Fate

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Punish.

  Punish.

  And then, Justice.

  Justice?I thought. Seriously? They thought this was justice? I thought of every pointed stare and whispered word and completely unsubtle giggle from girls who laughed at me and not with me, and still I couldn't wrap my mind around it.

  Jessica had snakes on her head. Snakes. On her head.

  “Make it stop,” Alec whispered beside me. I wanted, more than anything, to comply, even though he seemed to be talking to himself more than to me, his words a plea against the twisted horror of what we were witnessing. I felt for him and wondered what it would be like to watch this from the perspective of someone who couldn't see what I could, someone who saw the outcome but not the shadows. All he could do was watch and whisper. I was the one with powers. I was the one who could do something. I toyed with the idea of using my pyrokinesis to set the snakes on fire, but I wasn't sure how Jessica's head would fare with the flames. Thinking of my alarm clock that morning, I decided not to risk it.

  “Stop,” Alec said again, and this time, his whisper seemed to be the magic word. The snakes disappeared. The shadows quivered and became just shadows once more, and the voices in my head returned only long enough to issue one final warning.

  Stay away from him, or next time, we'll be punishing you.

  The bell did ring then, but I barely heard it over Jessica's continued shrieking. When the snakes disappeared, they'd left her bald again, and I had a feeling she wouldn't stop screaming for a very, very long time.

  “Let's get out of here,” Alec said.

  I looked back toward Jessica and considered approaching her, trying to comfort her in some way, but decided against it. Instead, I sent a soothing psychic command in her direction. Stop screaming. You're okay. You won't remember what happened. You feel safe. You're okay. I repeated those sentiments a few times, and then Jessica stopped screaming, letting me know that my mind-control powers were—if anything—stronger than ever.

  At this rate, I thought, I'd better hope that they're really strong.

  Making Jessica forget what happened wasn't enough. Real damage control would involve mind melding everyone in my class—and everyone they'd told about what happened.

  “Bailey, let's go,” Alec said again.

  I sighed, and started my massive memory-rewriting attempt with him. I didn't try to hear his thoughts and tried to keep mine out of his head as best I could, but I sent the compulsion to forget toward him. His mind felt cold to my mind's psychic touch, like a wet wall, slippery and slick. For a second, I wondered if my attempts had failed, but then Alec screwed up his forehead and asked, “What's going on? Did the bell ring? Where did everyone else go? And what happened to him?”

  Following Alec's gaze, I turned toward the teacher, who'd just recovered consciousness. I couldn't help but marvel at the convenient timing of that one—he passed out at the first sign of trouble and woke up just as I started cleaning it up.

  “He got sleepy,” I said, answering Alec's question with what was, quite possibly, the worst cover story of all time. Then I went to work on my teacher's memory. Compared to Alec, he was a snap.

  “Is class over?” Alec asked again.

  I nodded, feeling more than a little guilty for messing with his memory and more than a little headachy, because I really wasn't accustomed to using this particular power to this degree.

  “Class is over,” I told Alec, content that at least he, Jessica, and the physics teacher wouldn't remember what had gone on in this classroom. “Let's get out of here.” I really didn't want to be around when Jessica rediscovered that she was bald. I also didn't want Alec to look at Jessica—half because he'd probably give away the game by asking me what had happened to her hair, and half because I didn't want to have to make up an answer to that question just yet.

  Luckily, Alec and I managed to make a quick exit, and he didn't so much as glance at Jessica. When we stepped into the hallway, I half-expected Alec to ask me what had just happened in there, even though he gave every appearance of not having even the smallest clue that anything had happened. Some small, niggling part of me just kept whispering that—altered memories aside—maybe I should be the one asking him questions. Looking at Alec, I couldn't believe that he was somehow at the center of anything, but the voices in my head had warned me to stay away from him. He'd known what my tattoo meant. He was important.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, and I realized he was shaking, just a little.

  I nodded. “I'm fine,” I said. “Are you okay?” I paused, measuring his response as if I expected it to tell me everything I needed to know.

