Reggie & Ryssa and the Scavenger Hunt

By Bo Savino

By the end of the twins’ eighth grade school year, Ryssa has withdrawn from everyone around her. Reggie suspects that Ryssa is starting to lose control of Darkwind, which he knows will lead to the Faery elders breaking her bond with the Sprite, and most likely insanity...and that’s if she—and he as her twin—survive it. Their adopted mother, Debra Chambly, grows sicker with each passing day.

Reggie & Ryssa return to Faery for another summer of competition, with more Potentials mysteriously eliminated and the Seelie and Unseelie Courts moving toward the brink of a Faery war. The twins find changes to their training schedule and a series of impossible tasks set before them as they work together with their team to gather the strange list of items for a Faery Scavenger Hunt.

New adventures await them as the twins are attacked by Shadows, swept up in a Midsummer’s Eve Wild Hunt of the Fey, and face down the only known dragon left in the world of Faery!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bo Savino
• Release date: Apr 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476053646

Bo Savino

Award-winning author Bo Savino lives in sunny Florida surrounded by a mixed bag of family and friends. She wrote her first novel (never published) at the young age of 18, and is an avid fan of the science fiction & fantasy genre she writes her stories in!Bo uses different pseudonyms to keep her young adult genres separate from her adult ones, which she writes under A. J. Rand.Titles out by Bo Savino:The Reggie & Ryssa SeriesReggie & Ryssa and the Summer Camp of Faery (Book 1)Titles out by Bo Savino as A. J. Rand:The Yeshua Star Series:Broken Wings: Genesis (Book 1)Broken Wings: Alpha (Book 2)The Nibiran Series:Sky Gold (Book 1 with co-author Carrassa Sands)The Tapestry Series:Keeper of the Flame (Book 1)

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Table of Contents

Prologue: Eye of the Storm

Chapter 1: All in the Family

Chapter 2: Mean Girls

Chapter 3: The Birthday Wish

Chapter 4: Into the Mist

Chapter 5: The Winds of Change

Chapter 6: Rules of the Game

Chapter 7: Pillow Talk

Chapter 8: The Name of the Game

Chapter 9: The Mind’s Eye

Chapter 10: Fire and Ice

Chapter 11: For the Birds

Chapter 12: Healing Pains

Chapter 13: Surf’s Up

Chapter 14: You’ve Got Mail

Chapter 15: Faery Tea Party

Chapter 16: Time for a Change

Chapter 17: Air to Ground Control

Chapter 18: Hocus Pocus Focus

Chapter 19: Let the Festivities Begin

Chapter 20: Slayer of Serpents

Chapter 21: The Wild Hunt

Chapter 22: New Faery Bowl

Chapter 23: Something Fishy

Chapter 24: Pony Up

Chapter 25: To Market To Market

Chapter 26: Fire Branded

Chapter 27: The Windy City

Chapter 28: Undivided We Stand

Chapter 29: Running Out of Time

Chapter 30: An Apple A Day

Chapter 31: The Blackest Knight

Chapter 32: Choices

Chapter 33: Home Again, Home Again

About the Author

Prologue: Eye of the Storm

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Disbelief. The utter feeling that what is happening just can’t be happening—even when it is—and what is happening is taking place here and now. Desperation. It’s the feeling you get when you are willing to do anything to change the current situation and make it go away. Disbelief and desperation—a double d dose of reality. That was what Ryssa was totally immersed in and fighting against with every magical tooth and nail in her body.

A whimper of distress escaped her lips. Distress—another d word she wished she could remove from her vocabulary. Focus—a good old-fashioned f word. That was what she needed but couldn’t manage to find through the fear. Ryssa looked at the others who made up the rest of the circle sitting smack dab in the middle of Debra Chambly’s living room.

Hammie’s crystal blue eyes stared back at her out of a boyishly round face. A year older than she and her twin, Reggie, he seemed so much younger. That stupid d word—desperation—looked back at her out of those eyes, mingled with something else—hope. Ryssa’s heart sank. It was clear that Hammie’s hope rested on her. He believed that she’d get them out of this. She wasn’t sure she could, but she swallowed back the thought and looked away.

