Steel Lily (The Periodic Series)

by Megan Curd

  With that thought firmly lodged in my brain, I turned the handle.

  Jaxon sat with his back against the wall and legs sprawled out across my bed. My pillows were to his side with one on his lap and on that sat my sketchbook. Open.

  I died a little.

  “What are you doing?”

  He lifted the sketchbook. “Learning more about you.”

  He stuck his hand into my messenger bag. It lay unbuckled, the contents spilling onto the bed beside him. He rifled through the bag, then pulled out the metal blob of my mother’s teapot.

  “What is this exactly, and why would you keep it with you? Seems a bit strange, unless you’re planning to form it into a weapon with your extraordinary abilities. If that’s your plan, please refrain from killing me with it. I’ve always hoped I’d die in a blaze of glory. Death by crazy girl wasn’t really on my top ten.”

  “You. Are. Such. An. Ass!” I stomped across the room, all the while feeling the burn of unwanted tears welling in my eyes. “Are you even aware that the people around you might feel something? Might have emotions or secrets that aren’t yours to pull apart and pry into? Or is that something your dear old dad didn’t teach you?”

  I snatched the steel orb and turned my back on him as I tried to rein in my emotions. I couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—let him see me upset. Wouldn’t let him know how much his invasion of my privacy cut me to the core.

  He was silent. That was a first. I counted my breaths to slow them down. My heart pounded in my ears. The burn in my throat made it feel impossible to swallow. I held back the tears and hurt and turned to him.

  His eyes were downcast. He picked at his nails and actually seemed abashed.

  I bit my bottom lip, unsure what to do.

  He took a deep breath, and I watched his shoulders rise. His eyes met mine, and I saw uncharacteristic emotion displayed there—remorse. I hadn’t even known he was capable of it. “I really am an ass, but I’m trying…hard. You…you do things.”

  I laughed spastically. “I do things?”

  “Yes, and I don’t like it.”

  “Well I’m sorry I can make snow and whatever else it is I’m capable of. I didn’t mean to offend you by being a freak show.”

  “You’re thick, you know that?” He gestured to the steel in my hand. “You didn’t answer my question about that.”

  A lump formed in my throat, and try as I might, it wouldn’t go away. I swallowed hard, battling back the tears on the verge of spilling over. “It was my mom’s.”

  “Your mom carried a lump of steel around, too?”

  “No, it was a teapot.”

  “Was being the defining word?” He took the lump from my hand. His thumb slid over the bumps where air had been trapped from it cooling so quickly. His eyes met mine, and for once they seemed gentle, soft, willing to listen.

  I was surprised.

  “What happened, Avery?” he whispered.

  “It happened the day before you came to my dome. A girl in my class wasn’t exactly appreciative of my abilities, and I sort of smarted off and made it worse. I turned around for a second, and when I looked back, the teapot was…this.” I flung an upset hand at the handful of metal.

  He was coaxing the story out of me with his suddenly benign demeanor. It was the first time I’d spoken about the event, and my tears finally betrayed me. He’d broken the wall I’d so carefully constructed around my heart in one fell swoop.

  “You’re right. You’re about as smooth as sandpaper,” he murmured as he pushed himself off the bed and came to stand in front of me.

  Close.

  Too close.

  Not close enough.

  He put a hand under my chin and lifted it, so I had no choice but to gaze into his deep blue eyes so full of life. I noticed the white flecks that speckled his irises. They looked like the ocean right before a storm.

  Gently, he spoke. “No one deserves to have their belongings vandalized.” A tear escaped, and his thumb wiped it away.

  “It was the only thing of my mother’s I had,” I said, my voice cracking.

  “Why don’t you have anything else that belonged to your parents?”

  The question brought an onslaught of tears. He pulled me to his chest, where his scent filled my nostrils. Warm cedar and clean soap mingled together to make a perfect symphony of fragrance.

  I inhaled deeply and recollected myself, forgetting who held me, who had his arms around me, arms that before now I wouldn’t have been caught dead in.

