Charcoal Tears

by Jane Washington

  My blood had turned to ice.

  I painted this.

  His fist slammed into the side of my face and I went down, smacking my forehead into the stairs. I pulled up onto my hands and knees, groaning at the ringing in my skull, and his eerie chuckle echoed in the hollow house. It was low and contained; I supposed I might have mistaken it for a neighbourhood sound, carried on the moaning wind, or a remnant of some nightmare… had I been tucked safely in bed. He pulled my hair back, and the sound of a zipper being drawn down sliced through my shocked senses.

  I surged with energy and placed my palm against his thigh without hesitation. He flew back from me, tipping over the stair railing and tumbling into the living room below. I heard the splintering of wood, but didn’t dwell on what had broken his fall. As far as I cared, everything in this house was doomed. Either my father would throw it at me, or I would throw him at it. I supposed that it was a good thing that he had sold all of our valuables years ago. I quickly collected all of my stuff and held my bag together as I fought a lingering dizziness to make it up the stairs. I bypassed my room altogether and fell into the opposite end of Tariq’s bed smelling like a bar.

  There was no way in hell that I was sleeping in a room without a lock tonight.

  He nudged me with his leg, and I heard the ragged breath he let out. He had been listening to the whole thing.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Go to sleep, baby brother.”

  He made a gruff sound, turned on his side, and gradually relaxed into sleep. I remained staring at the dark ceiling, my face throbbing.

  I had painted it.

  The next day I rose early and showered. I washed my hair and dried it into blown-out curls, using the mass of it to hide the purplish bruises that mottled the right side of my face. I tried to put on some foundation too, but you could still see them. I had woken up with dried blood encrusted around my chin, but the swelling in my split lip was minimal, the cut small.

  I dressed in plain shorts and an oversized t-shirt. It was decorated with a skull that had flowers growing out of it, and the word ‘Tool’ was scrawled beneath, indicating that it was probably Tariq’s. I pulled on my chameleon shoes and we left the house quickly that morning, avoiding looking at the sitting room. We had groceries, so Tariq had already eaten, but I hadn’t wanted to linger, so I stopped for another subpar coffee on the way to school.

  We parked and I grabbed my book bag. It was secured together with straining safety pins. I spotted the jeep and walked toward it as Tariq ran off. The front door opened and Cabe got out, opening the back door and motioning me to get in. He wore a grim expression. I swallowed, slipping into the backseat. He followed, pushing me into the middle. Noah sat on the other side and they both glared at me.

  “Silas was watching.” I knew that I sounded disappointed.

  They stayed quiet, and something else occurred to me. I snapped my head up, fixing them each a look. “You were all watching?”

  Noah grimaced. “Silas recorded it. He showed us this morning.”

  “I didn’t know it was this bad.” Cabe’s voice was low and growly: hard, like I had heard it on occasion. I immediately wanted the light and happy Cabe back.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, glancing at my lap and fitting my hands together. I didn’t know what to say to them. I shouldn’t feel like I had betrayed them in some way by allowing myself to get hurt. I was hurt. Not them.

  Noah made a sound of frustration. “Don’t be sorry. We aren’t angry at you.” He tilted my face, checking out the damage under the glare of the sun streaming through the windows.

  He brushed a finger beneath my swollen lip, and Cabe captured my hands, pulling them into his lap. “You blew the bastard over the railing.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Cabe chuckled and Noah’s mouth tilted, almost smiling.

  “How do you know about… how are you not…?” I couldn’t seem to get the right words out.

  “It’s called valcrick, the lightening power.”

  I sat unmoving between them, hardly daring to believe. They were going to tell me. “I thought I was crazy for years.”

  “You’re not. There aren’t many people with the valcrick power, but there used to be, a long time ago.”

  “Am I an alien?”

  Cabe cracked up, falling back against the car door, and Noah shot him a chastising look.

  “You’re one of us,” Noah corrected. “A Zevghéri.”

  I tried to pronounce the name in the same way that Noah did, but failed terribly. “What are Zev… Zeg…”

  “Zevghéri?” Cabe saved me. “In ancient times, they called us the Paired People. At some point it made the transition through too many languages, and the proper translation for it became a little muddled. Mostly we stick with Zevghéri.”

  “Right,” I answered, because that seemed logical. Almost. “So I’m not from space.”

  He dropped a hand onto my head as Noah tried to swallow a smile.

  “No,” Cabe laughed. “You’re pretty out of this world, but you’re not an alien.”

  We spilled out of the car as the bell signalled the start of homeroom and split up at the doors. I ran with Cabe and still managed to burst in late to Mr. Thomas’s class, interrupting one of his usual lectures. He frowned and waited for us to take our seats, muttering something sarcastic about how he was glad we could make it. Cabe found it funny, but I was blushing furiously.

  Someone leaned over to me as I sat down. “Making out with your boyfriends in the car park? Tut tut, Miss Black.”

  I blinked at the unfamiliar boy who apparently knew my last name. He smirked at me, and I quickly turned to ignore him. I pulled out a notebook—easily ignoring Mr. Thomas—and hastily wrote something for Cabe.

