by Adam Silvera
“I don’t believe heroes should have body counts.”
“Then I’m not a hero in your books,” Wyatt says.
That catches me off guard. “Really? But you don’t even battle.”
“Again, it’s in our line of work. Three years ago, I was visiting the States to investigate a farm in Colorado that was stealing phoenix eggs for breeding. It happened to be the night of the Future Watcher, that lovely little prime constellation that aids celestials with all forms of foresight. My mum and dad had seen it years before, so they stayed in to prep while Nox and I flew atop the Chalk Cliffs to stargaze. Unfortunately, a psychic had sold us out to an alchemist and specter aspirant on the hunt for a phoenix, and we were ambushed.”
Wyatt looks even more horrified than when he was telling me about the history of cruelty Nox suffered from his former companion.
“You don’t have to talk about this. I’m not judging you,” I say.
“No, no. It’s important. It was a firsthand experience dealing with one’s violent desperation to become a specter. Paired beautifully with another great American problem—being held at wandpoint. The alchemist trapped Nox in an electric net that shocked him the more he resisted. I had one opportunity to snatch the wand and I took it. I cast spells, and while I didn’t intend to kill them, kill them I did.” Wyatt stares out the open window, fixed on the sky. “It was self-defense, but that’s a lot to take on at seventeen. It took about a year of therapy before I accepted that I’m not like those predators. My hope for you, sweet Emil, is that you’re kind to yourself if you ever have to kill for those you love. I can’t imagine you’ll feel alive if you have the opportunity to save them and don’t take it.”
After a sleep troubled with haunting nightmares of Bautista’s heroics, I settle into the meditation room shortly after dawn, more determined than ever to make sure my life doesn’t echo his. Brighton isn’t trying this time, only observing with Prudencia, and he’s managing a pretty neutral attitude about it, I got to say. Maribelle is eager to give retrocycling another go. She sits cross-legged in front of me as Wyatt and Tala remind us that the goal is to find Sera and Bautista on their last day alive.
“Understood,” Maribelle says.
“How are you feeling?” I ask her.
Maribelle glares as if I have some nerve to say anything to her.
I could offer her a lifetime of apologies, and it wouldn’t matter as long as Atlas is dead. Instead of bothering her anymore, I close my eyes and take deep breaths to mentally prepare for this next attempt to the past.
“Trust in your instincts again,” Tala says in a hushed voice. “Remember the history, breathe it, and fly back to it.”
I hear Maribelle’s flames burst to life, and I ignite too. I haven’t used the Dayrose salve since two nights ago, but thankfully my power is significantly less painful than before. I’m able to build Bautista’s life, beginning with his voice, which I know better now from those broadcasts, and I search and search for a way into his last day. I feel stuck, like my legs are buried in sand, and I think about how desperately I want to figure out those ingredients so I don’t have to be trapped in this war.
Everything becomes blurry as muffled voices surface. A younger Bautista flickers against a darkness, screaming as he finds his hand on fire, telling someone that he doesn’t want to be a weapon. I’ve been asked before if I ever experienced any flashbacks to lives I didn’t live, and now I can say I have. For several moments I forget my own face and name and history. I’m brought back as Emil Donato Rey with this memory of Bautista begging not to fight, and I can feel his hopelessness like fingers in my throat, suffocating me. We share this pain across lifetimes. Bautista wanted an escape too, and I urge him to help me even though he’s dead, even though I’m the new us, but it’s like asking yourself to solve a problem you can’t possibly know the answer to. Then Bautista, much older than the flashback, slightly older than the videos, flickers in the darkness again, mouthing words I’ve never heard him say—words like dry-tear and crimson root. The ingredients. I keep reaching for his voice like it’s something physical I can grab and squeeze. The other ingredients keep coming to me, like how my hands always know what words I want to type into a text, a total connection between body and brain.
Then I’m standing on darkness. I feel like I should be falling forever.
