by Sarah Jaune
Finally, Ivy located a place for them to rest. She pulled off the side of a road towards an abandoned strip of stores, parking in the rear on a drive that clearly hadn’t been paved in years. Grass sprouted through cracks and huge sections were crumbling into dust. She didn’t move her hands from the wheel, which left Eli to reach over and shut off the engine.
Eli tried to pry her fingers off the steering wheel, but they seemed to be glued in place. “You okay?”
“Sure,” she sighed and let go of the wheel. Ivy dug her fingers into her scalp and managed a faint smile. “I could really use a shower right about now.”
“At least it wasn’t like last time,” Eli reminded her with a laugh. “We crawled through sewers in Chicago.”
“True,” Ivy murmured as she opened her door to stretch her legs.
“Can we move him?” Claire asked Eli. “I think he’d be more comfortable up front.”
“Sure,” Eli yawned and went to move Thane from the trunk to the back seat, where he slumped sideways, drooling a bit.
“I could sleep for a week,” Eli told Ivy.
She shrugged, clearly not surprised. “With the amount of magic you put out to get him back safely, it’s sort of a miracle you’re awake at all. You get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
Eli didn’t want to sleep. The dreams he had were so unpleasant most of the time that he often ended up waking in a panic, but there was nothing else he could do. He was so tired, so worn down from the bursts of magic that sleep called to him insistently, demanding he give in.
It was with some trepidation that he climbed into the front seat of the jeep, reclined the seat back a bit, and closed his eyes.
Thankfully, he was too tired to dream.
Eli woke the next morning to the sounds of voices outside the jeep. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to force himself to wake, but all he wanted was to fall back into the blackness that his aching body was craving.
His chief complaint was the bite on his arm which still hurt like crazy. He glanced down and saw the red teeth marks and shook his head.
Eli pulled the door handle and pried himself from the jeep. What he saw made him grin. Thane, who appeared to be over whatever they’d been giving him to keep him quiet, had his arm slung around his little sister. His dark eyes turned towards him, and Thane’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“Do I look that bad?” Eli asked, trying for a lame joke.
“No, it’s just…” Thane’s voice was a little shaken, but his voice wasn’t as deep as Eli would have imagined. It wasn’t high, either, just right in between. “You look exactly like your sister.”
For a long moment, Eli was sure he’d heard incorrectly. “What?”
Instantly, Thane’s face went blank. “Nothing, never mind.”
“You know his sister?” Ivy demanded, rounding on him.
“I…” Thane hesitated, looking decidedly nervous. “I’m not supposed to talk about them.”
Something hot spilled into Eli’s gut as he strode towards the bigger man. “Why not?”
“For their safety,” Thane explained quickly, taking a step back from Eli, even though he was a good bit bigger than Eli. “Do you have Beth’s powers?” he questioned quickly.
That stopped Eli in his tracks. “Does she have all three?”
“Yeah,” Thane confirmed slowly, taking another step back and pushing Claire behind him. “On the rare occasions she gets riled up, people get hurt. She doesn’t have a lot of control.”
Claire, though, wasn’t having it, and she stepped back around. “Eli wouldn’t hurt me, Thane! He’s been really nice.”
Thane stared at Eli, trying to assess him. “I’ve been told not to talk to you or anyone about their location or stuff like that.”
Eli had never ground his teeth before, but he was getting close to it. “They are my family.”
Something flashed in Thane’s eyes, but was gone a moment later. “I get that.”
“Wait!” Ivy stepped between the two of them and the early sun caught her hair, making it almost appear to glow. “You’re saying Beth has three powers, but she doesn’t have a lot of control over them?”
“My power didn’t come in until about six months ago,” Eli told Thane bluntly, “but when it did, I had nearly perfect control straight from the beginning.”
Thane’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“I’ve seen what you’re talking about,” Ivy interjected, pulling Thane’s attention back to her. “When someone has more than one power, but they’re not evenly matched in intensity, it seems to make them unstable. I haven’t found a lot of proof, but my foster sisters are walking disasters half the time. However, they’re still young, so I don’t know how mismatched they’re actually going to be. If Beth’s strength is dominating her speed or telekinesis, then that might explain the problem.”
“My sister is not a problem,” Eli growled at Ivy as his temper flared again.
Ivy shot him an annoyed, reproachful look. “I’m not saying she is, Eli, just that she might have a problem. Two very different things. Why don’t you go for a run and cool off?”
He wanted to. His whole body ached to move, but he still felt bad enough from the day before that he couldn’t drudge up the energy to go. Still, though, she’d made her point. “I’m good.”
Thane glanced back and forth between them. “Uh…”
Eli shook his head, and waved off his generally crappy mood. “I’m good, I swear. If I get too heated, she’ll drench me in water.”