  How long did you know about it?

  I dropped the notebook onto his desk when the teacher wasn’t looking, and he glanced down and wrote something back.

  Immediately.

  Well… that explained everything. Suddenly, I felt an enormous weight lift from my shoulders, but it only made me want to cry. I snapped my notebook shut and shoved it into my book bag. One of the safety pins popped out, and I ignored it. The new gods of our high school hadn’t just been struck with the obscure urge to be friends with me. It was because I was a different classification of human. Not an alien, but—ugh. I wanted to ask how he had been able to tell that I was one of them, but I buried the question instead. I didn’t care. Not really. I packed my stuff up early and was out the door at the first hint of the bell.

  Cabe had quick reflexes, but I was used to being invisible. When I wasn’t with him, it was much easier to slip between people and disappear. I made it to the nurse’s office and sat my shaking body down onto a bench. A woman rushed out.

  “Are you unwell, dear?”

  I nodded my head; she pressed a hand to my forehead, felt my trembling, and urged me into the room she had come from. She asked me questions, directed me to a bed, and I stayed there until lunch time. I couldn’t stop shaking. A good ten minutes after the bell had rung, I walked into the cafeteria and sat in my usual seat, across from Matthew. He glanced up, paused, and then looked back down. I could have kissed him.

  Blessed invisibility.

  I gradually relaxed, and when I glanced to the popular table, only Cabe was there. He had his arms folded. He was hard Cabe again. I quickly looked back down and slipped out of the cafeteria before the bell rang to signal the end of lunch. I was the first person in the classroom for art, and Quillan glanced up, his dark eyes travelling straight to the bruises on my face. The flames flickered to life—the same smoulder that I saw whenever he was angry—and I flinched back a step. He wasn’t surprised at all. That hit me the hardest, and I marched to the back of the room, throwing my bag down moodily against the floor, the same thing running through my mind over and over.

  “Shit,” I muttered, kicking the base of my easel.

  A shadow drew over me, and I s
melt something reminiscent of sweet spices and wood smoke. Noah. I folded my arms and continued to stare at the base of my easel. He didn’t speak. I assumed that Cabe was there as well, but he wasn’t standing so close. I continued to stare at the same spot for the whole lesson, and still didn’t move as the bell rang. My shadow hovered, but Quillan’s voice carried to my ears, calling me to the front.

  I stalked to the desk, still not looking up, and waited until the door to the classroom had closed.

  “Take a seat,” Quillan offered, his deep voice making me want to do anything that he suggested, even if I was inexplicably angry with him.

  I pulled up a stool, sat, and glared at the floor. He got up and moved in front of me, tapping my chin. Usually, this raised my eyes, but today I was stubborn. He sighed and ducked down, cupping my jaw at the same time and applying a small amount of pressure. We met halfway.

  “What’s wrong, Seph?”

  “You knew,” I spat out. “You saw the recording too?”

  He drew back like I had slapped him.

  “What’s your first name?” My voice was almost a growl. “Is it Silas?”

  Mutely, he shook his head.

  “Miro?”

  He nodded.

  The anger sizzled right off my tongue, melting away into shock. I hadn’t actually expected a positive response. He… “You were in their apartment the other day? And you left?”

  Again, he nodded.

  “Why aren’t you speaking?”

  His breath left him in a rush, and he looked to the door. I wondered if he was considering sending me away, or running away. “This is a little difficult for me.”

  I could feel my eyebrow arching. “I don’t get it. What’s difficult?”

  “Look, Seph, I can’t really go into specifics right now.”

  “When can you?”

  His mouth twisted in a grimace. “Maybe next year?”

  My mouth fell open. I wouldn’t even be here next year; I’d be in university. Was he saying that he’d never tell me?

  He ran a hand over his face and stepped back around his desk, his expression pained, his dark eyes simmering with emotions that flickered by too fast for me to grab a hold of. “You should go now.”

  I planted my feet, kicking back the stool; it made a scraping sound against the floor. “No.”

  His mouth twitched. “Scared of Cabe and Noah?”

  I folded my arms tightly. “No…”

  “Liar.” He moved toward me again, taking me by the elbow. Familiar feelings shimmered up my arm, itching into my stomach, and I tried to ignore them. He opened the door. “Don’t be scared of them, Seph. They’re just upset, they don’t understand why you’re ignoring them.”

  “They’re only friends with me because of it. I was so desperate for friends I tried to convince myself that it was all normal, that the way they treat me is normal… but they’re not really my friends. They don’t really like—” my voice caught, and I shook my head quickly to clear the looming sadness—“have you seen them?” My voice picked up a little bit. “Have you seen me? Of course they didn’t just want to be friends with me. I’m a freak, like everyone says.”

  His palm slapped against the door and it fell shut again. “What the hell are you talking about? What’s wrong with… you?” His eyes slid from my face but just as quickly returned. There was anger in his face, but there was fear, too.

  My mouth fell open, I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with my art teacher, but I waved at my face, at my mismatched eyes and the mottled bruises flowering beneath the foundation I had tried to apply. “I’m a freak,” I repeated, slowly, like maybe he hadn’t heard me properly the first time.

