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Chapter Twelve

Ethan

Colt’s father paced and his mother sat steely eyed in a plastic hospital chair. Tobias came up behind me with a tray of coffee cups. He passed them out and then stood beside me, drinking some kind of green tea. “Did you get it?”

I shook my head. “Got some blood on my knife, but that’s it.”

“Do we know what it is yet?”

I shook my head again, so frustrated I tasted copper. I must have bitten the inside of my cheek. “What about Colt?”

“He probably won’t get full use of his legs back. Crutches if he’s very lucky, wheelchair otherwise.”

I swore, feeling sick to my stomach. “Where the hell’s my dad?”

“He was at the nurse’s desk, trying to get more information.”

I tossed my cup away and stalked down the hall, feeling the tightness of the stitches Abby had given me to bind my wounds together. There were layers of antibiotic ointment and bandages under my shirt and more scratches and bruises on my face and neck.

I closed in on Dad right as he switched from charm to abuse. It was a mark of his fear. He never lost his cool, not around pretty women. “Then find me someone who knows something. Anything!” he snapped.

“If you’ll have a seat, sir,” the nurse returned calmly. “The doctor will be with the boy’s actual parents as soon as the surgery is finished.”

Dad shoved a hand through his hair, cursing. After a moment of wondering if he was going to pull the hunting knife I knew was strapped under his pant leg, he used a different weapon entirely. He smiled a disarming smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just worried.”

The nurse nodded. I could practically hear her shields melting off. “Of course.”

Dad turned away, spotting me. “Ethan,” he said, with that warm, proud tone he used in public. I hated it more than basilisk poison. “There you are. Excuse me,” he said to the nurse before pulling me aside. “I’m having him transferred to the best medical facility in the city as soon as he’s stable enough to move. They’re already on standby.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” I asked quietly, antiseptic stinging my nostrils. “You’re the reason he’s in this damn mess in the first place. You and the damn Cabal.”

His hand gripped my arm, bruising in its censure. I had to restrain myself from tossing him into the cart of medical supplies beside us. I could do it. I was strong enough. I was considering it when he pulled me into a secluded family waiting room. “We need a show of solidarity right now, son,” he warned me. “I need you to keep it together, to be a leader. That’s what being Cabal is all about.”

“God, enough with your damn Cabal,” I shouted, punching a lamp off a side table so that it cracked against the wall.

“I made you strong. What are you complaining about? Childish tantrums won’t help us,” he said, barely acknowledging the broken glass at his feet. “And believe me, son, if you think I’m too hard, you really don’t want the Cabal coming for a visit. At least Colt’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain. That energy will feed the wards. It will continue to keep our secrets, to keep the collection inside the boundaries. To protect. Just as Summer’s sacrifice did.”

I took a swing at my dad. I’d never wanted to hurt him more than I did right then. Did that make me a monster? Or was he the monster?

Whatever else he was, he was trained Cabal and ducked my punch easily. “Settle down.” He knocked me back into the wall. “We need more champions,” he continued as if nothing happened. “To prove we can handle the bestiary.”

I didn’t want to be talking about this. I wanted to be tracking down Summer’s killer. Wanted to know its name before I gutted it.

Maybe I was more like Dad than I’d thought.

“We’ll have to hold more Trials, convince the twins to finally honor their birthright.”

“You’re joking.” I laughed harshly. “You have to be.”

“I am not,” he replied. His eyes glittered with something I couldn’t quite name, something that made bile rise in my throat. I stared at him for a full minute, rage and disbelief churning inside me. My hands clenched into fists again, but there was nothing close enough to punch. Except his face.

“Colt could have died. Summer
did
die, or have you forgotten?” Her ring was a burning ember in my pocket. “And Mom.” I’d never really known her. She’d taken off when I was young to find some mythical beast in the mountains of Tibet. She’d never made it home.

“I haven’t forgotten.” He frowned. “You’ll have to convince Justine not to be afraid. She’s a good fighter—she can handle the Trials.”

“She’s not afraid for herself,” I shot back. “She doesn’t want you to claim Ariel next. Dad, this has to stop.”

