I stopped short, certain he’d read my mind, then sent him a quick thought back. I’ll take vengeance, you psychopath! Your junk isn’t getting anywhere near me without you losing it.
He grunted, adjusting me on his shoulder. “Disappointing.”
“Stop flirting and get us out of here,” Olivander hissed.
Guy took me back the way he’d come, past the library and into a part of the building I’d never been to. How were all the doors unlocked? Shouldn’t there be someone stopping us? I didn’t want to have to explain this to my doctor. She’d definitely give me a treatment as punishment. I whimpered at the thought and caught Olivander’s eye over Guy’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Letty,” he assured me without stopping our trek down the hall. “We’re getting you out of here.”
Out? Out of the Asylum? But I’d never been out of the Asylum. I didn’t even know what was out there, what the world looked like, or anything like that. Still, his words answered my long-lasting question about whether or not the Asylum was the only thing in existence and there was nothing else.
We veered off to a room and Guy’s arms loosened before he set me gently on my feet. I stepped back and smack him across the face. He snorted out a laugh and felt his jaw.
“Yeah, I deserved that. Not the first time you’ve slapped me, kinda feels like old times.” I lifted my leg, ready to make good on my promise to punish his junk, and he held out his hands to protect himself. “Now, now, Letty. We still have to escape. You want that, right?” I nodded. “Then lay off my tackle, feel me?” Another nod. He grinned at me, twisting my stomach into knots, and snapped his fingers. The air in the room grew warm, a burst of it coming from behind me and tossing my hair around.
I turned to see… well, I didn’t really have the right word for it. I searched through my limited memories of the fantasy books I’d read. Portal? That seemed accurate. A piece of the room wasn’t the same anymore, it showed grass, mountains, all tinted orange. I stuck my hand into the portal and felt warmth, in complete contrast to the never-ending chill of the Asylum.
Noises down the hall brought me back to the boys, and Guy had his head tilted as if listening to them. “We have to go.” He grabbed me again, lifting me into his arms, and we stepped through the portal. The Asylum disappeared around us until we were standing in fresh, green grass with the mountains in the distance. Guy put me down, turning back to the portal that now showed the dreary Asylum room, and he snapped his fingers again, making the portal disappear as if it had never existed.
With it gone, I twisted this way and that to stare at our surroundings. The air was so warm. The smells were so intoxicating. Everything felt fresh and new. I knelt down and ran my fingers through the green grass.
“It’s not dead,” I whispered, noting my voice had come back. “Is this what grass looks like when it’s not dead?”
“How’d you know the grass was dead if you’ve never seen it alive before?” one of them asked me. Their voices were so similar, I knew I’d have to be looking directly at them to see who had spoken. I shrugged, because I never knew how I’d know the plants at the Asylum were dead.
I sat down on the grass, reveling in the coolness of it, the way the ground felt underneath me, and I stared up at my rescuers. “How do you two look the same?”
Guy raised an eyebrow at me and ran a hand through his black hair. “We’re twins. You don’t know what twins are?”
Shrugging, I danced my fingertips over the grass. “I’ve lived in an Asylum my entire life. They didn’t exactly have a class on ‘things you should totally know.’”
“But you haven’t been there your entire life. You’ve been there for three years.” My hands stopped, my eyes shooting up to their faces. Three years. I had a vague understanding of time, but even with that, I knew three years was a very small number. “We found you a year ago,” Olivander continued. “I went inside to get you out, but Guy never came back.”
Guy reached a hand up to grip his brother’s shoulder. “At the precise moment I’d planned on going in, the Asylum wasn’t there anymore. We didn’t realize it changed locations, and it took me all this time to find it again.”
But how? None of this made sense. How could a building change locations? How did that portal show up?
“Magic, Letty,” Guy answered, reading my thoughts again.
I scowled up at him. “I don’t appreciate you reading my thoughts like that.”
He shrugged. “Can’t help it.”
I rolled my eyes and stood up. “Magic isn’t real.”
“We literally just went through a damn portal and you’re still going to believe that?”
“I have to believe it. Because if I don’t, then that means…” I stopped and looked away, my stomach turning with fear. “Then that means I really am crazy. It means I am a freak, just like they told me.”
“If you’re crazy, then I’m a chicken sandwich.” I rolled my eyes and watched Guy hold his hand out, a flame bursting from his fingers. “You’re not crazy. You never were. You’re… and I say this with complete irony, by the way. You’re a witch, Letty.”
The twins answered every question I had as we walked across the grassy field, including every facet of our relationship, because apparently I’d been working up to date both of them before I was taken.
“Is that normal for… witches?” I swallowed the bitterness in my mouth over saying that word like it was completely normal. I was fighting my programming, as Guy
