“Here's what I'll do if you don't make this right.” Devon looked him right in the eyes. “I'll have some hapless girl fall head over heels in love with you, and then, when you're so deep in love you see stars, I'll rip her life away like that.” Devon snapped her fingers next to his cheek for emphasis.
Emerson stifled the urge to snatch the girl up by the front of the coat. The most vicious place she could strike was his interaction with other people. It was the one thing he had that was untouched by his chaotic existence. Secretly, he cherished the few friends he'd made in his lifetime. To think someone could set him up like that, write it into an innocent girl's destiny and then shatter them both—was startling.
It upset him more than he wanted to admit.
Audrinne had never stooped to threats when she asked for his help.
“There would have been too many victims. What don't you understand about that? You wanted Beelah, but--”
“No, I want Farris. I can't target Farris directly, though--”
“Why not?” There was something Devon wasn't saying here, Emerson felt sure of it.
Devon looked coy, batting her lashes angelically. “You're not privy to that information. Just know that Farris is the actual target. She's with that Beelah girl a lot though, so it's easy to use her instead. Get it done, Emerson. Tonight.”
As if the storm itself was intertwined with his moods, the wind stopped whipping all of a sudden, the thunder rumbled to an end, and the lightning streaked away into the sky, far from their position. Emerson disliked orders. He didn't want to be told what to do. Trading favor for a favor was one thing; being manipulated wore his patience thin. If this whole sordid affair wasn't tied directly to Fate, to destiny, if it wasn't so important that this needed to happen, he would have walked away without another word.
But he knew how this worked. If he didn't help out, something worse would likely happen.
The thought of Farris having to deal with Chaos—be it a wrecked home, a lost car, or injury to her person—didn't sit well with him either, and he wasn't sure why. He'd only known her a handful of hours. Devon wouldn't tell him what kind of Chaos she had in store for Farris, either, only wanted him to bend nature to his will.
“What do you want me to do? I can't call a tornado back here, you know that, right? It'll be too suspicious.” He shoved his hands in the wet pockets of his overcoat and glared at Devon.
Her peach painted lips tilted up in a smile that reminded him of a certain Cheshire cat.
“Fire, Emerson. She'll be staying at Beelah's house tonight, so you'll need to drop a flame on her apartment. Here's her address.” Devon took a small piece of wrinkled old parchment paper out of her pocket and handed it over.
“Fire? You can take care of that. Light a match and that's that.” Emerson's mood continued to deteriorate. The more involved he became and the more he knew, the less he liked the entire situation. He snatched the paper out of her hand and slid it into his coat without looking at it.
“I already told you. I can't get directly involved. All this would be so much easier if I could. Tonight, Emerson. Do it tonight.” Devon took a step back, and another. With a whirl on her knee high boot, she marched away across the field and disappeared behind an old barn.
Emerson watched her until she was gone. Muttering under his breath about Fate and Destiny and the whim of women, he headed the opposite direction, intent on a walk to cool his temper before he went to Farris' house.
The whole ordeal left a bad taste in his mouth.
. . .
After the danger was past, and coach Finch could be persuaded to allow the girls to leave the High School, Farris and Beelah drove to the nursing home. The streets were littered with tree branches, copious amounts of leaves, and bits and pieces of homes, barns, businesses and telephone poles.
It wasn't the first time a tornado had struck Newcastle. A devastating one hit in 1999, tearing a nasty swath right through town. She didn't think this one was as big or as powerful—a fact she was thankful for even as she pulled the Chevy into the nursing home parking lot.
In one piece, with no fragments of roof missing or doors blown off or glass broken, it appeared the structure was undamaged.
The nurses only allowed she and Beelah a half hour with her grandmother before they shooed everyone out.
Farris agreed to drop Beelah at her house first, even though she was anxious to get to old man Henson's and see if the garage and her loft were still standing. Now that she knew her grandmother was all right, her next concern was for her stories.
