Red (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Kia

Twilight made the light in the forest blue and dark, as if I was underwater. It smelled like leaf fires and frost. Ethan was already running into the woods, and behind him an ATV rumbled over the field. When I saw Abby perched on the back with one of her black veterinary bags, I ducked back down behind the wall. Guards trailed after them, shouting into walkie-talkies, rifles strapped across their backs. I headed back to the castle. I wasn’t stupid enough to go blundering into a forest full of mythical beasts and adrenaline-fueled guards with rifles.

Well, not twice in one night.

I was however, stupid enough to sneak into the museum.

With everyone else focused on electrocution and wounded manticores and whatnot, this was my best chance for more information. I was still trembling from the crash of adrenaline after tearing through the woods, fighting a monster, and setting fires, but I couldn’t pass it up. Even if I should probably just lie down or eat a hell of a lot of Sara’s pastries instead.

The gate was locked this time. I didn’t have a credit card, but I did have a plastic membership card to the comic book shop down the street from Dad’s apartment. I slid it between the door and the frame, horizontally, above the lock. I pushed it as hard as I could without snapping it, then shoved it down. It took a few tries, but eventually the door clicked open.

It still looked like a museum, but now the oddities made sense. What I had taken for affectation and irony were real. The wolf tooth Holden had given me might actually have belonged to a werewolf.
To Sloane.

I stared at the stag and the horse/unicorn head and the spears and symbols on the wall, but none of it unraveled the growing mystery of this place. The second door was open, light spilling through. I eased closer, my mouth dry. The museum was bad enough. Whatever this was, it was much, much worse. The same mythical beasts that roamed the zoo were pinned to the wall with dead glassy eyes. A mermaid floated inside a glass tank, her skin peeling. I felt sick.

The light from the camera in the corner blinked red, reminding me it was there. I backed out hastily and tore up the stairs to my room. The last thing I needed was evidence of me skulking around.

Ethan knocked at my door a few hours later, when everyone was asleep. I held up one of my combat boots threateningly as I opened the door, before I realized it was him. He smiled his crooked smile. “I hear supernatural creatures fear the combat boot most of all.”

“Shut up,” I said, but I was smiling back. It felt strange to be smiling, after everything.

“Sloane assures me that chocolate is the only way to deal with werewolves and manticores.” He offered the tray he was holding, piled with Sara’s cookies and cakes and two cups of hot chocolate. I stepped aside to let him in. He sat on the floor in front of the woodstove, handing me a mug. I sipped it, coughing in surprise. “And peppermint schnapps,” he amended. “It helps the chocolate do its job.”

I sipped it carefully. “My dad measures the liquor bottle levels at home.”

“So does Abby,” Ethan admitted. “This is medicinal.”

“I guess I understand why Abby’s here now,” I said. Most grandmothers knitted sweaters and slipped you money for candy. Mine, apparently, stitched up creatures that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. “She must have gone all animal rights on your dad’s ass.”

“Yeah. It was a thing of beauty.” He watched me scoop chocolate icing onto a fork. “Are you okay?”

“Surprisingly, yes,” I replied. “Actual crazy things are better than the crazy things just being in my head. Plus, years of comic books have prepared me for this.” I shook my head. “Still, your dad couldn’t import rare albino bunnies?”

“We had a rare breed of ostrich,” Ethan said helpfully. “Dad was told by some shaman that he was getting dragon eggs.”

I had to laugh. “Instead he got ostrich?”

Ethan laughed, too. “Yeah, he was pissed. We ate a lot of ostrich that summer.”

He reached for my hand, turning it over gently. My skin tingled and it had nothing to do with fire. “These scars,” he added, looking at my comet sparks of burn scars. He had to be used to girls with pretty hands. I moved to pull away. “The house wards did this.”

I blinked. “What new thing are you trying to freak me out with now? Because I think I might be over my legal limit of weird.”

“There are magical wards on the house. They sense supernatural creatures. It’s meant to protect us, to warn us if there’s a breach.”

I caught my breath. “Fire responds differently to me here.” The wards must be the reason my palms itched here when I tried to summon fire. They didn’t do that anywhere else.

