Fire Fall

by Bethany Frenette

  “Yeah, I don’t know why he ever put up with me.” She gave me a sad little half-smile. “Adrian’s hair. But your crappy decision-making, that’s all me.”

  I hunched my shoulders. “Thanks.”

  “I’m not going to lecture you. I have no moral high ground to stand on. Seventeen years ago, I’d have risked the safety of the entire Kin rather than go along with Adrian’s sealing. If it had been a choice between him and the world, I’d have chosen him. Every time.” The corner of her mouth quirked higher. She caught my hand. “Love changes the rules. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. I know how much Gideon means to you. You were looking out for your friend. I can’t say you were wrong. I don’t know if you were. We make our decisions and we live with them. That’s all we can do.”

  “You’re not mad at me?”

  “I can’t say I’m happy to face Verrick again.”

  I swallowed, remembering the last time she’d faced him, that long ago night when they had fallen from Harlow Tower wrapped in the Astral Circle’s light. I had seen it with her memory, felt the rush of the wind about her, the lurch of her heart. That was the night my father’s powers had been sealed. The night she had gone to Lake of the Isles to meet him and found herself waiting there alone. “If he’s unsealed,” I said quietly, “that means my father should be, too.”

  She hesitated a moment before answering. “He is.”

  My breath stilled. My lips parted, but I didn’t speak.

  “That’s what I came here to tell you,” Mom said. “He called Esther, to warn her what had happened. And it seems that whatever the Beneath did to unseal Verrick, it severed the link with Adrian. Resealing isn’t an option.”

  “Is he”—it took me a moment to get the sentence out—“is he coming back here?”

  Mom shook her head. “Not in the near term. Esther decided it wasn’t safe, and for once I agree with her. His brother, Elliott, is flying to New York to stay with him. He’s going to have a bit of an adjustment period, I’m afraid.”

  Like waking from a seventeen-year coma. Everything he’d known about the world had altered. Nearly half his life had passed without him even feeling it, days and hours just evaporating into the wide, open air.

  But he was unsealed. His heart would no longer sleep. My father had returned.

  Leon’s parents never would.

  I shoved the thought away, looking at Mom. “What are you going to do about Gideon?” I asked.

  She sighed again, rubbing her forehead with one hand. “Honey…”

  I crossed my arms. “Esther said to kill him, didn’t she?”

  “Believe it or not, Esther didn’t venture an opinion.”

  “She probably just took it for granted that you would kill him.”

  “I may not have a choice.”

  “But he’s not just Verrick anymore,” I insisted. “I know he isn’t. I felt it. He’s been so afraid, Mom. He doesn’t want to be Verrick at all. There has to be some other way.”

  I leaned back against my wall and turned toward the window, where outside the sky had gone milky and gray in the dusk. Gideon was out there, somewhere. I knew he was. And there would be some way to bring him back. I just had to find it.

  When Gideon and I were eleven years old, we’d gotten into our first (and only) major fight.

  Thinking back, I couldn’t quite remember the cause of it, but the fight had been my doing; I knew that much. Gideon never could hold a grudge. There had been an argument, and then some name calling, and then finally I’d punched him in the stomach—and watched in horror as his legs buckled and he toppled to the ground. It had startled me almost as much as it startled him. I wasn’t certain what I’d intended, but seeing him there in the grass, gaping at me as he wheezed in air, had felt like a kick to my own stomach. I’d felt my cheeks burning. Instead of apologizing, I’d fled. Even now, years later, I could see that bewildered look in his eyes, like he couldn’t quite understand what had occurred.

  Mom and Gram had told me to just apologize. They’d made chiding remarks about how my temper was its own punishment, and that I was only making myself miserable—but I couldn’t bring myself to speak to Gideon. For an entire week, I’d pretended he didn’t exist.

  Then, one afternoon, Gideon had simply shown up at my house like nothing was wrong. He hadn’t even realized we were still in a fight—or that we were as far as I was concerned. He was over it and assumed I was as well. He’d invited me to some family outing and then asked if we had any ice cream. And that had been that.

