by Alicia Fabel
“Nessa, we need to go,” Sam said.
Annessa couldn’t move.
“Ness?”
Annessa looked up at Elion. The pinch in his heavy brow was familiar and comforting, even if the rest of him was not. She gave a tiny nod. Or at least she thought she did. It seemed to be enough because Elion and Sam helped her to her feet. One on each side, they guided her out of the house and down the front steps.
“That’s not good,” Sam observed.
Across the street, the old man from earlier stared while his poodle strained at the leash. He smiled the same smile as Not-Jess and then fell lifeless to the sidewalk.
“Was that revenant there when you got here?” Elion asked Sam.
“I wasn’t exactly looking for revenants standing around wearing old men while I was hurrying to save you two,” Sam said tightly.
“So he could’ve seen it all,” Elion concluded.
“And be reporting to the Phyton council right now that there’s a Legend in Florida. And that he’s the headmaster’s son,” Sam added.
Annessa tuned out of the conversation that meant nothing to her. She watched the little dog nose around its owner. Did dogs know immediately when their owners were dead? Or did it take a few minutes for them to comprehend when someone they loved was gone, as it had for her? Had the dog any idea that the man was not really his owner? That he was something else?
“How long?” Annessa blurted.
“We came as soon as Axton’s wisp zoomed up the beach,” Elion answered.
Annessa shook her head. “How long was Aunt Jess gone? How long was that thing here instead of her?”
“We don’t know,” Sam answered.
But Annessa somehow did. She knew that her aunt had never come back after the accident. It wasn’t just her mind that was gone. It was her. Jess had been gone for months, and Annessa had had no idea. “Why?”
“It’s my fault,” Elion said.
Annessa didn’t doubt that. Not that it made her feel any better. An SUV sped up the street and screeched to a stop.
Axton jumped out. “Is everyone okay?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “We’re okay.”
Aunt Jess wasn’t okay. Annessa wanted to scream it, but she said nothing.
“A revenant saw me,” Elion informed them. “We can’t wait for the team.”
“Can I use someone’s phone to call the police before you leave?” Annessa had no idea what she was going to tell them, though.
Elion gave her an odd look. “You’re coming with us.”
“No, I can’t.” Annessa shook herself free.
“You can,” Elion insisted.
Annessa shook her head emphatically.
“You saw what just happened.” Elion didn’t seem to notice that his hood had slid back to show his smooth jawline, where there should have been sooty stubble. “You can’t stay here.”
He was right. And after everything that had happened, she didn’t want anything to do with her childhood home anyway. But that didn’t mean she was going to go with them. She’d move out, put the place up for sale, and never look back. Maybe she could still get into a school for the summer semester. Any place would do. In the meantime, she’d keep working and saving.
To get Elion to back off, Annessa said, “I have friends I can stay with.” Friends might be a stretch, but there were some regulars she’d gotten to know pretty well down at the courts. Someone would let her crash on their couch for a few nights. And if all else failed, the girl who’d given her a black eye a few weeks back was looking for a roommate after her last one bailed.
“They won’t stop coming for you,” Elion said.
“Who?”
Everyone clammed up. Annessa wasn’t surprised.
But then Elion said, “They’re called Phyton—a species of beings that lives alongside humans. They’re ruled by a Council of their kind. And you never knew they existed until now because they look like humans. Mostly.”
Axton winced. “Elion—”
“What more can it hurt?” Elion asked sharply. “She’s already faced wisps and revenants today.”
“Fine, but maybe we should have this conversation somewhere else.”
“I vote on the plane, miles above ground, on our way back to the Academy.” Sam’s green eyes silently pled with Annessa. “All of us.”
“No,” Annessa said firmly. “I’m not going to that place.”
“Why not?” Sam’s asked.
“Because.” Annessa hedged.
Elion cringed. He had to understand why she didn’t want to go, but he persisted. “It’s the only place the Phyton can’t get to you.”
