Spark

by Rachael Craw

  When I begin to sway, Jamie steadies me. I brace my hand on the back of the chair, easing myself against him. He shifts to make room, reclining the seat, releasing the footrest so our bodies fold together. I lie on his chest, my face pressed against his throat, salting his skin with my tears, savouring his scent and the current humming between us.

  Jamie reaches for the comforter on the end of Kitty’s bed. He shakes it out and draws it over us, careful with my injured arm, bringing my hand to his heart and covering it with his wide warm palm. He holds me and kisses my hair. I close my eyes and fall deeply.

  UNCERTAINTY

  Thirst brings me quickly to the surface. I wake to the sound of rain pouring outside and stiffen, fully aware of where I lie, my body hotly corrugated to Jamie’s. His arms tense around me and then relax. I know by the change in his breathing that my waking has woken him.

  Indecision paralyses me. My arm aches and I need water, desperately, but how will I explain throwing myself at him in the night? And what does it mean? And should it mean anything? And what time is it? And what will Kitty think if she wakes and finds us entwined?

  “Are you thirsty?” Jamie’s very naked chest vibrates under me.

  I crack my lips to speak, “I’m dying.”

  “Here.” He moves and I lift my head. “Barb brought it in.” He picks up a glass of water from a tray on the side table, also heaped with untouched food. I blush at the thought of his mother. I dart a look at the bed. No Kitty.

  “What time is it?” I croak.

  Jamie brings the water to my lips, tipping carefully. I drink, quick demanding gulps, bumping his hand, spilling water on my chin. It slides down my neck and pools on his chest, wetting my fingers, but I don’t stop until I’ve drained it, panting when I finish.

  He returns the glass to the tray then wipes the water from my chin with his thumb. “Around three, I think.”

  “In the afternoon?” I try to brush the water from his skin but each stroke makes my blood pound so I stop, unable to meet his gaze. Beneath the comforter his fingers fan over my lower back and he traces exquisite spirals at the base of my spine.

  “Help me get up,” I say, flustered and tingling.

  “You don’t have to. Go back to sleep. Sleep heals.”

  I finally bring my eyes up. “Miriam–”

  “Has been in.”

  I cringe. “She has?”

  “So has Dad. Kitty’s been in and out.”

  “Oh.”

  A rueful smirk curves his mouth. “They all know about the skin to skin benefits for rapid regeneration; nobody thinks we’re up here making wild monkey love.”

  I fight off an uneasy desire to laugh.

  “Though,” he says, “the traffic may have been to discourage it.”

  I close my eyes, brow tightening.

  “Listen,” he says. “You have to know that I–”

  “Don’t.”

  “But, if you could just understand that–”

  “Please,” I come to my conclusion in a snap. “Let’s not make speeches.”

  “But it’s a very good speech and I’ve been working on it all night.”

  “Jamie,” I groan. “You make it so hard to …” His eyes shift to my mouth and he teases his lower lip through his teeth. I trail off, losing my thread. “You make everything …” I try again but he leans down, slowly, nudging my nose with his, our breath mingling, scrambling my brain. “I mean …” His lips brush mine, a test, a question, then a petition, building in frequency and depth. I forget my point altogether and I’m in it as much as him.

  The tether pulls and I break away. “Kitty.”

  He kisses me again. “Pretend to be asleep.”

  I shove his chest and he chuckles, tipping the chair up, lifting me wrapped in the comforter and depositing me on the end of the bed. Before Kitty reaches the door, Jamie manages to pull his shirt on, throw me a bagel and nab one for himself, his eyes playful.

  The door clicks open. Kitty steps in. “About time.” She crosses to sit next to me. “How’s the arm?”

  “Better.” It still burns but nothing like the night before and my body no longer feels out of kilter. “Definitely better.”

  “You’re welcome,” Jamie says.

  Kitty gags.

  I don’t look at him. “How’s your mom?”

  “Oh, you know.” Kitty tries for a smile but can’t sustain it. “Bit worried about signing my death warrant after taking out my bodyguard.”

