Read The Eighth Guardian for Free Online

and her tendrils of light-brown spiral curls follow. Now she’s laughing, turning back around, and—
    She sees me.
    I freeze.
    But that doesn’t change the fact that she sees me. She reaches out and points.
    “What’s that?” she asks her father. “That boy with the long hair. What is he wearing?”
    I bristle at being called a boy, but only for a second. I push off the wall and run as fast as my legs will carry me back down the street I came from. I stop halfway and sink down so that I’m sitting with my back against a black door in the middle of a redbrick wall.
    What the hell is going on? Seriously. I look down into my lap. That girl back in the courtyard thought I was a boy. It wouldn’t be the first time. I have a boyish frame—no hips, no chest—and I put on muscle really easily. But my hair is long right now. I never get mistaken for a boy when I have long hair. It has to be because of my clothes. I’m wearing my old Peel uniform: a white shirt, a navy blazer, and a pair of khaki pants I chose over a skirt because it was a little chilly.
    Pants.
    That girl thinks I’m a boy because I’m wearing pants.
    Who the hell mistakes a girl for a boy just because she’s wearing pants? What is this, the nineteenth century?
    A pit forms in my stomach. Of course not. That’s a ridiculous thought. But I can’t help letting myself think the obvious. That what Alpha said before was true. That he gave me the ability to travel back in time, and now I’m here—wherever this is—trapped in a different era.
    Your mission is simple , Alpha’s voice echoes in my head. Get back. Leave from the place where you started.
    Could it be possible? Could I actually be in a different time?
    No. No way. I’m being messed with. Alpha is trying to wear me down for some reason I haven’t figured out yet. He wants something from me. This is an elaborate setup with a bunch of people in period costume meant to throw me off guard.
    Well, that’s not going to happen. All I have to do is determine where I am, and I’ll be out of here so fast Alpha won’t know what hit him.
    I stand up, take a breath, and walk to the other end of the alleyway, to where the guy in the horse-drawn carriage was. Another horse clomps down the street in front of me, but I shake my head and ignore it. Elaborate setup, I repeat in my head.
    I step out of the alley and immediately know where I am.
    Boston.
    I grew up in Vermont, but my mom would take me to the city to go shopping several times a year. Always in August to hit up Filene’s Basement right before school started. Always in December to buy Christmas gifts and ice-skate in the Common. And always one Saturday in the spring, at the first kiss of warmer weather. My mom would want to ride the swan boats in the Public Garden, though she’d never say anything as we drifted across the water. She’d close her eyes and inhale and do that thing she does where she purses her lips together really tight because she’s trying not to cry. And then I’d turn away and pretend to be looking at daffodils because my mom does that a lot and it never gets any easier to watch.
    I can see the lake in the Public Garden from where I’m standing. It’s to the right and down the hill. Boston Common is directly in front of me, and the huge dome of the Massachusetts State House is looming over me. But it’s not gold like it usually is. It’s only partly gold but mostly this dismal leaden-gray color. It almost looks like they’re in the middle of gilding it.
    That doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t need to be regilded. At least I don’t think it does.
    There’s a clomp-clomp-clomp sound getting louder. I look down the street and jump away as yet another horse-drawn carriage rides past. A small boy hangs out of the back.
    “Mummy,” he says. “Look at that boy in the funny pants. Why is his hair so long?”
    A young mother gasps from inside the carriage and smacks her son’s hand down.
    “James, you’re being