“I don’t care. I’m not going there.” Not to the place Elion had feared as a boy. So much that he’d never told her what secrets the exclusive academy hid behind those infamous gates. Because knowing too much put you in their crosshairs, and once there, there was no escaping them.
Axton mumbled something, casting his eyes up.
“I can’t leave you here,” Elion said.
“You’ve done it before,” she snapped back.
Sam and Axton suddenly found something fascinating to look at and talk about amongst themselves.
“It wasn’t safe for you to be around me,” Elion explained.
“It is now?”
“No, but it’s better than the alternative at this point.” When Annessa still didn’t budge, he continued, “They’ll hurt anyone you know to get to you. Friends, neighbors, anyone who enters your life—anyone who takes you in.”
Annessa’s shoulders dropped. That was a game-changer. “These Phyton, they’re your rivals, aren’t they?”
“Yes. But if you come to the Academy, I’ll make sure you get a clean start, far from their reach, as soon as I can.”
“The Academy will just let me leave?” Annessa asked.
“You have my word that you will be able to walk away from them too.”
“I…” Annessa gathered her thoughts. “I don’t want to end up like you and Sam.”
Elion’s face fell, and then he gave her a heart-breaking smile. “You don’t have to worry about that. You have nothing for the Academy to hold over you.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because you are everything I wish I could be—normal.”
4
When Annessa had pictured the plane, she hadn’t imagined a private jet. It seemed flimsier than a normal-sized plane, which made her grit her teeth as she angled for the most secluded corner. She settled her bag on the seat beside her. Everything she’d had time to grab was stuffed inside that one backpack. Sam and Elion both eyed the spot, but she didn’t offer to move her stuff and they didn’t ask. So she didn’t get to tell them to go screw themselves. She squeezed the tissue in her hand, not sure how it had gotten there. And not sure what she was supposed to do with it. There were no tears to dry. None had come.
Annessa stared out the window as the beach she’d grown up on shrank away. Palm trees became dots. And then the plane tilted, adjusting course. She pulled down the shade to block out the glare of the rising sun. A new day had come. Elion, Sam, and Axton chatted softly. Sam caught her eye, but she turned away. It all seemed surreal. Like the world had stopped turning, but she was the only one who’d noticed.
Wisp stretched out against the wall beside her. It turned out the shadow hadn’t abandoned her. It had gone for help.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
Wisp cocked his head.
“If you hadn’t zoomed away…” She shied away from the rest of her thought. “Hey, how about Zoom? Would you like that for your name?”
It stilled and then gave one nod.
“Then Zoom it is.” Annessa twisted the unused tissue. “Here, catch.”
Zoom snagged its shadow blip.
“Toss it back.” She held out a hand, and the wisp shot it right to her. “Good aim.” No matter where she threw it—wide, high, low—Zoom caught it.
“What are you doing?
” asked Axton.
Annessa startled and missed Zoom’s next return. “Playing poker with the Queen. What’s it look like?”
Axton wasn’t ruffled. On the contrary, he moved her bag and dropped into the seat. Zoom curled around his ankle before returning to their game. He picked up the tissue and tossed it to Annessa.
“I didn’t know he could play catch,” Axton mused.
Annessa didn’t reply. It wasn’t a question, and she had nothing to say.
Axton took a breath as if he was going to say something but released it. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve lost,” he said finally.
She recognized something in his tone. “You know what it’s like,” she guessed.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “The Phyton killed my parents. After that, it was just my sister and me until the Academy found us.”
“Why’d they kill your parents?”
“Not sure. The Phyton Council claimed it was a rogue member acting on his own.”
“But you don’t believe that,” Annessa concluded.
“No,” he said.
“It wasn’t because you’re a bender?” The word was awkward on her tongue.
Axton ran fingers over Zoom, and the shadow arched happily. “Phyton don’t target someone just because they’re gifted like me. They go after the really special people.”
“Legends.” Annessa said the word he seemed to be avoiding, watched him squirm, and then added, “Like Elion.”
