by H. D. Gordon
“You and your friends aren’t the only ones who care about this city,” Caleb said.
I tried not to cringe at the way he said this. Not so long ago, they had been his friends, too. Or so I’d thought. “So… you’re just going to keep giving me vague answers, then? Is that how it is?”
For the first time since I’d known him, I watched as red touched Caleb Cross’s aura. He sat up straighter on the loveseat. “You made things how they were,” he snapped. “And believe it or not, not everything I do is about you. Do you even know what my chosen major in college is?”
This curveball of a question threw me. Part of me reared defensively, but that part was slightly overshadowed by guilt. Now that I thought about it, Caleb knew a good portion of my biggest secrets, but there was a great deal I didn’t know about him. Was that because I hadn’t really tried?
“Um… computer… engineering?” I asked, and from the look on his face, I immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
“It’s physics, Aria,” he said. “I’ve earned a full ride to Cal Tech and I’m responsible for half a dozen of Cross Corps innovations and community outreach programs. So when the power starts shorting in the entire city, and the grid doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it, and then some masked madman seems to be able to control lightning, I look into things. I’ve lived here my whole life, and what happens here is important to me, too.”
I forced myself not to fidget. “Then I would think you’d want to help me,” I snapped.
“All I’ve ever wanted to do was help you!” Caleb returned.
I didn’t know what to say to this, so I stood there stupidly and said nothing.
Caleb returned my silence, and the air in the room felt as though it was getting steadily harder to breathe. My next question came out before I could stop it, or at least mitigate the vulnerability it exposed.
“Cal Tech?” I said. “As in, across the country, in California?”
Caleb nodded, and now the red streaks were gone from his aura and there was only that sadness, that steady strobe of blue that had endeared the boy to me in the first place.
“I accepted the offer,” he said. “I leave after the end of the summer.”
I tried to be cool, to keep control over the rush of emotions this sudden revelation was causing within me, but the best I could manage was to stare back at him, listening to the sound of our heartbeats and the gentle purr of the battery-operated lanterns.
“Okay,” I said at last, the word choking past my lips. I cleared my throat and shoved down the turmoil threatening to build in me. Now was not the time for a breakdown. Now was not the time for the faint of heart.
“Before you go,” I said, “Why not help me stop this guy? One last hoorah before you get on your way?”
The moment that followed was another one of those where I wished I could shut off my Empath abilities, to see the world without the swirl of brilliant energy that lit it to a blinding fashion on the best of days, and a dark depressive maelstrom on the worst—the way the full-blood humans saw things.
Caleb Cross said, “Why would I do that, Aria? You must know half the reason I’m leaving is you.”
If you’d asked me yesterday if two short sentences could break a heart in half, I wouldn’t have known the answer. Today, I knew.
“Because Grant City needs your help,” I said. “I need your help.”
Silence held for a short eternity. Then, Caleb sighed and gave his head a small shake. “Damn you, Aria Fae,” he said.
I nodded, swallowed. “That would seem to be the consensus,” I agreed.
CHAPTER 11
By the time I slipped out of Caleb’s room and cleared the land that belonged to Cross Manor, the sun was starting to rise on a brand new Wednesday morning. Tuesday had felt so long that I had almost become convinced that it would never end, that the darkness of the night would hold until the Earth died from lack of solar energy.
The sun was nothing if not reliable, and the shadows began to scatter in that slow manner they adopt for very early mornings. I welcomed the light, wishing it could leak straight through to my soul. My movements were heavy and slow, my mind a sluggish torment of recent happenings.
I needed to hit my bed and do so soon, or else whatever ground happened to be beneath me would likely become a bed for me.
At last, as the midnight blue of late evening was slowly giving way to the softer blue of early morning, I landed atop the roof of the building beside my apartment with a thud. As I rolled to my feet, a faint breeze cooled my flushed face, carrying a familiar scent along with it.
I inhaled deeply, not because I second-guessed the owner of the scent, but because my senses just insisted. A renewed sense of energy struck me, and I felt it flood through my tired bones and lift me back up again.
Then I was leaping over the edge the building and sailing through the air to land lithely on the roof of my apartment building. Standing from the crouched position I’d landed in, I took sight of the source of the scent, the presence I’d been missing terribly but hadn’t even known it until this moment.
He looked at me, his hazel eyes traveling from my boots up to my face. Gold flashed through his aura along with that other, deeper color I’d been afraid to look into before, but had now captured my attention with a singularity that was beyond frightening. One of his rare smiles pulled up his perfect lips, but slipped away as he took in whatever expression must’ve been on my face.
Sensing the state of me as if he were the aura-reader, he said nothing. He only spread his arms wide, welcoming me.
I ran into them like a ship returning to dock after the longest voyage on turbulent seas. Those arms closed around me, rescuing me from an unforgiving world.
I sent a silent thank you up to the heavens for small favors.
Thomas had returned home.
***
My lips found his, my body wrapping around him with an urgency that could not go unnoticed. My arms went about his neck and I jumped up and wrapped my legs around his waist, knowing that he would never drop me.