Bautista appears before me. His hair isn’t buzzed, it’s brown and messy and probably overdue for a haircut. His shadow of a beard has grown out in patches. His brown eyes look like he’s in need of sleep. Sweat bullets down his face. He’s wearing a raggedy gray sleeveless shirt tucked into his black jeans, and dang he’s got some muscular arms. It’s no surprise that everyone saw a superhero in him. I suddenly feel determination and hope increasing within me, and getting this far is huge, but there’s something off about these feelings, like a shirt that fits but I’ve spent the day not realizing is backward. I think I’m reading Bautista’s emotions. I’m standing right in front of him, though he can’t seem to see me, not even as the darkness shrinks around us, replaced with color and light that paints the wide room we’re in.
There are metallic yellow beams above us and dried blood staining the white floor that’s harsh on my eyes. There’s a poster with safety precautions by the window. Then lined all along the walls are a range of weapons that are mostly only used by the military, like semiautomatic sniper wands and gem-grenade launchers. This is definitely the Incendiary Factory in the South Bronx, where Bautista was killed and a few blocks from where I was born. I already hate this place so much that I want to go back to my time, but then I turn and find a man in a chair holding something that might be more powerful than any weapon in this room—a vial with a thick liquid that reminds me of wet clay. Oh man, I pray to every damn star that that’s the power-binding potion.
“This has to work,” the man in the chair pleads. He isn’t shouting, but his voice rings loud in my head. He has a black eye and while his jaw hangs open I notice he’s missing half of his teeth. I’m guessing he’s a few years older than me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s actually my age and just aged poorly because of whatever he’s been through.
It’d be great if sharing a space with Bautista could hook me up with everything he knows, or at least let me read his mind in the moment, but I’ll take the emotions.
“Just like the other potions, this version of the Starstifler is a trial too,” Bautista says, casting a glance at the blue journal lying open on the deactivated conveyor belt.
I’ve never heard of the Starstifler before, but the name tracks with its purpose. If all powers originate from celestial bodies such as stars, then this name is appropriate for when you bind them. I walk over to the journal. The pages are still a crisp white, not yellowed like in my time, with an index card lying on top. I try picking up the card, but my hand phases right through it, over and over. I’m only here as an observer; I can’t touch anything. I lean over the index card and it’s about the Starstifler, written in penmanship I recognize as Sera’s from half of the pages in the journal.
Attempt #7—the Starstifler
bone tears (tears from a lamenting phoenix)
ghost husk (eggshell of a reborn phoenix)
feather-rock (shedding from a blood-plumed basilisk)
crimson root (root of a Dayrose flower)
riot pod (breath spawn shell)
water from the Shade Sea (saliva from a hibernating shadow-star hydra)
burnt-berry (crushed torch grains)
cumulus powder (a sprinkling of soil from high mountain that isn’t frequented because it’s infested by hydras)
crooked star (peculiar soil)
grim-ash (soot from a crowned elder)
I don’t know how much time I have before I’m kicked out of this life, so I’m committing all this to memory as quickly as I can. Tears from a lamenting phoenix, heartbreaking but simple enough. Ghost husk are literal eggshells from a phoenix that’s resurrected. Blood-plumed basili
sk shedding, blood-plumed basilisk shedding, blood-plumed basilisk shedding. I’ve got Dayrose down thanks to Wyatt. I would’ve never cracked the code that water from the Shade Sea was saliva from a hibernating shadow-star hydra, and that’s the point, but man, who knows how many times I can retrocycle, so I’m dead set on getting everything right now. Crushed torch grains, which I know are common. And the Halo Knights can hopefully hook us up with soot from a crowned elder.
I’m running through everything over and over—lamenting phoenix tears, phoenix eggshell, blood-plumed basilisk shedding, Dayrose, hibernating shadow-star hydra saliva, crushed torch grains, crowned elder soot—when Bautista steps closer to the man, pulling me with him even as I resist, as if we’re tethered together.
This is such a trip, I wish Brighton were here to tag-team this with me. He’d be losing his mind about how Bautista smells like armpits and street cologne.