Moira and Jet sat at the other side of the little circle from Hammie. Moira was to Ryssa’s left with her twin, Jet, sitting next to her. The deep brown eyes of the phooka twins locked with hers. Moira’s eyes held concern and the chocolate-colored skin of her forehead was scrunched all the way up to the ebony black braids of her hairline, her eyes pleading with Ryssa to tell her it was going to be okay. The weight of responsibility felt heavy to Ryssa. Moira was almost four years older, yet the older girl looked to her for comfort.

By contrast, Jet stared at Ryssa with resolute determination. A single firm, but short nod bounced the long, tiny braids down his back, telling Ryssa he was there for her no matter what she needed. Ryssa smiled tightly in response. She looked up and met the clear blue gaze of her own twin, who sat across the circle from her, between Hammie and Jet.

She loved the color of Reggie’s eyes. They were a beautiful sky blue that was a marked contrast to the mud brown color of hers. Ryssa adored her brother, that other, almost opposite aspect of herself. He was very intelligent and she had never considered herself intellectual in any way. She was more of a social creature, guided by instinct and emotions, while he was more technically-minded. His thoughts turned inward more often, while hers tended to fall out of her mouth before she had time to think about what she was saying.

That didn’t appear to be the case at the moment. Now, she held back her worried thoughts, trying not to let her fear and concern spill over to the others. Reggie, on the other hand, let the full compassion and confidence he felt for her and in her speak in the look on his face.

It’s okay, Ryss, her twin offered encouragement. "You can do this. We have to do this."

Ryssa gave him the same, tight smile she had given Jet, mimicking the phooka boy’s nod of determination. She set her chin, ready to dive back into the web of magic that wound its way through the circle, connecting them all into a singular force of will.

Well, if you guys can really do something, you’d best do it quick, a voice from outside the circle shattered the focus she fought to reach.

Ryssa shot her foster brother, Terry, an irritated look. His cropped, wavy dark curls wrapped loosely around his head, intertwining with the earpiece that trailed a wire down to the radio in the palm of his hand.

What? He shrugged, holding out his hands defensively. They’re saying that the hurricane is heading directly for the Bay Area—which puts us in West Chapel on the bad side of the storm—and it’s still a Cat Two. It’s barely slowing down.

Ryssa closed her eyes, slowly shaking her head at the interruption while she fought to clear her mind and focus.

This can’t be happening, the thought crossed her mind with despair.

":But it is happening,:" an insistent voice replied inside her mind.

Ryssa didn’t have to look down to know that two black eyes would be looking up at her from out of a burgundy-colored crystal set on top of a fancy carved stick with arms and legs. Darkwind, the Sprite who inhabited her wand, had taken annoyance to the extreme of late. It was as though the Sprite were purposefully trying to goad her into losing her temper. And she had been trying equally hard not to lose control.

On their thirteenth birthday, which immediately followed the end of their seventh grade school year, the lives of Ryssa and her twin had been turned upside down. They had always known that Debra Chambly wasn’t their real mother—or at least not by blood. To them, she was the only real mother the twins had ever known. It was the night before their thirteenth birthday that Mary Rutridge, the caseworker for their special fosterage situation arranged through the Silverwood’s Adoption Agency, showed up at the door of Debra Chambly’s home. She announced from that day forward, Ryssa and her twin would be spending their summers at camp and getting to know their blood relations a little better.

Reggie had been intrigued by the idea and yet put off by the fact that relatives he felt hadn’t wanted them in the first place all of the sudden decided that now they did. For Ryssa, the whole concept was nothing short of social suicide and she wanted no part of being separated from what little social ranking she had worked so hard to achieve through the years.

