by Wendy Knight
“I want to see Ember’s new baby,” Ari said as they ambled along the road.
Washington was wet enough that the road was rarely dusty. Ari waved at a few kids, all three shrieking as they raced through sprinklers. “Hi Ari!” they squealed before darting back into the water.
“Knock knock. Are you napping?” Will whispered as he stuck his head through Ward’s door. Ari stood back, hesitating.
“No Will. Come on in. Is Ari with you? I heard she was in town,” a voice called, and Will opened the door wider.
“Yeah, she came to see the baby.” Ari followed him in.
“Ari girl! It’s been too long!” Ward enveloped her in a bear hug as soon as she crossed the threshold.
“Ari! I’ve missed you!” Ember cried, shoving Ward away and handing the small pink bundle to Will so she could hug Ari too.
“Wow. You get more gorgeous every time we see you. Look at her, Ward!” Ember exclaimed.
Ward grinned, an infectious grin that lit up the whole room. “Nah, she’s still just a bratty little kid with messy hair.” He tugged on her curls.
“Thank you. I’m planning on never growing up.” Ari edged closer to the baby. “She is beautiful! Can I hold her?” she pleaded as she peeked in the blanket at the angelic face.
“Of course! Will, share with your sister!” Ember teased. Ari carefully took the baby and snuggled her close to her chest. A light knock on the door, and Dani peered around the corner. “I heard Ari’s here — Ari!” She burst into the room and threw her arms around Ari, baby and all. “The rest of the colony is coming too. I just beat them here,” Dani said as she squeezed Ari’s shoulder.
“I’m so glad. I’ve missed them,” Ari said with her heart in her throat.
****
Two hours later, she forced herself to part with the baby and the Renegades and go back to Will’s. Will went to his computer to check something; Ari followed him in, dragging her feet. "I need to get back to school. I can jump back through the portal and pick up your mail and some pizza first though."
Will cleared his throat, glancing at her and then back at his computer screen, and Ari resisted the urge to groan. "Ari, I can protect you here. When you're here I'm doing my job." He pushed his chair back from his computer and stretched his arms behind his head. Out-of-the-blue but not unexpected. They had this conversation a lot.
She just shook her head at him and walked out, snatching up her cell phone. "Find me the number for the pizza place nearest the airport. And did you forward your mail to a PO Box by my school?"
She could hear him typing as she came back in. He turned the screen so she could see the phone number. She had several missed calls and texts, but she didn't want to check them. Her other life could wait.
"Yeah. I've got as much as I can coming electronically, but some people just won't get into the technological age." He shook his head in disgust, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
She grinned. "I'll be right back." The saldepement still sparkled in the living room, waiting to be lit. It was dangerous leaving the saldepement spell burning, but otherwise she would have no way to get back. And she always hid her end of the doorway with painstaking care.
"Be safe," Will called as she touched a spark to the portal. It shimmered and widened, allowing her through.
"Always," she said as it closed behind her.
After she dropped off the pizza and his mail, she headed back to school, a little bit healed, both emotionally and physically. Will had pouted for a minute, but it was a battle he knew he would lose, so he didn't try very hard.
When Ari had been born and they realized she was the Prodigy, Will had been named her Guard. In the seer's original vision, she had said each Prodigy had a Guard, one whose power nearly equaled the Prodigy's. It was obvious to everyone that Will was hers.
Ari swerved to avoid a deranged deer darting across the road, swearing under her breath, but her thoughts traveled back to Will. When he had left, he tried to take her with him. He thought the seer was crazy. He thought the vision and the prophesy were crazy. But Richard had stopped Will and banished him from the estate. Then, her grandfather had brainwashed Ari and sent her to kill her brother.
Now, it frustrated Will to no end that he couldn't protect her. He couldn't re-enter the war and fight at her side; the Edrens would kill him before the Carules did. In an attempt to protect her however he could, he invented her shroud, but it wasn't enough. For him, anyway. Ari thought the whole idea of the Prodigy, who was supposed to be undefeatable by anyone but the other Prodigy, was ridiculous. She did not need a protector. As the events of the previous weekend have illustrated, she thought with an unladylike snort, having anyone to 'protect' me just gets everyone in trouble.
Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, vibrating on the passenger seat, but it was a text and it was common knowledge that it’s stupid to text and drive. She didn't answer it, just turned her attention back to the road and tried her best to avoid killing any suicidal wildlife.
Chapter Nine
"Well, she isn't answering calls or texts. I don't know what happened to her." Charity plunked herself down next to Shane on the sidelines. "Aren't you guys playing?" She innocently batted her eyes.
Shane glanced over at her with a frown, twiddling grass between his fingers. "Nah. Apparently not." His blue gaze swept the football field where the guys were all standing around, arguing over teams.
Charity had told them the football game wasn't going to happen, so Hunter hadn't bothered showing up at all. Shane had come, hoping Charity was wrong.
"You let one girl play one time, and the team is lost for eternity." Shane flopped back into the grass with a dramatic sigh. Charity smiled.
He was trying to shake his horrible mood. Between Ari's sudden absence and the attack over the weekend, he was fighting a losing battle. No matter how many times he reminded himself that attacks were a way of life for the Carules, and this one wasn’t any different, or how many times he told himself Ari would come back, he couldn’t shake the rotten mood he was in. Ari has to come back, he thought.
"Oh hey, I was supposed to tell you without actually telling you that Chloe wants you to ask her out and there's some big movie release this weekend that you could take her to. I think she thinks we're friends." Charity squinted at the sky in an attempt to appear nonchalant.
The players were still arguing, but a few of them were giving up and heading back to the dorms. The sky was overcast and a breeze was picking up, making it a little chilly. "I hate it when they use you to get to me. Why doesn't she just ask me herself instead of pretending to be your friend?" he grumbled. His eyes widened and he jerked himself up. "Charity. I'm sorry. That came out all wrong." He almost fell over sideways in his haste to apologize.
"It's okay Shane. I know what you meant. And yeah, most of them just pretend to be my friend to get to you. I'm used to it."
"That's why you hang out with us, girl!" Nev appeared at her side out of nowhere.
"Yeah. No offense, Shane, but we don't 'like' you like you. We just like you," Livi piped in, popping up on Charity’s other side.
"Yep. I don't do trendy." Nev clucked her tongue like the word left a bad taste in her mouth. Shane started to laugh.
“I haven’t heard you laugh for four days.” Charity sighed with relief before turning to Nev and Livi. "Have either of you heard from Ari?"
"Nope. Not answering any of my texts and her phone goes straight to voicemail." Livi’s smile died on her face. She plopped down next to Shane, sitting cross-legged and pulling out strands of grass.
"She must be in an area that doesn't have service. I know she's not screening us!" Nev threw her arms around to emphasize her point. Shane caught Charity trying to hide a smile. It was no wonder that Nev was their favorite dramatic person in the world.
****
Ari dropped her keys off at the front desk and lugged her bag up the stairs to her room. She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that the room was e
mpty. Brittany was, thankfully, not there, but on her desk was a stack of papers with a bright blue sticky note attached. "Your homework," it said, with a smiley face next to it. She thumbed through it, attempted not to smile, and failed. Someone had gone to all her classes to get her homework. That was new.
She dropped her bag on her bed and sat down at her desk to get started. No sense putting it off, she thought as she stared at the annoying yellow walls for a while. It took a minute before she realized why she wasn't working. She wanted to do her homework with her friends, not by herself in her room. "What's wrong with you?" she said and groaned out loud to the empty room. If she went running to do homework with them, she would listen to them complain about lame weekends and bad dates and everything normal that she would never have. She would realize that they hadn’t missed her at all, probably hadn’t even noticed she was gone. And it would hurt, no matter how much she tried to pretend it didn’t.
So she wasn't going.
