The Boys Are Back in Town (16 page)

The rest of the world seemed impossibly far away. As he sat at his kitchen table and listened to Will James talk of magic and blood and levitation, Kyle felt as though his house had receded from everything he understood of reality. Out there was the yard he had played football in, the driveway he helped his dad shovel in the winter, the lamppost whose glass he had shattered with a Frisbee. The neighbors walked their dogs on Parmenter Road, kids rode their bikes, and in the summer a battered ice-cream truck went by, driven by a twentyish girl whose smile was far more interesting to the neighborhood boys than ice cream.

Yet across the table from him, face too pale in the unforgiving kitchen lights, Will James gave up his ugly secrets, staring at a spot in the middle of the kitchen as though he could see the past unfolding with every word. And despite how detached Kyle felt, how Will's stories made him itch as though tiny insects were crawling upon his skin, he reminded himself time and again that—once upon a time—Will himself had played football in that yard and helped his father shovel the driveway, had ridden his bike on Parmenter Road and probably looked forward to visits from the ice-cream truck, though for an entirely different reason.

So Kyle sat and he listened to stories about Will James and Brian Schnell, and Brian's little sister Dori's naked breasts, about orange floats and cafeteria fights and about that book. That damnable book. It looked so harmless there on the kitchen table, battered cover dull in the overhead lights, its deep red leather now anemic, drained of much of its color, as pale in its way as Will himself.

But Kyle did not want to touch it again. With every word Will spoke the book's presence there in the kitchen grew more ominous. He wished he had never seen it, never touched it, and though he knew deep down he would later pretend not to have considered it, the thought crossed his mind that he could
feel
a malignance emanating from those pages.

Dark Gifts.
It was aptly titled, that much was certain.

“. . . got worse after that,” Will went on. A sour expression pinched his face and he glanced up at Kyle, almost as if Will had forgotten he was in the room, as if he had lost track of precisely who his confessor was. “It was a big game. I mean, try to imagine it. Just for a moment, try to imagine that you were the one with the unhealthy little obsession that had finally borne fruit.” He chuckled humorlessly. “Rotten, bitter fruit.”

Through the open windows Kyle could hear a car engine growl as it went up the street. He hesitated, hoping he would not hear it slow, hoping that his parents had not decided to come home early. But the car went on, the engine noise fading, leaving only the sound of the floral-patterned clock ticking in the kitchen, and their breathing.

“Why you?” he asked doubtfully. “Okay, the book's rare. You and your friend were my age when you found this thing. It's just hard to think something that hadn't worked for other people would—”

“How do you know?” Will interrupted, voice soft.

Brows knitted, Kyle studied him, this guy in his jeans and his Red Sox jersey, and thought he could see in the man's face the teenager he had once been. “How do I know what?”

“That it didn't work for other people? As far as we know, there may have been hundreds or thousands of genuine magicians just in the past couple of hundred years. What makes you think the world would know? Scientific discovery is a thing of exultation, of celebration. That's what you don't understand, Kyle. Magic isn't like that. Once you've had a taste of it . . . it's secret. Something to be savored, to be held close and cherished, but not shared. Magic is dark and selfish.”

His eyes were so very far away that Kyle was almost afraid to speak then, to interrupt the connection that Will had in those moments with the dark days of his past.

“After that day in Herbie's—that was the ice-cream shop—Brian and I had a bond that wasn't like anything I'd ever experienced before. Or since, really.” Will grunted. “How fucking sad is that? Anyway, even though we had this secret, this thing that was so much ours, all this time we spent learning spells and stuff was just as much about one-upping each other as it was about the magic.”

Magic,
Kyle thought.
He says it like it's nothing.

Long seconds ticked by on the clock and Will seemed lost in the past, or in the pain of whatever was happening to him now. Kyle had long since reached the point where he did not know what to believe. Magic was bullshit, but then, the book had come from somewhere. So had the note. And there was nothing ordinary about either of them.

At length, he spoke up. “So . . . so what happened? I mean, it's pretty obvious from what you've told me that you and this Brian guy fell apart after a while. You stopped messing with . . . all this stuff?”

On the table were two glass bottles of root beer. Kyle's version of hospitality. Will had sucked his down so quickly that he'd had to wipe foam off his lips. Kyle had taken a single sip and now the bottle sat on the table as if daring him to drink. But he was lost now in the story, in the possibilities.

Will gestured to the bottle. “Are you going to drink that?”

“Help yourself.”

After he had taken a long swig, Will at last looked at Kyle again. “Something happened that . . . scared us. Scared me. Not only that, but it was . . .” He narrowed his eyes. “You act the tough guy, Kyle, but you're not stupid. I knew that right off. You think of yourself as a good guy?”

This bizarre tangent forced Kyle to take a breath. He blinked, thought about it a moment, and then shrugged. “Yeah. Don't most people?”

“I'd like to think so,” Will replied. “I did, too, back then. Thought of myself as a good guy. High on my white horse. I think a time comes in everybody's life when we get knocked off that horse.” His gaze lost its focus and then his eyes slid away, but it was not memory that made Will drift this time, that was obvious. He did not want to look at Kyle while he spoke. “I did something shitty, Kyle. We did. Brian and me. I've never forgiven myself for it, and I never forgave him for it, either. But I had to move on with my life. I had to get to a place where I could take it as a lesson learned and try to remind myself why I ever thought I was a good guy in the first place.”

Will took a quick sip of the root beer, then held the cold bottle against his cheek. He laughed softly and this time there was a bit of humor in it, a gleam in his eye. “We all have our sins to pay for. For your sake, I hope it's a long time before you have to learn that lesson.”

