“I also have a degree in philosophy, but I don’t like to mention it because modern day humans have twisted many of the details about my old pals—”
“Pals?” Ackerly said. “You were friends with philosophers?”
Tray lightly backhanded his roommate’s arm. “Don’t promote his insanity. He’s just trying to distract us so Floretta doesn’t have to expose Ashna’s plans.”
“If I tell you what she’s up to, you’ll want to help her,” Floretta said without a hint of doubt. “I may have pledged myself to the Affinities for Freedom, but I hold no allegiance to Danny. In truth, I’ve betrayed him, and if he discovers Ashna’s here—if he comes here—he’ll kill me as fast as he’ll kill her.”
“Well, he’s on the way, so you’d better stop being ambiguous and just explain the plan.”
“Danny—is coming here?” Floretta practically retched the words.
“That is the rumor I’ve been hearing,” a smooth voice chimed in. Then, before he could turn, an orb of water covered Tray’s mouth and nose, rendering him breathless. Everyone else in the room soon had a glob of water around their faces as well—except for Nixie, who stood between Eliana and Lavisa in the doorway, hands twirling maliciously.
“This town barely survived three of those Wackos; I doubt we could survive more,” she said, entering the room with gradual, calculating steps. “So, if you’ve betrayed the Wackos, Floretta dear, I assume you’ll be the perfect peace offering for them. Let them kill you instead of all of us—a noble sacrifice, wouldn’t you say?”
Floretta’s expression was nonplussed, but with the water surrounding her mouth, there was nothing she could say.
“Come along,” Nixie beckoned, retreating into the doorway once more. Lavisa’s fists clenched, barely suppressing a punch. “We’ll want to meet them at the front gates. And you primies ought to come as well. I’ve been instructed by the Rosses not to let you out of my sight, just in case you get any wild ideas to free Stromer and Periculy from jail.”
Tray tried to speak, allowing water into his mouth, at which he gagged and flailed. Rolling her eyes, Nixie moved the orb of water an inch away from his face. “Make it quick, Stark.”
“Calder and Nero,” Tray wheezed, hacking up water. “They’re in jail, too.”
“I know,” she snapped, smothering his airways with the water once more, “and I don’t care. My brother and my boyfriend are idiots. I won’t let them stay in jail forever, but they at least need to be locked up long enough for me to save this town without any of their stupid help. I don’t intend to be Nero’s bitch forever. Now, let’s move, shall we? Oh, and don’t try to fight back. I won’t hesitate to drown every one of you.”
34
Villains Galore
Hours had passed since Angor froze Adara and Mitt in place. Even though she wasn’t commanding her muscles, her body ached with soreness from hours of standing, and all she wanted was to drop onto her metal slab and take a glorious nap.
“How is it fair, Majesty, that you get to sleep all night and Mitt and I have to stand here like statues?” Adara prompted, not for the first time. The officer’s head was tilted as if he’d fallen asleep standing, but Angor, though his eyes were closed, had the audacity to smirk.
“I don’t believe it’s fair, Adara, but as I’ve reiterated, the choice is yours.”
She gritted her teeth, wishing he could see her venomous scowl. The stubborn side of her never wanted to give up, never wanted to cave to his manipulation, but the lazy side… “Fine. My ears are open. Tell us, exactly, how you can control minds but you’re not the one who killed Hastings. This should be a real test of your lying abilities.”
“Unfortunately”—Angor yawned into a sitting position—“Officer Telum has drifted into the land of dreams, so he will not be able to hear.”
“Okay, then screw Mitt and tell me. He doesn’t deserve to know anyway. I do. We’re—” Internally cursing herself, she clamped her mouth shut. The small smile that materialized on Angor’s lips implied he knew what she’d been about to say: friends. His soft expression reinforced the fact that, somehow, over the past month, Adara had actual come to like this strange man, as if he were a fun uncle of hers. She only had to try to move her limbs to know that fun had become evil.
“Well, spit it out before I make you,” she demanded. “I might not be able to move, but I think we all know what happens when someone pisses me off.”
