Parker’s mother sighed. Her sarcastic tone was gone when she spoke again.
“I’m trying, Parker. I’m trying so hard, but I’m doing it all alone, and you’re not helping me. It’s just...” She looked out her window. “It’s just not working.”
The light turned and the car drove on, the two of them sitting in silence.
“I talked to your principal, and I talked to your school counselor, and they suggested that maybe it might be a good idea if you spent some time someplace where you could stay out of trouble. Someplace with a yard and some fresh air where you could take a break and maybe make a fresh start. We thought that maybe if you stayed with your cousin for a while in New Hampshire...”
Parker was stunned. He had expected the usual riot act, the yelling, the empty threats. He hadn’t expected this.
“You’re sending me away?”
“No! No!” said his mom. “Just for a little while.”
Parker couldn’t believe it.
“It’s hard for you here. I’m working all these double shifts, and you’re alone half the time. It’s not good for you. And you need some positive male influence in your life.”
Parker let that one sit there. He knew she was talking about his dad, and he knew that she was right. Parker’s father was nobody’s role model.
“Let’s just try it. Let’s both agree that it’s an experiment and that we’ll both try to look at it like it’s a positive thing. It’ll be an adventure.”
Parker sulked. “Yeah, New Hampshire is known for adventure.”
“It won’t be for forever. Just until things improve a little bit.”
“So this is a done deal, then? I don’t even get a say in it at all? I thought this was a democracy.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Parker. You’re not going to a mental institution. You’re going to New England.”
“Same difference.”
Parker’s mom’s voice turned cold again. “This is happening, buddy, so you might as well get used to the idea. I’ve already talked to your aunt Martha and uncle Kelsey. You’re going this weekend.”
“This weekend? I can’t go this weekend! I have things to do here!”
“Really? Like what, exactly?”
Parker opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He didn’t have anything planned. Not a single thing.
“Really, Parker, what have you got to lose? What’s here that you’ll even miss? Maybe you’ll like it out there. You certainly don’t seem to like it here.”
She had a point.
“And it’s not like I’m abandoning you. You’re going now, and then I’m coming out in three weeks for Thanksgiving.”
Parker shook his head. He knew his mother. That was never going to happen.
“I am!” she said. “We’ll spend Thanksgiving together!”
“Sure, unless you have to pick up an extra shift or you can’t afford the ticket.”
“I’ll work it out.”
“Or you decide to go see dad instead.”
Parker practically spit the words out. His mother opened her mouth to say something cutting right back to him, but she took a breath instead. She let herself calm down before she spoke.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to forgive him,” she said.
Parker stared ahead.
“I’m not excusing what he did. It was stupid and it was selfish, and he’s paying the price for it. We’re all paying the price for it. You know, it hurts his feelings that you won’t go and see him.”
“He’s a crook.”
Parker’s mother glared at him.
“He’s the man I married. And when this is all over we’re going to be a family again, even if it kills me.”
They drove in silence for a moment. The button for the passenger-side window was broken. There was a Chiquita Banana sticker Parker had stuck on the dashboard in sixth grade.
“New Hampshire will be good for you, honey. It’ll be good for you to have people around that are going to be there for you. It’ll be good for you to have people you can count on.”
“You can’t count on anybody,” Parker said. “They’ll always let you down.”
His mother drove on. Parker knew that she was hurt, but at that moment, he didn’t care.
B31773—VESIROTH’S JOURNAL, CIRCA 1200 B.C.
Tonight, Farrad came back from trading earlier than I expected him.
He found me reading the book by the light of an oil lamp. I was so engrossed in its secrets that I did not hear him until he was already upon me. He jerked the book from my hands and began to scream, furious at my transgression and betrayal. I had never seen Farrad display any emotion at all, and to see him so angry was a surprise to me. At first, he railed against me, but soon his rant took on a different cast. He began to warn me against using magick. He said that any attempts to connect with the Nexus would only lead to my ruin.
I listened to his outburst with a chastised heart. The book was his, and I had no right to take it. He had saved my life, after all. I was in his debt.
But emotions I had never before felt flooded over me, and my guilt became bitter resentment. Who was this pathetic peddler to tell me what to do? Why should I follow his example, when he was so clearly a worm of a man? He had nothing. A wooden wagon rotting from the wheels up. A load of worthless trinkets. A bucket of meal. A horse close to death. If he were to simply skim the surface of what the book promised, he could be swimming in gold.
I knew then that Farrad was a fool. I remembered the pages of the book and I raised my hands. I summoned up but a paltry sliver of the Nexus’s power and cast my first spell. A ball of green light appeared in my hands, and Farrad was blown out of the wagon. He landed heavily in the dirt.
The book was mine. I climbed down from the wagon and leaned over Farrad. For a brief moment, his eyes flashed with anger, and he raised his hands as if to cast a spell of his own. I backed away, suddenly afraid. I sensed a great power unleashed in Farrad, as if I had roused a sleeping beast into action.
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the fury in Farrad was subdued. He seemed tired and resigned and older than I had ever imagined. I approached him warily, and I pried the book from his hands. He stared ahead, powerless to stop me.
