by Dean Murray
I hadn't even realized what I was feeling until that moment. The anger had just pushed its way to the front, ready to fight and even die if necessary to protect my dad. I wouldn't have said it would be possible for anything to short-circuit my rage so neatly, but Kat did it without even needing to touch me. It was like she'd known exactly what I was thinking and feeling and that had given her the perfect tool with which to defuse me.
"Seriously, sit back down. If you go into oxygen debt I'm not going to amp you up, I'll just drop the time effect and leave you here to either recover or suffocate. I've used way too much power over the last few days."
I dropped back down into my chair, confused by the way that she was treating me. "I'm sorry, Kat. I don't want you to have to burn your memories like this. Let's be done—we'll go back to class and I'll just not turn in my homework. It won't be the end of the world."
"That's just it, Selene, you don't get it. I don't have any other choice. You'd never go for us taking a fear approach with your dad—not that we'd want to anyway—so that means we either have to trade for what we want, play to his emotions, or trick him.
"No father worth the title is going to trade his daughters for cash, and that includes accepting something in return for putting you in a situation where he doesn't think you'll be safe, so I have just two options to work with. Both those options work best if he isn't suspicious. You need to continue to get good grades and carry on as though everything is okay or my job is going to get even harder."
"This isn't about my dad."
The words came out without me even realizing I'd opened my mouth, and they came out with the kind of bold, unapologetic tone that I'd always admired in Kat, but only rarely managed myself. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire. Kat's energy surged up and this time it wasn't warm and friendly, it was cold and prickly. Her face had gone so hard she almost looked like another person.
"You should keep your opinions to yourself—they aren't wanted."
"Well, tough. If you're going to drag me along behind you without even telling me the full story then you're going to have to deal with me opening my mouth and interjecting my opinions."
"I could kill you right here and nobody else would ever even know."
I actually laughed in her face. It was the last thing I should have been doing, but it was like the other version of me, the one who had spent decades as friends with Kat, was reaching forward in time and controlling me.
"Good luck with that, Kat. Jace would never buy it and we both know it, but that's not even the real reason why you aren't going to kill me."
"Oh, yeah?"
My mind was spinning frantically. Up until now, everything had just exploded out of my mouth of its own accord, but whatever had been motivating me was gone. Now I had to cash the checks my mouth had been writing. I opened my mouth intending to stall, and then it hit me.
"You're not going to kill me because I'm your last hope. You said it yourself last night. The other pantheons are hunting you and Jace as we speak, and the two of you aren't strong enough to stand up to them. Hell, based on how scared you are, there's a good chance that the three of us won't be strong enough to survive against what's coming for us, but at least with me you might have a chance."
"You figure that all out by yourself or has Jace been going off script again?"
"Some of both, but mostly things are just starting to click for me. It's rare that one of us dies in a big blaze of glory, isn't it? I mean it probably happens, maybe that's even what happened to me, but usually conflicts between different pantheons are just long drawn-out affairs where the side with more people wears the weaker side down, makes them burn up all of their memories until they are helpless and they can be dispatched by any idiot with a knife and a vendetta.
"With me in the pantheon we'll be adding memories fifty percent faster. That's a lot of extra power in a pinch. It just might make the difference if we get cornered at some point in the future—and that's not even accounting for the fact that I'm apparently some kind of savant researcher who could tip the scales irrevocably in our direction if I manage to unlock the right secrets of the universe."
We stared at each other, neither willing to blink for several seconds before I raised an eyebrow and tilted my head to one side.
"Well, Kat, what do you say? Am I getting warm?"
"Yeah, you did surprisingly well. For a second there you almost had me convinced I was talking to the old you, the one who wouldn't have let me get away with this kind of crap."
"So what am I missing?"
"You're missing the fact that once your powers fully manifest you're only going to need two hours of sleep per night as compared to my five, and you're missing the fact that Jace would do anything for you. He'd cut me loose in a heartbeat if that's what he thought he was going to need to do to keep you."
It was the last piece, Kat wasn't just scared of the other pantheons, she was afraid that we were going to abandon her when times got tough.
"Kat, I would never—"
"Don't say it, Selene. That's just going to make it worse when you end up deciding to cut your losses. You still don't get it. I have to sleep for five hours a night. Five. That's three extra hours a day spent in a useless slumber that doesn't do anything to generate base or peak memories either one. Even compared to Jace, I need an extra two hours a day of useless sleep."
"That's—"
"No, don't say it. I know it doesn't sound like much, but over the course of months and years it starts adding up. I'm a four-banger in a world of V-8's. I stay in the running by using peak memories to fill in when my store of base memories starts to get low, but the older you get the more jaded you become and the harder it is to form quality peak memories. My time is already running short. Jace remembers almost a hundred and fifty years together with you and me. I barely remember eighty at this point. I fill back in with my journals, but I'm already down in the danger zone. If another pantheon finds us and we have to make a run for it, I could lose twenty years' worth of memories in just a few days."
