Avery has until the winter solstice to find the final piece in the fairy queen's plan. In exchange: his family's lives and freedom.
Logan has been protecting the town of Dwyer from mythological threats for years. The destruction of the entire world...
I get back home two hours later than planned. It isn't that I didn't notice the passing of time, it's that I didn't really care. My mother has left a note on my bedroom door. It's written in Spanish, but it says, Mateo, It is eleven o' clock when I am writing this. You are not home. If you are dead, I will find out on the news tomorrow morning. If you are not, you are in trouble. Great. I pull the note from the door and move it to my desk. The streetlight just outside our lawn sends light right through my window, birthing blue-black shadows on my blue-grey walls. I shuck my hoodie, my jeans, and my shoes and sprawl out on my bed. My mother cares, more than anyone I know, but she's also extremely reasonable. If, theoretically, I did not come home on time (which has only ever happened before for entirely forgivable reasons), she would not wait for me, as I would either be home and she could be mad at me in the morning, or I wouldn't be home at all. Either way, she wouldn't wait up. Now I have to sleep with her extremely vague threat hanging over my head. Also, Avery Lunden. I dig my hand under my pillow. The sheets are freezing cold against my legs and my face, but there's no way to warm them up besides continuing to lay on them. We didn't do anything, Avery and I. I guess that's what happens when you don't make plans. We just sat there, in the car, and talked. I couldn't see the horizon anymore by the time I knew I had to go home. I'm pretty sure that most people would consider that a shit date (that was a date, right? Neither of us really specified), but I don't think Avery did. My phone says it's after twelve, but I don't feel tired. I turn on my back; the coldness of the sheets is starting to really annoy me. I stare at the ceiling, sliced in thirds by three shades of shadow. I think of how I've never missed work. I think of crystals wrapped in wire. I think of a dead animal under a porch, the spirit that once forcibly inhabited it banished. I think of the cuts on my collarbone; they still sting. I think of Devi's skirt fluttering around her deep brown thighs. I think of Avery's half-illuminated profile in my car. It's raining. I sit up, pull my knees to my chest and rest my chin on them. The sheets won't let me sleep. I actually feel fine. I sit like that until I fall asleep.
Every morning in third through eighth grade, I had to wake up at five. Although I haven't had to do that in two years, my body still wakes itself up around that time every morning. Most of the time. On August eighteenth, I doubt I would have woken up before noon if Blaise hadn't texted me.
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My brain, still foggy from having being woken up by an automated ping! struggles to piece together the words I'm reading. Jay. Gig. Today. Shit. Jay does have a gig today--he's in an actually-pretty-good independent band--and I promised ages ago that I'd go. If I remember correctly, the venue/performance/whatever it's called opened around thirty minutes ago, and I have maybe thirty more minutes before Jay's group comes on. I slide so I'm standing up and continue my ever-persisting quest of trying to get my hair to stay out of my eyes. (It's immensely unfair; it isn't even long.)
