First, her limbs would go cold, her breathing would speed up, and beads of sweat would roll down her face. Then her chest would feel constricted, as if someone had tied a rope around her ribcage and was slowly squeezing it tighter.
She would never forget the night she embarrassed herself in public the year before—the last time she’d ever danced in front of an audience. The performance had ended abruptly with her fainting on stage and waking up covered in a cold sweat. Since then, whenever she heard the words “talent show,” anxiety would speed up her heart and bring her dangerously close to puking.
The anxiety hit her even now, in the safety of her own living room. One of her legs shot out at the wrong angle. Her little toe banged against the hearth. The pain was incredible.
“Ow! Crap!”
Emma tumbled backward, lifting her right foot to nurse what must have been a broken toe. She hit the side of a small table on top of which one of her mother’s vases—the one covered in athletic men and women riding chariots pulled by winged horses, drawn in silky blue lines—had been carefully placed. The vase toppled, fell, and broke on the carpet in a powdery burst of jagged, triangular shapes.
Emma pictured the look of disappointment on her mother’s face. She had told Emma many times to please, please, not dance in the living room. That was what the basement was for, but Emma hated dancing down there because of all the dust. Plus, the concrete floor was so cold against her bare feet, even in summer.
She went to gather the pieces, already rehearsing an explanation and an apology. Her mother would make her wash dishes for the next two weeks—her favorite punishment because she knew how Emma hated scrubbing dirty pots and pans—thanks to this.
Then something strange happened.
One moment, she was watching the particles of clay, or whatever the vase was made of, rising in the sunlight streaming through the window, a powder so fine it was like flour. Then, suddenly, the powder took on a life of its own, swirling and twisting, almost like it was dancing to show Emma its own moves.
She backed away. It couldn’t be wind shifting the powder like that. No way. The motes seemed to be moving intelligently, like a million tiny flocks of birds. A clicking noise rose from the broken shards. She looked down and caught one of them moving. They all began to shiver and shake, as if from an earthquake, though everything else in the living room was silent and still.
“Oh, boy,” Emma said nervously.
Impossibly, the shards rose off the floor as if lifted by invisible hands. The powder swirled around the floating pieces. All of it came together to form the rough shape of the vase, as it looked before Emma had broken it.
“Mom?” Emma shouted.
The powder was sucked inward, the edges absorbing it, everything drifting back to its place, until the pieces came together with a final click, and the vase was whole again.
Emma jumped to her feet. Her hands flew to her mouth, as if to contain a scream, or a burst of laughter. Instead, she kept quiet as the vase lowered itself to the carpet and sat there, as if nothing had happened.
She went to touch it, hesitantly at first. What was she afraid of? It wasn’t like it was going to bite her. She picked it up and held it at arm’s length, inspecting the athletic figures and the winged horses and chariots splashed across the surface, drawn in those silky blue lines she had always admired—lines that appeared to be shifting.
The figures were moving.
“Oh my god!” she said, studying it in a daze.
Time seemed to slow. Emma was conscious of two things—a pair of horses rearing up, wings bending, as their chariot master pulled back a whip to strike at them, and the vase slipping from her paralyzed fingers.
A dizzy spell took hold of her. She was going to faint. The vase crashed with another powdery burst, tickling her feet, but this time, Emma didn’t care to watch it rebuild itself. All she wanted was to be far away from it—away from this living room before she caused even more damage.
She stepped on one of the broken pieces. A sharp point cut into her foot, in the soft arch between her otherwise-calloused toes and heel. It tickled more than it hurt, but it hurt just the same, the pain mixing with her dizziness to send her stumbling toward the stone hearth.
She reached out to catch herself, but her arms had turned to putty. Lines danced before her eyes. Elegant and blue, forming the muscular bodies of man and horse, the intricate shapes of chariots—and they were all moving, flexing, twisting, making her want to vomit.
Her right hand hit the hearth first, breaking at least one of her fingers. Then the world flipped as Emma toppled, and her forehead slammed against the edge.
She rolled over on the carpet, blinking up at the ceiling as a cool, tingling sensation washed across her forehead. She touched it and lifted her hand to find blood on her fingertips. So dark and red, like ink. Her vision blurred as some of it entered her eyes.
“Mom?” she said weakly.
From the corner of her eye, Emma saw something move.
It was the vase—that stupid, unbreakable vase—piecing itself together again, its shards swirling within a glittering puff of powder that made the whole thing look even more fantastic and unreal.
The adrenaline rush lasted only a moment. Then came the pain. Emma was unprepared for what felt like a hammer crashing down against her hand. The pain shot from her fingers and palm, up the length of her arm to her shoulder, until her entire body was filled with the electric agony of it.
She tried to shout—Mom! Dad! Milo!—but all she could do was cough as some of the powder from the vase entered her lungs and invaded her bloodstream. Her entire body seized.
Then all she saw was blackness, and all she knew was the pain, pounding across her body like the hooves and wheels of one of those horse-drawn chariots, breaking her into pieces.
CHAPTER 7
M ilo was upstairs in his room when it happened.
