Authors: Amy Garvey
Robin snuggles a little closer to Mom, a tear sliding down one cheek, bright as a diamond.
“I stopped, of course. And it wasn’t . . . pretty,” he says, sitting down again. “But I can’t use my power ever again. And I can’t be around people who do use it, not for very long.”
There’s nothing left to say—he looks so tired, I know that he’s told it all. Except one thing, I guess, and he says that now.
“I’m so sorry. Every day I’m sorry, every day I miss you. And I guess every day since the day I left, your mom and I have been screwing this up.”
If he starts to cry, I’ll be next, and I grit my teeth. If I cry now, I might never stop. The whole story is sad and stupid and careless and human and horrible. Like life can be, I guess.
But I don’t know what any of it means when it comes to my story,
my
life. My power is nestled safe inside me, a vague, comfortable hum, but for the first time I’m really afraid of it.
“I know now that we should have told you everything.” My mom’s voice is low, rough. “When you were old enough for all of it, I mean. And . . . we didn’t. I didn’t. I was scared, too. But I think Robin was right.” She squeezes Robin’s shoulders. “Taking the problem right to the source is usually the smart thing.”
For a second, the silence is too thick, too heavy, even with the fire snapping at the edges of it. And I think,
This is my family, the only one any of us have. And maybe it doesn’t have to be a tragedy.
So I smile at my dad, big and slow. “Maybe you can explain to her why summoning a living person is not ever the thing to do.”
I’m lucky I don’t singe my hair when Robin knocks me over with a sofa cushion, but I can hear my parents laughing. I like the sound of it.
“THIS IS SUCH A BAD IDEA,” GABRIEL WHISPERS
as we sit down in the Book Barn the following night. It’s packed, wooden folding chairs crammed into short rows around the stage, and the lights are already down. Jess and Cal are on the other side of Gabriel, holding hands and whispering something I’m pretty sure I should be glad I can’t hear. I’m on the end, and there’s barely two feet between me and the wall.
“We don’t have another plan.” I shrug, even though my heart is pounding. Gabriel can probably feel it even without his psychic senses. Inviting Bay and Fiona here is crazy. But when my mom said “taking the problem right to the source,” I knew it was the only choice left. We certainly haven’t been able to find out anything about Adam’s disappearance on our own.
And I keep hearing Gabriel’s voice in my head:
“Wren, there was blood.”
I shudder, and Gabriel wraps his arm around my shoulders. Everyone, Darcia included, is surprised I’m here tonight, with my dad still in town—and sleeping on our couch, which is a whole other level of awkward—but no way was I missing Dar’s big night.
“I’m going to stay for a couple days,” he’d said last night when I was going up to bed. He was standing at the foot of the stairs in jeans and a sweater and sock feet, and it was hard to remember he didn’t belong here anymore, that he had ever left. “Just to give us a chance to get to know each other. But a break here and there is probably a good idea, too.”
He’s not wrong. I mean, I’m trying to be understanding, and I’m trying to take him being part of my life in any way as better than nothing at all, but instant family togetherness is a lot of pressure. Especially when we’re all waiting for Robin’s powers to misfire every other minute.
Gabriel wasn’t surprised that I still wanted to come tonight, but I figured he wouldn’t be. He knows how I feel about finding Adam, not to mention Darcia’s big debut. And I’m counting on him to use his special Spidey sense to get into Bay’s head.
Which means I won’t have to use my power at all. For the time being anyway, I’m pretty content to park that part of me in the long-term lot.
“They might not even show up,” I say finally, glancing around the room. It’s an addition to the original barn, with a coffee counter along one side and the stage area set up catty-corner to it. Usually the rest of the room is full of tables and a couple of thrift-store armchairs, but for events like this, rows of folding chairs are set up. I think it’s supposed to give the showcases a concert atmosphere, but instead it feels a little like the high school auditorium.