Ethan nodded grimly. He was still holding my hand. “You’ve never threatened us with fire, so if we’re lucky, Dad doesn’t know what’s triggering the wards’ response. It would be weak enough to assume it’s something in the museums, maybe. But magic is tricky. Ask my aunt Simone.”

“Is that how the Cabal dealt with her? Magic?”

“It was a memory spell,” he said. “But sometimes they backfire.” His fingers brushed over the scars gently. “Do they hurt?”

I shook my head. I had to clear my throat to speak. “So you were being a jerk on purpose that first day in the museum. And after that. Misdirection.” I sent him a wry glance. “You’re really good at that.”

“I’m really good at a lot of things.” He was so deadpan, it took me a moment to realize he was teasing me. He grinned when he saw me struggling not to laugh.

“What about the dead rabbit? That morning in the woods?”

“I think that was Sloane’s midnight snack.”

“Ew.”

He shrugged. “Wolves gotta eat. Fires gotta burn.”

I shook my head. “You and Sloane are taking this fire thing way too well.”

“Can you blame us? You don’t eat bunnies in the woods or shed on the furniture.” He winked. “I’d say Sloane’s a little jealous.”

The silence stretched. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but I was hyperaware of my hand lying in his. I wanted to turn my palm over and link my fingers through his. “Do you know what I am?”

“Mouthy. Brave. Beautiful.”

I felt a blush creeping over my cheeks. “That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s still true.”

“Are there fire monsters?” I asked, because I couldn’t let it go. Not even for a beautiful boy saying kind things. “Am I one?”

“You’re not a monster,” he said sharply. “Believe me, I know monsters.”

“Well, I’m not normal, either.”

He shrugged, unconcerned. “Who is, in this place?”

“Maybe I was cursed. Is that possible?”

“Curses exist,” he allowed. “But fire isn’t a curse. It’s just an ability.”

“You sound like Abby.” I fiddled with one of the pinecones in the basket by the fireplace. It was dipped in wax, with a little wick at the top. “She made these. She used to give them to me for Christmas. We didn’t have a fireplace, but I thought they were so cute.” I dropped it back into the basket. “She used to stare at me every time I picked one up. I never understood why.”

“But now you do? Did you have fire even when you were little?”

“No, but my mom did. Abby said that’s why she left. She was a firestarter, too.”

“See, not a curse—just a family thing.” He rubbed his thumb across my palm. I wasn’t even sure if he realized he was doing it. “But she wasn’t as strong as you.”

“You’ve never met her.”

“Don’t have to,” he said. “She ran away. You didn’t.”

“No, I was kicked out. Twice.”

“Hot.”

I half smiled. “I guess it could have been worse. They could have charged me with arson. Instead, I was kicked out and my best friend stopped talking to me.”

He didn’t say anything, just waited. I guessed he’d been around enough wild creatures to know that you shouldn’t startle them when they started to come out into the open. And I felt as vulnerable as a deer, too aware of every sound and shift in light.

“I still don’t even really know what happened,” I said, surprising myself by speaking. The room was warm and dark, apart from the rest of the world. There were literally monsters outside, but it was safe here.

“It was a really hot day during that heat wave last June. Riley and I were hanging out by the parking lot. Riley was smoking, and she had matches in her hand. We got in an argument. I can’t even remember over what, something stupid. And the next thing I know the matchbox in her hand burst into flames. Even her shirt caught. I tried to put it out, but that made it worse. I threw the matches and they landed over the fence and set old lady Greyson’s rose garden on fire. I didn’t think about how a few matches shouldn’t have started a fire that big until later. Riley was screaming. I didn’t even feel my burns until the ambulance got there.” I rubbed my eyes fiercely, refusing to cry. “Riley’s okay, but she was badly burned, worse than me. She still won’t talk to me. She thinks I did it on purpose.”

“But you didn’t,” he said quietly.

“How can you be so sure?” That was the question I’d been too terrified to ask myself.

“When I was thirteen, I accidentally stabbed Sloane with a steak knife.”

“I can’t see Sloane letting you get away with that.”

He snorted. “She spent a whole day capturing hornets and released them in my bathroom while I was showering.”

My chuckle was watery, but at least I wasn’t crying. “Was this before or after she got turned?”

