Still, I’m trying not to show how anxious I am, and I think I must be doing an okay job of it, because Jaxon doesn’t seem any more concerned than usual—and neither does Macy.
“Okay, we’re here,” my cousin says as we stop in front of the yellow door leading to her secret passage. She waves her hand in front of the door and whispers the same spell as last time, and then we’re inside.
It’s just as cool as I remember, with stickers and jewels and scented candles to lead the way. Everyone else seems to think so, too, because—despite the circumstances—there are a lot of oohs and aahs going on.
“I can’t believe you kept this place a secret,” Eden tells her as she stops to examine a sticker that reads, Life’s a Witch, Then You Fly. “It’s amazing.”
Macy shrugs. “I don’t know. I found it when I was a kid, and it’s kind of always been my place. I used to hide from my dad in here when it was bedtime.”
“Well, I, for one, plan on visiting a lot more once we get the Circle the fuck out of Katmere,” Xavier says with a wink at Macy. “It’s really cool.”
“It could use a dragon sticker or two,” Eden tells her as we wind our way around one of the twists and turns.
All of a sudden, Xavier leans over and licks Macy’s cheek. She shrieks and shoves at him, and a glance around tells me everyone else is about where I am—doubting what we just saw with our own eyes.
But Xavier just shrugs and points at a sticker directly above her head. “I was just following orders.”
I move closer and see that it reads, Get a Taste of Religion: Lick a Witch, and I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. Macy and Eden crack up right after me, followed quickly by the others. Xavier, the giant goofball, looks exceptionally pleased with himself, though I don’t know if it’s because he managed to get all of us to loosen up or if it’s because he licked Macy and didn’t get punched.
The last traces of tension are completely gone as we wind our way down the hallway until it dead-ends at a short ladder, right in front of a trapdoor at the top of the wall. “Next stop, planetarium,” Macy says as she scoots to the front of the group and climbs up the ladder. Seconds later, she pushes open the door and crawls forward a few feet before she disappears with a loud squeak.
Xavier bounds up the ladder after her. “Macy? Are you okay?” Suddenly, he falls through the hole, too—though the noise he makes is more of a yelp than a squeak.
The rest of us kind of look at one another in a “who’s next?” kind of way, but none of us actually makes a move for the ladder. Facing the Unkillable Beast, sure. Falling through a floor…maybe not.
Eventually, though, Eden rolls her eyes and mutters, “What the hell,” right before she charges up the ladder, two rungs at a time. A little more cautious than the other two, she sits on the top of the ladder and slides in feetfirst. Seconds after her head disappears, we hear a soft thump on the other side of the wall, followed by another, louder yelp.
“Think she landed on Xavier?” Mekhi asks, brows raised.
“Oh yeah,” Jaxon answers. “No doubt.”
Jaxon seems determined not to go before I do, so I climb the ladder next. I slide my feet in first, just like Eden did, then close my eyes and call out, “Incoming,” right before I let myself drop straight into darkness.
My feet hit solid wood and not werewolf, thank God, but it’s so dark, I can’t see two inches in front of my face. I do have the presence of mind to shuffle several feet away from the gaping hole above my head, but after that, I’m left fumbling for my phone as I call for my cousin.
“Right here!” she answers a little breathlessly, and when I finally get my flashlight app open and focused on her face, it’s hard to miss the fact that her lipstick is smeared in all the right places. Looks like Xavier found more to lick than just her cheek…
I gesture for her to wipe her mouth just as Jaxon comes through the hole and lands like a cat next to me with barely a sound. Flint slides through after him, whooping like he’s on a ride at Disneyland. Then again, when isn’t he whooping like he’s on a ride at Disneyland?
Mekhi brings up the rear, and then—flashlights out—we’re stumbling around, looking for a light switch.
Xavier hits the switch to turn on the giant star dome above us. Suddenly, all the constellations are rotating over our heads and it’s strangely cool to be in this room, with these people, as all the stars float by above us.
It reminds me of the night Jaxon first kissed me, when he took me out on the battlements to watch a meteor shower. I glance over at him, feeling all warm and fuzzy on the inside, only to find him already watching me, a soft smile lighting up the hard planes of his face. So I’m not the only one remembering that night.
“So, wanna tell us why we’re in the planetarium, Macy?” Flint asks.
She gives him a huge grin. “Well…I was practicing how to build portals with Mr. Badar, our Lunar Astronomy teacher, because I figured we might need one to get back to campus after the Boneyard. Anyway, Mr. Badar was demonstrating how to build a portal leaving campus instead of just returning, and so he built this one…” She holds her hands wide like she’s revealing a magic trick. “And he left it up so I could come back and study it!”
“Way to go, Macy.” Flint offers her a high five, and now we’re all grinning.
“Only thing is that portals tend to move a few inches with the rotation of the Earth, so this one could have moved.” She points to a corner in the room. “Last time I saw it, it was over there.”
I turn and take a few steps back, so I can see around the telescope to where she’s pointing, then scream as I feel myself falling, falling, falling for the second time in less than a week.
96
Get Fanged
No matter how hard I try to right myself as I tumble through the vortex—determined not to make the same mistakes this time—I end up falling out of the sky and flat on my face. It turns out, hitting the ground hurts even more than slamming into the planetarium stage did, and it knocks the breath out of me.
Still, I scoot along the ground, trying to get out of the way of the portal before someone else comes shooting through after me. Sure enough, I still haven’t managed to take a full breath before Jaxon lands on his feet nearby. The jerk.
“Are you okay?” he asks, crouching next to me.
I nod as my lungs finally start working again. “One of these days, you’re going to need to teach me how to do that without nearly dying,” I gasp.
He grins. “I’ll see what I can do.”