by Jen Kirchner
Excited applause roared through the room when we appeared. We smiled and waved back and pretended everything was going according to plan. The hostess, Dana DaCosta, approached me. She was a lovely brunette in a pantsuit with an electric smile and a piercing stare that commanded your every move. I had watched the Dana DaCosta show before but hadn’t realized how tall she was. She was nearly as tall as Brad.
I wasn’t surprised when she asked Brad to take the chair next to hers. By the way she smiled at him, I was pretty sure she wanted to eat him, too. That left me alone on the love seat with space for one more.
I wanted to shoot Brad a questioning look, but there’s no such thing as a tiny movement on television. Cameras magnify and exaggerate every nuance. I had to be careful.
We started out with questions about the new record and the coming tour. I let Brad take the lead since he was in the hot seat, and I provided support when he needed it. Next came the usual questions about Brad and me growing up together. We were usually required to tell a quick, charming story about our childhood, so Brad told about my first day in elementary school when some boy flipped up my dress during recess. Naturally, Brad defended my honor by beating the kid up with a plastic lightsaber and was hauled off to the principal’s office. The next day, I was enrolled in a private school for girls.
I was ready for our next question when Dana made a sudden segue into a discussion about the entertainment industry and our relationships with other celebrities. To keep myself from fidgeting, I reached for one of the blue mugs and sipped. Where was this conversation going?
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have a surprise for you tonight. One of Kari and Brad’s dear friends just stopped by the studio to say hello—please give a warm welcome to Cody Springer!”
Of course. It takes us months of begging to get on the show, but Cody can waltz in whenever he feels like it.
Brad and I stood as Cody appeared at the corner of the stage, smiling and waving to the audience. To his credit, he looked great. His jeans were snug and his designer t-shirt accentuated all of the muscles on his chest and back. This wasn’t his usual attire; he was competing with Brad’s rock and roll look. I wasn’t sure who was winning.
Cody gave Dana a polite peck on the cheek. He and Brad exchanged a less formal handshake accompanied by a friendly clap on the shoulder. His head moved toward me for a kiss on the cheek, but I was practiced at this. I turned my head just enough that he got mostly hair, and not enough skin to give him visions of lingering spells. There were a lot of spells hanging around in this building.
He took the empty spot next to me on the love seat. As I leaned back, he slipped his arm over the top of the sofa and across my shoulders. My body tensed. I crossed my legs and folded my hands in my lap.
Cody flashed a million-dollar smile. “Thanks for having me here.”
Dana responded with utmost enthusiasm. “Always great to have you! Stop by any time!”
I felt Cody looking at me, so I turned my head. His deep, chocolate eyes looked straight into mine. I returned his smile with something mechanical and wished I had brought Stubby.
“I hope you don’t mind me coming out to see you,” Cody said softly, but loud enough for the microphones to pick up.
My head cocked to the side, like this was so endearing. “Of course not.”
We turned back to Dana, who started asking about the incident at the club. Cody’s fingertips brushed against my arm in an affectionate manner, then returned to the sofa. The gesture was subtle, but when projected by the television cameras, it screamed intimacy. I wanted to strangle him.
Brad and Cody covered up the club incident with friendly banter about how it was a misunderstanding. I knew I was supposed to say that the fire extinguisher was an accident, but I was so furious I couldn’t speak. Brad had to come to my rescue.
“On the way out of the bathroom, Kari bumped into the fire extinguisher, setting it off.” His voice came out controlled, carefully enunciating every syllable. “We filed a complaint, and the club manager is looking into it.”
I had nothing else to add, and Cody was conspicuously silent. I glanced at him, only to realize his attention had drifted to my chest. Our eyes met. He grinned. Brad cleared his throat and diverted our attention back to Dana DaCosta, who was changing the subject by asking how long Cody would be in town.
“I stayed a little longer than I was supposed to.” I could feel his eyes drifting to me suggestively while he spoke. My skin crawled. “I couldn't help myself.”
His hand left the couch and touched my shoulder, then drifted down my back. All the way down. His touch took me by surprise; I shifted, sitting up straight, unintentionally projecting to everyone where Cody’s hand had gone.
“You two are absolutely beautiful together,” Dana gushed. “I hope it lasts.”
Cody smiled. “Thank you.” I felt his eyes boring into me as he added, “We hope so too.”
Brad coughed. I smiled and said nothing.
Dana turned toward the audience and announced, “The new Vis Viva album will be out next Tuesday, so go pick it up! And thank you Cody Springer for stopping by! Stay tuned. We’ll be right back!”
The audience went wild with applause, and the cameras turned off.
Dana’s smile continued full throttle. “Well, guys, how do you think that went?”
Without a word, I reached for my nearby mug and threw the water in Cody’s face.
The crowd gasped in shock. Cody yelped and shrunk away from me. Brad jumped up, grabbed my wrist, and hauled me off of the stage before I could beat Cody with one of my high-heeled boots.
