Chapter 2

There was no telling how long I’d been soaring circles over miles of evergreen forest and thrashing gray ocean. But it wasn’t until I noticed a long-necked dinosaur towering over the treetops that I realized this couldn’t be real. But it wasn’t a dream, either.

More like a memory.

Suddenly, over the roar of the surf, there came a familiar bass guitar riff.

I snapped awake to my ringtone. The floor fan that made Grandpa’s attic livable on summer nights replaced the ocean breeze. Instead of thundering waves, Larkin Poe blared from my hand-me-down phone on the nightstand.

This was the third time in three nights I’d had that flying dream. I was starting to doubt that was a crazy coincidence.

I yanked off my sleep bonnet. My corkscrew curls bounced in all directions, and I pushed them out of my eyes to check my broken cell screen.

Dad. All my Monday morning grumps melted away as I swiped the green button. “Hiya.”

“Morning, Cee,” Dad said over the Dallas traffic noise. He must’ve been calling from the car on his way to the hearing clinic. “Did I wake you up?”

“Yup.” I scrubbed the crusties out of my eyes and swung my legs out of bed. My mouth tasted about like you’d expect for ten hours of slack-jawed snoring. “I had to get going, anyway. We’re headed back to the Hemming today.”

“Your mom told me you’re a working mage now.”

“Did she tell you I broke a window?”

A smile peeked through his voice like sunshine through dark blinds. “She said you made a real, live dinosaur.”

“I don’t think it’s technically a dinosaur. And we’re pushing the live part. But it’s real enough to cause property damage.”

“Does this little monster have a name?”

“I was thinking Nuke. For the nuclear power plant.”

“Cute,” Dad said, but he sounded like he was thinking about something else.

I padded over to the closet to get dressed. Just as I started to get suspicious of the long silence over the phone, Dad spoke up again.

“How are you feeling?” His tone was extra soft, like he didn’t want me to hurt myself on it.

I got real acquainted with his Sensitive Parent Voice during the divorce. It made me feel like a little kid, but I played dumb anyway. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, taking over Grandpa’s position at the museum. Living at the ranch. I’d expect that brings up some heavy feelings.”

I swung the closet door open, and the smell of Grandpa’s leather boot polish and old shirts hit me with a wave of black-hole sadness I should’ve seen coming. I grabbed a pair of cutoff overalls and shut the door before I could think too hard.

“I miss him.” I slumped against the closet and hugged the phone to my ear with both hands. “Mom does too. But she doesn’t talk about it.”

“You know she’ll listen, though, right?”

“Yeah. But there’s an extra high wall around this.” I paused, not sure if I should say my next thought out loud. “I think she doesn’t want me to feel guilty.”

“Oh, Cee.” His voice was heavy, and for a moment there was nothing but road noise. “Why would you feel guilty?”

I choked down the lump in my throat. “Because I might be able to fix it?”

“Cecelia.” He said my name like he just slammed his brakes.

“I’m not going to do it,” I said, a little too loud. The last thing I needed was Mom getting in on this conversation, so I shushed myself. “I know the rules. ‘Anybody worth bringing back is already in a better place.’”

But I touched the spot in my chest where the pterosaur’s soulshine lived, and I couldn’t get away from the facts. I’d resurrected a hundred-million-year-old flying reptile. Bringing back an eighty-year-old blues musician didn’t sound so hard.

“You know your mom doesn’t want that,” Dad said. “Not really.”

I tried to hold onto those words, and to make him feel better I said, “I promise I’m not gonna do anything crazy.”

But it was hard to believe Mom wouldn’t want Grandpa back. That she didn’t imagine how things would be different if he was here. That she never thought about asking me to try—not even once.

Because in the month since he died and we moved to Glen Rose to sort through his empty house, I wished he was here every day.

“I gotta go.” I thought twice before saying goodbye. “Could you not tell Mom about this? She’s already nervous about the whole magic-at-the-museum thing. I just don’t want to freak her out.”

Dad’s end went quiet for a second. “Okay. But text me if you need to talk. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

I hung up, took a big breath, and got ready for the day.

When Mom and I arrived at the back door of the Hemming Museum, we found a truck parked at the loading dock. Movers swarmed the trailer, unpacking crates the size of coffins. Each box was stamped with a logo like an upside-down raindrop.

I noticed the soulshine right away. “Whatever’s in that truck used to be alive.”

Mom eyed the trailer like it was a snake pit and pulled me a little closer. “I didn’t know they were bringing new fossils in.”

As we fell in step behind a mover dollying one of the crates inside, I scrunched my nose. The energy coming off those boxes was a shade off, like when the soda comes out weird on a coke fountain.

These mystery boxes had a lowkey, familiar flavor. But I couldn’t place it. Where had I felt soulshine like this before? If I could just get closer, I bet I could pin it down. But I didn’t want to get in the way.

When we came through the loading bay, we found Pedro slouched at the security desk, sipping an eight A.M. Monster Energy. He looked like he just woke up under the desk.

