“And not smell of stale cooking oil,” Emma added as Curtis pulled back a heavy sheet of builders’ plastic that concealed the burned-out kitchen. Then she noticed he was still wearing his glasses. “By the way, I don’t think you’ll be needing those in here. It’s a glamour-powder-free kitchen.”
“Oh, um, right,” he said uncomfortably. He flushed, hesitated for a moment, then with obvious reluctance took off the glasses and put them in his pocket. “I guess I won’t.”
For a moment Emma stared at him, not quite sure what his problem was, but then she remembered they had a job to do. She stepped over a huge pile of chopsticks scattered on the floor. She’d secretly worried that the place might be full of repairmen, but fortunately the damaged kitchen was empty of anything other than the charcoaled remains.
“Wow, that must’ve been some explosion.” Curtis whistled as he leaned forward on his crutches and surveyed the damage.
“Yeah,” Emma agreed as she walked over to one of the stainless-steel benches and put down her kit. “Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Or the right place at the right time. I wonder if the reason you can see the darkhel is because you were here when it came through the gate,” Curtis wondered aloud. He almost sounded wistful as Emma pulled the pendant out of her pocket.
“I have no idea.” She headed to the far end of the kitchen and systematically started to wave it in the air. “But right now, I guess that’s the least of our problems. Just yell out if you can see anything.”
Curtis paused before finally nodding. “Of course.” He started to glance around. “So what happened here last Saturday?”
Emma, who was just in the process of waving the pendant in the burned-out microwave, pointed over to the far wall. “Well, there were about ten fairies all hovering over there, and as I reached into my kit to get my weapon there was an explosion from over by the freezer,” she said as she continued to wave the pendant in the air, desperately searching for anything that might be a soul box.
Curtis headed over to the burned-out freezer and studied it. “Ah, yes. You can see that the door has been blown out, so it must be in here.” He pointed.
“Very CSI,” Emma said, smiling slightly as she stepped past him into the freezer. Despite its being out of order, it was still chillier inside the giant appliance, and she hugged herself as she stepped over a large bag of soggy bean sprouts and went in.
She held the pendant above her head and immediately sucked in a breath.
There, where the back of the freezer wall should’ve been, was now a great black swirling vortex of nothingness. For a moment Emma just stood transfixed, unable to look away from the hideous whirlpool of pulsing black space that silently flashed and flickered.
Her mouth felt dry and her eye throbbed as she forced herself to look away.
So it was true.
This was the Gate of Linaria.
“Are you okay?” Curtis was suddenly at her side with the stealthlike ability that she had come to associate with him, despite the crutches he was still using.
“I’m fine. Just a little freaked out. I mean, we’re sophomores at Burtonwood, and you don’t exactly expect to come face-to-face with the Gate of Linaria.”
“I know,” he agreed in a solemn voice. “Though I’ve started to discover that the more time I spend with you, the more I expect weird things to happen.”
“Thanks . . . I think,” Emma said as she reluctantly stepped away from him and held the pendant up again, still looking for the soul box. It didn’t seem to be there and she was just about to head back out to the kitchen again when she realized that Curtis was heading in the other direction, straight toward the far wall, as if the whole swirling black void of nothingness wasn’t even there.
“Curtis, what are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” He took another step forward and Emma screamed as the void suddenly burst open and hundreds of tendrils of smoke began to slowly reach out and snake and coil their way around his plaster cast like ivy up a wall. Emma rushed toward him and grabbed his arm.
Whatever the smoky vines were, they were strong, and as she tried to pull him away, they continued to writhe and wind their way up his leg. Emma felt herself