by Jayla Kane
And I couldn’t tell a soul.
Jake told me all kinds of things about the Society; school started with a bang, and he became the real source of my information on the mess I’d gotten involved with. We hunted Society members, mounted cameras in the room they used as an entrance to some secret lair; I almost told him I was the Wolf then, almost begged him never to go down there, but he went and signed the book and told me all about it and nothing happened to him, so I shut my mouth. They hadn’t threatened him. Just sent him to Rhode Island to interview the last Master of Games—never not funny, we laughed every time—and it was that bastard Leo took care of last year. Tanglesomething. Piece of shit. But Jake was fine. No shredded featherbeds, if you didn’t count his run-in with a couple of cute pledges from some sorority.
On the night before school was supposed to start Jake finally got his wish, and Raven became the Sineater… But only after he picked her out of some fucked-up line-up. When he told me what was going on with him, I wanted to ask him about magic and blood—I wanted to know if Raven, who was a murderer, had it worse than he did. Because Jake never killed anybody, and he was fine. Slowly going out of his mind because he’d finally gotten his damn wish and had more of Raven than he could handle, but he was fine otherwise. No sliced up sheets. No cuts zig-zagging across his chest, no sloppy bandages to cover them and make sure no one could see. Nothing.
But Raven was like me. She’d killed someone. Maybe only people like her and I woke up covered in blood.
She didn’t, though; she looked like she always had, sour and smart and sick of Jake.
Something happened between them. Something bad. I set a fire in the cafeteria for Jake when he asked me to—nothing big, just enough to get everybody dumped into the Commons and clear the way for him to get her back to his dorm. She missed her classes the first day of school, but I heard them talking through the door; I was napping in the extra room in Jake’s suite later that day, the same day he signed the book. The conversation sounded… I don’t know. Intimate. At least, it did to me. I don’t have a Raven; I have Baby Keller, who would saw me in half if she got half the chance, and I would fuck her in half if I got half the chance, but that’s not what was between Jake and Raven. I got up and left, went back home to rest. When he asked me to go to Delta house with him that night I was happy to oblige. I wanted to look at Raven up close, see if she was as normal as she seemed.
Which didn’t seem fair; I hadn’t done it myself. I just covered for my Dad… Although it was my fault Stacy died, because I should’ve been able to stop him, but I couldn’t. But Raven was an actual murderer—unproven, sure, but Jake was positive and I couldn’t find any contrary evidence. Maybe the magic found people like us, and twisted us into the shape we belonged in. Maybe magic was making me look like the monster I really was.
I waited in the main room. They knew better than to fuck with me when I came in with Jake; everybody knew he was the Game Master by then, somehow, although I was sure he never told anyone. When he reappeared, dragging Raven out of the back of Delta house, she was fine. Pretty girl, no visible bruises, and I would’ve seen ‘em in that dress he bought her. Got knocked around by those fuckers from Delta, but otherwise, she was fine.
Not a blemish on that pale skin. No scratches. No blood.
That night, I stayed out and partied hard. I made Molly sleep with her cell phone every night, and her trailer was basically Fort Knox—even I couldn’t get inside if she didn’t want me there—so I knew I could afford to blow off a little steam. I was drunk. At least whatever the hell was happening to me couldn’t take that away. I wandered around campus a little bit after Jake and Raven marched off into the night, then made my way back to Delta House. I knew if I stood outside for a couple of minutes, I’d be able to blow off a little more steam.
I was standing in the trees, watching the main street, too drunk, to anyone who passed, to put up much of a fight. Just a loner on his way home. Delta was still crowded, even though it was late. I turned towards the porch and saw someone’s head turn my way in my peripheral vision. Tall guy, soft face. He had a black eye.
Good. They found me.
