I break into a sprint. Chatty Cat’s eyes are saucers, his claws dug into the ramen for dear life. My package of tampons straight up bounces out of my wheelbarrow.
Damn.
I barely hesitate before plunging into the dark woods. I’m hoping the guard won’t follow me. Most are terrified of the forest at night, especially this close to the Shimmer.
I crane my neck back, only to see the guard standing at the edge of the tree line. He lifts his pistol, squints, and then a red flash lights up his gun’s muzzle. At the same time, a loud pop splits the air.
The bullet hits the tree next to me, leaving a quarter-sized hole in the bark and propelling wood splinters into my jeans.
“You mother cracker!” I growl, sending my lollipop tumbling from my lips as I plunge deeper into the forest. My heart is lodged in my throat and I’m breathing so loud I can’t hear anything else. My too-loose jeans sag low on my sharp hip bones. My belt is fixed at the last hole, but still it’s not tight enough.
Yanking my jeans up, I blindly burrow deeper and deeper into the forest.
Once upon a time I could run a fairly decent mile, even in this infernal heat. But we had a herd of cattle then, a couple good dairy cows, some chickens, plus the biggest garden this side of Texas.
Hard to make your muscles obey when you have nothing to entice them with but saltine crackers and gruel.
Staggering across the carpet of underbrush, I fight the darkness nibbling my vision to jagged crumbs. Limbs claw at my bare arms and rip my tank top.
Panic strangles my heart, and I blindly punch farther into the woods. If I’m caught, my family will suffer.
Since they cordoned off our lands and closed the last of our trade routes, everyone in the Tainted Zone—the long four-hundred mile wide border zone that goes vertical from North Dakota to the tip of Texas—is struggling.
The government from the Untouched Zone in the East sends us food and water, but the Millers confiscate everything that arrives. For safekeeping, they promise.
Not sure when safekeeping something turned into selling it back to the people for five times what it’s worth, but when you’re as rich and powerful as Cal and his family, you get to make shit up.
Righteous fury steels my resolve. I tug my lips between my teeth until sharp pain punches away the dizziness. Coppery warmth pools beneath my tongue as I pause to get my bearings.
Surely the guy didn’t follow me this far.
A yellow disc of light sweeps over the trunk of a huge oak ten feet to my right.
Oberon’s luck!
Dragging in a lungful of air, I try to force the now half-deflated wheelbarrow tire over a fallen tree, sending the rickety contraption reeling sideways. I watch in horror as the contents spill out onto the forest floor.
Chatty Cat lands on his feet. Ears flattened, he pins me with a look of supreme annoyance.
I so feel you, Chatty.
Before I have time to process what this means for my family, my gaze locks onto something even more dangerous than the man behind me.
The Shimmer. It sweeps across the forest a few steps away, an undulating wall of iridescent magic. Compared to the muddy-brown of the trees, it burns bright and metallic and beautiful. The kind of beautiful that takes your breath away and makes you feel both hollow and full inside.
On the other side is the Everwilde, which is just a fancy name for the realm of the Fae. Or, as I like to call it, the place you should never ever visit unless you want to die.
I crane my neck, trailing the twinkling curtain up up up into the moonlit sky.
“Hands up!” the guard calls from behind me. His voice is shaky and quick. He sees the Shimmer too.
A warning prickle scrapes down my spine, but it has nothing to do with the guard or the gun pointed at my back.
Everything goes still, as if, this near to the Everwilde, there is no sound. No life. Nothing.
I should turn around and give myself up. Being this close to their world is madness. I can feel the danger of it sweeping over me like a drug, ramping up my pulse, my breathing.
One roided-out guard with a gun is child’s play compared to what awaits me on the other side.
“Don’t make me shoot you,” the guard growls. His voice is closer; he’s no more than seven feet away.
I glance over my shoulder and immediately recognize the guard. Bryce Hawkins, a heavyweight wrestler a year ahead of me in school.
“Summer?” he barks, spitting my name out like a curse. “What the hell are you doing?”
I whip around, hoping to hide my face, but it’s too late. He’s already seen me.
Craptastic. No way Cal lets this go.
Reminder to self: criminals wear disguises for a reason.
In my mind’s eye, I picture the white farmhouse in the distance. The dark shapes bobbing around the lawn could be goats or even cows—if any of those were around anymore. But I know that each blob is a child. An orphan, like me. Rescued from horrible situations I can’t bear to revisit.
I can’t leave them. If Cal or his father catch me . . . there is no law here. No courts or justice. In the borderlands, the Millers are the law—which means I’m screwed.
Unless . . .
I take a step toward the Shimmer, heart thundering in my chest.
It’s mesmerizing. Completely, utterly wonderful in its strangeness. The way the rainbow surface seems to move and slide like the shell of a bubble. A breeze emanates from the other side, cool and biting against my bare arms. A few fluffy snowflakes break through and cling to my cheek where they immediately turn to water.
In this infernal heat, it seems impossible that only a few feet away lies a place of frost and magic and strange, dangerous beings. A place where day is night and summer is winter and the ordinary is extraordinary.
I place a hand on the wall. It’s frigid and smooth and gelatinous, not at all solid like I imagined.
“Wait.” Bryce’s nervous voice marks him only a few feet away. “Please don’t go any farther, I’m warning you.”
My fingertips indent the slippery surface. The idea that if I push real hard I could break through comes over me in a wave of impossibility.
This wall is supposed to be impenetrable.
The only time something goes into the world of the Fae is when they want it to. Usually a foolish mortal who bartered with a Fae and then couldn’t pay the price, or let a Fae give them something without understanding the consequences.
An Evermore never gives anything for free.
“Come to me before—before I’m forced to shoot you.” Bryce is terrified, his voice pleading. He refuses to draw any nearer. “Please, Summer. If Cal knows I let you get away . . .”
Chatty Cat brushes against my leg. Then he disappears through the Shimmer like it’s mist. Holy shit.
If Chatty Cat can do it . . .
Clutching my bow tight, I say a prayer and lunge through the Shimmer, straight into the Everwilde.
That was easy. Probably too easy.
Bryce yells at me on the other side, but it’s warbled and hard to make out. Then the mofo shoots at the wall a few times. The gunfire sounds like those little fireworks you throw onto the ground.
The bullets don’t pierce the Shimmer. They don’t even indent it.
After that, everything goes quiet.
3
The moment I pass through the Shimmer, a blast of icy air envelops me, and it takes a second to make my lungs work again. When they finally do, I watch in wonder as my breath spews on in a milky cloud and spreads through the forest.