by Laura Winter
Nate tried to grab me again but I walked forward to dodge his grasp. As he spun around the corner behind me, the floor creaked. The woman straightened just as Nate grabbed the hem of my sleeve. His grip released as soon as the woman turned around smiling.
“Mom,” I whispered.
Suddenly I lost the ability to move. My legs wouldn’t move forward as I stared at the woman I only knew from the police report of her death and the brief memory I had seen when Finnley stole the Blue Soul. How could I tell her that I didn’t actually know her?
“Baby girl, your eyes are blue,” she said.
My mouth opened but no words came out as she glided forward. Her hand reached up to my cheek, running it down my neck to pull my necklace chains out. I was still frozen as she played with the charm Nate had gotten me, followed by the large key that hung lower.
“You were always obsessed with keys.” She smiled up at me again but her face turned into a frown. “Baby girl, what’s wrong?”
Tears were rolling down my cheeks as she reached up again, using her thumbs to brush them away as she held my face.
“I lost everything, all of my memories. I lost every piece of you,” I choked, trying to stay composed. She wrapped her arms around and pulled me close.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. Come now, we both have a lot of explaining to do.” She tried to let go of me but I hung on and she laughed. “Sweetie, I think it’s time to introduce me to your boyfriend. He looks a little uncomfortable right now.”
I straightened and let go of her, sniffing and wiping my sleeves over my face. Nate was quiet as he stepped forward, his left hand sliding around my back.
“Mom, this is—”
She cut me off. “Oh, honey, I was kidding. I know exactly who Nate is.” She jumped forward and hugged him. For a second Nate was confused but eventually reached his arms around her. She leaned back, holding his shoulders. “Sorry, maybe that wasn’t the best time to play a joke. I hope you put up with hers too.”
Nate smiled. “I see where she gets it now.”
“Mom. How?” I mumbled, still trying to wrap my head around all of this.
Her dark green eyes stared back at me as she motioned for us to sit at the table. She placed three cups of coffee on the table, pushing the sugar jar in front of mine. Nate chuckled at the gesture as I slid my chair closer to him. My mom, who was definitely not dead, sat down across from us and didn’t take her eyes off me.
“So, my story. I guess you won’t remember that my power is healing. Jeanie warned me of your plan, and that she had changed your path so you’d have a few more months to live happily. But I was afraid that the man who followed you would get in the way. Long story short, I healed and went missing from the morgue.” She paused and took a sip of her coffee. I was shocked that she casually brushed over her death. I was already feeling the panic building, knowing I’d have to explain mine too. “I didn’t know you survived that night. I thought that either the man or your father had killed you.”
“Why did you come here?” Nate leaned back in the chair.
“Because when you two were both born with powers, I did what I could to find the answers. I found this place several years ago, but that’s where the information ended. I knew the who and where, not the how and why. Will the rest of the book tell me more?”
I glanced at Nate. She didn’t know about Isaac and Kinsie’s powers yet. And she didn’t know about the Blue Soul and Cold Soul.
“Mom, how did you know we were meant for each other?” I asked, looking back at her.
She looked confused. “You two were born with powers, that’s never been heard of. When you told me at The Trials you were looking for Nate, I realized it was fate. That’s what Jeanie meant when she said you would be happy. That’s why I chased after you, because I wanted you to have that. Or is there something more?”
Nate nudged me and I knew what he meant. We reached up at the same time, pulling off our keys and sliding our sleeves up. She gasped and yanked our arms across the table, spilling coffee over the edges of all our cups.
“You should probably read the rest of that book,” Nate said, shifting up in his seat as my mom pulled our arms closer to her.
“Why don’t you give me the cliff-notes?” She said as she released our wrists and we slid our sleeves back down.
“There are no cliff-notes. It’s a full-on, one hundred page thesis.” I shrugged.
I recapped as much as I could, starting with the returned memory of The Trials and then my actual four-month-long memory. Nate and I meeting, all of my headaches and outbursts, putting the Blue Soul back together and our new power, all the information we started to find, how Nate used his powers to keep me from destroying things, Aidan and Richard, up until meeting Angie and then…
My chest tightened and I gripped at the table. I could never forget the scene burned into my mind. The knife, my hands, the blue blood. Nate pulled my hand off the edge of the table and slid his wrist under my fingers. My mom watched our interaction carefully because I couldn’t talk anymore, even with the buzzing energy I felt through Nate’s skin. He was prepared and continued for me.
He recounted his dream, how the Cold Soul tricked him into letting it out. He reassured my mom that he would do it all over again to save me, even if he let two Cold Souls out. But now we knew how to stop them, thanks to the book and our discoveries at The Complex.
I released my grip on Nate’s wrist and he flexed his fingers. I had been holding on a lot stronger than I realized. He saw me staring at the red hand mark I had left on his skin and slid his fingers through mine.