It is packed, though. Four people are playing, and Dar is the second on the bill. She’s so nervous, she’s been jittering all day, and Thierry is here somewhere, which I bet is making it worse. I haven’t seen her this moony over a boy in, like, ever.
“What exactly did you say to Bay?” Gabriel whispers. His arm is draped over the back of my chair, and the chill of the night air on it is quickly fading in the overcrowded room. “I mean, you blew him off for days.”
“I said he was right.” I make a hair-ball noise. “I generally groveled and said I was being stupid about what happened, and hey, why don’t you meet me at this thing tonight?”
“And you think he’s going to buy that?” He sounds dubious, but the lights are going down and the first performer is walking up to the stool and mike, so I just shrug and take one last look around.
I don’t want to see Bay or Fiona. I don’t really want them on the same planet as me, much less in the same room. But I can’t forget that a kid I know might be out there somewhere, hurt or possibly dead, because he got tangled up with them.
I can’t believe I let myself get tangled up with them, either, but a little guilt and a lot of shame is nothing compared to being dead.
“Oh boy,” I hear Jess say when the guy at the mike starts. He’s oozing emo all over the place, dyed white hair dripping into his eyes, and I can practically feel Cal falling asleep. Gabriel is rubbing his eyes, but I’d bet a week’s paycheck it’s just general irritation instead of a headache.
“They’re only playing three songs each, right?” Gabriel mutters at the end of the second song, just as fingers snake over my knee and squeeze. I whirl to find Bay crouched beside my chair, and Fiona pressed against the wall behind him. She looks more malevolent than usual, too. Sort of like a crazy fairy who’s thinking about a homicidal rampage, actually. In the low light, her eyes are glittering.
I hold a finger to my lips, even though there’s nothing I want to hear less than this guy’s last song, but I smile when I do it. My “so glad to see you” face is not something I pull out very often, and I elbow Gabriel at the same time.
Bay sketches a salute and straightens up to stand beside Fiona, draping himself over her the way his coat hangs on him. And then proceeds to stare just past me at Gabriel.
So totally not cool. I could swear the temperature in the room just dropped twenty degrees, and beside me Gabriel is tense, too perfectly still to be relaxed. As the song winds to an end, all I can do is cling to his hand and hope he’s poking around in Bay’s head. And finding something we can use in what I assume is the rest of the slimy garbage in there.
The polite applause at the end of the set is a relief, for me if not for Emo Boy. I turn around to say something to Bay in the pause before Darcia comes out, but he and Fiona are gone. I glance back at Gabriel, and he’s staring at the stage like he’s hypnotized.
Where the hell did they go, and how did I not hear them walking away? I twist completely around to look at the back of the room, and the big archway into the bookstore, but they’re nowhere.
And Gabriel is . . . in a totally other zone. I snap my fingers and hiss his name, and he turns his head slowly toward me. Too slowly.
“Wren?”
“Did you get anything?” I whisper, leaning close. “Are you okay? Where did they go?”
He blinks, and his head swivels back to face the stage. It’s so close to the careful, lifeless way that Danny moved, the hair on the back of my neck is standing up. “Darcia,” he says, and smiles. Sort of.
And I am now officially freaked out.
I want to grab his hand and pull him out of the room, into the frozen night. I want to scream, and I want to find Bay, since I know he did this, whatever it is. And then later, when I have a minute, I want to pull my hair out strand by strand for thinking it was in any way a good idea to invite someone with powers like Bay’s to come here, when I should have guessed he’d be getting his payback on.
And my best friend, Darcia? The one who’s about to play in public for the first time? I’d kind of like to see her sing, and to stand up on my chair afterward and applaud till my hands bleed, because that’s why I’m here.
She walks up to the stool, and even from here I can see her trembling. But she sits down, guitar strap over her shoulder, and pulls it onto her lap. The lighting isn’t exactly professional, but it’s soft and focused on her, and her hair makes a dark halo around her face.
