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The surprise ends up being a secret portal in the basement that takes us to another city. Apparently when Mack’s parents were here, they discovered the portal, and only a handful of people know about its existence.
Also, apparently Mack doesn’t play around when it comes to surprises. The portal shoots us out onto pavement next to buildings—tall, modern skyscrapers, I discover. The snowfall here is less and I can actually see the stars.
Steam curls up from iced-over sidewalks and over our boots.
“Where are we?” I ask, following Mack and Evelyn around the corner.
Mack smiles. “Welcome to Evernell, capital city of the new Everwilde. This is where all the students go to relax.” She nods her head to the sleek high-rises. “Many of the Evermore students have weekend homes here. Your boy the Winter Prince has the penthouse to that monstrosity ahead. It belongs to his dad, but only the prince uses it.”
I follow her nod to the tallest building in the city, a metallic all-glass building two blocks down. The top floor is huge, and I study the tinted windows as if I can see the Winter Prince from here.
“I’m guessing by the weather he’s not here?” I say.
“Or,” she offers, cutting her dark eyes at me. “You bring out the worst in him. I mean, I may be wrong, but calling him a bitch in public was probably a little triggering. You should probably stop doing that if you want nicer weather.”
“Well, the truth hurts.”
Laughing, we follow a group of students across the street as I stare around in wonder. For some reason, I thought all of Everwilde would be forest and meadows . . . not this.
Bright neon signs glow from tall buildings, and in the distance, a fountain shoots water into the air to a strange Fae song. Something about this place seems so familiar.
“Wait . . . is this . . . ?”
“The City of Lights?” she finishes. “Yeah. Welcome to the old Las Vegas, baby.”
That’s right. When the Lightmare happened, I assumed all the cities had been destroyed. But I guess they were just repurposed. It was the human beings living here that got the short end of that stick.
Mack doesn't notice my anger as she grabs her phone and begins texting. “I’ll shoot Callum a message to have an emotion potion ready for us.”
“A what?” I ask.
She grins. “Just wait.”
Callum is the third year mentor our hall is assigned to. Any questions, Mack said, and we ask Callum. I haven’t met him yet, but the third and fourth year trials are supposedly almost impossible to pass, and he’s been crazy busy.
I can barely keep from gawking at everything as we exit an alleyway into a side street. A row of bars with names like The Black Cauldron and The Iron Centaur spill patrons into the street. I gawk at them, too, overwhelmed by their strangeness.
A swarm of sprites flutter out from a door to our left below a sign that reads, The Pink Pixie.
Mack guides me away. “Don’t ever go in that bar unless you want to end up drugged and wake up somewhere deep in Everwilde, enslaved to a woodland nymph or worse, a troll. The sprites think selling us into a thousand years of slavery is an entertaining sport.”
That sounds exactly like something Ruby would do.
When we near the end of the street, Mack leads me down crumbling stairs to a black steel door. There’s no sign other than a symbol with rounded ears inside a circle that Mack explains means ‘human friendly.’
The second we enter we’re enveloped in bass-thumping music and strobe lights. My focus immediately goes to a row of cages near the stage. Half-naked girls dance inside the cages, and I’m shocked to see they’re human. Fae males clamor around their cages, slipping money into the shreds of clothing they do wear.
But the dancers’ unfocused eyes stare off into the distance, and they hardly seem aware of the customers.
Glamoured. A surge of anger washes over me, and I have to look away.
I duck out of my coat and tie it around my waist as Mack leads us past a packed dance floor, up a flight of stairs, and into a VIP lounge area bespeckled in mirrors and red leather.
The bouncer, a warty, green-skinned orc, tries to stop us, but Mack holds out her wrist, showing off her new cuff mark: ram’s horns inside a circle for Magus’s Mythological Creatures Court.
We don’t get tattooed with our keeper’s mark until next year, but Basil must have given her that to use for occasions such as this.
When the bouncer’s tiny flashlight beam rolls over my tattoo, he frowns, showing off a mean underbite and bottom fangs that stick out. But he moves to let us pass quickly.
