Rowen tried not to look paranoid as she peered around every corner and jumped at every noise—and on the boardwalk, there was a lot of noise. Shawn actually commented on how quiet it was, now that summer was over and all the tourists had gone home, but if this was quiet Rowen was quite sure she didn't want to come back when it was loud. But her fingers were twined through Shawn's and that helped her feel secure. Safer. Illusions aside, Shawn was about a foot taller than her and his shoulders nearly twice as broad. Realistically, between his bulk and her magic, there wasn't much that could threaten them.
"Sorry about my dad," Shawn said as they traversed the space between two attractions.
Rowen had no idea what Shawn was talking about. She tried to puzzle it out for a moment but finally just asked. "What do you mean?"
"You know, prying about your uncle's job."
"Oh." Seriously, human etiquette. Defied logic.
"Dad's an engineer, so, you know. Kind of awkward, just says whatever comes to mind. He knows what tuition costs at Scazio—"
"—and tights, and pointe shoes—" Meghan added in a grumble.
"—and that." Shawn grinned and made a half-hearted shrug. "He's always curious how people pay. Almost everyone there is old money, or Silicon Valley big shots."
Rowen was getting the idea that humans had an incredibly unhealthy relationship with money. Not quite like trolls, who hoarded gems and metals the way ravens hoarded buttons and sugar-glass—instead humans seemed to separate themselves into castes, the way Avalon used to be. Only instead of grouping people by their abilities, they were separated by a secret money number at which others had to guess through clues, like who got scholarships and who lived in the sand valley. (The sand valley sounded like a terrible place to Rowen, but judging by how much humans liked the beach, presumably they would enjoy a sand valley, too.)
Apparently Shawn's dad had been trying to figure out what Tamani's secret money number was. And even though humans thought it was a very important thing to know about each other, they also thought it was impolite to ask about it, so Shawn had apologized.
Every time Rowen thought she was getting a handle on this new life of hers, the world seemed to open up to new complexities. She decided it might be best to go with the truth. Just this once. "Honestly, I really don't understand money. I tell Tam what I need and he makes sure I have it."
In perfect synchrony, Shawn and Meghan stopped walking and gave Rowen the same look she got from Mitchell whenever she tried to answer his questions.
"I guess that explains that," Shawn said, raising his eyebrows.
Meghan muttered something that sounded suspiciously like rich witch, but—though Rowen had never met any witches, and maybe humans had different ideas about them—Rowen was pretty sure she'd misheard.
Shawn chuckled and took her hand. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm gonna say it because I think maybe nobody ever said it to you before. You're one of the privileged elite, Rowen. I bet most people have problems you've never even heard of, because your family has so much money that you don't even know what money is."
"I do—" Rowen began to protest, but realized that if she pressed the issue she might wind up exposing just how ignorant she really was—and not just about money. "I mean, that is—"
"It's okay, really," Shawn said lightly, in spite of his sister's glower. "Don't worry about it. We're pretty comfortable ourselves—but you have to be a lot more than comfortable to afford Scazio, unless you're super-human like Meghan. Honestly my parents would probably have just financed her senior year, if that's what it took." And then, practically shouting straight at Meghan, he finished, "They're very proud of her!"
Meghan turned her face away, but Rowen thought she was smiling a little.
An odd buzz rose from further down the boardwalk. Shawn slowed down, pulling Rowen closer, and reaching out for the sleeve of Meghan's jacket.
"What?"
He pointed, silently.
The crowd seemed to be moving strangely—as if being drawn to someplace Rowen couldn't see. Shawn was taller; maybe he could.
But another sound, coming from the direction of the ocean, caught Rowen's ear. She turned to the inky-black waves.
Music hung eerily in the wind.
"Do you hear that?" Rowen asked.
"Hear what?" Shawn asked, an uneasy quaver in his voice.
"The music," Rowen said, tugging on his hand. "It's getting louder." She turned back to Shawn, but he was standing stock-still, his eyes unfocused. Meghan looked more graceful—her head cocked to the side, her arms in a soft first position—but she, too, wore an oddly blank expression. "Meghan?" Rowen said, quietly.
