Marny

Marny: Feyguard Book 3, copyright 2015 by Anthea
Sharp. First edition October 2015. All rights reserved. Characters
are purely fictional and figments of the author’s imagination.
Please do not copy, upload, or distribute in any fashion.

Cover by Ravven. Professional editing by LHTemple and
Editing720.

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MARNY: Feyguard Book 3

Headed to the big city for a summer
internship, Marny Fanalua is glad to leave her hometown and its
creepy connection with the Realm of Faerie behind. Drastic heroics
in Feyland are what her friends do—she’s just trying to figure out
where she fits in the real world.

Livestream gaming star and entrepreneur Nyx
Spenser isn’t sure why he’s able to create incredibly realistic
simulations straight out of the game of Feyland, but he plans to
share his crazy new talent by opening an all-ages hangout called
Club Mysteria.

As the boundaries between the human world and
the dangerous Realm of Faerie weaken, Marny and Nyx must forge an
alliance to repair the damage he’s done—before it’s too late.

This one’s for my brother, Colin:
third-degree black belt, awesome cook, and kickass orc.

***

March

T
he
first time the enchanted forest appeared in his bedroom, Nyx
Spenser wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened. Or even
what
had
happened.

He’d finished questing in the new game called
Feyland, pulled off his gear and powered down the equip, then got
out of his sim chair to find half of his room engulfed in a magical
forest. He’d blinked hard, bent down and put his hands on his
knees, took some deep breaths, rubbed his eyes…

When he stood up again, the trees were still
there. Sunshine slanted through the silver-leafed branches, and a
mysterious wind ruffled his hair. Beneath the trees lay a mossy
forest floor. Red and violet flowers bloomed on clumps of bushes,
and butterflies flitted in and out of the shafts of sunlight,
turning orange when the light hit them, then blue in the
shadows.

Legs unsteady, he’d walked over to the
nearest tree and put his hand on the pale bark. It felt
real—slightly rough and cool under his palm.

But it couldn’t be.

He swallowed back fear and
wonder and curses. What the hell was going on? Carefully, as if the
remaining half of his room might disappear at any moment, he sat on
his bed.
Breathe. Think.

Birds chirped overhead, and the smell of damp
soil mixed with the reek of Nyx’s sweaty workout clothes piled in
the corner. As he watched, a small, gold-furred creature the size
of a mouse crept out of the underbrush. It lifted its pointed nose
and sniffed, then dashed over to the discarded pizza box that
hadn’t made it into the trash yet.

Unbelieving, Nyx watched
while it hopped inside, then emerged a moment later, carrying a
pizza crust in its nimble, definitely un-mouselike hands. The thing
looked up at him, then winked—
winked!
—and scurried back into the
forest.

“No.” Nyx covered his eyes with his hands.
“This is not happening.”

His heart pounded frantically while his mind
scrabbled for an answer.

Somebody had slipped him drugs, or piped
hallucinogenics into his room. Except that he’d been home from
school for hours, and nobody in his family would do something like
that. For one thing, they had no imagination, and for another,
their life out in the suburbs of Newpoint was almost
stereotypically squeaky-clean.

Maybe the meatloaf his mom had made for
dinner had gone bad. He burped experimentally, but only ketchup and
broccoli aftertaste filled his mouth.

He dropped his hands from his face and looked
again. The forest was still there. It started partway across his
room, the tan wall-to-wall carpet rumpling up and becoming tree
roots and soil and emerald green moss. The far wall was just
gone—only trees stretching away, and a path that seemed to beckon
to him.

Okay. Okay. He could deal with this. He’d
dealt with crazy stuff before—though never as completely tweaked as
this. His martial arts training kicked in, though, and he made
himself center, breathe.

First thing was to figure out if it was him,
or if the forest was actually there—impossible as it seemed.

He stood and backed to his bedroom door,
keeping a wary eye on the trees. He fumbled at the handle, turned
it, and slipped through into the absolutely normal hallway of their
split-level home.