I felt the sting of my own betrayal as I mounted his ancient horse and rode off into the night, but the promise of the book urged me on. I had a new reason to live. I would find the men who had slaughtered my family, and I would use the spells at my disposal to make them pay.
4
PARKER STEPPED INTO HIS NEW bedroom and dropped his bag on the floor.
“This is Martha’s crafts room,” said his uncle Kelsey.
Parker could tell. There was a sewing machine shoved against the wall, and the quilt on the twin bed was handmade. The wallpaper had pictures of flowers and vines, and it was torn at the corners where the walls met the ceiling.
“I asked her to clean it out, but I think she just shoved most of her stuff into the closet. Not a lot of space here. Still, it should be big enough for you. Good thing you travel light.”
Uncle Kelsey put Parker’s duffel bag on the bed.
It was a farmhouse, deep in rural New Hampshire. The land had once been a working apple orchard. There were still some trees, and a battered old barn with a cider press, and a tractor with a seized piston. The Merritts’ house needed paint and new windows. The pipes groaned when anyone ran the water. It was old, but it was solid and it was big. It was a world away from Parker’s two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.
“Theo! Your cousin’s here!”
Uncle Kelsey ran a hand through his thick hair. He was a big man with an outdoorsy look about him. He had a goatee and work boots. His stomach hung over his jeans. He looked like a guy who knew how to get broken things to work again.
He crossed his arms on his chest.
“I know this is a big change for you, Parker. It’s a big change for us, too. But there’s no reason this shouldn’t work.” He paused f
or a moment. “I know it’s been tough on you, with what happened with your dad and everything. I want you to know that you can come to me or your aunt, either one of us, if you have any problems.”
Sure, thought Parker. There was about as much chance of that happening as there was for Parker’s shoes to spontaneously transform into singing frogs.
He put his hand on Parker’s shoulder.
“We want you to think of this as your home.”
Parker didn’t react. Uncle Kelsey removed his hand. When he turned around, Parker’s cousin Theo was in the doorway.
“Hey, Theo,” Uncle Kelsey said. “Great. You can help your new housemate get settled in.”
Uncle Kelsey walked out and down the stairs in search of his wife, leaving Theo and Parker.
“Hi, Theo,” said Parker.
Theo wore an MP3 player strapped to his arm, and gym shorts and a Robert Frost Junior High T-shirt soaked with sweat. He had braces and a crew cut. He took the buds out of his ears.
“This is crazy,” Parker said. “I mean, one minute I’m whooping it up in LA, and the next thing you know I’m in the sticks. It’s like living in the eighteen hundreds, am I right?”
Theo just stood there.
Parker took a breath and, for just a second, let his defenses down.
“I’m glad to see you, Theo. Really. You’re, like, the only person I know in this entire state.”
Theo shook his head. “The bus comes at seven fifteen,” he said. “I get the first shower.”
“Wow. Okay. You’re going to show me around and everything, right? At school and stuff?”
Theo just put his earbuds back in and walked off.
“Theo?”
Theo was gone.
Parker looked at the nightstand by the bed. His aunt Martha had placed a framed photo there of Parker with his mom and dad. He remembered the day it was taken. They were on a trip to the Grand Canyon. His dad had bought Parker a cowboy hat and a badge that said US MARSHALL. They were all smiling. Happier times.
All at once, the fact that he was separated from both his parents finally sank in, and a single sob erupted from Parker’s lips. He clamped his hand over his mouth and stood absolutely still. He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.
When he had everything back under control, Parker opened his eyes, turned the picture facedown on the table, and started to unpack.
B31774—VESIROTH’S JOURNAL, CIRCA 1200 B.C.
After weeks of searching, I found the soldiers who destroyed my life.
They were in a tavern, drinking and laughing and telling one another lies about great battles they had won. They paid no attention to me as I made my way to their table. Why would they? I was just a peasant dressed in rags and bandages. I was harmless.
Then one of the men jeered at me, and another threw a piece of wet food at my head. I was beneath them. I did not deserve to be in their presence.
I closed my eyes. This was the moment I had been waiting for.
I spread my arms to my sides, and I felt the power surge through me. I had chosen a spell carefully and had practiced it day and night since I had abandoned Farrad. I would not trip over the strange words. I would not hesitate. I would not fail.
I took a deep breath and began. As I said the words, my bandages fell away and the burns that disfigured half of my face were revealed.
Did the soldiers recognize me? Did they look on me and feel regret for what they had done to me and to my family?
The air turned cold, and smoke rose around me. The sounds of drinking and conversation gave way to panic as fear took hold. One of the soldiers, realizing too late that his fate was sealed, sprang at me with a knife. Before he reached me, my spell was done. As I finished the incantation, I closed my eyes tightly and brought my hands together in one mighty clap.
There was a roar, and then silence.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that everyone in the room was dead.
For a moment, my heart sank. I had tried to move beyond my anger, to let things lie. I had tried to think of my family and what they would have thought of my dark pursuits. I had tried to put their deaths behind me. But always the Nexus called to me. Always I had found myself turning the pages of the book, studying its arcane secrets.