  “If you're okay, I'm okay,” he said. “I think” He looked so utterly confused as to why he might not be okay, and whether or not there was a reason why he might feel mildly disturbed that I felt a smidgen of guilt. Playing with people's minds wasn't something I enjoyed doing. My own guilt, along with the hesitance in Alec's voice, and the way he looked at me, made me push down any questions lurking in the corners of my mind about whether or not he knew more than he was letting on. He just wasn't the kind of guy who hid things: not his own nervousness, not that whether or not I was okay was important to him, not the fact that he'd known what my tattoo meant. His whispers in the room had been just that: whispers. The two of us stood in the hallway, looking at each other, and I felt a second twist of guilt somewhere in my abdomen. After what had just happened in physics class, I had no right to be standing here, thinking about how he was kind of adorable, when something Otherworldly had just attacked one of the most popular girls in my grade in a very personal and sinister way.

  “OMG. How cute are the two of you? I swear!”

  Either I was in a complete daze or Delia was having a particularly good day when it came to stealth, because I didn't see her coming down the hallway until she was standing right next to me, sounding way perkier than usual. I recognized her tone of voice: it was the one she used for flirting with boys … or flirting with boys on my behalf.

  “Hey, Delia,” I said, prepping myself to tell her that now might not be the best time to move on her Geek Watch plan. After what I'd seen, after what had happened to Jessica …

  “So, Alec, are you free right now?” Delia didn't give me a chance to call the plan to a halt. She just proceeded, like the Titanic barreling toward an iceberg.

  “Free?” Alec repeated. “Right now?”

  I wondered what he was thinking, but held back. Thou shalt not mind-read thy love interest was the most important psychic commandment I'd come up with in the past few years, and I wasn't going to break it, especially not with Alec, who was shy enough that poking around in his mind would feel like an incredible violation of his privacy. I'd messed with his head enough as it was—I wasn't going to make things worse by probing his thoughts for a clue about his feelings toward me, even though I really wanted to.

  “You are free right now?” Delia asked, as if Alec had responded in the affirmative to her first question. “Good.” She clapped her hands together in a display of unholy glee. “Bailey's free right now too.” She shoved the two of us together. “You two crazy kids have fun.”

  Delia, I said psychically, you don't understand. Something just happened. I have to take care of it.

  My friend's response was immediate. Jessica Moore. Bald. Snakes on her head. I got the memo.

  I actually felt my jaw drop a little. In the past few minutes, the hallway around us had gone from eerily quiet in the wake of the snake incident to absolutely vibrating with varying degrees of hysteria. There was crying. Yelling. Lots of talking. I'd assumed that Delia hadn't heard about the snake incident— partly because it had just happened, but also because she wasn't reacting in the way I would have expected her to.

  You know? I asked.

  Natch, she replied. I mean, hello, gossip mill, founding member, right here.

  I tried to reconcile myself to the fact that Delia knew about the snakes but wasn't freaked out in the least. In a sic
k way, it made sense. Everyone had their priorities. Snakes and the supernatural weren't Delia's. Right now, boys and my love life were.

  Look, Bay, Annabelle's already on her way to Zo's house to work on figuring out who was behind the hair thing, and I'll put together a ‘bald is beautiful’ trend book or something tonight. We're all doing our part here. Yours is the cute boy—he might have information, remember?.

  Bits and pieces of other people's thoughts made their way into my head with Delia's mental words, and I reminded myself that my part in all of this wasn't just pumping “the cute boy” for information. The snake news was spreading like wildfire, and I had to get a handle on things before it was too late—if it wasn't already.

  Ignoring Delia and Alec, I took one deep breath and opened my mind to everything around me. I concentrated on a single image, a single thought—the snakes—and let the thoughts that matched up to that image come to me. It was everywhere. Everyone was thinking about it, everyone was talking about it.

