by Amy Garvey
“That’s not much of a welcome,” he says with effort.
“Hey, I call ’em like I see ’em.” Bay pats his knee when Fiona reappears with her own red cup, but she squints at Gabriel instead.
“You look like shit. Are you okay?”
“Maybe some water?” I tell her, and she heads off. Her rabbit fur is gone, and in its place is the eye-watering scent of whatever perfume she put on.
“Wren was telling me about . . . about what you all can do,” Gabriel manages, and I wish there was somewhere for him to sit other than the floor. He’s trying so hard to act normal, but I can tell the headache is slicing through him in angry arcs.
“Wren’s a natural.” Bay hasn’t taken his eyes off Gabriel. “She didn’t mention anything about you, though.”
The words sound wrong in his mouth, but Gabriel ignores them. “Power is something that should be respected,” he says instead. He’s still trembling, but he’s standing up a little straighter. Facing off, I think, and this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.
“Believe me, I respect her just fine.” Bay stands up, crumpling his red cup. It turns to shiny red confetti as it falls to the floor. He nods at me. “Wren.”
“Damn it,” I mutter, and turn around just as Gabriel blinks, like he’s startled, and then puts his hand to his head.
“Hey!” I grab his other hand. “Gabriel, what is it?”
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispers, eyes focused somewhere over my left shoulder.
For once, I don’t argue with him.
Chapter Eighteen
PLATES AND MUGS ARE FLOATING IN MIDAIR when I walk into the kitchen the next morning, a surreal Ferris wheel of china.
I blink and take a step backward. After a night’s sleep twisted in uneasy dreams, I’m not sure any of it is real until I see Robin on the other side of the room, leaning against the pantry door.
“What are you doing?”
One plate swoops higher before crashing, and Robin huffs. She’s still in her pajamas, her hair scooped into a loose ponytail. “You jerk!”
“Me?” I grab another plate and a mug out of the air and set them carefully on the table. “I don’t remember telling you to levitate the dishes.” I snatch at a few more, stepping around the jagged, white shards of the broken plate on the floor.
“You broke my concentration.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, you apparently broke your brain. Mom’ll kill you if she sees this.”
“She’s at work.” Robin snags the last plate from where it hovers over the table, and stacks it with the others. “And it’s none of your business.”
I wish that were true. I wish it so hard right now, it hurts my head. I can’t leave her alone to play sorcerer’s apprentice, especially not with our freaking dishes, but I don’t have time to babysit.
Not for Robin, anyway.
Gabriel was in such pain last night, and I was so terrified, I was shaking. I was also the one to drive us home, and if I never get behind the wheel of Olivia’s Beetle again, it will be too soon. Gabriel was sweating and trembling by the time I got the door open, and he stumbled directly into his bedroom. I took off his shoes and wrestled him out of his coat before I found him some Excedrin and poured a big glass of water, and he was asleep not long afterward, fully dressed. I had to grab a quilt out of the hall closet to put over him before I left.
I need to be there with him. Not here on brat duty with a rebellious Sabrina.
“Look, I don’t know what crawled up your—” I cut myself off just in time, choking back the word. “Into your head,” I say instead, and Robin smirks. “You know Mom would not be okay with this, so don’t expect me to cover for you if you wind up breaking everything.”
“Why not?” She stands up, and for the first time I realize my little sister isn’t so little anymore. I have only two inches on her, maybe less, and she’s cheating anyway, lengthening her spine and arching her feet. “Mom could put them all back together. So could you. And so can I, once I figure it out.”
I push past Robin to get to the coffeemaker, where Mom managed to leave at least one cup before she left. It looks a little like mud when I pour it into a mug, but I don’t care.
“It’s not a game, Robin. And you know we don’t use magic like that.”
“Yes, you do!” Robin protests. “Mom used to do it all the time, even if she pretended we didn’t know! And I thought when everything changed in the fall, maybe someone would finally explain everything to me, maybe someone would help me.”
