Shattered (16 page)

The whiteboard in the front of the class
read:
Congratulations Professor Lewis
.

“Who doesn’t love a good pizza party?” I
said. “Oh, I know. The guy who has to clean it up.”

I swallowed down the bitterness over my
current career as I fluffed a trash bag to life. Whatever job I got after Lydia
killed Kamon and his army would not include a cleaning cart, toilet wands, and
setting classrooms in order only to have someone mess it up by the end of the
day.

 
I was supposed to grow up and become an accountant,
according to the woman I wouldn’t let myself think of. Maybe that career or
something like it wasn’t completely out of the question. If I could find a way
to pay for it, in a perfect world where I didn’t have to protect my girlfriend
from death all day, I would go to college and major in Math or Education or
Math Education if that were a real thing.

Footsteps in the hallway pulled me out of
my fantasy. No matter how many times checking the hallway turned out to be
nothing, I still had to do it. It would only take the triplets a moment to take
Christine.

I poked my head out of the classroom and
saw a group of harmless students running down the hall. They were dressed in
white clothes and covered from head to toe in several different colors of
paint.

The next two times I checked the hall, I
saw the same thing. Multicolored kids, having the time of their lives. I
guessed something was going on today. Some campus event Chris hadn’t mentioned.

The next time, I was tempted to not look,
but it was my job to look. This time, there were no students covered in paint.
This time, there was no one at all. Both directions were clear. A normal person
would’ve gone back to cleaning, but I wasn’t normal, and it smelled like
spoiled milk. Spoiled Remi.

“Hey, hottie,” she said. I spun around.
She was sitting on a desk with her ankles crossed like she had a shred of
class. She waved like a happy dork, then flipped me off. “I’ve missed you.”

“Shut up,” I said.

She laughed and rubbed a pointy nail
across her dark red lips. “Manual labor has turned you into an asshole. What
does a job like this pay? Must be a lot. You drive around in that nice car. Oh
… that’s right. That’s for the princess. Did Mommy buy her that?”

I wasn’t interested in exchanging
insults. I kept my ears open for hunters, not falling for this distraction, and
I charged at her. I reached for her neck, and she disappeared.

“I’ve learned a few tricks since I left
you guys,” Remi said, behind me now.

“Good. Let’s test them out.”

She shook her head, her lips in a pout.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t want to fight you. My master calls you a Ghost.
Odds are … I’d lose. I just wanted to say hi. We didn’t think you two would be
coming back here with the stakes being raised with that sexy musician. This is
so bold of you.” She flicked a lighter on and off, and I charged at her again.
She moved to the door and winked at me.

She shoved her hands into the pockets of
her leather jacket, and I waited, planning my next move. Obviously charging at
her wasn’t going to work.

She pulled her hands out of her pockets
and held her fists over the trashcan. Purple flowers drifted from her palms.
That might have been the most random thing I’d ever seen outside of pink
balloons appearing out of thin air. She dropped her lighter into the trashcan with
them and vanished.

I snatched a bottle of water from my
cart. It appeared to be enough to put out the small fire. I unscrewed the cap
and kneeled next to the trashcan.

The scent of the smoke yanked at my nose,
a familiar, earthy aroma. It smelled like there should be tons of these flowers
… on a campfire … in the snow.

I sat the water bottle down and allowed
the flames to lick at the petals and the trash under them. I closed my eyes and
saw the beautiful snowy wilderness I’d only seen in my dreams. This time, I saw
those flowers covering little legs.

What’s
that?
a woman asked. Her
eyes were as green as mine, her skin as white as the snow around us. She was
only dressed in a thin, blue dress, like it was the middle of summer.

Flowers
, a little voice said. A little me. I’d
barely pronounced the word.

Good.
And where do they go?
she asked. I tossed them into the fire and clapped my tiny hands. An older
woman at my other side applauded with me.
And
what do they do?

Bring
… Daddy … home.

The older man who always told the stories
in my dreams sat across from me in the snow. He smiled and positioned a huge
drum between his legs. I wanted him to play it. He tapped lightly, almost too
low for me to hear. Too low for anyone to hear. But I knew they would, the dogs
waiting for the flowers and the drums.

