Wicked Hungry

“They can’t get in, can they?” I ask Blaine.

He shakes his head. “No one can enter here without our permission. We paid a lot of gold for all this security.”

“A lot of good it got you, Whelan,” says the first knight, dismounting now.

“You will join us, then, Nye?” Blaine asks.

The knight nods. “If you will allow me to enter.”

“So you, too, fear my sigils?”

“I fear more to abuse the hospitality of the gatekeeper.”

I realize that’s the third time someone has called him that. “The what?” I ask, looking at Blaine as he puts his hand to the door. “What did he call you?”

But Blaine is walking inside, and he turns to Nye and me. “Please come in.”

We walk inside. The sigils tickle my skin; like static electricity in the air, they make my hairs stand on end.

We hear soft sobbing from the kitchen.

“Morgaine?” Blaine calls. “We’re here.”

We walk in together, to find Morgaine sitting at the kitchen table, weeping silently now, like my mom does when she’s cutting onions. But there are no onions here.

“They’re gone, Blaine,” she says. “They’ve taken them, and I don’t even know where.”

“Have they sent a message?” Blaine asks.

Just then, my phone buzzes in my pocket.

I pull it out.

“THE GATEWAY WILL CLOSE IN ONE HOUR.”

“What time is it?” I ask.

Blaine looks at the wall. “Eleven. Why?”

“My phone says the gateway will close at midnight.”

“Your phone says what?” Blaine asks, looking at me incredulously.

“That the gateway will be closing in one hour.”

“Well, let’s just hope it’s true,” Blaine says. “That it’s closing in one hour.”

Morgaine looks at him sharply. “How can you say that? What if they’re caught on the other side?”

“We’ll get them back,” Blaine says.

“How can you be so sure? I thought they were protected; I thought we made pacts with everyone — with Piper, the Unseelie, even this boy here,” she says, nodding at me.

“You were afraid of me?” I ask, astonished.

“Not afraid of you, per se, but of what you might represent, of who you might become,” Morgaine says. “But I still don’t understand what we did wrong. We were so thorough.”

“It must be Zach. He keeps talking about a big cleansing. That the city needs a detox.”