But there had been no choice. So Ryssa and her twin were packed off to go to summer camp. It was on the way that things got even stranger. The eccentric little Mary Rutridge told the twins that their real relatives were Faeries—and their heritage included all of the magic inherently found in that mythical race. In addition, they were informed their real mother and father had been royalty among the Faery people. Despite the twins’ lack of belief, they found the truth of the magical world very real when they were chased onto the island of New Faery by a fireball—right after they had been told it was a fireball that had killed their parents. Both fireballs turned out to be the same one, or at least created by the magic of the same Sprite, Darkwind, who was now bound to Ryssa for life through the wand that she carried.

New Faery turned out to be almost everything Mary Rutridge had claimed, but with quite a few pieces left out. For instance, they found out not long after their arrival in New Faery that Summer Camp was actually a series of tests and trials that would span several years in order to select replacements among the last generation born to all of Faery for various positions in the Faery Courts. And Mary had also failed to tell them that of the original one hundred sixty-nine children chosen as Potentials for the trials, just over half remained. The rest had either died or disappeared.

Ryssa and her brother spent the summer learning more about the only true heritage left to them by their deceased parents. Magic, creatures of fairy tales and nightmares, intrigue, and Court politics were the realities of that world. Ryssa and Reggie worked together with their fellow teammates from Team Phoenix to successfully avoid elimination through the first year of the Competition.

They had only been back from Faery for a couple of weeks, and already that world interfered with the quiet life they had once led. Ryssa frowned. To be fair, she would have to actually say they were bringing aspects of that life into their more mundane one in the Zombie Zone.

She shot a quick, distracted glance at Moira and Jet. The phooka twins were the ones to coin the term Zombie Zone. They used it to describe the mortal world where people walked around like the zombies from old horror movies—out of touch with the world around them and living in dead unawareness of the magic that was everywhere, but they had forgotten how to see. Moira and Jet were twins from Faery. They were even from the same House that Ryssa and Reggie had been born into—the House of Starborn. So was Hammie. Reggie and Ryssa’s Uncle Aurelius, the temporary head of the House, had fostered the five children to families in the Zombie Zone to protect them from the same fate so many of the other Potentials had fallen victim to.

":You’re not concentrating,:" Darkwind’s admonishing tone seeped through the jumble of thoughts in Ryssa’s mind.

":Keep quiet,:" Ryssa shot back in irritation, speaking to the Sprite through the mind link. :I’m doing the best I can,:

":Tell that to your mother when the storm is on top of you, tearing apart the walls of your home,:" Darkwind chided, adding, :it’s switched directions again. The Storm elders have pushed it north to protect New Faery. It’s now coming directly for us.:

As though to emphasize Darkwind’s dire warning, Terry spoke up. Uh, guys, trouble. The storm has shifted again. It’s coming straight for us.

Leave my mother out of this, Ryssa mumbled under her breath. The others exchanged worried glances out of the corner of her eye. They were getting used to Ryssa’s constant arguments with Darkwind, but she saw the concern in their faces. They weren’t sure she was up to this.

If Ryssa were to be honest with herself, she wasn’t sure she was up to it, either. There was an underlying fear of dealing with the storm—of dealing with most kinds of magic she had encountered so far. In order for her to work at the level of magic needed to accomplish the monumental task, she had to give herself over to the magic. The problem was that while she had found something resembling control of those powerful forces, more often than not she lost control and only Reggie seemed to be able to help her find her way back. The end result was that everyone looked at her with fear—as though she were some kind of freak. And she was getting tired of feeling like a freak. She wanted some kind of normalcy back in her life.

":Normal isn’t an option,:" Darkwind interjected.

":Ryss, are you okay?:" Reggie’s voice came through the twin-bond they had discovered during their time in Faery. :We have to do something…:

Hey guys, Terry cut in, put up or shut up. We’re running out of time here.

":The Storm elders…:" Darkwind started.

":Mom won’t survive this…:" Reggie tried to continue.

"Now, guys," insisted Terry.

