it.”
She handed me the rolling pin, and the second my fingers touched the smooth crystal inlayed into the wood, it started to … change. From wood, it turned to cold steel and then bulked out, popping and bending and creaking as it transformed into … a motorcycle.
“Wicked,” Elle breathed.
“No helmets needed, just fly if you’re about to crash,” Trissa declared.
Yeah, I was pretty sure that wasn’t how it worked, but whatever, this bike was badass. My mother would totally flip out and give me no less than six hundred rules on how to drive it safely. For my sixteenth birthday, she smuggled a laptop and American DVDs into Faerie for Elle and I. I’d seen The Terminator about a hundred times, and had always wanted to ride a motorcycle like Arnold.
I swung a leg over the bike. “What did my mom ride?” Clearly, she wasn’t flying around Earth, scaring normies, and seeking could take you hundreds of miles.
Triss looked uncomfortable. “A red pick-up truck. It was … we don’t have it anymore.”
Oh. I was going to have to sit down with her when I felt emotionally ready and find out exactly what happened that night to my mom. But that might not be for years, if I would ever be ready. For now, Faerie depended on me to find that crystal.
Trissa pointed to a button. “Kill switch.” Then she pointed to another thing. “Petcock.”
It took every ounce of maturity I possessed not to bust out laughing at “petcock,” but Elle did it for the both of us. Trissa shot her a glare and then pointed to something else. “Throttle.”
Then Trissa pushed something, flipped another thing, and twisted something else and the motorcycle roared to life.
“Got it?” she asked.
No. Hell fucking no. I nodded, because I was so far into this shit train … what did it matter?
“You start seeking. Take Elle, I’ll follow on this.” She pulled a little electric scooter out from behind her back and popped it open.
Elle jumped on the bike behind me and hooked her arms around my waist. This was no big deal, like seeking anything. I’d done it hundreds of time. Taking a deep breath, I remembered the bluish-purple color and texture of the crystal, the way it was cool to my touch and how the light bounced off of it. As I was imagining it, there was a small tug at my navel.
“Got it,” I declared. The thrill of seeking always excited me. Feeling that intuitive hunch and pull in the general direction was always a bit like solving a mystery.
Elle clung to me. “Don’t kill us!” she shouted.
I nodded and pulled on the throttle lightly. The bike lurched forward and both Elle and I screamed. I slammed on the brake and we jerked to a halt.
“Okay, you know what, let’s work up to the motorcycle.” Trissa set the electric scooter on its kickstand and I frowned. “You ride the scooter and Elle and I will follow you.”
My one shot to be a badass bicker chick and I blew it.
Get your shit together, Lily.
“Come on, Lily, we need to hurry. They’ll move the crystal,” Trissa urged me.
Right.
Walking over to the scooter, I jumped on and set off at a whopping ten miles an hour. I followed my instinct out onto the road, and then to the right at a fork when I felt a strong tug in that direction. It was hard to keep my mind clear when I kept thinking about my mom. Had her celebration of life started yet? Were the elders bathing her body in crystal water and wrapping her in white silk? It was hard to get the gruesome bloody image from my head of her in that bathtub.
I got so wrapped up in my thoughts, I barely felt the tug to the left at the next fork in the road. Craning the handlebars at the last minute, I drifted down the road scolding myself for losing the connection with the crystal.
“Focus, Lily,” I told the wind, thinking again of how the crystal had felt, the way the sunlight shone on its light purple and blue.
Like a kick to the gut, my connection was back again, and so strong it knocked the wind out of me. We were close.
Trusting my gifts and following that tug, I careened the scooter down a small side street. I would have missed it had I not been looking; it was marked by two huge trees. We were here. After turning in, I immediately