Museum of Magic, page 6
The whole time they ordered, waited for their food, and then walked back to their seats, Emmi was quiet. Puck kept up a steady chatter of observations, mostly in delight of the food, but now that she had a moment to think, Emmi found herself growing more and more reserved.
And she hadn’t forgotten about the Hunter she’d seen in the crowd after she’d used her magic.
“Why won’t you tell me your real name?” Emmi asked once they were back in their seats.
Puck crammed a cookie in his mouth. Delaying tactic, Emmi thought, narrowing her eyes. After swallowing, he gave her a side-eyed glance. “Look, I don’t like wha— who I was before,” Puck said. “I don’t like that name. I don’t like that…person. So I picked a different name.”
“From Shakespeare.” Emmi forgot about the other half of her sandwich. “Kind of coincidental that he keeps popping up, no? I mean first MacBeth, now both you and that pony share names from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Puck shrugged. “Coincidence,” he said, although Emmi didn’t believe it for a minute. “Besides, I had it first.”
“Had what?”
“The name.”
Emmi blinked several times. “Are you telling me that you were named Puck before Shakespeare named his fae character ‘Puck?’”
“Yeah.” Puck eyed Emmi’s sandwich, and she shifted it closer to her.
“How old are you?” Emmi gaped at him. Sure, he was clearly fae and had some sort of power that she didn’t understand but—
“No idea,” Puck said. “Time’s…weird. I mean, I was ancient, but then I got young again. Then things sort of…stopped for awhile? And now here we are.”
Emmi stared. This was the first time Puck actually seemed serious, but…. “It sounds like you…are you constantly being reborn or something? Like…” She struggled to figure out an analysis, but comparing Puck to Doctor Who didn’t seem like a likely thing he’d understand if he also wasn’t too up-to-date on self-pay kiosks.
“No, no, not reborn. I just…change. Become different.” He grinned at her as if all of this made perfect sense. “Sometimes.”
“You molt?” Emmi asked doubtfully. “Like a butterfly?”
“Yes, exactly,” Puck said, smiling. “Also, not at all. Not like that all. Terrible analogy, really.”
Emmi crammed her sandwich into her mouth and chewed on the dry bread.
“Butterfly.” Puck chuckled to himself, shaking his head in amusement. “Although…”
Out the window, the fields were slowly giving way to larger and larger towns. They were approaching Edinburgh, and Emmi felt like they were also approaching a deadline of how much she could ask.
I should tell him I saw a Hunter. The thought came unbidden, and Emmi shoved it from her mind. He couldn’t give her a straight answer about his name. Even if he did answer her, could she trust what he said?
Instead, Emmi took a different tactic. “So,” she said, leaning back in her chair and brushing the crumbs from her lap. “Hunters.”
That sobered Puck up. Interesting.
“Where do they come from?” Emmi asked.
“Historically?” Puck’s brow furrowed in concentration. “There have always been people who hate what they don’t have. But they got organized around the time of the Civil War.”
Emmi immediately thought of Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and antebellum dresses. But a quick glance out the window and the rising cityscape of Edinburgh reminded her she wasn’t home any more. Puck meant the English Civil War, fought after King James died and his son, Charles, took the throne. Emmi was grateful for her grandfather’s historical background, for once happy about the way they talked more about long-dead kings than pop culture.
There had been a lot of factors contributing to the English Civil War, but religion and fear had definitely played a part in it. At the end of the war, Charles got his head chopped off, and England got a commonwealth government in place of a strict monarchy. That had all happened after Elspeth had immigrated to America, so Emmi wasn’t as familiar with that part of history.
“Matthew Hopkins,” Puck said.
Emmi dragged her mind back into the present. “Who?”
“The first Witchfinder General,” Puck said. All the levity was gone from his voice; he had never looked more serious.
“What is that title?” Emmi asked gently. The train shifted, slowing down.