  Part of me kept hoping that was what would happen now. I’d step outside my house and find him there, waiting out in the yard, grinning his usual grin and wondering why it was that I looked so upset. It would all have been a misunderstanding, an argument easily forgotten.

  It didn’t happen, of course.

  Instead, the following afternoon, Gideon’s mother called to ask if I’d had any contact from him. They’d arrived home yesterday to find Gideon gone, she said. He hadn’t answered his phone, and he hadn’t returned. One of the neighbors thought they might have seen my car there yesterday morning. I told her I’d stopped by to see him, but the house had been empty. I asked her to tell me if she heard from him.

  The Guardians were concerned that she would hear from him, I learned. Mom told me the Guardians had set up surveillance on Gideon’s house. As a precaution. And for the family’s protection.

  “He wouldn’t hurt his family,” I insisted.

  “Gideon wouldn’t,” Mom said. “Verrick might. I know you want to believe that Gideon still exists, but even if he does, at this point, which side of him is stronger is a complete unknown.”

  I hadn’t heard from Leon. When I tried calling, it went straight to voice mail. He didn’t answer my texts. I considered just showing up at his apartment, but I didn’t want to make matters worse—and anyway, he could disappear whenever he wanted to. The ability to teleport gave him the perfect means of avoiding me.

  “Just give him time,” Mom said.

  There weren’t any sightings of Gideon or Shane over the next few days. Though the Guardians were on alert, and I knew Mickey was sending Mom any suspicious reports, both of them appeared to be lying low.

  Then, Tuesday night, I arrived home from martial arts—where I’d gone in an attempt to clear my head—to find Tink sitting on my porch.

  She was perched on the top step, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her hands. She glanced up when she saw me but otherwise didn’t move.

  “How did you get here?” I asked, looking around and not seeing her car.

  “I walked.”

  “From your apartment?” Though it wasn’t precisely on the moon, it wasn’t what I’d normally have considered walking distance—especially since Tink was wearing flip-flops. Her short hair had been blown into whorls by the wind. There was a smudge of dirt on her yellow sundress.

  “I wasn’t really intending to,” she said. “I just found myself here. If you want to give me a ride home, I won’t complain.”

  I sat down beside her on the steps. The light was fading in the west, and little moths fluttered around us. Tink lowered her hand to flick a June bug off the porch, sending it sailing into the yard. She let out a soft sigh.

  “You heard about Gideon,” I said. Not a question.

  “You knew,” she said, a quaver in her voice. “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “I couldn’t,” I said. “Believe me. I didn’t even want to know. Please don’t be angry. I can’t have you mad at me, too.”

  She was quiet a long time. She wrapped her arms around her knees—then sat up, straightening her shoulders. “Well, what are we doing about it? What’s our plan?”

  I wasn’t certain what reaction I’d expected, but it wasn’t that. I blinked at her. “Our plan?”

  “To fix Gideon.”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet,” I admitted. Or even if it were possible.

  “But you’re working on it, right? Becau
se I am not fighting him. I don’t care. I couldn’t deal with that.”

  “Iris says I have to kill him.”

  “And we’re taking the advice of your psychotic, Harrower-dating cousin since…when?”

  “We’re not,” I assured her. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”

  “Intervention? Exorcism?”

  “It’s not like that. He’s not possessed. He’s…” I didn’t want to speak it. I’d been trying so hard not to believe it.

  Tink said it for me. “He’s Verrick. I know. But can’t we just—seal him again?”

  “He was linked to my father the first time. That was the reason it worked. They sealed both of them. I was trying to find information from Sonja, when she…”

  “Oh.” She rubbed at her face with her hands. “God. This is so messed up.”

  I stared down at the cement beneath my feet, the edge of green where the steps met the lawn, and breathed in the clean scent of the soil. A moth landed on my shorts, then floated back into the darkness with a dusty beating of wings. I thought of patterns, the way Gram had said that moments intersected, each connecting to the next, reaching endlessly back into the past. Not fate, she’d said. Reaction. And you couldn’t alter the past, but you could decide how you would react.

