The Gateway Trilogy: Complete Series: (Books 1-3)

by Christina Garner

  Thirty minutes later, I entered the dining hall and felt a tension almost as thick as when it became public knowledge that I was part Daemon. Conversation didn’t die down exactly, but there were furtive glances and a few openly questioning looks. I passed through the breakfast line trying to seem nonchalant and joined the girls who were already finishing their breakfasts.

  “Hey, Em,” Callie said as I slid into a chair.

  “Hey...so what’s with the looks?” I said softly. “I thought we were keeping the whole...incident from yesterday a secret.”

  “It wasn’t us,” Crystle said.

  I must have looked skeptical because Madison followed with, “Really, it wasn’t. I don’t think they know anything for sure, but you leave for the first time in almost two months, and Taren comes back beaten to a pulp... People talk.”

  It made sense. And even if Crystle did like to gossip, I didn’t think she’d ever really betray a trust.

  “Speaking of Taren, did you do what I said? Pretend his boo-boos didn’t exist?”

  “Yeah,” I said, tearing off a piece of my everything bagel. “Right after he pretended I didn’t exist.”

  “What do you mean?” Callie asked.

  “I mean, he told me he wanted to hang with his parents. I didn’t hear from him again.”

  “Hhmm...” Madison said, her brow furrowing. “I wonder what that means.”

  “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Bridget said. “The boy is crazy about you. You’ll see him today—don’t sweat it.”

  “Please,” Crystle said. “Easier said than done. The girl almost di—” Warning looks from the rest of us silenced her. She went on, in a much lower tone. “She had a really bad day. You’d think he’d want to make sure she was OK.”

  “You’d think,” I said, then latched onto what she’d said to change the subject. “Speaking of making sure you’re OK, Michael asked about you yesterday.”

  “Did he?” Crystle said, doing her best to appear disinterested. “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Is everything OK with Crystle?’”

  “And what did you say?” she asked, the corners of her mouth twitching upward.

  “I said, ‘What do you care? You’re the one who broke her heart.’ And then I walked away. Sorry, it was meant to be a show of solidarity or something.”

  Now I felt like a bad friend for not getting more information.

  “It’s OK,” she said, still smiling. “Thanks for having my back.”

  “There, that’s all you should need,” Madison said. “Talk to the guy. Maybe he regrets breaking up.”

  “Yeah, give him a chance to explain,” Bridget said, “because I’m telling you, mopey Crystle is seriously no fun.”

  “I haven’t been moping,” Crystle said.

  The four of us nodded vigorously.

  “Just because you’ve been dating other guys doesn’t mean you’ve been happy about it,” I said.

  “Yeah, and by the way, you’re not fooling anyone,” Madison said. “You think we don’t know you’re dating all of these guys to make him jealous? Why would you do that except that you still care?”

  Crystle was about to protest but Bridget cut her off.

  “Seriously, Crys—enough,” Bridget added. “If you’re still in love with Michael, talk to him.”

  “OK, OK, you’ve made your point,” she said, smiling into her cup of coffee.

  With that settled and breakfast over, the girls cleared their plates while I poured myself a second cup of coffee to take with me to Master Dogan’s. If I’d ever earned a day where he didn’t insist on only tea during a session, this was it.

  We were filing out of the dining hall when Crystle pulled me aside.

  “Go on ahead, guys,” she said to the others, “I want Em to tell me again what Michael said.”

  Bridget stifled a groan while Madison rolled her eyes. Callie was her usual sweet self, flashing me a look of sympathy. They were only too happy not to be part of the conversation, and they continued on toward their room.

  “Crystle, there’s really nothing else to tell—”

  “I just said that so they’d leave,” Crystle said in hushed tones. “If I show you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, wondering what I was in for—you never knew with Crystle.

  She hesitated for a moment longer then turned away, pulling up the back of her shirt and tugging at the waistband of her designer jeans and for a moment I was sure she was about to show me a tattoo.

  But then I saw it. Or more importantly, it was what I didn’t see. My eyes widened and she dropped her shirt and faced me.

  “What the eff, right?” she said, anxiety causing her voice to rise.

  I pulled her into a corner to avoid the students streaming past and took another look.

  “Please tell me you got overzealous with exfoliating,” I said, looking at what had once been a near-perfect replica of a segment of the Gateway. The birthmark that identified her as a Keeper was now split in two. A scant centimeter apart, but still...

  She shook her head.

  “I noticed it fading two weeks ago, but I told myself it was nothing,” she said. “But today... It’s broken, Em. What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, trying to reign in my racing thoughts. I’m in a car chase with a gun battle and now this? In some ways this was scarier. It was no secret there were less and less Marked ones found each year, if we started losing the ones we had... “We’ve got to tell Master Dogan.”

  “No,” she pleaded. “You promised.”

  “But Crystle—”

  “I can’t get kicked out of the Institute,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “If I’m no longer Marked...”

  She hadn’t even cried over Michael, and they’d been dating six months when he’d dumped her. I softened. I knew what it was to not want to be cast out of the Institute. Besides, wasn’t I keeping a secret of my own out of the very same fear?