"Oh, Kat. You poor thing."
"Yeah, poor Kat. I'm nothing more than a pawn. Most pantheons would chew me up and spit me out. They'd drain me dry in just a century or two, and then once all of my peak memories were gone it would only be a matter of time before I'd end up dead."
"Only these aren't the old days, are they, Kat? Back then dying just meant you had to start over with no knowledge of what you'd lost. Now in a world with digital cameras and social media, once you're used up it's game over. You'll never get another chance to have your power awaken. You'll be killed over and over again. Never knowing why powers you can't even hope to understand are out to get you."
She was crying. I got the feeling that didn't happen very often. As quickly as the tears had arrived she started bringing herself back under control.
"It's okay, Kat. If you need to cry then cry. I won't tell Jace any of this if you don't want him to know."
That brought a smile to her lips. "Don't kid yourself; the two of you are incapable of keeping secrets from each other."
"I'd do it for you. I think you're right that it would be hard, but I'd do it anyway."
"No, there's no need. Jace is fully aware of just how much of a basket case I am. I don't know how you do this. It was the same way back before you died. I can count the number of times I remember crying on one hand, and each and every one of them was because you said exactly the right thing at the right time to bring my tough-girl act tumbling down."
"I'm sorry…"
"Don't be—you just helped me form another peak memory. Maybe someday this will be what keeps me alive when my number otherwise would have been up. You always were better at triggering strong emotion in me than I was at triggering it for you. You've always been a better friend to me than I deserved."
I shook my head in protest. "Don't say those kinds of things, Kat. I'm sure that isn't true. Just over the course of three days you've proved that you're a great friend.
I can't think of anyone else who would burn a peak memory just to show Sandra up like that."
"Yeah, I've always had a weakness for making that whore look like the idiot she is."
"Wait, you mean Sandra is one of us? She's an Awakened too?"
"Either that or she's a copy—a mimicry. She's a dead ringer for the bane of your existence, of course she went by a different name back then."
It was so obvious I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it before then. Sandra and I had the same birthday. That meant that we'd died within seconds of each other.
"Kat, I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the truth."
"Selene, sometimes we're better off not knowing—"
"She's the one who killed me, isn't she? It was Sandra who did it."
Chapter 14
Kat hung her head in shame. "It wasn't supposed to be you, Selene. I was the one who was supposed to die that night."
I felt like I'd been punched in the gut, but I couldn't have said for sure whether it was Sandra, or rather her previous incarnation, killing me that was the biggest shock, or if it was the fact that I'd sacrificed myself to save Kat.
"What happened, Kat?"
"We were being chased by a group from another pantheon. They were hoping to run us to ground so that they could capture you, or barring that get their hands on your research journals. There were three of them and three of us, but they were all known quantities and we were too closely matched.
"You and Jace were more powerful and skilled than any of them, but I was much, much weaker than even their weakest. Jace suggested splitting up as a way of trying to even the odds. He went one direction and we went the other. We figured Jace would be able to overwhelm whomever they sent after him, and then he was going to meet back up with us and ambush the last two of them."
It was surreal to hear someone talking about how I'd died. I couldn't remember any of it, but I could still feel a complex tide of emotions rising inside of me. Sorrow was part of it, but only part, and I couldn't even begin to untangle the rest of the feelings.
"It didn't work though."
"No. Jace ran into problems. The guy following him was cagier than we'd expected and it seemed like nothing Jace tried was sufficient to get the other guy to engage. Meanwhile we were running out of time. Sandra and Mephistoles were closing in on you and me. We went to a safe house and you called Jace…you called to tell him goodbye. I didn't realize it at the time. I thought you were just checking up on him, trying to figure out if there was any chance of turning the situation around, but you were saying goodbye."
Kat stopped talking. The tears were back. It physically hurt me to see her in so much pain, but I had to know what happened next.
"Please, Kat. I need to know."
"You pulled me aside and told me that you had a plan. You were going to engage Sandra and Mephistoles head on. While I circled around and came at them from the other side. It was risky. Even I realized that. I tried to convince you to trade places with me. It only made sense for me to take the most dangerous spot."
"You knew what I had planned?"
"No. I had some vague suspicions that you weren't telling me everything, but that wasn't anything new. Mostly it was just the fact that you were so much more important than me. You'd been telling us for months that your research was on the cusp of producing something that would change everything for us."
Kat made a fist and slammed her hand into the desk. The blow looked casual, but she shattered the ceramic upper surface and sent her book spinning to the ground.
"I don't know what you were thinking. You should have fed me into the meat grinder and saved yourself. If you'd spent the last eighteen years working on your research you could have finally made us untouchable."
"I expect that I was probably thinking that I loved you, Kat. I saw an option that gave us both a chance to save ourselves, but I knew there was a risk, so I did what I could to make sure that at least you would make it out alive."
"Then you were an idiot. You saved me, but what did that really accomplish? You saved someone who won't even remember your sacrifice in a few more years.