The Spell Walker founder stands before the man as he trembles to unscrew the vial, tucking it between his legs, and then holding out his forearm. Bautista grabs his wrist. “Take a deep breath, Price. I’m going to count down from three.”
Price squirms. “As if you ever actually count down from—”
Bautista drives the dagger through Price’s hand, and Price’s yell echoes so loudly that I cover my ears. Blood spills into the vial, staining Price’s pants too, and once Bautista seems satisfied with how much blood has gone in he puts the cork back on and gives it a shake like a bartender mixing a cocktail. “You’ll heal any second now” is all he says. I would’ve apologized.
“Doesn’t mean it hurts any less,” Price says as the wound in his hand closes, leaving the faintest scar on his palm. “This is the power I’ll miss the most. Got me through some rough times in the Bounds.”
“And unless you want to go back there, you’ll drink up,” Bautista says, handing the potion back to Price.
“But it’s so disgusting. Can’t your woman make it tastier?”
“While I’m passing the feedback back to Sera, let’s hope your phoenix fire doesn’t burn you alive like the Blood Caster you replaced. Tell me, how is that pile of ashes doing?”
“All right, all right!”
Bautista’s attitude is not what I expected after watching him appear so respectful and heroic in his TV interviews. I never thought he’d be so taunting. I’m definitely not. It really goes to show how the only things we share are these powers and a history as the first specter.
Price stares at the potion. I can’t imagine it’s going to go smoothly down his throat. He drinks up, and when he begins gagging, Bautista slaps his hand against Price’s mouth and nose until he swallows. Price begins shaking, violently, and he sinks out of his chair. Bautista holds the back of his head as Price screams, “It’s burning me!”
“It’ll pass,” Bautista says.
I sense Bautista is lying. He’s sure Price is about to die. He’s actually sympathetic for this Blood Caster.
Price’s eyes go dark as an eclipse and Bautista steps back in self-preservation. Price lets out another yell that hurts my ears, like he’s shouting directly into them. White flames swallow his body whole, and it reminds me of Orton burning to death all over again. Bautista feels hopeless until the flames vanish and Price takes a deep breath.
“You okay?” Bautista asks.
Price sits up. He holds out his hand, as if he’s trying to cast fire, but nothing happens. Multiple attempts and nothing. “My powers are gone,” Price says.
“Stars,” Bautista says.
Hope shoots through both of us so powerfully that I can’t tell mine apart from his.
“My Caster days are over!” Price says with a high laugh.
“Everyone’s Caster days are over,” Bautista says as he gets up and grabs the journal, running out of the room and dragging me along like a shadow.
Forty-Three
Mother
MARIBELLE
There’s a chill in the darkness that feels like the wintry winds the day Mama and Papa were killed, and then Sera Córdova manifests out of nowhere. She’s stunning. She has my brown skin—I have her brown skin—and while my hair is usually braided behind my head, she wears hers fanned out and it trails to the middle of her back. She’s in a white blouse with a beautiful blue ring and silver bracelets. As the darkness shrinks around me, I can smell flowers and herbs, and hear a cauldron bubbling and a baby crying.
Sera picks me up out of a crib—baby Maribelle. I must be a couple months old. She’s softly singing me a song about a girl who makes a crown out of branches from her garden, and I’m so upset that I’ve never heard this before that rage builds in me so quickly that I might burn down this room that appears to be an alchemist’s lab. But serenity and an urge to comfort wash over me, even though those don’t jive with how I think I should be feeling. It’s as if I’m somehow tapped into Sera’s and baby Maribelle’s feelings too. The baby settles against Sera’s breasts, like a mother’s song and touch is all she needed.
“You want to help your mother, my sunflower?” Sera asks. I’ve never heard that nickname before, but I can feel how lovingly she uses it as much as I can see it in her warm brown eyes. She points at the steel cauldron and herb-loaded mortars on the polished counter. “I am making a potion for your tía Aurora to help her feel better. She’s been ill lately ever since losing a loved one. I can’t bring back her loss, or make her instantly happy, but I can make her body kinder to her during this sad time.”
