by Dean Murray
I only amped myself up to three times normal speed, but even so I felt a burst of memories flow out through the center of my forehead as Jace took off like a bullet. I threw myself after him, pacing him with a grace and ease that I never could have managed without my abilities. Now that the effect was up and running, keeping my system amped up wasn't requiring as much of an expenditure of memories, but there was still an ongoing drain. As I jumped over one fallen log and then ran along another, I wondered what I would end up losing.
I'd started out terrified of losing my memories. I still was in a lot of ways, but I'd finally started to come to terms with the fact that there wasn't any way to avoid using my abilities, not if I wanted to keep my friends and family safe.
We covered the mile from the hill to the house in just over three minutes, and I managed to remember to drop my strength and speed amp before I tried to open the sliding door. Things like opening doors got tricky when you were amped—I'd already broken several things over the last two weeks by accident. Getting stuff replaced wasn't a big deal from a cost perspective—money was basically a non-issue when you could transmute sand or clay into precious metals—but none of us really wanted a bunch of strangers inside the house repairing fixtures because I'd been too stupid to remember that I needed to let my effects expire before I tried to open a door.
I thought about yelling for help, but as soon as I got the door open Jace blasted past me at better than twenty miles per hour. I followed him at my best speed and found him in the triage area attached to the gym at the back of the house.
It was starting to make a lot more sense why Jace and Kat left most of the doors inside the house propped open. It meant that some of the internal security features weren't operating as intended, but it also meant that they didn't have to slow down and wait for doors to open with glacial slowness when they were in a hurry.
I heard drawers banging shut as I finally caught up to Jace, and he'd managed to start an IV by the time I made it to his side and he flickered back to normal speed.
"Okay, that should do it. I'll go ahead and hook up the monitoring equipment, but once the IV has had a chance to empty into his system he should be out of the woods."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Could you go get Kat and the others? They need to know that we've got someone else in the house. Kat knows how to lock down the interior, which she should go ahead and do, but I don't expect it to make much of a difference, not against another Awakened."
"Wait, you mean he's one of us?"
Even as I said it I reached out with my mind in an attempt to sense him. It took a second. That was partly because I was so unpracticed at sensing other Awakened, but mostly it was just because his presence was so weak as to be virtually undetectable.
"How is that even possible? He's unconscious, so he's not actively masking his presence, and even if he was I didn't know it was possible to mask yourself so completely."
"It isn't, but if you push yourself close enough to the edge you can come close. Based on the state he appears to be in, his emotional reservoir is empty and he's pushed his body to the point of collapse. We've got about twelve hours to figure out who he is and what he wants. After that, he'll start recharging his reserves enough that he'll be a danger."
Chapter 3
Jace's revelation wasn't reassuring. So far my experiences with other Awakened hadn't exactly been positive. Mephistoles had almost managed to kill me, Sandra had been more than happy to stab my dad before throwing herself at me in an effort to make sure that I breathed my last breath, and Kyle had turned my entire world upside down. In fairness, that last one had been as much my fault as it had been his.
This guy might be the nicest person in the world, but I seriously doubted it. It was a lot more likely that he was going to try to slit all of our throats while we were sleeping.
I found Kat and my dad sitting awkwardly by themselves in the media room. I wasn't sure which of them had suggested that particular idea, but even I could have told them that it was a terrible one. My dad hadn't been out on a date in five years, and it had been almost two decades since he'd gone out with anyone other than my mom.
Kat liked movies, but I knew her well enough to know that she really just wanted a chance to sit down and talk to him. A movie wasn't going to provide that—all it was going to do was make things weird between the two of them.
I sighed as I flipped the lights on and pointed back towards the triage area. "We've got a visitor. Jace wants everyone back in the medical room so we can decide what to do with him."
I tried not to notice just how relieved both of them looked at the interruption, but it was obvious that neither of them was comfortable with how their date had been progressing. I didn't wait around to listen to them try to convince each other that they'd been having a good time.
Ari was outside in the garage. By herself. I was worried about her, but I wasn't sure what to do about it. It had been my dad who'd spent several days as Mephistoles' prisoner, not her. Still, being locked away downstairs in the vault while Jace and Kat had gone looking for me had taken a toll on her. She was still my little sister, but she was different.
As nearly as I could tell she'd pulled away from her friends at school, and she seemed to have given up on the crush she'd been feeling for Jace. I wasn't sure if that was because she was uneasy around him now that she knew he and I had a history together that was literally longer than our country had existed, or if she was still just in shock that Jace, Kat and I had been keeping such a big secret from her.
Whatever the reason, she'd changed. She came inside the house to eat and to sleep, but she wasn't doing enough of either. She spent every waking moment working on my car. She'd pulled my engine out and removed all of the body panels, which meant it was no longer drivable, but that didn't matter since we were riding into school with Kat and Jace.
