Fire Fall

by Bethany Frenette

  Elspeth hesitated. “Grandmother has been in touch with some of the other leaders, but nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  “Can we at least agree that murder should be a last resort, not a first one?”

  “I’m really sorry, Audrey,” she said, her voice catching.

  I didn’t look at her. “Me, too.”

  I climbed out of the car and hurried toward my house. Another downpour had begun, and I nearly slipped on the rain-slick grass that crept up around the walkway. Once inside, I kicked off my dripping sandals, then looked around the darkened house. Mom and Mickey had departed, though the faint smell of coffee still hung in the air of the kitchen.

  Fatigue washed over me as I climbed the steps. My limbs felt heavy and drugged. I was just going to sink into my bed, I decided, curl up and pull the covers over my head. Maybe when I opened my eyes again, I’d find everything was somehow fixed. The Beneath would have released Shane’s body and withdrawn back behind the veil of the Circle. Gideon would return to himself. I wouldn’t have to worry about futures or visions or the end of the Kin, or whether or not I determined it. I trudged down the hall and pushed open the door to my room.

  I knew he was there before I stepped inside.

  Verrick. I had felt his presence often enough before to know it now. I had felt it within Mom’s memory, the night on Harlow Tower when I’d seen his face through her eyes, the malevolence within him. I’d felt it in my readings for the Remnant, that sensation of something watching me, searching as I searched. I’d felt it in my reading for Gideon, the cards almost burning against my fingertips. And I’d felt it that day of the baseball game, that moment when Verrick had briefly touched the surface.

  He was here. In my house. In my room. In the dark.

  I flicked on the overhead light.

  “Gideon?”

  He was sitting with his back to the wall, his knees drawn up against him. Rain trickled from his hair and clothing, soaking into the carpet. He looked wholly human, sunburn on his arms and face, no shine of silver showing through his flesh. The knuckles of his left hand were bloody. A thin trail of crimson rolled down his hand to the tips of his fingers, beading there a moment before falling. He was still dressed as he had been the last time I’d seen him. His T-shirt had a rip in the shoulder, but otherwise he looked no different. If I hadn’t sensed it, I might not have known.

  He raised his head and his gaze met mine.

  The color of his eyes hadn’t changed. It was still that deep, rich brown that was so familiar to me. But they weren’t Gideon’s eyes, either. I could see into them, through them, to the empty of Beneath. And beyond the Beneath, somehow. Impressions flashed through me, rapid and jarring. Fragments, visions, I wasn’t certain which—I saw birds wheeling above and then dropping like stones from a sky that was swollen and dark; I heard the sound of bones crunching, the sound of sirens; a scream and then a sigh. There was the thud of a heart. A throat sliced open, thick blood dripping onto a ground the chalky gray color of ash. All of that there, in his eyes. And rage, as well. An anger so intense it was blinding, choking.

  I inched backward.

  “Audrey,” he said.

  I scanned the room quickly, noting details I’d missed at first. My window was broken. Two or three shards of glass still hung from the frame, but most were scattered across the floor. A bolt of lightning that streaked across the sky outside made the shards spark and flare like they were alive. Gideon hadn’t come here from Beneath, then; he’d climbed up the house. I glanced at the blood on his knuckles, the growing red stain on the carpet below. He noticed my gaze land there, then lifted his hand and sucked at the injury.

  I stood there, divided. I wanted to run to him, to kneel beside him and wrap my arms around his thin shoulders; I wanted to flee in the other direction and never look back. In the end I did neither. I just kept watching him. As he huddled against the wall, I saw the quiet glow of the light that surrounded him. The Astral Circle’s light, pulsing faintly. It rippled into the air, warm and clear and familiar. I could feel the edge of its burn. The connection between us.

  The way I could kill him, Iris had said.

  I chased the thought away once more. There was a quiver in my voice as I said, “Your parents are really worried. Are you okay?”

  He gazed up at me again. I had to force myself not to look away.