  “OK, OK, I won’t tell anyone,” I said, and her face relaxed just a fraction. “What could that mean?”

  “You’re the Keeper,” she said. “And I know you know more about what’s been going on lately than the rest of us do. Is this happening to anyone else?”

  I shook my head. “No. I mean, not that I know of. Trust me, I’m not as in the loop as you think I am.”

  And that was the frustrating truth. I’m sure the Elders would say they were protecting me from things I could do nothing about, but there was something about the unknown that was scarier than the truth, in my opinion.

  “What about your training?” I said. “Are you still able to link?”

  “Well, yeah, but you know me—I’m one of the weaker ones as it is. It’s not like they expect much.”

  She was right about that. She was one of the oldest Keepers-in-Training, not yet able to pass the final tests that would make her a full-fledged Keeper.

  “And I haven’t tried since it...broke.”

  “I’m not sure you should,” I said.

  “Why? What do you think could happen?” she asked, her eyes widening.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Honestly, I’m flying blind with this. I just can’t imagine this is a good thing.”

  “Yeah,” she said with a troubled sigh. “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “Have you been hearing anything?” I asked, my eyes narrowing. That would be a deal breaker.

  She shook her head. “No, but I’ve stuck pretty much to the Sanctuary ever since Kaitlyn needed a Retrieval,” she said.

  A Retrieval was performed by specially trained Keepers when one of our own got pulled into the demon dimension. Not pulled in the physical sense—the body remained on this side of the Gateway—but it was no less real and no less dangerous. Without help, a victim might be unable to return, spending the rest of their lives in a comatose state; or come back with what resembled schizophrenia, seeing monsters everywhere. Even those re
scued in relatively short order bore the mental scars of the ordeal. I certainly did.

  Kaitlyn had become lost in the demon dimension just after her first official shift as a Keeper. She and Crystle were good friends; no doubt she’d told her in terrifying detail how awful it was.

  “You can’t keep it a secret forever,” I said finally.

  “I know, I just...”

  She cast her eyes downward and I had a feeling her eyes were threatening to spill over again.

  “I know,” I said, and pulled her into a hug. “Believe me, I know.”

  “You really think I shouldn’t keep channeling?” she said, pulling out of our hug then wiping her eyes.

  I thought for a moment. “It probably can’t hurt if you’re just practicing linking. But you have to promise me you won’t do it anywhere near the Gate.”

  It was part of the Keeper training to have more advanced students practice linking not just with each other, but with the Gateway itself. The fact that the Institute was so desperate for new Keepers that Crystle was now an advanced student was another worry all together, but if anything bad was going go down because of this recent development on her right hip, I was sure it would happen then.

  “And don’t go past the boundary unless absolutely necessary until we figure this out,” I added.

  “Easier said than done,” she said. “They’re pushing us pretty hard. But you’re right. Until I know what’s going on, or I suck it up and tell someone, I’ll find a way to weasel out of it.”

  “Promise?”

  The last thing we could do was risk an unstable Keeper, let alone an unstable trainee.

  “Most definitely,” she said. “The last thing I want is to be responsible for opening the Gatew—”

  The word died in her throat.

  I had opened the Gateway. And though it seemed a unanimous opinion that I’d done the right thing, there had still been fallout. Master Dogan called it, “The Law of Unintended Consequences,” and he was right on the money. My intention had been to save the world from the Demon who had been pulling my strings, convinced at the time that It was the ultimate in evil, but there had been a price to pay, and with each death due to the demons I’d unleashed in Los Angeles in the process, the debt continued to accrue. I’d had a rude awakening about when I learned that killing It hadn’t solved the problem with the demon dimension, only been a band-aid.

  “Em, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s OK,” I said quickly. “You’re not wrong; you don’t want to be responsible for that.”

  It was her turn to cast a sympathetic look.

  “How about this,” I said, wanting to stop the pity party before it went any further. “I’ve got some stuff I need to ask Dogan about. How about if I add this into the mix? I won’t say your name or imply it has happened, just ask if he thinks it could, and what it might mean.”

  “I guess that would be OK,” she said. “Thanks, Ember. It really helps having someone I can talk to about this.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “And I know what you mean.”

  We shared a half-hearted smile and said we’d see each other later.

  It hit me as I walked to Master Dogan’s office that there wouldn’t be very many laters for a while. Unless things had changed, I was getting on a plane in two days, leaving my girls—all but Kat—behind.

  For several seconds the feather twitched, suspended only an inch above Master Dogan’s table before dropping.

  “Oh my God, seriously?” I said, flicking the feather in disgust. “No wonder I couldn’t do a thing when Taren’s life was in danger.”

  Mast Dogan gave me a patient look and said, “Ember, you—”

  “Do not tell me it’s not my job to protect him because I swear—”

  “That isn’t what I was going to say,” Master Dogan said. “Of course it’s natural for you to want to be able to protect those you care about. But your frustration isn’t getting you anywhere—it serves only to break your focus. This is where you are in your journey; can you just be at peace with that?”