He didn’t try to resist me, as I’d always expected him to do when I’d run through this scenario in my head. Thomas had always been careful around me, treating me with a respect that was often lost among the recent generations of young men. I knew my age made him uneasy, and nothing about our situation was normal, so I’d tried to be respectful of this as well.
Just then, however, I found that I could care less about the fact that I was eighteen and he twenty-five, or that I was a half-human vigilante and he an operative of a top secret government agency whose purpose I still wasn’t entirely sure of. It didn’t seem to matter that both our lifestyles held high probabilities of ending tragically, or that there had been some awkwardness between us regarding the true nature of our relationship.
Just then, I only wanted to be with him, and if his physical reaction was any indication, he wanted to be with me, too.
His strong hands clutched at my thighs, securing their position around his waist, and with my Halfling ears I could hear his heartbeat pounding in his wide chest, matching the rapid pace of my own, beat for beat.
We’d only kissed a couple of times before, and our relationship had been mostly just friendly, but now that the line was crossed, I knew in my gut that there was no crossing back over it.
My surroundings melted away the way the world does when you finally find a really good night’s sleep, slipping me into another place where only Thomas and I existed, where all that mattered was his lips on mine, his arms closed around me.
I was barely aware we were moving, that Thomas was carrying me forward, and so I jumped a little in his arms when he kicked open the door that led inside the building from the rooftop. He chuckled against my lips, the sound unlike any I’d ever heard from him, a rumbling that started in his chest and vibrated against my own with our proximity.
Then my back was pressed against the wall of the staircase, his hands lost in my wild hai
r and me lost in him. It embarrasses me to admit it, but had he kept right there and still preceded, he likely wouldn’t have gotten an argument from me.
Thomas Reid was nothing if not a gentleman, and using the railing to guide him, he carried me down the rest of the stairs and somehow managed to get us inside his apartment. I could hardly believe that this was happening, despite the fact that I’d initiated this. My chest felt as though it were swelling, my stomach stoking a ball of fire somewhere low and deep. I wasn’t sure what was happening, because I’d never felt anything like this before, not even on the single occasion I had been with my childhood sweetheart, Nick Ramhart. I only knew that I would trade the heavens to stay in this moment, freeze time and just live here.
Somehow, we made it into his bedroom, which was as neat and uncluttered as the man himself, the bed tucked in military fashion and a picture of his sister, Rosemary, the only decoration sitting atop the single dresser.
Thomas bent at the waist and placed me ever so gently atop his bed. I released my hold on him reluctantly, feeling the loss of his presence like a shot to the chest. Straightening, Thomas stood over me, looking down at me with those hazel hawk eyes that pierced whatever surface they touched. His wide chest was rising and falling, his fine cheeks flushed with blood and his strong jaw clenched tight. I lay where I was, looking up at him, waiting.
Here it comes, whispered a little voice in my head. This is the part where he resists… walks away.
Another voice, a panicky one I didn’t approve of, followed this. If he does that, I swear to God I might scream.
Instead, a slow smile worked its way over his face, his gaze running the length of me then meeting my own.
“I missed you, too, little Halfling,” Thomas said, and then lowered his hard body back down over me, his lips claiming mine before anything else could be said.
***
Sleep took me in the aftermath, tugging me gently away and providing the best night of shut-eye I’d had in, like, ever. It was as if even in slumber my body knew that Thomas was near, my head on his shoulder, my heart in his capable hands. Thus, it could rest easy, because this place beside this man was one where nothing ill could reach me.
When I awoke, the midday sun was shining around the cracks of the dark shades Thomas had pulled down over his bedroom windows. I sighed, thinking that the world could be burning on the other side of those windows and I still wouldn’t want to leave this bed.
Rolling over, I lifted my head and saw that the place beside me was empty. Immediately following that, the smell of cooked bacon hit my nose, causing an audible grumble in my tummy. I sat up, saw that I was completely nude, and grabbed one of Thomas’s large t-shirts from his dresser drawer. Then I followed my nose out to the kitchen, where Thomas was sitting at the table with the morning paper and a cup of coffee in his hands.
On the table before him was an array of breakfast foods; pancakes, eggs, bacon, homefries. My traitorous eyes must have gone wide because as I took a seat across from Thomas, he laughed at my expression.
He’d barely got out the words ‘good morning’ before I was shoving my cheeks full of food.
Around a large bite of fluffy pancake, I replied, “Good morning.”
Then I couldn’t talk for another fifteen minutes because I was forced to take on the task of clearing the table of anything edible. Thomas sat silently as I did so, sipping his coffee and reading his paper, occasionally glancing up at me and hiding a half smile.
Once I was done, having drowned the food with about a gallon of fresh-squeezed orange juice, I sat back and rubbed at my belly, grinning like the goofball that I was.
Thomas’s hazel eyes found me over his paper. “Full?” he asked.
I shrugged and spread my hands as if I could have consumed more, smiling.
“How do you feel?”