I leaned against a tree and waited. It took another ten minutes for the squad to assemble; Percy wasn’t there. That was strange, earlier… When he’d arrived, this clump of dipshits disappeared like he was spitting razors. Titus Devereaux and Percy Hatchett were the only guys we’d pegged from the streaming feed we monitored the entrance to the Society’s main hang-out with; I’d liked the way he rolled his eyes at the wordless reminder from some other crony to put his hood on before he stepped through the trapdoor and down into the dark. Percy was slick and polished as a warden’s boot, but he didn’t seem to take himself too seriously—like Jake. Jake is richer than anybody else I’m ever likely to meet; the man could shit gold. But he doesn’t seem to even notice. He likes to spend his money on other people, but it’s not in a calculated way, which is fucking weird for a rich guy. He just uses it like any normal person would, if they happened to have hundreds of dollars at their disposal. Percy struck me as similar. Their personalities would be exactly the same if they woke up penniless tomorrow.
But Percy wasn’t here now.
It was the same guys. Five of them. I could use the beating, as strange as that sounds; sometimes, when my head gets really fucked up, nothing clears it like a good fight. And they weren’t going to win. Even at five to one, even drunk, I was bigger and meaner than all of them and apparently juiced full of fucking magic. Dangerous magic, if it kept ripping up my own goddamn body. So for somebody like me, a good fight is one where you really feel like you might lose. And like I said, they weren’t winning, and neither was I, and that was about the best someone like me could do.
Nobody spoke. They walked around me in a circle, very strategic, and attacked at once. I was impressed, actually; most of the time, people want to talk before a fight, work themselves up into a lather before they can throw a punch. That shit just means I’m going to knock you out cold, because I don’t talk, and I don’t need to get worked up to fight. They must have some training, or maybe they were too pissed to waste time. At any rate, they moved in at once and the air was full of fists, one of them hit my jaw and snapped it shut, another landed on my shoulder, a third on my chest—I spat some blood on the ground and caught the next one in my fist like a baseball, watching the fucker’s eyes go big around as he felt my fist enclose his, and then I jerked him forward and headbutted him. One down. I took a badly placed uppercut to the jaw and shook it off, then started swinging myself; everybody was too close. They were either going to pull out knives or too bloodthirsty to be able to tell they were getting in each other’s way. I knocked another guy out with my fist, then elbowed a third and felt something crunch when he howled in pain. The last two were the smartest; one of them got behind me and tried to grab my arms so his partner could get some clear shots in. I shrugged him off and booted his buddy in the chest, watching him tumble backwards over the legs of his friends sprawled out in the dirt, and spun around to look the last one in the eye.
And then I heard the sound of a siren.
Somebody called the cops.
We weren’t really on campus. I always thought of this part of the street as belonging to the Institute, but really it was in Ashwood proper. The only police officer around was Leo Gardener, and he knew me pretty damn well. Even if he only saw my back, I would get a phone call tomorrow.
I didn’t want to be on the hook for any of these fuckers’ hospital bills.
I mean, technically speaking, they jumped me.
The last guy and I locked eyes, and without another word we both started running, right past one another. If I saw him again I might recognize him, I might not. Didn’t really care either way. But I did care about getting caught out there. It would be hard for them to explain the obvious discrepancy in numbers, but they were all Delta guys—rich, stupid, thick as fucking thieves. Maybe they’d just say I had a couple friends with me,
and if anybody was at the party earlier they’d believe it. I ran harder, making my body obey me, the alcohol bubbling in my veins. I could get back to campus and book it up to Jake’s suite in two minutes if I concentrated. If only my goddamn feet weren’t so—
Oh shit—
I almost fell.
Almost because I didn’t—I took a wrong step, my ankle twisting on the damp pavement, my momentum shoving me forward as I tipped towards the asphalt—I was going to land right on my goddamn face—
But I didn’t.
I was still running at break-neck speed, but I was now twenty feet further ahead. Ducking below the entryway of the Institute, blasting through the Commons, and headed up the stairs to Jake’s. So goddamn fast I didn’t fully register what had happened.
I didn’t fall, I thought, shoving through the door to his suite and collapsing in the extra room, sliding down the wall and throwing my head back to rest on the cool, plaster surface. My lungs felt like they were on fire. I heaved big gulps of fresh air and tried to clear my head, tried to remember, to understand what had happened.
