Lilly had never seen Melissa cry.

Lilly didn't even know Melissa was capable of tears. Not when Lilly was on the brink of expulsion from Eldnac, not when stress from Melissa's job as an accountant ate her alive, not when her leg was obviously in pain, not when she had panic attacks she tried to hide. 

Now Melissa cried silent tears. Lilly sat at the kitchen table, soaked in sweat and blood, while Melissa busied herself to making a pot of tea on the stove. She breathed through her tears and didn't bother to wipe them when they fell down her face. She ignored the bloody, ashy, slimy mess on the floor and tried to steady her shaking hands.

She worked with her tea, graceful as ever, whipping out herbs, wooden spoons, and honey like a ballet dancer performing a solo.

Lilly balanced her elbows on the table and wound her hands through her tangled hair. Before Melissa began working on her tea, she had picked out the glass buried in Lilly's hand and wrapped her palm in a bandage, and now feeling was slowly creeping back into her hands in waves of tingles and stings.

Melissa leaned back on the edge of the cabinet before finally wiping her tears away. Sniffling, she said, "Can I just ask...if you saw that something dangerous was in the house, why didn't you just walk back outside?"

"Reckless courage took over common sense," Lilly replied without looking up. "I didn't know that killing giant monster slugs was a welcoming party."

Melissa turned back toward the stove to pour a can of soup into a pot. "Instructors send them out to trainees. They're killed when someone does something as an act of courage...an attribute of a soldier, they call it. For example, you were scared, but you found the courage to drive that glass into the slug's face."

"Creative," Lilly said. She did not feel courageous. Her heart had swollen twice its normal size, and storm clouds churned in her stomach. "But I'm not interested in any morals."

"But why? Why you? You're supposed to be exempt. You're not even supposed to exist."

"Last I checked, I'm existing, and now would be a great time to tell you that some crazy psychopath came up to me and told me that she's going to take a hammer to your face if I don't go to—"

"What?" Melissa whirled around, her wooden spoon raised. Her eyes were narrowed, and the soft-concerned voice she bore before had cracked and molded into a sharp, dangerous thing. 

Lilly crossed her arms and huffed, "Yeah. Exactly. So now would be a fantastic time to explain why she wants to bash your face in and what war I'm going to and why crazy ladies are coming up to me in dark alleyways."

"What were you doing in a dark alleyway in the first place?"

"That is definitely not the question that needs to be answered right now!" 

"Was it after the coffee shop incident? And what on earth made you think that dumping worms on someone's head was okay? What did Hailey do?"

"More useless questions that aren't—wait. How did you hear about that?"

"Just...give me a minute. Let me finish making the tea and I'll explain."

Melissa took the kettle from the stove and poured it into another pot. She plopped in a bag, stirred in some honey, and closed the lid. While it steeped, she began stirring the soup she'd set on the opposite side of the stovetop. "About Khofie's," she said after a while, her tone distant, almost dreamlike, "news travels fast, especially when that news comes from a coffee shop full of teenagers who saw the incident happen..."

"I can explain that. Kind of. Actually, I can't explain what happened, but I can explain why Hailey deserved to have worms dumped on her head. It was the journal. Vatakai brought it home with her. Hailey found it." Lilly clenched her non-bandaged hand, anger shooting through her guts and chest. "She read the journal out loud in front of everyone and...added to it."

"I thought you said the journal was written in another language."

"Not this entry."

"Someone must have spilled water on the journal, or got it too close to a fire, or dropped it in the dirt on accident. Elements make the writing understandable. It's a common form of magic."

"Magic." Lilly weighed the word in her mouth. Before she could think too hard on it, she leapt on. "Can I start asking questions now? Because I have a lot of them. I just mutilated a giant slug's face and it exploded into ashes and you knew about it, so I'm assuming you know about whatever Welcome to Elliott Way means, and I bet you know about whatever freaky voodoo came out of my hands at the coffee shop. And—and this part of my life you said you've been keeping from me after the slug exploded...what does that mean? And why is that crazy lady after you?"

