by Adam Silvera
Maybe Brighton was right. Maybe the wrong brother got powers.
Eight
High and Mighty
BRIGHTON
There’s too many people in this room, for star’s sake. Emil is reviewing test results with Dr. Bowes, and judging by his face it’s not looking promising. Wesley is leaning by the window and texting his contacts to figure out the next haven. Iris thankfully takes her phone call with Eva out into the hallway. There’ve been tons of practitioners too, but with everyone coming in and out, I haven’t seen Prudencia or Maribelle since we arrived a couple nights ago. One person is grieving her boyfriend. The other isn’t. I won’t be around when Prudencia regrets shunning me like this; that’ll be her future therapist’s problem.
Another practitioner, Dr. Oshiro, comes in, but I’m okay with them. Their methods of helping are simpler than the others. When I was a kid I assumed that all Gleam Care practitioners had healing powers, but Dad explained that if the world had that many willing healers, there would be fewer patients in hospitals. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, but Dr. Oshiro’s cooling abilities are very helpful at lowering my high temperature. They ask me to take deep breaths and I brace myself for their freezing touch as they place their tattooed hand on my forehead. It feels like those first moments when I step out into a snowstorm, cursing myself for not wearing some ski mask to protect my face from the cold, but then their touch cools my entire body down in seconds, and it feels like I’ve been relaxing in a pool all day to escape the summer heat. It’s not the kind of power I would’ve risked my life for, but it’s got its uses.
I couldn’t sleep last night. The side effects from the blood poisoning can be agonizing, but I’m more haunted by how much I hurt Emil yesterday. Apologizing seems pointless. This wasn’t like other past situations where all my own rage came before his feelings, like once when he wouldn’t turn off this podcast when I was trying to study so I told him that I was actually trying to succeed in life and not get rejected everywhere like he was with his pathetic grades. I knew Emil tried really hard with his schoolwork, but I didn’t care in that moment. It took weeks before things felt right between us. This time I would need true immortality to live long enough to make it up to him.
Dr. Oshiro and Dr. Bowes leave together, and Iris returns before the door can close.
“Your mom’s on,” Iris says, handing me the phone.
I don’t think I am ready to tell Ma everything. This reminds me of when I was studying for finals and, even with days and days of prepping, I still didn’t feel prepared. But it didn’t matter whether or not I was ready once the exam was in front of me—I just had to go for it.
A lot of people in my situation might ask for privacy, but I’ve lived so much of my life online that I don’t care. Especially not when everyone here knows my condition.
I take a deep breath and try to sound as strong as possible. “Hello?”
“My shining star,” Ma says with a crack in her voice. “I’m so happy you came back, but you can’t run away again. I told your brother the same thing, remember? We are each other’s responsibility.”
Tears are trying to break through as every moment feels like I’m inching toward my end. I feel guilty enough that she got hurt because I was pissed at Emil and the Spell Walkers when they told me I couldn’t go on any more missions, but now putting her through this? I would rather speak about anything else. Ask her about her favorite memory with Abuelita. The first meal she taught herself to cook. If watching me and Emil grow up together makes her wish she had her own sibling. What she misses the most about Dad.
I can’t die without being honest.
“I’m sorry. I won’t run away again. I promise.”
“Good. I’m excited to see you and your brother in a couple hours. Are you well?”
“I’ve been better. Ma, I came back because I wanted to help beat the Blood Casters. I survived and I held my own, but you should know I’m getting medical attention right now.”
The parallels between me and Emil both being treated in Gleam Care when we had to break big specter-related news to Ma isn’t lost on me. Except this is all my fault.
“What happened?” Ma asks. “Were you burnt? Is anything broken?”
“No one hurt me out there. It’s just . . . it’s been hard living in Emil’s shadow, and I decided to take action. My dreams got the best of me.”
She’s quiet for so long that I have to check that the call hasn’t dropped. “Got the best of you how?”
“I drank the Reaper’s Blood, and now I’m really sick. I wanted those ultimate powers and—”
“Brighton Miguel Rey! How . . . ? You . . . You’re smarter than this! The hydra blood ruined your father. What made you think you were the exception to the rule?”
“So many reasons, Ma! For one, your mother was a celestial, so I hoped it would better brace me to welcome other powers into my system.” Everyone’s eyes are on me, and Emil is approaching. He reaches for the phone, and I smack his hand away. “I could’ve saved lives if this had worked. I could’ve been safe from death forever.”
Ma is sobbing, and it immediately transports me back to when I called her to give her the news about Dad. I never thought words could hurt someone so much.
“I can’t lose you too,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m losing you because you were so selfish—”
“Selfish?!”
“Yes, selfish! You are always putting yourself before others, Brighton, and your father and I didn’t raise you to be so high and mighty! You—”
I’m burning hot, like I swallowed a star and I’m milliseconds away from exploding. “This is why Dad was always the better parent! If I told him I was dying, he wouldn’t have been shouting about how little he thinks of me!”
I throw the phone across the room, and the screen shatters against the wall.