  “You lied to me. You said I was Kin.” Though his words were strained, his tone anxious, his voice sounded the same. Like Gideon. His teeth started chattering. He clutched his knees tighter.

  “I’m sorry, Gideon,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Gideon never existed. He was just the skin I lived in.”

  “That’s not true.”

  The teeth chattering stopped. He smiled broadly. There was blood on his mouth from his split knuckle. The dimple in his cheek appeared, but a shiver crawled up my spine.

  “If it were true,” I continued, trying not to show my apprehension, “why did you come here?”

  “I came here to kill you.”

  I flinched. I stared at him, and now it wasn’t what I saw in his eyes that caused horror to grip me—but what I feared he saw in mine. Perhaps he could see into me, the way I had seen into him. Into that flicker of doubt I carried, the tiniest fraction of the smallest of seconds when I had wondered to myself if I should kill him. That instant when I hadn’t been his friend.

  “Why?” I whispered, the only word I could manage.

  “You killed Brooke.”

  “No—I didn’t.”

  “Your Kin did.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

  “I don’t want your apologies. I want your death.”

  But there was hesitation in his voice. I felt it. Clung to it. “You cared about Brooke,” I said. “I remember. You tried to comfort her after Miss Gustafson died. Verrick only wanted her power. Gideon loved her. You loved her.”

  “I am Verrick, Audrey.”

  The weary resignation in his tone frightened me almost more than the look in his eyes had.

  “No,” I protested. “I saw Verrick. I saw Mom fight him. You’re different.” He spoke differently I realized. Not just his voice, but his words. The cadence. The slight hint of sadness in them. Though it wasn’t quite Gideon, it wasn’t quite Verrick, either. “The Circle changed you. It made you into something else.”

  “You know the truth. That’s why you hid it from me.”

  “If you’re here to kill me, why haven’t you? Why are you just sitting there? Why break into my room and wait? You wanted to talk to me. You want my help. Because we’re connected. We can figure it out, Gideon. We can find some way to fix it. I know we can. We just—”

  Abruptly, he rose to his feet and walked toward me. The rest of my words died unspoken. He was no longer Gideon. Something within him had shifted, distorted. His entire posture changed. He no longer had that hint of a slouch that sometimes bent Gideon’s shoulders, and he didn’t have his long loping stride. He moved with a sleek animal grace, stalking forward, that bloody smile once again on his lips. But it wasn’t his motion that made my heart freeze and my throat close up; it was the malice that thickened all around him. His wrath seeped into the air, and the hate that coiled inside him burned so hot I was surprised it didn’t sear the ground where he stepped.

  I remembered the first impression I’d had of Verrick—that if there was a hell, he’d surely crawled out of it.

  Crawled out and carried it with him, I thought now.

  But he wasn’t looking at me, I realized. He was looking past me.

  I spun around and collided with Leon’s chest.

  He wrapped an arm around me, holding me tightly to him. Face-first in his shirt, I squirmed, trying to wrench myself from his grasp. His arm didn’t loosen. But he didn’t teleport right away, either. In his left hand, I saw the flash of Guardian lights beginning to glow.

  “No!” I said, feeling a stab of horror. I broke free long enough to t
urn toward Gideon, then Leon caught me again, clapping my back hard against his chest. His grip was firm and unyielding. “You can’t fight him!” I cried.

  “I know you,” Gideon said, gazing at Leon. His tone had altered, too. There was a chill in it I recognized, and didn’t want to recognize.

  “You should,” Leon answered. His own tone was clipped.

  “You’ve known each other for years,” I said, still struggling in Leon’s hold.

  Gideon was smiling again. That broad, vicious grin. The words were Verrick’s. “You want to ask me a question. You want to know how your parents died. You’ve wondered all this time, haven’t you? It’s the question you take with you into sleep. The worry that haunts your dreams. Would you like me to tell you?”