Melissa spared Lilly a quick, calculating glance before turning back to her soup. "First: The coffee shop. You brought down an ether atmosphere because you're a Shifter."

"Ether?"These hands had brought down...what exactly?

Melissa had a strength Lilly despised: She would never look away from Lilly's eyes when there was something important to be said...whether it be a lecture, some uncomfortable conversation, consequences for talking to a teacher, or talks about getting into arguments with Hailey. This always made Lilly hot and on edge. Melissa leaned against the stove, looked up, and gave her this same unbreakable-maxi-glass stare now. Lilly felt her nerves multiply tenfold. 

"Magic," Melissa responded. "A Shifter is a person can produce either fire, water, or earthly elements from their fingertips."

Lilly started to say, "It is not magic," but as soon as the words left her mouth, they felt sour. After what she'd seen today, magic was certainly applicable. Who was she to say it is not magic when she certainly didn't know much about the universe and its laws and all its layers? She often liked to think about the possibility of magic because it was supernatural, far away from the practical. Imaginative. Something more. She dreamed about magic; she pretended it was real anyway...but that was all pretend, imagination, not real but a mere imaginary desire to be real. But her? Actually magical? 

"Every Shifter gets one power," Melissa said, still never looking away. That stupid gaze made Lilly break into a sweat. "Either fire, water, or earth. But not you. You're different."

Lilly scoffed. "Really? You're gonna pull the you're different card on me now?"

Melissa narrowed her eyes. The placid facade she kept cemented on her face fell, revealing a shade of slight panic underneath. "I'm sorry?"

"That usually means something bad," Lilly replied with an annoyed shrug. "Because I'm different, someone's going to hunt me down and kill me, right? That's what happens in movies and books and comics and stuff."

"Being different is okay," Melissa said, still taken aback. "There's always going to be someone that wants to hurt us because we're—" 

"I do not want or need a lecture on how we should embrace our differences. This is not a Hallmark movie." 

"You can steal things from space."

The immediate reaction Lilly would've snapped back with at any other given time was I'm done now, I'm out, finished, gone, but doing that felt like it would be a betrayal of her imagination if she walked away...if she dismissed the idea of being able to steal from space altogether. She shoved down the desire to run away from the kitchen, humbled this raging confused heart of hers, gulped down her pride, and pushed aside the sass and backtalk. Quietly, she said, "In the coffee shop...I brought down...you said...ether atmosphere." 

The soup sputtered in the pot. Melissa began to stir again. She was quiet for a long time, letting the gurgling soup fill the void of quiet that had settled uncomfortably between them. Aromas of mustard seed, sweet carrot, and basil wafted from the pot; honeydew leaves and sugar-cured rose hips let out their own sweet fragrances from the teapot as the homemade bags steeped. Their small kitchen smelled warm and pleasant and secure, and the scents alone ever-so-slightly eased the tension. 

To alleviate the silence, Lilly asked, "Do you need help?

"I'm almost finished," Melissa replied softly without looking up. The corners of her lips quirked just a little, and Lilly wondered if that was supposed to be a small smile or an attempt to keep the fear out of her expression. "Yes, you stole part of an atmosphere from another planet. But people aren't supposed to know that you can steal from space. Your mother gave you those powers, and when she did, everyone thought you died. Even her. But I was there and you were alive...I actually have a book that might explain it better than I ever could." 

Melissa flicked the stove eye off and reached up into the cabinet where they kept their plates and saucers. When she withdrew, there was a fat leather-bound book in her hands.

Lilly gasped. "I've been in that cabinet a million times. There was never a book in there!"

"Did you reach all the way in the back? This book is magical. It used to belong to a nasty little elf who hoarded tomes as a way to keep his health up. I had to pay a lot of chains for it, but it was worth it."

Lilly pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She found it fascinating and terrifying all at once. "Magical books. Elves. Chains."