She looks beautiful, and for a second nothing else matters.
She sings an older Ani DiFranco song first, and her fingers are so sure on the strings, I want to jump up and down and throw flowers. But as I glance across Gabriel for Jess’s reaction, Gabriel’s eyes stop me. Behind the flat gray is a shadow that flickers and moves as I watch, and Gabriel gasps.
Everyone’s clapping as the song ends, and for a minute I freeze. It’s an echo of the noise in my head, shrieking to get Gabriel out of here, desperate not to make a scene, and cheering for Darcia all at once. I grab Gabriel’s hand, and his fingers tighten around mine painfully, knuckles white.
“This is the one I love,” Jess leans in to whisper, beaming, as Dar starts the next song. She frowns when she sees Gabriel’s face and mouths,
What’s wrong?
at me. I wish I knew.
Instead of answering, I mouth back,
Tell her I’m sorry
, and stand in a crouch, tugging Gabriel after me. He’s nearly boneless, all of his strength poured into the death grip he has on my hand, and I really, really wish I hadn’t thought of it as a death grip. Cal leans around Jess, confused, but she just shakes her head and points at the stage. Dar’s song is already winding down.
I nearly trip over a bag someone left in the aisle, and twice Gabriel glances off the wall like a giant boy-sized bag of potatoes, but I manage to get him through the archway and into the bookstore. The girl at the counter looks up in alarm, and I paste on a completely fake smile.
“Asthma,” I say, and wow, that’s dumb, because he should be gasping for breath, not propped against the wall like a zombie. She just nods and goes back to her book, and for one wild second I feel like shouting, “Hey, that girl in there is going to be on the radio in a couple years, so pay attention!”
Tonight needs the biggest do-over ever.
I sling Gabriel’s arm over my shoulder and steer him outside. It’s frigid, the cold a vicious slap as soon as it hits, and I realize I’d been hoping it would shock the vague lifelessness out of Gabriel. Instead, he’s doubling over, eyes slipping closed, and before I know it, he’s huddled on the pavement, barely conscious.
It only takes me a second to decide. I pull out my cell phone and call the house, shivering as the phone rings. My mom answers, and I don’t say anything but “I need Dad.”
The last thing I expected to see tonight was my father with Gabriel slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry as he climbed the stairs to the apartment. I mean, I’d envisioned Gabriel meeting my dad, probably tomorrow, totally chill, nothing big and formal and official. Instead, I had my dad laying Gabriel out on his bed, his face pinched in dread.
One day, I hope, I’m going to get something simple right the first time.
For now, I’m sitting on the edge of Gabriel’s bed, holding his hand, and it feels like the only thing I do anymore. His skin looks like wet paper, a sheen of sweat on his pale forehead. His hair is plastered to his head, and he’s shaking, eyes moving under his lids in staccato bursts. Olivia’s still at the bar, but as soon as I work up the courage, I know I have to call her.
“I don’t know, Wren. This could be a nine-one-one moment,” my dad says. He’s standing at the end of the bed, watching every move Gabriel makes, and I don’t blame him for suggesting it. Gabriel looks stuck somewhere between a coma and a seizure, and the worst part is that it clearly hurts. Like, a lot.
“But what . . .” I get myself together, blinking back tears. “But what are they going to do if they can’t find anything wrong? Bay did this, Dad, I know it.”
“If this is a spell . . .” The words trail off into silence, broken only by the creak of bedsprings as Gabriel jerks in pain. “This is serious stuff, honey.”
I finally look back at him, and I can see the protective dad warring with the furious father who wants to know exactly what his kid has gotten herself into. I don’t have time for that, even as I fleetingly imagine what he’s going to tell my mom.
Right now, I’m not sure how much time Gabriel has left.
“WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING,” OLIVIA SAYS.
It’s not quite nine on Saturday morning, and she’s pacing the length of the apartment wrapped in an old sweater. She hasn’t been to sleep; none of us has.
