Crystal Heart Read online

  Greg sighed as he sat back down. “Lady Gabrielle.”

  “Is she your aunt?”

  “No, she is the chair of the council. The council has decided that I should liaison with her from now on.”

  “Is she a changeling as well?”

  “No, she is the warlock president.”

  “Sounds impressive.” Mellissa grabbed the bag of crisps on the coffee table. “Seriously, Greg, you ate my crisps again. I was looking for them in the kitchen.”

  “Sorry, I got bored of eating carrots and lettuce. Just because I’m a vegetarian doesn’t mean I only eat salad.”

  “Hey, don’t complain when you’re eating for free. You know there are noodles, pasta, beans, and loads of other stuff if you cared to cook, you lazy bum.”

  Greg held his hands up. “Okay, sorry, I will get you some more.”

  “What, like the last pack you replaced?”

  “Fine, I will get you two packs.”

  Mellissa stuck her tongue out at him, not acting her age as usual. It was no wonder he’d originally gotten her age wrong. Dressed in her school uniform with her hair in pigtails, a random loose curl at the front, she really didn’t look eighteen. Greg leant on his arm. Maybe they were friends.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” he asked.

  “I live here.”

  “You know what I mean. You should still be at school.”

  “I have a study period, so I thought I would come see you.”

  “As nice as that is, shouldn’t you be studying?”

  “I came to see you for a reason.” Mellissa pulled a notebook out of the bag she’d dropped on the floor the first time she teleported in. “What do you think of that?” She handed him the notebook.

  “What is this?”

  “My biology homework.”

  “Wouldn’t it be cheating if I answered this for you?”

  “I just want you to write down what you think, and then I will come up with my own answer. Come on, you said you were a healer. You should know about this stuff.”

  “I am a healer, but I think you are perfectly able to find the answers yourself.”

  “This is me finding the answers.” She handed him a pen. “You know you are just dying to show off how smart you are. You never shut up when it comes to teaching me about magic. Even when I want to find the answers on my own, you’re there, nattering away.”

  “Fine, I will help you with your homework, but you have to do your own writing.”

  “All right. It’s not like I could hand in anything you wrote. Your handwriting is way too neat. They would know something was up.”

  Her homework was relatively simple for him. This was something he had covered a long time ago. It was good to see that the humans had a decent understanding of science, even if they didn’t have full knowledge of the world. Where he was from, science and magic crossed over. They were nearly finished when a loud jingle came from Mellissa’s bag.

  “My alarm.” She pulled her phone out of her bag. He had to admit, her phone was rather convenient in comparison to his communis device. It did a lot more than just make and receive calls. It was like a mini tabular and communis in one. She fumbled with her phone, almost dropping it as she turned the sound off. “Time for my next lesson.” She gathered up her work and put it back in her bag. “I think I can finish this on my own. See ya later.” She winked at him before disappearing.

  Greg shook his head and lay back on the sofa, putting the projection machine on. Mellissa definitely wasn’t like anyone back home.

  Mellissa arrived home from school that evening, announcing that their training session was cancelled. The Streets had a family thing to go to, so they wouldn’t be home.

  “Why can’t we use their training room while they’re out?” Greg asked. Mellissa was so close to mastering the sealing spell. He couldn’t let her slack off in the slightest.

  “Come on, Greg. Can you stop being all work for five minutes?” She sat in the window seat and leant her head on the wall. “I need a break. I’ve been working my butt off for weeks.”

  Greg sat beside her. “Fine, but there is something we need to talk about.”

  “What now?”

  “When do you plan on travelling to the Tree of Time to actually perform the spell? I reckon you could have the spell mastered by the end of next week. I know you don’t want to tell your father about magic, but he will notice your absence. It is at least a day’s journey from here.”

  She bit her thumbnail. “Can’t I just teleport there? I will be there and back in no time.”

  “Can you teleport somewhere you’ve never been before? Can you even teleport that far?”