Resisting the temptation to open the door
again, he quietly hurried down the hall to his sister’s room. Emmie
was supposed to be asleep, but he knew she’d be up, reading her
tablet under the covers.

For that matter, he was supposed to be
asleep, too. The parents were big on getting to bed early, but Nyx
couldn’t even deal with turning his light off at ten o’clock. That
was just ridiculous. After a serious shouting match a few months
ago—where he’d reminded his parents he’d be eighteen soon—they’d
finally caved.

“Stay up as long as you like, then,” his mom
had said. “But don’t whine at me when you’re exhausted the next
day.”

“Natural consequences.” Dad shook his head.
“You’d better get a loud alarm, son.”

So far, though, Nyx hadn’t missed any of his
classes. Been late a couple times, sure—but he was practically done
with high school anyway. And he wasn’t headed for college, so he
only had to keep his grades up to a minimum standard. It wasn’t
like he had a brilliant academic future ahead. He was “clever,” his
mom liked to say. Which meant not necessarily academically
gifted.

But since he’d already made over a hundred
thousand credits from his entrepreneurial ventures, his parents
didn’t give him too much grief about not going to college, beyond
the occasional suggestion he should look into business classes. Nyx
figured he could hire accountants and managers, though. He was good
with people, and already had his friend Durham crunching numbers
for him.

He gave his sister’s door a quiet tap, then
slipped inside. The glow emanating from under her blankets went
out.

“Hey, Emmie, it’s me,” he whispered.

She turned her tablet back on, then stuck her
head out from under the covers. The blue light illuminated her pale
skin and her bleached hair, all frizzed out.

“What,” she said.

“I need you to come look at something,” he
said.

She rolled her eyes. “If it’s another
live-stream idea, it can wait until tomorrow. I just got to a
really good place in my book.”

“Why can’t you be a normal teen and stay up
late gaming instead of reading?”

“Normal teens read, too. Not that you’d know
anything about that, mister illiterate.”

He had plenty of comebacks for her endless
store of cracks about his supposed stupidity. Most of them had to
do with money and usually shut her up. But whatever was happening
in his room was severe. Way more important than arguing with his
younger sister.

“Just come,” he said. He needed to know if he
was going insane in the brain.

Emmie let out a gusty, impatient sigh, but
set her tablet aside. “This better be good.”

He didn’t say anything, just held the door
open and waited for her to get up. With another long-suffering
look, she grabbed a fuzzy blanket off her bed and wrapped it around
herself, cloak style.

Again, Nyx bit his tongue. Usually he’d make
a comment about the fact that winter was over. His sister was a
complete wuss about the cold. She was wearing flannel PJs, too, and
paused to slip her feet into her fuzzy pink slippers before
following him down the hall.

He hesitated a moment in front of his door.
Maybe the trees had disappeared.

The thought left him half relieved and half
disappointed. It wasn’t every day weird magical stuff happened,
like enchanted forests taking over bedrooms. Probably he’d dreamed
the whole thing.

Only one way to find out.

He pushed the door open, his breath catching
when he saw that the pale-barked trees still extended past his bed
and into the sun-dappled shadows. The thing was, did Emmie see them
too?

“Holy crap,” she breathed, stepping into his
bedroom. “How did you do it? Projection holos? MR console? This is
amazing.”

Thank God—he wasn’t having crazy
hallucinations.

“Not exactly,” he said, carefully closing the
bedroom door behind them. The last thing he needed was his parents
seeing this and completely freaking out.

“It looks so real.” Emmie went up to the
nearest tree and swung her hand, clearly thinking her fingers would
pass right through the illusion.

Instead, her palm slapped against the
bark.

“Ow!” She stared at her hand. “You set up
some columns and are projecting the images over them? That’s dumb.”
She glanced up at him. “But kind of interesting.”

“I wish it were me.” He swallowed, hard. “Em,
believe me. This stuff is real. I was gaming, and then the forest
was just… here.”

“Right.” She smirked at him. “Nice try, bro.
Still, it’s pretty believable. Though you’ll need a bigger place
than your bedroom if you want the final installation to work.”