I put my cup down on the counter. All her bravado is gone. The girl standing in the middle of the kitchen in her puppy dog pajama pants and pink T-shirt is just a kid again, biting her bottom lip viciously so she won’t cry. And superimposed there, wavering like a ghost, is myself at her age, hair wilder and shorter, but otherwise just as furious and just as confused.
The magic I’ve finally learned to control isn’t only mine, but I don’t want her to have it, not yet. I just can’t decide if it’s the weight I don’t want her to carry, or the tingling buzz of freedom and power that comes with using it.
“Binny . . .”
“Don’t call me that.” She scrapes a chair away from the table and sinks into it.
I take a deep breath. “Robin. I’m sorry, okay? It’s just . . . it’s been so busy, with the holidays and Gabriel and all. But it’s not a good idea for you to do this stuff on your own. You don’t know what could happen. You . . . you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Because no one will explain it!” she yells, whirling around to face me. Her ruddy cheeks shine with tears. “I don’t know anything! Because no one will tell me! I don’t even get to talk to my own dad because you don’t want to!”
The panes in the cabinet doors over the stove burst, raining glass, and she flings herself out of the room to pound up the stairs.
Perfect.
I pick my way across the floor to finish my coffee, and consider waving the mess away with magic. It doesn’t feel like punishment enough, though, and when I set my empty mug in the sink, I get the broom.
Gabriel’s still asleep when I call, and Olivia is worried. “No one in our family has ever had headaches like this,” she says. “Do migraines just come out of nowhere?”
I don’t know what to say to that. When I hang up, I close my eyes, picturing his face, still strained, his eyes shut tight, as if he was trying not to see something.
Even a hot shower doesn’t wash away the chill of worry.
There is one thing I can do, though.
I shut myself in my room with a soda and my phone, and text Bay: WHAT WAS UP LAST NIGHT?
An hour later, I try Fiona, leave them both voice mails, and text Bay again, and nothing. Now I’m pissed. It’s not surprising that Fiona was acting like a bitchy elf, and flirting on top of it, but I don’t get what Bay’s problem was, and I don’t like it. It wasn’t even my idea to go to the stupid party, but Bay doesn’t know that. Doesn’t know that I had decided I was done with them long before last night. And if I hadn’t been freaked out by Gabriel’s headache, I would have confronted him then and there. Just the thought of him, smug and smiling that mysterious smile as he crumpled his cup, is enough to make me want to break some glass.
Instead, I bang around in the kitchen, making tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, and take some on a tray up to Robin. She doesn’t answer when I knock, but when I go back into my room I hear the telltale creak of her door opening. She may hate me at the moment, but she never refuses her favorite lunch.
With her not starving and hopefully occupied for a little while in something other than blowing up the house, I settle on my bed with half a grilled cheese on a plate. If Bay and Fiona are ignoring me, maybe there’s one person who won’t.
And maybe my magic is good for something other than fun.
I wipe greasy fingers on my jeans before setting my phone down on the bed in front of me. I don’t know Jude’s number—I don’t eve
n know her last name—but if I’m lucky, that’s not going to stop me.
I lay my hands on the phone, wondering what the hell I think I’m doing. I’m not Gabriel, after all. I frown and close my eyes, concentrating on Jude’s apartment, on Jude, on the phone I saw lying on her kitchen counter the day I was there. I let my power curl out slowly from my center, tentative fingers winding into the air and searching, and in less than a minute I feel my phone vibrating.
It’s dialing.
I pick it up and swallow hard. What am I supposed to say? Why was Bay such an asshole last night? Why do you seem worried all the time? Why do you look at me like the big bad wolf is right over my shoulder?
Four rings, and Jude answers with the same cautious “Hello?” I always give an unfamiliar number.
“Jude?” My stupid heart is pounding.
“Um, yeah. Who is this?”
“It’s Wren. From last night? And that one other time, in—”
“Wren. Right.” She’s silent for a moment after that, and I close my eyes, praying she doesn’t hang up. “Um, what’s up?”
