The Marked Girl (5 page)

Cedric and Kat chased Merek across the gray stone, leaving the odd girl behind. Eventually, the earth stopped shaking again, but Merek didn't slow. He ran wildly, blindly. When the gray stone in front of him reached an end, he pulled himself up a low wall and onto a patch of brown earth. Cedric followed, then Kat.

Merek only stopped when he reached a point where he could run no farther. A long, low fence spanned the length of the ground in front of him. It looked like no fence that Cedric had ever seen, however. It wasn't made of wood, but of pieces of iron that shot from the ground and wound around each other, creating diamondlike patterns. Merek clutched at the thin pieces of interwoven iron with both hands, his chest heaving.

“Merek . . . ,” Cedric started. But Merek wouldn't look at him. He threw one fist against the fence, which made an echoing, clinking noise in response.

“You think you know everything,” Merek said, his breath ragged. “But you were wrong. Now look at us.”

“We will get home again,” Cedric said. “We will find a way to open the portal, go back and take Malquin by surprise—”

“How?”

Cedric said nothing. He thought of his father's words back in the dungeon, something about scrolls. He hadn't had much time to think about them while escaping through the tunnels,
but now he tried to remember.

The only scrolls he could think of were part of a legend. They could supposedly open new portals from the Old World to Caelum. Cedric had always thought they were myth, but maybe . . .

“Cedric will find a way,” Kat responded. She sounded confident, sure.

“My father told me how to get home,” Cedric said, trying to sound just as confident. “We
will
go back.”

Merek narrowed his eyes, but he was either out of responses or was too angry to form words.

A noise like screaming cut through the air and grew louder. Lights shone in the distance, coming from the same direction as the screaming. The lights weren't from torches, however; at least, they were like no torches Cedric had ever seen. To begin with, they were red and blue. Also, they rotated. As they grew nearer, Cedric could see the lights seemed to be attached to something—something large that hurtled toward them, just on the other side of the fence. It was boxy, big, and moving fast. A beast?

“What is that?” Merek screamed. “What is that?”

Cedric said nothing as the beast approached. He could see now that it was black and white underneath the swirling lights. Cedric held out his sword, but it felt off, different. How had he not noticed sooner? The sword wasn't the wrath's weapon he'd brought from Caelum. It was lighter, and under the hilt it was wrapped in a dense fabric instead of leather. The blade itself was no blade at all. It was not any kind of metal that Cedric
knew—not steel or silver or bronze. Cedric ran his finger easily over the blunted edge.

It was worthless.

Cedric's grip on the nonsword loosened, and it fell to the ground. Again, he wondered what kind of world this was, where everything seemed false and unreal.

The beast with red-and-blue lights moved toward them, and now Cedric could see actual letters along its hide—LOS ANGELES—and smaller writing underneath.

He looked at his hands, which were empty, open. Exposed. His sword was gone. His last link to Caelum was gone. A fear stronger than any he had ever known gripped Cedric, and he couldn't move. He stood between Merek and Kat, frozen, watching as the beast grew closer, knowing they had no way to fight it off. They had no backup, no weapons, no knowledge of anything around them.

They were entirely alone.

L
iv pulled the curtains wide to let in the harsh morning light.

As she crossed her small bedroom, she avoided looking into the cracked mirror above her cheap flea-market bureau. She didn't need confirmation of the dark circles under her eyes or the knots in her hair. She knew from experience that looking into a mirror in direct California sunlight after getting only three hours of sleep could not end well for anyone.

Stretched across Liv's tiny twin bed, Shannon slept on, face smushed against the pillow, last night's clothes twisted around her body. Liv smiled, grabbed her phone from her nightstand, and clicked open the camera app. She turned on the flash, inched closer to the bed, and lowered the phone until Shannon's half-open mouth was centered in the screen.

Shannon groaned as the bright light flashed across her face.

“What're you doooinnng?” Shannon mumbled, half turning over and crossing her arms over her face. “Too early.”

“Actually, we're late.” Liv smiled and snapped another
picture. “Gotta get up.”

“Ugh, no.”

“Come o-on,” Liv said in a singsong voice. Then, less quietly, “You promised, remember? You said if I went out with you last night, you'd drive me to my appointment in the morning.” Liv pulled the comforter off of her best friend, causing her to curl up like a worm exposed to sunlight. “And it is now officially morning.”

Shannon groaned, her eyes still closed. “You're so not my favorite person right now.”

“What if I buy you a coffee . . . ?”

“Hmmgh.”

“From Coffee Bean?”

Shannon exhaled, then opened her eyes. “Fine.”

Liv laughed as Shannon finally sat up and ran her hand tentatively through her newly shortened hair. It was matted to her head, and its tips—which had also recently been dyed red—stuck up in funny angles around her ears. Her mascara ran from the corner of her eye down to her ear on one side, and her long, dangling earring had left an imprint in her cheek from when she'd slept on it in the night.

Shannon looked in the cracked mirror and shook her head. “Ugh. This is gonna take some time.”

