RILEY
SCOTT LIGHTENED UP the very next second, leaving me guessing whether he meant more by that or was just being an inconsiderate pot stirrer. Heather drained her chardonnay in one ambitious gulp. Anything else the man said, she stopped paying attention, but she hooked my gaze for a moment. She attempted to smile.
"That must have been so hard, realizing your father hadn't been honest with you," Scott pointed out, causing another stab of pain in the chest.
My spine hit the rigid line of the couch arm. "It is."
"Lucas requested a bracelet from us, saying you were having troubles with controlling your abilities in public. Stress will often do that before we learn to manage ourselves. How far along is the training?"
I dared to raise my eyes, this time. Did he tell the elders about the party incident...?
"I... I still can't run." Luc emerged from the basement stairs across the hall, and I almost cried in relief when he spotted me in the living room. As he went up the steps, another head popped up and then came a tiny body asleep on piggyback. Another one in bowed braids was stubbornly curled around his leg. Ethan closed the march.
Luc stopped at the railing and said something. The little girl shook her head.
I think Scott responded but I was so engrossed at the stranger who approached Luc to receive the sleeping child while the remaining one was pouting, her face adorably devilish. Her cheeks were chubby and pink, just perfect for pinching. Mutant babies looked like cherubs or porcelain dolls.
He passed me an exhausted wince from the distance. I was no good with kids, so I couldn't relate. They steered clear of me unless they were under five.
His mouth parted to form words, then he swooped and propped her in the air, ripping a joyous babble from her lungs. He spun her overhead like a helicopter, then put her back on ground level next to the waiting man.
Patting her head, he moved on. With Ethan, he parted the crowd to get to me, a brow furrowed the closer he walked.
"Scott." He nodded at the foot of the couch.
"Your new friend is lovely company," he returned, grinning at both of us. "To think that you would have dragged this out even longer, it's ridiculous."
Luc folded his arms, dead silent for several beats. "You know why." He turned to me, and his face opened up. "There's a hide and seek game about to start downstairs. Come on, you're the only one missing."
I straightened my legs, all too eager to be saved from this sticky situation, when Ethan tilted out of his shadow.
"Didn't they vote no on including her?"
Something in my heart fizzled out. I froze. Luc's fists didn't match the calmness of his reply.
"I have veto power." And he coaxed me to join, then flicked his chin at Heather and the perplexed elder. At this point, I'd rather go anywhere else rather than be asked twice. We ditched the couch, him placing himself last to block Scott's view, and I didn't understand what just happened.
We walked by the man with the two children and tumbled to the basement. Finally, I found Ben standing next to Devin, Maïa and a bunch of younger teenagers, as well as a handful of kids. Much to my relief, Niko was absent from the congregation.
A Wii game and remotes had been abandoned behind the group.
Devin scoffed, a red party cup in her hand. "We said no."
Luc seemed itchy to throw some choice vocabulary, but he bottled it in. Must not be kid-friendly. "You'll get over it."
"All right, folks, gather round." Ben clapped. "It's Mackenzie's turn to explain the rules."
He deferred to the youngest of the bunch bouncing on her feet, no more than ten, holding a chronometer and a blindfold. Hair was dyed blue-green at the tips with some glittery kid paste, or so I assumed. At the roots, it was a light brown with coppery tones.
She gave me a keen once-over first, and went ahead. "It's hide and seek but with jail. I'm the cop. You'll have two minutes to find a good spot. If I find you, you try to outrun me. If you can't, you go to jail. Others can come rescue you."
Ethan raised his hand, deeply focused. "How?"
Displaying the seriousness of a class teacher, the girl stretched out a hand. "With this chicken."
A teenage boy revealed this giant rubber chicken from behind his back and offered it to her. She approached her round face to the toy, squeezing. "We'll create a jail out of furniture. Everyone can change hiding spots as long as I can't see them, and they can free prisoners by stomping on the chicken." She eased the pressure. The thing piped and squealed pathetically.
She waited for the end of the sound to continue, shoulders squared.
"I will hear the alarm and come to catch prisoners. If you're tagged before you leave the basement, back in jail you go, and the infiltrator goes, too. If you make it upstairs, I have to let you hide again. Questions?"
"Limits of the game?" an older boy inquired.
A fiendish smile spread across her expression. "Nothing off limits, even the yard."
No wonder it has been armageddon since I arrived. I was surprised Luc and Devin played along, though. Mackenzie turned those gleaming, scanning eyes to me.