Fascinated, Thane turned back to Ivy. “You’re really a diviner and water?”
Ivy nodded with a tight smile. “Your magnetic ability is off the charts. I normally say someone can be up to a ten, but for you it’s almost like an eleven.”
Thane shrugged, but didn’t appear surprised. “It’s partly why I’m so big. I attract metal things to me constantly. It’s a workout every minute not to have the power going. I never have to lift weights. Just living is a constant battle.”
Eli turned away, unable to imagine just how difficult that would be to cope with. His powers sometimes worked against him, but most of the time he had to consciously think to make the magic work.
“It’s a little strange, actually,” Thane said in a voice that was clearly more relaxed. “Beth is so little, but she could lift me over her head, no problem.”
Like a moth to a flame, Eli was drawn in, needing to hear more about his sisters. He finally turned back. “So I look like Beth?”
“Nah, Naomi,” Thane explained with a grin. “You two have the same coloring, dark hair, light eyes, and olive skin. Beth is all pale and blonde. Come to think of it, the two of them have close to the same face, but you look different from the both of them. Beth says they look more like your mother. Also, they only come up to about here on me,” he held up his hand to mid-chest. “So you’re a good bit taller than they are.”
Eli always felt short and skinny. It was slightly rewarding to know that if he was going to be short, at least his sisters were shorter. That made him grin. “They’re doing okay?”
“They are fine.”
“Except that Beth explodes out in anger,” Eli said again.
Thane shrugged it off. “It’s usually not anger, but fear. If something scares her, she doesn’t always have a lot of control on her magical energy. She pushed a guy through a wall once. He was okay,” Thane assured Eli, who was gaping at him in stunned disbelief. “He’s invulnerable. Beth is just…” He glanced to Claire, then back to Eli. “I could use a run as well.”
Eli understood the message. They could go for a run and talk without little ears listening.
Ivy glanced between them. “That’s a good idea. Claire can help me make breakfast. Be back in twenty minutes.”
As much as his body protested the run, he set off at a slow jog with Thane next to him. They were an odd pair. “Tell me about Beth,” Eli asked, nearly begged, if he was honest.
“Beth is great,” Thane
answered with a grin. “She’s not perfect, but she’s great.”
“Do you know her well?” Eli probed carefully as he stared ahead at the trees that lined the road. It sounded like Thane knew her well, which left Eli caught in a mixture of jealousy, anger, and longing. He missed his sister so much.
Thane didn’t answer.
Eli glanced sideways to see the guy’s face was pinched in concentration. “What?”
“We’re attached.”
Eli stopped dead in his tracks. A few steps ahead, Thane stopped too and turned back, holding his hands out. “Please don’t beat me,” Thane said with an apologetic grin.
Eli’s mouth didn’t want to work. He opened it, tried to think of what to say, but the words weren’t coming. Attached.
Attached.
Beth and this guy in front of him were… they were it. They were as close to a matched set as one could get. It was so strange to think of his sister, his twin, being that close to someone else. He’d never thought about her finding that person.
What came out of his mouth was, “How long?”
“Two years,” Thane explained as he held up a big hand, maybe signaling for peace, Eli didn’t know. He let his hand drop to his side. “It was the first moment I met her. Cole brought me to stay with Naomi and Beth. I took one look at her, and I knew. I’d never even heard of an attachment before. She had to explain it to me.”
Thane’s brown eyes pleaded with Eli for understanding.
Eli was still too stunned to say much of anything. He was standing with the guy his sister was going to be with forever. Thane had seen Beth recently. Emptiness settled into the pit of his stomach as he tried to form some kind of sentence. “Cole was the one who saved you?”
“Yeah,” Thane confirmed with a nod.
“You stayed with Naomi?”
Thane hesitated. “She has her own place, now. She and Beth live together. I was taken there to heal up. They didn’t have another place they could hide me. That’s why I had Claire with that family in the Tulsa Zone.”
It was too much for Eli to take in. “Why can’t I live with my sisters?”
Thane shrugged, this time genuinely uncomfortable. “I can’t say.”
“You won’t say,” Eli fired back as he spun away.
He knew why, though. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that the Guard really couldn’t keep siblings together. He’d suspected for a few months now that he was with Pablo and Maia because his foster parents were special people. They were the people who were going to get him to adulthood as a functional human.
Naomi, even if she loved him, didn’t have the skills for that. She hadn’t been able to stand up to Eli most of the time when he’d been ten. He wanted desperately to punch something, to let out the explosion of feelings he was barely keeping under wraps. “I love my sisters,” Eli said after a long silence. “But I may not be good for them. I’m too much like my father sometimes.”
Thane didn’t respond.