“We don't have time. I'm supposed to meet with the museum acquisitions lady at ten.”

“Ten a.m. During the last week of summer. Just feels so wrong.” Shannon picked up a limp strand of hair and let it fall back against her forehead. Then she pulled out the tube of red
lipstick she'd worn the night before and reapplied it to her lips, smacking them together when she was done. While Liv only really dressed up when Shannon dragged her out to all-ages clubs, Shannon treated every single day like it was a Saturday night.

Liv slipped a jacket over her shoulders to cover up what Shannon mockingly called the only evidence of her “inner wild child,” an ill-gotten tattoo that she preferred to ignore. She slipped on a pair of Chucks and went systematically through her room, erasing any signs of mess. First, she made up her bed, pulling the sheet into tight hospital corners and arranging the pillows by the headboard. She collected a few stray hair ties from the floor and piled them neatly on her dresser, next to the one decoration in the room that was truly hers—a framed photo of herself and Shannon they'd taken during an excursion to Amoeba Records. Every other decoration in the room had been placed there by her foster mother, Rita.

The small guest bedroom still had the mothball-smelling floral bedspread and generic framed pictures of kittens on the walls that were there when Liv had moved in a year before. Most of her important belongings were hidden away in the closet—her meager camera equipment, sketchbooks, and photographs. One of the first things she had learned as a foster kid was to keep anything she valued hidden away or locked up. It also helped to know that she could always pack up her whole life with five minutes' notice.

Liv's eyes tracked over the nearly spotless room. The only item truly out of place was the heavy sword, which rested against the wooden bureau. She picked it up for the first time
in weeks and was again instantly surprised by its weight. At first glance, the sword could almost pass as fake, the kind of cheap item sold at Comic-Con or a ren faire, until she actually felt its heft in her hands.

Liv was relieved to finally be getting rid of it. She'd had a hard time shaking that weird night of the film shoot from her mind. Not only had she had to completely change her shooting plans—thanks to Jeremy being too freaked out by the earthquake to return to the river—but now she had this unwanted prop as a reminder of that night. Every time she saw it, she thought of the strangers in nightgowns who'd shown up out of nowhere before disappearing just as quickly, the shaking ground, the lost equipment. Hopefully once the sword was out of sight, that night and its unanswered questions would be out of her mind as well.

Right after bringing the sword home, Liv had immediately called her caseworker, Joe, to tell him about what had happened. She'd first thought to call the police, but then realized that a teenage foster kid in possession of a deadly weapon probably wasn't the most credible witness. So Joe had called the police for her, and they'd said the sword hadn't been reported as stolen. They'd agreed to keep an eye out for the weird teens or reports of missing weapons, but after two months, Joe hadn't heard from them. He was the one who suggested that Liv donate the sword to a museum if she wanted to get rid of it so badly. It looked old enough to probably belong there anyway.

“Let's go,” Liv said to Shannon as she carefully walked across the room, holding the sword and its crazy sharp edges as far from
her skin as possible. She led Shannon through the tiny hallway with its nicotine-stained walls and into the kitchen, where she frowned at the dirty dishes in the sink. As soon as they reached the living room, Liv came to a halt. Rita was passed out cold on the sofa. Just like Shannon, she was still wearing last night's clothes. Her heels and purse rested under the coffee table near two empty bottles of wine.

“Looks like we weren't the only ones out late, celebrating the end-time,” Shannon said.

Liv pulled Shannon slightly away from the doorway and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Shh, don't wake her. And enough with the dramatic apocalypse stuff.”

“Well, what would
you
call four earthquakes in three months?” Shannon asked, her voice as close to a whisper as it could get. Which was not very.

“I call it summer in LA. Now come on.”

Liv set the sword carefully against the wall and walked slowly toward Rita, navigating around some tubes of lipstick that had somehow found their way out of Rita's purse and onto the floor.

Up close, Rita looked peaceful. Her usually teased and sprayed hair was flattened into submission against a couch pillow, and her eyes fluttered as if she was dreaming. The heavy curtains in the living room were slightly parted, letting in a crack of daylight to fall across Rita's face. Through them, Liv could see Rita's useless, broken-down car sitting in the driveway. Next to it was Liv's still crappy, but at least functioning, Toyota. It wasn't pretty, but it had taken Liv two after-school jobs to save
up for the down payment, and she was proud of it. Ordinarily, she'd be driving her own car to the museum. But this week, she'd lent it to Rita until Rita made enough tip money to get her own car fixed. Liv figured it was the least she could do.

Rita wasn't the best foster parent Liv had ever had. That honor went to Chuck and Marty, the elderly couple who'd taken her in when she was eight. They were the ones who'd bought her her first camera, who'd shown her
E.T.
for the first time. They had encouraged her obsession with movies, even letting her stay up late to watch old classics like
The Godfather
and
Casablanca
with them on their sixteen-inch TV. Liv could have stayed with them forever, but unfortunately Marty had to move back to Australia to take care of his sick mom, and Chuck had gone with him. They left Liv behind.

