Page 200 of Keldori By Daybreak

“It’s Saturday.” It wasn’t the end of the world, though it wasn’t not the end of the world either, technically. It was just another thing. Another task on this never-ending journey home.

“And?” Ciarán prompted.

“And most people don’t work on Saturdays.” I had thought the campus was empty because it wasn’t open for the day yet, but no. It was the weekend. Maxwell Brenton wouldn’t be here for another two days.

“What if you tried the phone?” Ciarán asked. “That is a phone, right? I feel like I remember those.”

My eyes flitted to the desk phone. Had I really been in Skalterra so long that I’d forgotten about phones?

I straightened up and shot for the phone to jam Gams’s shop number into the keypad.

An angry, pulsing beat sounded on the other end, and I deflated.

The line was dead. Did that mean Mom was in danger? Or just that she wasn’t paying for the landline while she was overlooking Keel Watch?

I tried again. Then again, and then I threw the phone.

“Wren!” Ciarán grabbed me by my shoulders. “That won’t help.”

“It wasn’t helping anyway!” I pushed off his chest and turned away in anger, shame, and embarrassment, coming face to face with the wall of framed degrees that decorated the office.

Two doctorates, plus a Bachelor of Science.

The bachelor’s was the least impressive of the three, but I stared at my reflection in its glass cover, the college name projected over my cheek.

Von Leer University.

I was supposed to be preparing to move into Von Leer’s dorms. I was supposed to be admitted. I was supposed to be at home with my grandmother and mother, looking over the course catalog and worrying that my new roommate might be weird.

But it had all been taken from me, and now I had to save the world and my family and possibly give up my entire future to make sure it stayed saved.

And Maxwell Brenton, the man who had ignored his daughter, who had given up the chance to know me for his own convenience, for the convenience of the diplomas on the wall, the diplomas I so desperately wanted—

He had it all.

The dingy, underfunded research building. The career. The acclaim in his field.

And the one time in eighteen years I needed him, it was a Saturday and he wasn’t here, and I didn’t know why I was so surprised or hurt because he’d never been around.

Glass broke across my fist before I knew I’d even loosed the punch.

“Dammit!” I fell back into the chair, clutching my hand, and the diploma, shattered frame and all, fell to the floor.

Ciarán hurried around the desk to kneel in front of me. He took my hand to inspect the cuts the glass had left across my skin. “What did you do that for?”

“I don’t know!” I hissed through gritted teeth. After everything, I’d started to think I was immune to simple pain, but the glass had cut deep across my knuckles. “Dammit, that was stupid.”

“You’re frustrated. Breathe.” Ciarán rifled through desk drawers and was lucky enough to find a box of bandaids. “These are for bleeding, right?”

He cleaned my hand with tissues from a tissue box on the cluttered desk, then ripped the bandaids open with his teeth. He slowly, gently applied the bandages while I breathed deep in an effort to calm my angry, racing pulse.

“We have your old wallet,” I said. “We can buy bus tickets, maybe. Or the train. It’ll take longer, but there’s no way I can get us on a plane. Not without identification for everyone.”

“We can try to find your father’s house.” Ciarán bandaged the final gash in my knuckles, and then raised my hand to brush his lips across my fingers. “You said he won’t have one of the fancy, large ones, but surely even assholes have to call somewhere home.”

He was right. I scanned the desk. There had to be some hint to his address in here somewhere. Maybe on an envelope, or a receipt in the trash.

I flexed my fingers against the bandages and pushed papers out of my way. Most of them were work notes, meeting reminders, and weeks-old to-do lists. I thumbed through them.