  “I don’t know, but we can find out.” She jumped up and held her hand out to him.

  Greg raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting an experiment?”

  “Yup, you coming?”

  Greg took her hand and was tugged forward. Blinding light surrounded them. When he could see again, they were at a river. “Okay, how far away is this from your house?” he asked.

  She tapped her chin and pouted. “About a mile.”

  “We need to record the distance more accurately.”

  Mellissa wriggled her nose, thinking. “I’m not really good with distances.”

  “Do you have a map of the area?”

  “I have an app on my phone.” She pulled her phone out of her jean pocket and waved it in his face.

  Greg pushed the phone out of his face. “It’s a start. Let’s go back to yours before we continue this experiment.” Greg was tugged forward again as light surrounded him. They stumbled back into Mellissa’s bedroom.

  Mellissa pulled up a map of the area on her phone and handed it to Greg. They determined different places to go, slowly getting farther away. To make the experiment fair, they returned to Mellissa’s house to measure the distance from the same spot each time. The teleporting was going well until Mellissa tried to teleport them to the next town, and they got repulsed back. They both fell to the floor. It felt like they’d run straight into a brick wall.

  “I guess there is a limit,” Mellissa said, getting up off the floor.

  Greg also got up and dusted himself off. “Which means teleporting to the Tree of Time is out of the question.” Mellissa looked like she was about to throw up as the colour drained from her face. Travelling to the capital must be more daunting to her than he had realised. “I’m sorry this experiment didn’t provide the results you wanted.”

  “It’s all right. I just want to try one more thing.” She took his hand. Greg shut his eyes as the familiar tug of Mellissa’s teleporting pulled at him. When he opened them again, they were in Novos Forest.

  Mellissa squeezed his hand. “Well, at least I can cross the veil.”

  Greg’s chest tightened. She was smiling, but the shine in her eyes wasn’t there. Mellissa was usually so bubbly, but that seemed to have drained from her. Greg wanted to hug her and take all her worries away. “You can take as much time as you need to decide when to travel to the Tree of Time.”

  Mellissa looked at her feet. “Three weeks.”

  “What?”

  “I will go with you to the tree in three weeks, when Christmas break starts. That will give us plenty of time to practice. You overestimate my ability, thinking I’ll be ready in a week.”

  “I think you underestimate your ability. I guess I won’t complain about you not training this evening if we stick to schedule for the next three weeks.”

  She looked up at him with her big, brown eyes. “You don’t really have a choice. I was going to leave you in the forest if you made a fuss.” Then she smiled, and this time it reached her eyes. Greg’s heart warmed, because that was a real smile.

  Mellissa

  It was the last day of the school term. Everyone was looking forward to the holidays, but I wasn’t. Usually, I would be jumping for joy and doing everything Christmas-related. This year, I wasn’t feeling the same excitement. I had agreed to go
to the magical world to reseal Kadon once the holidays started—a decision I was regretting. Greg insisted I was ready, but I wasn’t as sure as him. I had picked up everything he’d taught me, and we’d been practicing the sealing spell all week, but I wasn’t sure it was enough. I was also expected to meet the magic council, which made me even more nervous. They were all really important people, and I was—well, me. Greg was enough proof that I was not of their social class. They were all about protocol and regulations and proper etiquette. I couldn’t even spell etiquette without using spell-check.

  At least I’d finally come up with something to tell my dad. Well, Victoria had. She was actually really helpful when she wasn’t intimidating me and completely freaking me out. I still didn’t want to tell him about magic, so Victoria suggested that the art project I had told my dad we were working on involved her parents taking us to the big art gallery down south. Her parents would go and snap photos of the gallery, pretending we were with them. Meanwhile we would really be crossing the veil.