“Aurora isn’t my aunt,” I say aloud, but Sera doesn’t hear me.
I want Sera to speak more about Mama’s loss and sadness. Is this around the time that her own mother passed?
The door bangs open, and I instinctively hold up my fists to fight, but I’m settled down by Sera’s cool composure. A man I quickly recognize as Bautista appears, looking pretty grimy, as if he’s been fixing up a car. I always remember him as the leader of the Spell Walkers, and I would salute him if he could see me, but wrapping my head around him being my father is a whole other matter. If I couldn’t clearly read the excitement in his face, I feel some triumph in his heart. I must be able to feel him as well because we’re all a family, and as Wyatt said, that’s one of the two lifelines phoenixes have. Juggling four sets of emotions at once is dizzying.
He steps fully inside, and Emil walks in after him. We see each other, and thank the stars I’m not feeling whatever he’s got going on inside. He’s muttering something to himself, eyes closed in concentration.
“It worked!” Bautista says.
Tears are brought to Sera’s eyes as glee and pride soar within. “The Starstifler worked?”
He puts down the journal on the counter. “You did it, my beautiful vision!”
Sera and Bautista kiss, love exploding so fiercely that I imagine my own family with Atlas as if he were still alive. This was going to be us in the future. Heroes and parents.
Bautista kisses the baby on her forehead. “You hear that, Maribelle? Your parents are making a better world for you.”
“I pray to the stars the potion isn’t used against our kind,” Sera says. “We have to be selective about who we introduce it to. Maybe only the other Walkers so it stays in the family. I wouldn’t even trust the government right now. They could use it on Maribelle whenever she comes into her powers.”
“If she does,” Bautista says. “My blood may have ruined that for her.”
“I know she will.”
“You’re the seer. I’m sure she’ll take after her powerful mother.”
“She would be lucky to have your fire, my sunray.”
“Once these streets are mine, I’m putting my fire out. Full-time dad,” Bautista says with a smile as he kisses baby Maribelle’s forehead again.
What would my life have looked like if they weren’t killed? Would the Blackout have ever happened with Sera around to predict the catastrophe clearly instead of my nagging gut feeling that I couldn’t make sense of? Would we have all transformed the world for t
he better by now so we could’ve had our own home after the streets were cleansed of violent specters?
Sera’s eyes glow like one full moon bouncing between her left and right eye. We’re being warned of a danger so intense that we feel it in our bones, picking at our skin; this is what my power should feel like. Even though I can’t see what she’s seeing, I have history to define the moment she’s dreading. Terror squeezes at her throat and she can’t speak their fates. One moment she was imagining a hopeful future, the next she was seeing that none of it would ever happen. Death may move quickly, but there’s solace in knowing she can prepare.
If only I could’ve braced myself for Atlas.
“Sera, what did you see?” Bautista has never been more frightened either.
“Our end,” Sera whispers. “But only mine and yours. There’s still hope for Maribelle. My mother can never know she’s my daughter. She’ll hunt her down and use her powers like she used me.”
Bautista is trying to stay strong, whereas Emil is crying like this is his own family. In a way, it is.
“What do we do?” Bautista asks as his own tears break through. “It was hard enough hiding your pregnancy this year.”
“I have a plan,” Sera says. She’s sobbing, her lips quivering as she plants a long kiss on baby Maribelle’s cheek. “I’m sorry I won’t be around, my sunflower.”
This is the apology I heard during my first attempt at retrocycling.
“How much time do we have?” Bautista asks.
Sera almost doesn’t want to answer, but time isn’t on their side. “Minutes. My mother and her forces will be breaking in as we speak.”
Rage takes over Bautista as his eyes burn like an eclipse and gray flames burst around his fist. “She isn’t coming anywhere near our daughter. Not unless Luna wants to die with us.”