Melissa poured the soup into a bowl for Lilly and sat two mugs and the teapot on a tray. "Magical books...get used to those. Elves are selfish hoarders and the more disgusting their habitats are, the better their health is. Chains are the Shifter World's international currency."

"There's a world for this thing?" Lilly lowered her hands as Melissa reached the table. She balanced the tray in one hand and cradled the book in the crook of her other arm. She set the tray down, sat down beside Lilly, and let the book slide onto the table.

"This book can show you anything that happened in the past as long as it was over ten years ago. Anytime after that isn't recorded. I think...I think to understand the Shifter World, you're going to have to think about it as a story." Melissa reached over to open the thick cover. The title on top of the first page read in swooping gold print The Storybook of Seconds.

Melissa flipped through big glossy pages filled with tiny ink-smudged blocks of text and colorful pictures until she found the section she was looking for. "Here."

Here meant a lot of things. Lilly peered down at the small bronze letters. Storm's Final Battle was written in bold text. There were pictures, too...watercolor paintings of violent black storms swelling over a vast purple field. The page had a strange stain on it in the left corner.

Brilliant purple light flared up from the page.

Lilly jumped and shoved her chair back as the corners of the room darkened and the light expanded. It churned from purple to green to gray to white and back again, until three figures formed out of the tendrils of brightness. They were featureless. One gray figure stood taller than the rest.

It was as if the people in the book decided to crawl out of the pages and into real life. In the form of light.

And the light, with Melissa's narration, told a story.

***

The sky was red; the world was panicking.

Everything descended into the sort of deafening chaos that rattles skulls and blasts eardrums, such a massive mess that made one feel like they couldn't trust their eyes or ears or noses. It was the sort of mess where the mind is crushed beneath the weight of the catastrophe.

On the coast of a large country ripped in half by a bridge composed of diamonds, a young woman sprinted with a chubby baby in her arms. The ocean was scarlet with blood and light and fire, and the sand was the same color beneath the terrible cumulonimbus clouds. 

There was a chapel at the end of this stretch of beach. It was old, created by a witch who used to sing opera music in one of the Master Houses in Balalaika. The chapel was a small stone building withered by sand and angry waves. It had been abandoned for years. There were no candles lighting the windowsills. Its steeple was bent and crooked like an old man. Roses burst through random cracks in the chapel's chipped walls, wild and unkempt and black black black.  

Emma merely thought open and a bolt of starlight smashed against the giant oak door. The door exploded forth on its great brass hinges. She hurried inside.

It was dark inside the chapel. An apocalyptic red haze settled upon the pews, the gilded apse, the stained glass windows that told stories of certain Lesser Gods bowing before certain Greater Gods to avoid a cataclysm. 

"Alright, let's get this over with," seethed Emma, making her way to an altar decorated with cobwebs. She set the child down.

"Can you lie down for me, please?" Emma asked her.

The little girl nodded. She sported big round eyes, ruddy cheeks, and lips glistening with spittle. She did as her mother asked.

What happened next is a mystery to all those save for Emma and a young woman who happened to be hiding behind a stone statue of the Lesser Goddess of ocean waves. Everyone outside the chapel on the beach that day saw the ocean rear back in anger and the chapel's steeple blow off in a white-hot explosion. Those who investigated the chapel later said the roses turned bright purple, a poisonous neon color that glowed like galaxies in the night sky.

After the ocean reared back in anger and the chapel's steeple blew off and the black roses turned neon purple, the chemist came knocking. 

People called him Storm, and he had been waging war for the past week. No one knew where the baby had gone, but many people saw Storm carrying an unconscious Emma out of the chapel by her hair.

And Storm was never seen again; neither was Emma. Neither was the baby.

Everyone assumed the baby was dead. 

***

According to Melissa, that baby was Lilly, and the young woman hiding behind the statues was Melissa herself, who knew Emma would go to that strange little chapel to do...whatever it was she did that made her magic transfer to Lilly. 