Meghan turned—not to Rowen, but to Shawn. She was glaring at him, her face twisted into a grimace of rage and hate so powerful Rowen stepped back in fear. A screech escaped Meghan's lips and she slammed a fist into Shawn's face.
Rowen leapt back with a shriek of her own as other screams sounded all around her, centering on whatever it was Shawn had noticed ahead of them on the boardwalk. Her eyes widened as she whirled, trying to look everywhere at once. All around her people were fighting, the sickening thud of flesh striking flesh playing percussion as the haunting music continued its awful crescendo.
Shawn cast his sister to the ground with a backhanded blow, then knelt over her prone form, and drew his fist back.
Without thought, Rowen grabbed Shawn's raised forearm and tugged at it, but his eyes were fixed on Meghan with a murderous glow .His free hand was reaching for her neck, gripping tightly. Tears poured down Rowen's face and she screamed his name, over and over, but he didn't hear her. He didn't seem to be hearing anything at all.
Hearing...
Rowen glanced back toward the ocean. Shawn hadn't been able to hear the music—which had started about the same time as everyone on the boardwalk lost their minds.
Everyone human.
Rowen had to stop the music.
But ... how?
Rowen heard a gagging sound and turned back to see Shawn had gotten both hands around Meghan's neck and was now choking the life out of her. Rowen had seen this sort of thing on Netflix and it never ended well. Desperation made her throw herself at Shawn once more, but the physical might that had made her feel so safe five minutes ago was now a fairly immediate problem. Meghan didn't have time for Rowen to figure out where the music was coming from and put a stop to it.
Could she stop Shawn from hearing the music?
Rowen flung herself across his back and covered his ears with her hands, but he simply reached up and slapped away one hand, then the other. It gave Meghan a chance to wheeze in a strangled breath, but that was temporary fix at best. Rowen's chest was starting to ache with her sobs and she had to gulp in air and try to think!
His phone. His music. He was never without his headphones.
Dodging around Shawn's flailing elbows and Meghan's kicking feet, Rowen darted quick hands into the front pocket of Shawn's hoodie and came out with a metal rectangle wrapped in white cords. Grateful that she'd spent so much time texting the last few weeks, Rowen opened the phone and went right to Shawn's music, selecting the first playlist she found and cranking the volume all the way up. Crossing her toes for luck, she jumped onto Shawn's back and jammed the earbuds into his ears.
For a few seconds she thought it wouldn't work, but then Shawn yanked his hands away from Meghan's throat and a wordless wail of dismay escaped his mouth. Rowen grabbed his ears with both hands, holding the earbuds in, and pushed her face in front of his, where he couldn't help but see her.
She's never seen Shawn terrified. It seemed wrong for someone like him to feel such fear. He raised his hands to where hers covered his ears, but she shook her head. His hands fell back to his side.
Pain radiated through Rowen's shoulder as Meghan dived into her, shoving her away from Shawn. By the time Rowen righted herself, Shawn was fending off blows from his sister, shouting wordlessly. Rowen tried to help, but Shawn had apparently had tussles with his twin sister before, because after another moment's hesitation, he spun her arms behind her back and simply restrained her.
Meghan writhed in his hold and Rowen rushed forward to check her pockets, hoping for more headphones, but even though she found Meghan's phone, there were no earbuds. Rowen held her hands over Meghan's ears instead, and that did make her stop struggling so hard, but this method clearly wasn't as effective. Finally she gestured to Shawn that they should retreat back the way they'd come, but Shawn hardly needed her encouragement. They were surrounded by noise and chaos and violence like Rowen had only seen once before, back in Avalon.
The day her parents died.
Rowen gasped as her memory assaulted her, every psychic scar she'd ever sustained splitting open anew. She grimaced against the onslaught; she wasn't in Avalon, these were not trolls, and if she lost her head now, she might lose Shawn and Meghan too.
A woman fell to the ground in front of Rowen, blood pouring from a gash on her forehead, and all Rowen saw was her mother's headless corpse, it's glassy eyes staring, and yet not staring, right into her. Rowen bit off a shriek, and it took all of her self-control to swallow her terror and step over the injured woman.
