Maybe not literally, but Claire thought if the police had roped it off, nobody would disagree. . . . Things were tossed everywhere, broken junk was piled in the corners, clothes were tossed on every flat surface. It smelled of old Chinese food, and the at-least-month-old trash was overflowing wit...
It came in a white blaze that seared my skin, blasted my eyes even through the squeezed-closed lids, and I heard myself make a rusty, metallic sound of protest. It was a single, thin crack in my prison, and I felt a tiny whisper of something so sweet and precious that I couldn’t identify what it...
It was the name Wardens—and Djinn—gave to a section of the world that had been scorched by something unnatural; a place where the basic energy that coursed through the world, the pulsebeat of the Earth, no longer existed. A black corner looked fine, but to anyone with sensitivity to power, it was...
Mabel watched us with a frown. After consultation with Isabel, we decided that an iguana was too large, but that a bearded dragon was an acceptable substitute. Ibby wasn’t interested in snakes as companions. I called Luis, who answered on the first ring, sounding worried. “Could you bring the tru...
The bus kept taking crazy back-road turns, as if they were searching for something. Finally, though, the dot stopped moving. “What is that?” Jason asked, and tapped the screen. It magnified. “Is that a town?” Claire couldn’t see through the grate, other than a dot on a map. “It’s tiny, if it is. ...