"Is it true that your abilities started showing, like, two months ago?"
"Uh... yeah. It just happened."
Her thin, dark brows crinkled. "But you're old."
I had no idea how to talk to kids. Nobody was helping me out, here. "I'm the same age as Luc, Ben and Devin. It's not very old."
"They've been moving things without their body since I could talk," she remarked.
"I know—"
"Can you make the jail cell?" Pointing a commanding finger at the closest corner, Mackenzie waited.
Amid the silence that fell over the basement, I heard Ben's stifled cough-laugh. I wanted to die. I wanted to die twice, because I was getting rinsed by a ten year old. These kids weren't cherubs or dolls, these were demons.
Devin was all smiles.
Aware of the sets of glowering eyes, I took in the space and the variety of stocked library shelves. There were some nightstands, a record player, and a green velvet sofa bed with several bean bags. A plastic organizer on wheels seemed misplaced for a house with such spendy arrangements. It was next to a short wooden table of irregular shape, the kind toddlers could sit at.
My mind involuntarily recalled the high windows of the classroom, of the debris ready to fire. I ran my palms over my thighs. The bracelet weighed in my side pocket.
The low-hanging fruit was the bean bags, so I placed them into the quarter of a circle just as the familiar throb in my forehead hit. Someone breathed out in the background. As soon as I switched to the shelves, the only furniture that could plug the remaining gap, I felt the energy zap out of me.
Emptiness bled through. I could feel it—this drop.
My attempt at budging the sofa failed spectularly. I concentrated again, shutting out the room with my lids, but I knew it hadn't moved. I opened my eyes to the fact that it was nagging me in its original spot. A kid clucked their tongue.
"Sorry," I mumbled. "Still getting the hang of it."
The twerp snapped her fingers, and Luc's low intonation traveled through the space.
"You're mouthy for someone who can't even do what she just did."
Mackenzie crossed her skinny arms and popped a hip, something she must have picked up. "I'll do better when it's my turn."
My jaw slacked.
"Yeah, okay," Luc mocked, and the sofa bumbled into the air. "Let's roll, losers. Get ready for countdown."
The girl twirled and sat cross-legged, blindfold sliding over her eyes. People were scrambling out of the basement, and I panicked. I didn't know the house in any real capacity. These kids were surely too smart to be tricked with cupboards and closets.
A thumb grazed the sensitive part of my wrist.
Luc leaned in my ear. His warmth followed, drawing an interesting flutter out of me. "I know a place."
Without thinking, I let him take me out of the basement and through the extension of the ground floor hall, into another staircase that was narrow and dim. The second floor was deserted. Noise and lights from the people below reached the glass guardrail, adding to the faint orange glow cast from the wall windows.
Pacing forward, he made for the opposite end, passing by another flight of stairs connecting the same upper hall.
He opened the door and closed it after me. My eyes blinked in the denser shadows until the curtains slid apart. It was a bedroom.
A large, tidy bed stood in the middle, and the rest of the furniture was stripped and dusty. The curtains gave way to an iron balcony where I could see the light pouring and patches of snow beyond.
"Is this...?"
Luc approached the glass. "My old room. I used to share it with Lauren until we were too cramped, then she got her own across the hall." He pointed to the ceiling. "We used to have this huge poster of Jensen Ackles hanging over us. She wanted me to stare at it while falling asleep. Rough times for my self-confidence."
I tried to imagine a younger him roaming between these four walls, as irritable as Mackenzie, doing homework at the desk, then thought back to the circumstances leading to moving here. Had he felt safe here, or had this been more of a personal hell?
"Why did you freeze?"
I jumped inwardly. "What?"
His long legs and arms were cut out against the moonlight. His head swayed. "You froze back there with the sofa. I witnessed you move my couch like it was a plastic chair before Christmas."
"I don't know... Guess it's too late now to earn their respect." It was a joke, but man did it sting.
He huffed out a laugh. "No shit, you goofed on that one. But seriously. What were you thinking about?"
I joined him against the balcony, trying to figure out how to explain it. Maybe it didn't even make sense. "I thought I might lose control. I couldn't allow that around kids."
"You really thought you might decapitate someone?"
"Not... in that way. I don't know." I stared off. "I was thinking about the study period with Miles. How fast it changed and how hard it was for me to snap out of it."
Luc was leaning against the wall, unflinching. "What are you scared of?"
