Blinding Light: A Sleeping Beauty and Snow Queen Remix

Chapter 9

"Well, we still have a contact in the border mountains, don't we?" Viviana asked.

Santiago shook his head. "We don't know that. No one in our family ever talks about her."

"Surely you haven't forgotten where she is!" Viviana paled. "I thought she told you where she was going."

"Not exactly." Jeanette mumbled. "She just told us to let her go, that she had to leave. And that was four years ago."

"Your cousin didn't give you any directions on how to find her?" Viviana asked, her heart plummeting. "None at all?"

Santiago held up a finger and reached into his sweatshirt pocket, pulling out what looked like a compass. But when he opened it, it was actually a chainless pocket watch.

"Just this." He said, sliding it across the table to Viviana.

Viviana picked it up and turned it over in her fingers. There were stars and Roman numerals engraved in the gold plating on the sides, and the back face of the watch was a night sky with the andromeda constellation. It glowed blue, but the magic was faint, like it was sealed away behind a glass door that was partially leaky.

Viviana dangled the watch down to Preisha, and she felt her familiar take it from her hands underneath the table. While Preisha analyzed it, Viviana used the opportunity to finish eating her fried egg sandwich and briefly scan her surroundings.

A business man was talking animatedly into his phone, a notepad open on the table as he scrawled frantic notes in blue pen. An elderly couple were chatting over waffles, and attempting to include their table mate, a teenage girl buried in her phone. The only other people directly in her sight were a family of four.

Preisha knocked the bag over and slunk toward the wall, and Viviana gaped at her.

"Preisha!" She hissed furiously. "Are you crazy? What are you doing?"

Her familiar held the watch in her paw up to the light, before setting it on the floor and smashing it with her tail.

Viviana snatched the watch away and Preisha scrambled back beneath the table into the bag before Viviana could blow a fuse. Her anger faded slightly when she saw the watch glowing more prominently now.

Preisha had activated the magic.

Viviana gave the watch back to Santiago who arched an eyebrow at her.

"Preisha." She answered his unspoken question. "She activated it. Somehow the magic was sealed."

"That makes sense." Santiago mumbled. "Izzy was always more cautious than us. It's probably slightly dangerous in some way. Or she just didn't want us finding her before she was ready."

"Of course she'd make a magic compass out of a watch filled with stars." Jeanette rolled her eyes with a heavy sigh. "Her obsession with the stars makes me think she must be closer to fey than the rest of us. Why else would she leave and go live closer to them?"

Viviana decided to ignore the last statement, which was decidedly false. The mountains were the same distance from the fey as Nazeen, so Jeanette could not possibly be right.

"So we have a compass to find her. How are we supposed to get from here to the mountains? Keep in mind, it should be fast." Viviana said.

"We were afraid you'd ask that..." Jeanette trailed off, putting her phone on the table and showing Viviana. "No matter what, we'll have to rent a car, but that isn't the main problem. The snowstorms haven't completely let up yet. There are still blizzarding conditions out toward the border mountains. As a result, certain highways have been closed, because Yaquir's government doesn't want people being stupid and getting themselves killed. Unfortunately, they're stopping us from getting exactly where we want to go. We could still take the kingdom highway, but it's longer, and eventually we'd have to go around to get on a way up the mountain."