Powerless (Bird of Stone Book 3)

by Tracey Ward

  “Something is wrong,” she whispers.

  I scan the room, making sure she’s alone. “Why did you scream?”

  “I had a nightmare.”

  “About Carver?”

  She nods, looking down. Lightning flashes. Alex jumps when thunder rumbles quickly behind it.

  I step past her bed to go to the window, briefly putting my hand on her shoulder in the most consoling, comforting way I know how. Outside is underwater. The rain is falling in a deluge that soaks the windows like someone’s unleashed a hose full blast on them. I can’t see anything but water.

  “It’s just a storm,” I tell her. I glance at my watch. “They should still be shopping. No chance they’re on their way back yet. They’ll be safe.”

  “What if they’re not?”

  “Then they’re not.”

  “Jesus, Campbell,” she moans.

  I round on her, instantly feeling frustrated. “What? What do you want me to say? What do people want from me today?”

  “Nothing. I don’t want anything from you.”

  “Good news.” I head for the door. “If you’re okay, I’m gonna go check on everyone else. A storm like this near the ocean, the wind is going to kick up soon. We’re gonna need to close the storm shutters.”

  Alex surprises me when she immediately stands, sliding her feet into her shoes. “I’ll come help.”

  “Cool.”

  She nods, not looking at me.

  I don’t want to care that she’s upset. I try very hard not to care. Problem is, it comes anyway; the caring. The giving a crap about the emotional well-being of another human person. As I look at her drawn face, her eyes tight with silent worry that I refuse to wash away, I feel like a dick for the first time in years. I tell myself it’s because she’s Carver’s girl and I promised I’d watch out for her, but I know what it really is. Alex is my friend. And I’m worried about her.

  Lame.

  I sigh, turning to block her exit from the room. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’ve had a weird day.”

  She’s quick to smile in understanding. It’s weak. Forced. “I know. Me too. It’s fine.”

  “He’s okay, Alex. Carver is. He always is.”

  She finally raises her eyes to mine. They’re hesitant but hopeful. Pushing through the gloom that hovers over the house. That batters against the windows and roars in the sky overhead. “He has the stones with him,” she reminds us both. “If the weather got too bad, he’d make a bigger boat that could ride it out.”

  “Or a zeppelin that he’d pilot right onto the front yard.”

  “I’d pay to see a stone zeppelin.”

  I grin. “I think we just named our garage band.”

  I’m relieved when she smiles for real. “Now all we have to do is learn to play instruments.”

  “I call guitar. Chick’s love guitar players. You can sing.”

  “I can’t, actually.”

  “Fine. Then you play the meat flute.”

  “What’s a meat—” Her eyes go wide with realization. Her hand lashes out to slap me hard across the chest. “Dude!”

  “What?!”

  “Gross!”

  “Don’t get mad at me. It’s your instrument, not mine. Well, actually, it’s Carver’s instrument but you’re the one who would—”

  She hits me again. Harder. She puts some stank on it. It seriously hurts.

  “Stop hitting me!” I laugh, backing away.

  Thunder rumbles angrily overhead, drowning me out. We both look at the window behind her. I was right; the wind has arrived. It pelts the rain against the glass so hard, it sounds like gravel being shot at it. One good wallop with a stick or a branch off any of the trees in the forest around us, and the outside is inside.

  “Grab a lifejacket if you’ve got it, SB,” I tell her heavily. “Things are getting ugly outside.”

  She gets her red raincoat. No lifejacket. She can’t sing, but I hope she can swim.

  On the way downstairs, I poke my head in Liam’s room. Naomi is standing between the beds in front of the nightstand, her back to me. She’s pulled the curtains back to look outside. There’s not much to see, just rain driving against the glass, but she seems calm and happy as she can be there, so I close the door without a word. Without poking that rabid, psychedelic bear.

  Downstairs is chaos, but it’s productive. I’m proud of everyone for jumping into action without being told. Beck, Brody, and Justin are already outside when Alex and I get there. They’re dragging in furniture; a few rocking chairs and small end tables. I ask them why they’re bothering, and Brody’s answer is sound. So they don’t come flying through the windows and kill someone.

