Copper Girl (24 page)

“If you come after my family, I’ll kill you,” I said, matter-of-factly. “If you approach us, even step in our direction, I’ll kill you.” I turned to walk away, assuming we were done. Like I said, I was an idiot.

“Sara, listen—”

“No!” I rounded on her, seeing that she was now flanked by guards armed with their puny plastic guns. “You listen! I trusted you! I confided in you! All for nothing!”

“I was always your friend! That was real!”

“Real?” I spread my hands to encompass the scene: a stone fortress built by humans to house their magical captives in the Otherworld, a military armed with weapons specially modified to capture Elementals, my broken family, and my horribly tortured brother. “Is this what real friendship looks like?”

“Believe what you want,” Juliana said. “I know the truth.”

I shook my head and looked at the ground. “Whatever.” As I started to walk away, she called after me.

“I can’t let you leave.”

“How exactly will you stop me?” I countered. Juliana gestured, and the militiamen melted out of the trees. Drones rose from behind the stone wall, their harmless cameras replaced by long, sharp weapons, like bayonets.

“Where did they come from?” Sadie squeaked.

“Portal,” Max replied. “They’re all over the woods.” Micah began his rant about the Peacekeepers carelessly using all the magic they’d forbidden to the masses, when Juliana started up again.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Juliana yelled. “We don’t need to fight. We can work together.”

“This is you working together?” I eyed the drones, still hovering just above the wall. “You want us all in our own plastic prisons?”

“We need to learn how your power works! If we can isolate the part of the brain that generates an Elemental’s power, like Max’s—”

“No!” The mention of Max’s name pushed me over the edge. No one, least of all this traitor, was going to harm my family again. I raised my arms as white-hot pain flashed inside my mind. Again, I was falling.

When the pain subsided, Micah and I were seated on the ground, his arms fast around me as he held me upright, and there was a metal wall between me and Juliana’s crew. A metal wall?

On closer inspection, it wasn’t just a wall, but a dome. It curved over the Institute, effectively trapping the Peacekeepers in their own house of horrors. Good. I assumed that Micah, or maybe Max and Sadie, had created the wall to protect us, but that wasn’t the case.

“You did it, my Sara,” Micah informed me. “You grasped Ferra’s tents and warriors and reshaped them into what you see before you. Truly, it was most impressive.”

I gazed at the metal wall and saw the remnants of a warrior’s leg here, a shield there. There were even a few flattened drones, but I was too exhausted to be amazed by what I’d done. “Do you think it will hold them for long?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I imagine they have ways to escape, but surely your display will give them pause before any Peacekeeper attempts to harm you and yours.”

I realized that my fingers were clutching Micah’s in a death grip. I looked up and saw Mom, Max, and Sadie watching the two of us with worried faces. And they should have been worried, since we couldn’t go home again. We, the Raven clan, the most powerful Elemental bloodline still in existence, were now outcasts from our own world.

But was that so bad? I thought of my Mundane life, my lame job, my tiny apartment. All of my good memories had happened at the Raven Compound, except for those involving Micah. Every thought or deed that had ever made me smile was a direct result of the four people with me now. I didn’t need to return to the mortal realm, not now or ever.

What’s more, I thought of all I had now. A man who loved me, a family that was almost complete, and a shiny silver mansion to hang out in, not to mention all the silver servants. Really, my life had never been better.

“Good,” I said, as Micah pulled me to my feet. “Let’s go home.”

Acknowledgement

It never ceases to amaze me how many people it takes to produce one little book; editors and publicists and copy editors and cover artists and even more editors. I mean, when you get right down to it, a book is just a heap of paper glued together. Who knew that these heaps of paper entailed so much work.

Now, all of our combined efforts—the editing and the angsty calls and the stressful emails, and yes, a few tears here and there—have been collected and distilled into this bit of paper you’re holding. Or maybe to a few blips on your ereader, whatever.

If I thanked each and every one of the people who helped make Copper Girl a reality individually, it would take another book (not to mention more work), so let me personally thank the one person who was there for me through all of it, and saw me through to the end: Robb. Love you, baby.

Four Goth teens and a washed up musician get stranded in the Pine Barrens and discover that New Jersey really is a gate to Hell--and if they don’t do something, being banned from the mall is the least of their worries.

Jennifer Allis Provost writes stories about faeries, orcs, elves, and the occasional zombie. She’s a native New Englander who lives in a sprawling colonial along with her beautiful and precocious twins, a dog, two cats, a maroon-bellied conure, and a wonderful husband who never forgets to buy ice cream. As a child, she read anything and everything she could get her hands on, including a set of encyclopedias, but fantasy was always her favorite. She spends her days drinking vast amounts of coffee, arguing with her computer, and avoiding any and all domestic behavior. Find her on the web at
http://jenniferallisprovost.com