by H. K. Varian
And again.
And again.
“Crazy, right?” Trisha’s voice cut through Gabriella’s thoughts. “I’ve never seen lightning do that before.”
“Yeah,” Gabriella managed to say.
“You should put it online,” Lauren told Josie.
“Ooh, great idea,” Josie said, and she uploaded the video. “Do you think it will go viral?”
“It might,” Abby replied. “And speaking of going viral, did you see Crash Course’s new video?”
As her friends began chatting excitedly about their favorite band’s latest release, Gabriella tuned them out. Her mind was whirling with thoughts—about the storm, the lightning, and what, exactly, was at the center of it all. No one else had seemed to notice that the house directly beneath the storm and all those strange lightning bolts belonged to someone they all knew.
It was where Darren lived.
Gabriella was still thinking about the video as she walked across the parking lot after soccer practice to meet Ms. Therian and Darren. Obviously, Darren would’ve been aware of the storm—it was happening literally above his house—but had he caused it? And if so, did he even realize it? Gabriella had struggled so hard to keep her nahual powers under control; to be honest, she was still struggling, but weekly coaching from Gabriella’s aunt, Tía Rosa, was helping a lot. She knew, though, that she’d never forget the dread and hopelessness she felt when her powers overcame her against her will. If Darren’s going through that, I have to talk to him, she thought. Gabriella didn’t want him to feel as alone as she had before her aunt started helping her.
Then she shook her head. But what if he thinks I’m accusing him of causing the storm? she thought. Or, worse, he thinks I’m saying he can’t handle his powers?
Then Gabriella thought about Darren’s performance in Changers class that afternoon, which had been disastrous again. For a moment Gabriella had wondered if Ms. Therian would still let him go on their mission this afternoon. Gabriella had learned the hard way that her own powers were even more difficult to control when her emotions were running high. Could the same thing be happening for Darren?
When Gabriella reached Ms. Therian’s car, Darren and Ms. Therian were already there. I’ll have to wait until Darren and I are alone to talk to him, Gabriella thought. The last thing she wanted was to get him in more trouble with Ms. Therian.
“Excellent,” Ms. Therian said as Gabriella jogged over to them. “Into the car. I’ll brief you both on the way.”
After everyone put on their seat belts, Ms. Therian pulled out of the parking lot. “As I told you yesterday, Jai disappeared the previous Thursday,” she began. “He was last seen by his father that afternoon. Apparently, Jai met up with some friends to ride his bike through the park, which they did until about thirty minutes before sunset, when they split up for the day. Jai said he was going home but never arrived. His bike was found abandoned on the trail the next morning.”
Gabriella closed her eyes and pictured it: the fading light, the dead leaves crunching underfoot, the boy who never made it home. She shivered with a sudden, unspeakable fear. “How long has Jai known he was a Changer?” she asked.
“A few months,” Ms. Therian replied. “He is unusually skilled. In fact, he came into his powers earlier than expected. He’s just eleven.”
“But I thought Changer powers didn’t show up until their twelfth birthday,” Darren spoke up.
“That is almost always the case,” said Ms. Therian. “But it has been known to happen—especially when one has been born with exceptionally strong powers. Of course, it is not just that the powers show up early. They tend to reveal themselves in an unusually dramatic way.”
That got Gabriella’s attention. “Did that happen with Jai?” she asked.
Ms. Therian sighed. “It did,” she said. “Naga wield control over water and weather, among other powers. Jai did not mean to, of course, but he caused a terrible flood in Middletown.”
“I remember that!” Gabriella exclaimed. “They said it was the worst flood in two hundred years!”
“So it was,” Ms. Therian said grimly.
“He must have been so scared,” Gabriella said. “Do you think he reached out for help? Like, to someone who’s not a Changer? Someone who might’ve kidnapped him?”
“I highly doubt it,” Ms. Therian replied. “Remember, his father is a Changer too, so when it became clear that Jai had caused the flood, he was able to intervene and begin his training. Though I suppose it is possible Jai told a non-Changer. There is still much surrounding Jai’s disappearance that we don’t yet know.”
