“I don’t know about everything, but the boy has read a lot.”

We’re walking down the section of the passage that has all my favorite stickers in it, and I grin as we pass one that says Hex the Patriarchy and another that’s a crystal ball with the words Looks Like You’re Screwed written inside it. It makes me laugh every time.

“So is that what you did on your mom’s birthday? Go to brunch and talk about books?”

“It’s where we started, yeah. Then we would go shopping and buy an outrageously expensive outfit just for fun. And we’d end up at home making the most fantastic birthday cake we could find. My mom was a great cook.”

“Yeah, she was,” Macy agrees. “Her cookies were legendary. She used to send them, even after you guys stopped visiting.”

My smile fades. “I always hated that we stopped coming.”

“Me too. The last time was that summer before I turned nine. Do you remember?”

“I do, yeah. We had picnics every day.” I haven’t thought about that summer in years.

“Every day,” she says with a laugh. “With all the cookies from your mom.”

“Yes.” If I close my eyes, I can still smell her lemon cookies. “And your mom’s tea.”

Macy’s smile fades. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her as we start down a staircase to the first floor. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay. My mom really did make the best tea blends,” Macy says with a shrug. “Especially the hibiscus one.”

“That was the red one, right?”

She nods.

She puts up the no-trespassing sign, and I don’t ask anything else about her mom. Losing my mom was one of the worst things that ever happened to me, but I can’t imagine how I would feel if she had just walked out one day. Just disappeared off the face of the earth after nine years of being Mom of the Year.

I was only ten when it happened, but I remember Uncle Finn freaking out. I remember dozens of late-night phone calls between him and my parents. My dad even flew up to Alaska for a few weeks when it happened to help my uncle talk to police. Eventually it was concluded that no foul play was involved, that Aunt Rowena had simply decided to not come home one day. Uncle Finn didn’t believe it.

He’d searched for her for years, to no avail. I can’t imagine what that must have been like—for him or for Macy.

I hug my cousin as we head down the passage to one of the exit doors on the first floor. She hugs me back and tells me I’m the best cousin ever. Then we push the final door open and step out into the slowly melting snow to find Hudson, Flint, Luca, Eden, Jaxon, and Mekhi already waiting on us.

“It’s about time,” Hudson says. They’re the first words he’s spoken to me since last night, and I barely keep my smile under control. Sure, they’re surly and not exactly polite, but that doesn’t bother me. Hudson is Hudson, after all, and I’m sure he slept about as well as I did.

“You’re welcome to get there on your own,” Macy says and gives him a sharp look, then walks toward the edge of the clearing, tugs open her magic bag, and pulls out her wand.

Hudson glances at me like, what’s that all about, but I just shrug and look as innocent as I can. No need for him to know I was ruminating about him earlier.

Everyone stands back as Macy sets eight candles on the ground, evenly spaced in a circle around us. “Gwen helped me create a portal big enough for all of us to go at once, since she’s visited Giant City before. These candles will keep this one available to us, and correct for the rotation of the Earth, too.”

Macy’s been practicing building portals all week with Gwen, and I am so proud of her when she creates this one on her first attempt. One minute, we’re standing on a field, patches of grass visible beneath the melting snow, and the next we’re sliding through the earth, the walls of the portal flying by so fast, it looks like we’re inside a brilliant kaleidoscope.

I reach out with a hand and let my fingers flutter through the jeweled-tone lights, because of course Macy’s portal sparkles like a rainbow. I turn to share my delight with Hudson, but he’s already grinning. He knows how special this is, too.

Before I know it, the rainbows are gone, and we’re standing in the middle of a forest of massive trees, sun-dappled light peeking between their branches.

Well, everyone else is standing. I’m kneeling on the mossy forest floor because apparently, I still can’t figure out how to land on my feet.

Hudson helps me up as Macy grins at everyone. “Pretty kick-ass, right?”

“So kick-ass,” Hudson tells her. “You made it look easy.”

“Maybe it was easy,” she tells him, still a little snooty because of our conversation earlier.

“Well then, that just makes you more kick-ass, doesn’t it?” he counters. And she folds like a bad poker hand, because Hudson is just that charming when he wants to be.

The two of them high-five while the rest of us look around. And realize that no matter how awesome the portal is, we still have a problem.

Because there’s no city—Giant or otherwise—anywhere around.

50

So Down-to-Earth

“So what do you think?” Flint asks Macy with a wide smile. “Getting any earth vibes?”

“I’m not a seismograph,” she tells him with a roll of her eyes. “I can’t just read the earth hundreds of miles in all directions.”

“I thought that was the plan?” Luca asks, sliding a hand around Flint’s waist as he joins us.

“The plan is for me to tap into the earth magic they use to keep themselves and their city hidden,” she answers, rummaging in her magic pack around her waist and then inside her backpack. “Which I’m going to try to do.”

“What can we do to help?” Eden asks as she comes up behind Macy.

“Stay out of my way,” she says, even as she shoots Eden a grin over her shoulder. “I know it goes against the dragon superiority code, but this is one of those times when witches have to do the heavy lifting.” She flexes her fingers together, like she’s preparing for a workout at the gym.

“Why don’t you try to help her, Grace?” Hudson says, and all eyes turn to me.

“I thought this was a witch thing,” I tell him uneasily. “How can a gargoyle help?”

“Earth magic is what heals you. You probably have some kind of affinity for it.”

Ugh. I hate even thinking about the day Hudson buried me alive to save my life. I know he had to do it, but it’s still one of the most awful things that has ever happened to me. Maybe even the most awful, and I include the whole Lia human-sacrifice debacle in that. I’ve wanted to ask him dozens of times how he knew to do that, but I’m smart enough to know the panic attack doing so would unleash. I have enough panic attacks these days without deliberately courting another one. But that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? I drop my head and sigh, because no matter how much I want to deny it, Hudson’s right. I have got to get better about dealing with conflict. And I guess there’s no time like the present to start.

I turn back to Hudson, but he’s not where I expect him to be. Instead, he’s moved closer, and as our gazes meet, I can see the encouragement I need in his bright-blue eyes. He wants me to ask the question, needs me to trust him enough to take a leap of faith.

And he’s right. I know he is. I’ve wanted to know the answer to this question for weeks—am I really going to let a little fear stop me from finding out more about my gargoyle? And about myself?

I take a deep breath, blow it out slowly. And ask, “So, umm… How did you know burying me in the earth would heal me?”

The smile on his face is enough to light up the entire forest as he answers, “I remembered reading in one of the books in the library that gargoyles were immune to all forms of elemental magic—earth, air, fire, and water. We already knew you could control water and we already knew you could channel magic, so I figured gargoyles weren’t so much immune to the magic as they were able to deflect it—to channel it away from them in much the same way they could channel it into them.

“And if that was true, then you could manipulate it. You manipulated water, so why not all the other elements, too?”

I wait for my heart to start beating too fast, for my lungs to empty of air at the reminder of being buried alive. But it doesn’t happen. Instead, all I can think about is finding out what else I might be able to do. “But how did you go from thinking about elemental magic in general to knowing earth magic could heal me?”

He lifts a brow even as he gives me a self-satisfied smile. “The Unkillable Beast, of course.”

Macy leans against a tree as her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “What does he have to do with earth magic?”

“He was huge, remember?” Hudson glances at her before turning back to me. “He looked like he’d swallowed boulders for breakfast for the last hundred years.”

“And?” Flint asks. He looks as fascinated with all this as I am.