  I spent the rest of the school day in a daze. While everyone else enjoyed games and slacking off normal classes, I was busy trying to stop myself from having a panic attack. I wished I could be as carefree as my fellow classmates, but I knew something they didn’t. They had no idea the dangers that lurked just beyond an invisible wall. That an evil leprechaun was waiting for me to fail so he could enslave the human race. It sounded insane, but it was the truth, and no one here would ever know, except Matt and Victoria. They somehow managed to remain calm about everything. Matt seemed more concerned about Greg than the fact that the fate of the world rested in my hands. My stomach churned, and I felt like I might throw up. I’d been starting to enjoy having magic, especially teleporting, but now that the time for me to travel to the Tree of Time was so near, I wasn’t feeling that joy anymore.

  When the bell rang for the end of the day, I was out of that classroom in a flash. I slid out of view and teleported home. I screamed as I toppled over the coffee table in the living room.

  Greg ran into the room. “Mellissa, what happened?”

  I rolled over and lay on my back. “I landed badly.” Greg appeared above me with his hand out. I waved it away. “I think I’m just going to lie here for a bit.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, sitting on the sofa. “Where are Matt and Victoria? I thought one of them always escorted you home.”

  That they did. At first, I hadn’t minded—Matt and I spent a lot of time together anyway—but they had gotten more anal about things. I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom alone anymore. Victoria had even stopped moaning about me hurting her reputation. They were taking their duty as my guardians very seriously. I stared at the ceiling.

  “I teleported back—no escort required.” He didn’t need to know I had done a runner at the end of the day. “Also, my dad is working late tonight, we can just practice here.”

  The amount of fruit I had successfully sealed away was high, but I had a feeling sealing an apple in a melon wasn’t the same as sealing a super powerful leprechaun in a tree. I needed to get as much practice in as possible. I just didn’t need the twins watching over me while I did.

  “Okay. Are the twins coming here?”

  I sat up, slamming my hand on the floor. “I do not need to be followed constantly! If it isn’t them, it’s you. I mean, at least you let me go to the bathroom alone, but can I not get a moment of peace?”

  “Sorry, I just thought we were meant to be finalising our travel plans for tomorrow.”

  “Well, I kind of forgot about that.” I laid my head on the coffee table, the fight draining out of me.

  “How about I go make you a cup of tea? Will that make you feel better?”

  “Yes,” I grumbled.

  Greg got up and left. Why was he being so nice to me when I’d snapped his head off for no reason? I needed to relax and stop worrying so much. I had been practicing for weeks, but practice in the Streets’ training hall wasn’t the same as the real thing. According to Greg, the magic world was polluted with Kadon’s darkness. Was I really strong enough to overpower him? Regardless, snapping at the people who were trying to help me wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Greg returned with a hot cup of tea and placed it on the table beside me.

  “Thank you,” I said, “and I’m sorry about before.”

  He shrugged. “I get it. You’re nervous.” He walked out of the room and left me alone.

  I pulled my legs up to my chest and rested my arms on my knees, with my hands wrapped around my cup. The warm mug felt amazing. I breathed in the comforting smell of hot tea. My moment of peace didn’t last long. Banging at the door had me on my feet. There was a crash and a snapping sound. A cold flurry swept through the living room. Victoria entered the room with a look on her face that could kill. Matt ran around her and pulled me into a bear hug.

  “Don’t ever disappear like that again,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” came Greg’s voice from behind Victoria. “What happened to the door?”

  I pushed Matt off me and ran into the hallway. The door was in pieces. I ran back into the living room. Victoria was perched on the edge of an armchair, and Matt was lying across the sofa like they hadn’t done anything wrong. “Why did you have to break the door?”

  Victoria glared at me. “Someone disappeared from school and then wasn’t answering the door.”

  “You didn’t give me much time.” I tugged at my hair. “How am I going to explain this to my dad?”

  Matt frowned as he shrugged. Victoria admired her nails and said, “Not my problem.”

  “Don’t worry. I can fix it,” Greg said.

  “You can? How?”

  “With a spell.”

