“Brent, will you let me feel your illness?”
Brent lowered his lashes before nodding.
“Thank you,” I said. I’d only done this once before, back in high school.
My heart beat a tattoo in my chest as I reached out and let my fingers trail along his face, down his neck. He practically purred and the corners of my mouth tilted up. The pads of my fingers glided to nape of his neck and I slid closer to him, near enough for his body to warm mine. I exhaled and let my spirit’s fingers sink past his mortal flesh at the base of his skull.
The cold, heavy hurt of his illness assaulted me. It reached toward my fingers, its thick dark tarry substance slinking like a vine, growing and twisting around everything it could. The intensity of its arctic temperature scalded my fingers, stealing my breath and blurring my vision. It had grown since I’d last checked.
Connected like this, Brent could hear my thoughts and I could hear his.
It’s so much worse, I said.
The disease brushed against my finger and I jerked back. It followed, trying to ensnare me. My fingers moved to his cheek where the blackness of the disease hadn’t yet touched. My thumbs stroked his spirit’s cheeks, letting the warmth of his soul, his goodness, thaw the frigidness I had just encountered.
He didn’t look away when he spoke into my mind, I know.
His brown eyes were now open, honest. For the first time, I really saw how much this scared him. He was finally letting me see all of him, and the intimacy of the moment robbed me of breath. Brent stood in front of me brave, courageous, scared, and vulnerable, and I’d never loved him more. I leaned forward, my lips grazing his.
DJ cleared his throat.
I jumped; I’d forgotten we weren’t alone.
“Please, spare me the PDA.” DJ pretended to shudder. “I thought we were training.”
Brent gave me a swift kiss before stepping back and shaking his head.
“What I meant to say—before I was so wonderfully interrupted—was that Yara can manipulate water, earth and air. But I also think that she can now access fire. Since the medicine has been less effective, especially the last few days, I’ve felt it sparking in me again. You should be able to feel it too, Yara.”
My hands shook and I stuffed them in my pockets. I hated that power.
Brent looked away and scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the brick on the patio. “I know you don’t like it, because it’s tied up with my soul-disease, but it gives you an ability Crosby doesn’t know about. And it could be useful.”
“I don’t like it.”
“But you could use earth and water to create mud, and if you used the fire on that, you could make something like clay. It could slow people down if you put it on their feet, or make a defensive wall.”
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “But that will take some practice.”
I wandered a few steps away thinking about my new abilities. Before trying the clay idea, I had to find the fire inside myself.
I took several cleansing breaths and closed my eyes. The warmth was easy to find, a simmering heat under my rib cage. It instantly responded when I called on it.
For half an hour, I practiced combining all four elements together. I’d pluck browned leaves from the tree with air, set them on fire as they fell, use the moisture in the air to douse the fire before the ashes hit the ground, and then turn the earth over to bury the evidence. All without moving from my seat on the patio.
I then moved on to creating clay.
Brent and DJ practiced as well, tossing whatever was handy across the yard at each other.
Several times I felt weird shifts in my energy, sudden spikes and drops. Deciding it was low blood sugar, I grabbed a handful of trail mix and a Dr. Pepper.
Taking a swig of the sugary drink, I walked to the middle of my grandma’s herb garden. I levitated some dirt, about to combine it with a globe of water wrested from the air, when the water evaporated and the dirt crumbled to the ground. My energy plunged as if being pulled from me, and I fell on my butt, spilling my soda on the ground.
My energy plummeted and I collapsed.
I lay among the plants, panting and staring at the brilliant blue sky, too weak to move. Another tug came and I realized it felt familiar, with its own brand or signature or . . . I didn’t know what to call it, but the tug came from DJ. My hair twisted in the thyme as I rolled my head so I could see him. More energy surged out of me, and this time it was drawn out by Brent.
“Hey!” I called out in a weak voice. “Guys, did you realize you just stole my energy?”
The chair Brent had been throwing at DJ clattered to the ground. “What?”
“You guys keep borrowing my energy.” I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t find the strength, so I fell back into the herbs, the smells of basil and oregano wafting around me. “I can feel it leaving me and going to the two of you.”
“We can do that?” DJ asked. He bent over, resting his hands on his knees, breathing hard.
“Apparently.”
Brent came over and helped me to me feet. “Well, it might be cool if we could do it without draining each other. It’s like something out of a video game. I wonder if we choose when to do it.”
“Try giving some to me,” I said. “I don’t have any; you stole it all.”
Brent ruffled my hair. “Sorry, Bonita.”
I pushed him away. “Yeah, yeah. Sure, you are.”
Brent took hold of me, his palms warming my forearms, and a heated charge traveled through my whole body. I almost shook with the rush of strength coursing into me, and my already staticky hair poofed out even more.
“Just call me Dr. Frankenstein.” Brent grinned. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’m drinking pure caffeine.”
“This has incredible possibilities.” Brent clapped his hands together. “Imagine if we perfected it. There’d have no weak links. We’d be unbeatable.”
DJ readily agreed. The three of us spread out in a wide circle trying to borrow and share energy from each other. I could see why they hadn’t even realized they’d taken it from me before. When I got tired, my body instinctively borrowed it from them. And when one of them needed it, my body offered it up, as naturally as breathing. It was odd the way we made such a complete unit.