  Alex and I get to work pulling the shutters closed while Britta, Trina, and Stewart search the house for flashlights and candles. Blankets. We’re running on a battery hooked up to the solar panels on the roof, but what if the lines connecting them gets knocked out? We’ll be in perfect darkness behind these shutters. No time to look for light. While they’re upstairs, I tell them to lower the rouladen shades on every window. Rouladen’s roll down from above in metal slats that allow wind to leak through in small doses but hold steady against debris. Best part is, you don’t have to be outside like we are now to close them. They’re ugly as hell, but they’re effective, and right now that’s all that matters.

  When we’ve made our way around the house, every last window sealed up tight, I shout to Alex to go back inside with the others.

  “Where are you going?!” she cries over the din of wind, rain, and thunder, her eyes squinting into the gusts that batter us left and right.

  “To check on the horses and the barn! I want to make sure her animals are alright!”

  “I’ll go with you!”

  “It’s too dangerous! You could get hit by something caught in the wind!”

  Even through the rain, I can see her roll her eyes at me. “You’re starting to sound like Nick!”

  “That’s not the worst thing you’ve ever said to me!”

  “You’re also an idiot!”

  “That’s closer!”

  She reaches out, taking my dripping wet hands in hers, and I immediately get why I’m an idiot. I forgot she can Slip. Her energy is quick to vibrate inside me, reminding me. Pulsating through our hands up into my spine. In the base of my skull where it tingles gently.

  Alex Slips us quickly, but it’s surprisingly smooth. I barely notice the void as we fly through it, but what I do notice for the first time echoes in the back of my mind like a distant alarm bell.

  It’s cold inside the nothing.

  When we come to, we’re in the stables. Right at the entrance inside the closed bay doors. One dim light burns overhead, showing me a dark floor dusted with bright hay. Luckily, it looks dry. No leaks on the roof. Not too much rain making it in under the doors. I glance around at the walls, looking for a power switch.

  “Maybe we should have brought Trina,” I mumble, my voice barely audible over the rain on the roof. It’s quieter than it was outside, though. Warmer and way more comfortable. “She could turn on the lights for us. Like a clapper.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to clap her,” Alex grumbles.

  I smile at her appreciatively. I kind of like angry Alex. “How’s it going, SB? You seem grouchy.”

  “We all do.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.”

  “There it is.”

  She’s spotted the light switch on the wall next to the stalls. She flips it with a sharp snap and the place is suddenly bathed in warm yellow light. More hay is on the floor in front of each stall. Heads pop out to see us. Tall ears, long noses, and big, dark eyes that watch us with interest. Judging us for not being Jonnie.

  We walk slowly down the hallway between the stalls. I reach out with my hand to brush the nose of whoever will let me, glancing inside to make sure they’re staying dry. That they have clean, dry hay and water to drink. Alex does the same on the other side.

  “You know what it i
s, right?” I ask her.

  “The hostility?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I do,” she admits glumly. “It’s you.”

  I snort. “I only wish I had that kind of impact, but I’ll admit defeat here. It’s not me.”

  “It’s Naomi.”

  “Bang on, SB.”

  She lifts up on her toes, glancing down inside a stall. She wrinkles her nose against the smell of manure, but her disgust quickly turns to delight when the horse inside nuzzles her shoulder. She giggles light as a little kid as she cups his big face lovingly in her hands.

  “It feels better out here, doesn’t it?” I point out.

  She nods. “Much better. It’s because we’re farther away from her.”

  “What are we gonna do about that?”

  “What can we do?” She rubs the horse’s head between its ears before slowly moving to the next one. “You want me to Slip her somewhere else? Liam would never go for it. Nowhere is safe alone.”

  “What about Jonnie’s bunker?”

  Alex freezes, turning to me slowly. “She has a bunker?”

  “Somewhere, yeah. I think it’s where she does her projection thing. Where she hides her body.”

