Excerpt. At Just the Right Moment is the twins’ prequel novelette, narrated by Gabby (click here for bio and illustrations). It is available in Moments of the Adept Universe 1, including this heartrendingly perfect illustration by Memo (another of my favs of the entire collection) (am I allow to say that about all the illustrations?).
Click here for the full reading order of the Adept Universe, including a downloadable PDF.
At Just the Right Moment
Moments of the Adept Universe 0.3
(Gabby 0.5)
February 2011.
Somewhere in Southern California.
My hand shook as I pressed a series of numbers on the pay phone keypad, reciting the sequence quietly as the others gathered around me did the same. My fingers felt weak, to the point of being useless. The handset was heavy, and painful where I pressed it against my ear. After the tenth number, we waited, pressed together, holding our collective breath.
Peggy, Matty, Sophia, and me.
We had gambled everything.
We’d been ready for a week, which was the best we could prepare without more notice. And in the end, only four of us went through the hole it had taken Sophia and me three months to create in the wards. A crack partially hidden behind a bushy lemon tree, and which had barely been big enough for Matty to pass through. He’d grown fast in the last months, taller and broader.
Which was part of the reason we were running without a full plan.
All I could hear over the telephone was an empty fuzziness, like a vastness stretching out from my ear into nothing. My heart was beating too fast. We’d only been gone for maybe ten minutes. But that was ten more minutes than we’d ever been off the property, let alone gathered around a pay phone at a gas station.
Peggy wrapped her fingers around mine, taking some of the weight of the handset. Then something clicked in my ear, and a man’s voice came over the telephone.
“Henry Calhoun,” he said cheerfully. His accent, we’d agreed, was Southern. “At your service.”
I’d prepared a speech. The other three had helped me with it. Sophia, being the oldest, was the best with magic — witch magic, specifically — and she’d told us we wouldn’t have much time to get out all the information that the cowboy sorcerer would need to find us.
They’d picked me to talk. Peggy could get overwhelmed with too many new people around. She could read minds, even of people without magic. Matty was always worried about sounding stupid, and Sophia was on watch.
Because we knew they would come for us.
They were probably already on their way.
All the prepared words emptied out of my head. I felt sick. Weak with fear. I was shaking with it.
But I wouldn’t cry.
I wouldn’t break.
“Hello?” the man — Henry — asked again. His tone was sharper. Less cheery.
“They’re going to kill Matty,” I said. The words were rushed, and my voice was a little thin, but clear. “They call it relocating, but we know … we know what they mean. And then they’ll move us. And you won’t be able to find us again.”
“What’s your name, little one?” Henry asked, all traces of cheer gone from his voice now. He sounded hard and a little fierce.
That should have scared me, that tone. But I knew — because Peggy knew — that Henry Calhoun would never hurt us.
He had come to inspect the orphanage that wasn’t really an orphanage three days ago. We’d thought he’d been there to rescue us. And Peggy said he was. But he was just looking for something really, really hard. Something called cause.
“Gabby, sir,” I said, feeling stronger. “They named me Gabrielle. I’m here with Matty, Sophia, and my sister Peggy. The others were … locked up. Or too scared to come with us.”
“Where are you right now?”
“The gas station two blocks down and three blocks over from the house. It was the first pay phone we found.”
I could hear other noises over the line, like Henry was moving. A door opening, then closing. Murmured voices.
“Someone is coming,” Peggy whispered.
“Humans,” Matty said, his voice a low growl. His shoulders were broad enough to block my view entirely. “Not Dave. Or Charlotte.”
“Gabby?” Henry asked over the phone. “That’s not … they’ll be able to track you.”
“We know,” I said.
“I’m coming to you right now,” he said. “But I’m two hours away.”
Pain crunched through my chest, then another wave of weakness ran through me. I tried to hide it from the others. “Two hours …” I whispered.
“They can’t get away from me now, Gabby,” Henry said. “But I need you to keep moving. And every time you find another phone, you call me again to check in. Do you … do you have money?”
“Twenty-seven dollars.” It had taken us three years to put it together. Usually the eldest of us held it, which in our case now was Sophia. Others had held it before her, and before they got relocated — killed, we now knew — they passed it down to the next eldest.
“Okay, okay,” Henry said, sounding like he was talking to himself, and maybe like he’d stepped outdoors.
It was my first time using a phone, so I wasn’t totally sure what I was hearing.
“Stick together as much as possible,” Henry said. “But don’t fight when they come for you, Gabby. Tell the others, don’t fight. If you fight, they will hurt you.”
“But Henry …” My voice broke, and I pressed my hand against Matty’s back. He completely blocked my sight of the rest of the gas station, standing guard. I dropped my hand. I had touched him without permission, and we didn’t do that to each other. “We have to fight now. They’re going to kill Matty. He’s getting too strong for them. He hurt one of the regular clients. They don’t like that …”
I glanced over at Sophia. Her face was hard. Her densely curly dark hair was pulled back with an elastic band. Sophia was a witch. She could generate electrical impulses. At fourteen, she was very careful to not reveal how strong that power had become.
“Unless they pay for it,” I whispered.
– Excerpt from At Just the Right Moment (Moments of the Adept Universe 0.3)
New to the Adept Universe? The first book is Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1). Or click here for the main READING ORDER.
Need to get caught up? Or want to reread in order? Click here for the FULL READING ORDER OF THE ADEPT UNIVERSE.