  “I’m not dead yet. You survived the night and apparently most of the day. I’d say things are looking up.”

  “Now we know it’s either Richard or Aiden.”

  Jamie sits bolt upright. “You told her?”

  Kitty clicks her tongue. “I’m not a complete idiot. It’s not like I haven’t wondered about both of them since the ball. We’ve been debating downstairs, leaning towards Richard. Aiden gets the sympathy vote on account of being nice and poor and a protector of girls from date rapists.”

  “Nice and poor doesn’t save you from mutant genes,” I mutter.

  “What does Miriam say?” Jamie asks, reaching for more food.

  “She left a few hours ago. We’re supposed to call her when Evie wakes.”

  I frown. “Where did she go?”

  “She didn’t say. She was in her running gear and didn’t take her car. She’s been odd all morning. Barb said she disappeared for a few hours last night as well.”

  “You don’t think she’s after Richard?”

  “I wondered that,” Kitty says. “If Richard were dead, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

  “She would,” Jamie says.

  I get to my feet, the comforter falling away. I start pacing. “I need to think. I need a shower and I need to think.”

  “I’ll get something to cover your bandage.” Kitty crosses to the door pursing her lips. “Can I remind you both that this is my bedroom? I’d rather not have to get it decontaminated.”

  “What?”

  Jamie grins, rising with the comforter and wraps it around me. “Best keep this on, love, or she’ll need a hazmat team.”

  Kitty scowls.

  “Wait,” I say. “Has Doctor Sullivan been? Has he called?”

  “No,” she bites her lip. “He’s not answering.”

  Jamie touches my shoulder. “He’s not likely to have processed Richard’s sample in three days, yeah?”

  “It’s taking too long,” I mutter.

  Kitty exchanges a look with her brother and slips out the door.

  “Tell me what happened last night.”

  Jamie lowers his head. “I drove around for a while, looking for the sedan. In the end, I went to Richard’s house. There were a couple of grey cars in the back.”

  “One without plates?”

  “Dad mentioned that when I got home, but I didn’t notice.” He frowns. “I saw Richard with his father in the library.”

  “How was he acting? Did he seem wound up?”

  “Like someone who’d just been driving like a lunatic, trying to run a car off the road?” Jamie arches his eyebrow. “Extremely wound up. They were arguing. Richard was screaming.”

  “Screaming?”

  “He hates his father for ruining his life and being a compassionless bastard who understands nothing and he hopes he burns in hell.”

  I stare at Jamie and swallow, thirsty again, post-Fretizine.

  “I was waiting for him to go upstairs and then …” he taps his temple.

  I feel weak and faint. “You would have broken in and … if I hadn’t reached you?”

  He cups my face, his eyes hardening. “Yes.”

  The unimaginable truth. Life snuffed from an actual person, even a completely revolting person with almost no redeeming qualities. It seems inconceivable, the ceasing to exist and the aftershock of such an end, rippling through a family, a community. Even with all my paranoia, the act of killing is something I’ve envisioned only in the heat of the Fixation Effect: tha
t blind, primal instinct responding to a present threat, the culmination of adrenaline and electricity and genetically fueled rage, where you became something entirely other, controlled by stimuli and synaptic response. But to come at it this way, coldly, by an act of will?

  “This is so messed up,” I groan and lean my forehead on his chest. “I still can’t be sure.”

  “You may be advanced, Everton, but you can’t Harvest from civilians.”

  How can he be so adamant? “What about Aiden, the blank wall of nothing? That’s not normal either.”

  “You want it to be Aiden?”

  “No!” I say. “Of course not.”

  Jamie tips my chin up. “You don’t want to be responsible for someone’s death.”

  “For the wrong person’s death.”

  “Then we’ll test it. Try it on Barb or Dad, but we need to act. For him to attack like that, out in the open, it means he’s getting desperate. He’ll try again and it will be soon.”

  “Call Miriam. I want her here. I need to know what she’s thinking.”

  TESTS

  “Do I need to do anything?” Leonard sits on the edge of the sofa, his fingers curling into fists on his knees. “Should I try to visualise something?”