We were uninvited from the after-show party, but we hardly cared. Our priority was to make it back to the airport before Cody remembered he had loaned us his jet. Once we were in the air, the late hour and stressful day took its toll on everyone, and we all started dropping off to sleep. Only Luucas stayed awake, staring out his window, seemingly lost in his thoughts.
I was briefly woken by a bump in the channel, alerting me that we had reached the edge of Mikelis's collected energies. That meant we were about three hours away from Rochester. The channel was at a low hum, which was odd since this was Mikelis’s prime time. Even when he slept, the channel was never this calm. I was half asleep, yet I knew this meant Mikelis was up to something: bribing my cat with treats, snooping around my house, or discovering the panic room and learning all of my secrets. I was too tired to care. I closed my eyes. The relaxing hum of the channel lulled me toward sleep...
Wait, what in the hell was Mikelis up to?
I jolted upright, knocking over my purse. Its contents spilled out on the floor around my feet.
Behind me, Brad mumbled, “What's goin’ on?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“’Kay.”
I bent down and swept everything back into my purse, but when I picked up my phone, I paused. The visual of Luucas holding my phone earlier came to mind. I glanced over at him, but he was still staring out the window.
I turned the phone on. The screen flickered to life and told me it was 2:47 AM on Sunday. On a whim, I selected the call log.
While I was on stage, a call had been placed to someone in Rochester. The call lasted eleven minutes. I didn't recognize the number.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I looked up. Luucas was staring at me. Our eyes locked, but neither of us said anything. He wore a serious look that made me nervous. I hadn’t seen this expression on Luucas before: thoughtful, inquisitive, calculating. I didn’t like it.
I didn’t sleep for the rest of the trip home. By the time our van turned onto my street, I was antsy. Who had Luucas called?
The van’s headlights first hit Pasha’s car, parked in front of my house. Behind hers was an older Toyota Camry with tinted windows. I knew the car very well. I had even toilet-papered it once. I hit the gate remote and checked Death Radar for signals.
Mikelis was inside my house.
We let Pash
a out at her car, then pulled up the driveway. The light over the garage door flickered on. Before the van even came to a complete stop, Luucas opened the door and made a beeline for the house. The guys were too tired to notice.
I couldn’t call anyone until the driver was gone, so I tore our equipment and luggage out of the back of the van, slapped some cash in his hand, and wished him goodnight.
The gate hadn’t even closed yet and I was digging through my purse for my cell phone. This was an emergency. I had to call Grandpa.
“Hey,” Brad said, “someone’s in your house.”
“It's Luucas,” Nicolas said.
Brad pulled his key fob from his pocket and hit the remote. The red tail lights of his BMW strobed, temporarily illuminating the front of the house and the figure passing by the living room window. There wasn't enough light to get a good look, but it obviously wasn’t Luucas. Luucas was tall and lean. This figure was shorter, with a muscular build. I knew it well.
Movement in the driveway came to an abrupt halt. All attention turned toward the house.
Brad dropped his gear back on the driveway. “Nicolas, scan the house.”
“No,” I said, grabbing my phone from my purse, “don’t!”
Nicolas put both hands on his hips. “Don't worry, Kari. Whoever that is, he's going to have a hard time holding off Luucas.”
“They’re together,” I spat.
Nicolas shook his head at me as if I were being an idiot. “They’re still outnumbered. Between Brad and me attacking and you shutting down their spells, they're going to have their hands full.”
A blue spell string started to form over Nicolas’s head. I ripped his spell out of the air, changing the string from blue to black. The runes slapped against the white garage door like ominous graffiti. The guys looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.
“What’s wrong with you?” Brad demanded. “If someone's in your house, we need to stop them.”
“No, we need Grandpa.”
Another set of blue runes appeared, and I stopped the spell again. A second layer of black markings appeared beneath the first and the air around me began filling up with smoke. The guys all started yelling at me. Ryan grabbed my hands and Brad snatched my phone away.
“Let go!” I shouted.
“I’m not bothering Grandpa for an attempted burglary.”
Nicolas turned back toward the house and rolled his shoulders as if warming up for a fight. “I'm going to find out who this jerk is, and then we're gonna go in there. And then we’re gonna…”
He cast the spell again. A blue web stretched over the house and started to close in. Ryan was still holding my hands tightly, sharing my sight. He let out a soft gasp. We watched the web pass through the walls and roof and felt the soft pulses it emitted while providing information to Nicolas on everything that moved in those walls, from the immortals, to the cat, all the way down to my goldfish.
Nicolas’s eyes widened and his expression transformed into horror. Without a word, he turned and took off running down the driveway as fast as he could.
Ryan released me as Nicolas disappeared into the darkness. “What the hell is he doing?”
Once we heard a loud slam followed by a frantic, metallic rattling, we knew Nicolas had reached the end of the driveway. Nicolas's voice was a faint, frantic echo.
“Open the gate!”
“He's not going to hurt you,” I called back.
The panic in Nicolas's voice was palpable. “He's a necromancer! There's only one way to get that powerful, and it doesn't involve Band-Aids and lollipops!”
