Courage (44 page)

She opened her mouth to ask about Buffalo, but the invisible wall slammed into her. She pinwheeled off the train and onto the platform, then caught her balance. The train door rumbled shut with a metallic thud, an explosive note sounded from the nose of the train, and the wheels started chugging. “Wait!” She took no more than three steps before she stopped and gaped at the empty tracks. The train was gone. Not vanished; gone. It had sped off like a bullet. There was no way her superhuman speed could catch up with it, much less keep up.

She heard amiable laughter behind her. She spun around and held up her fists. Once her knuckles were near her chin, she remembered her sword, but she didn’t draw it. It’d only make her look ridiculous if she dropped her guard to draw a weapon she didn’t know how to fight with.

A boyish-looking girl leaned against the brick building with her hands in her coat pockets, the sleeves bunched up by her scrawny elbows. The girl smiled, her silvery eyes looking at her through a mop of untidy hair held down by a Borsalino cap. She wore skinny jeans and Chuck Taylor sneakers, and she had wings as well. Membranous ones. The girl pushed off the wall with one shoulder and the sun gleamed off them, creating a rainbow in each section of membrane. Fairy?

“How did you get here?” the girl said as she drew closer.

Roxie lowered into a fighting stance and the girl stopped approaching. “I fell asleep. This is the strangest and creepiest dream I’ve ever had.”

The girl snorted a laugh, baring pointed canine teeth. “You’re not dreaming. You’re very much awake. How did you get here?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because in order to be here, you have to either be a Numina, or be dead. You are neither.” The fairy girl tilted her head. “How did you get here?”

Roxie had never heard of a Numina. “I...” She thought a moment, cycling through her memory of releasing Frava, then chasing after Nexus. “I... fell. Into darkness. I don’t know how I got here. Where are we?”

“The Realm of the Dead.”

Finish the trilogy with
Determination
!