I crawled to the drum, but the lady in
the blue dress picked me up and forced me to be still in her lap.

You’re
too young, Dali
.

I opened my eyes in the classroom, but
the drums didn’t stop. They were in this world too. The fire was blazing in the
trashcan now. I made no moves to extinguish it. I was still caught in the scent
and the drums and the memory I’d just seen.

Dali.

That was what people called me in my
dreams. In the hospital in New Zealand, after her seizure, that name came
floating out of Christine’s mouth. I was so shocked I couldn’t even respond.

Now, I heard that name in the air,
twisting around the beat of the drums, wafting in and out of my nose with the
smoke. It took me to another place. The trashcan and my cleaning cart and the
other things tying me to this building were gone. It felt like the end of
everything. Of being tired. Of being worried. The drums meant … come rest. And
I needed that more than anything. I needed to go home.

I didn’t feel myself moving until I was
outside of the McCray building, standing in a wasteland of snow.

Seeing Nathan in pain had changed
everything. It made me question Trenton and art and whose life I was living. It
made me question if I was supposed to forge my own way or just be happy doing the
things my mother couldn’t do, no matter who it hurt, no matter how many people
had to go out of their way to make it happen. It made me question where I
belonged. St. Catalina hadn’t worked, the portal world surely hadn’t, and now
Trenton had become a daily struggle for my soul mate.

When I thought about my life ten, twenty
years down the road, I didn’t really know what I would be doing. I knew what
felt natural for my life–using my powers–and that what felt natural
was wrong, but outside of that, I wasn’t sure. But there was one thing I knew
without a doubt: that I would love Nathan Reece for the rest of my life and
well after. So I was done trying to please my parents just so they’d know I
wouldn’t run off and open another portal or go after Kamon. That had hurt
Nathan, and nothing was worth that.

After the botched family meeting, I tried
for the rest of the weekend to get my father to see things my way. But by
Monday, even though he was all over the news and they thought Nathan had been
physically attacked, he still didn’t care. And now I was sitting in Max’s class
once again.

I stared at my canvas, unable to start my
painting, and my phone vibrated on my easel. Nate.

You
love painting. Don’t make yourself miserable today. I’m fine.

I craned my neck to the door. He was
watching me, watching the canvas. I just nodded to him. I did love painting,
and I’d made myself like Trenton because I loved painting and making my parents
happy. Trenton wasn’t the enemy, I knew that. It was stress and Kamon and uncontrollable
magic and both of us pretending everything was fine. For two people who claimed
to love each other so much, we certainly had a problem being honest.

“Will there be another trip to the wall
today, prodigy?” Max asked. I shook my head as I continued to stare at my
canvas. “Good. Get to work. I want your version of my landscape finished by the
end of the week, and you have nothing.”

I had nothing because two of my
landscapes had found their places on the Wall of Shame. He pointed to the
painting he wanted us to copy and tapped my canvas with the end of his famous
paintbrush as a warning.

I swept a light shade of green across the
bottom of the canvas and let out a loud breath. My problems were like a dark
murky cloud hanging over my face, constantly threatening to pull me in.

“Dark murky cloud,” I whispered, feeling
inspired.

 
I dipped my brush into black paint and covered
the green smudge I’d made. Soon, a trail of black smoke swept across my canvas.
I imagined it holding all the bad things in my life. St. Catalina was there,
the
girls
, the pain. Kamon–past, present, and
future. My grandparents’ deaths were there. So was my mother’s lost life and
Dad’s brain injury. And Nathan was there. The sound of his bones grinding and the
mops he’d pushed because of me. Because he loved me.

Like my problems, the smoke seemed
inescapable, stretching to both sides of the canvas, leaving no room to run.
But I didn’t want it to be that way, I didn’t want my life to be that way, so I
painted a black bird soaring above it all. The smoke couldn’t reach it up
there. To it, the thing that chose to fly above it, the cloud of problems was
nothing. I painted another bird in the sky so Nate could be there too, not
suffocating in our issues. Then I made one for Mom, then everyone in my life.