With a brief chuckle, Angor stood from his slab and fixed his attention on Mitt. Before Adara could conjure a quip about how creepy he looked, the former principal mentally forced the officer to walk into the front lobby. The movements were so fluid that it almost seemed like Mitt controlled himself—except his head still lolled to the side.
“I’ll allow Officer Telum to take a nap on his cot. Is that kind enough for you?” Angor questioned, pink eyebrows perking.
“I think that’s the first time anyone’s ever asked for my judgment on kindness. If I ever see Tray again I’ll have to rub it in his face that someone actually values my opinion on morality.”
“You’ll see the Starks again. I’m not going to kill you, Adara.” Sighing, he plopped onto her metal slab and then used his mind controlling powers to walk her over and seat her beside him.
“Ew, this is weird…” Scrunching her nose, she pointedly swiveled her face away from him. “What, are you going to tell me a bedtime story?”
“This would be a rather lame bedtime story,” he said, staring at the ground, “considering all of the holes in my mind… I will force you to sit here, but I will not force you to look at me—mostly because I fear that controlling the muscles close to your head will interfere with your brain to a debilitating extent.”
“How merciful of you… Okay. Talk. I’ll try not to interrupt.”
From the corner of her eye, he appeared unconvinced, but he plunged on regardless. “This…ability feels very new to me. I’ve been practicing over the past few weeks, and I have become quite proficient, but it does not feel like an Affinity I am rediscovering. I don’t think I had this Affinity before we were imprisoned—”
“If I was going to interrupt, I’d say it’s awfully convenient that you just happened to acquire this Affinity after the death that was caused by this Affinity—but I’m not interrupting.”
To his credit, Angor actually continued without any hint of annoyance. “Since I lack the proper materials to research, I haven’t been able to deduce the full scientific analysis of this ability, but with my previous knowledge, I can conclude that I must have a connection to people’s upper motor neurons.”
Adara blinked, finally meeting his eyes, just to give him the driest, cheekiest expression she could muster. “Are you trying to make me hate you, or are you naturally as irritating as Nerdworm?”
“I can control nerve cells in the brain,” he explained patiently. “Nerve cells that can force your muscles to start or stop moving. However, I don’t harness the ability to trigger your Affinity. I have tried, I admit, to no avail. When I first discovered that I could force your muscles to move, I feared I had actually been the cause of Hastings’s death, but I cannot control minds, Adara, only bodies. If I did command Hastings to kill the Rosses, he used his Affinity of his own volition—which, of course, seems unlikely.”
“Mm, an interesting story, Periculy,” she hummed, studying him through slivered eyes. “You could easily be lying about your ability to control minds, though. And your whole, ‘I didn’t have this Affinity until a few weeks ago’ claim sounds like bullshit. You knew your Affinity before the incident. Unless your Affinity changed, you had to have known.”
After a long minute of pensiveness, Angor said, “The science of Affinities is not stagnant. We are constantly discovering new knowledge pertaining to the properties of our chromosomes, the range of our powers. Though I have never heard of such a case, it does seem…possible that my Affinity might have morphed during a traumatic situation.
“Let’
s say, for instance, that my Mental Affinity before was related to nerve cells in some fashion. Then my son, Hastings, finds himself in a predicament where he cannot control his mind, and therefore cannot control his body. In my desperation, I try to coax him to stop what he’s doing, but my Affinity doesn’t extend that far. Wouldn’t a chromosome that exists to adapt to harmful stimuli then give me the ability to control nerve cells in a way that I never had before? Couldn’t my Affinity evolve into something greater?”
Adara’s lips curled churlishly. “I don’t know why you’re asking me, man. I have no freakin’ clue.”
Exhaling, he leaned back against the wall. “It’s just something to think about. I have to consider all options at this point, since so much is still unknown to me… Should I expect you to betray me in court tomorrow?”
“I don’t think you should expect anything from me ever,” she countered, but her hostility quickly withered as she loosed a breath and shook her head. “I won’t betray you, okay? If you go down, I’ll probably go down with you, whether I want to or not. Being on your side is the only thing I’m certain of in this whole shitstorm. The rest—the Rosses, Nero, the Pixie Prince—”
“Talking about me as usual, Stromer?”