“The leader of the Hunters.” Puck looked down at his lap. “He decides who lives and who dies.” He finally looked up at Emmi, just as the train pulled into the station, the roof blotting out the sun and casting them in shadow. “And the first one decided that all witches must die. The Hunters knew about your power as soon as the bottle broke. It doesn’t matter to them whether or not you understand your power, or what you intend to do with it. They are not going to stop until they kill you.”
Emmi felt her heart thudding in her chest. She doubted most of what Puck said at any given moment, but she didn’t doubt this. He spoke with a strange sort of calm that reached deep inside her, confirming fears she had never known she had.
Unsure of what to say, Emmi turned to look out the window as the train slowed to a stop. The station at North Berwick had been nothing more than a shed barely capable of holding a dozen people and a plain platform under the sunny sky. The Edinburgh train station was a huge building, designed to hold hundreds, if not thousands, with multiple train lines coming and leaving.
Outside was a cacophony of people and luggage, schedules flashing by as trains opened and closed doors. Overwhelmed by everything, Emmi stared at the numerous people milling about, all of them with such clear direction that envy washed over her.
They all knew what to do, where to go. Only she was in the dark, paralyzed by fears she couldn’t name.
But…
Her eyes fell on someone standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at the various trains pulling into the station. He stood perfectly still, letting the rushing travelers flow past him like water cascading around a rock in the river.
Emmi was still sitting on the train at the window, looking up. The man couldn’t possibly see her.
She hoped.
Because he was a Hunter.
His robe hung on his shoulders like a cape, the hood tossed back to expose his long hair and his cold eyes. He almost seemed like any other man, if a bit oddly dressed, but it was Scotland. Oddly dressed men weren’t that unusual.
No, it was the beard Emmi recognized. Steel grey, despite the man’s relative youth. He was maybe in his late thirties, early forties; the hard lines of his face made him seem older.
“Greybeard,” Emmi whispered.
He had followed them from her house all the way here, to Edinburgh.
He was waiting for her.
The Hermit, Transposed
being withdrawn, timid, or fearful
“Puck.” Emmi reached blindly for Puck’s hand, gripping his fingers hard.
The fae leaned down, clearly sensing the fear and urgency pouring out of Emmi. When he peeked through the window, he cursed.
“Maybe he won’t attack us,” Emmi said in a low whisper. A conductor was clearing the carriage, so they got up, moving to the door. “It’s a crowded station,” Emmi told Puck. “Maybe he wouldn’t risk being seen—”
“We can’t be sure of that.” Puck’s voice was darkly serious, and he wore the most concentrated look that Emmi had ever seen on his face.
The train car’s door opened up on the opposite side of where the stairs were, and Emmi was glad to at least have the train between them and the Hunter. She bounded down the steps. “What do we do?” she asked when Puck joined her on the platform.
They could—with enough confidence and luck—steal someone’s unattended luggage and cobble together a disguise from the contents, but even that seemed like a stretch.
“You’ve got to try your magic,” Puck said, his eyes serious.
“My magic?” Emmi’s heart rate ratcheted up. “How can ‘seeing the mystical’ help now?!” She hooked her fingers in mock quote marks.
Puck shook his head. “Your magic is about sight, but that includes how other people see you.”
“What?” Emmi’s brow furrowed, and she tried to think through the possibilities of what he was saying. “I don’t—”
“Call it a glamour, call it a shadow, call it whatever you want, but you do have the ability to change a person’s perception of you. And, hopefully, me.” Puck’s eyes grew distant.
“How does it work?”
Puck shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not a witch.”
Emmi growled in frustration. “Then how—?!”
“Try!” Puck grabbed her shoulders, his face inches from her. “Just—try.”
Emmi’s eyes grew round—this was fear, real fear radiating off of Puck. She nodded. Seeing the old church had been a matter of forgetting her consciousness, slipping into a different realm. It was like those old visual puzzles that tricked her eyes into seeing something in 3-D out of a chaotic mess of colors.
