by Shaye Easton
It’s not the first time I’ve had an out-of-body experience while enduring a heat surge, but it still rattles me. I can feel everything: the carpet under my hands, the boiling fire surging through my veins; it’s just dulled; my pain is the sound a television makes and someone’s gone and turned the volume down.
A cry rips out of my throat and I watch my mouth open while my own ghostly mouth remains closed. It’s like I’m in two places at once, occupying two minds and trying to control both of them. And all this happens in two heartbeats. Two heartbeats, and then I’m sucked back in my body and everything is full volume once again. The air hitting my skin feels like daggers, the sound of footsteps, of ruffled movement, is like claps of thunder assaulting my ears, the dull light leaking in through the window is as bright as staring into the sun.
I squeeze my eyes shut and feel tears escape out the corners. And I’m not just crying because of the wildfire burning my insides. It’s as if all the pain I’ve ever experienced has amassed within me: all the sorrow and anger and agony, all the excruciating memories. It’s mashed up inside my chest, creating a welling tide of pain so severe that all I want to do is scream. But I don’t, and as the heat starts to dissipate, the feeling leaves me.
Then it’s all gone—the pain, the fire, the emotion, the noise. And in its place I’m left with the most terrifying of knowledge:
This was my second heat surge in a single day. Which means the process is speeding up. Which means …which means—
“I was serious,” Davion says, tugging me back to the current situation, filling the silence intersected only by my gasping breath. I tilt my head back to stare woozily up at him and his gaze latches firmly onto mine. “I would have killed you tonight. But now there’s no point.”
“What are you saying?” Caden asks. He casts a fearful look down at me before raising his eyes to Davion.
The afternoon seems to take a breath, the trees pausing to silently sway—or maybe my own ears just block out all other sound, honing in on Davion, dreading his coming words. Because I know what they will be. And they petrify me.
“You’re already dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
All night, the government labourers of each suburb worked to clear the roads of snow. That’s what the news tells us when I wake the next morning, still tired after a restless sleep, my mind loud with thoughts late into the evening. Sure enough, our street is mostly cleared, the wet tarmac sparkling whenever the sun dares to shine through the patchy clouds, like it’s run through with diamonds.
School is bustling when I arrive, loud with chatter and shouting, a wave of white noise like the low hum of a crowded amphitheatre. I have first period English, and when I enter, I spot Caden talking with Lauren, the two of them sitting on the edge of their desks. Caden’s got his back to me, but I can see Lauren smiling, talking animatedly. Then her eyes skip over his shoulder and get snagged on me, passing through the doorway. At once her mouth stops moving and her expression collapses, a landslide of emotion crumbling off her face and smashing to dust on the floor.
Caden turns, lips parted, forming an ‘O’ of bewilderment. Before I know it he’s kicked off his perch and is zigzagging around desks and students. I’m slipping around the edge of the room, yawning when he catches up to me.
“We need to talk about last night,” he says, ducking his head to speak to me.
“Not really.” I find my seat and drop into it, releasing my books onto the desk with a smack.
Caden slides into the chair next to mine, gingerly putting down his things. “I need to know why Davion said that.”
“Said what?”
He’s staring at me intently, his whole body turned in my direction. “You know what.”
I shrug. “He was just restating what we already know. My disease is killing me. I’m a time bomb. Yada, yada, yada.”
“No.” He shakes his head, forehead creasing as he puzzles it out. “It was like he knew something we didn’t.”
“You’re overthinking it.”
“And you’re not telling me something.” I look away so he won’t see the truth in my eyes. “What aren’t you saying?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be hiding it from me.”
I exhale and lean back in my chair, gazing sideways at him. Like this, we’re close enough that I can feel his breath, whisper-soft against my cheek. I can see the velvety dark of his irises and the muscles twitching by his jaw as he swallows. We’re so close, but at the same time we’re divided, an invisible, unpassable barrier between him and me: the understanding that we can never touch.
“It’s my heat surges,” I say at last. “They’re more frequent.”
He clenches his jaw. “How frequent?”
“Two yesterday. And I already had one this morning before I left for school.”
Caden looks away, his hand balling into a fist where it rests on the desk. “You were meant to have more time than this. It was supposed to be years.”
Something inside me twinges. “It was supposed to be years ago. I’m already beating the odds.” Caden has his eyes closed, his forehead scrunched up as he breathes deeply. “Caden,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. “How long?”
He raises his head. “Months.” And the way he says it, you’d think the word was poisonous.
Months. Months to live. Months to find a way to swap back and get Sara to agree to it. And that’s if I don’t get killed by an underwalker first. Suddenly my world gets smaller, time spiralling down and constricting around me. I gulp down a greedy, rattling breath, as if it’s already happening, as if my heart has already decided to throw in the towel and stop beating.
“It’s not just that, Melissa,” Caden says, tugging me from my inner panic. “You’re the Final Prophet, which means you will live to see the war. It’s not possible for it to happen without you. That leaves us with two possibilities: either you find a way to swap back and survive until the time of the prophecy, or—”
“Or the time of prophecy is already here,” I say softly, my heart trembling with dread.