  My jaw dropped as Greg muttered some words in a weird language and the pieces of the door knit themselves back together. I ran my hand over the door. “Amazing.” It was as good as new. You would never know it had been blown to pieces by a crazy ice warlock.

  Greg clapped his hands together. “Well, now that everyone’s here, we may as well discuss our travel plans for tomorrow.” A chorus of groans sounded in the living room. I sighed, following Greg back into the room. He was right though; we might as well get it over with. “Oh, and I thought for today’s practice you could seal this peg into this rock.” He sat on the floor, placing a peg and rock on the coffee table.

  I slipped down beside him and held my hand out toward the peg. “Disseptum.” A barrier formed around the peg. I closed my fist, and the rock began to glow. “Signo que claudant abesse.” The rock opened up and sucked the peg inside, resealing itself. I opened my fist, and the rock stopped glowing.

  Greg lifted the rock and held it up to the light. “Very well done. I told you—you’re ready.”

  “Except I still have to say the spell for the barrier. I’ve never heard you utter a word when creating a barrier.”

  “That will come with practice. Remember, I have been doing this a lot longer than you.”

  “Which is exactly why I don’t think I’m ready.”

  “All you have to do is cast the spell as you just did. The only difference is, since Kadon is already in the tree, you have to make contact with the tree and put the barrier around that.”

  I leant on the coffee table. He had way too much confidence in me. The twins joined us on the floor.

  “Are we going to get on with the planning?” Matt asked.

  We sat around the coffee table, finalising the plan for tomorrow. They did most of the talking while I listened. I might’ve been the one they all needed, but I felt like I had no say in anything that was going on. Instead, I just agreed to what they decided. It wasn’t like my opinion mattered. I didn’t know anything about the magic world, while they were all originally from there. Greg had a map, and they were currently deciding the best route to take. I sat playing with my hair. I was starting to wonder if my presence here was necessary. There were so many other things I could be doing right now.

  “Wait, yo
u mean your dad has a boat?” Matt said.

  “It’s only a riverboat,” Greg replied.

  Matt sat up straighter, putting his hand over his chest. “Oh, it’s only a riverboat,” he said with a fake posh voice. “Most normal people don’t own boats.”

  “I’m not sorry about my background, and if it can help our journey, I will use my privilege to our advantage. Unless you wish to walk?”

  Matt leant on the coffee table. “Riverboat sounds good.”

  Greg pointed to the river on the map. “The boat will take us to the dock in Novosvillas. Then, a sleigh will take us the rest of the way.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “Great, we’re going to have to go to a changeling city first.”

  I sat up, my interest sparked. “Wait, did you say a sleigh?”

  “Yes,” Greg said, “it has been snowing all month. The snow is so deep that all normal means of transport have been suspended.”

  It was snowing on the other side of the veil. How was that even possible? It was cold here, but there wasn’t any sign of snow. We just kept getting pummelled with rain.

  “That’s not good,” Matt said folding his arms. “You realise if it’s actually that deep, we might lose Mel in it.”

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  “You have to admit, you are pretty tiny,” Victoria said, demonstrating how small she thought I was with her fingers.

  Matt put his arm round me. “It’s not all bad being small. You’re cute and tiny and almost hand-luggage size.”

  I pushed Matt’s arm away from me. “I am not that small. You are just freakishly tall.”

  In fact, all three of them were. Victoria was just under six feet, and the other two were well over it. I hated to say it, but compared to them, I really was tiny. This reminder of how small I was did not help with my self-confidence. I got up. “I’m going to get some snacks.”

  Victoria snickered. “You know, excessive eating won’t make you taller, just fatter.”

  “Thanks for those words of wisdom,” I said through gritted teeth. I walked out of the room and made my way to the kitchen. I put the kettle on to make myself tea but ended up with my head laid on the kitchen top. What had I gotten myself into? I was the weak link in this odd little group of ours. The world was doomed if I was its only hope to stop this evil.