“New York?”
“Yes. The School of Magical Arts in Manhattan. It just opened in the fall – oh, excuse us, sorry!” I grimaced and guided Gigi around a group of Crones doing a ritual, then hurried out of the courtyard. “Paulina was talking about it. She says it’s incredible. It’s all witches and shifters. We could go there, G.”
I stepped into the sand and the white powder crunched under my toes. The ocean rolled gently onto the shore a few feet in front of us. I could not believe the color of the water here. I wanted to put my feet in it. But then I took another step and a cold wall of air slammed into me. I gasped and froze – but then I remembered about the border. I looked down and smiled. We were back in our regular clothes.
When we got here before I’d been a bit startled to find myself suddenly in a white dress, until I saw everyone was – even the guys. Then Lennox had explained the magic of Crone island. Apparently we’d just crossed back out of their border because I was back in my black jeans and buffalo plaid shirt. That was all fine and dandy but it was a bit rude to force me back into my Doc Martens when my toes were enjoying the sand.
“What if I don’t want to go there?” Gigi asked softly.
I frowned and looked up at her. “What?”
“What if I don’t want to go to the school in New York?”
“Why don’t you want to?”
She shrugged and tugged on her burgundy cardigan. “I just want to go home.”
What? “But it’s magic school. It’s like Hogwarts in real life…?”
“I don’t want to go to magic school in real life. I just want to go to normal school. I want to live a normal human life.”
“Gigi, there’s a war coming. Were you not listening to Riah’s story? Have you not been paying attention? There’s a war with Lilith coming. LILITH.” I gestured between us. “And we’re not human.”
“What if I don’t want to fight in a war?” She pushed her hands into her hair.
Well I do. I gasped at my own thoughts. I hadn’t ever considered what I’d do if there was a war but I supposed I just got my answer. I wanted to help. Lilith wasn’t going to only attack The Coven. She’d come for everyone – humans and nonhuman. Mortal and immortal. The last war with her lasted a century and it caused humans to go to war against each other.
“Why are you so eager to go to war, Savannah?” She turned and looked at me like I had four heads. “If you stay with them or if you go to magic school, you risk going to war.”
“Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not,” I said, quoting one of my favorite characters ever simply because I couldn’t resist. She’d set me up so perfectly.
“You’re not Aragorn, Savannah! This isn’t Lord of the Rings!”
“Isn’t it?” I waved my arms around me wildly. “‘Cause let me tell you, ma’am, it’s startin’ to sound like it. Shit, if Riah ain’t the most Legolas lookin’ mothereffer, I don’t know who is—”
“More reason to stay away!”
I opened my mouth and then shut it. I shook my head and turned to face the ocean, trying to let the cool salty air bring my blood pressure back down. I didn’t understand the person standing next to me anymore, the person I thought was my best friend. The last month of stress and worry over Saffie had put a lot of unfamiliar tension between me and Gigi and I didn’t like it. I felt like I didn’t know her at all. Reading people had always been a skill of mine yet here I was being blindsided by the one person I’d let get close. How did I miss this side of her?
“Savannah—”
“Just don’t.”
“I’m just saying—”
“You want to run back to the Shire, I get it.” I glanced over at her. “But I want to ride into war to fight for my people.”
“So what are you saying?”
I cursed. “I don’t know, Gigi. But we just got Saffie back. I want to stay with her for a little while, I want to get to know the real her. Shit, she’s like three hundred years old. She lived through the Salem Witch Trials. The history that our entire town is built around and profits on she lived through it. She’s been back a matter of hours. I’ve barely got to speak to her. I’m not sure of anything other than the fact that I want to see my friend…and I think I deserve that.”
“I’m not saying you don’t. I was just trying to think long term.”
“Well maybe you need to think about it harder — who’s that?” I frowned and pointed to the horizon. “Is that…is that a person?”
“What? Where?”
“There,” I pointed straight out in front of us. “There’s a woman standing there.”
“Standing…on the ocean…”
I held my hand over my forehead to block the sun and squinted. It was a woman. And she was gorgeous. She was tall with long bright royal blue that fell to her hips and faded to a vibrant aquamarine. Yet then she turned her head and her hair looked purple. Her left arm was covered in a black tattoo that looked like flowers of some kind but she was a bit too far away to see. I couldn’t see her eyes either, but they reflected the sunlight the same way the ocean did.
“Gigi. Do not tell me you don’t see her.”
She exhaled. “I see her…how is she standing there?”
“Do you see wings?” I frowned. “Maybe she has wings?”
“What is she doing is the more important question.”
The blue-haired woman shouted something but it wasn’t in English and her voice barely carried to the shore.
Gigi groaned and grabbed my sleeve. “Maybe we should get The Coven?”
A wave rose up beside her and then a massive dark blue object shot into the sky. For a moment all I saw was the white cap on the wave and the color blue, but as it swung back down I saw suction cups and a sharp-pointed tip. The blue-haired woman grinned and then vanished into thin air. Four tentacles lined with teethed suction cups sliced through the water. A giant octopus head the size of a house rose up and let out a roar like some tiger-whale hybrid.
Gigi gasped.
I pointed to it like she hadn’t seen it and frowned. “Is that a fucking kraken?”
The kraken lunged forward, splashing through the shallow water and landing on the sand in front of us.
“Savannah!”
“Rhetorical question! Shit, RUN!”
But everything was moving in slow motion. I couldn’t get my legs to move fast enough. The ground shook under my feet like an earthquake. The kraken opened its mouth and roared again, revealing six rows of teeth that looked razor sharp. Tentacles sliced through the air. The tips of the tentacles opened like some Venus flytrap kind of horror.
Gigi screamed. Light flashed in my peripheral vision and then she turned into a penguin.
“DAMMIT, GIGI!”
I wrapped my arm around her penguin body and hoisted her in the air. She was heavy and slippery and definitely too big for my short-ass body but this wasn’t my first rodeo with her. I didn’t have time to think. It was fight or flight time and I knew I couldn’t fight a whole ass kraken by myself. I sprinted away from the shore as fast as I could, digging the balls of my feet into the ground, but the sand was soft so I kept sinking.