But how could she turn that inward in a way that would change her outward appearance? She focused on her hands, holding them in front of her face. I need to hide, she thought. I need Greybeard not to see me. I need to…
Words left her mind as her hands started to fade. With a yelp, she leapt back, but Puck grabbed her arm. “Keep it up!” he said. “You almost had it!”
I need to hide, I need to be safe, I need to be unseen, Emmi chanted to herself, focusing on her hands again. On the way Puck had slipped his fingers through hers, holding her hand tightly, squeezing with reassuring pressure. Anyone who saw them would think they were romantically involved, the way he was staring at her and clutching her hand…
But no one would see them. Because they were invisible now.
“Are you there?” Emmi whispered.
Puck rubbed the pad of his thumb over her knuckles but didn’t let go. “I’m here.”
“And we’re—”
“Invisible. You’re not so bad at this, Castor.”
Emmi took a shaking breath and stepped forward. If she looked straight ahead, it wasn’t so bad, but if she glanced at her feet, her concentration wobbled and a hazy image of her body re-appeared. She had to stay focused.
But not too focused. She slammed her shoulder into a pole before turning the corner around the station and heading to the stairs, and her image reappeared so fully and suddenly that a man who’d been hurrying in the opposite direction startled and dropped his full cup of tea, milky brown liquid splashing everywhere.
Puck gripped Emmi’s hand even harder, yanking her around. “You have to concentrate!” he said, eyes darting to the wide central staircase. They were still hidden from view of Greybeard, but barely.
“I know, I know,” Emmi said. It wasn’t just that the magic required her single-minded focus; bumping into the pole had made the illusion jerk back into reality before she dropped her concentration.
The train station was crowded. If anyone bumped into her, it would blow her cover, force her magic to fade.
And Greybeard would see her.
“You’ve got this,” Puck whispered. He hadn’t let go of her hand, and his breath was warm. How could she be so aware of him when he was invisible?
She gripped his fingers. “Let’s go.”
Emmi took the lead—invisible, they navigated the outer edges of the crowd, going wide to avoid both Greybeard and the chance of bumping into someone else. Emmi wanted to grab the hand railing, but she worried that would break the illusion, too. They took the steps carefully, both of them deeply aware that slipping now would blow their cover.
Emmi stopped when she was halfway up the stairs. Greybeard turned his neck slowly, looking left and right.
He paused, his gaze resting exactly at where Emmi and Puck were. Her breath caught; she could feel Puck’s heartbeat in her palm.
Greybeard looked straight through them, then turned the other way.
Once past the stairs, Emmi risked going faster, racing toward the big exit sign. The station opened up to the street, a blast of warm air ruffling her hair. She pulled Puck to a little alcove around the corner of the station and let the glamour fade.
“Holyrood is that way,” Puck said, pointing past the station.
Emmi had looked it up on her phone, and so she knew they would only need to go about a half mile to reach it. On the train, that had seemed easy. Now, with Greybeard hunting them, Emmi wasn’t so sure.
“Do you see?” Puck asked.
“See? Like with my power?”
Puck nodded, but he was distracted, looking not down the street but back toward the station entrance. “It’s all connected.”
“Connected?” Emmi’s heart thudded as she followed his gaze. “Can Greybeard trace us?”
“Greybeard?”
“It’s what I’m calling that Hunter,” Emmi said.
“He likely doesn’t have a way to track us,” Puck said. He grabbed Emmi’s hand and pulled her down the street. “But it won’t take long for him to realize he missed us in the crowd, and he’s likely going to follow us out here. Do you see anything?” His question was a little more urgent, his grip on her hand tightening.
Emmi trusted Puck to guide her down the narrow sidewalk as she squinted in the direction of the palace. She shook her head.
“It’s probably safe,” Puck muttered, picking up his pace. They were almost running now, and the crowd from the train station was thinning out as people went their separate ways.