She could take the loss of all her clothes and other memorabilia better than she could fathom the ruin of her stories. Years upon years of work that would be all but impossible to replace.
Beelah's parents were fine, as well as their house. They tried to get Farris to stay the night—Beelah insisted—but Farris couldn't sleep until she knew the fate of her loft.
In the end, Beelah packed an overnight bag and headed home with Farris. She wanted to be with her, wanted someone there in case Farris arrived to find the farmhouse and the garage gone. Farris thanked her lucky stars; she didn't want to endure the loss alone if the worst had come to pass.
When they arrived, not only was the farmhouse and the garage still standing, but it didn't appear as if the rain had reached this far to the outskirts of the city. Dry gravel crunched under the tires of the Chevy as Farris pulled the truck up in front of the garage.
“Henson's not home. If he's home, he always leaves the back porch light on,” Farris said. She glanced up at the loft, grateful it was unharmed.
“He's probably in town helping out. You know him. I'm so happy your loft is all right. I know you were worried,” Beelah said, collecting her bag and her organizer before sweeping Farris into a one armed hug.
Farris laughed and hugged her in return. Beelah knew her better than anyone and had, as usual, been correct in her assumption about the loft.
“I might have died a little if it was all blown away,” Farris admitted.
In decent weather, she parked the Chevy beside the outside staircase. Tonight, with storms still in the area, she opened the garage door with an opener and drove the truck inside. Even though it hadn't rained, there was still a thick cloud cover that blotted out the moon, making the farmland stretching for hundreds of acres around them even darker.
She palmed her keys and got out.
“What do you think happened to Emerson? I can't believe he ran back out into the storm,” Beelah said, getting out of the truck.
“I don't know. I guess he just needed to help.” Frowning, remembering how Emerson had plucked her off the ground after she'd been hit by the barrel, she exited the garage by the side door and turned to walk up the steps to the loft. Her hip and shoulder ached like...well, like she'd been hit by a large, heavy object.
Despite that, a tingle raced down her spine as she unlocked the door, a familiar sensation when she came home to her stories. Stepping inside, she could see them stacked everywhere in piles. All safe.
For the nights she got home late from the diner, Farris had installed an automatic, motion sensor controlled nightlight. It flicked on, chasing the shadows into the corners.
Everything was just as Farris left it. Once Beelah was inside, she closed the door and engaged both dead bolts.
“I hope he made it out of the way of the tornado all right.” Beelah dropped her bag and her organizer on the coffee table. It was one of the few places in the loft that wasn't covered with paper.
“I'm sure he did. He seemed capable.” Farris peeled off her coat and her scarf and hung them on a peg by the door to dry. She toed off her shoes and left them below against the wall. “You want something to drink?”
“Nah, I'm all right. Hey, what was Larissa's problem tonight?” Bee flopped down onto the couch, stretching her legs out, hands arching up behind her head.
Farris padded into the kitchenette and grabbed a mug from the cupboard. Too tired and sore to mak
e tea the right way, she filled the mug with water from the tap and popped it into the microwave.
“The same thing that's always wrong with Larissa. She holds grudges forever.” Farris retrieved a small basket from another cupboard and plucked a raspberry tea packet from the myriad assortment. The basket went back where she found it. With such minimal space, every single item in her kitchen had its own place.
“She shouldn't be holding a grudge. She was the one who stole Palmer out from under your nose.”
Farris frowned. “It doesn't matter anymore. Palmer's the past. Right? If he's so shallow that he believes Larissa's lies, then it's his loss.”
“Right. The next time Larissa does that, though? I'm going to punch her right in the nose.”
Farris paused and glanced across the small loft at Bee. The very idea that Beelah would hurt a hair on anyone's head was so ludicrous that she could only stare.
Beelah's lips twitched.
Farris burst out laughing when she realized Beelah was teasing. She pointed a spoon at her best friend, then took the mug from the microwave when it was steaming and dunked the tea packet in. With the spoon, she stirred it gently.