It’s okay.
I leaned my head on his shoulder and focused on my mom. She was looking at us but deep in thought. “I have a theory.” She scrunched her nose just like I did when I was deep in thought. There were so many mannerisms that were like mine and it pained me that I couldn’t actually remember her.
“Theories are welcome,” Nate said, rubbing his thumb over the back of my hand.
She ran her finger over her chin. “Why do you think people called it the Blue Star before now? Don’t answer, I’m going to continue. A blue star, in the real stars, is bright and hot and has a short lifespan. The explosions are violent supernovas and often turn into black holes.”
I looked at her like she was crazy. “They said it wasn’t the Blue Star, they called it a Soul. Two different powers, two different souls shoved into the same source. Where are you going with this?”
“Black hole.” She pointed to Nate. “Absorbs everything around it. Kinsie trying to contain the Cold Soul. Nate pulling your headaches and pain away.” She pointed to me now. “Supernova. Explosions. Violent, powerful shockwaves. Isaac’s punch, sending the power back inside. Your outbursts.”
“That’s nice. I’m violent and explosive,” I groaned.
“No, C, I think I get it,” Nate said, looking at me.
“C?” Mom questioned Nate, but he continued.
“The extra power we have isn’t the Blue Star. The power source is the Blue Soul. We, together, are the Blue Star. In broad terms, I contain your explosions and you counteract so I don’t pull everything in with me. We keep each other grounded, constantly. That’s what we feel when we touch.”
“Yes, that’s where I was going with this. You called her C?” My mom leaned forward but we ignored her question.
I frowned. “Mom, why would the Cold Soul want to recharge the objects?”
She looked disappointed that we were avoiding her question but she responded. “A soul, Cold or not, is essentially life. But you can’t just create that energy to recharge the sources out of nothing. It has to come from somewhere.”
It clicked in my head. “The Cold Soul wanted Kinsie to create the black hole. Isaac couldn’t contain it if he wasn’t there. It absorbed the powers back from everyone in the village. If they took any power, it got returned, and if no one had powers, no one could put the Cold Soul back.” I turned to Nate, excited that we finally had a
nswers.
He was putting it all together too, his eyes widening. “But Kinsie and Isaac survived, not part of the Cold Soul’s plan. They still had their powers because they were born with them. They used their powers, an explosion and a black hole, to contain the Cold Soul inside the power source. They had to use the extra power source because they were about to die and it was the strongest available.”
“You said the source was destroyed. How can you contain the Cold Soul without its original power source?” Mom asked.
“We use the one that Isaac left empty; the Blue Soul’s original source. We know we need our powers to hold it, but it should be a lot easier for us since we are basically extra strength right now.” I stood up at the same time as Nate and he joined in on my next sentence.
“We need to get back to The Complex.”
My mom stood up across from us and leaned over the table. “First, one of you better explain why Nate keeps calling you ‘C’.”
60
Clara
My mom drove us back to the dingy cabin, knowing Nate’s parents would be pissed if we left their car out in the middle of nowhere. On the way there, I had to explain my new name. I suppose I could have gone back to Finnley, but it just didn’t feel right to me when I still didn’t have those memories. Mom didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t using the name she gave me but she admitted it might take some getting used to.
“I suppose you picking the name Clara Rivers shouldn’t surprise me. You chose the best two Doctor Who characters to model yourself after.” She turned to look at me in the passenger seat. “Wait, you do remember Doctor Who, right?”
So she was the one who showed it to me. I shrugged. “Yes. Well, no. I don’t remember it, but Nate made me watch it, so kind of.”
Nate poked me from the back seat. “Made you? You loved it.”
“Alright, yes. And Star Wars,” I laughed.
“Oh, that one was your obsession alone. I’m surprised you didn’t choose the name Quinn. Quentin was always your favorite character from The Magicians. I could never pull you away from that book.” Mom smiled as she looked over at me. “You still seem like you… I know that probably doesn’t mean much when you have nothing to compare it to.”
“Yeah, tell me about all the trouble she used to get into. She still seems to have a knack for that,” Nate said, leaning forward between my mom and I.
“You mean besides sneaking out after dark to break into a library? I suppose there are worse things, like blowing up a building,” Mom laughed. “I used to think she did all those things to piss her dad off, but I guess that was more of the Cold Soul fighting in her head. Still, there was no stopping my little rebel.”
“You weren’t mad at me?” I asked, surprised.
“Of course I was mad at you. You blew up a building as a ‘scientific experiment’ in the middle of the night. But you also never did anything that put anyone else in danger. You were strange, and no one understood you, but you were never evil.”
“Like dad was?” I asked, folding my arms.