“What do you mean about safe and connected?” Emmi asked. She shot a look behind her, but couldn’t see anyone following us.
“Before Elspeth left for America, she set up a series of protections in key places around the UK,” Puck said. “Witch bottles are designed for protection. The one in your house was like the central hub for the network.”
Emmi’s mind raced. If the witch bottle in her home acted as a sort of battery supply for all the other witch bottles her ancestor had scattered throughout the UK, then…
“Elspeth thought it would be safer if the main bottle was in an entirely different country,” Puck continued. “She thought her protections would hold. And they did. For centuries.”
“Until you broke the bottle.”
“Not on purpose.”
“So Holyrood Palace has one of Elspeth’s bottles?”
Puck nodded. He pulled Emmi closer to the buildings as they walked. The streets were broad, but there were lots of little side alleys and corners to hide behind. For both them and any Hunter tracking them.
“Why would Elspeth make a protection spell for the king who started the witch persecutions?” Emmi asked.
“Wasn’t for him.”
Emmi looked behind her again. She could see a dark swath of cloth half a block behind them. It could be Greybeard, but it could be someone’s fancy rain coat. It was impossible to tell between the long shadows of the buildings and the curve of the street. But—
Puck pulled Emmi into a little alcove. “Hide us,” he hissed.
Emmi nodded, throat tight. She concentrated, clutching Puck’s hand. She didn’t feel anything, but when she looked down, her body was invisible again.
She looked up.
And saw Greybeard.
The black cloth she’d seen had been his cloak. Emmi barely breathed. If she reached out, she could touch the Hunter. Puck’s grip on her hand was so hard it made her fingertips tingle, but Emmi kept her concentration on staying invisible.
Greybeard sniffed the air, like a hound on the scent. He lingered in front of the little alcove for several long moments, but he never looked at them, and if he did, he would have seen nothing. He strode forward, determined.
Puck and Emmi waited a beat before Puck jumped up. Emmi’s spell broke, and they were both visible again. He held his hand out to her to help her wobbly legs stand straight.
“Should we make a detour?” Emmi asked. Even though Greybeard was at least a full block ahead of them, she spoke in whispers.
Puck shook his head. “He’s definitely going to Holyrood. Our best bet is to get there as fast as possible.”
They started off again, eyes peeled. But Emmi couldn’t help but ask, “What were Elspeth’s bottles for?” Emmi asked. “Why put one in Holyrood if not to protect the king that lived there?”
“There are places where the veil between mystical and mundane are thinner,” Puck said. “Places where other creatures—”
“Fae creatures, you mean,” Emmi interjected. Like you, she thought but did not say.
Puck nodded tightly. “They come through. It’s dangerous for us all.”
“Like when a deer crosses a street,” she said. “If it’s hit, everyone’s hurt.”
“Exactly.”
Emmi looked up, and in that exact moment saw Greybeard cutting through the thin crowd, heading straight toward them. Emmi gasped, yanking Puck back and throwing up her protective magic in seconds. She and Puck pressed into the wall, invisible, as Greybeard strode by.
“Where are they?” the Hunter growled to himself, the words barely audible. Emmi smiled smugly, but Puck squeezed her hand, as if to say, Don’t get cocky, kid.
As soon as Greybeard was safely at the corner on the opposite direction of where they wanted to go, Emmi and Puck started racing toward Holyrood. The street was growing wider now, and a traffic circle—and the gates to the palace—were in sight.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Elspeth’s bottle at Holyrood sooner?” Emmi asked. They were so close now she could see the stone walls rising beyond the gate.
“She made dozens of witch bottles and hid them really well. There are some I don’t even know about. Since Holyrood is located over a fae circle, yeah, it’s one of the ones Elspeth protected. Your unnamed witch may be there. But…she may not.”
“Yes, but—” Emmi started, but then an iron knife slammed into Puck’s back.