“You are so not the tomboy type, Beelah Bosley. But that would be funny.” Farris left the spoon in the sink and threw out the tea bag once it was done steeping. Crossing to the chair adjacent to the couch, she set the mug on the table, glanced anxiously at her current story-in-progress, then went to yank the curtains over the windows.
Back in her chair, she flopped one leg over the arm, wincing at the stab of pain in her hip, and cradled her mug in her hands.
“So, let's talk about alternate plans for Halloween. If we decide to go out. I don't think anyone will be visiting the Rocket anytime soon.”
Farris' stories would have to wait until later, after Bee fell asleep, before she could give them her undivided attention.
Chapter Four
It was past midnight by the time Emerson walked onto the Henson property. He scoped out the main house—which looked empty—and the garage set apart with the loft above. The crunch of dry grass under the soles of his muddy boots told him that the farmhouse and the garage had been spared the violence of the storm, which served his purpose here well. From the pocket of his coat he fished a box of matches that he'd gotten at a convenience store earlier after his 'talk' with Devon. Fiddling with it, shaking the thin wooden sticks inside, he geared up for what he had to do.
This was impossibly easy. It didn't even really require his talent; it only required that he light a match, toss it onto the grass near the garage, and give the flames an extra bit of fuel so it would engulf the structure and burn it to the ground.
The closer he got to the garage, the more weighted his legs felt. The heaviness was different. Unique.
Emerson realized he didn't want to light Farris' loft on fire, didn't want to bring her the pain it would inevitably cause when she came home from Beelah's place tomorrow to see nothing left but ashes.
And since when do you care, Emerson? An inner voice taunted him, forcing him back to the reality that he was a Weaver of Chaos. He was meant to do these things. Since becoming a Weaver, it had enhanced the part of himself that was closed off socially, making mingling a bit awkward. It made him edgier, less predictable, and often he had a difficult time caring for people he knew nothing about.
It made his job easier.
When he did care, he cared deeply and with a frightening passion that had scared more than one friend away. He knew all his flaws but could do little to change them.
Taking a match out of the box, he turned it over and over between his fingers. All he had to do was scrape it, watch the match flare to life, and toss it down.
Simple.
Yet it wasn't so simple at all.
There was something about Farris that made him hesitate. He couldn't put his finger on it, didn't understand why he felt like he should be protecting her instead of bringing her heartache.
Before he could contemplate more about the weirdness of it all, he struck the match and flipped it end over end into an ankle high patch of yellow, dead weeds at the base of the garage. For a moment, it seemed as if the flame wouldn't catch.
He waited. Smoke slithered up and dissipated on a gentle breeze.
Emerson muttered under his breath. He didn't want to fan the flames, so to speak, even though it looked like he would have to do something to make it burn.
Calling up a bit of Chaos, he drew an arc in the air with his hand, twisting the smoke into a tighter coil. The flames at the base burst to life, catching hold of the dead grass. A second after that, the fire lapped along the wood of the garage like a greedy tongue, feeling out its prey, and when it took hold, it took hold.
The corner of the garage caught, and Emerson knew that was all the Chaos he needed to unleash. The fire itself would do the rest.
Disgruntled, he lowered his hand and slid the matchbook back into his coat pocket, turning away so he didn't have to watch the results of his destruction.
With an odd pang in his gut, he headed back the way he came, the crackle of fire ringing in his ears.
. . .
Shut away in her bedroom, lost in the current story, Farris was oblivious to anything but the events pouring out from the end of her pen. This particular character (as she thought of it), had a roller coaster youth that transferred over into his young adult life. Leonard Augustus Moon wore braces, loved jelly beans, broke his wrist riding a skateboard, had a severe case of chicken pox and owned a pet turtle named Scooter. He was shy, ambivalent, nosy and secretly mischievous. In his teens he fell for the most popular girl in school (who didn't know he even existed), tumbled off the stage during his debut in Macbeth, caught his hair on fire and failed his driving test twice.