  Leon tensed. He choked out one word. “No.”

  “They died screaming.”

  I felt Leon recoil, the hard slamming of his heart. I feared he was going to attack, but instead he lowered his left arm. The bright spin of lights under his skin dimmed. He tightened his grip on me.

  He was going to teleport us.

  “Leon, no—you can’t teleport me,” I said. “Leave me here. Let me talk with him. He was listening to me.”

  “You are out of your mind,” he hissed in my ear.

  “Don’t,” I said. I didn’t think. I started amplifying.

  He froze. “Stop.”

  “No. He hasn’t attacked. He isn’t going to hurt me. He wants my help. He needs my help.”

  “If you weren’t in danger, I wouldn’t be here.”

  His words stung, but I shook my head. I didn’t stop amplifying. I held to the bond, feeling the heat that coursed through my veins, the surge of strength.

  “Dammit, Audrey!”

  He wouldn’t do it, I told myself. He wouldn’t risk teleporting.

  And then he blinked us out of my room, into nothing.

  The darkness closed around me, seconds lengthening. One heartbeat I was in the muffled yellow light of my room, pleading, twisting in Leon’s hold; the next I was in this blank, weightless void, and there was no air to give my words voice, and no arms clasped about me. Then that, too, receded; the darkness dissolved, the empty gave way, and there was gray sky above me, heavy falling rain.

  Leon released his grip so rapidly, I stumbled forward in surprise.

  “I told you to stop amplifying,” he growled. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  After steadying myself, I whipped around to face him. He was furious—but so was I. “Then don’t abduct me! I told you not to teleport!” I dragged my sodden hair out of my eyes. I could barely see through the rain. We were in a field of some sort. Tall grass climbed up to my ankles, bending beneath the downpour. In the distance, I glimpsed the bright beam of headlights along what might have been a highway. There didn’t seem to be buildings anywhere near us. No shelter to be found. I lifted my arms to shield my face. Rain dripped down my nose, clung to my eyelashes. My clothing was already molded to me. “Where are we?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  Which meant he’d overshot the distance again. “Well, where were you trying to go?”

  “My apartment.”

  “This is clearly not it.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” He reached into his pocket and removed his phone, but instead of using it to pinpoint our location, he lifted it to his ear.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Your mother, to let her know there’s a Harrower hanging out in your bedroom.”

  I turned away, squinting in the direction of the highway. It might not have been a highway at all, I thought—it could be a back road, some long dirt lane curving toward a farmhouse. Maybe Leon had teleported us north, across cities and suburbs, and accidentally carried us all the way to my old home. Maybe if I started walking, I’d find the pines swaying in the storm, the little yellow house with its porch swing and a light in the window, and Gram’s blue truck still parked in the gravel drive. I closed my eyes, imagining it. I understood now Iris’s desire to erase time. If I could walk backward and reach that house, and see Gram smile and point at the stars, I’d tell her that I was done with secrets. I wanted no more stories. I’d tell her she was wrong. There was such a thing as fate. You couldn’t escape it. It was like a carrion bird circling above you. Every second, every breath, you felt that circle tightening.

  I sighed. More likely we’d traveled south, since that was the direction of Leon’s apartment. We were probably in Iowa again—though, since my Amplification was much stronger than it had been three months ago, we might have gone even farther. For all I knew, we could be in Texas.

  When I turned back to Leon, I found he’d unbuttoned his shirt and was using it as a dripping, misshapen tent while he studied his phone’s GPS. There was a streak of lightning in the distance, and then a low boom of thunder. More headlights shone on the road, cocooned in the thick gray mist. After another minute or so, Leon returned his phone to his pocket, then strode toward me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

  My spine stiffened.

  He scowled. “Can I get us somewhere out of the rain, or are you going to object to that, too? Would you rather I just leave you here?”

  “Don’t you dare,” I hissed.