My mom comes out of Gabriel’s bedroom without closing the door behind her. She’s been sitting with him, doing everything she can to make him comfortable, since sometime around one this morning. I don’t know what kind of spells she’s used, but he’s not as restless with pain anymore.
I think that’s what they call “cold comfort.”
Olivia is so wild with worry and rage, she’s practically vibrating. Every time she falls silent, I’m sure I can hear the echoing screams in her head. Gabriel is all she has.
I don’t need anyone to remind me.
Mom brought my books when she came, leaving Robin home asleep, and Dad’s been poring through them for hours.
“It’s been a long time,” he keeps apologizing, “and I never had to deal with anything like this before. You’re sure you didn’t hear him say anything? You didn’t smell any herbs or notice anything strange, something he left behind?”
All I can do is shake my head and go back to the books I’m looking through. I was too freaked to think to look around, and I know I didn’t hear him say anything. And even though I’ve seen him do magic without a word plenty of times, this is terrifying. Something like this . . . I don’t even want to know what he was thinking at Gabriel to cause this.
“You’re going to have to find him,” Olivia announces suddenly, stopping in the middle of the room. Her arms are folded tight against her chest, and her jaw is set hard. “Find him and hold him down if you have to. But figure out what he did to my brother.” She swallows back a sob and sits down suddenly on the bare floor, a puddle of sweater with a girl inside it. “And then let me at him.”
My father glances up at me and nods, and when I look at Mom, she’s frowning but she’s not arguing. “I can keep him comfortable while your father keeps researching. I think finding this boy is probably your only choice. But I want you to go with her, Mari. Double the magic anyway.”
Mari nods right before she stifles a yawn. She looks about as powerful as a kitten right now.
I lay the thick, dusty book I’ve been paging through on the sofa and stand up. Everything feels stiff and sore, and my head is aching with exhaustion and worry and probably hunger at this point. My Docs have been kicked under the coffee table, and as I lean down to grab them, Dad touches my back.
It’s just a warm weight, no stroking or patting, but for the space of a minute I
remember
with a rush that overwhelms me. My daddy doing just that as I turned over to go to sleep, my night-light a steady gold glow on the wall, and his hand just anchoring me there in bed, a connection, a presence. I’m here, that hand said, it’s okay to close your eyes.
When I straighten up, I don’t try to hide the tears slipping down my cheeks, hot and fast.
Mom crosses the room and pulls me close, her hand in my hair, and her voice, gentle and steady, in my ear. “We’re going to fix this, baby. I promise you.”
I manage to nod and finally stand back. My nose is dripping, and my hands are shaking, but I need to do one thing before I leave.
Gabriel is flat on his back beneath a faded West Point blanket. I took his shoes off not long after Dad and I brought him home, and his socked feet have fallen toward each other like a little kid’s. I bite the inside of my cheek, hard, so I won’t cry again, and lean over him, one hand on his chest. He’s breathing a little easier, and he’s cooler now, at least.
He hasn’t opened his eyes in hours.
I lean my forehead against his. “I don’t know what Bay did, but I’m going to undo it. I will. Just . . . just hold on for me, okay?”
He doesn’t stir.
Aunt Mari gives me a ride to Summerhill.
It isn’t until we’re on campus, parked outside the dorms, that I realize I have no idea where Bay’s room is. And it’s not like there’s a handy directory.
“Maybe I could figure out some sort of location spell,” Mari says, leaning on the steering wheel and peering out the windshield at the buildings. “I’ve never actually done one before, but I think—”
“We don’t have time to play ‘Occult Nancy Drew.’” I shake my head. My hands are clenched so tight, my fingernails are digging half-moons into my palms. “Wait, I know. Jude. I can ask Jude.”
“Jude?” Mari says, confused, but she’s already turning the car on again. I give her the directions to Jude’s apartment and sit rigid in the passenger seat as Mari takes us there.