But… a grin split her face. Their history project was due on Wednesday. She should go see what she could do to help get it done, just to be a good team member. Still smiling, she stuffed her homework in her backpack and forced herself not to skip on her way out the door. She knew she was going to get hurt, without a doubt, but somehow, right then it didn't matter.
"Hey, Hunter," she said, her voice soft in the quiet of the library. It was empty, for the most part, since most of the kids worked in the commons. But she had gone there first and none of her friends had been there, so she had wandered over here. And found Hunter, all by himself.
Hunter was sitting at an empty table in the back corner, his head propped up on his hand, an open book in front of him and his face a mask of boredom. He looked up in surprise. "Ari," he said with a nod. "Where ya been?" He pushed an empty chair out with his foot.
"Family emergency," she said, dropping her bag on the table and taking the chair.
"Charity's half driven herself crazy worrying about you. Don't you ever answer your phone?" He sat back in his chair to study her, hands folded behind his head. He wore his light brown hair cut much shorter than Shane's, so it never fell recklessly across his forehead like Shane's did.
She raised her eyebrows. "No. Not when I'm with my family. They're insane," she said before she could help herself.
"Ah. I know how you feel," he drawled, a quirk teasing the side of his mouth as he dug his cell phone out of his pocket and started typing.
She breathed a sigh of relief when he didn't ask her anything else. "Where's everybody? I thought you always do homework together," she said after she had unpacked her books and spread them all over the table in front of her.
"On their way here, I would guess." He flipped his phone around so she could see the text. Found her.
She smiled. "I'm not used to being missed."
"Yeah well, that's what Charity does. She makes friends, and then she misses them when they’re gone. I assumed it was a girl thing. Nev and Livi were doing it too.”
Ari smirked. "Sorry for the trouble."
He just shook his head, but a smile tugged at the corners of his lips.
"So how's our history project going?" she asked.
"We uh… kinda had a bad weekend… so we haven't worked on it. Good thing you came back when you did, huh?" The smile expanded to a half-grin. That half-grin was usually all Ari got, but she was okay with that.
A squeal shook the room, and Ari and Hunter both looked up, alarmed. "Ari! Good grief do you know how many times we tried to call you?" Livi stood in the library doorway, bouncing on her toes, unable to contain herself. Ari couldn't help it and her face split in a wide grin. Everyone in the room turned to look at them as Livi barreled over, Nev right behind her, both of them chastising Ari every step of the way.
And then Charity and Shane rounded the corner. Ari's breath caught in her throat as time slowed and her eyes followed their approach, trying to memorize every detail and store it for later. Shane’s eyes immediately found hers across the library, and he absently pushed a strand of dark hair away from his forehead. Charity’s face lit up at the sight of Ari sitting at the table.
Ari realized she had missed them. A lot. How did this happen? She thought, blinking rapidly to hide her surprise.
"We were worried about you," Shane said with a quiet smile when he got to the table.
"Sorry… I—“
"She didn't think anyone noticed she was gone," Hunter interrupted, leaning back on his chair.
"Good grief. We barely functioned all weekend." Nev rolled her eyes.
Ari's grin broadened. "Really?" she asked without thinking.
"Really," Shane said. His face was serious, still holding her gaze. She stopped breathing completely.
"Yes, really. You run off in a panic and then we don't hear from you all weekend. We were thinking all kinds of terrible things had happened." Nev threw her arms up in exasperation. Ari turned to her, struggling to resume breathing normally.
"I'm sorry. I am. But… just to warn you… this happens a lot. My family is dysfunctional. I'm the only normal one," she said with a mischievous smirk. "Oh, my brother Will said he would be happy to look at your computer," she continued to Charity, expertly changing the subject from her abrupt disappearance.
"That would be so awesome. I'm lost without my computer. Sharing Shane’s and Hunter's sucks."
"What's wrong with our computers? They work fine." Hunter sat forward to glare at her.
"Nothing. It's just… boring. Your wallpaper is some yellow and black football thing and Shane's is blank since his latest relationship went south.” Shane glowered at Charity, too.
