The Forever Blaze [3]

C H A P T E R - 2

"Calm down, we'll figure this out," Meredith promised as Sophie clutched her head and groaned from the migraine. "Are you doing anything different?"

She took a slow, deep breath and tried to think through her panic. "No—I can picture exactly where we need to go. But it's like my mind hits a wall when I try to take us there."

"Have you tried taking us somewhere else?" Keefe asked. "Maybe there's some sort of security around the Sanctuary to keep Teleporters away."

Sophie doubted that, since she was the only elf who could teleport. But it was worth a try. 

She just couldn't think of anywhere else to go. Her mind was racing a million directions, and they all ended in a blank.

"How about home?" Keefe asked. "Can you take us home?"

An image flashed in Sophie's mind, so sharp and clear it made her eyes water. Or maybe the tears were for the narrow crack that finally split through the darkness. She had just enough time to tighten her grip on Keefe's and Meredith's hand. Then the air filled with the boom of thunder as they blasted out of the void.

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They hit the ground hard, tumbling across sloshy grass before landing in a heap. Sophie sat up first, untangling herself from Meredith's arms as she stared at the gray, overcast sky.

"Uh . . . this isn't Havenfield," Keefe said, squinting at the narrow street lined with plain, square houses.

"I know." Sophie rallied her concentration, imagining an invisible barrier wrapping around her head to shield herself from the voices pummeling her brain. She'd forgotten how loud human thoughts could be. "This is San Diego."

Keefe scrambled to his feet. "You teleported us to a Forbidden City? Okay. That. Is. Awesome! Don't get me wrong—I could do without the whole almost-getting-trapped-in-the-endless-black-nothingness thing. But this is epic! I mean, that's a human!"

He pointed across the street, to a mom in a bright blue tracksuit, jogging with her baby in a stroller.

"Yeah, and she can probably hear us," Meredith whispered.

Surely everyone must've noticed the teenagers in strange clothes who fell out of the sky. But the few people outside weren't even glancing their way, too busy walking their dogs or checking their mail.

"I don't think they know we're here," Keefe said, pointing to a small black orb nestled in an overgrown daisy bush. There was another next to the trunk of the giant sycamore in the center of the yard. And three more along the path.

Obscurers.

Sophie had only seen the light-and-sound-bending gadgets once before, in the hands of her kidnappers when they ambushed her, Meredith and Dex on a bridge in Paris.

One of them was the same blond elf who'd tried to snatch her months earlier, posing as a human jogger on the very street she was standing on.

She walked to the spot where she'd faced him, hoping it might help her remember something new. But all she could see was his face—and Alden had already entered his image in the Council's database, which was supposed to have a record of every elf ever born.

No match had been found.

He was a ghost. Only real when he jumped out of the shadows, like the rest of the rebels in their dark hooded cloaks with a creepy eye in a white circle sewn onto the sleeve.

"Maybe we should go," Sophie said, glancing over her shoulder, half expecting to spot the rebels jogging toward them.

"Are you kidding? I've been dying to see where the Mysterious Miss Foster grew up." Keefe turned toward her weathered old house. "It's . . . small."