  Despite the increase in my Amplification ability, Leon had apparently learned to gauge the distance better, because we were still in Minnesota. We’d landed a few miles south of Northfield, and after a few more teleports—a vacant parking lot, another rainy field—we arrived at his apartment.

  Leon didn’t have a TV, and his only pieces of furniture were his bed and an old wooden desk he’d brought from his grandfather’s house in Two Harbors. Since he didn’t have shelves, he’d piled textbooks and paperbacks in tall stacks along the walls. That was the only part of the room that appeared cluttered. The hardwood floor was spotless—at least before we started dripping all over it—and his desk was clean, organized with his laptop beside a couple of notebooks, a pencil cup set near the back. The bed was neatly made. His walls were bare, though there were a few nails jutting out of the paint. In the hall outside, two people were arguing loudly. I glanced down at my feet, to my wet sandals and the pool of water that was growing steadily around me.

  The apartment was a studio, which meant Leon couldn’t just disappear into a room and avoid me—unless he planned on hiding in the bathroom for the rest of the night—but he made it clear he wasn’t interested in talking. Without a word, he left me in the middle of the room while he stalked off toward the closet. I said his name, but he ignored me.

  He yanked off his tie and let it drop to his feet. Next he tugged off his drenched button-up shirt, which was soaked into the consistency of tissue paper, followed by his undershirt, and then tossed them both onto the floor. I took that as further indication of his anger, given how tidy he usually was. Still not looking at me, he reached into the closet, and then tossed a towel in my direction.

  “Dry off.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t have figured that one out on my own.”

  He shot me a glare. Then he turned his back again and stripped down to his boxers.

  I paused toweling myself in order to watch him, then quickly looked away when he glanced over his shoulder at me.

  “How soaked are you?” he asked.

  “I’m about to grow gills.”

  He dug into his closet again, balled up a shirt, and threw it at me.

  I caught it with both hands and clutched it against me a second. It was going to be huge on me, but I didn’t particularly care. I held it out in front of me. The fabric was a faded yellow-gold, and it bore the words Two Harbors Agates in maroon script. His high school team, I guessed. I brought the shirt to my face. It was soft, and smelled like soap and clean linen.

  “Are you smelling my shirt?”

  Embarrassed, I let my arms drop. “I’m just in shock that you own a T-shirt.”

  “If you don’t want it, give it here,” he snapped.

  Instead of replyi
ng, I dragged my wet tank top over my head and added it to the heap on Leon’s floor. “You were in sports?” I asked, somewhat surprised. He’d never mentioned it. And since I knew he’d skipped a grade in school, and his response to summer break from college was to take even more classes, I’d sort of figured he’d spent his pre-Guardian free time reading encyclopedias.

  Leon had turned sideways and was busy pretending he wasn’t looking at me. He hadn’t bothered to clothe himself yet. His hair was still damp and curling. “Track and field.”

  “That sort of counts.”

  “It counts. Are you planning to wear that or not?”

  I wrung out my own hair onto my towel before pulling on the T-shirt. “You know you’re never getting this shirt back, right?”

  “It doesn’t even fit you.”

  “It fits fine.”

  “Then I’ve changed my mind. You can’t have it.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or serious, but considering how angry he was with me, I suspected it might be the latter. I folded my arms over my chest, hugging the shirt against me. “Too bad.”

  He crossed the room in three long strides. I stood staring up at him, my heart thumping erratically. His blue eyes were dark and narrowed. A lock of hair was sticking to his forehead. He had that stubborn look on his face that usually foretold an argument. But instead of yanking the shirt up over my head, he backed me against the wall and kissed me. Hard.

  I tilted my face to his, returning the kiss—but I didn’t unfold my arms, in case this was some ploy to distract me. Gradually, however, the tension left my shoulders. The kiss turned hungry, heady. I eased toward him. Without raising my arms, I moved my hands and pressed them to his chest, feeling the heat that burned through his wet skin, the rushing of his pulse. He had his own hands on my hips, lifting me against him.