“Busy day?” Mom asked.

Pedro grabbed a guest badge and slid it across the counter with a form for Mom to fill out. “We got loaned some stuff from Europe.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s supposed to go on exhibit pretty soon.”

I craned my neck to stare down the hall, where the movers wheeled the boxes into a back room. “Can I see?”

“No.” Mom and Pedro both replied so fast I couldn’t tell who squashed my dream first.

“They gotta sit in quarantine,” Pedro said. “Give it a week.”

“I bet it would be okay if you came to check it out with me,” somebody said.

I turned. The guy coming up to the desk couldn’t be past ninth grade, but he dressed like the front for some boy band—business casual button down, stylist-approved skinny jeans, and pumped up sneakers probably worth more than my phone in its prime. The bangs of his baby blond undercut were styled up into a soft-serve ice cream curl.

Pedro gestured vaguely between Mom and the boy who looked like an after picture for a zit cream commercial. “Magus Slumber, this is Magus Dixon Hemming.”

I did a double take. “As in the Hemming Museum?”

Dixon flashed a museum badge and a rehearsed humble smile. No wonder he was dressed like a kid in a catalogue. His family built this place.

Mom shook his hand. “What kind of magic does your family practice?”

“Divination.” Dixon paused for a second, thinking. Then he looked over at me, searched my face, and smiled like he was reading a scandalous headline. “Huh. What are you up to?”

A paranoid chill rolled down my body. Divination. Dixon could predict the future.

Somehow, I forced my face flat. “Nothing yet.”

His grin spread extra wide, and his stare pressed me harder than a pack of paparazzi. “So, did you want to see those new fossils, or . . . ?”

I really, really did. But what if I tipped him off to the Slumber family secret? What if he could already see me raising the dead in my future?

Mom put on her guest badge and held the security door open for me, blazing an escape route to Trinity Hall.

I brushed past him, resisting the urge to check him with the guitar case. “I’m busy.”

“That’s fine. I’ll see you later.” He said it like we’d made plans.

I speed walked into the exhibit hall, and it wasn’t until the door slammed behind me that I finally let out a breath. “He knows what I can do.”

“Not yet, he doesn’t. Diviners aren’t mind readers. They only see possibility.” It sounded like Mom was trying to convince herself. “Anyway, he can’t be a very good mage. He’s only got a year or two on you.” She paused. “No offense.”

“None taken.” I knew I was a mess. “How am I gonna throw him off?”

“Stay cool. If you avoid him, you’ll only make him more curious.” Mom knocked on the paleo lab door. “But you stay away from those new boxes till we know what’s in them. We don’t want any accidents.”

Dr. Jacobs opened the door. A loud buzz like a dentist’s drill filled the hall.

“Well hey, the music’s here,” she said over the noise.

We walked past the storage area to the workbenches up front, where Martina sat in a facemask, goggles, and noise-blocking headphones. She carved away a block of sandstone with her pen-shaped drill, spraying grit in all directions and tapping her foot to some high-speed music I couldn’t hear.

Couldn’t help but notice somebody had replaced the window over the weekend. Again, sorry.

Dr. Jacobs tapped Martina’s shoulder as we passed. Martina switched off her drill, scruffed the dust out of her pink hair, and followed us to the back room.

Wow. Since Friday night, they’d done a lot more to this lab than replace a window.

The sandbox from last week was surrounded by a foldable metal cage about the size and shape of a backyard shed. The cage took up most of the back room, leaving a very narrow aisle to the computer desk in the far corner, plus some shelving along the wall.

“What is this?” I asked.

“An old chicken run.” Dr. Jacobs plopped into a swivel chair at the desk and spun. “Seventy bucks on Facebook Marketplace. Can you believe it?”

Martina picked up a power drill from one of the nearby shelves and pumped the trigger. “Now it’s a dinosaur containment unit.”

She and Dr. Jacobs exchanged a super serious high five.

I put my hand on my hip and gave the coop a slow once-over. “Nice.” Those dog crate bars wouldn’t stop any T. rexes, but they oughta hold Nuke just fine.

“Is the pterosaur with you?” Dr. Jacobs asked.

I sat down on the stool in front of the cage and unpacked my guitar. “All the time.”

I freestyled a few bluesy bars to warm up. Then I closed my eyes. Focused on the soulshine nested near my heart. And Nuke’s special song rolled right out of my hands like a river.

It was a light melody with quick turns of the slide, and as the song picked up, the air burned like summer sun. A whirlwind from nowhere blew back my curls. The play sand in the chicken run shifted and bulged.

Watching Nuke form was like watching an ice sculpture melt in reverse. His black, triangular head and tall neck rose up from the ground like a periscope. He schlorped upright on long limbs and took a few awkward baby Bambi steps.

I was so wrapped up in watching him wade out of the sand, I forgot I was the dummy conjuring him—until I twanged out three sour notes in a row.