Slowly, very slowly, Will set the bottle of root beer down. There was a despair on his face unlike anything Kyle had ever seen. The man raised his right hand, lips moving silently at first; then his voice rose, but the words sounded like gibberish. Will swore, stumbling over a word, then he started again, eyes closed. He rubbed his thumb across his index and middle fingers repeatedly for several seconds.

He stopped. Fell silent. Opened his fist.

A small flame no larger than what might burn upon a candle's wick danced in the palm of his hand.

Kyle nearly wet his pants. “Oh, shit,” he whispered, eyes wide.

Will closed his hand and a tiny tendril of smoke furled up from between his fingers as the flame was snuffed. Then Will leaned toward him so that their faces were only a couple of feet apart, his eyes locked on Kyle's.

“You knew something extraordinary was happening, Kyle. You wouldn't have let me in here if you weren't ready to hear the truth.” Will reached for the book, dragged it across the table with a sound like sandpaper on wood, and tapped it. “Someone is using magic—magic from this book—to hurt people I care about. Someone's changing the world right under my nose.”

He bit his lip, eyes closed tightly as though to ward off tears. When he opened them again fury had replaced despair. His blue eyes seemed a dismal gray now, as though storm clouds had covered the sky. “I have to set things right. Not just for those people who've been hurt . . . but also because it's affecting me, Kyle. Changing me. I don't feel the same. And I want to hold on to the person I was long enough to fix it.” His voice lowered to a confidential rasp. “You can't imagine what it's like to feel yourself changing, to know it's being done. . . .”

Another car went up the street and this time they both paused to listen. When the engine noise had diminished and the ticking of the clock and the hum of the refrigerator were all that remained, Will pulled
Dark Gifts
into his lap and stared at the cover.

“I need help, Kyle. You have no reason to help me. But someone brought you into this thing already with this book and with that note. You live in my old house. In my old room. I can't believe there's no significance to that. I don't know if I know anyone else I could convince, even with the hocus-pocus shit. And even if I did, I think it's a bad idea to wait. I want to get to this before anything else happens, or before I'm . . . altered drastically. Or erased.”

Kyle stared at him. After a few ticks of the clock he got up, sighed, and began to pace in the kitchen. His head hurt. His chest hurt. The image of that flame in this crazy fucker's hand was going to stay with him, he was sure of that. His parents would be home eventually and he had no idea what the guy wanted him to do. But if that little flame was possible, then couldn't it all be true? All of it.

His gaze ticked over to where the book lay in Will's lap and he shuddered, remembering the way it had felt in his hands. True or not, he didn't like that book. Not at all. The last thing he wanted to do was mess with whatever was inside it.

Striding across the kitchen again, he paused and leaned against the door frame, looking down the stairs at the darkened landing by the front door, glancing into the shadows of his living room, imagining Will James opening his presents there on Christmas morning.

But this was no dream. It wasn't some drug trip. It was impossible, sure. But what the hell did that mean?

“Tell me what's going on. Who's being hurt? Who's in danger?” he said into the shadows of the living room. Then he turned to find Will James watching him hopefully.

“And then tell me what you did that was so terrible.”

April, Junior Year

Friday afternoon was a time of bliss, with the whole weekend ahead. There would be plans, of course—the mall, a movie, maybe a party—but of late every weekend began the same way. Will boarded Brian's bus and they sat in the back, windows open, talking about everything except what they were both thinking about, the secret that they shared.

The book.

This particular Friday was no different. The bus rattled, its engine straining as it climbed up Terrace Road, exhaust fumes swirling up and into the back windows. Will and Brian ignored the fumes. That was part of the price to be paid for sitting in back. Once upon a time they would never have gotten these backseats, but they were juniors now, and juniors ruled the buses. Most seniors either had cars or rode with one of their friends, abdicating their regency over the seating arrangements on school transportation.

“What've you and Caitlyn got going this weekend?” Brian asked.

Will smiled. “Wouldn't you like to know?”

Brian rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, not much,” Will relented. “I think we're probably going to go to The Sampan tomorrow night. I want to hit the bookstore at some point this weekend, but I don't know if my mother can take me. Can't wait until I get my license.”

“No shit,” Brian agreed. He nodded slowly, then studied Will. “So you guys are pretty serious, huh?”

Will couldn't stop the grin that spread across his face. “I know. I'm whipped. What can I say? Love's pretty cool.”

“I don't even know what that is,” Brian told him. “Love.”

His tone was layered. There was a level at which he was taunting Will, riding him for his dedication to Caitlyn the way all of the guys did, partially out of ignorance and partially out of envy. But Will heard more than that in Brian's words; on a certain level, he meant what he had said. He really did not understand what love was, and he seemed to regret it.

“Not that I'm a fuckin' expert,” Will said, “I'm sixteen, not sixty. But, okay, take a look up there.”

Will gestured toward the front of the bus. There were dozens of other students there, laughing and talking, their voices blending into a kind of loud growl that almost matched the roar of the engine. There were many faces he recognized, and a handful of freshmen who were unfamiliar to him. Some of the girls were plain, or simply ordinary, but a few were cute as hell. Dori Schnell was among them, but not only was she a bitch, she was Brian's sister, so he didn't want to use her as an example.

“See Candace what's-her-name? Brillstein?” Will asked.

Brian glanced forward. The girl in question was a sophomore, a friend of Dori's who wore the miniest of tank tops and had long sandy hair, pale skin, and the most amazing eyes Will had ever seen. It didn't hurt the package at all that Candace was a flirt with perfectly round breasts that she seemed extremely proud of.

“How could I miss her?” Brian asked, shooting a lascivious look at Will.