Chapter1
Lora
Lora’s eyes tracked the odd reflections on the sapphire waves as they glistened in the evening sun. It almost looked too lovely for such a dark time, but she knew the otherworldly magical border was responsible for the image before her. Even though her view was partly blocked by a high wire fence, the shimmer of the portal, stretching from the ocean until halfway into the town of Bournchester, was always hard to avoid from her vantage point above the beach.
Lora caught sight of a car pulling to a stop in front of her mother’s restaurant. As she stepped off the sidewalk, she glanced back at the neon “Buffalo Diner” sign above the restaurant door. The light was turned off, as it was the majority of the time nowadays. What used to be a busy street above the beach was now almost deserted, and it had nothing to do with the cold September wind.
Music was blasting from the speakers of the car, distracting Lora from her thoughts. She smiled at the girl behind the wheel as she got into the passenger seat.
“Slow day, huh?” Maja said over the chorus of the song, waiting for Lora to fasten her seatbelt.
Business was indeed slow these days. With the virus sweeping Earth, a dark cloud hung over the town—over a large part of the world, really—taking away people’s incentive to leave their homes. Lora should have been home now too; she wasn’t needed at the diner with barely any customers coming in.
But home felt suffocating. Everyone was trying their hardest to stay positive while waiting for the moment everything would shift to normal again. Lora, on the other hand, was waiting for things to take a turn for the worse.
“Earth to Lora. You okay?” her friend asked. Maja’s hands lingered on the steering wheel. Her fingers tapped to the rhythm of the pop song filling the small car. If they had been living in another time, a better one, Maja would have been singing off-key in full force, and she would’ve made Lora join her. Lora desperately wished to get back to that place, but singing hardly felt right with everything going on in their world.
Lora quickly adjusted her seatbelt. “Yes, sorry. Thanks for picking me up.” Her gaze involuntarily flew back to the water, to the magical portal lightening up the area. Fenced-in and surrounded by warning signs, the tear in their universe was almost like a divider of Bournchester, splitting the town into two parts. The light indigo shimmer, reaching about ten meters into the air, was their reminder that Earth wasn’t the only world out there. It didn’t give away what lurked on the other side, but everyone knew it led to the fae world of Liraen.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Maja said. Lora flashed her friend a confused look but Maja’s gaze was fixated on the traffic as she hit the gas. “I have to make a short stop on the way. My dad asked me to deliver some stuff.”
“Since when do you help with the black market?”
Maja sighed as she fumbled with the radio, turning up the volume even more. Her dark bangs fell into her face and she hastily swiped them back. “Don’t get me wrong, I hate it, but it’s not like there’s a lot of work. There aren’t any graphic design gigs for me and my mum was laid off this morning.”
“She was?” Lora shifted in her seat, turning towards her friend. “I’m sorry, that’s awful. Did they say why?”
“The usual—the company can’t afford it. They already cut everyone’s hours, but it wasn’t enough.” Maja shrugged. Her mother was an accountant. Very different from her father’s risky trading work. Though Marcel, Maja’s father, was quite successful, it was Maja’s mother who provided the steady paycheck. “The only thing I can do is work on mybrilliantportfolio and help my dad with hisoh-so-importantbusiness endeavours,” she said with forced enthusiasm.
Lora could tell Maja’s cheery attitude didn’t quite reach her smile. This was a tough time for everyone. It felt as if someone had pushed the pause button on normal everyday life.
Maja’s grin slowly disappeared as she locked eyes with Lora for a brief second. She knew Maja was trying to decide whether she should ask about Lora’s own job hunt, a reoccurring, depressing topic.
“The museum isn’t hiring anymore,” Lora said. “Maybe once this is all over, they’ll need help adding this pandemic to their history archives.” She gave her friend a sad smile before shifting her gaze to the window.
Down the street, close to the magical border shimmering in the distance, was the Museum of Human and Fae History. Lora had imagined her future there, working while surrounded by rich history and fascinating facts. She had finished her master’s degree online even with the pandemic taking over the world, but now she didn’t know what the future held for her. The uncertainty nagged at her as if it was a virus itself, not letting her go. Incurable.
“Did your dad hear anything new about a cure? Is that what this delivery is about?” Lora asked, a hint of hope carried in her voice. The virus didn’t only affect their everyday lives, it threatened humanity’s very existence. So far, no medicine had worked. Some of the infected managed to recover, but far too many didn’t. As soon as the first symptoms showed, they rarely made it longer than three weeks. Lora glanced at the empty streets through the passenger window. The atmosphere sent a chill through her.
Maja bit her lip. “Nope. There’s still nothing that could help. But business is booming nonetheless. Fae items are hot right now. Of course, Dad keeps trying. I swear, if the virus doesn’t get him, the black market will.”
“I get why you worry about him.” Lora almost leaned closer to comfort her friend, then remembered to keep her distance. She cursed the virus. It had been months, but they still didn’t know how it spread so quickly. Even though it seemed as if the virus wasn’t actually that contagious, the high death rate had everyone on edge. There were too many scary possibilities taking over Lora’s mind at all times. A chill spread in the rhythm of the familiar panic settling in her heart and she forced her attention back on Maja. “If anyone can handle the black market, it’s Marcel. He knows what he’s doing. I just wish he, or anyone, would find some way to cure this bloody virus.”
Maja didn’t look convinced but quickly continued, “Yeah, me too. If only the virus gave people scraped knees, then we’d be in business.”
A smile almost made its way to Lora’s lips but the steady panic overrode it. “Can’t your dad talk to whoever he works with on the fae side? There has to be something.”
Lora’s gaze found the portal again in the distance. She wouldn’t be able to see the illegal black market from here as it was below surface level, but it wasn’t the first time she’d wondered where the secret entrance was. Years ago, when she was still a teenager, someone had dared her to enter the underground tunnel that supposedly led to the black market. Ignoring her mother’s strict rules about never going near the market or going beyond the fence surrounding the border, Lora had taken the dare only to find herself at a dead end soon after. It had been for the best. She would rather research and read about such things than take unnecessary risks anyway.
“I wish there was. He told me that the few fae traders he knows aren’t healers. And they aren’t putting in an ounce of effort to save humanity. Those arseholes are lacking the right motivation.” Maja huffed in frustration.
“I guess they couldn’t care less about humans dying.” Lora felt a familiar anger building up. The fae had taken too much from humans already. In her opinion, they could at least try to make up for the horror they had put humans through. Even though the fae could never erase enslaving humans for over a hundred years after dark magic had ripped a tear in both worlds.
It wasn’t until the fae had needed help that they had agreed to close the portal as much as possible. Witches of Liraen had been called to eradicate the portal but even with the help of magical artefacts, they hadn’t been powerful enough to close it completely. Instead, they had settled on putting a spell on it, making it impossible for humans, fae, or witches to cross the border and survive. Both sides had tried and, as a result, the border had been lined with corpses on either side for some time; a haunting image that Lora had studied in detail during her history studies. It might be morbid at times, but the history between the humans and fae had always been a fascinating topic to her, much to her mother’s dismay. She would have preferred Lora had stayed away from anything related to the fae world, but Lora couldn’t help but be curious. Still, she was glad the border had been fenced off for decades now, preventing anyone else from trying and failing to cross over.
As Maja turned the car to the right, she said, “We’re almost there.” Her voice pulled Lora back to the present.
“What did they order?” Lora had never understood the appeal of fae items. Was it the fact that it was forbidden that made it so interesting? Her mother Karla would never allow anything fae in their house. It was the one thing Karla and Marcel always disagreed on. The two had been friends for most of Lora’s life and, naturally, she and Maja had become best friends too.