He was lying on his bed, listening to music on his headphones and staring up at the ceiling. The song was actually an instrumental track from a movie he liked. Usually, listening to cinematic scores unleashed his imagination, made him feel like he was soaring across the sky in another world.
But not today. Instead of relaxing, Milo was recalling—and endlessly repeating and pulling apart—the explanation his father had given him after the Holly Gerald incident a week earlier. Mothers can sometimes lift a car to save a child pinned beneath the wheels. Victims of a shipwreck can swim entire oceans just to get back home.
At some point, he felt a weird tingling behind his eyes and pulled off the headphones. A muffled crash told him something was wrong downstairs.
Emma. Somehow, he knew it was her.
He jumped off his bed and ran for the stairs.
He found his sister lying on her back next to the fireplace, unconscious and covered in blood. Without hesitating, he ran to retrieve the first-aid kit his mother kept in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. He did his best to bandage the gash on her forehead, and then ran outside to get his mother.
Along the way, he noticed a fine powder surrounding his mother’s favorite vase. It was as if the sunlight pouring through the front windows had lifted a thin coating of dust from its surface.
The origin of the vase was just one of the strange things about the Banks family. Milo’s father was a salesman, but Milo and Emma were both uncertain as to what it was he actually sold. He said it was antiques, rare books, and other precious items, but the look in his eyes told a different story.
Whatever it was, it took a great toll on him, and he often looked weary and upset the day before he had to leave. And he would always come back with unusual little gifts, like the time he gave Milo a wooden top that could spin forever unless someone stopped it, or when he gave Emma a baby doll that could say over a thousand words in a language she and Milo had never heard before.
And, of course, he always brought back a vase for his wife, because vases were her favorite.
Milo put aside those
thoughts and focused on the mission at hand. He practically crashed through the sliding glass door on his way to the backyard.
His mother was crouched in her garden, yellow boots reaching halfway up her calves and a straw hat casting a shadow over her delicate features. She was a tall, slender woman, as beautiful as the Hollywood stars Milo and his sister admired on TV.
She had a strangely charismatic way about her that made it easy for others to open up to her. And it wasn’t just people; whenever Milo saw her working in the garden, he’d get the impression that she was having a conversation with her vegetables, as if urging them to grow. And they always did, too. The tomatoes would turn out as big as softballs, the cucumbers as thick around as his forearm.
Seeing the alarmed look on her son’s face, Alexandra Banks threw off her hat and removed her gloves. She ran toward the house, her rubber boots squeaking and her nut-brown hair tossing in the breeze.
“Is she okay?” she asked as she passed her son.
“No. She banged her head on the fireplace. I think it knocked her out!”
“Oh, gods. Hurry!”
He followed his mother into the living room. The dust around the vase had settled, and yet, Milo felt a tickle in his lungs when he breathed in. Something strange had taken place. The room felt foreign to him, and it wasn’t just the scent of blood in the air, or the sight of his sister sprawled out on the floor, her right hand swollen and mangled as if the fingers had been smashed.
“I’m an idiot,” Milo said, turning toward the phone in the next room. “I’ll call 911.”
“No!”
He froze.
Was his mother telling him not to call for help? What was she thinking?
It was then Milo noticed his sister’s body convulsing. He coughed as he stepped back in horror. The dust in the air was like finely crushed glass, scraping the insides of his lungs. A tiny voice in his head told him it was the vase, that somehow the vase was involved, though it seemed to be sitting perfectly still on the tabletop.
An eerie voice filled the room, each word lilting and musical, like a poem in a European language taught in no classroom Milo had ever attended.
It was coming from his mother.
She had laid both hands on Emma’s shaking body and was chanting. Blue light spread beneath her fingers, burning against Emma’s bloodstained clothes.
As Milo watched, he grew more convinced his father had lied to him. Something supernatural had taken place the day he’d saved Holly’s life, just as something completely out of this world was happening now.
He was convinced of one other fact, as well. Emma was going to be okay.
In less than a minute, the blue light went away, the air in the room went back to normal, and Emma was sitting up and touching her forehead with a hand that was no longer swollen.
“What happened?” she asked her mother.
“Nothing. You fell, that’s all. You’ll be just fine.”
Milo pressed his back against the wall and tried to calm his breathing. Things were going to be different now. His parents couldn’t possibly lie about this—definitely not this. It was just too weird, too incredible, too—impossible!
He had seen the gash on Emma’s forehead up close, the way her fingers had been all swollen and bent. He had watched the wounds disappear.
Like magic.
CHAPTER 8
T he vase was nowhere to be found.
Milo was certain his mother had stashed it somewhere, which confirmed his suspicion that it had played a role in his sister’s injury. When he tried asking about it, his mother gave him a steely look that said she wasn’t in the mood for an interrogation.
He watched his mother lead a disoriented Emma to bed, giving her an herbal tea that made her drift instantly to sleep. She told Milo not to disturb his sister, and not to ask any questions until she, Alexandra, had a chance to nap. The bags under her eyes and the weariness in her voice told Milo she was dead serious about needing one.
