The Legend of the Eight: The Hunted (Book 5)

1: Three Months Later

"Look," she said after a while, leaving her ring in place. "You said it yourself when we first met. He's known where to find me all these years but never did. I have one shot here, Finn. One shot to make my dad fall in love with me and want to be my dad again. I can't blow it."

"Is that why you've been killing yourself trying to master Shadow Magic on your own?" Finn asked, his violet eyes searching for answers in hers. "Love, you've got nothing to prove to him. I know he's not exactly father of the year but he's still your dad."

"He already left once, Finn," she reminded him even though he already knew the story of Alessandro Domingo as well as his own. "What if I meet him and I scare him off? What if he meets me and he's disappointed because I'm not as talented as he thought I'd be? Or I remind him of my mom and he doesn't want to see me? He already left once. What's to stop him from leaving again?"

"Look at me," Finn said, grabbing hold of his shoulders and forcing her eyes on his. "And listen good. You are extremely talented, extremely powerful, and every bit as amazing as every father wishes their daughter would become. You are more than enough, love. And if he doesn't fall in love with you for you the second he meets you, he's an idiot."

Phoebe smiled and for a second, just a second, she believed him. But then the moment passed and she was back to her usual, frantic, nervous self.

PHOEBE RETURNED FROM HER MEETING with Finn just in time to catch breakfast in the Dining Hall. She sat at a table with the same people she'd been sitting with for months now—Drew Briggs, Nicole Bradley, Liam Heart, Kate Diamond and Alex Hummel. These were her people. Her tribe.

She sat down with a tray of strawberry pancakes and almost immediately, her appetite disappeared. Drew leaned to her and kissed her shoulder, but unlike all the times before when that kiss would relax her, it made her even jumpier.

"Hey darling," he said in that smooth as butter voice of his. "You were up pretty early this morning."

She'd forgotten that in her hurried effort to meet with one man, she left another in her bed. Worse yet, the one she left in her bed was her husband—kind of.

Before Phoebe, Drew, and the rest of the Eight did the one thing they thought would fix the Three Realms (going back in time and preventing an attack on the Veil), Phoebe and Drew decided to get married. And while the trip through time erased many things from the timeline, including their wedding, the couple acted married still. Their wings were on and they used words like husband and wife in place of boyfriend and girlfriend. So why had she been lying to him for months now?

"Yeah, I wanted to get a run in while it was still dusk," Phoebe lied seamlessly. "Figured it was safer."

"Still no Bess?" Nicole asked of Phoebe's real, non-husband, roommate, Bess Walker.

Somewhere between ten and twelve weeks ago (Phoebe had been too busy balancing her double life to keep track), Bess Walker went missing. The first few days, Phoebe thought maybe Bess had taken a page out of Wil Diamond's book and left on her own accord. But when the days turned into a week and then a week turned into two, she realized it was more than that.

It was the Doctor.

Since his arrival last fall, the Doctor had made himself the most feared individual in the Realm. He tore holes through the Veil so he could slip in and out and planted land mines around it to deter anyone from discovering this. He'd also been kidnapping Alties (wizards whose magic was not entirely Pure) to turn them into creatures of various species. As the weeks went by, whenever someone went missing, she knew it was the Doctor's doing. Sooner or later, the missing people all turned up, morphed into a creature with no name, stuck to a tree in the East Woods with an arrow through the chest. The victim count passed twenty last week.

"Maybe she got away," Nicole said optimistically, pushing bites of omelet around her plate. "Maybe she's safe."

DUE TO HER EARLY MORNING rendezvous with Finn and late-night Shadow Magic crash courses, Phoebe found herself falling asleep during most of her classes. On that particular day, Dr. K and Levi Heart's Study of Magical Beings (which had become Levi's Study of Magical Beings in Dr. K's prolonged absence) provided the perfect backdrop for a mid-morning nap. Within the first ten minutes of class, Phoebe's head was on her desk and her hair had fallen in her face to cover her shut eyes.

Usually during those naps, Phoebe found herself dreaming. Odd, she thought, because she was never much of a dreamer. It was the stress or the fact that she'd been overworked or exhausted. Or maybe it was something else. Something magical.

In the dream, she was in an empty room with mirrors on all sides. There were no windows or doors. Just a floor and the mirrors. Phoebe walked over to one of the walls and knocked. She knocked hard enough that the whole thing shook but it didn't break. It didn't even crack.

"Hello?" she called and her voice bounced around until the echoes became deafening.

She took her fist and hit it against the mirror, hoping to shatter it. The wall wobbled but remained intact and she huffed. It was always like that. She was trapped in the mirrored room and the only way she could escape was to wake up.

"Wake up," she said to her reflection. "Wake up!"

The girl in the mirror looked like her. She was the same five-feet-two-inches tall as Phoebe and her light brown hair was tied back in the same tiny braid with a single stripe of purple peeking out on the side. Her skin was dotted with freckles and her eyes were a vibrant lilac color. Every move Phoebe made, the girl in the mirror mimicked. She was a perfect reflection.

Until Phoebe began yelling at her to wake up and the girl in the mirror didn't open her mouth. Instead, she curled her lips into a smirk and then raised a single finger to them.

"Shhh..." she said and Phoebe's brows knit together into a frown.

The girl in the mirror took her hand and waved, gesturing for Phoebe to follow her. She ran the length of the wall before jumping to the next one and Phoebe followed along curiously. There, at the far end of the wall, the girl in the mirror bent down to the ground. Phoebe watched and then the girl looked up, holding something in her hand. Phoebe reached for it but when she did, she only felt the cool, smooth glass. She whipped her head up, confused and then right before her eyes, the girl in the mirror disappeared.

Phoebe looked around, searching the mirrored room for her reflection but it was nowhere to be found. Instead, she saw a ball of paper crumpled in the corner where she last saw the mysterious girl. She collected the paper and uncrumpled it to find a single word written in handwriting that looked like her own.

WHEN SHE WOKE UP, SHE was still in class and Dr. K was still teaching about manticores—creatures with a lion's head on a human body. They hadn't been seen in ages and many people believed they were myths.

Rubbing her eyes, Phoebe lifted her head off her notebook and there beneath the scribbled notes she'd failed to keep, she saw a new entry.

Alessandro.