Brent motioned the bowling ball closer and it soared toward me, moving faster than I was ready for.
Brent had turned, picking up another object, but DJ shouted a warning behind me. Before I could direct it away or even duck, an icy presence—DJ, I recognized—darted through me, merging with me, then knocked me out of the way. I was on the ground and DJ was in my place, letting the ball that would have crushed me pass harmlessly though him. I shivered and glanced him. He was looking around, his eyes wide, like he wasn’t even sure what just happened.
“Thanks. How did you do that?”
“Instinct.” DJ rolled his shoulders and shook himself out. “It’s like I’m hardwired to protect you.”
“I’m so sorry, Yara! Are you okay? You’re getting so much better that I sometimes forget you aren’t as fast as me.” Brent helped me to my feet then fist bumped DJ. “Thanks, man.”
I wiped the dirt off my butt while DJ and Brent considered how DJ’s action might be used in a fight. Soon we were running more drills.
On my command the water hose rose from the lawn and orbited in the air, spraying everywhere. With a twirl of my finger I pointed it at Brent.
He jumped back laughing as the cold water drenched him. “Just wait; payback is—” He cut off, his eyes rolling back in his head as he flopped forward, crashing to the ground with a thud. His whole body went rigid, then shook, trembling with a forceful seizure.
“Brent!” I yelled dropping down to my knees beside him, but out of range of his flailing motion. “DJ, get his medicine.”
DJ vanished. My medical training kicked in and I did a quick visual to make sure he wouldn’t hurt himself on anything nearby. I pulled out my cell phone
and called 911 before turning back to Brent. Foam slid from the corners of his mouth and blood dripped from his nose. His eyelashes fluttered, showing only the whites of his eyes.
His abilities raged out of control. The earth beneath him heated and smoked, forming a halo of singed grass. Strong blasts of wind knocked me flat on my face, while the ground rumbled and shook. Trees swayed in the sudden storm, rain and hail pelted me from the sky and tree limbs cracked and creaked. With each jerk of Brent’s body, flashes of lighting brightened the sky. Flowers and herbs were smashed into the mud and the scent of wet earth surrounded me.
Still Brent seized and the ground complained and shook along with him.
Adrenaline pulsed through me, chased by deep panic. I’d been through this with him before. We’d make it this time too.
“I’m here, Brent.”
I took a deep breath, trying to let go of my fear. I reached out to his rigidly splayed fingers and, just like I had in my living room long ago, I let my pinky touch his, moving past my own flesh and through Brent’s until our souls touched.
With that connection, his movements slowed and his body relaxed, until he looked like a young boy in a deep sleep.
The wind and rain stopped and the clouds rolled away. Not letting go of his hand, I crawled through the mud and let my head fall against his shoulder. DJ appeared beside me holding the bottle.
“Thank you.” I panted for breath. “You carried it.”
DJ nodded. “Impressive, I know.” He handed me the bottle and I gathered Brent in my arms, letting his head rest against my chest. I forced some of the medicine down his throat. I didn’t bother measuring, knowing those days were long gone. Holding him, I could tell the illness in him had grown, almost doubling in size.
“It grew.” My eyebrows shot up as my heart sank. “I can feel it. What would cause it to do that so suddenly?”
DJ sat across from me, his eyes skimming over Brent. “Maybe it has to do with him using his abilities? Maybe it eats through the treatment faster?”
That made sense. It was his spiritual self that was sick, and that was the part of him that held his special abilities. But how could we take Brent out of the fight? He was our strongest player, our not-so-secret weapon, the one thing that seemed to worry Crosby. If he fought, he might not make it through the battle. If he didn’t, we’d already lost.
Chapter 14
Numb to everything, I watched the ambulance drive away, knowing they would only treat the symptoms, never touching the real problem.
DJ came with me to the hospital and waited through the hours of testing. They put Brent back on the drugs he’d been taking in high school and gave us a little bit of good news: there didn’t seem to be any damage to his brain or body because of the seizure.
My parents didn’t even protest when I brought him back to our house instead of leaving him with Steve. Exhausted and worried, we helped Brent into an extra bed and then my parents forced me to go to my room and rest. Sleep evaded me, so I curled up on my window seat and gazed out the window at the moonless night.
Instead of my reflection in the glass, all I saw were flashes of the things that were wrong and needed to be fixed. I knew only one possible place to find the answers, so I cracked open the enormous tome of the Matriarca journal. The first story in the tome was one I knew by heart, the tale of the First Waker. I skipped it and moved on, searching the pages for answers or clues. Anything that might help.
I must have drifted off because I woke up in the window seat, my heart pounding.
My clock’s big red numbers read three thirty in the morning and everything looked normal, but it felt like a cement block had been tossed on my chest, leaving my heart shattered, broken into jagged, cutting shards.
It took me a moment to breathe around the emotional pain, and to realize it wasn’t my own. It was Brent’s grief I could feel, his suffering, his sorrow. My heart rose to my throat and I sat up in bed fast, scrambling out of the room and running down the hall toward Brent. “What’s wrong?”
