Page 19

Kat looks me over, takes in my Hello Kitty shirt and jeans, and tilts her head.

“Where are you—where could you possibly—there’s nowhere in the world that doesn’t have this problem!

Like, it is the worst in LA, because we’re on the intersection of majorly unstable ley lines, but we have these weekly! ”

“I grew up in LA! But this—” I splutter, gesturing at the familiar and not-familiar-at-all Target—the people in hipster Regency clothes shopping, the huge poster advertising otherspace storage where the dudes hawking cell phones should be—it couldn’t be possible, could it?

Crash.

The sound of breaking glass shatters my train of thought.

Kat freezes, her head jerking toward the direction of the sound.

“Ahhhh!”

“What the actual fuck—”

“Someone call security!”

Screams and panic echo from the aisles to our right, and my heart leaps into my throat.

Something clatters on the ground, skittering and moving quickly, something that sounds like claws on linoleum, something moving closer—

A sharp scream echoes in the air, and then the sound of fabric ripping.

More screams and scuffling, like a person—multiple people—breaking out into a run.

A panicked teenager sprints down our aisle, wide-eyed and panicked.

“Wyvern!” they spit out. “A whole lot of them!” They shoulder past the both of us, their jacket ripped and torn—as if by claws.

They’re fumbling in their pocket, pulling out the not-phone and swiping furiously at it, and then they disappear with a pop .

“What the—” I step back from the spot where they were just standing and look up at Kat, who has her own not-phone out and has her thumb resting on it mid-swipe.

“We should get out of here. You got a teleport charged up?”

“No!” I squeak. “Why would I—no!” I fumble in my messenger bag, my fingers brushing past my wallet, the hard plastic of my water bottle, looking for something, anything. Pepper spray, I’m sure I have pepper spray here somewhere.

“Give me your namekey, I can write you into mine,” Kat says, holding out the not-phone to me. I stare at the screen and at the squiggles and numbers and lines of what looks like—code?

Overhead on the speaker system, a voice crackles—different from the stern warning earlier, a younger one, high-pitched and panicked. “Hey! There are three wyverns in Home Goods and they’re heading toward Otherspace Tech, get the fuck out of here—hey!”

“Nathan, you’re not cleared for announcements, give me that—ahem.

Please remain calm. Target has everything under control.

Wyvern wran glers are on their way. Please calmly proceed to the nearest exit in an orderly fashion and remember that with the recent mana surge, activating any teleportation spellkeys may result in unforeseen circumstances.

Do not teleport. I repeat: DO. NOT. TELEPORT. ”

Kat shakes her head. “I’ll take those chances. What’s your namekey? We gotta get out of here!”

“I don’t have one!”

People are full-on running now, shopping carts left unattended and the sounds of panic echoing throughout the store interspersed with the pop s of what must be teleportation.

My instinct tells me I should be running, too, but my feet are still catching up to my brain, and I’m frozen as the click of sharp claws echoes on the tiled floor.

Then I see it—something scaly slithering around the corner. It’s almost like a dragon, and I recognize the shape only from D broken plates and glass crunch under our feet as we put as much space between us and the wyvern as possible.

I turn around to look at it and regret it, getting a glimpse of green and purple, and then two more shapes behind it join the pursuit.

“Shit, where’s the exit—come on, I can do this the long way! Full name!”

“Brenda Quách Nguy ? n!”

“Where were you born?”

“Uh—Los Angeles?”

“No, exactly !”

“Culver City Memorial Hospital!”

“Birthday!”

“January the fourteenth!”

The questions continue rapid-fire as we run, and I gasp them out as quickly as I can.

“Favorite color?”

“Green!”

“Do you like milk in coffee?”

“Are you serious?” I gasp, trying to catch my breath.

“You don’t have a namekey, I gotta get all the details right or it won’t work!” Kat says, shaking her head.

A boy in a red coat barely older than us wheezes, dropping his clipboard as he mutters to himself. “We’ll answer all calls in the order received my ass, stupid wranglers and stupid mana surges, I cannot believe—”

“What’s going on?” I ask, spotting the name tag barely hanging onto his coat. It reads NATHAN . Our announcement rebel.

“Wyverns spawning all over the Westside because of that stupid mana surge, get out of here—”

“Are you supposed to—”

Nathan shakes his head. “Hell no, I don’t get paid enough for that, and wyvern wrangling is definitely not in my job description!” He fumbles for his runebook, swiping furiously. “Shit, I don’t have enough charged up for a teleport—”

He takes a hard left, sprinting as he goes, his coat flapping behind him.

“Let’s go that way, I bet he’s heading for an exit!” I say, turning to Kat.

She’s frantically pressing squiggles into her runebook. “I’m almost done but—aah!”

A shelf topples over right in front of us, blocking the path between us and Nathan’s retreating figure and the bright light of the exits ahead.

One wyvern clambers onto the shelf, scattering mugs as it hisses at us, a bright yellow-green glob of spit dripping from its teeth.

The glob drops onto the red shelf, sizzling as it burns a clean hole right through the wood.

I freeze.

“Can they fly?” I whisper. “Should we run? Are they like dinosaurs who only see you if you move? If we don’t move, will they go away—”

“Don’t move, don’t make any sudden—”

The wyvern in front of us stops moving, leg paused in mid-air. Its beady eyes swivel toward me, and it blinks slowly.

Pepper spray. It’s better than nothing, right?

I reach into my messenger bag at my hip ever so slowly, and for an eternity the wyvern doesn’t move, watching me. Behind me, I can feel Kat shift closer to me.

Journal. Pens. Wallet. Come on, where is it? My fingers close around something hard and pointy. My lucky d20. I feel stronger, thinking of Resna—she could deal with a wyvern, no problem. Resna is who I need now, who I wish I could be.

In a world where magic suddenly exists, I wonder if I could be.

The wyvern’s eyes narrow, its pupils widening as it locks on me and Kat, and then it charges .