Glumly, Caden nods. “But what I’d like to know is how Davion knew your time was running out. How could he have known that was your second heat surge in a day?”
“At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had me under constant surveillance. It was probably the ghost spying on me again.”
Caden frowns. But if he isn’t convinced, he doesn’t say a word about it.
Class starts and ends, and the whole time I’m trying not to think about my expiry date, which, of course, only makes me think about it more. I traverse the hallways, on my way to second period, and every step feels momentous, a miracle of bones and muscle, tissue and sinew working together to usher me onward. I want to run, to test the limits of my body, to push myself beyond physical restraints—energy, pain, death—until I crash into the metaphysical realm and escape. It makes me ache. All of my seventeen years feel like they’ve been wasted. Why didn’t I ever try to live?
I’ve barely been looking where I’m going but the sea of students parts around me like I’m surrounded by my own force field. When I look up, it’s just in time to see Sara approaching from the opposite direction. There’s something different about her today, almost frightening. Her tan seems to have faded, a sickly pallor bleeding through. Her eyes are shadowed, her posture is closed off and defensive, and her face is gaunt, like the blood has been drained from her body, leaving only a skeletal form wrapped in skin.
She barely sees me as she passes, coughing into her jacket sleeve. I stop and stare, turning to watch her go, my blood hammering in my ears. Something like terror settles down over me. It creates roots, digging into my chest, twining around my ribs, knotting inside my heart. It fills every part of my body, mixing with my blood, seeping into bone. I stare and stare and stare, even after she’s disappeared into the throng, terrified beyond belief, without knowing why.
At recess, she looks m
uch the same as I walk by her table. She’s still sitting with Lauren’s group, and I find it hard to believe they could be so mercurial. One moment, they’re happy to welcome me into the fold. The next, it’s like they can’t imagine anything worse. It reminds me of Caden’s first days, of Drew, who was Caden’s friend on the days he was here, and clueless as to who he was when he wasn’t.
Sara sets her cold gaze on me as I pass, glaring, warning me to stay away possibly even more fiercely than usual. But what really draws my attention is Lauren sat next to her, eyes trained downwards as she blatantly avoids my gaze.
I don’t understand it. It’s as though Sara is slowly poisoning everyone against me.
I’ve only gone several metres when I hear Kira shout my name. I turn as she catches up, green-streaked hair flapping in the breeze.
“What is it?” I ask sourly.
“I’m having a party Friday night,” she says, sticking a blue-paper invite into my hand. “You should come.”
I stare at it, then at her. “Uh, not to be ungrateful or anything, but why?”
“Because we’re friends.”
“Really?” I exclaim, brows raised. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
“So I’ll see you there?”
I sigh and shove the invite into my pocket. “Don’t count on it.”
“I’ll take that as a yes!” she calls after my retreating form.
I see Sara again in math class. Despite her sickly manner, she’s just as lively; a large crowd of students hang on her every word.
“Oh, look,” she says as I enter, “it’s Cold Spell Mel.”
I don’t dignify that with a response, pushing past the crowd.
“Aww, she’s upset.” Sara takes steps towards my desk in the back row. She’s a hunter, dark, shadowed eyes pinning me in her web, the skin stretched tight over her bones, her thin, gangly limbs like the exoskeleton of a spider. “What’s wrong? Don’t feel like burning anyone today?”
“What happened to leaving each other alone?”
“Now why would I do that? You’re my main source of entertainment.”
“No, you’re just using me as an outlet for your anger,” I say, keeping my voice controlled. “Because you hate what your life has become and you don’t know who to blame. You’re hurting.”
Her eyes burn as she draws close. Evidently, this was not what she wanted to hear. “Well, you’re a bitch,” she spits, voice low so others don’t hear. “Have you enjoyed living my life? Have my parents been good to you?”
“Sara, don’t—”
“I hope you at least made the most of your freedom, seeing as I was stuck growing up in a fucking supernatural cage.”
“A cage? Is that what you call your body?”
“No, that’s what’s I call my childhood. You had it so easy. You got to live away from all this. But I grew up the only human in a family of spectres. I grew up hearing about the prophecy and how special you were and how important it was that I stay safe. Because god forbid I ever hurt the body of the Final Prophet. God forbid I die and you don’t have a vessel to swap back into. Just imagine, for one moment, growing up as I did, smothered by a family that wasn’t mine to protect the body of the child they’d lost, and still grieved. No one gave two shits about me. It was always about you.”
Finally, I get it. She’s lived her entire life in my shadow. So, of course, she’d make it her duty to cast me into hers the moment she walked through the school gates. “Sara, you need to believe me: I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t ask for this to happen. I’m so sorry about what you’ve been through, but you can’t keep blaming me. It was their fault. The underwalkers. They did this.”
Sara snorts, backing up. “You’re the Final Prophet. Everything that happens happens because of you. At some stage, you’re going to have to accept that everything is your fault.”
She spins around, putting on a smirk for the benefit of her posse still hovering by the front of the class. But the façade slips, a quick but nonetheless ragged-sounding cough bursting out of her mouth. She clears her throat.
Dread squeezes my heart like vines. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t act like you care,” she snaps and leaves to re-join her gang.