“It can’t.” He was calm, almost robotic.

“It has to,” I insisted. “Let it go, before you get us all killed!”

“The Cabal doesn’t let you walk away, son. Once Cabal, always Cabal.” He grabbed the back of my neck. “And I’ve worked too hard to let my collection go. It’s my life’s work, and it means something.”

I broke his hold, stepping back. “You’re losing it. And you can’t seriously put your trophy room above the lives of my friends.” I wouldn’t let Summer’s death be another casualty of his greed.

“You’d rather forget?”

I thought of my aunt and the way she sang nonsense to herself. She’d never been able to complete her Trials. She’d tried three times and failed three times and then the Cabal administered the spell to wipe her memory. It had gone wrong, as it sometimes did. Now she barely remembered her own name. Everything was about keeping Cabal secrets and keeping the creatures contained. If they got loose, we’d all be discovered.

“That’s the only way to break with the Cabal. And it’s no guarantee. Plus, consider this—without us, the monsters win,” he said. “The hiker they found last week? You know it wasn’t a bear. We control the bestiary or it controls us. It’s that simple.”

And monsters called to monsters. Between the wards and the creatures, Dad’s bestiary reeked of magic. It lured other beasts to the castle. Even if we shut the bestiary down, which I’d wanted to do since Summer died, the magic would linger. Dad was right about one thing. Walking away wasn’t an option.

I thought of the broken wards. That hiker wasn’t the first to be attacked. Anyone might be next. Even Kia, and she was innocent in all this. I wouldn’t let the Cabal get her killed just because she had the bad luck to live in my father’s house.

So I’d do what needed to be done.

“I guess you got your wish,” I said. “You’re turning me into one of them.”

“Cabal? Good, they’re survivors.”

“No, Dad,” I said quietly. “You’re turning me into one of the monsters.”

Chapter Thirteen

Kia

“Today sucks.” Sloane fell into step beside me in the hall outside the cafeteria. She wore a pink lily behind her left ear, blowing matching pink bubbles with her chewing gum.

“What?” I said stupidly. It was really hard to concentrate. I was trying to decide if I believed in werewolves.

And if I was living with one.

Oblivious, Sloane licked chocolate shavings off her thumb. “Did you hear about Colt?”

“No, what?”

“He fell out of a tree and broke his back. He might not walk again.”

I turned to stare at her. “Are you serious? He was fine at dinner.”

“It happened really late,” Sloane explained. “He must have been drinking again. You didn’t see anything?” She looked carefully at me.

“Besides the forest fire? No.” I didn’t tell her about the ice monster. I wasn’t totally insane. “You shouldn’t hang out with me, Sloane,” I said bluntly. “You should pretend you never met me.” She popped her gum at me. “Seriously,” I insisted. “You don’t need the kind of baggage I’ve got.”

She stopped, still smiling, though it was slightly sad again, and gentle. “Don’t even try it, Alcott. I’ve dealt with Blackwood tantrums all my life. You’re sunshine and puppies, sweetheart.”

“You don’t know what I can do.”

“What, start fires in the girls’ bathroom? Piss off Justine? Big deal.” She pushed her long red curls over her shoulder, unconcerned. “We’re late for class, so can you walk and frown at the same time?” She choked suddenly. “And hey, school’s on fire.”

One of the flyers on the bulletin board was burning. I hadn’t noticed the spark or the tingle in my fingertips, though now that I was paying attention again, my eyelids felt uncomfortably hot. Sloane leaned over and slapped at the bulletin board, putting out the smoldering flyer before the flames spread. A tiny plume of smoke belched out from under her hand. I glanced around but the hall was empty—everyone was already in class. Sloane tilted her head, watching me curiously.

“Um,” I said.
Nice cover-up, Kia. Some superhero you’d be.

Sloane didn’t look particularly surprised. She definitely didn’t look scared. “Don’t tell anyone you can do that.”

Startled, I said the only thing that popped into my head. “Duh.” I was more bewildered than Sloane. Shouldn’t she be screaming right about now? Or fainting?
Something?

