by Ainsley Shay
He grabbed my upper arm. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I tore my arm free. “You know what it means,” I sneered.
“You don’t know anything,” he shot back.
The little fury beast backed out of her corner again. “There’s a lot I don’t know. But I do know that when times get tough, only cowards dig a hole and crawl into it to bury their heads.”
He glanced hard and fast from side to side. His mouth was set in a hard line. “Whatever,” he grumbled. Not sparing me another second, he hiked up his backpack and stomped away.
I was almost afraid to turn around for fear of seeing who else I would have to set straight at seven thirty in the morning. Thankfully, no one was there except the principal, and I didn’t think he needed me to lecture him on the proper way to treat people.
“Good morning, how are you?” I said as gracefully as I could.
He clasped his hands together. “Fine, Ms. Shade, thank you.”
“Great. Here too.” I whisked passed him.
“Not so fast, Ms. Shade.”
Easing into a slow shuffle before stopping completely, I turned around.
“How are things going?” he asked.
“Like I said, great. I’m here to talk to Mrs. Limpus.”
He nodded. “Excellent.” Unclasping his hands, he rested them at his sides. “Better get on then. The woman is very punctual, so I’m sure she is waiting for you.”
I took off without saying another word.
It only took all of three minutes to wrap up our meeting. I was on track, and she was impressed at how I was able to maintain a high grade-point average. She informed me I’d have no problem graduating and getting into almost any college I’d like to attend. I already knew all this, but it was still reassuring to hear.
I went to the small reading lounge they called a library, which had all of about three hundred books for the entire school. My class wouldn’t start for another period. Since I was all caught up with my schoolwork, I took the Legend of Veil Rock book out of my bag. I glanced through section after section, not knowing what I was searching for. I was so caught up in the book, I hadn’t heard the person approach.
“What are you reading?” a familiar silky voice asked.
“This morning just keeps getting better and better,” I muttered as I glanced up. “Hello, Taryn.”
She sat down across from me, propped her elbows on the desk, and rested her chin on her hands. “Legend of Veil Rock, huh?”
I ignored her. “Where’s Raiden?”
She half shrugged. “Out and about doing his own thing.”
“What do you want, Taryn?”
“I have to admit, I’m not really sure.” She giggled. “I just can’t seem to get you out of my head. Nothing good. Nothing bad. You just won’t leave.” Reaching over the book, she touched my hand. “Everly, I think we should be friends.”
The bell rang. “Fine, we’re friends. I have to get to—”
“And, as friends, there is something I want to show you. But—” She held up a finger. “I need to warn you, there are some who have witnessed it and think it’s the work of the devil. It’s not,” she finished dryly.
“Okay,” I said as a dull ache in the pit of my stomach warned me this wasn’t good. “I got to get to class. Can I meet you later?”
The corners of her mouth rose. “Sure.”
I wasn’t too convinced she was completely satisfied with my answer. But it didn’t matter.
Hartley didn’t even look in my direction in class. Cameron quickly glanced my way before facing the front of the room. It was perfect. I was all out of drama cards for the day, anyway. Mr. Greer reviewed our homework, asked if anyone needed any additional help, then started discussing circular motion and gravitation.
Cameron did a full-on glare at me then. I choked a little on my own saliva. So I could move air—what was the big deal? Everyone could technically; all someone had to do was run by a desk and papers would fly off. If someone waved their hand really fast, they could make someone’s hair float up. Big deal.
Ignoring him and my ridiculous excuses, I focused on Mr. Greer, took notes, and hoped we wouldn’t be assigned a ton of homework.
The time passed undesirably slow. When the bell rang, Hartley was the first out the door. Cameron lingered.
After I packed my bag, I walked by his desk.
“Hey,” he said.
I paused. “Yeah?”
He stood. “You were right,” was all he said before he hurried away.
Wow! My respect for Cameron just went up a few notches. I knew it hadn’t been easy for him to admit that to me. He had run away and now, maybe he wouldn’t.
The halls were crowded with students changing classes. I weaved through them, making my way to the exit.
“Where are you going?”
I looked over my shoulder to see Mina coming toward me. “Anywhere but here. Want to go?”
She looped her arm through mine. “Let’s go to Vegas,” she suggested. Her bleached hair was as wild as her expression.
The sun had already heated the day when we left the school.
“First off, I don’t know how to get to Vegas, and if I did, I’m not sure this car could make it.” I opened the door of the Volvo, motioning for her to get in on the other side. “I was thinking more along the lines of Poe’s for pizza or that burger place with the amazing fries.”
She sat in the passenger seat. “Anything will be better than listening to Mr. Imballa get all excited about ancient wars and crap that happened a thousand years ago.”
I started the engine. “So where to?”
“Chauffeur, I would be ever so grateful if you would take me to the Burger Joint,” she said in an English accent.
It was the first time that day I had laughed. Mina turned up the radio to some crappy station, then belted the song that may or may not have been in the top forty last century.
“How do you know that song?”
“My parents. They still live in the eighties when supposedly the best music lived. And that’s all they listen to, so after seventeen years, some of it kind of sticks.”