  This moment stretched backward seventeen years, to Harlow Tower gleaming under an inky sky. Maybe further. Maybe all the way back to the moment the Old Race had first crossed over from the Beneath and locked it away behind the Circles, leaving it in bottomless darkness. They’d taken the light with them, Gram had said. The very last pinprick of light. And they had taught Harrowers hate when they did.

  That was all it was. Push and pull. Reaction and reaction. Another circle we were caught within. Gideon’s eyes flashed before me. Frightened. Accusing.

  He wanted to be Kin, I thought.

  “It was always messed up,” I whispered. “We just didn’t know it.”

  Tink sighed again. “Well, if we’re going to be miserable, we should at least be miserable together.”

  “I take it that means you’re sleeping over?”

  “Yep.”

  I supposed that was preferable to another night spent staring at my phone. I rose to my feet, stretching my arms upward above my head. Tink paused to brush the dirt from her dress, and then we made our way inside. I saw the shine of tears on her face, but she wiped them away quickly. We stepped into the house, heading for the kitchen, and then paused in the hallway when we heard Mom and Mr. Alvarez arguing.

  “Ryan, this isn’t like you,” Mom was saying.

  “I told her she was safe. I told her I would protect her.” There was a long pause. His voice sounded strange. Thick. “And I delivered her to them.”

  He must have asked Esther about Brooke, I realized.

  “I know,” Mom said gently. “And you can’t undo it. But the Guardians need you. You can’t just fall apart.”

  His words came out in a snarl. “They don’t need me. We’ll be all right as long as we’ve got Morning Star to save us. You just need to know where, right? You solve it. You fix it. I’m done.”

  Tink and I looked at each other. Her eyes went wide as Mr. Alvarez came stalking out of the room past us, hardly sparing us a glance.

  His face was haggard, his eyes red-rimmed. He was still wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing two days ago—dark gray jeans and a faded T-shirt. I wonder if he’d slept in them, or if he just hadn’t slept. Dark stubble covered his jaw.

  Tink turned to follow him when he opened the front door. “You’re quitting? You can’t quit!”

  He swung toward her. “You know what, Brewster? I was wrong. This whole time, I’ve been wrong. You don’t want to be a Guardian? Then don’t. Make your own goddamn choice.”

  He disappeared as the door hit the frame with a resounding slam.

  “Um, holy shit,” Tink said.

  I nodded, feeling a bit stunned.

  Mom stepped out from the living room. “You all right, girls?”

  “Did that just happen?” I asked, jerking my head toward the door.

  “He’ll cool down,” Mom said.

  “I don’t know. He seemed pretty pissed.”

  Not that I blamed him. He’d been the one who brought Brooke to the elders. He had been the only one she’d trusted to help her. He’d told her the elders would protect her, and they’d murdered her instead.

  “That was not pissed,” Tink said. “I have seen that guy pissed, and that was not it. That was nuclear meltdown.”

  “Who’s going to lead the Guardians?” I asked.

  “Ryan will come to his senses,” Mom insisted.

  The look on Tink’s face said she was less convinced. I had to agree with her. Mr. Alvarez did not do things by half. Susannah had nearly killed him, and he’d still not only figured out her plan, he’d run off from the hospital to help coordinate a counterattack. If he said he was quitting, he meant it.

  But I still found it difficult to fathom. I remembered the first time I’d seen him, that sleepy, almost-forgotten moment when I’d seen him drive up the long road to our old house and step out onto the driveway, his black hair catching the sun. The day he’d told Mom that the Kin needed her, and asked her to come home. He hadn’t just led the Guardians—he’d stitched them back together.

  We didn’t have time to dwell on it further. Mom’s phone rang, and when she quickly disappeared into the kitchen, I could tell the news wasn’t good. Tink and I waited on the staircase, and as soon as Mom hung up, we hurried to the kitchen.

  The call had been from Mickey, she said.