Miss Davis enters and the class gets underway. But it doesn’t take long for the sound of coughing to fill the room. Sara is leaning over her desk, a hand over her mouth as the coughing bout worsens, turning sharp and violent. When she, at last, pulls her hand away, the centre of her palm is glistening and red. She quickly balls her hand into a fist.
Miss Davis, distracted by all the coughing, turns away from the board and sighs. “You have my permission to get a drink of water, Sara. Just be quick.”
Sara’s head trembles up and down and she rushes from the room. But she doesn’t return. In fact, it’s the last I see of her until lunch, when I’m walking by the front of the school on my way to the lawn. She’s chucking her bag into the back of a black Audi. An older woman is resting her arm atop an open driver-side door.
I freeze in my tracks.
The woman has the same fair hair as Sara, albeit a darker shade, and it’s cropped well above her shoulders. She has the same facial structure as well—prominent cheekbones, nose, and jawline perfect enough to be carved from stone. The only major difference is the eyes. While Sara’s are a vibrant blue, this woman’s eyes are a deep, inky black.
It takes me a beat to realise who I’m looking at. The woman is Sara’s mother—my birth mother. I’m looking at Kathryn Falconer.
If there was any time to sneak away before I’m caught staring, it would be now. But just as I think it, Sara sees me, Kathryn following her gaze.
There’s a moment where time seems to falter, memories from the past bleeding into the present, shared knowledge thick on the air between us. Then Sara says, “Let’s go,” and the moment holding us captive is shattered. Kathryn barely takes her eyes off me as they both climb into the car, her face unreadable.
And I’m still just standing there staring, the two of them staring back from behind the windshield, up until they drive away.
***
That night, I dream.
The sun is hot, beating down on me with a strength that has me yearning for the cool refuge of shade, but there is none in sight. Around me, the places that should be in shadow are filled in with light, as if the sun is coming from every angle at once. I wipe a hand across my brow, sweating.
“Hot today, huh?” Sara asks, appearing suddenly beside me on the deserted street. I look sideways at her and nod, squinting in order to make out her features.
“You want to go to my place?” she asks. “It’s nice and cool inside.” Again, I nod, and she takes me by the hand, pulling me across the empty road as I look at the ground, shielding my sensitive eyes from the sun.
When we reach the other side, I look up, and there stands my house, its garden full of blooming flowers, its lawn neatly mowed. Sara pulls me right up to the front door, which opens before we even get the chance to knock.
“Sara, darling,” my mother says, barely acknowledging my presence. “Come on inside.”
I look at Sara quizzically and lean over, whispering, “I thought you said we were going to your place?”
When I pull back, she’s frowning. “This is my place,” she says and lets go of my hand, walking inside. I follow her in.
“Oh, honey,” my mother says, grabbing Sara by the shoulders. “You’re sunburnt.”
I stand just inside the door watching them. My heart punching the walls of my chest every time I breathe.
“I’m fine, Mum,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Mum smiles, saying, “I’m glad you are,” and pulls her into a hug.
Then, as they embrace, Sara looks at me over my mother’s shoulder.
And winks.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I don’t know how to explain the feeling that comes over me the next morning. It’s as if the world has decided to crank the
depression meter up a notch, creating an atmosphere that seems to generate its own sadness—a sadness that robs the world of colour and pollutes my body every time I swallow, every time I breathe.
I push myself out of bed and force on my uniform, not completely sure how I’m going to make it through a day of school. Every time I try to think of anything other than my twice daily heat surges, seeing Kathryn yesterday afternoon; or Sara and her coughing; Sara and her pale, haggard face; Sara and the crimson blotch on her palm, my brain falters, changing the tracks on my train of thoughts so it takes me straight back to those same points of dread.
Dad drives me to school, and the ride is silent the entire way. It’s not an uncomfortable silence, just a tired one. I watch the suburbs pass outside with the sort of detachment you get when you’re really thinking about something, and suddenly you’ve gone three blocks without noticing it. I’m unseeing and tormented and tired. Every time I close my eyes, the blood on Sara’s hand flashes bright and ugly on the back of my eyelids, like a warning.
I get to my locker just as the first bell screeches, a high-pitched wailing that saturates the air, grating in my ears. I’ve got science, and I sit in the same spot as always, a window seat in the final row. The glass I smashed has been replaced by now, but I can’t stop imagining it in pieces, jagged teeth around the frame and sharp diamonds littering the floor.
I was the one who shattered it—I know that, of course—yet it still fails to make any kind of sense to my brain. It’s one of those things that I can grasp in theory but is wholly unreachable in practice. I can be told again and again that the rules of the spectre world operate differently, that you can manipulate fire and smash windows and vanish into thin air, but witnessing it in person, in real life—to physically see a man disappear, or glass shatter of its own accord—is like watching the universe glitch. The mind spasms, eyes blinking, shock rolling over the body like a steam-roller. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.
I look past the glass. The ghost is milling around in the street, and by milling, I mean standing rock-solid and eerily still, even as cars drive through it. I can’t find it in me to be afraid, not today, not anymore. I return to my work.