“What’s wrong with Beth?” Eli asked him when he finally had himself back under control. “Tell me the worst.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Thane said loyally, almost defensively. “I love your sister. You have to know that.”
After two years of being attached, Eli could hardly imagine that Thane wouldn’t love her. He’d seen several attached couples. They basically melded perfectly together. “I believe you,” Eli said, even though it gnawed at him to admit it. “You thought I might hurt Claire?”
“I’m just being careful,” Thane told him as they began to walk back towards the jeep. “I’ve heard you have a terrible temper.”
It was true. He smiled ruefully. “I got into a fight with my foster brothers not too long ago. It gets ugly fast between us.”
“Ivy isn’t afraid of you,” Thane noted with clear admiration. “I’ve seen what Beth can do in a temper. I’m sure you’re just as, uh, impressive.”
“Ivy’s power works very well against mine,” Eli informed him with a laugh. “She soaked my brothers and me with water, and that was the end of it. My mom made us go running. I don’t typically lose it. I never lose my cool with the girls. I…” he hesitated as Naomi’s face, young and terrified, sprang into his memory before it fled again. “I’ve grown a lot, changed a lot. But yeah, I have a wicked temper.”
It was always there, bubbling just below the surface, but he’d worked daily for six years to earn his control. He wasn’t letting that go now.
They walked on for one minute in silence before Thane said, “Beth isn’t… she’s not a fighter.”
Eli tried to piece together exactly what that meant, but it wouldn’t come together. “I don’t understand.”
“Well,” Thane waved his hand off down the lane. “Ivy seems like she’d just tell you off if you irritated her. Beth won’t really do that. She’s like… she’s…”
Eli stopped and Thane did as well. He waited, wondering what on earth he was going to hear, but he almost knew what Thane meant. “Beth would always hold my hand,” Eli told him. “When we were kids, she was always looking to me, even though it was clear she was magical, and I might not be.”
“Yeah,” Thane nodded in relief. “That’s how she is. She doesn’t want to do what I do out here. She’d never want to be a pursuer. If I’m there and something needs to be lifted that’s heavy, she asks me to, even though she doesn’t need me. She’s…”
But he didn’t need Thane to finish. Eli understood. “She’s fragile.” Despite her strength and gifts, Beth had always been fragile.
“Yeah,” Thane sighed as worry filled his eyes.
CHAPTER 17
THE STORM INSIDE
Eli stood there, staring off into the trees, and tried to put himself in Thane’s place. Eli had been Beth’s rock for ten years, but he’d never understood just what that meant. He hadn’t gazed at it with the eyes of someone protecting another person’s life. As much as their father had abused them, Campbell would never kill them. He had plans for his children, plans for his daughters. He could marry Naomi and Beth off to people who he wanted a connection to.
Inexplicably, he flashed back to when he and Ivy had been kidnapped. He’d felt responsible for Ivy, who hadn’t been a fighter then. She’d been weaker than he was, physically, but what she lacked in strength, she’d made up for in willpower. Not only that, but Ivy had fought back any time Eli had needed her to. She’d stood up to Eli. She’d stood side by side with him and faced down whatever was coming.
Eli had felt guilty about a lot of things that had happened to her, but he’d trusted Ivy to have his back, and she’d not let him down. What would it be like if he couldn’t trust her to do that? What would it be like if he couldn’t trust that she was going to react rationally to solve a problem?
It would be terrifying. Going up against someone with such strength, so much magic, who wasn’t one hundred percent reliable would be terrifying.
But Thane did it because he was attached to Beth, because he loved her and she was his future.
It was such a strange thing to realize.
The only time Ivy ever lost it was during a thunderstorm. That was the only time he couldn’t count on her, but even then she didn’t put anyone else in danger.
Eli had hoped that Beth would have changed some in their time apart, but from the look on Thane’s face, he could tell she hadn’t. “How…” he swallowed hard against the panic. “How bad is it?”
“I wish she weren’t fragile, but mostly because I’d prefer she could take care of herself,” Thane explained as he shook his head and gazed off towards the horizon. He held out his hand and a small shard of metal floated out of the field. Thane caught the round disk, which was no bigger than an apple, and threw it up into the air, catching it as it dropped. “I don’t want her to change, exactly.”
He waited, barely breathing. Eli knew, without a doubt, that whatever he was about to hear was never going to leave him.
“A few months ago,” Thane
said with forced calm. He seemed to be picking his words very carefully. “There was an escaped prisoner in her town. The police went house to house, pulling the young men to help search, and ordering the women to lock themselves in. Cole came to warn them, even though he’s not police, but he was out helping search. Naomi was apparently asleep, but Beth said she’d stay up and keep watch. She locked the doors and waited.”
“Wait,” Eli held up a hand. “Cole lives in the same town that they do?”
