The Books of Magic #4: Consequences (AER) Chapter One "So you see, Molly, it's like this." Timothy Hunter took a deep breath and launched into his speech. "I am the greatest, most powerful magician of all time. At least"—he ducked his head modestly—"that's what they tell me." Tim paused and then groaned. You sound like a head-swollen, egomaniacal loon, he scolded himself. Timothy Hunter, the boy with the potential to wield extraordinary magic, skate-boarded back and forth in front of Molly O'Reilly's dilapidated house. He'd been doing it for about half an hour. He and Molly had planned to meet later, and he was determined to have this conversation today. He tried out different speeches as he carefully avoided the many cracks that spread like veins in the pavement. In this part of London, a bloke was lucky if the traffic lights worked and the garbage was picked up regularly. Asking for smooth asphalt was a bit much. Tim didn't mind—he developed his awesome boarding skills by learning not to let such obstacles trip him up. He arrived at the end of the street and rolled to a stop. "Try again," he told himself, picking up the board and turning it around. "Version number three hundred and twelve." He kicked himself along until he picked up speed, then balanced expertly as he dodged cracks, litter, and a mangy stray dog. "Okay, Molly, you're probably not going to believe me, but I swear on anything you like it's true," he declared. "I didn't believe it at first either. But these guys—I call them the Trenchcoat Brigade—came and gave me the heads up on being magic." He flipped up onto the sidewalk as a car drove past him, spraying some gray slush—the last bit of slush from the winter. "I've been to other worlds," he continued. "I even saved a few." He frowned. Every time he tried telling even imaginary Molly about some of the truly stupendous things he'd done, he had to stop. It sounded impossible and worse—it sounded like bragging. Then he wound up feeling like a total fake, because he wasn't always certain how he had done the things he had done. Take Free Country for instance, he thought. The kids there had kind of kidnapped him, wanting to use his power to save the place. But instead, he'd short-circuited everything. Literally—major power eruptions. The weirdest thing was, that was what ultimately saved them. Tim had protected that world by accident. He was glad he had—he just didn't know how he'd done it. What if Molly asked him to prove that he was magic? She was definitely an I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it kind of girl. Her down-to-earth, no-nonsense attitude was one of the qualities he liked best about her. That and the fact that she was super tough, really brave, and awfully funny. He liked her soft-looking hair and sparkling brown eyes. Even more important, she was someone he could talk to. Like when he found out that the man who raised him wasn't really his father. She'd come through aces when he'd told her. High marks in all categories. Only, even then, he had held something back. Something big. He didn't let her in on the fact that he had also found out who his real father was: a man named Tamlin, who lived in a completely different world called Faerie and could turn himself into a bird. Tim had left out that little feathered detail when he talked to Molly. "I should have told her everything right then," he muttered. Was she going to be angry that he'd waited so long to tell her? He'd never kept a secret like this from her before. It had been almost six months since the Trenchcoat Brigade episode, and she still didn't know. The snow was melting, the ground turned to soggy mud, and tiny little buds were starting their willful attempt to grow in this concrete and asphalt world, and still Tim had not told her. So much had happened so fast—time seemed to move differently for him now. It had moved differently that first day—or was it a first lifetime?—when the Trenchcoat Brigade had appeared out of nowhere to lay this whammy on him. They'd taken him to the past, the present, and even into the future, only to deposit him back in the here and now—only the here and now had been forever changed for him. "Here" now included unseen gates, passageways into other worlds, worlds that bordered on his own, and "now" meant one thing in this world and quite something else in any other. That made it hard to tell how much time had passed during any of his adventures. When Tim had saved Faerie from the grip of the evil manticore, Molly hadn't missed him at all. As far as she could tell, he'd been gone only a few short hours, yet Tim had been to death and back again. It had felt like days, weeks, even months. It was all so impossible, and yet it had all happened. No wonder he'd been having trouble finding the words to tell Molly. It was a delicate situation to explain. Tim tried it out loud. "I know you think you know me, but you don't, because I hardly know myself." He shook his head. That wasn't something a girl would like to hear. Yes, he thought, the words have to be just right. You make the choice to believe in magic, Tim mused. To be magic. To live in a magic world. But nothing turns out the way you expect. And you've got no one to turn to, no one to show you. No teacher. No parent. No one but yourself to count on—unless you tell Molly . . . The Books of Magic #4: Consequences (AER) . Copyright © by Carla Jablonski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Consequences by Carla Jablonski, Neil Gaiman, John Bolton All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. 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