Thank God. “Look, I know we don’t know each other, like, at all. But . . .” Suddenly I have no idea what to say, or what I think she can help me with. I don’t know anything about her but how unhappy she’s looked the two times I’ve met her, and the fact that she knows Bay and Fiona, too.
She startles me out of my thoughts when she says, “Is your boyfriend okay?”
“Oh. Um, yeah, I think so.” I didn’t realize she was even around when the pain started, or that she saw us leave. “He’s been getting these headaches lately. It’s sort of messed up.”
“Yeah.” She goes quiet again, and I wince. Think, I tell myself.
“Look, Bay was being really weird last night, and I don’t . . . I mean, is he usually like that? We’ve been hanging out, not that much, I guess, but still, and he was cool at first, but I’m not totally comfortable with it anymore, and . . .” It’s too fast, a jumble of words trailing off like a limp string, but it’s out now.
The silence is huge, a gulf of nothing that I’m trying not to fill with crazy thoughts. When Jude finally says something, I nearly drop the phone.
“Look, Wren, Bay is . . . Bay is just a little off.” It sounds like an understatement the way she says it. It’s unsettling how easily I can picture her face, that shifting worry in her eyes. “But you’ve got your boyfriend and all, you know?”
“One thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other,” I tell her. “I wanted Bay to help me explore what I can do, not take me to a movie.”
“Well, I don’t know if . . .” I can hear her swallowing. “I don’t know if he wants that. So. Maybe just let it go, huh?”
“Bay’s the one who approached me.” I swear I can feel her edging away from the conversation even as I speak. “He’s the one who wanted to see what I can do, not the other way around. And if he’s going to be all weird and jealous, I mean, I thought he was with Fiona anyway.” Sort of. It’s actually hard to tell, but I’ve said it now.
And more than anything I hate that this might be some ridiculous testosterone match, even if my suspicion is that it’s more.
“Bay is . . . not everything he says he is.” Jude’s choice of words is too vague, and she’s not even answering my question. “Look, I have to go,” she continues before I can reply. “I’m sorry, Wren, but just . . . just be careful.”
She hangs up before I can ask her what I’m supposed to be careful about, and I stop short of throwing my phone across the room in frustration.
Mari’s willing to come over when I call her a little while later. “Just pretend you’re here to, I don’t know, use the kitchen or something. If Robin thinks you’re babysitting, she’s going to freak again.”
She shows up just a half hour later, with a tote bag full of construction-paper letters to cut out for her class. “Poor noodle,” Mari says, glancing up at the second floor with a frown. “A lot of it’s probably hormones on top of everything else.”
I groan as I grab my coat off the rack and shrug it on. My little sister’s initiation into womanhood is not something I want to think about today or any day.
“Yeah, well. Anyway, Mom should be home soon. I’ll be at Gabriel’s.”
He was awake when I called the second time, although he sounded like a worn-out tape of himself, scratchy and faded. I head face-first into the wind and nearly run the last block, panting as I climb the stairs to his apartment.
Olivia is already gone, working again tonight, and Gabriel answers the door in a pair of gray sweatpants I’ve never seen before. They hang off his narrow hips under a plain, white T-shirt and his blue hoodie, and he doesn’t look entirely steady on his feet.
“Have you eaten?” I ask him as I throw my coat on the nearest chair.
“No food. Ugh.” It’s almost a grunt, and I follow him to the couch. He sits down too carefully.
“Has this ever happened before?” I take off my boots and edge toward him slowly. I want to curl up around him, soothe away the creases of pain in his forehead, but I don’t know if he wants to be touched. For the first time, he looks breakable.
“The headaches?” He backs away, but only far enough to lie down, putting his head in my lap. I touch his hair gently, combing my fingers through it. It’s sweat-damp, silky.
“Well, yeah.” I smile as he rolls to his side, his cheek against my thigh. “I have seen you eat before.”
“Not until a few weeks ago. I mean, not like this.”