Emmi screamed, whirling around as Puck staggered and fell to his knees. Greybeard stood there, his hand still poised from having released the dagger he’d thrown at them. A smirk smeared across his face.
And she hadn’t forgotten about the Hunter she’d seen in the crowd after she’d used her magic.
“Why won’t you tell me your real name?” Emmi asked once they were back in their seats.
Puck crammed a cookie in his mouth. Delaying tactic, Emmi thought, narrowing her eyes. After swallowing, he gave her a side-eyed glance. “Look, I don’t like wha— who I was before,” Puck said. “I don’t like that name. I don’t like that…person. So I picked a different name.”
“From Shakespeare.” Emmi forgot about the other half of her sandwich. “Kind of coincidental that he keeps popping up, no? I mean first MacBeth, now both you and that pony share names from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Puck shrugged. “Coincidence,” he said, although Emmi didn’t believe it for a minute. “Besides, I had it first.”
“Had what?”
“The name.”
Emmi blinked several times. “Are you telling me that you were named Puck before Shakespeare named his fae character ‘Puck?’”
“Yeah.” Puck eyed Emmi’s sandwich, and she shifted it closer to her.
“How old are you?” Emmi gaped at him. Sure, he was clearly fae and had some sort of power that she didn’t understand but—
“No idea,” Puck said. “Time’s…weird. I mean, I was ancient, but then I got young again. Then things sort of…stopped for awhile? And now here we are.”
Emmi stared. This was the first time Puck actually seemed serious, but…. “It sounds like you…are you constantly being reborn or something? Like…” She struggled to figure out an analysis, but comparing Puck to Doctor Who didn’t seem like a likely thing he’d understand if he also wasn’t too up-to-date on self-pay kiosks.
“No, no, not reborn. I just…change. Become different.” He grinned at her as if all of this made perfect sense. “Sometimes.”
“You molt?” Emmi asked doubtfully. “Like a butterfly?”
“Yes, exactly,” Puck said, smiling. “Also, not at all. Not like that all. Terrible analogy, really.”
Emmi crammed her sandwich into her mouth and chewed on the dry bread.
“Butterfly.” Puck chuckled to himself, shaking his head in amusement. “Although…”
Out the window, the fields were slowly giving way to larger and larger towns. They were approaching Edinburgh, and Emmi felt like they were also approaching a deadline of how much she could ask.
I should tell him I saw a Hunter. The thought came unbidden, and Emmi shoved it from her mind. He couldn’t give her a straight answer about his name. Even if he did answer her, could she trust what he said?
Instead, Emmi took a different tactic. “So,” she said, leaning back in her chair and brushing the crumbs from her lap. “Hunters.”
That sobered Puck up. Interesting.
“Where do they come from?” Emmi asked.
“Historically?” Puck’s brow furrowed in concentration. “There have always been people who hate what they don’t have. But they got organized around the time of the Civil War.”
Emmi immediately thought of Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and antebellum dresses. But a quick glance out the window and the rising cityscape of Edinburgh reminded her she wasn’t home any more. Puck meant the English Civil War, fought after King James died and his son, Charles, took the throne. Emmi was grateful for her grandfather’s historical background, for once happy about the way they talked more about long-dead kings than pop culture.
There had been a lot of factors contributing to the English Civil War, but religion and fear had definitely played a part in it. At the end of the war, Charles got his head chopped off, and England got a commonwealth government in place of a strict monarchy. That had all happened after Elspeth had immigrated to America, so Emmi wasn’t as familiar with that part of history.
“Matthew Hopkins,” Puck said.
Emmi dragged her mind back into the present. “Who?”
“The first Witchfinder General,” Puck said. All the levity was gone from his voice; he had never looked more serious.
“What is that title?” Emmi asked gently. The train shifted, slowing down.
