Rooming with the Wicked

47 | too good to pass up

Damp grass touched the back of my neck as I found myself staring into the blue sky high above the treetops. The spinning treetops. Nausea made me roll on my side and suck in as much air as I possibly could.

Not even fifteen feet away from me, a stone foot stood in the tall grass. Sentinel. And this one wasn't confined by a low basement ceiling. Nope, this one—and its four companions—had all the space in the world to move freely and drive a spear right through me.

Except they weren't moving.

I exhaled a shaky breath and made myself as small as possible. Good thing Haze wasn't here to see this.

Haze. That stupid, self-sacrificing jerk. His words still echoed through my mind.

I'll be fine.

Fine? If there was one thing he would be, it definitely wasn't fine. And if he thought he could just push me through a portal and be rid of me, he thought wrong. Dead wrong. But hopefully not dead.

Still dazed, I scrambled to my feet and ran at the portal—and found myself still in Central Park. I tried again. The familiar cold and the swirling colors were all present, yet the portal didn't work.

No, wait. The color was off. It was duller somehow.

Okay, so maybe he could just push me through a damn gateway to keep me away.

But how?

I walked around the gateway until my eyes found the key piece. The twin crystal. It wasn't glowing like it should be. I was no expert when it came to portals, but something must have severed the connection.

Haze.

But...why?

To stop the sentinels.

I felt myself nod. If they were solely after me like he'd said, maybe destroying the only way to get to me stopped them. Then he'd be okay. He had to be. That didn't stop me from picturing him playing a deadly game of tag with four sentinels around the broken portal.

I shook my head and focused on the mystery at hand. The guards here didn't react to my presence in any way. That could mean two things. Whoever had given the command to attack—or retracted my permission to use the portal—had done so spontaneously. Perhaps only moments before I'd gone down into the basement. Or it was someone who didn't have the power to command the sentinels in New York.

Professor Renis. He was an ambassador. He had that kind of influence. Maybe.

But how could he have known where I was heading today?

Professor Flamel.

He could have told him. He'd warned me earlier—warned me to accept his and Renis' help. Had he known? Or had that just been a ploy to get to me first.

I clenched my fists.

Or maybe he had nothing to do with it. Renis could be acting on his own.

Or it wasn't Renis.

There was someone else with the power to restrict portal access. Someone whom I'd just talked to. Someone I'd shared my plan to talk to Dad with.

Chancellor Riviera.

But that made even less sense.

My head was starting to spin for a whole different reason yet again. Done. I was so freaking done. I didn't even have anything to do with any of this. Nothing. And now someone had tried to kill me, or get me killed, again. And all because of Dad.

My fingers tugged on the zipper of the secret pocket on the bottom of my backpack. Knowing the picture of Mom was securely hidden within gave me a strange kind of comfort. Despite everything, I'd found this. And Dad could never take that away from me again.