Since then, though, the foster family situation had seriously declined. Liv had moved from house to house, getting bounced out of some, running away from others. Rita wasn't perfect, but she treated Liv with respect and left her alone most of the time. They got along.

Liv drew an old afghan down from the back of the couch and spread it across Rita. She picked up the empty wine bottles and carried them into the kitchen, careful not to clank them against each other as she lined them up neatly on the countertop. Now that her summer program was over, she'd have some time to spend cleaning up the house before school started up.

Sparing one last glance at her foster mom, Liv once again picked up the sword and motioned to Shannon. Together, they slipped out through the screen door and into the hot late-August morning.

Shannon pulled her mom's minivan over to the side of the road, right across the street from the Natural History Museum. She yawned, then reached out to take a gulp from the iced coffee that sat in her cup holder.

“How long will this take, you think?”

Liv shrugged. “Maybe like an hour or so? I haven't exactly done this before. Sure you don't want to come with?” Liv asked.

“Tempting, but since I already have this baby out of the house,” Shannon said, patting the minivan's steering wheel, “might as well take advantage. Think I'm going to swing down through the fashion district, see if there's any sales.”

“Your mom's gonna kill you.”

Shannon shrugged. Her parents had grounded her when they discovered Shannon had spent her summer not volunteering at the library like she'd claimed, but acting in Liv's movie. Both conservative Minnesota transplants, Shannon's parents weren't too pleased about their daughter's obsession with becoming the next Jennifer Lawrence. Not that their disapproval stopped Shannon. Nothing ever stopped Shannon.

“What are they going to do, lock me in my room? There's, like, laws against that,” Shannon said with a grin. “Text me when you need me to pick you up?”

“Sounds good.” Liv opened the door handle, maintaining a careful grip on the sword. Before she got out, Shannon reached over and grabbed at her sleeve.

“Are you sure you just want to give that thing up? I mean, it could be worth something.”

Liv lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah, and getting mixed up in the
arms market is exactly what I need on my college resume.”

“For all you know, that thing could pay for college. Or your next movie.”

This gave Liv pause for just a moment, but then shook her head. “Not worth the trouble.”

“Please. You love trouble.”

“Uh, I think you're confusing me with you,” Liv said as she hopped out of the van.

“If you say so. See you in a bit.”

As Shannon pulled away from the curb, Liv turned to face the museum. Though she'd lived in Los Angeles her whole life, she'd never actually been here before. She walked up the path toward the front door, passing vendors selling fruits and bags of chips. She was quickly surrounded by families and groups of kids trailing stressed-looking nannies.

Liv's eyes flicked over the crowd. Her mind went through its regular mental checks, running through the same questions it did whenever she saw the unfamiliar faces of kids around her age—how many of them were fair-haired, bespectacled boys a couple of years older than her, and how many were freckled young girls who tripped over their own feet when they walked? It had been nearly ten years since Liv had seen her biological brother and sister, and it was unlikely she'd run into them by chance, and unlikelier still that she'd recognize them when she did.

But she couldn't help checking, every time.

No boys or girls she saw matched the outdated images of Peter and Maisy that she clung to in her mind, and Liv breathed
a sigh of both disappointment and relief. Once the flickering hope had passed, it was easier to get on with her day. She gripped the sword closer and made her way quickly inside.

The first thing Liv noticed was a giant skeleton of a T. rex, one she recognized from dozens of television shows and movies that had been shot at the museum. As she walked around it, Liv got that strange feeling she always got when she encountered something in person in LA that she had first seen on a television screen—a sense of inclusion, like she was being let in on a secret that no one else knew. Like she was seeing behind the scenes of something amazing.

Liv pulled out her phone and rechecked the email she'd been sent by the assistant to the museum's acquisitions director. She was supposed to meet with the director, who would appraise the sword and hopefully take it off her hands as a donation made to the museum in her name. The hilt of the sword felt hot in Liv's hands as she made her way up to the museum's member desk. An older woman with glasses looked Liv up and down, raising one eyebrow when she saw the sword point dangling down by Liv's knee. Liv cleared her throat and explained she had an appointment. The woman said nothing, but turned to a monitor on the desk. She typed into it for a few minutes, then gestured for Liv to follow her.

The desk woman led Liv through a series of hallways and deposited her on a wooden chair outside of a door labeled “Acquisitions.”

“Should I just wait?” Liv asked.

“Dr. Clark knows you're here,” the woman said, before
turning around and leaving Liv alone in the hall.

She didn't see another person for forty-five minutes.

Though the entrance to the museum had been bustling, this back hallway was nothing but stillness and silence. Liv's ears perked up whenever she heard the sound of footsteps in the distance, but they always trailed off before coming her way. The Acquisitions door remained firmly shut. She played with her phone until finally the door creaked open, and a mousy-looking man peered out into the hall.

“Olivia Phillips?”

“That's me,” Liv said, standing.