Emil is staring at me like I’m a hydra that chewed up a phoenix and spit out its bones. Wesley’s jaw has dropped and frozen in place. Iris is staring at her broken phone and probably dreaming up which arm of mine she’s going to rip out first so I can’t ever destroy her property again.
“Don’t look at me like you know how she was talking to me,” I spit out.
Emil stares me dead in the eyes. “Bright, if you need to swing at someone, I’ll be your punching bag, but don’t go off on our mother like she spoon-fed you the Reaper’s Blood and expect me to take your side. You crossed the line, big-time.”
He storms out of the room.
Iris picks up the phone and examines it before dropping it in the bin. “That was my last phone. Wesley, do you mind getting some new ones?”
“We’re low on funds,” Wesley says.
“Then cash in on favors. Someone somewhere has to have a connection to a bulk buyer,” Iris says on her way out too.
“You got it.”
Wesley comes to the foot of my bed like he’s about to say something, but he gives me this look of pity before taking off. He’s got it so good being born with power. When he was living on the streets, he used his swift-speed for his own selfish means, but no one is ever calling him out on it. But when it comes to me, I’m the bane of my family because no one believes I could be just as good and powerful, if not better and more, than any Spell Walker in this building.
I’m left alone. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force myself to rest so I don’t have to think about how little my own mother and brother think of me.
Nine
Oblivion’s Edge
MARIBELLE
I slowly wake up, wondering why I don’t feel his chin between my shoulders or his breath on my cheek or his hands locked in mine. I’m not actually in bed with Atlas. I’m alone in his car. I begin shaking as I realize it was only a dream. I scream and punch at the wheel, the horn honking a dozen times. I don’t know how long I was asleep. Minutes, I’m guessing. When I parked the car outside of the Aldebaran Center, reclined the seat, and used my power-proof vest as a pillow, I doubted I wou
ld get any rest. But it seems my body will only take my revenge into account for so long before it shuts down.
I wipe my eyes dry and go inside the hospital. Immediately I see Prudencia, Wesley, and Iris being escorted into a faculty cafeteria. Great. I won’t have to deal with any of them when I get upstairs to check on Brighton. I ride the elevator and go to the room everyone crowded last night before I sought air on the sky deck, and I let myself in.
Brighton is watching TV on this cart that someone must have brought in for him. “Good timing. We made the news,” he says.
I stand by him and watch.
Senator Iron’s pick for vice president, General Bishop, is on site at the Alpha Church of New Life. His tie is loose, and his sleeves are rolled up, revealing the dark green arrow tattoos on his pale skin. He keeps trying to remind the public that he is one of them, that he’s gotten his hands dirty. People overlook that General Bishop was never working-class. His family lived luxuriously from all the riches his grandfather made by creating the Bounds.
“Am I surprised we’re here again?” General Bishop says to all the reporters. “Of course not. These gleam gangs only care about winning their war, not the well-being of your neighbors, your homes. These young acolytes, all aspiring to become specters, were slaughtered in this church last night. Let that sentence sit with you. . . . Is no life, is no place, sacred to these Spell Walkers?” His expression is furious, leaning into the tough-guy persona their supporters are cheering on. “It may not have been your child killed last night, but what’s to stop them from being seduced by power and ending up dead?”
Brighton looks down.
I turn off the TV.
“If there’s a bright side to all of this,” Brighton says, “I probably won’t be alive to see Iron and Bishop win this election.”
He’s right. Senator Iron and General Bishop will most likely take the White House. If they’re going to do everything in their power to take away ours, I’m going to make sure I don’t go down alone.
I’m dragging June into the grave with me.
I dig my thumb into my palm for the first time in months. It’s a technique Atlas passed on to me, one he taught himself after his parents were convicted for using their powers to rob a bank and sent to the San Diego Bounds. If I press my thumb into my palm, I’ll feel how real I am. It worked even when I was in the haze of grief from losing my parents.
“You would’ve been a great partner,” I say, taking a seat. “The Casters weren’t ready for the storm we were about to unleash on them.”
“Nice to know someone believed in me,” he says.
“That didn’t work out in your favor.”
“You gave me a chance. Emil, Prudencia, Ma, and the others didn’t.”
“Maybe not, but love gets in the way.”
“I’m not sure how much they love me,” Brighton says. “I said some really horrible things to Emil and Ma, and Prudencia hasn’t visited me once.”
“Prudencia cares. I see right through her act,” I say. It’s not my business. But Prudencia protecting her heart so Brighton can’t be used against her the way Atlas was killed because of me seems pointless. Brighton is already dying.
He tries to sit up. “What do you mean? I—”
Spellwork thunders outside, and I rush to the window to see what’s going on. There are a couple vans and four motorcycles blocking the entrance. I identify acolytes by their gray jumpsuits. They’re battling the hospital’s security guards, both sides firing spells out of their wands. It’s hard to make out any faces from the fourteenth floor, but there’s no mistaking the six-armed girl holding her own wands—Dione. If one Blood Caster is here, the others can’t be far off.
“What’s going on?” Brighton asks.
“Blood Casters,” I say. “Go find cover.”