Once she had locked herself in her bedroom, Milo checked on his slumbering sister before retiring to his room to muse over what had happened. He waited for his dad to return home with dinner and an explanation. His father had been gone all afternoon. As far as Milo knew, he had no idea what had happened in the living room.
Milo tried reading, but his mind buzzed with questions. When his father returned with pizza and soda for dinner, Milo explained what had taken place. His father bit into a pepperoni slice and listened. He barely spoke, mostly nodding as Milo poured out a story that seemed more and more ridiculous as he went on.
“Do me a favor,” his father said at one point, interrupting Milo. “Eat your dinner, and don’t bring this up again until your mother and I have had a chance to talk about it.”
Milo could only look down in defeat and nod.
Later that night, he lay in bed, unable to sleep. It must have been eleven o’clock when he heard a sound in the hallway that made his muscles tense. It was his parents’ bedroom door.
He listened as soft footsteps grew louder outside his door, and then stopped. Another click as his own door opened. He could tell it was his mother by the lightness of her movements. He faked sleep. Satisfied, she closed the door and made her way downstairs, probably to consult her husband.
This was his opportunity. Milo kicked away the covers and sprang out of bed. Soon, he was in the dark hallway, creeping toward the stairs, using only the front pads of his feet.
“Milo?” whispered a voice from behind him.
His entire body went rigid. He turned slowly to see Emma also creeping like a bandit in the shadows. She held up her right hand—the one their mother had mysteriously healed—and gave Milo a single, firm nod, as if she completely understood what needed to be done.
“Let’s go,” Milo said.
They crept down the stairs until they reached the door to their father’s study.
“She should have gone to a hospital,” Max was saying.
“Are you crazy?” Alexandra replied. “We don’t have health insurance. Plus, Emma was convulsing. She’s allergic to Samarindh clay, and you know there’s only one way to heal that kind of a reaction.”
“Did you get rid of the vase?”
“Not yet. I hid it. I’ll toss it in the river tomorrow morning. Max, I healed her. You know what that means.”
“It doesn’t mean anything. We’ve been hiding down here for almost two decades. Our enemies think we’re dead.”
“Still, it’s too risky. The hunters are out there, looking for people like us.”
“Don’t I know it.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Allie, listen to me. I’m close to finding our ride out of here. Our allies buried it in the wrong place all those years ago, and I’ve been searching for it for weeks. Until I find it, there’s no way out. We need it to make the journey where we’re going.”
“What about the crystal?”
“I have it. I’ll give it to Milo. He’s the only one of us capable of charging it.”
“That means he really is…”
“Yes. Which is why we have to leave.”
On hearing his own name spoken, Milo leaned to get closer to the door. He stepped on Emma’s toes in the process. She drew a breath in a hiss.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“What was that?” came his mother’s voice from inside. “Did you hear that?”
Milo and Emma glanced at each other before scurrying like mice into the unlit kitchen. When they were safely away from the hallway, Milo faced his sister in the darkness.
“Did you hear that?” he said. “Mom talked about healing you. And—and Dad’s searching for something that’s going to get us out of here.”
“I know you’re excited,” Emma said. “But, Milo, they sounded terrified. And you know Dad. He isn’t scared of anything. Besides, why should we have to go anywhere? Who’s after us?”
“But he mentioned a crystal he wants to give me! He said I was the only one capable—”
Milo was barely listening now. He tried to breathe as a dizzy spell came over him. So many questions swirled inside his head. He looked around as if the answers lay scattered all over the kitchen, but all he saw was darkness.
“Emma,” he said, very seriously. “What if we’re like them? You and me. Capable of magic, super-strength, and stuff like that?
“If that’s true, then I don’t think we should tell anyone. It sounds like we could be in danger.”
“You’re right.”
“Milo…” Emma gripped his forearm. “Let it go. There’s nothing we can do except stress Mom and Dad out more. Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
“Fine. I won’t tell anyone. Besides, who would believe me? But I’m not just going to forget about it, either.”
“I know you won’t,” Emma said, chewing her lower lip. “I just can’t help thinking that the truth is going to hurt us somehow. We should get to bed. Let’s not talk to Mom and Dad about this.”
“Fine. But if we see anything strange like that again—magic or whatever—I’m going to look for answers.”
Emma nodded in agreement. “If it happens again, we’ll bug Mom and Dad until they tell us the truth. But until then, we act normal and see what happens. Pinky swear?”
She held out her hand, pinky extended. Milo sighed in frustration.
“Waiting. All I do is wait.”
He wrapped his pinky around hers, and they shook on it.
HIS MOTHER LOOKED POSITIVELY CHIPPER the next morning.
“Eggs, bacon, and pancakes,” she said, holding out a plate with a stack of at least twelve pancakes weighing it down. She was even wearing an apron. “Your favorite. Chocolate chip!”
Milo hadn’t slept a wink the night before. He couldn’t help but frown at her. Emma pushed past him and took a seat at the table, even smiling as she poured herself a glass of OJ. She really was an amazing actress.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 4