“Speaking of stuff you don’t know,” Darren began, “how did you miss him? I thought there was this whole network of Changers dedicated to finding new Changers before their powers appeared.”
Gabriella blinked in surprise at Darren’s tone of voice. He was always so friendly, so easygoing. But lately, more often than not, he sounded upset—even angry. Something is definitely going on with him, she thought.
But if Ms. Therian was bothered by Darren’s rudeness, she didn’t show it. “Yes, you are correct,” she said. “But the system is far from perfect. Occasionally, a youngling coming into his or her powers slips by, undetected, which is what happened with Jai. Even though his father is a Changer, we never expected Jai’s powers to appear so early.”
“I guess that’s like life,” Darren replied, staring out the window. “It never quite works out like you expect.”
As the car approached Fisherman’s Bay National Park, the road narrowed; the forest grew more dense. Gabriella tried to catch Darren’s eye, but he was turned away from her—and he never looked over, not even once.
“We will begin by retracing Jai’s last known movements,” Ms. Therian said as she parked the car. “We don’t have a lot of time before sunset, so we will need to move quickly.”
“What are we looking for, exactly?” asked Darren.
“Anything suspicious, really,” Ms. Therian said. “Anything that seems out of place. Most of all, I want you to listen to your intuition. If something feels off—or wrong in any way—I expect you to speak up.”
“Is that how we’d know if magic was used?” asked Gabriella. “Our . . . intuition?”
Ms. Therian nodded. “You’ll feel it before you have the ability to see it,” she explained.
Darren perked up a little. “See it? Like, see actual signs of magic with our eyes?”
“What does it look like?” asked Gabriella.
“It is difficult to describe,” Ms. Therian said thoughtfully. “For me, it is the hint of a shimmer, a gleam that you barely see from the corner of your eye before it disappears . . . like a memory of something that was there but is no more.”
For a few minutes no one spoke as they walked along the trail. Soon, it forked into two separate paths.
“Which one did Jai take?” asked Gabriella.
Ms. Therian paused and closed her eyes. “Both,” she finally said. “I believe he took both. I will take the right trail; you two take the left. The paths meet up again after about a hundred yards, near the entrance to the bay. Shout if you find anything, and I will be right there.”
Gabriella could hardly believe that Ms. Therian was going to let her and Darren investigate on their own—especially after all the warnings the First Four had given them in Changers class yesterday—but the sun was setting pretty quickly. Maybe it was just in the interest of time. Either way, Ms. Therian was already disappearing into the trees, her footsteps crackling over the carpet of fallen leaves.
This is perfect, Gabriella thought. Now that we have a few minutes by ourselves, maybe Darren will tell me what’s going on.
“You coming?” Darren asked. Their side of the trail narrowed even further, so that the spruce branches on either side created a canopy overhead. Darren pushed one of the branches and held it out of the way for Gabriella.
“Thanks,” she said, hurrying to catch up. “Listen, I’ve been meani
ng to talk to you about something.”
“Sounds serious,” Darren replied. “Anything wrong?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you,” continued Gabriella. “What’s going on?”
Darren shrugged, but he wouldn’t meet her eye. “I— Nothing, really. School, Changers stuff, football practice. Same old, same old.”
A hint of a frown flickered over Gabriella’s face. He’s not getting off the hook that easily, she thought.
“Are you sure?” she asked lightly. “Because you’ve seemed pretty . . . I don’t know, upset for the last couple days.”
Darren’s laugh was tense. “I don’t know what makes you think that,” he said. “Trust me, everything’s fine. I just have a lot of stuff going on right now.”
“I think it might be more than that,” Gabriella said, fishing around in her pocket for her phone. “The girls showed me this at lunch earlier.”
Darren’s expression was part confusion, part intrigue as he walked over to Gabriella. “What’s this?” he asked as the video loaded.