“The leader of the Hunters.” Puck looked down at his lap. “He decides who lives and who dies.” He finally looked up at Emmi, just as the train pulled into the station, the roof blotting out the sun and casting them in shadow. “And the first one decided that all witches must die. The Hunters knew about your power as soon as the bottle broke. It doesn’t matter to them whether or not you understand your power, or what you intend to do with it. They are not going to stop until they kill you.”
Emmi felt her heart thudding in her chest. She doubted most of what Puck said at any given moment, but she didn’t doubt this. He spoke with a strange sort of calm that reached deep inside her, confirming fears she had never known she had.
Unsure of what to say, Emmi turned to look out the window as the train slowed to a stop. The station at North Berwick had been nothing more than a shed barely capable of holding a dozen people and a plain platform under the sunny sky. The Edinburgh train station was a huge building, designed to hold hundreds, if not thousands, with multiple train lines coming and leaving.
Outside was a cacophony of people and luggage, schedules flashing by as trains opened and closed doors. Overwhelmed by everything, Emmi stared at the numerous people milling about, all of them with such clear direction that envy washed over her.
They all knew what to do, where to go. Only she was in the dark, paralyzed by fears she couldn’t name.
But…
Her eyes fell on someone standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at the various trains pulling into the station. He stood perfectly still, letting the rushing travelers flow past him like water cascading around a rock in the river.
Emmi was still sitting on the train at the window, looking up. The man couldn’t possibly see her.
She hoped.
Because he was a Hunter.
His robe hung on his shoulders like a cape, the hood tossed back to expose his long hair and his cold eyes. He almost seemed like any other man, if a bit oddly dressed, but it was Scotland. Oddly dressed men weren’t that unusual.
No, it was the beard Emmi recognized. Steel grey, despite the man’s relative youth. He was maybe in his late thirties, early forties; the hard lines of his face made him seem older.
“Greybeard,” Emmi whispered.
He had followed them from her house all the way here, to Edinburgh.
He was waiting for her.
The Hermit, Transposed
being withdrawn, timid, or fearful
“Puck.” Emmi reached blindly for Puck’s hand, gripping his fingers hard.
The fae leaned down, clearly sensing the fear and urgency pouring out of Emmi. When he peeked through the window, he cursed.
“Maybe he won’t attack us,” Emmi said in a low whisper. A conductor was clearing the carriage, so they got up, moving to the door. “It’s a crowded station,” Emmi told Puck. “Maybe he wouldn’t risk being seen—”
“We can’t be sure of that.” Puck’s voice was darkly serious, and he wore the most concentrated look that Emmi had ever seen on his face.
The train car’s door opened up on the opposite side of where the stairs were, and Emmi was glad to at least have the train between them and the Hunter. She bounded down the steps. “What do we do?” she asked when Puck joined her on the platform.
They could—with enough confidence and luck—steal someone’s unattended luggage and cobble together a disguise from the contents, but even that seemed like a stretch.
“You’ve got to try your magic,” Puck said, his eyes serious.
“My magic?” Emmi’s heart rate ratcheted up. “How can ‘seeing the mystical’ help now?!” She hooked her fingers in mock quote marks.
Puck shook his head. “Your magic is about sight, but that includes how other people see you.”
“What?” Emmi’s brow furrowed, and she tried to think through the possibilities of what he was saying. “I don’t—”
“Call it a glamour, call it a shadow, call it whatever you want, but you do have the ability to change a person’s perception of you. And, hopefully, me.” Puck’s eyes grew distant.
“How does it work?”
Puck shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not a witch.”
Emmi growled in frustration. “Then how—?!”
“Try!” Puck grabbed her shoulders, his face inches from her. “Just—try.”
Emmi’s eyes grew round—this was fear, real fear radiating off of Puck. She nodded. Seeing the old church had been a matter of forgetting her consciousness, slipping into a different realm. It was like those old visual puzzles that tricked her eyes into seeing something in 3-D out of a chaotic mess of colors.