  “No, Dad, relax.” Jamie rubs his father’s shoulder.

  I stand at the window, looking out on the grey afternoon. The rain hasn’t stopped, the doctor hasn’t called, and still no sign of Miriam. I cross to the sofa, taking a seat beside Leonard, feeling horribly self-conscious with everyone looking at me.

  “Mr Gallagher, I’ll need to hold your hand. The rain makes it hard for me …”

  He opens his palms, wide and warm like Jamie’s, and cocoons my hand in both of his, giving me an encouraging squeeze. Immediately, the static increases.

  It always feels like this with civs, it doesn’t mean anything.

  “Maybe close your eyes …”

  He does and I do too.

  My dip into the bandwidth is as timid as last night’s reach for Jamie was bold. I look, not wanting to see; reach, not wanting to connect. I can feel Jamie’s expectation – or non-expectation – rolling at me, his certainty about Richard’s guilt. I open my eyes. “That’s not actually helpful.”

  Leonard opens his eyes and everyone looks between Jamie and me.

  “You can read each other’s minds?” Leonard says.

  I blush. “No. It’s not like–”

  “I thought rain interfered?” Kitty says.

  “Not between us,” Jamie says. “Not at this proximity.”

  His family look at him, bewildered.

  “Synergist perk,” he says. “Sorry, Everton, I’m not trying to–”

  “Can you move away?” I say, irritated by my own embarrassment. I hate feeling like a sideshow freak. “You’re distracting me.”

  He pushes up from the couch, taking up my sentry post at the window. He lifts his hand. “I’ll be good.”

  “This is creepy.” Kitty shivers. “Like being at a seance.”

  Barb’s eyes widen. “It really is.”

  “Sorry,” I say to Leonard. “Can we try again?”

  He draws a deep breath, as though about to plunge under water, and closes his eyes. This time colour bursts in my mind and sensation sweeps over me, shocking in detail and intensity. His hands, my hands on Miriam. The heat of her mouth. I have to fight my way out of it, almost falling off the couch.

  My cheeks flame.

  I scramble to my feet.

  Leonard jerks back. “You … you saw something?”

  “You didn’t?” I pant, my hand pressed to my chest, pain stabbing my arm.

  “No,” Leonard says. “Nothing.”

  I see truth in his eyes, but the impact of the KMH has me reeling. I look to Jamie who stands frozen, colour draining from his face. “You can Harvest from a civ.” He turns his back, bracing his hands on the window frame, lowering his head. “That’s twice I nearly killed the wrong person.”

  Leonard goes to him.

  Kitty covers her face. “Oh, shit … then it’s Aiden.”

  I fumble for my phone, texting rapid fire to Miriam that things have changed and it might not be Richard and hit send. Please check your phone.

  I grind my fingers into my temple then go to Kitty. I kneel in front of her seat. “Kit, listen.” I detach her hand from her face, bringing it down between mine. “It still might be Richard. Jamie says he was strung-out and acting crazy when he tracked him home. I’m just not a hundred per cent.”

  She shakes her head, tears streaming.

  “Maybe someone else was waiting for us to leave the governor’s office?” But I feel the emptiness of my words and grit my teeth.

  Miriam, please, I need you.

  “Listen to me, Kitty.” I try to sound as brisk and authoritative as my aunt does under pressure. “It was always going to be someone, a person, not some shadow monster. And let’s face it, it was likely to be someone you knew. I hope it’s not Aiden. Really, with all that’s in me, I hope it’s not, but you’re right, the evidence against him for timing and location … it’s not good.”

  She doesn’t stop crying.

  I stand there, feeling totally useless. “I’m going to try Miriam again.”

  I walk out into the foyer, away from the sound of Barb murmuring to her daughter and Leonard speaking softly to his son, a father’s comfort. I sit on the bottom step of the staircase and look up at the chandelier and try to imagine my mother sitting beside me, her arms around me, promising things will work out in the end. The image barely forms, an insubstantial mist that leaves me cold. Someone will die. I shake my head, dig my phone from my pocket and hit redial. It goes straight to Miriam’s voicemail. “Where are you?” I lean, elbows on knees, hand in my hair. “Come home. I need you.”