“Okay, then.” She slipped her arm through mine. “Next time aim for the neon-pink ones. They get on my nerves.”

We didn’t have the same classes for the rest of the afternoon. It was difficult to concentrate now that someone knew my secret. I had a hundred questions for her, mostly because she didn’t seem to have any for me. She was pretty blasé about the whole thing. Starting fires with my mind should have freaked her out a little, shouldn’t it?

The day didn’t get any less weird. When I got home, Clare was letting Sloane in through the kitchen door. “Sloane, honey, you should have gone around the front.”

Sara opened the oven door. “She knows today is blueberry scone day.”

Sloane tried to look both hopeful and hungry. She’d changed out of her uniform and was wearing another long dress, this one in a light plum, under the same military tuxedo-tails jacket. She didn’t point at me and start screaming about fire, so that was something.

Sara nodded to me. “Have a seat. The scones are nearly ready.”

Sloane slid into a chair. “Yum.”

“Should I tell Ethan you’re here?” Clare asked.

“No way,” Sloane replied. “He’ll eat all the scones and leave us crumbs.”

“This from the girl who ate four herself in a single sitting just last week.”

“No wonder Sara likes you so much.” I was dying to talk to her about the fire on the bulletin board, but I didn’t want to be overheard. Sloane snatched a scone before Sara even finished placing the plate on the table. The smell of warm blueberries was both sweet and tart. “We’ll take them upstairs,” Sloane said through thick crumbs. “Before Ethan smells them.” She went up the stairs so fast I had to run to catch up.

“Hey, leave me some!” I took the steps two at a time. She was curled up on the couch, halfway through a second scone, crumbs caught in the toggle buttons of her jacket. She didn’t look the least bit guilty, or inclined to share. “You know, most people are kinda scared of me,” I pointed out.

She shrugged. “I’ve seen weirder.”

“You’ve seen weirder.” I gaped. “You can’t seriously be that cool with it.”

“Looks like you’re freaked out enough for the both of us.”

“I set fire to the flyers. With my mind.” Accidentally. Which wasn’t any more comforting. And I should be doing my best to convince her it had been a trick, that I was a budding stage magician or something equally implausible. I shouldn’t be insisting she be weirded out by me. I was pretty sure Wonder Woman wouldn’t have handled it this way. Then again, I was hardly wonderful.

Sloane hugged the plate to her chest. “As long as you let me have the last scone, I couldn’t care less.”

I honestly didn’t know what to say or how to react. A change of subject seemed wise. “So what the hell is up with Ethan? Has he always been so…”

“Moody?” she supplied. “Temperamental?”

“I was going to say bitchy.”

Sloane choked out a laugh. “That, too.” Her smile slipped. “He used to be nice.”

“Nice?” I asked dubiously. It was such a bland word. Whatever else I might say about him, Ethan wasn’t bland.

“Until he was about fifteen, he was great.”

“And then what? Testosterone poisoning?”

“And then his girlfriend died.”

I blinked at her. “Shit.” Now I felt bad for calling him names. Well, almost. “What happened?”

She put half of the last scone down and pushed the plate away. “He doesn’t talk about it,” she said quietly. “Her name was Summer. She grew up with us. All of our parents were friends. We all thought she and Ethan would get married one day. And then she died.”

“She had really long black hair, right? Super pretty?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Ethan has a photo of her on his piano.”

Her eyebrows raised up practically into her hairline. “He talked to you about Summer? And wait, what were you doing in his bedroom?”

“Please. I was fixing his leaky faucet. And no, he didn’t talk about her. He threw me out of the room, actually.”

“Yeah, that sounds more like him.” She uncurled from the couch to brush her fingers over the spines of my books. “No vampire or werewolf books.” She smiled, and for some reason it was melancholy. “That’s refreshing.”

“I like the postapocalyptic stuff.”