Farris was never happier than right now, filling out all the fantastic details of her creations. She loved the whole process, loved the energy that flowed seamlessly through her when she wrote.
Someday she would do this for a living.
Grinning down at the crinkly parchment page, she finished the last sentence and straightened her back. She got so caught up in writing that often her shoulders and neck cramped under the strain. Setting down her pen, she traced her fingertips over the slightly yellow edges of the paper, re-reading Leonard's adventures. His 'story' would be ten or twelve pages long by the time she was done.
Occasionally, she started a characters antics mid-way through their life, instead of from birth. It almost felt like she was picking up from where someone else left off, because those stories flowed as easily as the ones she started from scratch. Now and then, she fished back through her stacks and pulled out a finished story to change something critical in the middle.
Why this happened, she didn't know. Farris just understood she needed to make the changes, and so she did. Speaking of which, there was a story she needed to fix.
Standing up on her bed (there was no desk in the small bedroom), she turned around to face the tier of shelves she'd erected on the walls to hold the stacks of paper. Farris knew exactly which shelf, which stack and what color paper clip held the story she needed together.
If the shelves ever fell, it would brain her into her next life. Finding the green paper clip in the fourth stack on the third shelf, she eased it free of the rest.
So many papers. It was like Pick-Up-Sticks to take one in the middle out and not topple the rest.
Liberating it, she crossed her ankles and twisted around, falling into an Indian style sit. For sleep, she'd changed into her favorite crushed velvet lounge pants and pull over shirt, a rare purchase from Victoria's Secret, her ultimate shopping destination. Every time she had a surge in tips, had paid all her bills and tucked away fifty bucks for gas, she hit up the store for something new.
In every day life she was a jeans and tee-shirt girl with a yen for flowery dresses on hot summer days. But at night she was all about her crushed velvet loungers when the weather turned crisp.
Gathering Leonard's story together, she paper-clipped it together (turquoise for old Leonard boy) and pulled off the green for the next.
Before she could pick up her pen, she caught a faint whiff of smoke. Farris paused and sat straighter. She took another deep breath.
The scent of smoke lingered.
Immediately she thought perhaps the lightning from earlier had caused a fire nearby and it had spread into Farmer Henson's fields. She scrambled off the bed and ran to her window. Because her bedroom was at the back of the loft, all she saw when she looked outside were the fields and the treeline.
No fire anywhere.
Except the smell was much stronger.
Leaning out her window, she glanced up at the eaves. Over the top of the loft, she saw wisps of smoke.
Gasping, she yanked back into the bedroom, crab-hop-crawled across the bed, and ran to open the door.
“BEELAH! GET UP!” The hallway was so short that she arrived in the living room in time to see Bee, who was sleeping on the couch, bolt upright. Dressed in Hello Kitty footy jammies, auburn hair askew, she peeled the eye covers off and stared at Farris.
“Why are you shouting? Farris, you sound like--”
“There's a fire!” Farris could see the glow past the teeny tiny part in the curtains. She ran to the window and pulled the drapes back.
Fire had raced up the side of the garage toward the roof. A corner of the small balcony was on fire, too.
Farris almost fainted.
Her stories. Her stories were going to burn! For an awful moment, she forgot about her and Beelah's own safety. The crushing need to save her work was so intense that a dizzy spell gripped her.
Beelah screamed when she saw the fire.
“Get a bucket from under the sink! We can still put it out!” Farris ran to the door. The second she touched the knob it felt warm. Not boiling hot, but...warm.
She fretted the fire was already on the stairs. The only way out if the stairs went was the front balcony and her back bedroom window. It was a straight fall to the ground. Not lethal, but if they landed wrong, it might mean a broken bone.
The Fate of Destiny (Fates #1) Page 4