I thought about my parents. It had been weeks since I had spoken to them. Maybe they’d walked off the earth and decided they no longer wanted a daughter. Probably not, but that was what it felt like.
I pulled into the parking lot, then parked.
Mina grasped my hand on the gear shifter. “My other half.”
“What are you talking—” I stopped in midsentence as Raiden exited the fast food restaurant. “Okay yeah, you don’t want—”
“Oh, I sure as hell do. I want it all and super-sized.” Her eyes were glued to the dark figure moving in our direction.
A motorcycle was parked next to me. Closing my eyes, I begged for it not to be his. But, like everything else, nothing was in my favor today. He went right to it. I tried to crawl under the seat like I had dropped something to avoid him seeing me. Strike two.
He rapped on the window. “Everly, I know that’s you. Even if it wasn’t for your Rapunzel hair, the whirlwind of trash around the car gave you away.”
Mina squeezed my hand to the point of pain, and I cried out. “Ow!”
“He knows you,” she hissed.
Instead of rolling down the window, I opened the door and got out. “Leave me alone, Raiden.”
Mina was at my side within a second of the car door slamming. The wind in the parking lot fluttered straw papers and fry bags around in no particular way.
He glanced around at the flying debris. “I see you haven’t been practicing.”
Heat crawled up my arm like a slithering serpent. This was not a conversation I wanted to have in front of Mina. “Not good timing, Raiden.”
An infuriating laugh escaped his lips. “Timing is in the eye of the beholder.”
“It’s beauty, not timing, you—”
He pressed his finger to my lips. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”<
br />
I was no longer hungry. Taking a few breaths to calm my emotions and the wind, I concentrated on controlling the element. The garbage floated to the ground. Mina was so infatuated with Raiden she hadn’t noticed the odd occurrence.
Raiden set his sights on my friend. “Don’t you look delicious…”
“Mina,” she rasped.
He held out his hand to her. “Nice to meet you, Mina.”
Mina actually blushed. I didn’t think the girl was capable of blushing, but there it was.
Raiden’s eyes were back on me. “I’m going for a ride through the desert. Maybe we can catch up later.” He took the helmet off his seat. He didn’t bother putting it on. Instead, he strapped it to the side of the bike in a hook.
“I’m meeting Taryn later.”
“She told me.” Straddling his bike, he started the engine. The motorcycle roared to life, drowning out the thumping of my heart I was sure they could hear. “When you see her, ask her whose side she’s on.”
“Side? What sides?”
“All in good time,” he said to me. To Mina, he said, “See ya around.” He flashed her a grin, put the bike in gear, and rode away.
“Tall, dark, and one-hundred percent bad boy. I’m thinking I may be pregnant.”
Laughing, I grabbed her arm. “Let’s eat.”
My appetite returned. We devoured three orders of fries, a burger, and a shake each. Our conversation stayed light, and, I was happy to report, free of anything that had to do with magic.
I dropped Mina off at the dock. Her dad was on the boat gathering rope into a coiled mass. She waved goodbye before running to him. It was like watching a little girl. She looked so happy. Tears swelled in my eyes. I missed my dad, a lot.
My day would not be complete if I didn’t see what Taryn had in store for me. I drove to Carousel. She was sitting on the swing.
After making my way to her, I sat in the grass. “What did you want to show me?”
She kicked her feet out, swinging them back and forth. “My interests in you are changing. Raiden feels it, too. But for me, it’s like you’re more like one of us than one of them.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Can you please speak English?”
Taryn took a deep breath. “What I’m trying to say is I believe there is more to you than just being a sacrifice.”
18
Sacrifice? Like dancing around a fire, all hailing to some god to be blessed with food for the winter and dry land to sleep on, all while the lamb to be slaughtered was chained to a pole, me being the lamb, kind of sacrifice?
I started to get up when the ground beneath me shook with a hard vibration, knocking me down again.
“It’s an earthquake,” I declared. I hurried to look around Carousel. The other people who were out didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Settle down, child,” Taryn mocked.
My heart rocked in my chest. “Did you feel that?”
Taryn laughed. Her high-pitched tinny sound was how I imagined a fairy’s would be. “I can feel it whenever I want.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? How?”
A sly smile slid across her mouth. She held her hands up, shrugging one shoulder. “It’s easy when you’re the one able to create it.”
With disbelieving eyes the size of golf balls, I searched her face for the truth. “You did that?”
“It’s just a small glimpse of what I can do.”
And I thought moving air around was significant; she moved the freaking ground underneath me.
“How’d you do that?”
“I thought it was the same as how you move air, but I’m not so sure.” She shooed away a persistent bug. “Besides, that’s not what is important.”
“It may not be important to you because this is already your world. But to me, this is all new.”
She huffed out a breath. “There will be time for all that later. Right now, let’s talk about you and how you ended up in Veil Rock, of all places.”
Fear struck me silent for a beat. I didn’t know this person who could shake the earth, and whatever else she was capable of. Telling her any of my secrets didn’t feel right, so I stuck to the basics. I wrapped my hair into a twist, then tied a band around it.
