Chapter 1

It was close to midnight when Mom and I entered the Hemming Natural History Museum. Coming through the loading bay in the back made it feel like we were about to do something that would land my thirteen-year-old butt in juvie.

A square-shouldered security officer looked up from a half-built Lego Star Wars kit on his desk. His nametag read Pedro.

“I have an appointment with Dr. Jacobs.” Mom awkwardly swung my guitar case in front of her, clunking it against the desk and rattling about six million loose Lego bricks. “For the Cretaceous Texas reconstruction. I’m the mage.” With dazzling earrings, a crystal ball buzz cut, and sharp gold eyeliner on cool black skin, she definitely looked more like a mage than me.

“Been a long time since I sent a magic user back to the paleo lab.” Pedro pulled a clipboard out of a drawer. “Name?”

“Evelyn Slumber.” She planted a protective hand on my shoulder. “And this is Cecelia.”

He actually had to stand and lean over the desk to see me behind his gigantic playset.

“I’m just here for the dinosaurs.” I gave him a quick wave. “I like your, uh, Death Star.”

“It’s an Imperial Star Destroyer. But thanks.” He checked us off his list and shoveled his Lego mountains aside so Mom could sign a form. “You related to Johnny Slumber?”

“I’m his daughter.”

“Oh.” Pedro paused. “Sorry. They never told me what kind of magic he did, exactly, but the whole paleo team was ruined when he—uh.” He glanced at me like he wasn’t sure if I should hear the word died. “You really saved the day when you agreed to step in for him.”

Mom went, “Mm,” like she was focused on the paperwork. But she gave me a glance.

I sucked air through my teeth and shrugged. If I didn’t embarrass our family’s entire magic legacy tonight? Then yeah. Throw me a parade.

Mom pushed the clipboard back to him and spoke for me. “I’ll do my best.”

Pedro went back to his Lego set. “The lab is in the Trinity Hall. I’ll buzz you in.”

Mom and I pushed through the steel doors into a dim exhibition hall full of dioramas and dinosaur bones.

As soon as the doors slammed behind us, Mom passed the guitar to me. “Lord, I get nervous when I lie.”

“You’re nervous.” I’d been trying to chill out since lunch. Turned out Dairy Queen fries dipped in Brownie Batter Blizzard didn’t sit too good with a stomach in knots.

She switched on her phone light to guide us through the exhibit. The towering skeletons all around us threw unnatural shadows. “Relax, baby. It’s just a test.”

I clapped my free hand to my topsy-turvy stomach. “Can we not call it a test?”

“Have it your way.” Mom’s voice dipped low. “You feel any soulshine?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I whispered.

I thought soulshine only hung this heavy around cemeteries, but it filled these halls like the smell of old books. Any normal person who felt energy like this would call a priest—and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t one jumpscare away from leaping into my mom’s arms like Scooby Doo.

If my Grandpa John were still here, he wouldn’t miss a beat. He always told me to imagine lying down in a bed somebody just got up from—that soulshine was like the warmth left behind. He never did like the word haunted. I guess it was a Baptist thing, like Fall Fest instead of Halloween.

I glanced at Mom. “You don’t think it’s kinda dangerous for me to be around prehistoric soulshine?” This is the same woman who wouldn’t let me have an Instagram. She trusted my magic skills even less than my internet safety.

Mom took a deep breath. “I don’t love it, but you’re a teenager now. At some point, you’re gonna raise the dead. At least this way you’ll have some adult supervision.”

Since Grandpa John passed away and nobody was around to teach me how to work the family gift, Mom had been extra strict about holding in my magic. But tonight, for once, she’d given me a chance to flex, and I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.

We rounded the corner to find a woman standing in a pool of blue light admiring some swimming reptile skeleton as long as a truck trailer.

“Dr. Jacobs?” Mom said.

The doctor turned around with a gasp and opened her arms. “Evie, look at you, all grown up.”

Mom closed the gap and completed the hug. They held each other for a few long seconds.

This was stupid, but I expected the paleontologist we were meeting up with tonight to be more Indiana Jonesy. This lady could’ve been somebody’s grandma. But she had the outfit down—button-up shirt, cowboy boots, and a cream-colored Stetson. It wasn’t hard to imagine her digging up a T. rex in some desert ditch.

“You must be Cecelia.” Dr. Jacobs shook my hand. Her skin was cracked and tan like red rock canyon. “I don’t think we ever got acquainted at your grandaddy’s funeral.”

“No ma’am.” I wasn’t at the service. Just the reception at his ranch house. Mom didn’t want me anywhere near a dead body, especially a dead body in public. And maybe that was fair. One slip and things could’ve gotten weird, fast. But I wished I’d gotten a chance to say goodbye like everybody else.

I swallowed a flash flood of heavy feelings before they swept me away. Now was not a good time.

“Well, I’m awful pleased to meet you. Johnny was my good friend.” Dr. Jacobs pulled out her phone and showed me a photo. “See?”

