An undignified snort escaped me. “I’d almost believe it at this point.”
“Wanna see? There’s unicorns in the background.” Red cracked a smile. “People from across the state are reporting problems, too.”
I’d brought up another spoonful of cereal, then paused. “Across the state?”
“I haven’t seen anything definitive,” she hurried to add. “They may just want attention. Some town up north claims to have a troll infestation. The videos aren’t convincing.”
“In conclusion: chaos,” Rainbow said.
Red nodded. “That sums it up. I didn’t even mention all the people freaking out over seeing a really ugly dragon.”
“They’re calling Neven ugly?” I asked. “Mean.”
“She has some passionate defenders. I saw two long discussions on the topic.”
“Poor Neven,” Four mused. Casper chose that moment to jump on her lap and study the food on the table. “Sorry, Cas. You’re not allowed on the table.” Four scratched the soft fur on his neck.
(Of course she knew my aunt’s house rules. Of course.)
“Anything about our”—I almost said my, but that felt wrong, like I was hogging the attention—“destiny?” My cheeks heated up, and I found myself laughing. “Jeez. ‘Destiny.’ How ridiculous is that?”
“Unless your—our—destiny is fighting trolls or giving Neven a makeover, there’s nothing in the news,” Red said. “I mean, nothing new or supernatural. There’s other news. Obviously.”
We fell silent. The only sound was Casper’s purring and the background blend of choppers and sirens and car horns. The rift had left downtown, but the aftermath lingered.
“Maybe this destiny isn’t supernatural?” Four suggested.
Rainbow chowed down on her cereal. “Could be. Isn’t it silly to need to, I don’t know, take the ring to Mordor, or prevent a time traveler from blowing up LA, when there’s so much existing crap to deal with?”
Red leaned over to scratch Casper’s chin. “Preventing LA from getting blown up is silly?”
“It’s like news coverage, right? Earthquake in the United States, nine dead, it’s horrible, gets around-the-clock coverage and an auto repair guy from three towns away gets interviewed. Earthquake someplace else, hundreds dead, it gets a brief mention on the evening news. I bet this rift isn’t doing half as much damage as that tsunami last month. I don’t even remember which country it hit.”
I didn’t remember a tsunami, period. Maybe it’d happened in Rainbow’s world but not mine. But maybe it had happened here, and I’d either forgotten or missed it; I supposed the fact that I didn’t know proved her point.
Rainbow went on. “Why isn’t there a Chosen One sent to help them? Or to stop queer persecution around the world, or save refugees, or prevent mass shootings, or, I don’t know, take down the prison-industrial complex right here at home? Governments screw their people more than any supernatural cause could.”
The three of us stared at her.
“Um,” Four said. “The prison-what?”
Apparently, alternate-universe me was into politics. I studied Rainbow’s face, fascinated. As different as we were, I’d still recognized parts of her. For those few seconds, though, she could’ve been an entirely different person.
Rainbow deflated. “I mean. It probably is a supernatural problem. And I don’t know what some sixteen-year-old Pennsylvania blonde could do about anything I mentioned. I’m just saying. Some other Chosen One should.”
“We can take that up with the Powers That Be,” I said, relieved to be joking about it. “File a complaint—”
Four yelped. An orange blur shot from her lap. Casper hit the ground, hissing. Four cradled her hand to her chest. “He just freaked. Out of nowhere!”
A line of fur on Casper’s back stood upright. His tail went puffy.
Four went for the sink and ran her hand under the tap. Two red lines welled up.
“Are you OK?” Red asked.
Casper hissed again.
Rainbow crouched and squinted at the living room. “What was that?”
I followed her gaze.
Skkkkrt.
Skkrt.
A muffled thump.
A cabinet under the TV slammed open, and something darted out.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“What the—!” Rainbow jolted back.
Four slammed the tap, cutting off the water.
Blu-ray boxes tumbled from the cabinet. The shape blurred through the living room—grayish, four legs, roughly Casper’s size—and disappeared under the coffee table before I got a good look.
Casper darted forward. He let out a warning yowl, fixated on the shape underneath the coffee table.
“Um,” Rainbow said. “What is that?”
“No clue,” Four breathed.
Slowly, a hand stretched out from under the table.
A hand.
I stared, wide-eyed.
The hand was half the size of my own. It was long-stretched, with a thumb and three pencil-thin fingers, knuckly and crooked. Each ended in a sharp point.
A second hand reached out. Its nails tapped against the laminate floor, then pressed flat. The shape dragged itself out from under the table, revealing rough brown-and-gray arms nearly as thin as its fingers. Then a triangle ear. A head like a misshapen lump of earth, a bald face that was all craters and black patches. The other ear was missing. A craggy mouth formed an uneven line below flat nostrils and buggy amber eyes.
“That . . .,” Red whispered. “That must’ve come from the rift.”
The creature’s eyes flicked from Casper to us. Its body was like a spring, all tight tension ready to explode. It was crouched on all fours, its back arched, but its limbs seemed more human than animal. It might walk on two feet just as easily as crawl.
“I think that’s what I saw outside earlier,” Red said. “Those . . . monster things people talked about online. How’d it get up here?”
“What do we do?” Four said.
I glanced at Rainbow just as Red glanced at me.
Great. Four indecisive girls were as useless as one.
With no clue about my destiny, I hadn’t known how to prepare, but in retrospect, finding weapons would’ve been a smart move. Neven had told me to hold on to my knife, which I’d left on the breakfast table—
Knives. Kitchen. Duh. The contents of Lina’s knife block would be more useful than that weirdly shaped thing from the canoe last night. I