“This one was really bad.” I slow my hand, stroking all the way from his head down his nape to his shoulder. “I thought you were going to pass out for a minute.”
“I’m aware.”
“Hey, if you can worry, so can I.” I wish I could see his face, but he seems comfortable, fitted against me and the back of the sofa. “Did something happen?”
He doesn’t answer for so long, I wonder if he’s asleep. Finally he says, “I saw something, Wren.”
Okay. I mean, I figured that much. “Something . . . bad? What do you mean?”
Under my hand, his shoulder tenses. “I got a glimpse inside Bay, accidentally.”
My hand has stopped moving, and I realize I’m holding my breath. I release it slowly. “What did you pick up?”
There’s only one light on in the room, a lamp on the table in the corner, and the soft gold glow throws his face into shadow. In the dim light, the hair falling over his forehead looks like a painted brushstroke.
“Gabriel, please. Tell me.”
“I’m trying.” He holds a hand up when I groan. “Look, I know. Just . . . go easy, huh? My head feels like the wreckage after an explosion.”
It’s the most he’s said since I got here, so I give him a minute and spend it stroking his back. Finally he looks up again.
He sits up, resting his head against the sofa. “It was just flashes, a lot vaguer than when I saw inside you the first time.”
I move closer, splaying my hand lightly over his chest. His heartbeat is a steady thump behind his ribs. “So what did you see?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “There was a butterfly or something, and everything was sort of spinning, but someone was screaming and there was . . .” He trails off and looks at me, gaze as steady now as the beat of his heart. “Wren, I think there was something about blood.”
I inch closer, and he opens his arm to gather me into the circle of it. Fiona loves butterflies—she was making them that day at Jude’s, and she showed up the other day in her coat of purple wings. “But why would it be so . . . obscure? What does it mean?”
“It’s not always clear, you know. And maybe it’s because he was drinking?” His fingers scratch through my hair gently. “But I don’t like what I saw. That I felt something like blood and violence inside your . . . friend.”
It’s not like I hadn’t made that connection. Maybe if I change the subject . . . “Do you want some tea?” I’m already getting up and head
ing into the kitchen.
“No,” he calls. I hear his footsteps, a little slower than usual, and then he’s standing beside me as I lean into the fridge, looking for I don’t even know what. “Wren, look. Maybe I’m wrong, but I got a bad vibe from Bay. Really bad.”
“And you have nothing to say about Fiona? No bad vibe for the pretty girl, huh?” I try to make it a joke, but it doesn’t really work.
“There’s nothing there.” He shrugs. “She’s like a blank space in the room. It’s all just . . . playing dress-up.”
“Yeah, well. Whatever. I’m done with them, okay?” I walk past him and straight to the sofa, where I grab my boots.
“Wren, come on.” He sits down next to me. “It’s not like that. But you just assume that people are good. They’re not, Wren, not all of them. Some people are dangerous, and you don’t know Bay, or what he’s like, and doing magic with him . . .”
The words are choked out, and I don’t know if he’s still in pain or really as disturbed as he seems.
“Just forget it, okay?” I lean over and grab my other Doc. “I learned my lesson with Danny, believe me, and I’m not about to do anything ‘dangerous.’ This is part of me, Gabriel. You can’t make it go away.”
“Wren, you’re not listening—”
I wrench away from his hand when he touches my shoulder and walk away to grab my coat. “No, you aren’t. I keep trying to tell you, and you just don’t hear me. This is me, Gabriel. This magic, this power—it’s what I am. Maybe I made some wrong choices hanging out with them, but I told you, I’m done.”
I leave him standing in the shadowed living room, alone.
I’m a guilty, awful liar anyway, and I’m taking it out on him. I know he’s only worried, but I hate having to face that I chose to be with people who might have done horrible things. Not just pranks, not just reckless fun, but dangerous things.
I thought I knew myself better than that by now, and I walk home wondering what else I’ve been wrong about.
Chapter Nineteen
