Chapter 1
Far From Over
“Just what’re you talking about? ‘This is far from over’?” Wayne repeated Jo’s sentiment with a level of confusion, agitation, and exasperation that she’d never heard from the man before.
“Exactly what I said: the Society may have been destroyed, but we still have work to do.” Jo took a deep breath, letting it out with a sigh. She was still wrapping her head around everything; it seemed almost impossible for her to fathom. How could she hope to explain it to them? Where would she start when it felt like something she should’ve told them long ago?
“Just how was the Society destroyed, Jo?” asked the magical projection of Takako. Her voice was gentle enough that Jo wondered if the astute woman could sense her inner turmoil. “From our perspective it was all a bit . . . confusing.”
Wayne scoffed at the last word, though his demeanor remained serious. “Yeah, Takako and I didn’t run into the room untilafterthe Door was broken.”
“Eslar and I saw it,” Samson added. “But even I don’t understand.”
“We’ve been trying to put it together for nearly a year, doll.”
“A year,” Jo mused. “You said that before . . . What do you mean, a year?”
For Jo, it hadn’t been a year. From her perspective, the past twenty-four hours comprised a series of events that competed with each other for maximum impossibility. The Society had crumbled—thanks to her unleashing her destructive magic on its foundation—and then she’d woken up yesterday in this time, in the front yard of a serial killer’s house—one who, thanks to a piece of resistant code in his AI mainframe, had helped her get her bearings.
Her bearings—there was another oddity. The whole world around her was a strange transformation of the time she knew. There were skyscrapers, and elves roaming the streets. The earth itself was a familiar map, but with notable changes to the land, along with kingdoms and empires she didn’t recognize atop it.
Oh, and then she’d ridden on a Dragon. Couldn’t forget that, could she? Yeah, the past twenty-four hours had been a day for the record books. But just a day—at least, from her perspective.
“We all woke back up, already solidified in—as far as we can tell—the lives we would’ve had in this world had we not been pulled from it.” Once again, Takako was the one to answer, but Jo could see that even she was struggling with a response. Comprehending their odd twist of fate was like trying to read a book backwards, up-side-down, and written in pig Latin. “Eslar was the first, then Samson.”
“I think we woke up in the order we joined the Society,” Samson chimed in, only briefly looking up from his bauble. He had yet to fully recover from Jo’s initial mention of Eslar. Another oddity that needed eventually to be addressed.
“I’ll tell you what, itwasa bit jarring. Waking up to a life I’ve supposedly been living for twenty years and having no memory of it . . .” Wayne motioned to the office. “Though I can’t rightly complain about how I turned out in this world.”
Twenty years. That was how old Wayne was when he’d made his wish, Jo remembered. So, the Society had been destroyed, they were all subsequently dropped back into a new world, in the order they’d joined the Society, and they were already settled into the lives they would’ve been living. As if the Society had never even existed. As ifnoneof their previous timelines had ever even existed.
Jo couldn’t help but wonder if she had a mother in what had been Texas but was now some corner of Aristonia. Something in her said she wouldn’t; they were returning to timelines as they “should’ve been” and for her, that was as a demigod, not as Josephina Espinosa. Now, all she would carry of her 2057 would be her name, and the memories she’d never let go of.
“So . . . this is what 2057—I mean 2058, looks like now for all of us.” Jo turned away from the table and the projected images of her teammates, looking out through the windows that dominated one of the walls of Wayne’s office.
It was New York City.Yorkton, Jo mentally corrected. Charlie hadn’t known what New York City was, but Yorkton made perfect sense. And, just like the name, it was similar, but not the same as the “original” Jo recalled. But what was ever original in a universe that could be entirely remade?
She saw winged creatures landing on rooftops. The sky was filled with a mix of animal and technological flying systems. The buildings were skyscrapers, but not quite as she knew them. Impossible feats of architecture hollowed out cores of buildings where lush gardens cascaded down, striking a contrast against the industrial glass-tones below.
“A new Age of Magic.” Wayne stated the obvious and rested a hand heavily on her shoulder. It summoned Jo’s attention away from the sights and back to her team.
The Age of Magic had once given way to the Age of Man—Jo’s original time. But it seemed that when the Society was destroyed, so too was the world reset to the year of the Society’s creation: the beginning of the Age of Magic. Somewhere in this time was Snow . . . Jo’s chest tightened at the thought, and Wayne’s next question had Jo wondering if he could sense it.
“Now, what did you mean when you said, ‘It’s not over’?” Because from what we’ve managed to discern, life is pretty great not being beholden to wishes, or Snow, or, you know, watches.”
Jo couldn’t help but notice that, even still, he wore the gaudy golden timepiece on his wrist. She also couldn’t help the small smile that threatened to pull at the corner of her lips at the sight.
“We’re all here, yes. But the Society was—”
“The Society ended, but the fight hasn’t,” Jo interrupted Takako.
“What fight?” Samson asked. Jo hated the tremor in Samson’s voice, an obvious reluctance to hear her response. But he needed to. They all did.
“A fight for the power to destroy the world.”
“Pan.” Samson surprised her by being the one to say it. Seemed to surprise everyone, in fact, as he elaborated for Wayne and Takako’s benefit. “Pan was the one going after Jo . . . I’m guessing she’ll keep trying, but I don’t know any more than you do.”
The moment Pan’s name was brought up, Jo felt the sickening feeling she’d come to associate with pure loathing. But it also brought up a different feeling—the phantom sensation of being watched. A feeling that had haunted her in the Society, that had kept Pan’s name off her lips, and seemed to linger even now.