  “They…they were taken.”

  “What do you mean, taken?”

  His question brought an onslaught of images to my mind of the day my parents went missing. “I went to the market with Alice after begging them to let us go by ourselves. We were so proud we were on our own. After a couple hours, we came back, and my front door was knocked off its hinges. They were gone. The Polatzi pillaged everything from the house and put me in the orphanage.”

  He stiffened as he listened. “Oh my God. Do you know why they were taken? Or who took them?”

  “I don’t know why they were taken, but your father has them here. He proved it by calling my mother.”

  Silence. My face was buried in his warm chest, and I couldn’t tell if the heartbeat pounding in my ears was my own, his, or both and they’d become timed to one another.

  He tightened his grip. There was an edge to his embrace, and his voice carried some raw, new emotion I couldn’t quite pinpoint. “I am so, so sorry that my father is the man he is. We’ll get your parents back. Sari can find out where they are. Did they have abilities?”

  “Not that I know of.” I voiced all the frustration that had built up. “It doesn’t matter, though. I learned to make it on my own. Legs was there. Alice too. We’re like sisters.”

  Jaxon was quiet, contemplative in the silence between us. He picked me up in one smooth movement and carried me like a child to the chair by the door. His skin was soft, and his muscles flexed under my weight. With the utmost care, he sat me down and kneeled in front of me, his hands on my knees. He pointed over his shoulder and mouthed, “Camera,” but he didn’t seem to care about anyone hearing him.

  “You’re special,” he said, his eyes fervent, “and I highly doubt that was lost on your parents. Even my idiot father feels that way about you. We’ll find them, reunite you with them.”

  “I don’t know if I want to. What if they’re not the way I remember them?”

  “At least part of you wants to be with them, otherwise you wouldn’t carry a lump of steel around in your bag.”

  The reminder of his intrusion rekindled my anger. How had I dropped my guard and allowed him to get so much information? I barely knew him. “You shouldn’t have dug around in my bag. That’s private.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” He sounded like he meant it. “I needed to get to know you, and I knew you wouldn’t give me a shred of information without physical coercion.” His disconcerting smile blossomed across his face. “I don’t like to torture without a viable reason.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. Nothing was clear with him. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t have a viable reason to torture me.”

  Our eyes locked for a beat longer than they should have. I quickly looked away, but not before he became curious. “Say, do you mind me asking you about your eyes again? I’ve never seen anyone with two different-colored ones, and I highly doubt someone beat you into having two different eye colors.” He flashed an impish smile.

  It was hard to turn down his request. Hard, but not impossible.

  “I wasn’t born like this,” I said simply, pain laced in the words.

  “Really? What happened?”

  “The left one is a glass eye. Can’t see out of it.”

  “No way! It looks so real.”

  “Yeah, get closer and you can see the difference.”

  He leaned in, unable to help himself.

  I smacked him playfully between his eyes. “Gotcha!
”

  He laughed as he lost his balance and fell backwards, his hands bracing his fall. “You think you’re clever!”

  “Clever enough to fool you.”

  “Touché.” He sighed, then seemed to size me up. “You know, you’re kind of like a lily. A steel lily.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “Yeah. At least that’s how I meant it. I mean, you’re a girl; you’re this beautiful person inside and out, but you hide it. You’re hard, or that’s what you want people to think, anyway. That’s why I think you’re a steel lily. Hard and beautiful, intricate and unmoving. It’s the most puzzling thing I’ve ever seen or experienced. You’re…different.”

  After a couple minutes of avoiding his gaze, I stood and made a spectacle of stretching. “What time is it? I’m really tired.”

  He glanced at the watch on his wrist. “It’s one-thirty in the morning. You should probably get some rest. Big day tomorrow, eh?”

  “Big day.”

  Standing up, he glanced from the floor back to me. “I put one of my dad’s journals in your bag. Turnabout is fair play. Since you shared with me, I’ll share with you.”

  “Why your dad’s journal? I want to know about you.”