The voices assaulted Ryssa both inside and outside her mind, leaving a jumble of confusion, irritation, anxiety, and a sudden burst of anger. Couldn’t they see that she was trying? Why did all of this have to rest on her? She didn’t deal well with pressure and certainly not of this magnitude. The anger rolled through her, cutting off the voices in her head. With the anger came what she had been lacking in—focus and intent.

The fear and uncertainty vanished. With deliberate ease, she threw herself into the shaky web of magic connecting those sitting around her, solidifying it. She could see the glow of the combined magic, the lines connecting to each other, weaving in and out to form a concrete force. Other lines, smaller ones that grew marginally larger as she watched, flopped around with wild frenzy, brightly colored shades of grayish-white. Ryssa felt herself detach from her physical body and instantly her point of view switched to a position somewhere above the group, looking down.

They’re really afraid of the storm, the idle thought passed through Ryssa’s mind. The magical net woven among the group was made up of energy lines that were purple and blue interspersed with traces of green. She knew that the purple ones were connections to Air magic, the blue ones were Water magic and the bits of green were connections to Earth magic. Properly woven together, they created a wall that could be expanded and used to push away the oncoming storm.

The grayish-white ones, she knew from Darkwind—and from experience—weren’t magical lines as such, but were reflections of the emotions lashing outward from those below her. These were lines of fear.

":They are afraid of the storm,:" Darkwind agreed, :but more than that, they are afraid of you.:

":Me?:" Ryssa’s surprise slipped through the link back to Darkwind. ":Why are they afraid of me?:"

":Look at your body,:" Darkwind encouraged. :What do you see?:

Ryssa did as the Sprite directed. Another color whipped around her body, passing through the members of the circle. It was a line of deep, dark red, shot through with a spattering of black. She frowned. The line diminished in size even as she watched.

":What is that?:" Ryssa asked.

":It is your anger,:" Darkwind explained, :and they all feel it. That’s what is making them afraid of you.:

Ryssa looked at Terry, standing off to the side of the rest of the circle. The line of anger wasn’t touching him. She examined him closer, curious at the small line of grayish-white coming from him, barely noticeable until she looked at it carefully. He’s hardly afraid at all, she mused.

":Your foster brother has other issues,:" Darkwind remarked, but didn’t elaborate.

Ryssa watched as Terry’s facial expression changed and he rolled his eyes in disgust. She felt the annoyance creep back in.

This is worthless, he mumbled loud enough for her to hear. I should’ve known better…

Ryssa’s line of anger snapped out directly at Terry before she even thought about it. The expression on his face froze as he stopped mid-sentence, carefully looking around to find the source of his sudden discomfort. She saw his tiny line of fear grow a little bigger. With almost perverse pleasure, she grabbed that line, added it to the ones in the circle, and started to weave them all into the magic web to let the emotions become the strength of the force needed to fight the hurricane.

A frantic pull surprised Ryssa as Terry’s line of fear bulged in her hands, growing huge in comparison to the others. She looked over to see an expression of pure terror on the face of her foster brother. The line in her hand that represented his terror writhed in a frenzied attempt to pull away from the magic web. Ryssa dropped the line and it recoiled back to its point of origin.

I’m going to check on Mom. Terry hastily stumbled away from the living room while the circle of children watched in confusion.

Ryssa almost felt sorry that she had frightened him so badly. She really hadn’t meant to, but part of her was secretly glad—it was definitely going to make things easier with him gone. His reaction was puzzling, but she didn’t have enough time to work it out. Now that she had detached from her body, she felt the essence of the storm looming on the horizon, putting them barely at the edge of the danger zone.

Movement outside the window drew her attention and she watched in fascination as the trees at the edge of the Chambly’s front yard bent under the force of the hurricane winds. Tall and slender cypress trees, their flexibility in the face of the winds gave them the appearance of bowing to the oncoming storm. Rain accompanied the winds, but it was sporadic, sometimes falling in a gentle drizzle and other times coming down in sideways sheets that blurred the scene outside.