“I’m staying with my aunt for a little while, and Veil Rock is where she happens to live.”
“Who’s your aunt?”
I didn’t see why that was information Taryn needed to know, so I bypassed that question. “Are you from here?” I asked.
In the distance, I heard my name. Not sure where it came from, I searched the area. My aunt was walking toward us. Not now! Not now! Not now!
I turned back to Taryn, trying to get what information I could before my aunt got close enough to hear. “So are you from here?”
“I think I was, a long time ago.”
My face scrunched up like a rotten peach was my comeback. I had no other. How could she not know?
“Hey, Ev.”
I jerked in response to my name. “Hi,” I said with more of a shriek than intended. I cleared my throat. “What brings you here?”
My aunt kneeled, her skirt hiking up her thighs. “You, silly. I was coming to get my nails done when I saw you over here.” Oddly she seemed like she had just noticed Taryn for the first time. “Hi, to you, too.”
Reluctantly, I introduced them. “Aunt Juju, this is Taryn, Taryn, my Aunt Juju.”
My aunt held out her hand. “Please call me Juliet. Juju is a nickname my niece came up with when she was just learning to talk.”
Aunt Juju faced me. “Listen, we really haven’t done anything together since you’ve been here. So, I was thinking that tomorrow night, you can come to church with me.”
I didn’t want to know what the look I gave her was like. It had to be somewhere in the middle of the rotten peach face I gave Taryn, and the WTF one I’d given Cameron when he told me about his parents.
“Church? They have church on Friday nights?”
She chuckled. “That’s when they do it around here. Seems to keep the kids out of trouble at least one day of the week.”
“Weird.”
My aunt’s cheeks warmed with pink heat. “Not only should I go to church because I haven’t been in long time, but the preacher, I think his name is Macias, is more than a little handsome. And yesterday when I saw him down the cereal aisle at my store, he personally invited me to his sermon tomorrow night.”
While she squealed like a schoolgirl who just got asked to her first dance, I internally cringed and wanted to fall off the face of the earth.
The last thing I wanted to do was go to church and see my protector—who I disobeyed and could no longer protect me. I couldn’t blame my aunt for that, though. She had no idea what was even happening to the niece who gave her the nickname. I also couldn’t let her down.
I forced a smile. “Sure, I’ll go with you.”
“Yay!” She kissed my cheek and stood. “Okay, I’m late for my appointment. I’ll see you when you get home.” She turned to leave, but then whipped back around. “Something else… Earl down the street is selling his daughter’s scooter. She went off to college, and he’s looking for a new home for it. Is that something you’d be interested in?”
I had never driven a scooter before, but it had to be faster than the bike. I was sure it couldn’t be that hard to learn. “Yeah, definitely.”
Her smile grew. “I thought so. Then, I’ll stop by and talk to him on my way home.”
“Great, thanks.”
“It was nice to meet you, Taryn. If you’re a friend of Everly’s, you’re a friend of the family, so come by the house anytime you want.”
“Thank you, Juliet.”
Taryn was cordial and respectful.
I couldn’t imagine Taryn and I just hanging out eating pizza and watching a movie. Maybe she could add the ambiance of an earthquake, and I could add the sensation of being in a tornado. Yeah no, Taryn and I would not be hanging out.
&nbs
p; My aunt left, prancing off toward the nail salon. I guessed she would go to State-of the-Art Salon, but she walked into Simple Salon.
“Isn’t she just a jar of sunshine?” Taryn teased.
Slightly offended by her comment, I said, “She is. She took me in when my parents left and—”
“Does she know you have elemental power?” Taryn asked.
Elemental power? There was more I needed to know about that. “That’s something—”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What about you? What are you, and how can you make an instant earthquake like that?”
“I am the Artisan of Earth.”
My head flooded with what I had read in the Legend of Veil Rock book. “Holy shit! Your pendant. I read about it. It’s like you’re the keeper of it or something.”
Taryn’s face grew serious. “Yes, I am the keeper of it. It was given to me a long time ago.”
“Does it do anything? Wait. How long ago? That book was written early last century, and you can’t be older than twenty.”
She bit her lower lip. “Things, and the ones around you, aren’t as they always seem.” Her pensive gaze settled on mine. “But I think you’re in the process of learning that.”
Riddle upon riddle. The mountain of questions was growing to a height I’d need hiking gear soon.
“How old are you?”
“To answer your first question, no, the necklace doesn’t necessarily do anything; it serves a purpose. Without it, things could not be as they are now.”
Her answer was definitive with underlying hints of something else she wasn’t sharing. It seemed we all had secrets we were choosing to keep.
“And the answer to my second question?”
She dropped her eyes from mine. Kicking her legs, she began to swing again. “That’s a question for another day.”
Taryn didn’t try to stop me when I got up to leave. Her legs kicked out and in. The wind blew through her caramel ringlets. She looked like an amused child.
I didn’t look back as I walked away.
Just ahead of me, a customer went into The Warlock’s Workshop. I heard Boone screech as the door closed. Reaching for it before it closed, I went in. I glanced up. Boone jumped to a lower branch, then hooted.