The light from the book shattered into a million shards that looked like a broken stained glass window poised in midair. The lights lingered like an afterthought, before finally disappearing, stealing any visible evidence of magic with it. The kitchen brightened to its warm gold glow of lamps and candles.

On the inside, Lilly went ballistic.

Her skin felt like it was shrinking around her organs. Both her hands were on her chest, and she tried to focus her breaths. Her thoughts raced a million miles an hour around her head, but none of them registered, so all these thoughts were just words that didn't make any sense. She needed a minute. She needed quiet. But she also needed answers, and so she looked up at Melissa with the fragments of her life dying before her eyes and said, "My mother was kidnapped."

Melissa closed The Storybook of Seconds and nodded. 

"And you knew that?"

Melissa nodded again. Stars burst in Lilly's belly, forming constellations of wonder, pain, and aggression. "You could've told—why would you keep this from—I—why?"

"You and I both know you would've gone on some mission to find your mother if you knew," Melissa replied, and the quiet, even words felt like a slap. Lilly knew she hadn't intended to sound accusatory or hurtful, but it was so true, it stung anyway. Melissa continued just as hushed and as bluntly as before. "Or you would have wanted to. She's in the Shifter World. You're in this world."

"And she could...?"

"Steal atmospheres off other planets, radioactive flowers, crystals from somewhere deep in the universe, plasma from stars. She gave her magic to you in that chapel. I watched it happen. She transferred her magic to you before Storm took her. He didn't realize you were there."

"Why did Storm kidnap her?"

"He wanted her magic. He wanted revenge on the Bloom—the Shifter government—for something they did a long time ago. Part of his plan for destruction involved your mother's magic. I think there's something in space that he needed...but it doesn't matter much now. He didn't get Emma's magic because she gave it to you, everyone thought you were dead, and now he's actually dead."

Lilly blew out a breath. She was already beyond confused. "He is?"

"The Bloom found him a year after the attack at the chapel. They executed him."

"But if my mother...if he kidnapped her...did the government ever find her?"

Melissa clasped her hands together so tight, her dark knuckles turned white. She shook her head.

Lilly's heart sank.

"Okay," Melissa said. "Why don't we finish this up in the morning? We have a lot to talk about, and you need to eat before your soup gets cold."

Lilly picked up her spoon and swirled it around her soup. She was hungry, but how could she eat at a time like this? Setting the spoon against the bowl, she asked, "Storm created storms, right?"

Despite the tension between them, Melissa smirked, something she rarely did in the middle of strenuous situations. Sarcastically—another rarity, as Lilly often doubted whether Melissa knew the definition of sarcasm—she said, "That one was impossible to figure out."

"Oh, ha ha. Very funny."

"He could manipulate the atmosphere of the world he was on. He was powerful. I'm so sorry, Lilly. I wish I knew where he kept your mother, or why he took her and kept her instead of killing her on the spot. I don't have all those answers. At least eat your soup while I'm talking."

Okay, so her mother was dead. The initial knowledge stung, but truthfully, Emma was a phantom-mother: never there, always an idea. Lilly was sad but not mortally wounded...she'd never had a relationship with her mother, anyway. 

Maybe if she kept telling herself that she was not mortally wounded, she wouldn't be.

Lilly picked up the spoon again, pointed it at Melissa. A little more composed and a little calmer now that she knew her cousin understood the definition of sarcasm, she said, "This is me eating. Next question: What's Elliott Way and why did they send a giant killer slug with bat wings into our house?"

"The Shifter World is about to erupt in a world war."

"With who, the dragons?"

"Whom. And the Acids."

"Do not correct me on grammar right now."

"I can see you're angry."

"You think?"