“Yeah, like Elion,” Axton said heavily.
“What’s the Academy like?”
“Like any small private college, I guess. They just teach a very specialized curriculum.”
Annessa let her head fall back against the seatback. “I researched Legend Academy, you know. Everything I found says it’s an exclusive school of the arts.”
“It is,” Axton replied.
“Yeah, but we’re not talking watercolors and orchestra, are we?”
“Nope,” Axton confirmed.
Annessa tilted her head to look at him. “Is someone going to tell me what to expect before we get there?” When he didn’t reply right away, Annessa knew. “You drew the short straw, didn’t you? The poor sucker who has to enlighten the normal girl and deal with her freakout.”
“To be fair, we didn’t draw straws.” Axton’s eyes lit with humor. “We discussed it and decided you might be most comfortable having this discussion with me.”
“The one guy here that I basically don’t know at all,” Annessa said.
“Were we wrong?”
Annessa rolled her eyes and tipped her head to look at Zoom instead of Axton. But she didn’t correct him because they weren’t wrong. “So, enlighten me.”
“There are people in the world who are gifted in the arts. Some might call them psychics.”
Annessa raised a brow. “Nooo. You don’t say.”
“All right, Miss Smarty Pants.” Axton laughed lightly. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve figured out, so I don’t bore you with the stuff you already know.”
“Okay.” Annessa sat up straighter. “I know that Sam could talk to my dead mom. And sometimes random ghosts at the store or the park too.”
“That didn’t scare you?”
“I was used to weird by then.” Annessa darted a pointed look at Elion. “Granted, you guys have taken weird to a whole new level in the last twenty-four hours.”
“True enough,” Axton said.
“Anyway, no. Sam’s strangeness never bothered me. It’s how we met, actually. I was hiding out at a park, so I didn’t have to go home and see Aunt Jess there instead of my mom. It was getting dark. Sam came up and informed me that my mom wanted me home. I thought she was talking about Aunt Jess. But then Sam described my mom right down to the scar on her upper lip and the mole in the corner of her eye.” Annessa shrugged. “I knew she was telling the truth.”
“Most people would convince themselves that Sam was playing a cruel trick on them.”
Annessa shook her head. “Nah. Sam was a wreck as soon as she realized she’d outed herself. I had to chase her down to make sure she knew it was okay. That I didn’t mind. The only thing that ever bothered me was when other people were asshats to her because she was different.” Annessa’s lips twitched at the next memory. “I joined the basketball team in middle school so that I could put some mean girls in their place. By the time I’d done that, I was actually pretty good with a ball. And I liked it. So I stayed on the team.”
“Sam never told me that.” Axton glanced at the girl of the minute.
“Do you guys talk a lot?” Annessa asked.
“What? No,” Axton protested. A little too much. “So, yeah, Sam is a revener. She can communicate with revenants.
“And you’re a bender who can manipulate shadows,” Annessa added. “So, what’s that make Elion, besides the guy who can reverse the flow of time?”
“Gazers are the people who can see through time.”
“But he’s not a normal gazer,” Annessa prompted when it seemed Axton would not continue.
“No, he’s not,” Axton conceded. “But I can’t tell you more than that.”
“Fine, but tell me this,” Annessa said, feeling particularly bitchy. “If he keeps getting younger, who will have to change his diapers?”
That made Axton laugh and got Elion’s attention. When neither of them volunteered what they were talking about, Elion turned back to Sam. A crease puckered his brow.
“I believe there’s someone on staff just for that job,” Axton murmured.
Annessa shivered dramatically. “Ugh.” But the corners of her mouth tipped up just the smallest bit. For that, she owed Axton. It gave her hope that she wouldn’t be numb forever. “So Phyton are psychics too?”
“Except, unlike humans, every Phyton is born with one of the nine psychic arts.”
Annessa’s eyes widened. “There are nine kinds of psychics?”