Brent sat with his phone in his lap, staring at the wall with a completely blank expression. I wanted to run to him, but the stiffness of his posture and the bleak emptiness in his eyes made me hesitate.
“Brent? Brent, what happened?”
“M-my… my dad.”
He took a shuddering breath and looked at me, but I couldn’t tell if he actually saw me. I held my breath, waiting for more.
“My dad’s dead.”
His words robbed me of breath. I struggled to find some magic words that would ease his pain, but there weren’t any. They didn’t exist.
Walking forward, I wrapped my arms around him, holding him against me. It only took a second for that wall around him to crumple. He seemed to shatter with it.
Gripping me so tight the air rushed out of my lungs, Brent buried his face in my hair. His body shook as he let his tears fall.
I’m not sure how long I held him, but eventually he kissed my cheek and let his head fall onto my lap. I traced figure eight’s around his eyes, trailing my fingertips across his eyebrows. Tears still streamed from his eyes, trickling down the sides of his face and onto my pajama bottoms. He took my other hand and interlaced our fingers, resting them on his stomach.
Not sure I wanted to know, I asked, “What happened?”
“He was shot . . . ” Brent’s voice trailed off. “Crosby.”
“Why? I thought he worked for Crosby.”
He glanced at me, a little color rising in his pale cheeks. “He called me last night, right after I got home from the hospital.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“The conversation didn’t last that long.” Brent closed his eyes. “He was still ticked because I blew him off to go to Modesto. And he was mad that I ignored his invite to the bus terminal rally. He started ranting about how bad this made him look.”
“But how do you know it was Crosby?”
Brent’s jaw clenched. “Because he’s the one who told me my dad was dead.”
“What?”
“He called me. Said I should have met with him. Said that if my dad couldn’t even get me to meet with him, then he really was as useless as he’d always suspected.” His tortured eyes bore into mine. “It’s my fault.”
“No.” I leaned over Brent, the bed creaking as I shifted. Wind swept across the room, rattling the generic artwork hanging on the wall and tipping over a glass vase of fake flowers. I placed a hand on his cheek. Brent didn’t even seem aware he’d done it. “Calm down. Breathe. And don’t let Crosby pin the blame on you. He killed him.”
Brent rolled off the bed and knelt beside me. “Are you trying to make me feel better or do you really believe it?”
I wiped away the tears streaking down his cheek. “I believe it.”
He clutched me to him, holding onto me like nothing else could save him. He hid his face in my neck and his lips brushed my throat. My arms went around him, stroking his back, making soothing reassurances until he relaxed against me, totally spent.
I’m not sure when we drifted off, but we awoke when Brent’s cell phone started ringing. Her jerked up, his eyes darting around before he grabbed the phone and looked at the screen.
“It’s my mom.”
Looking down at the phone, my stomach clenched. “Do you want me to get it?”
He shook his head and answered the call just before it cut to voicemail.
Even through the speaker, I could hear her sobbing. I hugged him tighter.
“I know, Mom.” He paused. “Someone called and told me.”
She said something else and he shook his head, sitting up.
“No, I’ll be there soon. Don’t go anywhere.”
As soon as the call ended, I handed him his shoes. “I’m going with you.”
“Thank you,” he said. Some of the tension in his face faded. “I’m going to need you.”
Within half an hour, a completely disheveled Katie let us into her house before throwi
ng her arms around Brent’s neck and sobbing incoherently.
It took a while for her to calm down enough to tell us about the cops waking her up to give her the news. Brent held her hand and told her the truth about his dad’s death. Everything. She didn’t scoff when we told her what had really happened, or when she learned who was responsible.
We sat with her all morning. Brent comforted her as much as he could and I took care of the mundane things like phone calls and cooking food. Katie probably didn’t like me being in her house, but I didn’t care. I was there for Brent, not her.
Brent and his mom seemed to have reached a truce. After he jerked awake for the third time and yawned, neither of them batted an eye when he went upstairs to sleep in his old bed.
That left me alone with his mom. Fantastic.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked.
She shook her head and dabbed at her eyes with an already wet tissue. “How did my life go so wrong?”
I held my breath. What could I say to that? It probably started the day her husband decided to align himself with the Clutch years ago.
Katie shuddered. “Everything changed after Neal died. Richard never recovered from that.”
I didn’t say anything; it didn’t seem like she wanted me to. She just needed to talk.
“But that year, your senior year . . . That was when I really lost him. He changed and every year since, he pulled away more.” She stared at me. “It was the Clutch and Crosby, wasn’t it? They dragged him away, and they tried to steal my son as well. Brent told the truth about that, didn’t he?”
I nodded.
“That wild story Brent told about ghosts and secret societies isn’t made-up, is it?”
I took a deep breath. “Brent’s telling the truth.”
“I was afraid of that.” She looked away, toward a picture on an end table of her family. It was an old picture, from before Neal’s death. “I always thought Richard and I would work things out someday. Find our way back to each other.” She put her hand over her mouth to fight back another sob. “But now we never will. I don’t want to remember him as the man he was when he died. I want to remember the man he used to be.”
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