“Sun no see! No see! Sun blind!”

“Thorsen!” Fen yelled.

Matt struggled up and wheeled to see Laurie in the grip of Aerik. The twins batted at the monster, who ignored them. Fen was twenty feet away, facing off with Leaf, who stood between him and his cousin.

“Thorsen!” Fen shouted again.

“Got it!”

Matt ran and launched himself at Aerik. As he did, he remembered why he hadn’t done this the first time—because it was like leaping onto a smooth rock face. There was nothing to grab. No, wait, maybe…

As he jumped, he managed to hook one arm around the troll’s neck and hold on. He reached around to grind his palm into the troll’s eye.

Aerik roared and dropped Laurie. He whacked at Matt, his claws catching Matt’s T-shirt. Matt lost his grip and fell off before he was hooked.

The troll spun as Matt jumped. He landed with Laurie, Ray, and Reyna. When Matt realized that, he tensed to run, to draw attention away from them, but Sun had recovered from his temporary blinding and blocked Matt’s path. He turned again, looking for a way out. Fen ran at them, Leaf right behind them, and then noticed that he was running straight for Sun and stopped.

The five of them stood together, three trolls circling around them, gnashing their teeth and rumbling with rage and frustration.

They were trapped.

SEVENTEEN

LAURIE

“A DOOR OPENS”

Laurie’s heart was racing, and her lungs felt like someone was trying to suck the air out of them. They were surrounded by trolls, and they hadn’t fared well the last time they’d tangled with trolls. There weremore of them, but Ray and Reyna were huddled together, Matt was low on energy, and Fen’s other form wasn’t too much use against creatures made of stone.

As the trolls’ circle grew tighter and closer to them, the pressure in Laurie’s chest intensified until she thought she was going to fall or throw up. She saw Fen and Matt both reach out to steady her, and she lifted both of her hands to signal them to keep back. As she did so, the air in front of her started to ripple. She widened her hands, staring at the oddly colored space in front of her. It was as if the space between her hands was taking on the colors of an opal.

“Laurie?” Fen stepped closer, but didn’t touch her. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” She felt light-headed as the space grew, and she wondered abstractly how long had passed because she felt disconnected from her skin as she stared at the flashes of color in front of her and tried not to puke.

Beyond the light, she knew trolls waited. They had stopped and were staring at the portal that had appeared between her hands. Behind her were the twins. And in front of her, on the other side of the doorway she’d somehow created, was a room filled with plants. “Go on,” she said.

Ray said, “Where?”

“Who cares, as long as it’s somewhere without trolls,” Reyna muttered. She grabbed Ray’s hand and dove into the doorway, tugging him with her.

It hurt. Laurie’s body felt like she was being squeezed, and she thought for a moment that the trolls had grabbed her. They were all staring at her, the trolls and the boys.

“Go now,” she demanded.

Matt exchanged a look with Fen, but he said nothing as he went through the doorway. Then Laurie shoved Fen through the door and jumped in after him, leaving Deadwood and the stupefied trolls behind.

They weren’t inside the doorway long, but it felt like space was folding in on her. The pressure of letting others through the doorway was completely different from the sensation of going through it herself. It was as if she were being folded inside out, and the temptation to close her eyes was almost overwhelming. Fen’s hand held tightly to hers, and she tried to concentrate on that.

In either a moment or maybe a piece of forever, they stumbled forward into a giant open room filled with tropical plants and brightly colored birds. Overhead was a dome window, and through it, she could see trees outside. Around her in the room were orchids, and something scaled with a long, thin tail vanished under a plant she couldn’t identify. They were in a greenhouse or something; they were alive; and she was not, in fact, inside out.

There were also no trolls here. That alone was enough to make her want to sit down and relax for a minute. However, Matt and Fen stood on either side of her, looking around for dangers. Fen still had hold of her hand, and the twins were behind them. As Laurie looked around at their little group, she realized that everyone looked like they expected trolls or some other monster to jump out at any second, and considering where they had been mere minutes ago, that wasn’t an altogether unrealistic fear. They also, she admitted to herself, were darting looks at her like she was something peculiar.

“I’m going to puke,” she whispered to Fen.

As Laurie slumped to the ground, Fen said, “Put your head between your knees.”

“It’s all real,” Reyna said quietly. “There weren’t any zippers, were there?”

Without seeing him, Laurie knew Fen rolled his eyes or scowled at them.

“Slow much?” he said.

“Be nice,” Laurie whispered, not because she was trying not to be heard but because speaking any louder seemed impossible right now.

“Don’t puke on my feet,” Fen said just as quietly.

“I’m okay,” she lied to him—and herself. There was nothing okay about how she felt. She had the horrible feeling that her insides had been turned wrong side out by whatever she’d just done. They were safe from trolls, but she wasn’t sure what had happened. Maybe the Norns or Valkyries or whatever else was out there had given her a weird gift. Right now, though, she wasn’t so sure it was a giftand not a curse.

“That was unexpected,” a boy said. “I’ve never seen a portal open before.”

Laurie looked up to see a boy who looked about their age watching them. She hadn’t noticed him at first when they’d arrived, but the whole making-a-gateway thing was dizzying. The others were staring at the boy, too, so maybe even going through the portal was unsettling for everyone.

“Where did you come f—”

“Around the corner as you portaled in.” The boy pointed at the walkway, which had, in fact, curved just out of their line of sight.

The boy himself was taller than her and Fen, but not quite as tall as Matt and the twins. He was almost as big as Matt, bigger than either Fen or Ray. Sand-colored hair, somewhere between light brown and blond, flopped in his face. Freckles dotted his cheeks, and brown eyes stared at them with open curiosity. He had on a T-shirt with what looked like an advertisement for a skateboard.

When he took a step closer to them, Fen growled.

“I got it.” Matt stepped in front of Fen and Laurie. “There’s nothing here to see, so—”

“He’s the person we’re looking for,” Laurie interrupted. The pins-and-needles feeling was back, and she suspected now that it meant that she’d found a descendant of the North. She smiled at the boy.

“You’re like a homing pigeon, aren’t you?” Reyna said from behind her.

Laurie looked over her shoulder, but said nothing. The sudden movement made her dizzier, and Fen was starting to look like a dog straining on a leash, ready to attack everyone. He leaned away from the twins and toward the new boy.

As she stood, she reached out for his hand as much for her stability as to keep him restrained.

“Come on.” Reyna pulled her twin farther away from them.

Fen and Matt stayed beside Laurie, but they kept an eye on the twins. Laurie noticed—with a not-insignificant amount of pride—that the twins didn’t move so far away that they couldn’t see the rest of the group. She and the boys had saved them from trolls, and while the twins might not entirely like the situation, they had enough common sense to know that keeping the girl with gate-opening skills and the two warriors in sight was a good idea. That’s what they are, she thought with a smile. Warriors.They might be kids, but they were going to do something amazing.