  He fell silent, the dominant expression in his dark eyes now that of shock. He fell into the door, hitting it hard with his forehead. “I can’t believe this.”

  I had never seen him lose this much composure. Usually he just hovered and observed, pulling me this way and that with his deep voice. Right now his eyes were closed and he seemed to be holding his breath. He drew back from the door, and I still hadn’t moved. Other than the stranger at the bar, Quillan was one of the tallest men that I’d ever stood next to. I had to tip my head right back to meet his eyes.

  “You’re a miracle, Seraph. You’re incredible. You just don’t know it yet. Now get the hell out of my classroom.”

  I should have put my foot down and stayed, demanded to know why he’d suddenly lost his mind, but he was using that commanding tone of his, and I was obeying before I even knew what I was doing. I was halfway to my music class before his words hit me.

  You’re a miracle, Seraph. You’re incredible. You just don’t know it yet.

  My book bag fell from my shoulders and a few more safety pins popped off, but I didn’t move. By the time I collected myself and made it to music, the class was almost over. The teacher frowned at me and I muttered an excuse about feeling sick, which she didn’t believe. I dashed straight to the corner of the room, and it only took a second for the boys to corner me.

  They each planted a shoulder against the wall, and angled themselves to close the space between them and hide the rest of the noisy class from me. The message was clear: no escaping this time.

  “What’s going on?” Noah’s voice was quiet and calm. “Why are you ignoring us?”

  You’re a miracle, Seraph.

  I started to hyperventilate a little bit, but then someone plugged in a guitar and the loud sound of an amp flare cutting through the room brought me back to earth.

  “I was… angry.” My voice was too breathless. “I had been wondering why you two were trying to be friends with me… it didn’t make sense, but now it does. I just—I just hoped maybe—” I cut my hand through the air. I wasn’t even understanding myself anymore.

  “You’re going to kill me,” Noah groaned quietly. “Don’t think like that about yourself, Seph. Even if you hadn’t been one of us, we still would have stalked you to the grave.”

  I snorted on an unwilling laugh, feeling like he had stolen it right out of my throat, and he grinned.

  Cabe looked a little incensed. “We don’t stalk her.”

  “If she didn’t want to be friends, we probably would be,” Noah countered.

  Cabe tilted his head, considering this. “Yeah, okay.”

  I groaned, hitting both of them on the chest, one after the other. They let me, so I did it again, harder. This time Cabe’s hand snaked out and grabbed my wrist. “Alright, you emotional wreck, stop beating up your stalkers please. We need to stay healthy, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  I shook my head, swallowing down another laugh. “You’re absurd.”

  6

  The Questionable Sanity of Silas Quillan

  The rest of the week passed in a cycle of avoidance. Gerald avoided me, I avoided speaking to Quillan, and the boys avoided talking about the Zevghéri. I fell into a normal routine with them, hanging out after school and going to work on my own.

  Everything came crashing down again when I opened my locker at the end of the day on Friday. Hundreds of Polaroids spilled out, a mass of them hitting me right in the chest, the rest of them fluttering innocently to the ground. I picked out one and held it up, and then immediately began trying to stuff all of them back into my locker. The one I had picked up was a picture of me sleeping.

  It had been taken inches from my face.

  Too soon, I found myself facing the back wall of my locker. It had been painted in sloppy red letters.

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

  Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

  The pictures kept sliding back out of my locker, and I was sobbing. One of them had cut my finger, but the sting was muted, existing somewhere in the inconsequential part of my mind that worried about things like homework, and whether I would have clothes warm enough to last me each winter. I could hear the dull whispering of the gathered students rising to an ear-burning babble, and could sense the
flash of a cell phone camera, but I was numb with shock. I couldn’t break from the circulatory motion of catching falling photographs and stuffing them back, only to catch them again as there was no room for them to stay. Eventually someone dropped a hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. Quillan picked up one of the pictures and flicked it over. He stilled, looked over my shoulder and his voice boomed out.

  Footsteps scurried behind me and the hall cleared.

  He tossed the picture into my locker and grabbed another one. He released a slew of curses that managed to shock me even further, and then ran his hands through his dark hair, messing up the perfect style. He pulled out a phone and sent a quick text, before reaching over and empting my book bag. He was on the ground, stuffing pictures into my bag when Cabe and Noah ran into the hallway. Arms tightened around me from behind, pulling me away, and I didn’t resist. The arms turned me, and I caught the electric fury brimming in Noah’s eyes before he lifted me, an arm strapped across my thighs. I stared unblinkingly over his shoulder, and Quillan looked up, meeting my eyes. Fire, consuming and dangerous. I wavered, deciding that I was going crazy. For a minute, Quillan had looked exactly like the stranger from the bar. That confused me more than anything, because my feelings for both men were strong, but vastly different. Quillan was important to me, but the stranger… he fascinated me. I didn’t like that they reminded me of each other.

  Not at all.

  Noah got into the back of the car and I curled into the seat beside him. Cabe wasn’t there, and when I said something about it, Noah told me that he was talking to Tariq.