  Going into an altered state of being that resembled Fate Bailey so much it disturbed me, I pulled that thought toward me, applying so much mental pressure that I yanked it out of everyone else's mind and into my own. I let my mind venture farther and farther—outside of the school, miles away, searching for more, pulling thought after thought out of foreign minds and into my own. For one terrifying moment, all I could see or think about was snakes, but then, like the person I was in the Nexus weaving life, I pulled the thought apart, into tiny, threadlike pieces, and it crumpled to dust.

  All around me, the hallway went from an atypical, supercharged buzzing to a rather confused calm, and then the buzzing started up again, but this time it was regular gossip feeding the rumor mill.

  “You okay?” Alec asked me. “You look kind of pale. Not that you don't look nice pale. I mean … not that I'm trying to say you look nice, but you do, and …”

  Ah-dorable, Delia told me silently. Also, is it me or did everyone just stop talking about the snake thing?.

  Even though I hadn't meant to leave the thought in Delia's head, and even though I'd torn it out of everyone else's (except, I would have been willing to bet, for A-belle's and Zo's), it didn't surprise me that even in a trance, I wouldn't have messed with my friends' brains that way.

  There were some lines you just didn't cross. Mind-melding a friend as a joke and letting them know you were doing it was one thing. Taking their memories was completely another.

  That thought led me back to feeling bad for messing with Alec's mind again, and about then, I realized that I should probably say something in response to his (almost) saying that he liked the way I looked.

  “Thanks,” I said. “For saying I look nice. Not that you said I look nice, but …”

  Delia didn't comment on whether or not my babbling was as adorable as Alec's. Instead she gave me very explicit instructions.

  Zo's going to follow you and your boy—discreetly, of course—in case something else happens and you guys need some muscle. In times of crisis, it's important to keep a clear head.

  Zo versus Evil Fairies, part two. I couldn't wait to see how that one turned out. Not.

  And I'll be close by too, Delia continued. For advice, emotional support, etc, etc.

  “Do you … ummm … want to?” Alec finally worked up the courage to ask. “You know, what your friend was saying before, about us both being free. Do you … ummm … want to go someplace?”

  “She'd love to,” Delia said. Her words left Alec hanging, so I agreed. I couldn't not, and as Delia had pointed out, as weird as this was, we did need more information, and Alec was somehow involved in what was going on—even if he didn't know it. Besides, after the psychic trick I'd just pulled, I deserved it.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “Yeah.”

  Alec smiled, like I'd just recited poetry. I wondered if the happy, dizzy feeling that had taken up residence in my entire body was the result of Alec's smile or if it was because I'd used way more power than my earthly body was probably meant to use.

  “Okay. Yeah.” Alec repeated my words with no small measure of awe in his voice.

  I am so good, Delia congratulated herself silently, and then flounced off, expertly navigating around the everyday chaos, completely and freakishly unfreaked, even though she—unlike my slightly amnesiac classmates—had every reason to be creeped out by the day's happenings.

  “She's …” Alec started the sentence but wasn't sure how to finish it. I obliged by adding the perfect word.

  “She's Delia,” I said, and, I thought, It's going to take a lot more than snakes and vicious Otherworlders to knock her off her game.

  Before I knew it, Alec and I were walking out of the school together, hand in hand, neither one of us entirely sure how this “date” had come about.

  I didn't know what to expect out of my “date” with Alec. We'd spoken for the first time less than thirty-six hours earlier, and if Delia hadn't been on a geek kick, I might not have even noticed how absolutely adorable he was. Add to that the fact that the sum total of our interactions included falling out of our chairs in study hall and witnessing some kind of utterly bizarre mystical attack in physics class (which he didn't even remember), and my mind couldn't find a next logical step.

  Not that logic had ever been my forte.

  For that matter, stepping wasn't really my strong point either. I proved this as I stepped out of my car. My ankle twisted beneath me, but I managed to regain my balance. “Walk it off,” I mumbled under my breath.

