It was the middle of the day when we arrived in Paris, and I was exhausted. My internal clock was all thrown off. Even though I’d taken a really long nap on the plane, as I walked through the airport with my backpack carry on slung over my shoulder, I felt like I was walking in sand. The idea of turning myself into something small enough to ride in Sam’s pocket.He had my hand as we went to the baggage claim. We had a lot of luggage but not as many as we would have if we hadn’t planned on my ability to make new clothes or for us to buy them. I didn’t know how we would look in French fashions, but the idea of Sam wearing some of the clothes I saw on the French men we saw walking around the airport almost made me laugh. Not that all of them were dressed way different than Americans, but some of the more fashionable ones wore tight pants, or pants that were baggy at the top and tight a

We took a few days to get settled into the house before we went to have our initial look at Brookstone. We had to take a train to get there because it wasn’t in France. It was in Bavaria, which is part of Germany. The train ride took over six hours, and we had to transfer trains at one point. I really enjoyed looking out the window at the beautiful scenery as it went by. Whether it was a field, rolling hills, or a city I’d never seen before, it was all magical to me. I’m not sure why the farmlands and pastures in Europe seemed so much more stunning and interesting to me than those in the United States, but they did. I had been sitting by Sam for most of the train ride, but at one point, he got up to go play a card game with Tony, Brice, and Joshua, so that left me sitting by myself as Raven had gone to get a drink in the dining cart--yeah, the train had a dining cart. The Euro team as I’d come to think of

Flying above the forest, looking down at my ancestral lands, I couldn’t believe how enchanted the woods were. All of the leaves were bright green, a vibrant emerald that caught the sun’s rays and dazzled, the leaves dancing in the air. The patches of grass I could see between the thick, brown trunks of the trees were also that same bright green color. Everything looked healthy and alive, which surprised me a little since the evilness of Verina Crow had so quickly blackened and killed the part of my forest in Montana that she’d touched. Why hadn’t Grimly Grouse turned this forest into a black, decaying wasteland? Was it possible that the reason the forest looked so alive and vibrant was because he was messing with me? Maybe he used a magic spell to make it look like he hadn’t drained the forest and caused it to rot and decay.I tried using a spell to counteract any spell he had

I took advantage of the fearful flicker I’d seen in Grimley Grouse’s eyes and hit him with a bolt of power before he had much time to expect it. He got his hands up, but it wasn’t enough to completely deflect it. I ended up hitting him hard enough to knock him backward almost to the edge of the stream. The other mages around him took a few seconds to stare in shock before they remembered they had powers and could possibly do something to help him.They weren’t going to be able to help him, though. My mages were all ready, so before any of the red cloaked mages could hit me with their powers, mine had their hands up, shooting rays of light to counteract the ones directed at me. I watched the magic around me bend and shift, redirecting back the way it was coming. A few of the red mages were knocked off balance, but none of them went flying the way that Grouse did, probably because mos

Looking around at my mages, I tried to determine who I needed to help and who was okay on their own. Liam was taking on a large male mage with a nose ring and the appearance of horns coming out of his bald head. I assumed those were placed there by magic, and he didn’t really have horns growing out of his head, but it was difficult to know for sure. “Give it up, Harlow!” I heard Grimly shout from far behind the line of advance. “I have more reserves. You cannot win.” It was difficult for me to keep my eye on this brute that was about to knock Liam out and respond to the maniac in the back. I decided to ignore Grouse and concentrate on Liam’s predicament. I was fairly far away from the fight, and there were other engagements going on between me and Liam, but I couldn’t let that stop me. The devil guy with the horn