I pulled out my phone, Mr. Donato’s words in my head, and wrote a new message. This time I appealed to my dad’s writer senses.
Dad—I don’t get the timeline. You named me after her, but then you didn’t let me meet her until…
I paused. This next piece was a guess.
…until she found out she had cancer. Eight years later.
I hit send as Eamon slid into the driver’s seat. “Everything all right?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I took in his adorableness. He’d changed into a T-shirt and jeans, but his makeup was still on and so were those darn ears. They were, however, starting to grow on me.
“Eamon, what happens at the end of the trilogy?” I held up the book. “At the airport, Shoshanna made some comment about it being sad.”
Eamon pumped the clutch and started the car. “Ah, I think you should read it.”
“Yeah, but what happens? Is it as bad as the end of The Amber Spyglass?”
He shook his head. “Worse. Iris, keep reading.”
“One of them dies,” I guessed. “One of the twins because…”
That’s what happened in real life.
Which left the question, which child did Grandma Mae kill off? Her daughter?
Or her son?
CASTLE ON THE ROCK AND OTHER BIBLICALLY CHALLENGING IDEAS
I’d been reading for an hour, a third of the way through the sequel to Elementia, and already the characters were getting older and more complicated. And the love story? Hot. I kept backing up entire pages to reread—although I had to stop picturing Eamon and Shoshanna as Nolan and Sevyn because they were, um, kissing too much.
“Ready?” Roxy turned the chair around to face the mirror, and I looked up and screamed.
The sea of extras mingling around the makeup trailer jumped, including Eamon, who had been reviewing his script in the corner. I clapped my hands over my mouth and tried not to die.
“What? Is something wrong?” Roxy asked. “Are you having an allergic reaction?”
I shook my head back and forth. “I’m an elf. I can’t believe…I’m a freakin’ elf.”
Ryder—who had gotten his ears first—shot up the steps and started giggling so hard he fell over Eamon’s legs. Eamon started to laugh too. I tugged on one of the pointy ears lightly. “Don’t laugh! This is my own personal hell, and it’s glued to me!”
“It was,” Ryder corrected between giggles. “Now you love us.”
I glanced at the pile of my brother and my boyfriend and couldn’t disagree. Then I looked down at my rather spiffy elf outfit, complete with leather bodice and leggings, and felt out of place all over again.
Henrik stuck his head in the trailer. “Ten minutes and I want everyone up on the hill for the scene set up. Got it?” He glanced at me and snorted a laugh into the back of his hand.
“Okay, okay!” I got out of the seat and tried to act in charge. I did look pretty darn amazing in my warrior elf outfit; I just had to own it. “Let’s go. March.”
We left the trailer, joining the stream of people making their way up the hill toward a massive, old castle atop a two-hundred-foot-high limestone outcropping. I’d learned a few interesting details from the tour we’d taken earlier. For example, it wasn’t a castle but a series of towers and cathedrals, even a bishop’s palace, amalgamated over many hundreds of years. There had been real freakin’ kings crowned there. One of them was even named Cormac MacCartaigh, to which I joked, “He was high king? When did he find the time to write The Road?”
No one laughed, so I texted it to Julian. He’d ROFled; he might not know literature, but the guy knows his Viggo Mortensen. One more day and Julian would be back. I couldn’t wait to find out how it’d went with Elora and tell him all about Eamon and me.
There was a laundry list of even more history attached to the Rock of Cashel, including Saint Patrick and, everyone’s favorite, Satan. But mostly I could feel Cate’s genius in the setting—how ripe this place was for fantasy filming. The great, green mound of the rock beneath the structure was called the Fairy Ridge, and the rolling planes to the north were known as the Golden Veil.
The Elementia crew and all our trailers were camped out to the west, out of the way of the town, and half in the middle of some poor pasture. We were close to a neglected old stone abbey that, in my opinion, was cooler than the Rock of Cashel, but then, I’d always been a fan of underdogs.
Eamon was back in his Nolan gear, and he seemed tense. “The Vantage execs thanked me for my time before they left, like they were trying to make themselves feel better. They were supposed to stay around until the end of the day, but I guess they’ve seen all they need to see.”
“Hope they’re gone for good,” I said.
We reached the top and filed through the gate. There were many extras; I wasn’t used to that, and neither was Eamon. We found an empty spot by a huge stone cross and waited for Cate and Shoshanna to reappear. They’d been filming for hours, and the only time I’d seen Cate, she’d been wearing those black sunglasses again.
Ryder was pretending to battle foes, wearing the little leather elf outfit that made him look like he won a cosplay contest at Comic-Con. I sat in the grass beside Eamon, running my fingers over the lines on his palm while he looked over his script.
Shoshanna appeared like magic, sitting