  To my great relief, Alec didn't say, “Walk what off?” There were definite benefits to hanging out with someone who really got what it was like to be a teensy bit clumsy. Then again, other than asking me if I could drive because he didn't have a car, and he knew that sounded lame, but he'd give me directions, because he knew this great place, Alec hadn't said much. I wondered if he was thinking about the “nap” our physics teacher had taken during class, or the way Delia had bulldozed us into this date. Then I wondered if he was thinking about me—even a little bit.

  My mind flitted to James then. I'd only met him once, but we'd talked a lot more than Alec and I had, and with James, I'd felt like everything was funny, even the fact that I was probably the least perfect person to ever set foot on Otherworldly soil. James was laughter. Alec was shy smiles.

  Why couldn't I have both of them? And really, why did I want them both so badly, when I barely knew either of them at all?

  “It's just a little walk from here,” Alec said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “I think you'll like it.”

  I didn't ask what “it” was. I probably should have, given the fact that there was a distinct chance that Alec had somehow stumbled across something that had brought him to the attention of the Sidhe. I couldn't imagine what he could have found, or what knowledge he could have gleaned, that would have made him so important to the beings that had warned me away from him.

  The same beings, coincidentally enough, who'd turned Jessica into an unwilling high school Medusa.

  “Ummm … where did you say we were going again?” I asked as I followed him through a park I'd been to before, up to the edge of a forest I hadn't. I couldn't help thinking that the mental interlopers had promised me similar “punishment” if I didn't stay away from Alec. For our first date, I was hoping for somewhere well lit and open, where we could be seen by dozens of people and there were no shadows.

  That wasn't too much to ask for, was it?

  “It's just this place,” Alec said. “It's really pretty.” He paused and gave me that trademark shy smile. “It reminds me of you.”

  Awwwww, I thought.

  Keep all awwwww's to yourself, Zo grumbled. I knew she'd been following us for a while and, as a side effect of keeping my mind open to her thoughts and Delia's, that there was a risk that some of my thoughts would travel in the other direction. Apparently, my awwwww had been one of those.

  Where is Geek Boy taking you, Bay?

  Somehow, I di
dn't think that “someplace pretty” would satisfy Zo's curiosity. I may have been Alec's “bodyguard,” but Zo was mine, and she took protecting me very seriously. Following a guy who I knew to be at the center of some kind of Sidhe something-or-other into the woods probably wasn't my smartest move ever. But, hey, it's not like it was my idea.

  “I can't believe you're here,” Alec said as we stepped into the woods and started walking down a small stone path. I felt distinctly uncomfortable at the number of shadows all around us—to the point that I was ready to set them on fire with very little provocation. Thus far, however, I hadn't heard even a hint of a voice, hadn't felt or seen anything out of the ordinary, other than the gentle tug of attraction that made me want to tousle Alec's hair.

  And maybe bury my hands in it for a while.

  I can't believe I'm here either, I thought.

  That makes three of us, Zo told me. Somehow, I don't think this is what Delia was picturing when she set the two of you up. Dee's idea of a “date” usually includes food or a movie.

  Luckily, Delia couldn't hear Zo the way I could, or I would have gotten a lecture on dating right then and there. Up to this point, Delia had been pretty quiet, waiting patiently for me to psychically send her any questions I might have about flirting or mussy hair or the seduction of geeks.

  “There,” Alec said. It took me a second to figure out that he was pointing toward a clearing. As we walked closer, our steps in rhythm except when one of us stumbled over a lump of grass, a rock, or nothing, I saw what Alec was really pointing to.

  A bridge.

  He looked at me, gauging my response, and I looked at him, wondering what my response was supposed to be. The grass was green here, and there was a small creek with surprisingly clear water running underneath the bridge. A weeping willow on the bank put half of the bridge in the shade, and the other side, covered in sunlight, looked downright cozy. It looked like the kind of place Delia, Zo, and I would have gone when we were little. I imagined dangling my legs over the edge of the bridge as Zo tightrope-walked along the railing and Delia co-opted the nearby flower blossoms as hair accessories.