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Finally, he nodded.
“Good. Now, let’s move.”
I pulled Max through the grounds, zipping from one carefully manicured structure to another. When I thought we were in the clear, I told him to make a run for it. We reached the outer walls panting, but also laughing.
“You’re insane,” Max said between breaths. “You’re gonna get into such deep shit.”
“I’m not letting your first drink be that old stuff dad likes to drink.”
“You mean whiskey?”
“Guh. I don’t know what it is about his whiskey, but it tastes like old socks. No, you’re going to drink something colorful, and fun, and then we’re going to dance. With real people!”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It’s your birthday, Max. You’re twenty-one. It’s time to live a little.”
He seemed a little less unsure now than he had been a moment ago, but his eyebrows still furrowed. “Alright, fine. But how are we going to get out?”
I reached into my top and pulled out the amulet hanging from my neck. It was a beautiful, golden amulet, ornate and made up of lines and curves that resembled a pentagram with a fingernail moon running through it. At the heart of the amulet sat a purple stone, which shone with whatever light touched it.
“That looks important,” said Max. “It also looks like something you definitely shouldn’t have.”
“This used to belong to Aunt Persephone,” I said. “When she died, she left it to me… but mom and dad decided I wasn’t ready to have it.”
“And it’s in your hand right now… because?”
“Because they don’t lock their safes carefully enough.”
“Okay… so, what does it do?”
I took Max’s hand. “Are you ready to find out why our family name is Ethera?”
“Ooh boy, I don’t like the sound of—” I didn’t let Max finish. Instead, I wrapped the amulet in my other hand, shut my eyes, and pushed a trickle of my own power into it, activating the magic inside.
In an instant, my entire world fell away—or more specifically, I fell away from it. My stomach lifted, as if it had suddenly become lighter than air. My skin prickled and turned cold. I felt airy, and light, and when I opened my eyes, everything was different.
It was like standing at the bottom of the ocean, if the seabed was flooded with pale green light instead of being infinitely dark. I could see my family mansion, the garden, even the moon in the sky, only these things were more like impressions than solid objects; impressions that swayed, and shifted, like underwater weeds.
Here, in the Ether, there was no physical matter. The wall behind me wasn’t a wall, but the suggestion of a wall. I could see all the way through it to the road on the other side of it; from the streetlamps to the benches, to the city lights twinkling far beyond. When I glanced over at Max, he looked a little more real than everything else, but the features of his face swam, and shifted, and swayed just like the rest of this strange, ethereal world did.
The poor guy looked horrified. His eyes were wide, he had clearly opened his mouth to yell, but I couldn’t hear him. I hadn’t figured out how talking worked in here yet. But I had learned I could move through solid objects, which I did, with Max in tow—pushing through the solid wall separating our mansion from the world beyond.
But that wasn’t all I could do while I was in here.
I looked over at Max and mouthed the words are you ready, but he only gave me a look like he wanted to throw up. I decided to do this quickly, then, and with another pulse of my power, funneled through my amulet, I made the world around us shift once more.
I didn’t bring us back into the material world, though; not yet. First, I hurled our nearly weightless forms through the Ether, toward the city. From our perspective, it looked as if we were standing perfectly still, and Boston was speeding toward us, its city lights growing larger, and larger, like stars zooming toward our direction.
Once the city reached us, we zipped through its streets, alleys, and boulevards, crossing entire districts in the blink of an eye. The first time I had tried this, I had ended up nearer to Salem than I would’ve liked, and miles off my intended target. But so long as I visualized the destination firmly in my head, I learned my instincts would guide me to it, and warn me when I was close.
As soon as I felt that urgent tug, I stopped us in our tracks, and pulled us out of the Ether all in one quick move.
The weird, almost soundless Ether gave way instantly to the hissing of car tires on asphalt, to horns honking, to the chatter of people on the street just beyond the alley I had brought us into. Max let go of my hand, headed for the nearest dumpster, and promptly threw up beside it.
I grimaced. “Sorry!” I called out, “It was like that for me at first, too. You’ll get used to it!”
Max wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t think… I ever will…” he said. “I just threw up. Gross.”