"I'll still have my journals, I'll still know that you died to save me, but I won't know what that felt like. Every time I burn a peak memory I worry I'm going to lose the memory of that day, but in a little while it won't even matter. I'm steadily losing the day-to-day stuff that defined our relationship. At some point it's just going to be a memory of a stranger who threw her life away to save mine."
"Oh, Kat. I finally understand. You're not just scared for your own life, you miss your friend, and you're in mourning for the day when you won't be able to remember her, for the day when her sacrifice will cease to have meaning. Why didn't you just tell me?"
"Because it sounds stupid to say that I miss you when you're sitting right here next to me."
"I'm not really her, and I know it. Maybe someday I'll be someone very much like her, but right now you and I don't even begin to have that kind of history together. It's okay, I don't expect you to feel any different than you do."
Something about that statement calmed Kat instantly. It was eerie, like the way that she'd short-circuited my anger so effortlessly just a few minutes before. The difference was that I didn't have any idea what it was that I'd said to reach her.
"You say that, but sometimes I wonder. Most of the time you're exactly what I expect you to be, but every so often you sound just like her."
"I know, Jace explained it to me. My body has changed over the last few years and now I'm basically a clone. Even my voice."
"No, that's not what I meant. Your voice is the same, but it's more than that. Sometimes the things you say are exactly the same things she would have said."
I shrugged. "You guys keep telling me that kind of thing is to be expected. I'm still her, just without her memories."
"Yeah, I know. It just seems sometimes like the similarities between the two of you go beyond even that."
Chapter 15
We went back to our fifth class and made it through without any problems, but when it came time for my next study session I flatly refused to let Jace or Kat either one bend time. They weren't happy about my intransigence, but I'd managed to get a passable amount of homework done during fifth hour, and I was going to take a 'D' on an assignment before I was going to let the two of them wipe away one more memory that didn't need to be wiped away.
As luck would have it, I managed to get just enough work done in each class to continue to be ready as the next class rolled around. I've always hated working under a deadline, so it made for a stressful couple of hours. I was going to have a lot of catching up to do over the weekend because of all the stuff I hadn't gotten done during class, but that was what the weekend was for.
Kat ditched school right before PE started, which I thought meant I was going to have to fly solo, but apparently Mr. Lake and Ms. Stacker decided it was time to let the two different PE classes mix, so we were playing co-ed volleyball.
Predictably, Jace was chosen as one of the captains. Less predictably, he chose me as his first pick, which caused a round of giggling from the girls and a lot of rolled eyes from the guys.
"You just made a huge mistake. I've got to be the world's worst volleyball player. Our team is going to suck."
Jace gave me another lazy smile. "Oh, ye of little faith."
I hit him in the arm, but it was like hitting warm marble. I was pretty sure that I'd just done more damage to my fist than I had to his arm.
"Biblical quotes are less funny coming from you than they would be from other people, Jace."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
I looked around before responding, but we were far enough away from the other captains that I thought we were probably safe.
"I mean quoting another faith's holy book when you probably had a holy book of your own at some point a few thousand years ago comes off as being kind of mocking."
"So what you're
saying is that because I'm not like everyone else around here, I don't get to share their beliefs?"
"Wait, are you trying to tell me that you're a believer?"
"Yep. So were you once upon a time, Selene. Just because we can bend space and time doesn't mean we can't believe in a higher power."
He'd stumped me with that one. I opened my mouth to respond, and then just closed it again and shrugged. "With someone else I'd think they were trying to mock me still, but I think you may actually be serious."
"More than serious, my doubting Thomasina. Watch, I'll show you. Who's the worst athlete here—I mean besides you?"
I stuck out my tongue at Jace, but I pointed at Sally Westernaught, whom he promptly selected for his next pick. That proceeded for the next four selections as we filled out the spots on the floor and selected one more person to rotate into the game.
By the time the teams were formed up it was obvious that we had no chance of winning. We had five girls who were more likely to flinch away from the ball than hit it, Jace, and one other guy who I suspected was going to fake an injury shortly into the first game so that he could sit out and avoid humiliating himself.
The worst part of it all was that each person on the team knew that we were all losers. Jace surveyed the six of us and smiled. "I could tell you that I don't care about winning or that I just want us to all have fun, but that would be a lie. I want to win because a lot of the people on those other teams look like the kinds of jerks who would have picked most of our team last.
"I'm going to make you a promise. If you'll hit the ball when it comes to you, I'll do my very best to make sure that it goes over the net."
Sally shook her head. "I've heard this story before. We want everyone to play, don't just stand there, yada, yada. The truth is that you're going to get pissed if we don't hit it just right to set you up to spike the ball."
"I'll tell you what, Sally. I won't spike the ball until you tell me that it's okay to do so, and I don't really care where you hit the ball as long as you hit it. Try me—hit it the worst possible way you can and I'll bet you twenty bucks that I don't get mad."