I hit the gray button that opens the shuttered panel in the domed ceiling, designed to allow celestials to accelerate their healing by sleeping under the night sky. I need to get outside faster, so once the clearing is open wide enough, I levitate to the edge, slide down the side of the dome, and dive off the building. Wind roars in my ears as I keep my hands to my sides, and I must look like a missile. When I’m near the ground, I activate my power, thrust backward a few feet, and glide down in a circle. I drop into the parking lot, and when my psychic sense signals that there’s danger, I dive behind a car, catching myself in the air so I don’t slam on the concrete. More spells are being shot into the car, and I move away before it can explode and take me with it.
The front doors open and Iris and Wesley run out alongside three more security guards. Even though it’s clear that the acolytes are directly across from them, they keep looking around. Iris points—Eva and Ruth are here, and they’re helping Carolina out of a green van. None of them have the offensive powers needed to take on the acolytes. Iris yells at them to stay inside the car, but they don’t seem to hear her. She runs across the path as spells crash into her, simply slowing her down, until Dione charges across the lot and tackles her.
Acolytes fire spells at the green van as it begins to drive my way. Ruth is in the driver’s seat, but another Ruth is also still helping Eva and Carolina. It’s unclear which one is the clone until the one on foot vanishes in a purple glow. Four acolytes hop on their motorcycles and chase after the van. I knock down one acolyte with a fire-arrow before he gets too far, but everyone else vanishes from sight as they go out of the exit. Wind blasts past me; it’s Wesley chasing after them to protect his girlfriend, maybe even their daughter if Ruth brought Esther along.
I run for Atlas’s car, knowing my skin can’t resist the spells like Iris’s can. I grab my power-proof vest from the front seat and put it on, quickly like my parents trained me, and I grab the oblivion dagger.
I jump and glide into the battle, hurling fire-arrows at the acolytes. I land behind Dione, and before she can hammer Iris with her six fists, I slice her back with the dagger. Dione screams, whirls around, and punches me four times. Spit flies out of my mouth, and she snatches the dagger from me. Dione hooks one arm around my head, flips me over her shoulder, and slams me on my back. She hovers over me, pinning down my arms with two of hers and twirling the oblivion dagger with another. I try kicking at her head, but a fourth arm catches my foot. She drives the dagger down toward my throat, but Iris’s hand slides underneath, and the bone blade goes through her palm, her glistening blood spilling onto me. Iris punches Dione in the face with her other hand, and I can hear bones cracking as Dione flies backward.
Iris bites down on her lip as she slowly pulls the oblivion dagger out of her hand, the bone clattering as she drops it to the ground. We take cover behind a pillar. Iris examining the blood gushing out of the hole in her hand reminds me of when we were children in the park and she jumped on my back so she could experience what it was like to levitate. We ran toward the edge of the staircase and I carried us into the air, but I couldn’t hold her for very long. We fell, and she landed on a pile of broken glass that pierced her skin. At least Iris isn’t crying this time.
“Fly after Eva—she’s with Carolina, Ruth, and Esther.”
“Ruth drove off,” I say.
We peek around the pillar to see Eva and Carolina being pursued by acolytes.
“We have to get them,” Iris says, taking off at a sprint.
But that’s when I see June standing by the driveway’s entrance sign—and she’s staring at me.
I grab the dagger and go straight for June, ignoring Iris shouting for me to help her because she’s not in charge of me. I don’t owe her just because a dagger was driven through her hand for me. If she hadn’t kept my true lineage a secret from me, I would’ve understood my powers better and saved our parents and Atlas. Iris will rescue Eva and have her hand healed. I have to kill June while she’s stupid enough to show her face.
I glide after June as she takes off running through the bushes and heads downhill. June darts into the street and has to phase through an oncoming car, though it�
�s too late for the driver, who swerves to miss her and crashes into another car. June stands in the center of her chaos as the other cars honking masks the sounds of spellwork back at the hospital. I drop down onto the street, swinging the dagger. June fades out and kicks me from behind, and I crash into the hood of a car. Then my psychic sense goes into overload as she keeps reappearing around and attacking me. Punch to my back, elbow to my neck, kick to my ribs. She punches my shoulder from behind so hard that I think she’s dislocated it, and I don’t have Atlas around to pop it back in. My eyes flutter from dizziness as she slams my face against the hood.
She tries to wrestle the dagger away from me, and my arm is too busted to keep a tight grip. Dark yellow flames burst from my fist and burn her hands. Is this why she and the Blood Casters came back—for the dagger? Or did they hunt us down to get revenge for their creator? I don’t know if June even has enough humanity in her to care for Luna like a mother, but I hope she was forced to watch Luna choke to death on her own blood.
I cast a stream of fire at June, obscuring her vision as I levitate about ten feet high, and when she walks through my flames, expecting to find me still on the ground, I hurl the dagger down at her with my good arm. June sees me just in time, and the dagger phases through her, clattering against the ground. She’s untouchable. . . .
June slowly turns to her shoulder, eyeing it curiously. Gray-and-red blood drips down her solid body.
The oblivion dagger can harm her when she’s incorporeal.