"If you don't start eating your soup we'll leave the rest of this conversation for tomorrow. There's a whole race of Acids who have their own vendetta against Shifters. Their magic is poisonous; it originated from a disease. There have been terrorist attacks, bombings, prisoners...each side is getting angrier, more aggressive. Last I heard, the Acid commander was drafting a declaration of war to send to the Stem, the commander of the Shifter armies. So what happens when the world is about to go to war? The government creates a draft and puts every thirteen-year-old's name from every country into a huge magical pot. Hundreds are drawn, others are hand-picked by official spies who have watched these kids for years. The Bloom wants as many kids as possible for the war. There are several training camps and facilities in the Shifter World, and the second largest is Elliott Way. Your name was not in the draft."

"The woman from the alley put it in there," Lilly muttered. Her stomach had already been in knots, but thinking about the woman in the alleyway sent fresh spasms of fear through her insides. 

"Don't let her scare you. I'm not letting you go train for war in a world you know nothing about."

"She said they already pulled my name out of the draft." 

"Then I'll write to the recruitment board and tell them it's a mistake and you're not a Shifter. No one can know you can steal from space. The Bloom is very strict in that they only want Shifters with the classical elements in their race. They execute any human with different elements under a charge of accidental treason." 

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever—" 

"The Bloom is prejudiced towards the classical elements. They fear that humans with non-classical elements will rise up and start a war like Storm did." 

"Again, that's so stupid, as I won't be starting a rebellion in a world I know nothing about any time soon. But I have to go." 

"You can't, Lilly. If the Bloom finds out, they'll kill you. I will not let that happen, do you understand?" 

Where Melissa's voice was strong, and Lilly's was weakening by the word. She bit her knuckle before half-whispering, "She said she was the one who ordered those guys to jump you the morning after my thirteenth birthday."

That hit home.

Visually, Melissa's face collapsed, and with it, Lilly could see pieces of her soul crumbling, too. Her eyebrows fell, her usually sharp jawline slackened as her lips parted in a small o of thought and...not shock, no, definitely not shock...but more like a person waking up from a nightmare to find out the dream had materialized in real life.

The morning after Lilly's thirteen birthday, she had forgotten her lunchbox and had to go back to get it. It was a weekly occurrence that left her either sprinting for school or really late for homeroom, depending on how far down the street she got before she remembered. When she got in sight of the house and could see that the back door was smashed in, she ran inside. There was blood, so much blood, and a bloody Melissa struggling to breathe on the floor of her kitchen. Lilly remembered she had to dial 9-1-1 three different times because her hands were shaking so bad. Ambulances came. Police reports were made. There were sleepless nights in the hospital where she and Maya did homework on the waiting room floor and, eventually, Lilly had to stay with Maya for an additional five days while Melissa recovered. Melissa had four fractured ribs and needed thirty-six stitches to close up all her cuts. 

Lilly thought they were robbers.

"I don't care," Lilly started slowly, seeing how much it pained Melissa to talk about how the woman from the alley was connected to her and the Shifter World, "who the woman is. I never, ever want to see you dying on our kitchen floor again. You're all I have and I love you and finding you like that was scarier than training for war or stabbing giant flying slugs or stealing from space. That woman said all she had to do was give assassins the word and they'd kill you, so I'm going to train for war if that she wants me to. If it keeps you safe."

A pause; it was like time froze: neither of them moved, and the world around them didn't, either. For the ten long seconds of the quiet hush that held them poised in a passion-dense moment, everything felt still. 

And then Melissa drew Lilly into a hug and Lilly hugged her back, hard. Melissa's soft voice tickled her ear when she said, "I'll make you a deal. If you go to Elliott Way to train for war in the Shifter World and keep your magic a secret, I'll find a way to get this woman off of our case."

They pulled from their embrace. Melissa pulled her black tresses over one slender shoulder, and in that one action, she looked more composed than she had been this entire night. "There are some things you need to know about the Shifter World and they're not going to make you happy."

"Go for it." It couldn't get worse. It couldn't possibly get any worse, right?

"You'll train there for a season; probably for the summer. You'll be on call for training anytime after that, and after you're finished, they'll send you to the front lines."

"That's not...terrible. Sucks I have to give up my summer, though. What's the other thing that's not going to make me happy?"

"You leave tomorrow morning."