Kat had given Ari a credit card that didn't seem to have a limit, and she'd been using it to buy car parts. Turbos, new rims, new exhaust systems, she'd purchased at least one of just about everything under the sun.
When she finally finished up with her project my car was going to look brand new and completely unrecognizable, but it didn't really matter. I already had more than five million dollars' worth of platinum stockpiled inside of my room. Once I got a chance to turn some of that into cash, it would be the easiest thing in the world to replace my old clunker with any car I wanted.
After watching the slow transformation of my car over the last couple of weeks, I was actually kind of curious to see what it was going to look like once she was done, but at the same time I was scared to death of that day arriving. I wasn't sure what Ari would do once she no longer had that distraction to keep her from facing her demons.
"Hey, Ari. Jace and I found a guy out in the forest and Jace wants everyone to meet inside the house and discuss what we do next. He's in the triage area off the exercise facilities."
"Can't you just call an ambulance and let someone else worry about him?"
"No, he's an Awakened. That means he could be dangerous."
"Okay, I'll be in shortly. I just need to finish tightening down these bolts."
All of that drifted out from underneath the car—she didn't bother rolling out to where I could see her. I stood there for several seconds wishing I knew what to say, that I had the words to fix whatever was bothering her, but I didn't. In the end I just turned around and walked back inside.
There was only one other person I needed to hunt down, and she was the person I was least excited to see. It took me another five minutes, but I eventually found Sandra in the main basement level, sketching in one of the black-bound journals that Jace had given her.
She didn't look up as I walked into the large sitting room. I watched her from across the vast expanse of carpet for several seconds before finally clearing my throat.
"Jace has asked everyone to meet upstairs. Another Awakened practically tripped over us while we were out in the f
orest. He's hurt, so he's not a threat right now, but we're going to have to decide what to do with him before he wakes up."
She continued drawing without acknowledging my presence and I had to suppress a rising tide of anger. This kind of anger would have been bad enough for a normal person to deal with. It was twice as bad for me because the anger meant that I was that much closer to working an effect.
I started across the room, all but shaking from anger. "Did you hear me, Sandra?"
"Yeah, blah, blah, go upstairs and listen to everyone else make decisions that I have absolutely no input into. Blah, blah, a new one of us has arrived so I'm even less important than I was before, blah, blah."
I pulled up short, my mind reeling. "Really? That's how you're going to behave after everything that Jace and Kat have done for you?"
"What, you mean like not killing me? Yeah, I get it, I'm a massive bi-otch who nearly killed your dad. I deserve to have my pretty little head chopped off, but you're all so wonderful that you decided to save me despite all of that."
"I didn't say anything about that."
"You don't have to, Selene. It's there underlying everything any of you say or do. Here's the thing though, I don't remember any of that. All I have is your word as to what happened, and I can't seem to get past the fact that I hate your guts with an intensity that should scare me, but doesn't."
"I don't know what to tell you, Sandra. You've hated me for as long as I can remember, but I've never done anything to deserve your hatred."
"Yeah, I got the memo on that too, but that doesn't change how I feel. From everything you've all been saying, I shouldn't remember anything more complicated than how to walk or use a fork, and I can't—not really—but I can't get away from the feeling that you stole something from me, something that you didn't even want."
She was talking about Jace, but I wasn't sure how to respond. I didn't remember any of that—I hadn't even read my journals from back then yet. All I knew was what Jace and Kat had told me.
"Look, I'm going to level with you, Sandra. This all happened way before either of our current incarnations, but my understanding is that you and Jace used to be an item. For a while it was you, him and Kyle, but then Kat and I happened along and the guys threw their lot in with me. You didn't handle that very well. It was ultimately the reason why you ended up joining forces with Mephistoles the first time around. I don't know anything more than that—I promise."
"You must be loving this."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you got everything. Jace and Kyle are fighting over you, you have the clothes and the money—everything you could possibly want—and I'm sitting here in borrowed clothes with a memory that covers only the last two weeks. You've got superpowers, and I do too, but nobody is willing to teach me how to use them because none of you trust me. I apparently have a dad, but I'm not allowed to go see him, and he must be freaking out about me, but there isn't anything I can do about it other than just sit here wondering when I'll be something other than a slave."
"You aren't a slave. You have the run of nearly the entire house, and the only reason you're stuck here is that you're not capable of protecting yourself right now. If we let you run around by yourself you'd end up captured or killed by one of the other pantheons. Believe me when I say that either one of those options would be a ton worse than what you're going through right now."
"Then teach me how to defend myself. Show me a little trust for once."
I forced myself not to grind my teeth. "It's not about trust, Sandra. You don't have enough memories to power any worthwhile effects. Knowing how to create effects is addictive. Once you know how to do them, it's nearly impossible to avoid using them. If we taught you right now, you'd just wipe away what few memories you have left and you'd be back to where you were two weeks ago.
"Give it some time. In five or six years you'll have enough baseline memory built up for us to begin teaching you how to defend yourself. After that, you can go off and do whatever you want."