This thing with Kamon was not going to be
the end for us.

“Is that what you see up there?” Max
asked. I hunched my shoulders. I wasn’t in the mood to pretend today. He shook
his head and walked away, like I was too out of line to even make a trip to the
Wall of Shame.

Funny, it was the most fun I’d had in his
class all semester.

I kissed Nate goodbye in front of my last
class, praying that we’d get to move on from the black smoke and just focus on
us for a while. I couldn’t lose him forever. I couldn’t watch him turn into a
dog and leave me alone. When he told me he was here as long as he needed me, I
thought to myself:
then you’re here
forever
.

I sat in the back of class and opened a
text to Mom. I tried a few messages that I didn’t send. Finally, I settled on:
Please help me. I’m afraid of this place and
what it’s doing to my life. It’s more dangerous than you let on, isn’t it?

A few minutes later, she responded:
OK, angel. You’re right. I had a bad feeling
about it yesterday. That’s why I voted against it. I’ll talk to Sophia and your
dad, and we’ll figure something out.

I texted Nate about our possible victory,
but he didn’t respond. I checked my phone every few minutes, waiting on his
reaction. I wanted him to be ecstatic and relieved that his troubles would be
over sooner than twenty more days. With only three minutes left to class, and
still no reply, I decided to let it go and talk to him about it in person.

I felt the world move from under me as a
sound I never wanted to hear again blared in my ears. The fire alarm shrieked,
and I jumped out of my skin. It pulsed in my ears, a painful memory. This was
the sound that had started it all, the madness at St. Catalina, and I wasn’t
the only one who noticed that.

Phones lifted in my direction as
Professor Johnson ushered us out of class. I waited by the door for Nate, and
for the first time all semester, he wasn’t there.

Something felt off, wrong, and when a
pale face stood out in the crowd, I knew why. It was as if she’d materialized
right there in the middle of the hall. The students taking pictures of me faded
into the background as unimportant matter surrounding Remi Vaughn.

She smiled at me. If she weren’t so
horribly evil, I would call her beautiful. Her hair was long and sleek, like a
thick black curtain falling to her waist.
Her tattoos were
covered by a black leather jacket
, and she was wearing long leather
pants–a stunning amount of clothes for her.

As she stepped closer, pushing through
the herd of students heading for the exits, I felt the knife she’d plunged into
my chest months ago when she’d almost killed my mother.

I swallowed the rage. I couldn’t fight
her here. Compared to me, she was an Amazon woman, and I didn’t have powers
anymore.

Keeping my eyes on her, I pressed towards
the door with everyone else. I called Nathan on my way out, and after five
rings, I got his voicemail.

Hey,
it’s Nate. Leave a message if you’re not Paul.

“Babe, Remi’s on my floor. I’m headed
downstairs. I’m sure you hear the alarm. I’ll look for you outside.”

Then I tried my mother, half expecting to
get her voicemail.

“Baby?”

“The fire alarm went off and Nate isn’t
here. Remi-”

“Don’t move. I’ll be there in a second.”

But I was already in the stairwell, the
momentum of the crowd pushing me further. I turned around. Remi was about
twenty people behind me. I had to move.

The sun blinded me as I stepped out of
the building, still enclosed in a murmuring crowd of my biggest fans. The phones
pointed at me stayed in place for longer than a few seconds. Video. Wonderful.
They were recording this.

I did my best to appear calm and not at
all annoyed. I waved at the students who bothered to speak and repeated, “I
have nothing to do with this,” when a girl dared to bring her phone close to
me.

Then I heard a strange sound. “Drums?” I
said. They were distant and muted, barely audible over the fire alarm. They
were coming from the thin patch of woods where I’d found Nathan after the open
house.

Remi stopped a few feet away from me and
just stood there, smiling, then nodded her head to the left.

Between the McCray building for painting
students and the Kenner building for dance majors, was a figure, caught in the
glare of the sun, but clearly a person walking towards the woods. I cupped my
hand over my eyes to get a better view. The person was wearing a navy uniform.
Nathan.