  Thunder rumbles over the house, a deep rolling growl. The front door clicks and Miriam slips in, hair plastered to her face, jogging gear slicked to her body. Relief and anxiety make my legs shaky as I rise to meet her. Miriam leans against the door, drawing ragged breaths, desolate eyes, sheet-white face. “It’s not Richard.”

  I stop on the rug, uncertain whether to touch her. “So, you got my message? Where have you been? I Harvested from Leonard.”

  The last part breaks her trance. “That’s not possible.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I say, confused. “You didn’t get my message?”

  She covers her mouth then slides her hand up to her eyes, water dripping from her hair down her forehead.

  “What’s going on?” Jamie and the rest of the Gallaghers gather in the entrance to the living room.

  “Where have you been?” Barb says.

  “I needed to think.” Miriam pushes past me towards the stairs. “I couldn’t think clearly. I needed to check … with Sullivan.”

  “You’ve spoken to the doctor?” Jamie joins me beneath the chandelier. “Where the hell is he?”

  Miriam leans on the end of the banister. “I need to talk to Evie.”

  “Wait. You know who it is?” Kitty breaks away from her mother to stand beside us. “It’s Aiden, isn’t it? Doctor Sullivan told you.”

  “I told him.”

  “What?” We all seem to say it together.

  Miriam sinks on the step. “I need to talk to Evie. Alone.”

  I can feel myself recoiling. “You’re not making sense, Miriam. Just spit it out.”

  “Doctor Sullivan said he’d meet me here.”

  “But it is Aiden?” Impatience and frustration burn in my chest. “You’re telling me that Doctor Sullivan has evidence that proves it’s him?”

  “Yes.”

  “See!” Kitty’s voice is high, but the sound seems to reach me from a distance, my own seismic response consuming everything.

  Miriam’s “yes” triggers a shadow in my mind, and my breathing becomes short, sharp and shallow. I rub my face, squeeze my eyes and focus on the pull of the tether. Kitty alive beside me. Even through the internal storm, I kn
ow there’s no immediate threat; it’s simply a physiological reaction to the news.

  Aiden.

  I try to think straight for a minute.

  Aiden.

  I fight my way to the niggling feeling in the back.

  Aiden.

  It shocks me to find I can feel anything beyond the feral burn of my instinct, but it’s in there – the small piece of rational me not quite swallowed by the Fixation Effect. The sense of regret.

  “Damn it.”

  In a flashflood of memory, I see all my suspicions confirmed: Aiden’s tension, the white knuckles, the agitation, the shadowed eyes. It makes me ashamed, how willing I was to cast Richard as the villain – not for Richard’s sake but for the lapse in my duty to Kitty. Am I so unreliable? Is my frequency so weak that I can’t even discern friend from foe? My failings crash in on me and I ball my fists, appalled at myself. He’s come so close, time and again.

  Kitty whimpers. “He saved Kaylee.”

  “He’s a killer,” Jamie says, a compassionless monotone. “You can’t fight DNA.”

  “You told Sullivan?” I say to Miriam. “How did you know?”

  “I guessed at the governor’s office.”

  “That’s why you freaked out?” I gape at her. “Why didn’t you say? You know what nearly happened?”

  “I didn’t know Jamie would go after Richard. I wasn’t completely sure …”

  “You sensed something?” Jamie says.

  “I recognised him,” she says. “Look, Evie–”

  “How?” My ears pop and roar. “You know him?”

  Miriam unzips her windbreaker and digs inside, pulling out a rolled-up sheaf of paper, dog-eared and faded to yellow. Her hands shake as she flattens it out. I try to see what’s written on the top sheet. It looks like an official document: heavy paper, a governmental stamp and date marks. “He’s my son.”

  The high-pitched hum builds in my head, making me nauseated. I stare blankly at the paper. “What?”

  “I have birth certificates.” She holds them out.

  “A child?” Barb, her voice weak as a wisp.

  “Twins.” Miriam looks up at me. “I adopted the boy out and April took you.”