Transfigured (The Transcendent Trilogy Book 2) by K. A. Riley

Author:K. A. Riley [Riley, K. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Travel Duck Press
Published: 2020-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

24

Chocolate

Hopping down one at a time from the bus, we follow Croque Madame’s lead and do a whole series of stretches of our own on the clean cobblestones of the large parking area.

But sore muscles are the last things on my mind. I want to know where we are, exactly, and why this city isn’t a smoldering expanse of slag.

Brohn must’ve been reading my mind because he stops in the middle of a groaning back-stretch, turns to Rain, and laughs. “So…Rain. You’re our resident expert in logistics. Is this place real? Or did Noxia get ahold of us and plant this all in our heads?”

“It does seem too good to be true,” Terk agrees.

Rain takes a second to survey the empty area. The buildings surrounding the open parking lot are a combination of old stone and tidy brick. There are a few signs on some of the shops: “Boulangerie.” “Laverie.” “Café.” “La Boucherie.” “Supermarché.” “Grand Magasin.”

The big storefront windows twinkle under the rays of the crisp yellow sun.

The place is an odd combination of quaint and clean with a few modern flourishes—strips of holo-lights, automated waste-recycling bins, mag-doors, and floating, apple-sized air purifiers—speckled around for good measure.

Surrounding us are church spires and cathedral tops—fully intact—poking up here and there, happy flowers in a field, all of them getting along like old friends.

Rain swings back around to face Terk and starts ticking names off on her fingers. “There are lots of examples of perfect little places like this hidden away in corners of our world: Xanadu. Brigadoon. Narnia. El Dorado. Wonderland. Atlantis. Shangri-La. Themyscira. Avalon. Wakanda.”

“But those are made up,” I remind her. “This is real. We’re here. We’re in it.”

Rain shrugs.

From behind me and sounding a little offended, Manthy crosses her arms. “They’re not all made up.”

“Sure,” Cardyn scoffs. “Now I suppose you’re going to sprinkle some of your magical Manthy-dust on us and fly us home to Neverland.”

“Whoa,” Brohn says to Cardyn, as if he’s calming a wild stallion. “Try not to be such an annoying little Lost Boy.”

“I don’t care if this is real or an illusion or a figment of our deepest desires planted in our heads,” Terk gushes. “It’s clean. There’s no one chasing us, and it smells like the Valta.”

“With a little cedar, prunes, and pepper thrown in,” I add, with my headed tilted back, my nose in the air.

Croque Madame gives me an impressed squint. “You know your scents. Wine connoisseur?”

“It’s not me,” I assure her, pointing up to where Render has settled on a spiked, white metal railing running along the rooftop of a nearby two-story building. “It’s him.”

“Got a good nose on him, does he?”

“Well,” I grin, hoping he doesn’t hear me. “He’s no turkey vulture, but yeah.”

We’re all startled to attention as a group of people appear out of nowhere. They’re mostly adults with a few kids our age mixed in.

Dressed in a rainbow of linen pants, skirts, and shirts, many of them are carrying some kind of silver cricket bats with a blurry red halo around the edges of the blades.

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