She showed me a scan of a grainy polaroid of my grandpa, lying on his side like a swimsuit model in front of a line of sauropod backbones and rocking an afro the size of Saturn. And although the lady voguing next to him had a big blond blowout, I knew it was Dr. Jacobs because she had on the same hat.

“Nice hair.” Man, I hoped that didn’t sound sarcastic.

Lucky for me, she waved it away as a compliment. “Aw, well, hair was just better back then. That’s a fact.”

“Thanks for meeting us after hours,” Mom said. “You can understand why we’re so private about Cecelia’s gift.”

“Oh, of course.” Dr. Jacobs smiled at me as she stuck her polaroid back in her pocket. “The Slumber magic is lot of power for a li’l mage like you. How old are you, ten?”

I showed her my teeth in the shape of a smile, but behind that fake grin was a cringe so intense it would make a weaker person black out. “Thirteen.”

“Ope, sorry.” She tapped the top of my head, punctuating it with a pop of her lips. “You’re just so darn cute.”

Wow. I spent an hour in the bathroom moussing the frizz out of my curls and painting my nails sunflower yellow—for this?

Dr. Jacobs turned away just in time for me to shoot Mom my this-is-why-I-need-my-ears-pierced glare.

She just brushed past me with the same pat and pop.

Dang it.

We followed Dr. Jacobs to a mural on the far wall. I didn’t even notice the door handle hiding between the painted-on fish until she zipped a keycard from the reel on her belt to unlock it.

“Anyhoo,” Dr. Jacobs said, “if you’re half as talented as Johnny was, we’ll do whatever it takes to keep this partnership going. You wanna be anonymous, you’re anonymous. Nobody outside of this lab has to know what you can do.”

She opened the door to clean white walls and bright fluorescent lights.

I stepped inside and collided with an invisible wall of rock dust and soulshine.

The long hallway ran to the left and a wall of stacked metal shelves ran with it. The racks were packed with stuff I’d expect to see in a garage instead of a lab—Home Depot buckets, huge bags of plaster mix, tool kits, brushes, bottles of glue . . .

“Sorry about the mess. This area is off-limits to guests so we sorta let our hair down.” Dr. Jacobs led us down the hall, past bins labelled stuff like Paluxy, Twin Mountains, Antlers. “Cecelia, do you know what we do here?”

“I know you clean up fossils from around central Texas.”

“Right, and we use the clues from that fossil material to create the most accurate picture of Cretaceous life we possibly can.”

I had to hug my guitar case close so I didn’t whack the shelves as I passed. “How much can you learn from just bones?”

“It’s not always just bones. But the answer is more than you’d think—especially if we have a lot of the same species.”

She led us past a long worktable and rolling chairs set up against a big window that looked out on the dark museum lobby. Each station had a big magnifying glass on an adjustable arm. Half-carved chunks of rocks sat on the bench, screaming with soulshine. One of them had an actual bone sticking out—a straight-up, KFC-looking, cartoony femur.

“Is that an actual—”

Mom hurried me along before I could say dinosaur.

“Problem is, sometimes all we have of a certain species is a few bones, or even just one piece. That’s where your granddaddy came in, and now you.” Dr. Jacobs paused at the corner at the end of the hall and looked back at me. “If you can do it, I mean. You do bring them back physically, right?”

“Yes ma’am. For fifteen minutes.” For some reason they always poofed at fifteen. I’d timed it.

“What’s the biggest animal you’ve ever conjured?”

“Grandpa John started me on clams and ammonites. I did a fish once.” That sounded so freaking weak. “It was a big fish.” Ugh, that sounded even worse. Why did I say that?

Dr. Jacobs smiled. “We’ll try going just a little bigger tonight.”

“Bigger like what?”

Her mad science smile wrinkled the corners of her eyes. “It’s a secret.”

I tightened my sweaty grip on my guitar case. Dear God, please don’t let me turn this experiment into a flaming pile of dog doo. Amen.

Just as we rounded the corner with Dr. Jacobs, somebody shouted, “Wait, don’t let her see anything.”

A blur of pink hair lunged at me out of nowhere. Before I could clock the girl with my guitar, she blindfolded me with a bandanna.

“Uh . . .” I stiffened as she cinched the knot behind my head. “What’s happening?”

“This is Martina Molina,” Dr. Jacobs said. “She’s with the University of Buenos Aires. She’ll be helping with our research to complete her master’s degree.”

“I need to make sure you don’t see what you’re conjuring.” Martina took my hand and guided me forward. She smelled a little like cigarettes. “It’s a control, so we can be sure you’re actually recreating the fossil—not just what you think it should look like.”

Heat flooded my face. “I don’t just make stuff up.”

“Sure.” Martina sat me down on a stool. “But I have to prove it, understand?”

Crud. I wasn’t even sure I could find my guitar frets in the dark, let alone conjure blind.

Somebody took my case, and for a moment all I heard was the click of the latches and twang of strings echoing off the bare cement floor.

I slipped my hand into my pocket and found the simple glass tube I’d brought along, my guitar slide. I worked it onto my sticky ring finger, taking some comfort in the chilly, snug fit.