I hadn’t fallen. I’d gotten afraid I would, my foot twisted and then—
And then I ran through time. I jumped ahead twenty feet.
I fucking teleported. Like I was in a goddamn Star Trek episode.
It wasn’t deliberate, or even smooth; I could feel the slip of the wind on my face as I ran faster than it, through a blink in the universe’s eye and out the other side. Just like that. I’d been looking ahead to where I needed to go, and then I was just… I was there.
Now that, I thought, is a lot fucking cooler than waking up covered in blood every goddamn day.
Chapter Four
Hunter
The sun was coming up. I spent the next three hours trying to do it again, with no luck, but that didn’t matter to me; my only real virtues are patience and persistence. I would just do it again and again and again, and eventually, I knew, I’d be able to do it without the push panic provided, without being uninhibited because I was drunk and full of adrenaline from fighting. I’d be able to do it because I needed to do it, because I wanted to do it.
That felt fucking good.
Maybe this whole magic thing wasn’t just a shitshow, I told myself. Jake needed me to help him with a couple errands that day—I liked helping him out when I could—and I used the opportunity to keep practicing. I did it over and over and over again; I hadn’t slept in two days, and I hoped that would kind of help. Make my mind blank and free. I concentrated on my classes and when I left them I concentrated on doing it again, on finding that little hole in the world I could step through and come out further along the line. Just a little bit.
And then I did it.
I made it happen. I focused enough that I was able to make the jump—just about ten feet, a little less than the first time. But I wasn’t panicking, and I wasn’t supercharged with adrenaline; I was just thinking about it, as hard as I could. And that was enough.
I don’t get excited about much, but I whooped out loud like Jake had when he got that cursed envelope in his bag. My whole body was swept with relief. I didn’t just get excited because I was doing something that wasn’t completely awful, something that I still didn’t control and couldn’t understand—I was fucking psyched ‘cause I was doing fucking magic. What the hell was that?
That was the reaction that evil woman wanted in the office. I was glad she didn’t get to see me smiling after all.
I barely slept the next couple of days; I had to help Jake—getting in and out of places isn’t hard for me, in spite of my size, and mostly what we were doing was trying to get information on the Society, which I would’ve wanted without his help.
And then something real bad happened with he and Raven, and he stopped sleeping. Just quit altogether.
I didn’t blame him.
I was there too. I was glad I was—Raven’s sister’s wrath was so contemptuous… And Jake has no one. I was the only person that could be there, and I was glad I was, but… It was sad. Too sad. So sad there was nothing to say.
Jake’s brother is alive. Raven isn’t a murderer—maybe that’s why she wasn’t ruined when her name was put into the book. But the devastation on her face… You’d never know they’d just gotten good news. Jake and Raven thought everything was ruined, when really, it was finally made right.
I wanted to talk to him. About her, about anything—about the goddamn Society and the fact that I could teleport. I tried to make myself feel less guilty about not telling him, but I couldn’t, especially when I realized he didn’t seem to have any overwhelming powers even after he signed the book. Why were mine different? I didn’t know, but it made me even more reluctant than I would’ve been to share the fact that I was now, apparently, something called the Wolf.
I wished I was smarter.
I’m not dumb. Not really—not like Martin was, my cousin, who was the sweetest person I ever met and had some kind of brain injury from a car wreck when he was twenty. He passed away when I was five, a happy old man; his funeral was full of tears and smiles, because everybody was sad but he was such a great person nobody had anything bad to say about him when he went. No unresolved arguments, no unspoken resentments. Just this really strange mix of joy and pain. Martin wasn’t bright. He hadn’t been even before he totaled his car, and when he recovered he lost a few more spare inches of memory and recall in his brain. But I’d rather be like Martin than like me.