“Maybe you can tell me,” she said.
A sudden realization dawned on him. “That’s my house!” he exclaimed as the clouds gathered over it, blazing with lightning.
“One of my friends took this video during the storm yesterday. But it wasn’t an ordinary storm, was it?”
At last, Darren looked directly into Gabriella’s eyes. What she saw there—a sea of swirling emotions; fear and anger and guilt and sadness all jumbled up, each more intense than the last—was so familiar.
But all too soon, Darren broke her gaze. He turned abruptly and began walking down the path away from Gabriella, her phone, and the video that proved all of Gabriella’s worries.
Wait, Gabriella thought. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. “Please, Darren, I want to help,” she urged him.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said, walking faster with his fists balled up.
“You don’t know that,” Gabriella shot back, lowering her voice as she noticed a couple of teenagers—a boy and a girl—ahead of them on the trail. “Would you just try to trust me? I’ve been there—I’ve had my powers surge out of my control. I know what you’re going through—”
“You don’t know anything about what I’m going through!” Darren exploded. At the same moment a white-hot bolt of lightning burst from his fingertips—right in the direction of the teenagers on the path.
“Duck!” Gabriella screamed at the top of her voice.
Oddly enough, though, they didn’t need to.
It all happened so fast: the air wavering as some unseen force—a shield or something—surrounded the teens, who stared through it with empty black eyes at Darren and Gabriella.
It was magic.
But where had it come from?
Then Darren grabbed her arm. “That’s—that’s— He’s a warlock,” he gasped. “Bram, remember? I saw him at New Brighton University—and then he was on the beach, when we tried to get Circe’s Compass.”
Gabriella stretched and flexed her muscles, like she did just before practice. She wanted desperately to transform, but she didn’t want to start a fight. After all, maybe the teenagers would flee—report back to whomever they worked for.
That was never going to happen, though. The shimmering shield began to fade, disintegrating before their eyes, and Gabriella understood at last what Ms. Therian meant about sensing the reminder of where magic once had been.
The witch’s hands were clenched tightly together, and her dark lips were moving with silent words—
It’s a curse, Gabriella realized as she dodged the spell just in time.
Zzzzap! One of Darren’s lightning bolts cut through the air, but it missed the witch by several feet.
In an instant Gabriella changed into her nahual form and jumped in front of Darren. A low, menacing growl rumbled in her throat.
As another curse zinged past Gabriella, she stood her ground, the velvety black fur bristling along the back of her neck. When the moment was right, she would pounce. She would have to take them both out with one tackle; if she tried to attack them separately, there would still be one left to curse her.
Unless Darren’s lightning . . . , she thought suddenly.
Darren, in his human form, responded, You got it, Gabriella. You take her out. I’ll block him.
Gabriella watched in amazement as one of Darren’s lightning bolts intercepted a curse, causing it to sizzle up into a puff of smoke. A brief smile of relief flickered across his face—but it didn’t last. It soon became clear that Darren’s strike was a lucky one, because each bolt of lightning after that was increasingly unpredictable. They ricocheted through the air, slicing through leaves, singeing tree trunks. Thin plumes of smoke spiraled into the sky, the smell of char thick in the air.
Darren! Watch out! Gabriella thought to him desperately. Even with her heightened nahual senses, she didn’t know how she could manage to keep track of both the magic-users and Darren’s wild lightning. The problem was that Darren’s lightning was just as dangerous as the real thing. A thick bolt, crackling with even more power than the others, shot straight into the air—and sliced off a heavy branch from the pine tree above Gabriella. It fell in an instant, pinning her to the forest floor.
I can’t move! Gabriella cried out to Darren as she struggled beneath the branch.
I’m sorry! Darren responded, and Gabriella could feel his desperation. I’m trying—I’m trying my best—
But right now, Darren’s best wasn’t good enough. With a malicious gleam in her eye, the witch began to cast a new curse.
Darren! Gabriella screamed.
A lightning bolt burst from his hands instantaneously . . .
