Spiral (Spiral Series) (31 page)

I tried to breathe, but drawing breath into my lungs hurt too much. I started slow, just taking in a little air. The rest of my body felt like it had been pummeled with sticks. I didn’t want to move.

“Is he okay?”

“Ha. Yeah, I think he’s the healthiest person on the planet at the moment.”

I smiled weakly. Even that hurt. “Good.” He was kneeling in front of me, his warm hands on my knees. I still found that distracting.

“I could heal you a bit,” he offered, his silver eyes intense with worry. “Just to give you a little strength.”

I shook my head. There was no chance I was still going to be awake in five minutes. “No, I want to feel this. Did I do it right, then?”

Pierce scoffed. “Basically, yes, except for nearly killing yourself. But luckily you do have a spiral and it wouldn’t let you. They are known to be very pure and good, which is lucky in your case.”

“You realize I have no idea what you just said, right?”

Pierce laughed, a genuine laugh. It was the first time I had ever heard him make that sound.

“Sorry. I’ll explain everything as soon as I can.”

“Okay, as long as that means tomorrow. Or the next day. Who knows. I might sleep for a week. Just talking hurts.”

“Whatever you want,” he murmured in my ear before I slipped softly away. “Whatever you want.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but not because of that.”

My nonchalant response only served to infuriate Eric further. He picked up a coffee mug, still with some coffee in it, and threw it at me. I ducked easily; we both knew it would never have hit me.

“Why are you so upset?” I asked, sitting down at the table.

“Because,” he hissed. “You were not supposed to help her. It puts everything in jeopardy.”

“What is everything?” I asked. “If you mean the Visioners, they already knew she was here. They’re the ones that caused the accident in the first place.”

I hadn’t been able to stay long after Natalie’s healing. I hadn’t had a choice, so I just left her sleeping in the chair. I knew she would be okay in the hospital, and I had to get out of there and figure out how exactly I was going to explain everything to her now that I had promised I would.

“Are you INSANE?” Eric yelled at me when I walked in the front door of our house. I had expected him to be furious, and I wasn’t disappointed. His eyes were bulging and he looked at me with murderous intent.

“You helped a Spiral unicorn perform an advanced hele WITHOUT training? Are you INSANE?”

“You have no right to yell at me,” I pointed out calmly.

Anger was etched in every line of his body. “I have every right. I am your Watchful, and as such I am charged with keeping you alive. The fact that you set up a beacon to every Visioner from here to unicorn purgatory makes that impossible.”

“They already knew she was here,” I pointed out. “Otherwise Andrew wouldn’t have been harmed, as I already said.”

“Some did, now more do. That amount of hele can’t go unnoticed.”

“I’ve never seen you so angry before,” I said.

“You’ve never done anything this unbelievably stupid before,” he shot back.

I grinned at him. “That you know of.”

“You’re right. I had heard about your reputation for recklessness and dangerous stunts before I agreed to be your Watchful, and I’m still surprised by your level of stupidity. It’s an unfortunate fact that I expect the best of people, and Pierce, for all your stupid behavior I did always think you had a head on your shoulders. Tonight you proved me wrong.”

I leaned forward, letting my eyes sparkle in the dimly lit kitchen. Eric, whose face had gone red from ranting, paused and watched the change in my demeanor. I was no longer sitting back passively. His rebuke had had no effect on me.

 “She had to know. There was no second choice. She is always the only choice. When are you going to understand that?” My voice was ice cold.

“You’re mad,” he muttered, shock written across his face.

“Why would I choose a bunch of unicorns who let my family be murdered and then sat back and watched as their killers got away and my dad spiraled down into nothing? Why would I care what Watchfuls think who can’t even take care of me? No Watchful can match me. The best have tried.” I shot Eric a look, knowing he thought of himself as the best.

“I’m going to bed,” Eric announced, scraping his chair back. “I’m sure your aunt will have orders for us. Don’t expect to be allowed to remain in Blueberry.”

I laughed bitterly. “You and what army are going to remove me?”

Eric’s eyes flared in his pale face. “We will see,” he said, trying to sound menacing but only managing scared.

As for me, all I wanted to do was get to sleep. I knew I would be seeing Natalie the next day and I had a lot of explaining to do.

“Hi, congratulations. You have TONS of explaining to do,” was Natalie’s greeting when she met me in the park, as we had arranged by text messaging. Her arms were folded over her chest and her face was hostile. I should have known better than to hope that after my help the previous night she would have a positive outlook on what had happened. She had had time to think about it, and she wanted answers. She looked like she might pummel me if she didn’t get them. She was small, but formidable.

Once I reassured her that I would tell her everything I could, she relaxed a tiny bit and agreed to sit near me on the grass. Before I could say anything, she started in. She barely allowed to ask me how Andrew was doing (better), because she was so impatient for me to explain.