I’m so tired, it’s hard to keep my eyes open. But every time I close them, I see Gabriel’s face.
Mari pulls into an empty spot on the block where Jude’s apartment is, and I’m already halfway up to the door before she gets out of the car. I press buzzers until someone opens the outside door, and then I run up the stairs to Jude’s apartment.
There’s no answer. I keep pounding, calling for her, but the door stays firmly shut. When I press my ear to it, I don’t hear anything, not that I would hear her crouching inside, ignoring me. It feels empty, but I knock one more time. “Jude, come on, I need to talk to you!”
A door down the hall opens, and a guy in a backward baseball cap and a pair of basketball shorts sticks his head out. “Christ, she’s not home! Give it a frigging rest, it’s, like, ass o’clock in the morning.”
“It’s almost ten, slacker,” I snap, but I head back downstairs, where Mari is waiting by the door.
“No luck?”
“None.” I push open the door and stand on the walk, shaking.
If I can’t find Jude . . .
“Come on.” Mari’s hand on my back steers me toward the curb, but I glance up and down the block first. And maybe someone, somewhere, is rooting for me, because Jude is walking home with a bakery bag in one hand and a giant coffee in the other, just a block away.
My mouth falls open when she spots me—and turns around. She’s not quite running, but it’s close, and I lunge into a sprint to go after her. She turns the corner, and I groan.
I can hear Mari’s feet pounding the sidewalk behind me even as I shout, “Jude, stop! Please, Jude! I need your help!
Jude!
I mean it, come on! He might die!”
The toe of her sneaker catches on an uneven piece of concrete in the sidewalk, and her coffee lands with a messy splash on the grass beside it, but she finally slows down. We’re two blocks farther into the residential neighborhood on this side of downtown, big sprawling houses set back from the street, the bare trees arching overhead like a canopy. It’s not really the kind of block where you’re supposed to have messy, screaming confrontations, but I don’t care.
She stops and turns around to face me as I jog toward her, panting. Mari is somewhere behind me, but I don’t need her for this. I only need Jude, and suddenly I’m not at all sure what awful thing I might do if she tries to take off again.
“Who might die?” Jude says quietly when I’m finally close enough to hear her. She sets the bakery bag down on the short wall at the foot of the yard behind her. It slopes up in a graceful hill, and the wall is a perfect place to sit. I take it, still trying to catch my breath.
“Gabriel,” I say simply, and let my head hang down over my chest for a minute. “Look, I know this isn’t your problem, but I can’t find Bay. And he . . . he did something to Gabriel last night, and I need to find him. I need to know what he did so I can fix it.”
“Oh, Jesus, Wren.” She drops down next to me and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. It’s freezing, and her cheeks are hot pink with it.
“Look, I know what you said. But I didn’t know why you said to be careful, you know?” I scrub my hands through my hair, trying to get all the facts straight so she’ll understand. “I saw Bay with some other kids, and I heard them mention Adam Palicki’s name. And Bay totally made the grossest moves on me and said awful things about Fiona, and that night, at the party, Gabriel got a glimpse inside Bay, and I know it was about Adam.”
If I was trying to tell this sensibly, I’m not doing a very good job, but I can tell Jude is following anyway.
“But Gabriel and I, we wanted to see if . . . well, first you should know Gabriel is psychic, so we wanted to see if—”
“Wren.” Jude holds a hand up, nodding. “I get it. Bay is poison. What happened to Gabriel exactly?”
“I don’t know.” For the first time, tears are threatening again, because at the heart of this mess is Gabriel, unconscious on his bed. “He got all spacey, and then he was in pain, and then he passed out, but he was still in pain, and he’s sort of . . . comatose now, or something.”