":Ryss,:" Reggie’s voice came through the twin-bond to interrupt her distracted thoughts, :umm, do you think we could do something here?:

Ryssa snapped her attention back to the circle of magic, literally, at her fingertips. She finished what she had started by weaving the emotional lines into the web and letting their power feed its strength. The added force of the emotions caused the web to swell, to expand, and Ryssa let it grow into a wall of pure power.

With determination, she sent the wall of force into the direction of the storm, ready to meet it head on. Ryssa was so caught up in the movement of the magic she didn’t even realize when it hit the storm—its own power so solid that it physically shook her body when she slammed into it. Her head throbbed from the impact, and a groan escaped into the link that bound her to the others below.

":Ryss,:" Reggie’s voice called through the magic link this time, letting the others hear them. :What happened? Are you okay?:

":Yeah,:" Ryssa called back, trying to push the wall into the force of the storm. It wasn’t budging. :It felt like I ran head first into a tree:. She struggled with the magical web, trying to push the storm in any direction, but it pushed back, and Ryssa felt the loss of ground as it inched again in their direction.

":It isn’t working, Regg,:" the rising fear she felt communicated itself through the link. :What are we going to do? It isn’t working.:

":Keep trying, Ryss,:" Reggie tried to be encouraging, but she could hear the concern in his voice. :You’re the only hope we have left.:

":Gee, thanks,:" Ryssa shot back sarcastically. :No pressure, right?:

":None at all, kidlet,:" she heard Jet’s voice joke through the link, but his tone, like Reggie’s, was strained.

":Detach further,:" Darkwind’s voice whispered into her distracted mind. :Take yourself above it all so you can see what you’re doing.:

":I’m stepping out, guys,:" Ryssa let the others know. With minimal effort, she took her spirit self out through the roof of the Chambly house and shot up into the sky. She looked below at the silver line that connected her astral body to her physical one.

It’s amazing, she thought to herself. I get dizzy looking down from the top of a stepladder when I’m in my physical body, but this is actually kind of cool.

She turned her eyes toward the storm. Her breath caught in amazement at the beauty of it—and at its immense size. It was a wall. It was a solid wall of white, spinning slowly around a wide, open space in the center. Ryssa was mesmerized for a moment, watching the clouds circle around each other, non-stop. A surge of pressure pushed against Ryssa and she saw the storm inch forward.

Ryssa looked again and saw another wall, a little to the south, pushing the storm away from the center of population nearest New Faery. But that pushed the storm’s path in a straight line for Reggie and Ryssa and all of the others below her, sitting in a house that she was pretty certain wouldn’t stand up to the beating of the hurricane force winds.

Annoyed, Ryssa looked at the wall she had created with the help of those below. It was so tiny in comparison to the storm—heck, it was even small in comparison to the one that she knew was created by the Storm elders of New Faery. What was she going to do to fight against that?

":Why fight it?:" Darkwind asked into the turmoil of her mind. :Why not blend with it and attack it from the inside?:

":What?:" Ryssa asked incredulously. ":How am I supposed to do that?:"

":How are you supposed to do what, Ryss?:" Reggie asked. :Is everything okay?:

":Yeah,:" Ryssa answered distractedly. :Darkwind and I are trying to figure out what to do.:

":Okay, if you’re sure…:" Reggie was hesitant. Ryssa ignored him and focused on the Sprite.

":See the lines of power wrapped into the storm?:" Darkwind asked.

Ryssa looked and saw lines of the same color as the magical wall––purple, blue and bits of green. She was puzzled.

":I hadn’t noticed those before,:" she said absently. Then a sudden thought struck her. ":Hey—this isn’t a natural storm—someone really is sending them to attack New Faery.:"

":It is a natural storm,:" Darkwind corrected. ":But someone else has blended their magic with the storm to control it. Or rather, they have put their magic into the storm. They didn’t blend it properly or else the Storm elders would have never had a chance.:"

":If they have a clue and they didn’t get it right,:" Ryssa was agitated, :how am I supposed to do it?:

":Just close your eyes and let the magic come to you—give yourself over to it,:" Darkwind instructed. :You’ll know what to do.:

":Uh, yeah, sure, okay.:" Ryssa rolled her eyes inwardly. ":That’s easy for you to say:."