"You like Pittsburgh’s football team?" Ari asked Hunter, trying not to laugh at Shane. Ari might be new, but she wasn’t deaf. She knew all about Shane’s constant string of girlfriends.
"Favorite team."
"Me too. Love them," Ari said.
"Wonders never cease. We actually have something in common." Hunter rubbed his chin with a wicked grin.
"Yeah. Imagine that." Shane frowned, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
Charity looked up at him, saw the look on his face, and cleared her throat. "So we've got a project due. Should we get started?"
"Yeah. Having your book with you might be helpful." Hunter pointed a pencil at her empty arms with a sardonic raise of his eyebrow.
"I'll walk back with you. I gotta get my homework too," Nev said.
"I'll come too. I forgot… well nothing. I'll come anyway." Ari jumped out of her chair, inexplicably excited to work on homework.
Charity linked her arm through Ari's on one side and Nev's on the other. "Liv? You comin'?" Nev asked over her shoulder.
"What? I've got both these guys all to myself. You think I'm going anywhere?" She giggled and plopped down on Hunter's lap. Hunter laughed in surprise.
"Why's Hunter getting all the fun?" Shane scooped her up and spun away. Livi's girlish laughter sparkled through the room.
"You guys are gonna get kicked out of the library," Nev said over her shoulder in mock disgust as she sauntered out.
"You okay? You look exhausted," Charity said once they were outside walking across the lawns.
Nev looked up, studying her face. Ari felt it turn red and then felt it turn redder when she realized she was blushing.
"Well, now ya don't." Nev bumped Ari with her shoulder as they walked.
Ari sucked in a deep breath and tipped her head back, letting the evening sun warm her face, feeling her heart heal, just a little.
"It was a rough weekend. That's just how things go with my family," she said.
"How come?" Nev picked her way through a crowd of younger girls. They stared at Ari. She ignored them.
"Ugh. I'd rather not talk about it. No offense… I'm just… trying to forget it," Ari apologized. She didn't have to pick her way through crowds. They always got out of her way. Whether it was because she was so tall or because she looked menacing or because they instinctively knew th
e powerful killer she was, they got out of her way.
Charity nodded. "Of course. I totally understand." She blew out a breath in agreement.
"Well, I'll tell you about my weekend then. Guess what I did? Just guess," Nev said, tugging open the door to the dorm and walking backward to look at them as she went in.
"Went to a movie?" Ari asked slowly.
"Went on a date?" Charity asked at the same time.
"No. I did homework. What a blast, huh?" Nev said, and laughed like the whole thing was hysterical.
Ari and Charity exchanged amused looks. "Nev, you're going to trip over the stairs. Turn around," Charity said.
Nev turned, just in time. "Ya see what happens when everyone disappears on me? My groove is thrown off and I trip going up the stairs," she complained, taking the stairs two at a time. Ari followed her, also taking them two at a time. Charity came up slower, but her room was near the stairs and Nev's was at the end of the hall. Nev slung her white designer bag over her shoulder as they got back to Charity’s door. She was just coming back out.
"History project, here we come." Charity sighed, looping arms with Ari and Nev again as they took the stairs down together.
Chapter Ten
Hunter was hauling Ari up off her butt after a particularly rough tackle when Nev and Livi came crashing through the crowd, shoving their way through the bunch of dirty, smelly boys. And Ari, of course.
The boys let Ari play every week now, although some of them had been reluctant at first. Until they all realized I’m better than most of them, she thought with a smirk. Then they got over it. Or at least, they pretend to when Hunter’s glaring at them. The thought made her smile.
“We’re going to the outlet malls!” Livi squealed as Nev looped her arm through Ari’s.
“Go get cleaned up. We need to go shopping.”
Ari frowned. “We do?” She could see Charity standing at the sidelines, smiling. Charity didn’t smirk, but the look she had on her face was pretty close, leading Ari to believe that somehow Charity knew exactly how the conversation was going.