“Finally, I get to tell you something you don’t know,” Axton teased. “Yes, there are nine guilds.”
“How come Phyton and humans have the same psychic abilities?”
Axton threw her a look. “Are you going to interrupt me with questions the whole time?”
“Probably.”
“Good to know.” Axton sobered. “Phyton and humans have lived side by side for a very long time. Our species have intermingled a bit—Phyton are what you might call art collectors. Only, since the arts we’re talking about are passed through bloodlines, they would infiltrate the strongest families so they could pass the arts on to their children.”
“That’s disturbing.”
“That’s nothing. They’re like human-snake hybrids. Think, fold-out fangs.”
Annessa’s heart sped.
Axton seemed to pick up on her quiet distress. “Don’t worry. Once you’re at the Academy, they can’t come near you.”
“Because there’s a campus full of psychics to scare them off?”
“Because the campus sits on a natural spring. It feeds into the streams and waterways, and nourishes all the local animal and plant life.”
Annessa didn’t understand. “Does water melt them or something?”
“That would be nice, but no. This particular water is poisonous to them.”
“So does that mean I have to worry about drinking the Kool-Aid while I’m there?”
“You’re not Phyton, so it’s just water to you,” Axton assured. “All you’ll have to worry about is the weather.”
“And the psychics,” Annessa added.
“I'll point out the dickier ones so you can avoid them. But otherwise, they’re just people like you.”
“Who can see the future, talk to ghosts, and manipulate shadows,” Annessa said dryly.
“Wait till I tell you what piercers can do.” Axton grinned and Annessa barely suppressed a groan.
Elion wondered for the millionth time in his life why he hadn’t been gifted with the ability to tap into a person’s thoughts. It seemed l
ike a much more useful and less complicated gift. Especially while stuck on that plane with Annessa, who was chatting easily with Ax. He was relieved to see her relaxing around anyone at that point, but he hated that it wasn’t him. It used to be him. Before he’d messed that up.
“How are you holding up?” Samara asked.
“I was staring again, wasn’t I?”
“Like a creeper,” she confirmed.
Elion gazed down at his lap.
“Hey, now that she knows about the guilds, maybe you can explain what really happened,” Samara suggested.
“That would require Legend talk, which is still off-limits if I’m going to make sure she walks away from this with no strings.”
Samara chewed on a fingernail, obviously just as anxious as he was. “It’s killing me that she thinks the worst of us,” she admitted.
“I’d rather she thinks the worst if it lets her move on without asking too many questions.”
“So what do we do?” Samara asked.
“Get her shadow back then set her up in a new life.” His eyes tracked the clouds streaking past the window. “It’s the least we can give her after everything.”
“You know I won’t be able to lie to her for long.”
“Which is why we’re both going to keep our distance from the mansion while she’s there,” Elion replied.
“Mr. Marks?” One of the pilots approached Elion. “We received a call from the Academy and are rerouting to Colorado Springs.”
“What’s going on?” Elion asked.
“Gazers have reported a confrontation if we land at the usual airstrip.”
“Phyton?” Elion guessed.
“Yes, sir.”
Word of Elion had definitely made it to the Council, then. “We can’t drive up the mountain,” Elion said. “They’ll be watching for us.”
“A helicopter will meet us in Colorado Springs. It will take you to directly to the Academy.”
Elion sighed. “This is not going to help my case with my mother.”
The man’s round cheeks lifted with amusement. “I would assume not.”
5
The snow outside looked enchanting until Annessa stepped off the plane. Have mercy. She hunched over, wrapping her arms around herself. Her breath came out in a puff of white, but she was shivering too hard to appreciate the novelty of it. Just as her eyes began to water, Axton grabbed her elbow and towed her to the smallest airport Annessa had ever seen. Elion and Sam were somewhere behind them, but all Annessa cared about was getting inside. The hoody she’d grabbed might as well be tissue. White mountains towered in the distance—their ultimate destination. Which meant the cold was only going to get worse.