“And comics, apparently,” she said, motioning to the shelf of graphic novels and DVDs. “
X-Men, Smallville, Batman.
”

I didn’t tell her it was partly research. That sometimes I thought about wearing a red leotard and calling myself Solar Flare. I could rescue people from lukewarm tea and freezer-burned food. I could light stubborn barbecues and save summer, one picnic at a time. Solar Flare to the rescue!

Sloane’s lips pursed disapprovingly. “But you don’t have any poetry. No Edgar Allan Poe, no Emily Dickinson.” She shook her head. “Savage.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “One of your parents is an English lit professor?” She had that look.

“Actually, I’m an orphan. Both my parents died when I was little.”

“Shit. Sorry.” This was what happened when you talked to people.
Way to shove your big foot in your big mouth there, Alcott.
Sloane, thankfully, didn’t look like she was going to cry or anything. I shifted awkwardly.

“It’s okay.” She shrugged. “It was a really long time ago. I barely knew them.” She glanced at the sun setting on the other side of the window. “I should get back to the dorms.” Her eyes went hard. “Be careful in this house, Kia.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Ethan, you mean?” Maybe she knew something.

She wouldn’t say anything else, just took the empty plate back downstairs and then left. I grabbed my bag.

“Where are you going?” Abby asked.

“To practice self-control,” I told her.

On the days that I didn’t deliver Danishes and doughnuts for Sara, Ethan’s dad let me borrow one of the cars. No one would notice me in the weedy parking lot of an abandoned factory, not like they’d notice the pink cupcake van. Still, I pulled around back where I’d be hidden. I needed to focus on important things, like werewolves and dead rabbits. Especially since it seemed, against my better judgment, that I had a friend again. I had to do better at protecting her.

And I’d spent too long pretending I couldn’t create fire. It wasn’t helping. I had to try another tactic, especially now that I knew there was something skulking in the forest. I briefly considered telling Abby, but decided I really didn’t want any more therapy.

Absently rubbing the burn scars on my elbow, I sat on the cracked pavement and ripped blank pages out of one of the notebooks in my bag. I crumpled them into balls and set them out in a line, like glass bottles on a fence for a sharpshooter. I took a deep breath and then held out my right hand, palm out.

Nothing happened.

Well, not entirely nothing.

I did feel like an idiot.

Maybe I needed incentive. Fear. Surprise. I needed something to strike against, like a match. Maybe friction would be enough, since neither Justine nor Ethan was around right now to piss me off. I rubbed my palms together until they chafed. I concentrated on the sensation of burning on my red skin, pushed it out like heat waves, visualized the paper catching fire, smelled the smoke in my nostrils. I concentrated so hard my face went hot, my breath caught, and I probably looked like I had a lemon wedge stuck in the back of my throat.

But the paper finally caught.

There was the barest spark, and then the edge burned, slowly crumpling in on itself as the fire got hungrier. The flames went high, then low, and then it was ashes. The next paper caught fire and the one after that. “Ha!” I cried triumphantly, before I remembered to be freaked out about it.

Especially since now all the paper was burning, as well as the litter next to it and one of the dandelions growing up out of the broken concrete. “Oops.” I leaped to my feet and stomped it out. The garbage pushed by the wind against the wall of the building began to smolder. Grass caught along the edge of the lot. Clearly, starting a fire on purpose wasn’t a problem.

Controlling it was something else entirely.

“Stop!” The stench of burning garbage made me cough. “Stop it!” I waved my hands around, and the fires hissed and jumped higher, as if they were attached to a propane hose. Oxygen. I was flapping my hands around, and fire needed oxygen to burn. I’d spent a lot of time researching fire when Riley was in the hospital.

So maybe in some weird way I was fanning the flames. I dropped my hands. The fire didn’t go out, but at least it looked less likely to jump to the surrounding birch trees. I tried to picture rain and waterfalls, but it didn’t help. Except now I had to pee. I took a deep breath. My heartbeat stopped racing quite so frantically. I clenched my hands together.

The fire died, belching smoke.

Fingers trembling, I ran back to the truck and jumped inside. My hands felt too hot, my eyelids gritty.

I might still not know why I had this power, or where it came from, but once, just once, I’d stopped it before it did any real damage.

It was a start.