Then Mom—I could smell her vanilla hand lotion—put my guitar in my lap.

“You’ll do just fine,” she whispered.

I closed my eyes behind the blindfold, propped the guitar on my knee, and gave it a slow strum. Six sweet notes fell like drops of Texas tea.

One chord was all it took to dissolve my nerves. That perfect harmony took me back to the summer Mom and Dad split up, the summer I stayed with Grandpa John. All those days collecting fossil shells from the creek that ran through his horse pasture. All those nights on his porch swing, learning to play the blues. Practicing our magic with my head on his shoulder, until one night the strings didn’t hurt my fingers anymore.

Oh yeah. I could do this blindfolded.

“The specimen is right in front of you,” Dr. Jacobs said. “Just take your time.”

I listened with my sixth sense for the whisper of its soulshine. The baby hairs on my scalp stood up. “I can feel it.”

The first few bars of music came to me nice and easy, and as I slid the glass along the strings to make them sing, that soulshine touched my heart and told me what it wanted to hear.

A hot breeze picked up, whipping around little particles of what might’ve been sand. The specks stung my face. But I kept playing, and the wind and the heat kept rising, and the soulshine blazed like wildfire.

Then Martina gasped. Mom said my name. Dr. Jacobs swore like she saw a tornado touch down.

I dropped the song, pushed the blindfold back into my hair, and opened my eyes.

An animal lay in a sandbox on the floor.

It was the size of a deer fawn. Black and white like a penguin. Soft all over like a rabbit.

I glanced at Mom, flattened against the wall with her mouth open and her hand on her heart. Martina hugged her pin-studded jean jacket around herself like a security blanket, covering her mouth. Her cheeks were striped with mascara tracks. Dr. Jacobs took off her Stetson like she was in church, uncovering a Christmas-morning smile and glittering eyes. I couldn’t tell if those were tears, or just the inner light of a crazy person.

The alien in the sandbox lifted its humungous, wedge-shaped head on a long, straight neck. It pinned me with a shiny, birdlike eyeball. Blinked.

Then it stood, so much taller than I thought it would be—nearly on my eye level. It looked like a giraffe and a kite had a baby. Its first steps were so light and stiff you’d think it was made out of construction paper and coat hangers.

It clacked its absurd triangle beak at me.

“Holy—” I fell over backwards.

The guitar banged. The stool clattered. The dragon tripped out of the sand box and staggered away on four long stilt legs. It slipped on the cement with raccoony claws and thumped into the wall.

Mom swooped in and dragged me away, hugging me against her chest.

“What is that thing?” I was yelling. I couldn’t not yell. “Is that a dinosaur?”

“It’s a pterosaur.” Dr. Jacobs had some control over her volume. Barely. “Radiodactylus langstoni, known from a single humerus found under a nuclear power plant.”

“Is it dangerous?” Mom was more hysterical than me.

We all watched it strut around in the corner, rotating its ridiculous pizza-slice head to look at us from different angles.

“It can’t be much worse than a goose,” Dr. Jacobs said, like she just decided.

Martina crept toward it with shaking hands. “Look at the pycnofibers. There are actinofibrils in the wing membrane. There’s no way she could guess these details.”

Slowly, shaking, she reached out to touch it. But before she could brush her fingers across its neck, the pterosaur broke into a gallop and leapt toward me.

Mom shoved my head down.

Radiodactylus unfolded its switchblade wings to their full ten-foot span. Sailed straight over us.

There was some loud flapping—a crash of glass—a reptilian hiss.

Martina sprinted after the pterosaur. She leapt over the prep workbench and rolled after it through the broken window. “It’s headed for Trinity Hall,” she shouted.

Dr. Jacobs yanked me to my feet. “Come on.”

We ran through the lab and crashed into the exhibit hall—just a second too late. Behind the open security doors across the hall, Pedro screeched like an intruder yanked back his shower curtain.

We ran through the security doors just in time to watch him slam three-and-a-half feet of Imperial Star Destroyer down on the pterosaur.

The Destroyer shattered. Radiodactylus exploded. Legos and play sand spilled all over the tile floor.

The pterosaur’s soulshine returned to me like a thunderbolt. I staggered back a step and gripped the hot spot in my chest.

Mom grabbed my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “You got it?”

In the sudden silence, I felt the pterosaur’s soulshine glowing behind my ribs. Trapped like a butterfly in a jar. Tucked in like a second heartbeat. “Yeah. It’s with me.”

Mom, Dr. Jacobs, and Martina all let go of the same breath at once.

I almost forgot Pedro was there until he shouted, “Was that a freaking bat?”

“We had a little accident with the prep station window.” Dr. Jacobs adjusted her Stetson. “Martina, sweetie, make a note. Radiodactylus can’t see glass.” She turned and pointed at me. “And you.”

I withered in the dust and the Legos. A cold rush flowed from my head to my toes. I was so fired.

Dr. Jacobs smiled. “Can you start Monday?”