I laughed and bit my lip, my cheeks flooding with heat. “Honestly?” I said. “Like I could rule the world.”
Thomas stood and began clearing the table, fighting a grin of his own. Under his breath, but audible to my strong ears, he mumbled, “Right back at ya, babe.”
This made my chest swirl with pride and butterflies tickle my stomach. Watching Thomas, I saw that his entire aura had shifted since last night. I tilted my head as I tried to pinpoint the change, and realized with a rise in my heart that some of the shadows there had skittered away.
Had I done that? I wondered what my aura looked like this morning, if there had been as profound a change there as well, but suspected I knew the answer.
I cleared my throat and excused myself to use the restroom. When I returned, remembering that the power was out when I couldn’t turn on the light, I asked, “How’d you make all this food without electricity?”
Thomas pointed out the window to his fire escape, where a camping stove was set up and some of his clothes were hanging to dry.
“Speaking of the power,” he said, moving to stand behind me and placing his hands on my hips, “I saw what happened at the parade. What’s the plan?”
Sighing, I rested my head back against his chest. “Figure out what’s causing it, and who. Then catch him and lock him up.”
I tilted my head as Thomas gently brushed my hair away from my neck and placed a small kiss there, causing goosebumps to break out over my skin. Warm lips still against my skin, he said, “Copy that.”
I stared out his window. Thomas’s body was pressed protectively against mine, his arms wrapped about my waist, and I could not help my next admission. It was only two words, but they were as true as two words could be.
“I’m scared,” I said.
Thomas’s hold on me tightened, and I welcomed the embrace. “Whatever is going on here,” he told me, his lips so close to my ear, “We’ll figure it out together. Agreed?”
I nodded and offered a smile, but while I appreciated the sentiment, my gut told me that this was a battle I’d have to end myself, in one fashion, or another.
CHAPTER 12
For obvious reasons, Wednesday morning—the beginning of the second full day since the lights had gone blank across Grant City—was not so bad. Thomas had given me a good workout the night before, and then I’d slept and eaten well on top of that, so physically I was feeling in grand condition.
This combination of things does wonders for the mental state, but by the time the sun was beginning to set, the dark of the night creeping back in around the buildings’ edges, that knot that had formed in my stomach during that mess of a parade was returning, and I was growing more anxious with each passing hour.
“How is it that we know nothing?” I said, looking around the lair at Matt, Sam, and Caleb.
The three of them had been running through theories most of the afternoon, and so far everything they’d come up with sounded more like science fiction than an actual lead that could help us figure out how the man in the mask was controlling all the energy powering the city.
“The whole thing is unprecedented,” Caleb said, spreading his hands. “About ninety percent of Grant City is powered by fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, coal, and for these things to fail usually requires a disruption with the lines themselves, like a tree falling on the lines or lightning striking the transformers. We know certain weather can cause this, but even then, the outages are isolated to the area where the weather was bad.”
Sam nodded and picked up this line of thought. “Right, but these outages spans the entire region that is Grant City, stopping almost exactly on top of city lines, as if it’s being… controlled.”
“In short,” Matt added, “what’s happening is scientifically impossible, just like that bolt of lightning striking Mayor Briggs the way it did. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Raven sauntered over from where she’d been lounging on the old couch we’d dragged in here not too long ago. I knew Matt and Sam still weren’t particularly fond of her, and definitely didn’t think we should trust her, but Raven had become a constant with our little group.
I guess pretending to be dead so that her former employer didn’t try to rein her back in—or worse—hadn’t left her with a lot of options of things to do and people to hang out with.
“Well, if this guy isn’t using science,” Raven said, pursing her red lips, “that only leaves one thing, geniuses.”
To her credit, Sam didn’t roll her eyes, even though the urge to do so flashed through her aura. “What’s that?” she asked in an uninterested tone.
Raven wiggled her fingers in the air theatrically. “Magic,” she said. “The supernatural, of course.”
I nodded, wondering why I hadn’t considered this obvious possibility. I’d seen from his aura that the man on the Jumbotron was human and I hadn’t thought beyond that. I chalked this oversight up to having too much on my mind.
“What could do something like that?” I asked.
Raven shrugged, grabbing my half-eaten bag of potato chips off the card table and making me rethink her admission to our little group as she plucked a few crisps from the bag and popped them in her mouth.
“A Demon, of course,” Raven said. “Or a Demi-God, a Sorcerer, hell, even a well-trained Witch.” Another shrug. “The possibilities are endless.”
“Awesome,” Sam said. “Super helpful.”
“I’m sorry,” Raven said, “how close are you to figuring this out?”
I sighed and held up my hands. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s not be buttheads. We need to work together, because the longer this city goes without power, the tenser the situation is going to get. Already stores have been looted and people have been cut off from fresh water and food. It’s only a matter of time before the citizens really start losing their marbles.”
“No argument there,” Matt said. “Add that to the fact that there isn’t any way to contact emergency services, and you’ve really got a recipe for disaster.”
“Hmm,” Sam said, her brow furrowed in a way that practically made the wheels turning in her brilliant head visible.