But how could she turn that inward in a way that would change her outward appearance? She focused on her hands, holding them in front of her face. I need to hide, she thought. I need Greybeard not to see me. I need to…
Words left her mind as her hands started to fade. With a yelp, she leapt back, but Puck grabbed her arm. “Keep it up!” he said. “You almost had it!”
I need to hide, I need to be safe, I need to be unseen, Emmi chanted to herself, focusing on her hands again. On the way Puck had slipped his fingers through hers, holding her hand tightly, squeezing with reassuring pressure. Anyone who saw them would think they were romantically involved, the way he was staring at her and clutching her hand…
But no one would see them. Because they were invisible now.
“Are you there?” Emmi whispered.
Puck rubbed the pad of his thumb over her knuckles but didn’t let go. “I’m here.”
“And we’re—”
“Invisible. You’re not so bad at this, Castor.”
Emmi took a shaking breath and stepped forward. If she looked straight ahead, it wasn’t so bad, but if she glanced at her feet, her concentration wobbled and a hazy image of her body re-appeared. She had to stay focused.
But not too focused. She slammed her shoulder into a pole before turning the corner around the station and heading to the stairs, and her image reappeared so fully and suddenly that a man who’d been hurrying in the opposite direction startled and dropped his full cup of tea, milky brown liquid splashing everywhere.
Puck gripped Emmi’s hand even harder, yanking her around. “You have to concentrate!” he said, eyes darting to the wide central staircase. They were still hidden from view of Greybeard, but barely.
“I know, I know,” Emmi said. It wasn’t just that the magic required her single-minded focus; bumping into the pole had made the illusion jerk back into reality before she dropped her concentration.
The train station was crowded. If anyone bumped into her, it would blow her cover, force her magic to fade.
And Greybeard would see her.
“You’ve got this,” Puck whispered. He hadn’t let go of her hand, and his breath was warm. How could she be so aware of him when he was invisible?
She gripped his fingers. “Let’s go.”
Emmi took the lead—invisible, they navigated the outer edges of the crowd, going wide to avoid both Greybeard and the chance of bumping into someone else. Emmi wanted to grab the hand railing, but she worried that would break the illusion, too. They took the steps carefully, both of them deeply aware that slipping now would blow their cover.
Emmi stopped when she was halfway up the stairs. Greybeard turned his neck slowly, looking left and right.
He paused, his gaze resting exactly at where Emmi and Puck were. Her breath caught; she could feel Puck’s heartbeat in her palm.
Greybeard looked straight through them, then turned the other way.
Once past the stairs, Emmi risked going faster, racing toward the big exit sign. The station opened up to the street, a blast of warm air ruffling her hair. She pulled Puck to a little alcove around the corner of the station and let the glamour fade.
“Holyrood is that way,” Puck said, pointing past the station.
Emmi had looked it up on her phone, and so she knew they would only need to go about a half mile to reach it. On the train, that had seemed easy. Now, with Greybeard hunting them, Emmi wasn’t so sure.
“Do you see?” Puck asked.
“See? Like with my power?”
Puck nodded, but he was distracted, looking not down the street but back toward the station entrance. “It’s all connected.”
“Connected?” Emmi’s heart thudded as she followed his gaze. “Can Greybeard trace us?”
“Greybeard?”
“It’s what I’m calling that Hunter,” Emmi said.
“He likely doesn’t have a way to track us,” Puck said. He grabbed Emmi’s hand and pulled her down the street. “But it won’t take long for him to realize he missed us in the crowd, and he’s likely going to follow us out here. Do you see anything?” His question was a little more urgent, his grip on her hand tightening.
Emmi trusted Puck to guide her down the narrow sidewalk as she squinted in the direction of the palace. She shook her head.
“It’s probably safe,” Puck muttered, picking up his pace. They were almost running now, and the crowd from the train station was thinning out as people went their separate ways.
“What do you mean about safe and connected?” Emmi asked. She shot a look behind her, but couldn’t see anyone following us.