“Olivia is shocked and awed. So are the doctors. They think some lightning struck last night that somehow healed him. If only they knew the truth.” She snorted as if she had been healing for years. I could see that she was trying to hide the fear beneath the joking exterior. She didn’t look like she had slept much, and she kept biting her lip to keep it from trembling.

“I probably would think you were lying about all this if it hadn’t actually worked,” she said with a sigh. “But here’s my biggest issue,” she continued.

I hid a smile. She was sitting in the grass in the park in the town center of Blueberry, the picture of ordinariness, talking about something far out of the reach of ordinary Blueberry life. She wore a pale blue sundress, with her white hair cascading over her shoulders. The sun shone down warmly, and even the dark circles under her eyes didn’t diminish her beauty.

“You just have just one?” I asked dryly. I had stretched out next to her, lying comfortably on my back while she looked down at me and I squinted up at her. “I was sure you’d bring a long list of questions.” It was such a relief to finally get to tease her that I almost couldn’t believe it was happening.

She scrunched her face at me and ignored my comment, but I saw her relax just a little. After what we had gone through the night before, she just couldn’t be as distant in my company as she had been earlier. Whatever Jackson had said to her no longer mattered. Even if she had questions, she trusted me. It was like I could breathe for the first time in years.

“What am I?” Her eyes bore into mine, pleading.

“Good question. You are a unicorn. As am I.”

Natalie’s eyes widened. She looked adorable in her surprise.

“You do realize,” she said, “that neither of us has hooves or walks on all fours? Last time I checked I looked terrible in horseshoes.”

I grinned. “I had noticed something like that. Weird.”

She smiled slightly at my joke but made it perfectly clear that she was waiting for me to explain.

“We have unicorn blood,” I said. “Some unicorns have more than others. Only the strongest can really turn into unicorns - the horse-looking creatures of which you speak. Most of us just have silver eyes as our defining characteristic.” I pointed to my eyes, then gently reached up and touched Natalie’s temple. My breath caught as I felt her tremble under my fingers. I held that pose for as long as I dared, then lay back in the grass, but I was breathing as if I had been running. Natalie’s eyes sparkled down at me.

“There are unicorns who turn into the stuff you see in books?” she asked.

I nodded. “Not exactly how you see them in books, but something like it. Yeah, complete with a spiral horn, a white mane, and everything.” She looked away, fiddling with a blade of grass in her hands.

I sat up so suddenly she jumped a little. “You have a spiral, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what it is,” she muttered, still shifting uncomfortably. “How am I supposed to know what stuff is when it appears in the middle of the night protruding from my head? It’s just rude.”

“May I?” I asked softly. She knew what I wanted to do, even if she looked at me reluctantly.

Gently, I placed my hands on either side of her head as she bent her forehead down. Sure enough, at her hairline was a tiny mark, almost unnoticeable in the light.

“Do I have it?” she breathed. I held on to her head longer than I needed to, enjoying the ability to touch her.

“Yes,” I murmured. “I think you do.” I tried to keep my voice even. The last thing I wanted was to worry her.

“Does that make me super cool or something?” she whispered.

“Or something,” I said.

Her head flicked left and I watched her eyes.

“What is it?” I asked softly.

She shook her head. “Sometimes I think I see shadows. Sometimes I feel like the air is on fire around me.”

My body stiffened and she raised her eyebrows at me. “Is that a sign that I’m crazy?”

“No,” I said. “Look, we don’t have a lot of time.” I glanced around. A bad feeling was creeping over me, one I knew very well.

“A Spiral unicorn is a very powerful type of unicorn. It’s why you could heal Andrew and I couldn’t. I could have done something, but not enough to save his life.”

She nodded, her eyes wide.

“There are different tribes of unicorns. I’m part of the Silves. You live in Deker territory, although they pretend you don’t exist. Unicorns are closely associated with Watchfuls, a type of witch whose powers tend towards the protective. They keep unicorns safe, and in return we let the Watchfuls live in our territories and help them any time they’re sick.”

She nodded numbly.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” I said. “But you can trust me.”

She smiled at me, her eyes shining. “I know,” she said. “That’s one thing I definitely know. If you wanted to hurt me, by now you would have. Of course, I would have just healed myself with my super cool unicorn powers, but whatever.”

I dropped my arms into my lap. It was all I could do not to reach out and touch her, but this wasn’t the time to explain everything else and I knew she needed time before I told her the rest.

“What about me?” She asked. “That explains unicorns as a whole, but you haven’t explained me. Or what I can do,” she whispered.

The creeping feeling was moving up my back, but I forced myself to continue to sit quietly in the sunlight with Natalie and tell her what I could.

“You’re complicated,” I said, smiling.

She grinned. “I’m a girl.”

“I noticed,” I said dryly. Her giggle warmed my heart.

“Spirals are the strongest healers.”