  He grimaced slightly. “Do you know what I wanted more than anything growing up? A dad. I’m jealous of you, Avery. You have a reason to not know your dad. He’s gone. Mine…mine is here, but he’s really not. I’d rather be in your situation.”

  “But what does that have to do with—”

  “I asked Xander about my dad. He found one of my dad’s old journals and asked if I really wanted to know him. I thought I did, but I was wrong. Every day I hoped that Riggs would be different, but Xander is the closest thing to a father I have. The journal will explain why.”

  He walked past me, and our shoulders brushed for the briefest of moments. I followed him out into the living room and up the stairs to the door, not quite understanding why I felt the need to be his shadow.

  His hand gripped the door handle as he stood with his back to me. “Good night, Alice,” he called over his shoulder.

  I heard a squeak and a shuffle in the kitchen. Little eavesdropping bugger. I giggled at the thought of her pressed up against the side of the stairs, her only goal to be as small as possible. Good thing Jaxon had thought to check for her.

  The door clicked as he opened it and slipped out.

  I grabbed the door before it closed, bewildered by the turn of events. “What, no goodnight for me?”

  His calculating eyes peeked through the crack in the door. “It’s better if I don’t. I’ll see you tomorrow, Pike.”

  He seemed almost remorseful, I immediately chastised myself for thinking he’d feel bad for anything. I stalked back to the bedroom and slammed the door behind me.

  Alice was waiting. “What’d he do to you? I thought a little bit of snogging would do you good.”

  “We didn’t snog. Jaxon is that last guy on earth I’d do that with.”

  “Shame,” she said ruefully. “I wouldn’t mind his hands on me.”

  I thought back to when he’d held me not an hour ago—the warmth, the excitement that exploded within me, the aroma that still lingered on my clothes. Damn it, I was going to have to change to get away from him.

  “So, what did he want?”

  “To break me down.” I rummaged through the massive closet in search of anything cotton, comfortable, and non-Jaxon scented.

  “Seems a bit melodramatic to me.”

  “It’s not, I promise.”

  “Still, I think you should get to know him. Seems like he knows this place better than anyone else, save Riggs.”

  She had a point, but I wasn’t going to spend any more time than necessary with Jaxon. I finally found a pair of plaid pajama pants, then grabbed a plain grey t-shirt from a stack nearby. “He’s such a—”

  “Hottie? Yes ma’am, he is. Although, Will isn’t an eyesore, either.” Her head popped around the corner, and she bobbed her head toward my pants. “Cute.”

  “Thanks.”

  She padded back out to the main bedroom, and I followed. My bed was a rumpled mess and littered with my personal belongings. I pulled my bag toward me and stuffed it full of the things that shouldn’t have been out in the first place. My hand gripped the unfamiliar leather-bound book. I immediately knew it was Jaxon’s journal. I pulled it out and flipped it open. A paper fluttered out.

  Turnabout is fair play.

  He was right; it was fair play, and it was on.

  I stared blankly at the pages. “Alice, all we’ve heard since we arrived is that we need to escape. I think we need to find out who Riggs really is before we go on a suicide mission.”

  “I was thinking the same thing, but how do we find out?”

  “Sari’s looking into things, but I don’t think she’ll find anything on the computer. Riggs wouldn’t be dumb enough to put something where she could find it.”

  “You think it’s in there?” she said, nodding to the book.

  “If it were, Jaxon wouldn’t have given it to me.”

  “Are you going to read it?”

  I hesitated. “Not tonight.”

  I set it down on the bedside table and crawled into bed. The sheets were silky, like water rubbing against my bare arms.

  Alice turned out the lights. In the darkness, I heard her voice float to over to me. “I’m so glad we have each other. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

  “You’re my sister.”

  I heard her sheets move and a deep sigh come from her side of the bedroom. For the first time in a while, I felt happy. If nothing else was the same, at least the consistency of having her beside me was comforting.

  That’s when I realized something.