And zoomed straight toward Gabriella.
Chapter 5
The Wristband
“No!” Darren howled, seeing what was about to happen and entirely powerless to prevent it.
Gabriella strained against the fallen branch, but even though she tried her hardest to move it, she couldn’t get out of the way in time.
The lightning bolt found its mark, and suddenly, Gabriella lay very still. The thick, choking smell of singed fur filled the air, and Darren fell to his knees, overwhelmed with guilt.
A streak of steel gray bounded past him then, shoving Darren out of the way. He landed so hard that the air was knocked out of his lungs; gasping, he looked up and saw Ms. Therian in her werewolf form.
Their teacher was imposing as a human, but as a werewolf, she was downright terrifying. Her long, razor-sharp teeth couldn’t be contained in her mouth, which was open in a perpetual snarl; there was a brutality to her every movement that made Darren feel afraid, even though he felt safer with her than just about anyone else in the world.
And if he felt afraid, the witch and warlock must have been really terrified. Ms. Therian only had to lunge at them once and they were off, running for their lives through the thick brush, not even bothering to send any curses flying back at the Changers. Ms. Therian continued to chase them, anyway.
“Gabriella!” Darren gasped, scrambling to his feet. He raced across the clearing to her. Somehow, she was back in her human form, and her face was very pale; with her help, Darren rolled the branch out of the way. “Are you okay? Please say something! Please!”
It seemed to take a lot of effort, but eventually she smiled. “I’m good,” she managed to choke out. “A little sore, but okay.”
“The lightning,” Darren said, biting his lip. “I thought it hit—”
“It did,” she interrupted him in a quiet voice. “Just the edge of my ear, though.”
Darren looked closer and saw a bright red burn on the edge of her ear. “I’m so sorry,” he said miserably. “I would never, never, never—”
“You don’t need to explain that,” Gabriella told him. “I told you, I’ve been through the whole out-of-control powers thing. You can trust me—just tell me what’s going on.”
Darren squeezed his eyes shu
t tight, trying to hold back the tears that had suddenly filled them.
“Hey,” Gabriella said, reaching out to pat his arm. “Look, everything’s going to be okay—”
“It’s not,” he said through clenched teeth. “I could’ve gotten us both killed! I can’t fight, I can’t control my lightning, I am failing at everything important, at everything that matters.”
“No—”
“I can’t do it, Gabriella,” he continued. “I don’t know how to get control.”
“I didn’t know how to either . . . ,” she began, but at that moment, Ms. Therian rejoined them. She was back in her human form, without a single hair out of place from the long, silver-streaked braid that fell heavily down her back.
“Gracious,” she said, bending down to examine Gabriella. “Tell me everything. What happened?”
A long look passed between Gabriella and Darren, and he had the sudden feeling that she was going to tell Ms. Therian everything, including how Darren’s initial outburst caused him to fling lightning at two people unintentionally. If they hadn’t been magic and blocked the bolt, I don’t know what would’ve happened. . . . Please don’t tell, Gabriella, he begged. Please don’t.
“They must’ve sensed we were Changers,” Gabriella said, choosing her words carefully. “All of a sudden, they attacked. There was, like, no warning.”
“None,” Darren agreed, feeling a rush of gratitude toward his friend.
A pensive frown crossed Ms. Therian’s face. Then she glanced up at the sky, which seemed to grow darker by the minute. “We’ve lost the light,” she said, holding out her hand to help Gabriella up. “Come, let us get back to the car.”
“But we didn’t find anything yet,” Darren protested.
“It can’t be helped,” Ms. Therian said firmly. “Perhaps there was nothing to find. Though it is very interesting that two magic-users were patrolling the area. Very interesting, indeed.”
“Why were they even here?” Gabriella asked as they began to walk back to Ms. Therian’s car.
“I do not know,” Ms. Therian admitted. “Perhaps they were watching to see if any Changers would come to investigate? It seems odd. There might be more to consider here than we initially thought.”