“Before Elspeth left for America, she set up a series of protections in key places around the UK,” Puck said. “Witch bottles are designed for protection. The one in your house was like the central hub for the network.”
Emmi’s mind raced. If the witch bottle in her home acted as a sort of battery supply for all the other witch bottles her ancestor had scattered throughout the UK, then…
“Elspeth thought it would be safer if the main bottle was in an entirely different country,” Puck continued. “She thought her protections would hold. And they did. For centuries.”
“Until you broke the bottle.”
“Not on purpose.”
“So Holyrood Palace has one of Elspeth’s bottles?”
Puck nodded. He pulled Emmi closer to the buildings as they walked. The streets were broad, but there were lots of little side alleys and corners to hide behind. For both them and any Hunter tracking them.
“Why would Elspeth make a protection spell for the king who started the witch persecutions?” Emmi asked.
“Wasn’t for him.”
Emmi looked behind her again. She could see a dark swath of cloth half a block behind them. It could be Greybeard, but it could be someone’s fancy rain coat. It was impossible to tell between the long shadows of the buildings and the curve of the street. But—
Puck pulled Emmi into a little alcove. “Hide us,” he hissed.
Emmi nodded, throat tight. She concentrated, clutching Puck’s hand. She didn’t feel anything, but when she looked down, her body was invisible again.
She looked up.
And saw Greybeard.
The black cloth she’d seen had been his cloak. Emmi barely breathed. If she reached out, she could touch the Hunter. Puck’s grip on her hand was so hard it made her fingertips tingle, but Emmi kept her concentration on staying invisible.
Greybeard sniffed the air, like a hound on the scent. He lingered in front of the little alcove for several long moments, but he never looked at them, and if he did, he would have seen nothing. He strode forward, determined.
Puck and Emmi waited a beat before Puck jumped up. Emmi’s spell broke, and they were both visible again. He held his hand out to her to help her wobbly legs stand straight.
“Should we make a detour?” Emmi asked. Even though Greybeard was at least a full block ahead of them, she spoke in whispers.
Puck shook his head. “He’s definitely going to Holyrood. Our best bet is to get there as fast as possible.”
They started off again, eyes peeled. But Emmi couldn’t help but ask, “What were Elspeth’s bottles for?” Emmi asked. “Why put one in Holyrood if not to protect the king that lived there?”
“There are places where the veil between mystical and mundane are thinner,” Puck said. “Places where other creatures—”
“Fae creatures, you mean,” Emmi interjected. Like you, she thought but did not say.
Puck nodded tightly. “They come through. It’s dangerous for us all.”
“Like when a deer crosses a street,” she said. “If it’s hit, everyone’s hurt.”
“Exactly.”
Emmi looked up, and in that exact moment saw Greybeard cutting through the thin crowd, heading straight toward them. Emmi gasped, yanking Puck back and throwing up her protective magic in seconds. She and Puck pressed into the wall, invisible, as Greybeard strode by.
“Where are they?” the Hunter growled to himself, the words barely audible. Emmi smiled smugly, but Puck squeezed her hand, as if to say, Don’t get cocky, kid.
As soon as Greybeard was safely at the corner on the opposite direction of where they wanted to go, Emmi and Puck started racing toward Holyrood. The street was growing wider now, and a traffic circle—and the gates to the palace—were in sight.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Elspeth’s bottle at Holyrood sooner?” Emmi asked. They were so close now she could see the stone walls rising beyond the gate.
“She made dozens of witch bottles and hid them really well. There are some I don’t even know about. Since Holyrood is located over a fae circle, yeah, it’s one of the ones Elspeth protected. Your unnamed witch may be there. But…she may not.”
“Yes, but—” Emmi started, but then an iron knife slammed into Puck’s back.
Emmi screamed, whirling around as Puck staggered and fell to his knees. Greybeard stood there, his hand still poised from having released the dagger he’d thrown at them. A smirk smeared across his face.