Nuke’s foot crumbled to clods. He stumbled and honked at me.

“Crud. Sorry.” I had to hit the next few notes just right to keep the spell up, and I gave it an extra lick of soulful slide to boot. “How’s that for ya?”

He pulled his final fully-formed foot out of the crater he came from, sneezed, and gave a ruffling shake that fluffed his—what was that, fur? Feathers? Something in between?

The air cooled. The dust settled. I set my guitar aside and slid off the stool, nice and easy, to sit crisscross on the ground. “Welcome back.”

He shuffled into the far corner of the cage and gave me the stink eye.

Couldn’t blame him, seeing as the last time I called him out Pedro executed him with a hundred pounds of Lego bricks.

Martina crept close to the cage bars and pulled out a measuring tape from the pocket of her lab apron.

Worm-shaped fear twisted in the spot where me and Nuke were connected—but the icky feeling wasn’t mine.

“He feels trapped,” I said. But how—why—would I know that?

Nuke froze. He zeroed in on Martina with one bright eye and bristled his black fur.

“It’s okay.” Martina took a knee and pulled out a length of the tape. “I’m just taking some measurements.”

A mean streak zinged through me. “He’s gonna bite,” I blurted.

Out of nowhere, Nuke struck like a snake. He smashed his beak on the bars and rattled the pen.

“Whoa!” Martina fell on her butt and scrambled backward, sneakers squeaking.

Nuke retreated too, hissing like an alligator with his wingtips opened. Suddenly he looked a lot bigger and freakier than usual.

Dr. Jacobs helped Martina up, giggling. “He near took your finger off.”

Slowly, Nuke’s wings folded and his hackles went down, and the sick knot in my chest untightened. He twisted his neck to preen the fuzz between his shoulders, and my pounding heart slowed down.

Martina dusted her jeans off and looked between me and the pterosaur. “Are you connected to that thing?”

“I think I might be,” I said. As Nuke scratched that itch on his back, the satisfaction I got sure felt real.

Me and Grandpa John never did get that deep into the laws of our magic. The summer I lived on the ranch, I was mostly just trying to get the hang of the slide—and when I finally did summon an oyster or a snail, they didn’t seem to have much to say. By the time next summer rolled around, Grandpa was gone. Now all I had left were questions.

“I’ve been having dreams,” I said.

Mom frowned. “What about?”

I told her about the forest. The ocean. The brontosaurus, or whatever it was.

Dr. Jacobs leaned over her knees to listen, focused like a hound on the trail. Mom, on the other hand, looked like she might barf on her platform sandals.

“In the Cretaceous most of Texas was covered by the Western Interior Seaway.” Dr. Jacobs pulled up a map on her phone and showed me America split into two separate continents. The very tip-top of Texas formed the southern coast of the land labeled Appalachia. “Pretty much anything around here that wasn’t underwater was trees. Dinosaur Valley State Park is actually right along that old beach.”

Weird. That tracked with my dream a little too close for coincidence. “So, I did see a memory?”

Dr. Jacobs looked at Mom. “Is that normal?”

“I don’t know.” She leaned against the shelves, stiff all over, biting her manicure. “Dad was real private about his magic. I only saw him summon maybe three times in my life.” She cut me a sharp look. “You need to tell me stuff like this.”

“It didn’t seem like a big deal,” I said. “I didn’t want you to freak out.”

“I wouldn’t freak out,” Mom said in her lowest, tightest tone. The woman was fully freaking. “I just need you to help me keep you safe. Can you do that?”

I held up my hands to fend off her five-alarm stress. I didn’t get why she was mad at me. “Okay, see, this is not making me want to tell you stuff.”

Someone knocked on the window to the foyer. Praise God.

Martina rounded the corner to check. “Ugh. It’s the Hemming kid.”

“Don’t let him in,” Dr. Jacobs said. But before Martina’s footsteps even made it to the door, the card reader outside beeped and the door opened.

“Keycards for the Slumbers.” Dixon’s voice echoed through the lab. “Is this a bad time?”

“I think you know the answer to that.” Down the hall, Martina’s voice was desert dry.

“Dagnabbit.” Dr. Jacobs jumped out of her chair and rushed around the corner. “That little oil baron would invite himself into the White House.”

“Cecelia.” Mom gritted her teeth and made a chopping motion at her neck.

“Uh, right.” I turned back to Nuke, trying to figure out how to switch him off. I held out a sweaty hand like Moses parting the Red Sea. “Come back.”

Nuke blinked, eyelids slightly out of sync. Still in the chicken run. All flesh and blood.

“And . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut and clapped my hands. “Come back.” I peeked at him. Still here.

“Grandpa didn’t teach you how to make them go away?” Mom whispered. Her head pulsed with a vein I never saw before.

“Uhh . . .” I glanced away from her heat vision. All anybody ever put in my job description was make the dinosaur. Nobody said I’d have to withdraw it too.

Welp. This was a problem.