Merlin panted as he rose and threw himself at the side of the cage.
Nothing, much to Dash’s amusement.
But I refused to accept defeat. Magic couldn’t free us, but I’d never had any of my own in the first place. We needed a non-magical solution, and I would find it.
Dash returned Excalibur to the cauldron and continued to work on his potion, doing what I had no idea. My eyes grew heavy as I watched him.
No!If I fell asleep, it would all be over.
“You never told us what you plan to do once you reforge that thing. Other than kill us, I mean.”
Dash ignored me.
“Yoo-hoo!” I called. “Earth to Dash, or Merlin, or whoever you are!”
The bearded wizard spun to face me.“I am many people in one. I am everyone, thus no one.”
“Uh-huh. So what about the rest of your plan? Don’t you want to share it with me?”
“Why? You’ll be dead anyway.” A small smile played at his lips. I’m glad the thought of my demise could bring his dark little heart a bit of joy because I would definitely not be the one dying today. Still, I had to play to his vanity to get him to keep talking.
“True, but I’m still curious,” I managed.
“Well, it’s still a bit early, but I see no reason why we can’t get things ready.” Dash returned to the cauldron and extracted the sword once more. He carried it over to me, stopping a few feet out of reach. Then returned to his cat form.
This was my chance to fight.
I kicked out but missed by a mile.
He ignored me as he raised a paw and extended his claws, then dragged them across his chest with a gasp of pain. Blood dripped to the ground, splashing onto the sword.
“With our three bloodlines combined, I will reforge Excalibur and use it to seal the portal between Nocturna and the human world, so none can ever rise against me again. And then I will rule as a god, the most powerful—the only—magical being left in the mundane universe. Happy?”
Dash leapt on top of the boulder to which I was chained and jumped down to my chest, staring me in the eye.
“And now it’s your turn to contribute. I’ll just be taking some of your blood now.”
“Like heck you will!” I raged and writhed but still couldn’t free myself.
Dash struck out with a paw and slashed me across the face. I squeezed my eyes shut tight as he made impact, and when I opened them again I found myself someplace entirely different.
20
I stared down at the cash register. It blinked the numbers$4.15 at me—the price of our thirty-ounce classic pumpkin spice latte, plus tax. In my hand, I clenched a crisp five-dollar bill.
Glancing up, I saw a customer waiting with one hand extended as he used the other to scroll through something on his cell phone.
Right. I must have really spaced out there for a second.
I made the correct change and handed it over.“Your drink will be ready soon,” I said with my best customer-facing smile, then walked over to Kelley who had already fired up the espresso machine and gotten to work on the order.
A thick fog crowded the edges of my mind. I hadn’t felt like this since I foolishly attempted to down twenty-one shots on my twenty-first birthday. I’d only made it to seven before I barfed all over my date for that night and forever gave up recreational drinking.
I didn’t remember drinking last night. In fact, I didn’t remember anything about last night at all… Or this morning, either. I just woke up, and I was here at work.
Huh.It seemed I really could do this job while sleeping. Next I’d have to try one hand tied behind my back.
“How has your day been so far?” the next customer asked me with a grin.
I returned her smile and turned back to the cash register. I loved our friendly customers. Increasingly, people treated me like a nuisance, an inconvenient distraction from whatever they were doing on their phones—even though they themselves were the ones who’d chosen to come to the coffee shop.
“It’s a good day. Beautiful,” I answered, even though I couldn’t remember much of it so far. But no customer—no matter how friendly—wanted to hear the ravings of a mad barista.
Because I was going crazy, right?
Or losing it?
It being my memories.
I took the customer’s order and cashed her out. As soon as she left, another came to take her place.
Then another.
And another.
I had no downtime between orders. Granted, Harold’s always tended to be busy, but this was ridiculous. I didn’t even recognize a single person who came in, and normally we had a steady flow of regulars.
“Kelley?” I asked, walking away from the register and the new customer who stood waiting.
“Hmmm?” she asked as she continued to work the espresso machine.
“Does anything seem off to you today?” I ventured, shifting my weight to one side.
She continued her work without even taking a second to glance up at me, but at least she answered.“Off how?”
I shrugged, wishing I could explain it.
Kelley chuckled.“Looks like someone had a few too many cold ones last night.”
I grabbed her arm, but still she didn’t look at me. “I don’t drink, Kelley. You know that.”
“Must have slipped my mind,” she said coolly. “Now get back to the register. You have a line.”
I followed my boss’s orders, even though I now felt more out of sorts than ever. Kelley always made time for small talk, no matter how busy we got. It was important to her to keep up staff morale. And I was one of her best friends. If I came to her because something was wrong, she’d stop everything to help me through it.
“Welcome to Harold’s. I’ll be right back,” I told the customer at the front of the line, then zipped back toward Kelley to test a theory I’d just developed.
“Do you think Drake could be cheating on you?” I asked her. Admittedly, this was a risk. Last time we’d spoken, she’d been intensely worried that Drake’s sudden trip away meant he had another woman on the side.
I didn’t want to rekindle that worry in my friend, but I also needed to get a stronger response out of Kelley. That would at least ease my own worry, that nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right here.
“He wouldn’t cheat on me,” she said with a dreamy smile. “We’re way too happy for him to go and mess things up like that.”
Okay, that did it!
Where was I and who was this standing before me? Because it definitely wasn’t the Kelley Carmine I knew and loved.
“Sorry, but I’ve gotta go,” I told her, tearing off my apron and dropping it onto the floor.
“You can’t just walk away mid-shift!” she shouted.
“Watch me,” I called back as I raced around the counter and toward the exit.
21
Before I could make it to the door, a strong hand reached out and grasped my arm.
Drake.
“Hey. Where are you off to in such a hurry?” he asked with his usual chill demeanor, a stark contrast to the sobbing heap he’d become when last we met.
“Something’s not right here,” I informed him, my voice low to keep the milling herd of customers from overhearing. “I have to go.”
“It’s weird, right?” came his reply. “One second I was hanging out with Fluffikins and the gang in Beech Grove, and the next I’m here at work.”
I took a second to process this.“So you were somewhere else, and then suddenly you ended up here? I think maybe that’s what happened to me, too.” I racked my brain trying to remember but still came up infuriatingly short.
Drake rocked on his heels.“Yeah, probably, considering this is an illusion.”
“A what?” That word sounded familiar, but why?
“An illusion,” Drake repeated slowly. “You know, as in, fake. Not real.”
“Illusion,” I mumbled aloud, tasting the word, meditating on it.
And at last everything came into focus.
Dash!
He’d done this. Illusions were his specialty, and he’d had almost a thousand years to practice this particular skill. He’d captured me and Merlin, taken us to the top of that mountain. He was going to use our blood to do something terrible. He already had some of mine, but I didn’t know if he’d gotten to Merlin yet.