  Xander had said Sari, Jaxon, Legs, and I would have to leave at some point.

  He never mentioned Alice.

  THE MORNING CAME with crushing weight. Between my incessant worry of leaving Alice behind and the overwhelming scent of Jaxon in my bed, I hadn’t slept much. What did it mean? Did Xander really expect me to leave her?

  In the dim sliver of sunlight that peeked through the blinds, I saw Alice’s figure sleeping peacefully in her bed. The only movement was her breath that lifted her side up and down in quiet tranquility. I had to bite my knuckles to keep from crying.

  Maybe Xander hadn’t brought her up because he hadn’t met her. Why would you mention someone you didn’t know? I was overreacting to something so inconsequential it was borderline absurd. This place made me twitchy.

  I quietly extricated myself from the too-soft sheets. Jaxon’s aroma infused in my comforter was a constant reminder of the tension that built in my stomach every time I saw him. He wouldn’t be sitting on my bed again.

  The mirror in the bathroom revealed dark circles under my eyes. My hair was a frizzy mess. I leaned against the cool porcelain counter to steal a moment for myself.

  “Are you actually asleep against the sink?”

  Jolted, I saw Alice behind me in the mirror’s reflection. “Yeah, I guess I was.”

  She shook my shoulders playfully. Her smile was too bright for having just woken up. It’d always been that way; she was a morning person, and I was the night owl. She was full of excitement that I would probably never be able to muster, even if I hadn’t had a horrible night. “Well, wake up, sleepyhead. Today we start our classes!”

  “Joy,” I muttered as she bounced away. Part of me was glad she was excited. The other, well, I hated that she was so naïve about this place. Then again, she hadn’t seen what I’d seen yesterday.

  Blood.

  So much blood.

  And bodies.

  Bodies of men who’d come to retrieve us.

  The images were burned into my mind. Before yesterday, I’d never seen a dead body. I wondered if I should tell her, but as soon as the thought manifested, I squashed it. No. When the time came to go, we’d escape, and I could explain everything. No need to invol
ve her in things that were impossible to fix. She couldn’t undo death. No one could.

  “If you’re going to take a shower, get on it. I need to take one too,” she called from our bedroom. “And by the way, Mr. Riggs dropped off uniforms for us yesterday while you were out. They’re pretty wild.”

  That set my teeth on edge. Hard to tell what Riggs would have us in—his little army of elementalists.

  I rushed through my shower and wrapped myself in a soft cotton robe that hung beside the sliding glass door. When I let Alice in to get ready, she gave me her award-winning smile and nodded toward our room.

  “Have fun in there. Don’t die from shock.”

  “Thanks for making me even more excited to see what I have to wear today.”

  Sari’s voice rang out from the room. “Oy, any day now, slowpoke. We’ve got places to go.”

  I entered the room to see Sari sitting on the edge of my bed with a look of amusement. She was wearing the most absurd outfit I’d ever seen.

  I laughed. “Please don’t tell me you dressed yourself.”

  She gestured to the tight-fitting white and grey long sleeve shirt and matching pants. It looked like a space suit. “What, this old thing? Just plucked it out of my closet of my own free will.”

  “That is certifiably god-awful.”

  “Don’t look now, but you’ve got your own little slice of god-awful.” She tossed a pile of clothes at me and winked.

  “You ever been told you’re a pessimist, Sari?”

  “All the time. It comes with knowing too much about everyone.” She pointed to the clothes. “So, what’s the damage?”

  I lifted the shirt. It really wasn’t all that different from my preferred clothes. The sand-colored undershirt was form-fitting, and a dark green military jacket like the one I’d snagged from my dome’s dumpster was loose and provided pockets. Good. The black pants weren’t bad, either. A little tighter than my taste, but not nearly as obnoxious as the ones Sari was currently wearing. Hers might have been painted on.

  She whooped in objection. “Wait a second, those aren’t bad! Why do I have to look like I stepped off a starship? That hardly seems fair!”

  “Maybe Riggs is breaking me in easy?”