"Whatever. I'll believe it when I see it."
"Fine. Stay down here for all I care, but don't go whining to everyone that you don't have a say in what's going on if you're not willing to come up and participate in the discussions where the decisions are made."
I turned and walked away from her without looking back. A second later her pencil went spinning through the air past my head. It slammed into the wall next to the stairs, but I never even flinched. I'd had much worse things thrown at me lately.
Chapter 4
Everyone but Sandra made it up to the triage room by the time the new guy woke up. I was surprised that he was conscious so soon after nearly dying, but I shouldn't have been—Jace did good work.
Most healers could save someone if they were on death's doorstep, but it was a rare individual who had a light enough touch to save someone without throwing the rest of their systems off so badly that they would have to spend several days in bed recovering.
The new guy opened his eyes and then shut them immediately. Jace looked up obviously planning on asking one of us to darken the windows, but Ari was already on it. She turned the dial on the wall while the rest of us were still looking around trying to locate it. The windows slowly polarized, bringing the light level down to where our visitor could open his eyes with a minimal amount of squinting.
"I guess you're as good as they say you are, Jace."
I half expected Jace to shake the guy's hand and pat him on the back, but instead Jace produced a knife from somewhere and stood between the new guy and the rest of us.
"Who are you, and how did you find us?"
"My name is Byron. I'm part of the Helena pantheon."
Kat had put on a hard facade too. "Nice try. There isn't any pantheon in Helena."
"That's what we wanted everyone to think. The truth is that we've been there for the better part of the last sixty years, we just keep a very low profile."
Jace shook his head. "Nobody keeps that low a profile. Even the best of us can't manage to drop completely out of sight for that long. Five years? Sure. Ten years? Maybe. Sixty? Not on your life."
"It's possible. You just have to cut off all contact with the fae and avoid using your abilities. If you can live like a normal human for a year or so, your presence starts shrinking down. After eighteen months it becomes possible to hide your signature from anyone not right on top of you."
Ari and Dad didn't seem to understand the significance of what we'd just been told, but Jace, Kat and I were all reeling. It seemed too impossible to believe that there was really a way to bow out of the eternal fighting that seemed to go hand-in-hand with being one of the Awakened. I was so shocked that it took me a second to realize the importance of the first half of his comment.
"Wait, are you trying to say that we can't trust even the Seelie court?"
Byron gave me a once-over, eyes stopping on Bethany, who'd landed on my shoulder as I'd climbed back up the stairs from talking to Sandra, and then nodded.
"You must be Genevieve's latest incarnation. Yes, contact with the fae always causes nothing but problems. I'm a big fan of your work, by the way."
Bethany took off from my shoulder like she was planning on dive-bombing Byron, but then realized that she was still much too small to be a match for him, even in his weakened state.
"Take it back! I would never do anything to bring harm to Selene or her friends."
Byron shrugged. "That may be the truth. It probably is given that you're so newly created and Selene is so close to Genevieve, but that's not the case with all of the fae."
I was glad that Kregor wasn't around. He was still relatively weak for a fae, but he was big enough to be dangerous under the right circumstances.
"So we're fine. We limit our contact with the Seelie court to just Bethany and Kregor, stop using our abilities, and then in a year or so we'll manage to drop out of sight and live normal lives."
Byron shook his head. "I've spent the better part of
the last five hundred years learning how to disappear. I figured out how to make my signature disappear more than four hundred years ago. I thought I had the answer I was looking for back then, but then I spent the next two hundred years running from one pantheon or another. It wasn't until my friends and I cut ties with both courts completely that we were able to get under the radar."
Jace was considering Byron's words. In another life I would have been the one matching up what he was telling us with all of the theories our pantheon had put together regarding how the world worked, but I wasn't that person anymore. It was possible that Jace was right about my capability to one day become a star researcher again, but for now I didn't even begin to have the background knowledge needed to evaluate what we were being told.
"So what happened?"
"A lot of things. Sometimes our familiars got frustrated by the fact that we weren't burning memories anymore, sometimes one of the Unseelie Court happened along unexpectedly and we ended up having to defend ourselves, sometimes we got flushed out of hiding by stuff that seemed like freak accidents."
"But you're not convinced?"
"Nope. I'd like to think otherwise, but the freak accidents all stopped happening when it was just us Awakened."
"What's your working theory?"
"I'm not sure. The courts both operate giant intelligence networks. It's possible that the Lady was keeping tabs on us for some benign reason and she just has a leak somewhere in her organization, but I think that the courts can sense each other."
We all turned to Bethany, who I could feel shifting around from foot to foot.
"Don't look at me like that. I can't sense anyone but Selene."
I reached up and patted her on the backs of her legs. "Nobody is saying that you're going to betray us, Bethany. It could be any number of things that made it so the Helena pantheon was able to drop out of sight after they stopped interacting with the fae. My bet is that one or more of the other pantheons have figured out how to sense the presence of members of either court."