Adara whipped her head—the only mobile part of her body—toward the doorway, through which Calder and Nero now entered. Donning dark sweatshirts and jeans, the duo looked as intimidating as always. The complacent edge to his expression made Adara wonder if he’d come to drown her. On his own he wouldn’t have, but with Nero, his morals were not his own.
The boys didn’t saunter in with their typical swagger, though; instead, they were constricted by handcuffs.
Adara found it difficult not to let the pure elation swelling in her show—and the pure dread. What would happen at the trial if Nero wasn’t there to oppose the Reggs? What would happen if Calder wasn’t there to support her? Not that she expected him to, but the prospect of enduring the trial without him—especially if none of her friends were allowed to attend—was daunting.
“We were just making a list of the people we’re gonna kill when we win tomorrow’s trial.” Adara gifted Calder with a maniacal smirk that didn’t reflect her conflicted mood. As she spoke, Angor silently released her tensed muscles; she tried not to look surprised as she hopped off the metal slab and stretched out the stiffness. When she peered back in Angor’s direction, there was a warning in his eyes. Though she was tempted to divulge his incriminating Affinity to the three new arrivals, she knew Nero would be a potential enemy in court—and Calder might be, too.
“What are you doing, Weaponizer?” Adara asked, noting that Mitt, as he escorted the boys, used Nero as a human shield. Upon their arrival, the officer must have awoken from his nap, and though Angor had relented his hold on his muscles, he obviously hadn’t forgotten. He now poked his head out from behind Nero’s massive body, eyes flashing fearfully, as if the man would start controlling his neurons as soon as Nero wasn’t in the way.
“Just—bringing in some new prisoners,” Mitt coughed, his hands shaking when he unlocked the cell across the hall.
“Ah, finally,” Adara crooned, eyeing the manacles on the boys’ wrists like they were delectable donuts. “The day has finally come—or night, technically.”
She assumed Calder would be chagrined by this situation, but his demeanor remained fairly mild, a secret smirk on his lips even as he was ushered behind bars.
“You’re pretty wet, aren’t you, Demoness?” he mused, eyes roving her body, then the puddle in the corner from the fire extinguisher. She should have expected him to notice the water—to sense it or feel it. Without control over her body, the warmth of her Affinity had failed to dry it over the past few hours, and so she’d remained soggy and wet, to Calder’s delight. “You must have been thinking about me a little too long, hm?”
Nero’s jaw clenched at the blatant flirtation, but Adara barked out a laugh, playing it off as meaningless banter even though it roused the embers in her core.
“What’d you two idiots do to get thrown in here? Did the Rosses discover your treacherous plan?”
Nero’s eyes narrowed, his big head swiveling toward his cellmate, his ally. “What plan?”
For the first time, perhaps ever, Adara wished she had the ability to think before she spoke.
“I don’t know, Stromer,” Calder said, cool and smooth. “What plan?”
“Seth said I’m indebted to you because he’s an idiot,” Adara explained as flatly as she could. “I assume this means you don’t want me going to federal prison, and therefore wouldn’t agree with the Rosses’ plot to incriminate me. I am capable of gathering information from people other than Mardurus, you know. Your asshole of an ally doesn’t even deign to visit me.”
Calder’s lips slid upward, perhaps at how easily the lies rolled off her tongue, or perhaps in gratitude for not ratting him out. Or perhaps because he’d been the one to visit her most, and he knew it.
“Ah,” Nero said, relaxing into her lie, “you’ve heard about the debt, then? Oh, do I have plans for you, Stromer—glorious plans. This is a bit of a setback, though.” Nose twitching in displeasure, he nodded around the cell. “But I’ll figure it out.”
“Huh. Well, for your sake I hope you do. For my sake…I don’t really care. Your plans won’t interfere with mine.” Adara shot a conspiratorial glance back at her cellmate. Angor, of course, was bemused, but she would explain soon.
“I don’t think anyone’s plans for the trial will matter considering the courthouse will probably be ash in the morning,” Calder said. “The Wackos are on their way here as we speak. Turns out Unicorn Fairy’s the leader’s sister. Your plant friend was pathetically heartbroken. Suppose it won’t matter how he feels if Ashna kills him, though.”