  Although the Kin had cleaned up—or covered up—the scene at Sonja’s house before any suspicion of foul play had occurred, they hadn’t been as lucky with the other two elders. The police had found the homes of Deirdre and Julia bloodstained and wrecked, and had been quick to link the two.

  Tonight, Mickey told her, they’d found a third home in the same condition.

  Tink had followed me into the kitchen. She stood clutching her elbows, trembling. “That means…”

  “We have another member of the Kin missing,” Mom said. “Kira Wilbanks.”

  Between her words, I heard what she really meant.

  We had another Kin death.

  Late that night, in the darkness of my room, staring up at the shadows that crossed my ceiling, Tink and I played remember when.

  “Remember when Gideon got his tongue stuck to the ladder of the monkey bars?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper.

  That had been the winter of fourth grade, during recess. We’d been old enough to know better, but that hadn’t been much of a hindrance. “Because you dared him,” I said. I could picture it: Gideon in his blue winter coat, snow melting in his hair. Tink with her cheeks wind-reddened. Then, instead of waiting for one of the teachers to come and help thaw him, Gideon had ripped himself free. Tink, of course, had shrieked and fled.

  “Oh my God,” she said now, with a gasp of laughter. “It was disgusting. He bled everywhere.”

  “It ruined his coat. And his favorite shirt.”

  “That was the ugliest shirt I had ever seen. Still is.”

  For a second, I smiled up into the darkness. But when Tink began recalling the time she’d tripped and spilled all of her Halloween candy into the street and Gideon had offered her his, I made her stop.

  “He’s not dead,” I told her. “We need to stop talking like he is.”

  “What we need to do is come up with a plan.”

  “We will,” I said.

  In the morning, I drove Tink back to her apartment. She lingered near my car, holding the door open, chewing her lip.

  “You’ll let me know the instant you hear anything, right?”

  I nodded. “If you do.”

  She nodded back, then turned and jogged up the steps.

  Instead of going home, I drove to Leon’s lake.

  It wasn’t planned, but once I hit the highway, I sped past my exit and kept
going, finding my way by memory. Leon and I had taken his motorcycle there last autumn, and stood near the park, in the dry and dying grass. I didn’t know the route well, but I mapped it in my mind—the bridge across the river, the old back roads thick with gravel.

  Part of me hoped I would find him there. I had it all planned out in my head: I’d park in the shade of the evergreens, walk slowly into the grass—green now, bright and growing—and cross the park to the red picnic tables. They would be empty except for a lone figure sitting on one, his back turned. I’d call his name. He’d walk to meet me.

  But the other part of me said he hadn’t forgiven me yet. He wouldn’t forgive me. If I found him by the lake, he’d simply leave instead.

  He wasn’t there at all, of course. There were a few groups of swimmers down on the beach, but most of the area was deserted. The clouds were dark and low, swirling through the sky and giving it a sickly yellow glow. I made my way to the shore, and then waded out into the water, up to my thighs, not caring when the current lapped at my shorts. I stared down into the little ripples that cut across the surface, the flash of minnows darting underneath.

  Leon’s parents had come here, I knew. I tried to picture them, though I had no image in my mind to draw from. They were mere silhouettes I tried to stage in the scene around me. There they reclined in the sand, waiting for the sun to seep through the clouds. There they guided a toddler along the shore, pausing to pick up shells. But the details eluded me. They were mere shadows, faceless specters who had died at Verrick’s hands.

  Verrick. I could see him, too. And he wasn’t faceless. He watched me through Gideon’s eyes.

  Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be saved, I heard Leon say.

  I shook the memory away.

  When an abrupt downpour began, I left the water and ran back to the parking lot, my hands covering my head. My sandals slapped wetly against the bottoms of my feet as I ran, and by the time I dove into my car, my clothing was soaked through. A glance in the rearview mirror told me my hair was clumpy and clinging, and it must have dried that way, because when I arrived home and stepped into the house, Mom did a double take when she saw me. I ignored her and darted upstairs to change clothes.