  “No,” I said without hesitation. “Absolutely not. I have the ability—we all know I have the ability. There’s no excuse for me not being able to access it—especially now that we know your theory about me needing a life-threatening situation to access it was wrong.” When what I’d just said registered, I mumbled, “Sorry. I didn’t mean...”

  “It’s perfectly alright,” Master Dogan said, unruffled.

  That had been his pet theory as of late. That I’d risen to the occasion against the Root Demon because the lives of those I love had been on the line, and were it necessary I’d be able to give a repeat performance. It had been small comfort, but after yesterday even that hope had been stripped from me.

  “Maybe we could practice doing it together,” Gretchen said, rising from her seat near the window. She’d been so quiet I’d almost forgotten she was there.

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh, “I guess that’s worth a shot.”

  In a sense Gretchen was doing better with training than I. True, she was weaker, but she was able to access a greater percentage of her power. After years of getting nowhere, she was now adept at levitating lightweight objects. But I didn’t have years in which to struggle; our world didn’t have years before the next attack.

  Dogan retrieved the feather from the floor and placed it on the table. Gretchen came to sit on the cushion next to me and we closed our eyes. When the link was complete—energy pulsing from her to me and back again—we opened them, concentrating on the feather. It floated easily, this time two inches, then three, then floating across the room and coming to rest on a high bookshelf.

  “Splendid,” Master Dogan said.

  Gretchen released the link and said, “See, when we work together you do great.”

  “Come on,” I said. “That was so much more you than me and we both know it.”

  I didn’t need her guilty look to know it was true. The tables had certainly turned between us. Two months ago she was a basket case, now she was the one reassuring me.

  “Ember, why do you think you’re having these difficulties?” Master Dogan said. “We’ve established I was wrong, so what are your thoughts?”

  All I could do was shrug. I told myself that once the trip was underway I’d come clean—tell Master Dogan that any time I got close to doing much with my powers I was almost pulled down by an undertow—but not now.

  “Then let’s go over what happened yesterday again. The part when you were trying to move the knife of the attacker,” he said.

  I steeled myself against the memory. Taren being cut, then the barrel of the gun—

  “I remember shutting my eyes,” I said. “Because I couldn’t watch. I was really scared for Taren.”

  Gretchen’s posture tensed at the mention of her son’s life being in jeopardy, but she motioned for me to go on.

  “And then...nothing,” I said. “Nothing happened. The knife didn’t move. I screamed like a banshee and a minute later the fight was over.”

  “And what made you scream?” Master Dogan asked.

  “The fight. Taren had been hurt; I was scared.”

  “Your eyes were closed,” he said.

  I pressed my lips together, trying to think of what to say. A look passed between Gretchen and Master Dogan and I suspected that she’d come to him with her suspicion that I had held something back in my debrief.

  Just tell them, I reasoned with myself. Why don’t you just—

  Because then I’ll have to feel it! They’ll make me feel it. And that can’t happen, because if I really feel how not OK I am, I’m going to seriously and irrevocably lose it.

  The truth of it startled me; I hadn’t allowed myself to think of what might happen beyond not getting to go on the trip. Maybe I did fear my own psyche’s reaction more than that of the Elders. In either case, the answer was the same: I needed to get it—and keep it—together. That was all.

  I’d been
silent too long, both Gretchen and Master Dogan looked at me with concern. Gretchen was about to speak, but I jumped up before she could.

  “I think I need a break,” I said. “Would that be OK?”

  “Alright,” Master Dogan said reluctantly. “It’s almost time for lunch. Why don’t we meet back here at one thirty?”

  “Perfect,” I said, and scuttled out of the room before Gretchen could follow me.

  On days we had sessions, she and I usually ate together, but that was the last thing I wanted today—I didn’t need her telepathy kicking in again.

  8

  The moment I was outside, I checked my phone for word from Taren. Nothing. Still. A knot formed in my belly and I contemplated just calling him, but my pride wouldn’t allow it. I could check the practice yard. If he was training students I might be able to pull it off as a happenstance meeting.

  Right, because I’m always hanging out at the practice yard.

  I walked the back way toward the dorm, wanting to make sure Gretchen didn’t see me. I was most of the way there when I saw Michael. He was running, and he held an unconscious Crystle in his arms.

  “What happened?” I said, rushing toward them.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “We were talking and she just fainted.”

  I thumbed her eyelids and got no response. “If she’d just fainted, she’d be awake by now.”

  “Then what... ?”

  “Where?” I said, a terrifying thought taking shape. “Where were you when this happened?”

  “Over there,” he said, jerking his neck to his right. “She wanted to talk but I had to patrol the perimeter.”

  The perimeter—past the boundary. Dammit, Crystle.

  “Set her down,” I said.

  “I’m taking her to the infirmary—”

  “They can’t help; you have to find a Keeper who can do a Retrieval.”

  “A Retrieval?” He’d been scared before, but now this oak of a man looked shaken to the core.

  “Set her down,” I said again. “I’ll stay with her and do what I can. Go find a Keeper.”