Causing a scene when everyone was
expecting one would be an awful idea. It would be beyond the blogs. I would be
breaking news again.

To stop myself from yelling his name, I
called his phone. As I closed more of the distance between us, trying my best
not to run, I heard it ringing in his pocket, yet he made no moves to answer
it. I looked over my shoulder. Remi hadn’t followed, but a few phones were pointed
at me, recording me speed walking away.

“Nate,” I said, when I was close enough
not to yell. He didn’t turn around, just continued his slow march towards the
forest. I jogged the rest of the distance and touched his shoulder. “Where are
you-”

My words scrambled back into my throat
when I saw his eyes–dulled and distant–and the skin moving
unnaturally on his face and neck.

“Baby?” I said. Still nothing. “It’s
happening again. I’m going to get you home.”

The drums sped, the sound echoing through
the trees, and Nate’s legs sped with them. I tried to make out the silhouettes
between the trees. There were people there, waiting for him. Or us.

“Snap out of it,” I said. “Nathan,
please.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, yanking him back as his bones
quivered inside of him. He shoved me away and continued marching towards the
woods. “What if it’s Kamon?” I said. “Come on, Nate. This is dangerous.”

I grabbed him again with all the strength
I had. His legs begged him to change forms at the same moment and robbed him of
strength. I took advantage of his weakness and pulled him through the door
closest to us.

The alarm had been tripped in the Kenner
building as well. The dance studios were empty. He struggled in my arms as I
pulled him into an empty room with mirrors covering each wall. I locked the
door behind us as if that were enough to keep Kamon out. Or even keep Nathan
in.

He pushed me aside. I caught my balance
just before smashing into a glass wall. He tried to open the door, but the
bones in his hands wouldn’t cooperate.

“Nathan, please listen.” His mouth opened
and what came out of it was not close to English or even close to human.

I stepped in front of the door again,
barricading it with my body, and he growled at me, so hard I expected him to
land on paws at any moment.

An angry animal? What should I do in the
presence of an angry animal? I suddenly felt sure that I needed to hold my
ground, be strong and certain.

“No!” I screamed. “You are not going out
there!”

He growled again, harder this time, and backed
away from the door. He lowered until he was on all fours and lifted his butt in
the air. He looked like he was about to charge at me. “Nathan, baby, please
relax
.” His eyes focused for the quickest moment, then he
covered his ears like something had suddenly become unbearably loud, something
I couldn’t hear.

He growled again and charged at me,
moving so fast his body blurred. I saw him from every angle in the room of
mirrors–a streak of blue in front of me, a broken thing speeding past the
right wall, and an angry shifter bounding towards me in the left.

I didn’t know if I should move and let
him hit the door. Or what if he opened it? I couldn’t let him go outside like
this. People would see. Kamon would hurt him. And now he was just inches away
from ramming into me.

My breath hitched, and an arm yanked me
out of the way. I saw nothing but waves of blonde hair in my face. Then white
hair. Sophia. Mom had pushed me into my caretaker’s arms.

Sophia covered my ears, but it didn’t
stop the sound of glass shattering around the room. I spun around. The shards
seemed to move in slow motion as Nathan slammed into the right wall, taking
down the wooden bar with him.
 

“No! Stop!” I yelled. Mom walked to Nate,
one foot in front of the other, like a model on a catwalk. “Please,” I begged. “Don’t
hurt him!”

She looked over her shoulder, her eyes
burning, and said, “Sophia, bring her home and put her to bed.”

She sounded like a rich mother barking an
order to the nanny. And my nanny complied. I saw Nate scrambling up from the
glass and my mother walking towards him with clenched fists, just before Sophia
magically turned the world hazy and black.

When the fog cleared, I felt cold hands
on my forehead. I couldn’t open my eyes. It felt like someone was rewinding my
thoughts and watching them like a movie. I prayed it wasn’t my mother. I prayed
she wasn’t reading my mind. That would be intrusive. That would be devious.
That would be dangerous for Nathan.