“Before. She spent that entire summer floating in a rowboat in the lake pretending to be the Lady of Shalott.”

“From the poem? Doesn’t she die?”

“Yeah. Sloane’s always been morbid. Anyway, I was on the other side of the lake in a scuba suit, trying to find the mermaid.”

“Wait. There’s another mermaid? Not just the one in the tank?”

“How do you know— Never mind. Who am I asking? Yes, there’s another mermaid, but you’ll never see her. She’s pathologically shy.” His jaw clenched. “Not to mention Dad had her tongue cut out so she couldn’t lure anyone to a drowning death in the lake with her singing.”

I remembered the animal sounds I’d heard and how they were a little like singing.

“Anyway, I saw Sloane’s hand and her hair trailing over the edge of the boat. Between the sun and the silt in the water, everything was murky. I thought she was the mermaid. I grabbed her hand. She shrieked and fell in. When she bit me, I still thought it was the mermaid.”

“So you stabbed her.”

“Afraid so.” He grimaced. “But she forgave me. She knew it was an accident. Riley should realize that, too.”

“Yeah, but you guys haven’t exactly had a normal upbringing. You were already used to weird shit.”

“Still.” He shrugged.

I ate a chocolate-strawberry truffle, mostly because my stomach felt raw. I wasn’t used to talking about fire. “I can’t picture Justine running through the woods with a spear.”

“Well, we don’t use spears. Generally.”

“So, what do you do? Observe monsters and take notes? Write papers?”

“Not exactly.” He looked disgusted. “Sometimes they’re studied, but mostly hunted. At least here.”

“That seems…”

“Cruel,” he finished for me. “Barbaric. Wrong.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because it’s too late now.” He lay on his back. His voice was raw. “We have fences and gates and magic, and thousands of acres in the middle of nowhere, but nothing is foolproof. If something gets out, we have to stop it.”

“And they’re all in cages?”

“No, not like the ones you saw. Those are for sick or injured creatures. Or new acquisitions. For everything else, the whole forest is a cage.” His mouth twisted. “This castle, too.”

“And you can’t leave?”

“You can,” he said. “My aunt did.”

I thought of her slack mouth and dead eyes. “Oh.” I lay beside him. Our shoulders touched slightly. “So why do they do it? Your parents?”

“My dad was a hunter,” Ethan said. “My grandfather was a hunter, too, but the normal kind. He took Dad all over the world, to Africa, Australia, Alaska. Mom had the bug, too. It always pissed Dad off that she was a better hunter than him.” His grin was lethal, and brief. “Once, in Tibet, he thought he saw something different. He became obsessed. So did my mom. She died trying to find it again.” I touched his hand this time. His fingers tangled with mine, holding tight.

“Then Dad took it that one step further and added a little cultastic cryptozoology when he joined the Cabal. He got tired of hunting regular animals, and he hired a shaman to do some ritual in a cave or something. I think it was revenge for a while, trying to find what killed my mother. But when he saw his first basilisk, he was hooked.” He rubbed his face. “The Cabal used to mean something, back in the Middle Ages. They were knights and warriors and they legitimately kept people safe from monsters. But now…it’s a power trip. In the castle, anyway. Dad makes the mess, and we have to contain it. I asked him once why we had to join the Cabal, too.”

“What did he say?”

“That they were protecting us. That we were in it now whether we liked it or not, so we had better learn how to survive. That the Cabal wasn’t to be crossed. I was six.” He held up his hand so the light glinted off his silver ring. “The thing is, the Cabal is more than this. It’s just my dad and his friends who are stuck on the hunting aspect. They usually only take in the most vicious monsters. But we could do so much better. The creatures can’t just roam free; I’m not an idiot. They’d kill people. But they need to be protected, too. Can you imagine what the scientists and governments would do to them if they found out?”

I could imagine it extremely well, actually. I’d been thinking about it constantly since I discovered what I could do with fire, after all.

“Some of the other Cabal bestiaries are nothing like ours. They study the creatures and take care of them. They don’t taunt them to see what they’re capable of, like some twisted bullfight. But with your grandmother’s help as a vet, we could start a kind of monster hospital, for the wounded.” He made a face. “You’ll think I’m stupid. Dad does.”