Brad’s and Ryan's heads snapped in my direction.
“What in the hell is going on?” Brad demanded.
I didn’t know what to say. In a way, I was glad the truth was finally out; I just wished it hadn’t happened like this. I turned toward Brad and dared to look him in the eyes. “His name is Mikelis Priedis. My car accident didn’t happen exactly the way you were told. I don’t know why they didn’t tell you the whole truth.”
I suspected the reason was that Brad had enough on his plate in worrying about my protection without being concerned about a paranoid, trigger-happy necromancer who lived only ten minutes away.
“What does he have to do with your car accident?” Brad asked.
I exhaled a long, deep breath. “The story they told you about how I became a necromancer is mostly true. It was self-defense, and it happened in a car. But as soon as my magical consciousness was birthed into the fourth channel, Mikelis thought I was a new necromancer coming to challenge him and tried crushing the car like a tin can. My dad protected me. He’s the only reason I survived.”
No one spoke. For a few minutes, all we could hear was the distant rattling of my fence, probably caused by Nicolas trying to scale it. I grabbed my purse and suitcase. As I passed Brad and Ryan on my way to the front door, Brad reached out and touched my hand. I stopped.
He leaned close and he kept his voice low, as if he didn’t want Ryan to hear. “You used to wake up in the middle of the night, screaming about a monster.”
My stomach churned. I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want him to know there were secrets between us. But I couldn’t lie, either. “Mikelis was the monster.”
Brad said nothing, though I could feel his shock. His eyes were hard and reflected a deep sense of fear he had suppressed for a long time, now bubbling to the surface—although Brad had been trained to protect me his entire life, there were dangers he’d never be able to stop. My world was snowballing out of control, and all he could do was let me face the danger on my own.
I ran into the house.
FIFTEEN
Luucas and Mikelis were no longer showing up on Death Radar, though there was a lot of noise coming from the basement. I threw everything on the floor of the entry and ran downstairs. The lab door was open and the lights were on. As I neared the room, my footsteps slowed. I stopped in the doorway and my heart skipped a beat.
The room was a scene of chaos. The panic room door was wide open and its contents were strewn all over the lab. My map of The Floor lay halfway on the counter, with the rest draping to the linoleum. A few of my accordion files were out and had clearly been rifled through. Egg crates filled with my glowing necromancer spheres covered every flat surface. Even Nadia had joined the pandemonium, batting at the cutlery box latch in a vain attempt to open it. The knives shouted back encouragement. From the state of the room, I could tell this wasn’t a simple investigation; it was an inquisition.
Luucas stood near the panic room door, studying a small stack of my legal documents. I couldn’t tell what they were. Bank statements, probably. My foreign accounts were registered in my immortal name. Mikelis was behind him, inside the panic room. Half of the drawers hung open, and he was ripping out their contents as fast as he could. They both looked up as I entered.
I shouted at Luucas, “I saved your life and this is how you repay me?”
Luucas’s lips pinched together and his expression softened. He almost looked sorry. “You’re a human secretly integrated into a very prestigious immortal family. I had to know.” He held up the documents he had been reading. “According to these, you’ve been a part of the Rendon family your entire life.”
“So? There aren’t any laws about making humans family.”
“No, but there are laws about humans having a choice.”
“That law refers to becoming immortal, not family.”
“It can still be applied.”
“Why can’t we all just be honest and say this is really because I’m a necromancer, and you’re afraid of what it all means?”
Luucas tossed the papers down on the table, scaring Nadia. She jumped a foot in the air and ran out of the room. “You have to admit, your relationship with the Rendons looks suspicious. Maybe Diaco is grooming you into a powerful necromancer for his own ends.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“How else am I supposed to explain what we’v
e found in here?”
Mikelis brushed past him and stepped into the lab. In one hand, he held a small, velvet bag. In the other, he held the two vials Grandpa and Moons had given to Brad and me. The thick, onyx liquid inside swirled like tiny whirlpools and pushed against the corks at the top. He held up the vials. “If you and Diaco weren’t up to something, you wouldn’t have these.”
My voice dropped to a low warning. “Put those vials back where you found them or there’s going to be a world of trouble.”
“There already is trouble,” he snarled. “Where did Diaco get these?”
“He doesn’t know I have them. Now put them back.”
“You stole them?”
“No. They belong to Brad and me.”
The black liquid swirled faster, as if sensing our anger.
Luucas’s gaze left me and went over my shoulder. I realized Ryan was hovering in the hallway behind me, watching the heated argument go from bad to worse.
“This is the original blood that created my race,” Mikelis said. “It was supposedly lost, and yet here it is with you. With it, you would surpass all of our kind. You would be like The Fathers who created us. And you would become the most powerful necromancer who ever lived.”
He and Luucas stared at me, waiting for a response, but I was taken aback by his statement about becoming like The Fathers. I had always known Grandpa and Moons were different than other immortals, but no one had explained why. This lack of information was the real reason Brad and I had delayed in making The Change. We really had no idea what we would become once the blood was consumed.