But she quickly found how easy it really was. Ryssa closed her eyes—or at least shut out the sight of the overwhelming task in front of her. Almost immediately, her senses heightened to the magic. She felt it all around her, the lines and the energy everywhere. In her state of awareness, the distinction between the separate magics lessened. There was no Air magic, no Water magic, no Earth magic, and no emotion. It was all pure magic, pulled from a seemingly single source.

Ryssa let go completely and let the magic wrap around and through her. She let the essence of her spirit melt into the magic until she felt one with it—as though she were the magic. It was an incredible feeling of power and she reveled in it, merged with it and became one with it. And Darkwind had been right. She knew what she needed to do.

Taking all of the lines of magic—from the wall created by her group, from the wall created by the Storm elders, from the storm and from herself—she brought them together to encase the storm. Ryssa was reminded of Darkwind’s capture by her Uncle Aurelius. The Sprite was inside of and melded with a fireball sent to destroy her and her twin. Aurelius completely encased it in a sphere of water that he shrunk down against the ball of fire until it imploded, releasing the Sprite for Aurelius to capture. She used the same concept now, putting the storm into a sphere of pure magic that she started to condense down around the force of the hurricane.

At the edge of her awareness she felt another magic, separate from the others. It probed at the sphere around the hurricane. Ryssa sensed the moment it touched her essence and mingled with the other magics. She opened her eyes, letting in the sight of everything that surrounded her, everything she was a part of.

Two large eyes stared back at her with curiosity. Ryssa was reminded of the way Darkwind looked at her, curious, taking everything in. But these weren’t the wide, round eyes of a Sprite, these were more like the fathomless eyes of one of the Fey—of one of the Faery in particular. Ryssa blinked in surprise. Who is that? She wondered.

Then the look in the eyes changed. It went from open appraising curiosity to contempt. It was as though whoever it was had examined Ryssa and found her lacking. Ryssa felt the heat of emotion—embarrassment—rise to her face just before a powerful surge pushed outward against the sphere, trying to break the power that held it back.

The shock of the attempt didn’t last long for Ryssa. With determination, she clamped down on the magic sphere, tightening it, trying to force the storm inside to dwindle against the magic. The eyes that stared at her looked surprised at first and then calculating.

Ryssa felt a slight shift in the magic—in the lines coming from the storm. They wrapped around her essence, trying to choke it off from her physical body. She felt suffocated, although her spirit didn’t actually breathe. And pain—the pain ripped through her and hummed across the magical net so intensely that a scream was torn from her—a scream echoed by the cries of the people still connected to her by the link of magic.

":Ryss!:" Reggie cried out to her through that link. :Are you okay? Ryssa? Answer me!:

She thought about not answering and then changed her mind. Her anger built and she called out to her twin and the others through the link.

":I’m under attack,:" she said with deliberate detachment. ":If you guys can’t give me everything you’ve got, right now, then we’re done for:."

Ryssa immediately felt the surge of magic combined with love, protection, and fear pour through her from the others below. No more questions. They gave it all to her without hesitation. Ryssa felt humbled by their complete trust in her. The look she turned toward the eyes now was cold and unfeeling, and yet the anger that wrapped itself around the edges was the fuel to feed the magic.

She took all of the magic around her and all of the magic sent to her and poured it into the sphere. Ryssa wasted no time in shrinking it down around the bulk of the storm. The eyes held a look of surprise and then fear. Ryssa could feel the other person struggle, but it did no good. At the last instant, Ryssa slammed the size of the sphere to a pinpoint. The eyes widened, and then bulged, and then they just disappeared. Ryssa let go of the magic and felt her essence slam back into her body, the recoil of letting go so quickly driving her away from the implosion of the storm.

When she opened her eyes this time, her physical eyes, she was staring at the ceiling of the Chambly living room from a position of laying flat on her back. The others huddled over her with looks of concern