Mom sighed. “He wasn’t always. I think he was a little jealous of you being born with powers. His power was the only thing he had worked for and you got it without trying. I think he probably tried to use you to get more, and he roped Aidan into helping him.”
Nate groaned in the back seat at the mention of Aidan. As we pulled up to the cabin, I turned around to kiss him before he got out.
“I love you.” I smiled at him.
“Always forever.” He winked and slid out, letting me stay so I could keep talking to my mom.
We pulled out behind him and followed as he drove out toward the highway. We still had another two hours before we got back, and it would be well past midnight. The night was clear and the stars sparkled as I leaned against the window. I could see my mom’s reflection looking at me, dimly lit by the dashboard.
“What?” I asked. It was easy to block out thoughts now but it didn’t mean I wasn’t interested in listening in on them.
“Lots of things. Your eyes for starters.”
“The power source did it. I don’t know why my key doesn’t hide them. I did the same charm for Nate and it worked on his.” I frowned but I didn’t actually mind the blue. It was the only color I knew.
“I wouldn’t know either.” She reached her hand out and held mine. “So tell me about Nate. I didn’t see him grow up. Angie sent him and Tom away from The Complex shortly after he was born, thinking he didn’t have powers. I was the only one who knew about him.”
“He grew up with a normal life. I mean, besides his parents not really being around. He and his best friend both had powers but they kept it secret. The three of us were doing fine until we met Richard and Aidan.”
“Oh, please tell me Nate is better than Aidan.”
“Even without my memories I can tell you he absolutely is. It’s not just the connection we share,” I said, smiling as I watched the taillights of his car. I wondered if he was listening in. Sometimes I couldn’t block my thoughts from him, even if I tried. “He has done so much for me, and I almost feel terrible that I dragged him into this.”
“Sweetie, he was in this long before you both knew it. All you can do now is stay together.” She paused. “You do want to stay together, yes?”
I looked at her, surprised she would ask that. “Of course we do.”
She laughed. “I’m just checking. You’ve only been together for four months. That must be one powerful connection.”
“Kinsie and Isaac had the same one. You were right, we were meant to be together.”
Mom shared some of her favorite stories and filled in more of my past. Even without my memories, I could still picture everything she described since I had seen The Complex and I could easily see myself doing the things Finnley did.
Apparently when I tricked that guard so I could steal his keys, I forgot to shut off the building alarm. They caught me climbing out a window on the second floor. No one could explain how I reached it, and I wouldn’t tell them either. They had to get a ladder to force me down off the roof because I kept climbing up and away from Richard as he tried to wrangle me in front of a crowd of people. I had to help out in the library for two months as my punishment. That’s probably how I met Jeanie.
Then, when I blew up the building in the middle of the night, everyone ran up to see me just sitting in the middle of the rubble, scribbling in my notebook and laughing like a total psycho. Not only was I performing a scientific experiment, I was documenting every reaction that came as a result of my crazy actions. Those notes probably included everyone’s thoughts too.
I was clearly fueling my dad’s hate for me. I may have been defiant of him because I watched him kill Nate in my dreams, but I was only making it worse. The older I got, the more trouble I got into and the worse I was to the people around me. I had no more friends and people started to hate me, pitying my parents for having to deal with the actions of a crazy child. Even the doctor, who ran a brain scan to see if my headaches and behavior were a result of something, concluded that I was just a pain in the ass and somehow a brilliantly functioning insane person. The brain scan was probably where Richard got the idea to use a tumor to trick us the day we went to his house.
We followed Nate off the exit and through the rocky path. Without light, it was hard to see anything except what was directly in front of the cars. But as we got closer to The Complex, my stomach started to churn. There was an eerie orange glow in front of us, getting brighter through the trees and Nate started to speed up.
Clara, my parents.
He slammed on the brakes as he entered the parking lot. His door flew open and he jumped out without turning off the car. I didn’t wait for my mom to stop the car before I had done the same, sprinting to catch up with him.
The Complex buildings were engulfed in flames, smoke billowing and blocking out the night sky. There were no screams, no people around, just the sound of fire cracking around us. The Assembly buildi
ng was already crashing to the ground, sending creaks and roars through the night.
“Angie! Tom!” I screamed as I gained ground on Nate. He was running toward the apartment building like he was going to run inside. But something else caught my eye as I finally snagged the back of Nate’s sweatshirt to stop him from running. He fought me for a second before he saw the figures in the middle of the plaza.
The Cold Souls stood over his parents, Finnley pressing her hand hard into Tom’s shoulder while the evil Nate had the same grip on Angie. Black blood dripped down their scars and over Angie and Tom’s shoulders. They watched as we got closer, not moving or releasing their grip. When we got too close, Finnley stuck her other hand out and I walked into an invisible wall.