She had to get Shawn and Meghan out. Rowen stumbled on a loosened board, both hands slipping from Meghan's ears, and she began writhing against Shawn's hold. Rowen reached up to block Meghan's ears once more, but seconds later a man started waling on Shawn, slackening his grip and allowing Meghan to wrench her head from Rowen's grasp. They were only perhaps a minute's walk from the parking lot and Shawn's car, but there were fifty raving humans between it and them and now two people were hitting Shawn. Something in his eyes told Rowen that Shawn would never let his sister go, no matter what it cost him, but a few more hard blows and it wouldn't be his choice to make.
It was after sunset and Rowen was already feeling weak, but she wasn't helpless. Gritting her teeth, she closed her eyes and felt for the river of photons rushing over her skin. It would take some effort to bend them around herself and her friends, but she thought she could manage it—there.
When Rowen opened her eyes again, Shawn's former assailants were beating one another bloody—and his sister's expression, though still full of rage, had taken on a hint of confusion. Rowen placed her hands over Meghan's ears and nodded her head toward the parking lot, but Shawn was looking around uneasily, his eyes unfocused. For a moment Rowen was afraid he'd fallen sway to the madness once more, but ... no. He wasn't acting murderous.
He was acting blind.
Making other people invisible was harder than she'd realized. All Summer illusions were manipulations of light, and vanishing was especially tricky—though after the trolls invaded Avalon, many more Sparklers worked to master it than ever before. Forcing light to go around yourself instead of bouncing off of your skin was challenging enough, but unless you also wanted to be blind you had to keep some light flowing to your own eyes. Rowen had been able to do so for years, but she didn't think she could adjust the illusion to accommodate Shawn. And she wasn't sure how long she could maintain the illusion as it was.
Trusting Shawn's strength, Rowen let go of Meghan's ears and circled to Shawn's shoulder, where she began pulling him down the boardwalk toward the car, doing her best to ignore the mayhem around her.
When they reached Shawn's vehicle, Rowen dropped their cloak of invisibility, weak-kneed and short of breath. She'd held bigger illusions longer, even helped with Avalon's mighty fireworks shows from time to time, but that had always been in full sunlight, with plenty of sugar in her system.
Shawn held a squirming Meghan in one arm as he dug a set of keys from his pocket, but she seemed to be thrashing somewhat less violently. Or was that was wishful thinking? Blackness was closing in on Rowen's vision and her words slurred as she tried to tell Shawn to put Meghan in the back seat. It was only when she couldn't make her tongue work that she realized it didn't matter; with his music blaring Shawn couldn't hear her anyway.
Luckily, he seemed to have made a few connections and he tossed Meghan into the back seat and slammed the door shut behind her.
"Hurry and get in!" Shawn bellowed, flinging open his own door as Rowen stumbled around the back of the vehicle.
"Sguirhh!" called an impossibly high-pitched voice—and in spite of herself, Rowen turned toward the command. It had been a long time since someone had commanded her to stop in Gaelic, and the person issuing the command had seriously butchered the pronunciation, but it was close enough—
Rowen froze.
Running toward them from the direction of the beach were three humanoid figures, too small to be trolls, too green to be humans, and far too heavily armed to be friendly.
Throwing out one arm to help her aim, Rowen threw out a burst of light between herself and her assailants. They reeled back, clawing at their faces with webbed fingers, as Rowen sank to her knees.
Oh. With a sinking feeling she realized she'd officially pushed herself past her limits.
Rowen half-stumbled-half-crawled to the passenger door, pulled it open, and slid into the vehicle, barely managing to get the door closed before Shawn squealed his tires backing out.
Meghan was sobbing in the back seat, but at least she wasn't fighting anymore. Shawn slammed the car into gear and zoomed away from the boardwalk.
"What the hell just happened!" Shawn shouted. He'd removed his earbuds, but his stereo was pumping out music at near-deafening volume.
Rowen was having trouble making her mouth move, but there was one more thing. She had to do one more thing. Her fingers fumbled as she reached for her phone and held it out to Shawn. "Call ... Tamani. Promise ... call ... Tamani."
Darkness descended.
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