And now, though my family was avenged, I saw that I had only brought more sorrow into the world. Did these men not have families? What of the innocents caught in my own war of vengeance? What would my daughters think of me now, surrounded by the corpses of my victims?
I saw then that these soldiers were but a symptom of a larger disease. The enemy was war itself, and I knew that I would not rest until I had ended the very idea of war.
My future is sealed. In order to forever end war, I must assume dominion over all men. I must rule the world.
5
REESE WATCHED THE NEW KID two tables over.
He was small and scrawny, even for a seventh-grade boy, but, man, was he confident. One day of school and he was already surrounded by admirers.
“Oh, sure, we had a box at Staples Center, so I got to know some of the Clippers a little bit. Blake Griffin, Chris Paul. One time I got to sit on the bench for a game. They play so much, though, and sometimes I just wanted to hit the bars on Sunset with my friends. A lot of them are in bands.”
Reese knew that everything that came out of the new kid’s mouth was a crock, but the kids at his table hung on his every word. Sheep, she thought. They’ll believe anything.
“How did you get into bars?” Jenna Conroy asked, her mouth hanging open. That girl would believe anything.
Parker shrugged. “I know people.”
Parker looked at Reese, but she immediately buried her head back into her art history book. She was an eighth grader, and she didn’t want him to get the mistaken idea that she was interested in anything he had to say.
She turned the pages of her book slowly. She wished that Robert Frost Junior High actually taught art history, but no dice. The high school didn’t, either. She wouldn’t be able to take it until college. Until then, she would have to be content sitting through classes taught by teachers who didn’t want to be there, and filled with dopes, airheads, soon-to-be burnouts, and class clowns.
Reese’s mom had gotten her the art book, along with the poetry and the Russian novels. She had also enrolled Reese in a pile of classes outside of school. There were the viola lessons, of course, and the piano, and the French, and the extra math (Reese was already far, far ahead of her high school-age tutor, a kid with bad skin and rimless glasses, who spent more time texting his girlfriend than formulating quadratic equations), and the swimming (Robert Frost didn’t have a pool, but they did have a new scoreboard for the football team), and the ballet (this one Reese actually sort of liked, although she would never, ever admit it to anyone), among others.
Reese’s mom was hell-bent on getting Reese into a good college on the first try, and in her opinion, it was never too early to start pushing. Overachievement was not enough. Reese had to be stellar in everything, all the time.
After years and years of constant pressure, Reese was just now starting to push back. She still got the grades, sure, and she still went to the classes (sculpting! There was a sculpting class for a while there!), only now she did it with magenta streaks in her short black hair, and enough rings for any six emo kids. She wore sweaters with long, long sleeves, and she mumbled whenever her parents spoke to her.
All of this was designed to get a rise out of her mom. It failed utterly. If Reese’s mom noticed any of it, she kept it to herself as she taxied Reese all over Cahill for extracurriculars. Reese was starting to wonder if she was going to have to actually start listening to goth or death metal, which would be a real sacrifice. In her heart of hearts, Reese remained a Taylor Swift fan.
“Did you ever meet any movie stars?” another one of Parker’s new pals asked.
“Meet them? Are you kidding? When I was a kid, Selena Gomez was my babysitter.”
Reese wat
ched Parker’s table out of the corner of her eye. Theo Merritt rolled his eyes and shook his head. Reese was pretty sure that somebody had said the two boys were cousins.
“Yeah, it’s a shame I had to leave Hollywood, but I crossed some pretty intense guys, and the police thought it would be in my own best interest if I got out of town for a little while.”
“Wait. Wait.”
Jenna again. This girl was more gullible than a four-year-old whose uncle kept pulling quarters out of his ear.
“You’re hiding out here? From a gang?”
“Gang is an overused term. Let’s just call them a well-organized group of guys with similar taste in clothes. They thought I should join, but I had other ideas.”
Reese saw the jocks before Parker did. They were eighth graders that had been her classmates since kindergarten. She wasn’t sure why guys became tools when they got together in a group and put on uniforms, but in her experience, that seemed to be what happened. She would look it up. Somebody must have done a study on it.
“Wow,” one of the eighth graders said. “Look at this, guys. We have a real action hero here.”
Parker grimaced before he turned to face the jocks. There were guys like this at every school. Somebody had to run the places. Otherwise, kids might actually enjoy themselves.
“Me? Nah,” Parker said. “I’m new here. I’m just, you know, trying to fit in.”
The lead jock picked a Tater Tot off Parker’s plate. Parker liked Tater Tots. Everybody likes Tater Tots. “Well, you’re doing a bang-up job at it so far.”
“We got off on the wrong foot. I’m Parker.”
“Why, hello, Parker. My name’s Evan...”
Of course it is, thought Parker. Of course your name is Evan.
“...and I’ll be teaching you a lesson in how to respect your elders.”
The jocks with Evan grinned. Reese saw Parker look to his cousin for help.
“You guys don’t scare Parker,” Theo said with a grin. “He’s from the city. He’s faced down guys with guns. To him, you’re just a bunch of pansies. That’s what he was saying before you got here, at least.”
Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 Page 3