  Alex chews on that thoughtfully, glancing in the last stall on her line. “Liam wouldn’t like it. He’d say we’re locking Naomi up again.”

  “Liam’s vote shouldn’t count for everyone’s.”

  “We’d be no better than her dad.”

  “It’s not forever.”

  “Really? How long then?”

  “As long as we’re here.”

  “But what happens to her after that?”

  I shrug. “Not our problem. She’ll head off with Liam to wherever, same as last time, and we won’t have to deal with it.”

  “You mean we won’t have to deal with her?”

  “I know she’s a person, Alex. I’m not a sociopath. I meant we won’t have to deal with the situation.”

  “But it’s still a problem.”

  “Not. Ours,” I remind her clearly. “What is our problem right now is what she’s doing to people. She was affecting us back on the island, but ever since we got here, she hasn’t just been leaking. She’s been broadcasting. And she’s radioactive. We’re all getting poisoned by it.”

  “You think she’s doing it on purpose?”

  “I don’t know, but I think it’s bad enough that it doesn’t matter. Intentional or not, she’s too much. We have to quarantine her.”

  Alex frowns, her eyes unhappy. She looks at the ground for a long time before finally growling, pushing her hands through her hair. “I hate it, but I think you’re right.”

  I grin. “Say that again. That was beautiful.”

  “You’re right,” she admits reluctantly. “But we should look at the bunker before we talk to anyone else about it. Especially Liam. We need to know what we’re really suggesting here. Maybe we can make it less… I don’t know…”

  “Bunkery?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll ask Jonnie about it when she gets back.”

  “Maybe we should try to ask her now.”

  I fold my arms over my chest, leaning back against a stall door. The white mare inside brings her head out to brush against my shoulder supportively. “You want to try to call Jonnie?”

  “You’ve done it before with Liam, right? Can you do it again?”

  “I think the real question is, can you do it? I didn’t do it before. He did. I just sat in.”

  “Okay, so how did Liam do it?”

  “Meditation. Do you know how to meditate?”

  “He taught me at the clinic the first time. It was supposed to help me control my Slipping.”

  “Did it?”

  “I don’t know, but the meds he was injecting me with sure did,” she answers bitingly.

  “You gotta let that go.”

  She balks at me. “Are you for real? You know what he did.”

  “Yeah, and I know what he’s done since,” I reason calmly. The feeling comes easy out here. We’re outside Naomi’s reach and there’s something about horses. They’re weirdly soothing. They remind me of being a kid and going riding with my mom. Of Christmases in Colorado with the whole family. “He’s done more good than harm lately. And he’s obviously trying.”

  “Trying to do what?”

  “To make you forgive him.”

  She hesitates, her face filled with doubt. Confusion. Conflict. It’s more than I want to deal with and I wonder why I bothered opening this can of worms.

  I quickly snap the lid shut on it.

  “Let’s give it a shot,” I tell her, hoisting myself off the stall door. “Let’s call Jonnie and see how she and Nick are doing. Ask her if we can borrow her bunker.”

  Alex nods, her eyes swimming with waves of emotions as she sits down on the floor across from me. I drop down to mirror her. I don’t bother going full lotus. I’m not interested in showing off right now. Alex knows I’m awesome. No need to rub it in her face.

  She takes a deep breath. Releases it slowly. “Any ideas on how to do this?” she asks me quietly.

  “Just think about her, I guess. You’ve met her. You’ve seen her in a projection. Focus on that. On what her energy is like when she comes into a room.”

  “When she comes into a room it feels like I’m about Slip on accident, and I have no idea where I’m going.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “I’ll try not to,” she chuckles nervously.

  I frown before reaching for her hand. Before taking it firmly in mind and meeting her eyes with a seriousness I save for the rarest of occasions. Occasions that have been creeping up a lot lately.

  It’s like I’m growing up or something.

  “I’ll go with you,” I promise, parroting what I’ve heard Nick tell her before. Because that’s her biggest fear - ending up alone and afraid. She did it for most of her life and it’s like making a comfortable living after growing up homeless. You never want to feel that helpless again. “If you Slip, I Slip. ‘Kay?”