I was big and fat when I was a kid. And poorer than fucking dirt. My mom and my dad were never together; she dropped me off at the garage with a note and thousand dollar bill pinned to my blanket when I was a newborn, and my dad found me half-starved and crying fit to wake the dead the next day. I was maybe two days old, the doctor said, maybe three. As much as I hate my dad—and I do, more days than not—I’m so grateful he didn’t let me die. He could’ve. He could’ve sent me off to Social Services and popped that money in his pocket. That might’ve been better for me, in the long run, but I wouldn’t have understood myself if I’d been raised away from him. My dad is… Cruel. Meanness comes as naturally to him as it does to a rattlesnake. So it was better for the world that I saw my future if I didn’t get ahold of my temper and my size.
I straightened my dad out a little bit, strangely enough, and he courted Stacy somehow, and convinced her he’d make a good husband. They lived in the little trailer I slept in now. Maybe she thought she was getting a good deal—he owns a giant slice of property, and a garage, at least technically. No reason, in better hands, he wouldn’t be well off. But my dad took his inheritance and did literally nothing with it. He thinks of the income he has as a means to support the life he’s chosen, which is to say he drinks. That’s all he needs. If he’s awake, he’s drunk. And Stacy got tired of that, especially after Molly came around.
I was his punching bag for a long time. But when it came to Molly… I mean, Stacy kind of knew what she was signing up for, but Molly didn’t. Molly deserved a normal life.
Being big and fat meant I was a moving target for cruel comments from other kids, but not a lot of physical confrontation. I’m sure they thought I was getting in a lot of fights somewhere, because I was always sporting a black eye or a bloody nose. But that was just Dad. It made me look tough, though, and I didn’t fight anybody else—or have to—until middle school. I started getting taller and that stretched my body out or something, too, because by high school women actually looked at me twice once in a while. If they were looking for something rough.
But before all that, Dad killed Stacy. Not intentionally; he shoved her into the fridge and she cracked her head, bled out before we knew what was happening because it was all inside. It was my fault—it was always my fault, by then. I knew I could take a beating by the time I was six, and when he lit into Stacy I would get right in the middle of it and distract him. But that time, I calculated poorly. Stacy thought he was too close to the baby; I didn’t draw him out of the kitchen. And when she
rushed forward to get Molly out of her high chair and make for the driveway, he pushed her, almost accidentally, as he was aiming for me. She blacked out for a minute. I could see her eyes rolling in her head. Molly was still in the damn high chair, screaming like a banshee. I picked up the cast iron pan from breakfast and got him low, in the knee—cracked him good. He started to come at me again, but I lifted it up and he knew I’d hit him dead in his eye. Even drunk, that registered. I was almost eight years old by then, Molly was three. He’d been drunk for at least two years. And Stacy was there dying on the floor, and none of us knew.
I didn’t call the police. I watched my dad stalk off to the last trailer, the one in the way back, where we kept all of our tools. I heard the door slam and turned around, gave Molly the rest of her dinner and helped Stacy into a chair. She asked me if I would take her to the hospital, and I said sure.
She must’ve known something was wrong. Must’ve felt the bleed in the back of her head.
But she started to drift off, and I didn’t want to drive to the hospital—people always had fucking questions, and I didn’t want CPS coming back again. If I took her to the hospital and she told them what my dad did, they’d take Molly away. If they saw me driving, they’d take Molly away. No one would want me in foster care; that was a given. But I’d never see Molly again, and then I’d have to explain to Stacy once her head cleared why her little girl was gone.
Fuck it, I thought, and helped her to bed.
And she never woke up.
I wish I was smarter, but I’m not. I’m dyslexic, which I hear doesn’t necessarily mean you’re dumb, exactly, but in my case it sure as hell didn’t help with school. There’s supposed to be a bunch of things they do for you—provide tutors or councilors and put you in special classes… But we didn’t have special classes any more, so I was ‘integrated’ with regular kids, and I didn’t have a parent who gave two shits about me, so no one ever came to my IEP meetings, and I never got any tutors or counseling. Someone has to give a damn to make all that happen.