“Ashna is a Wacko?” The revelation opened a dark chamber of vengeance within her. “She lied to Greenie? She actually—ha!” Calder blinked his lazy eyes as she erupted into a fit of angry laughter. Ackerly might have been a naive fool, but he was Adara’s naive fool, and for someone to have taken advantage of him… “I will devour her like a rainbow sprinkled donut.”
Calder’s face twisted into about ten different expressions before he finally said, “Sounds entertaining for me.”
“There will not be one sprinkle left once I’m done with her—not even a lick of icing.”
“I can’t tell if she’s making death threats or sexual innuendos,” Nero commented, at which Calder tilted his chin in contemplative agreement.
Mitt’s silver eyes popped like coins. “Definitely death threats.” Her hands hadn’t exploded with flames, but the water logged in her clothes now steamed off her. The Pixie Prince beamed greedily.
“I will burn her for hurting Greenie,” Adara growled, and she meant it. She hated fire—she hated her Affinity—but she would gladly use it to avenge Ackerly.
“Cool the rage, Stromer,” Nero huffed, glowering at her through the bars. “Save it for later—once you’re under my authority. I’ll make sure your wrath isn’t misplaced.”
“I think she should keep channeling the anger,” Calder said, disregarding his master’s bristling incredulity. “Burn us out of here, Stromer. You know you want to.”
“No one’s burning anything.” Mitt gave Adara a hard glare. Normally, it wouldn’t have quelled her emotions, but she knew the dangers of her own power—and the dangers of Angor’s. In a room with this many volatile Affinities, she knew it was best not to act too impulsively, however boring the inaction seemed.
“Nixie will free us,” Nero insisted. “She’ll come as soon as the Rosses tell her where we are. She knows this town will be doomed without us.”
Angor slid off Adara’s metal slab and joined her near the bars. Mitt shrunk back as far as he could without leaving the hall completely. “You were serious about the Wackos invading? They’re truly on the way? With what purpose?”
“The leader thinks we stole Ashna or something.” Calder shrugged. “
He seemed pissed about it.”
“Daniel’s fury is never a positive thing,” Angor muttered, stroking his chin as he ruminated. “The boy has a reactive Affinity. Essentially, he’s a bomb. Some say his abilities include nuclear reactions, but I can’t recall if that’s true…”
Adara’s lips pursed. “He’s a terrorist with a bomb Affinity? How fitting.”
“You can imagine why the Wackos are so revered…” Angor stared between the bars as if he could see the world’s mysteries unfolding between the metal. “And Ashna… I can’t seem to remember Zacchaeus and Daniel having a sister, but it’s quite possible her existence has been blocked with my other memories… So then, Ashna came here with the intention of luring her brother for destructive purposes—why? What does she have against this town? What are her motives?”
“How are we supposed to know?” Nero’s aggression wavered slightly at Angor’s stern gaze. Adara wondered what the hell the man had done with his weird muscle controlling Affinity to scare Nero. “All I know is that we got thrown in jail when the town’s about to be attacked because I threw a party.”
Adara covered the lower half of her face with her hand as she snorted through her nose. “That’s why you’re here? Well, the Rosses are certainly notorious for overreacting. All I did was almost burn a few people to ash and look where they put me. But, hey—how come you never threw parties when I was around? I’d be the life of the party—probably.”
Calder’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve never been to a party?”
“I’ve never been invited to a party, though I have been to several—at Kiki’s house, of course. Dumped chili powder into the drinks one time, which was fun.”
“I wonder why they all hated you,” Mitt mumbled. Adara’s temper flared, but she didn’t reply before the officer’s radio beeped.
“Mitt—we need you out here by the gate,” a woman’s voice crackled through the speaker. It was probably the security officer, Ira, who Adara still teased Mitt about on a regular basis. She would have cracked a joke now if the lady didn’t sound so frazzled. “I see the Wackos’ vans coming. There’s gotta be twenty of them—we don’t stand a chance. The Rosses are assembling the students, but they look weak, and I doubt any of the families in town will be much help. I tried to get that water girl—Nixie—to gather some of the stronger kids for me, but then she ran off claiming she has an idea to save the town—”
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