  She grins faintly. Gratefully. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Do your thing.”

  She nods again. She closes her eyes.

  She turns up the volume.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ALEX

  It’s hard to do something when you have no idea what you’re doing. Like snow skiing or fractions. I’ve never been good at fractions. Or math in general. Or meditating. I’m not the kind of person who can turn their mind off. That’s sort of the heart of all my issues with my Slipping. I could never make my mind do what I wanted it to do. Or, more accurately, not do what I didn’t want it to do. But that’s what Campbell is asking of me when we sit down in the center of a drafty stable surrounded by curious, magnificent animals at the heart of a raging storm. He’s asking me to shut it all out and divide three-fourths by five-eighths.

  I reach out into the nothing, looking at everything from the other side. Campbell is the first thing I see; yellow like Nick but faint by comparison. I can tell just by looking at him that Campbell isn’t a super. He’s missing that power that I can see pulsing inside Nick and, to a lesser degree, the other people in the house. That’s where I go next. Inside the house. Reaching farther and farther out, pushing my limits. I sift through the minds inside one by one, but I can’t get past them. If Nick were here to feed off of, maybe I could, but he’s not, so I can’t. Not unless I crank up my own energy, but if I do, I run the risk of Slipping. I’m already on the edge as it is, and if I do it, I don’t know exactly where I’ll go. Nowhere I meant to, that’s for sure.

  “Easy, SB,” Campbell warns, his voice coming from far off. Muffled like it’s on the other side of a door. “You’re getting a little wild.”

  He can feel the energy in the air in the stalls. So can the horses. They stomp their feet, grunting with misgivings.

  I feel myself shake my head in my body, the rest of me still searching the void, and I wonder how
Nick does this. I’m splitting my brain in two, but he has a habit of doing it in thousands. How did he manage the rain? And the sand? And a giant ship and a big black bird cutting across the sky? Power and confidence, that’s how. I have one of those things. Maybe it’s about time I took a crack at the other.

  I conjure that feeling I had when I dreamt as Nick. The one where I felt like I could do anything I put my mind to. The one where I wasn’t afraid to try because I wasn’t afraid to fail. The feeling that I’m all power and the world will just have to deal with it.

  It’s a heady way to be.

  I turn it up, creeping closer and closer to a Slip. Toeing a line I’m usually very wary of. The fear is there because my feelings are mine, not Nick’s, and I can’t shut it off. But I can control it. Just like I control the Slip, and I think the handling of one leads to the mastering of the other. If I’m in control of the fear, I’m in control of the Slip, and vice versa.

  So suddenly, I’m beyond the house. Outside the gate. Over the river and through the woods, rushing over that rut road leading to the docks. To the water. And I don’t bother asking myself why I go this way. I just know I have to, the same way a bird can find south in the winter. It’s built into their brain to know.

  When I find Jonnie, she’s at the mouth of the Sound. I’m instantly elated. And confused. She’s alone and so dim. Ghostly the way she is during a projection, but fainter. And red. Blood red slowly fading to pink at the edges.

  The closer I get, the more convinced I am that it’s not Jonnie at all.

  “It’s Gwen.”

  “What’s Gwen?” Campbell asks. “I thought you were looking for Jonnie.”

  I reach out with my body to grip Campbell’s hand, keeping my mind focused on Gwen. “She’s in trouble.”

  “Who is? Gwen or Jonnie?”

  “Gwen. She’s not in the house.”

  “Where the hell is she?”

  “The Sound.”

  He holds my hand tightly. “Can you Slip to her?”

  “We’re going now.”

  The Slip is fast. Violent. I’m already revved up, so all I have to do is hit GO and we’re gone. Zip. I launch us to the dock, landing us unsteadily right at the edge of it where Nick and I were standing earlier. The water under our feet is frothing in the wind, popping under the rain, and the force of both hits us hard. I sway unsteadily on my feet, gripping Campbell tightly for support. He quickly pushes me away to vomit in the water.