She shakes her head, closing her eyes briefly, and then stands up. “Come on. Come back to my apartment for a minute, and then I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
Jude tries Bay’s phone when we get upstairs, and sighs when she hangs up a second later. “This number is no longer in service, apparently,” she says. “I bet he just took off. I got sort of . . . freaked out about him not long ago, and probably about a week before I met you, I did a little digging on him. It seems like he’s done this before. I don’t think he’s really a freshman, either.”
“What about Fiona? Do you know her home phone or where she lives?”
“Yup.” Jude picks up her phone again, but I can tell no one’s answering. “Maybe we should swing by there, just to see.”
I know where we’re going when we’re still half a block away, and when Jude tells Mari which house to pull up to, I groan.
“Here? God.” It’s the house Gabriel and I were walking by when he had his first headache all those weeks ago. I can’t believe it. All along, he’s been picking up Bay’s nasty frequency, and I had no idea.
Jude and I get out of the car and walk up the driveway. There are no cars parked there or in the garage, and the house has the locked-up, lifeless look of something empty.
“We could probably get in,” Jude says with a shrug. “I mean, I know we could—it’s nothing to open a door. But I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”
“At the moment, I don’t really need to add breaking and entering to my list of crimes,” I tell her, and lean against the back door for a minute. “You know what happened to Adam, don’t you? That’s why you were so uncomfortable with them?”
She nods, her colorless hair falling forward to hide her eyes. “It was just us, Adam and Fiona and Bay and me, here. Fiona’s parents were away, like always, and Bay . . . wanted to party. Adam had been hanging around, and he didn’t really have any power, but he wanted to learn the spells, the craft, and Bay liked to . . . play with him. Adam was a sweet kid.” When she looks up, her eyes are glassy with tears.
“It was an accident, really. They were goofing around, and we were all drinking a little, and Adam wanted to fly. Bay had been sort of dosing him all night, giving him little jolts of magic, and I don’t think Adam realized it. Next thing I knew, Bay was coming in from outside and telling us all to clean up, putting Fiona to bed. I think he did some kind of spell—she doesn’t remember Adam at all now. For her, he never even existed.”
I’m staring, my blood frozen into sludge inside. “Fly?”
She just nods, and suddenly I can imagine it all, Adam up on that roof right there, the blood . . .
“What did he do with the . . . the body?”
She swallows hard. “I don’t know. I thought Adam had just gone home at first. But when we were leaving, I saw the . . . the blood in the driveway.”
Oh God.
“I was so scared of him then, Wren.” She grabs my arm, fingers too tight. “I mean, I thought it was just fun, I’d never met anyone who could do what I could do, and I knew it was sort of slimy the way he treated Fiona, but she just didn’t get it, it was all a game to her, it was just make-believe, fairyland, and—”
“Stop!” I’m shaking again, my stomach rolling with the dark, foul taste of all of it. “Do your guilt on your own time, okay? Right now my boyfriend is
sick
. Can you help me or not?”
She straightens up, sniffling. “Absolutely.”
There’s no time for formal introductions when we get up to Olivia and Gabriel’s apartment. I probably could have brought in Merlin, and Olivia would have simply nodded and told us to get out our wands.
There’s no good news yet.
“I’ve found pieces of other spells, or spells almost like what you need, but without knowing what we’re fighting, it’s hard to be specific.” Dad looks beyond exhausted.
“Are you a . . . what they are?” Olivia asks Jude, blunt and wild-eyed. She seems to be disappearing farther into the huge sweater every time I look at her, nothing left but crazy, knotted hair and tearstains.
Jude nods and takes off her coat and sits down next to my father. “Can I take a look? I’ve studied some of this, just out of curiosity.”
“Kids these days,” Mom says faintly, and Mari puts an arm around her.
“It was partly to get familiar with the history of the practice, and partly because . . .” Jude trails off and looks at me with a sad shrug. “Well, I was scared I might run into someone who liked the black arts.”
I shudder and turn away, wrapping my arms around myself. The door to Gabriel’s bedroom is still partway open, and I walk over to it to peek inside.