Everything. God. I was terrified of harming anyone from this gathering as Niko was predicting. I was terrified of what the new year would bring, of making that announcement to these people and tossing their world upside down.
"Sunshine," he said, and I made a face at the nickname. "Never be afraid of using the power you have. Don't overthink it. You always gain your end when you don't overthink it."
Niko was getting to my head.
As soon as that thought formed, I hated myself. He had valid points. To him, I was some reckless freak who might put his people at risk on any given day. I might be angry, too.
"Why were you so determined to delay them meeting me for as long as possible?" I tore my gaze from the image of the yard fractured in with my reflection. "Scott said..."
"Waiting for emotions to settle down is always better." He briefly noted that I was still confused. "When I had to... break it to them that I exposed myself and let you walk off, I had to keep your damn address off record."
My eyes widened. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.
"Heather and Tony were always cool," he shared, and a shaky sound escaped me. Good to know. "But I needed the weeks to pass, to show them nothing was going to blow up because of you."
"I do not remember you having such faith in me at the start."
He grinned. "I didn't. But you were suspicious and an appetizing lure."
"Wow, don't be honest or anything."
Luc's grin stretched a little more as he looked down, temple against the glass door. Amber shimmers around his pupils were back within visible distance, brought out by the darkness of the room. I stared, awestruck.
"It worked out, didn't it?"
We had no real way to know. I prepared to respond when high-pitch hollers rang out in the hall. My hand clenched around the curtain. The whoops were fast approaching. Wasn't it supposed to be one seeker?
Luc lifted a finger to his lips.
❖❖❖
"Do you ever feel cold?"
Lying down on solid ground, I twisted.
Heather's mansion had a complex roof made of different shapes, not all horizontal. This chunk was, though. It overlooked the sleepy yard and most of the surrounding trees.
Luc interrupted his pawing with my new key chain. He had flattened himself against the concrete, and as the crispy air got my teeth chattering, energy diffused from his limbs, bathing me in blissful heat. He really felt like the blazing summer sun on the surface of my skin. The perfect radiator.
"On colder nights, yes."
Whether the kids broke out in the room below or not, I wouldn't know with the balcony door shut.
"It was getting stuffy down there," I breathed, rolling on my side. "This is nice."
"We got a while before they think about checking the roof." Taking his eyes off me, he stared at the stars. "I need to talk to you about something."
I sat up under the sky and massaged my neck, grateful again that jagged exchange with that elder was over. How could anyone blame Lauren for what happened as she barely pushed seventeen at the time?
The burden on these kids, I couldn't begin to comprehend.
Luc stretched in the same position, crossing his ankles, and sighed.
"About what?"
His whole demeanor changed. I tucked my legs carefully. What could there be now that had to be discussed in private?
He hesitated, stole a glance then drove it into the ground.
"It might be hard for you to listen." His face tensed, like something bothered him. "You've been weird since finals."
"What do you mean?"
"Ever since Adam... Twice, you almost died, and still I've never seen you more at a loss than the night of the party."
A hot shiver racked me, from head to toe.
"We already talked about this, Luc."
"I know," he said, and finally he lifted a steady, sober look. "But I fucked up. I haven't said that enough. Whatever happened in that room before I showed up..."
"Nothing bad happened. It didn't go too far."
"You don't just levitate everything inside the house for no reason—" He threw his hands up as I shrank back, before I even acknowledged I was moving.
The morning after, I was lying on my bed with my soaked pillowcase, completely torn, and the mention stirred all of that pain again. All the times I tried to squirm, Adam only kissed me harder or held me down firmer. Why?
I accepted his apology, acted like it was fine.
I remember that like I remembered a fever dream.
"That night, I took a lot of things from you. The punching should have been all yours, and then I shouldn't have immediately left you at the house. Instead, I put my anger first."
Each word sliced until I could not longer let him see my face.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"I stupidly thought you'd get over it if Adam took a beating," he pressed on, and the bluntness of his voice disconcerted me. "That it'd make it right. I thought backing off was doing what you wanted, but I never should have let you come to me. There was nothing to apologize for."
Trying to figure out how I was supposed to feel was impossible. Flipped? Pissed off?
I held an ear out into the winter night, but the yard below showed no signs of life. The only lights were the lanterns lining the wall and driveway.
I struggled to speak, so I just nodded.
"You sure?" Luc echoed.
"Pretty sure those things don't work like that—just punching it out." I peeked above my shoulder.
His eyes narrowed, perusing up and down. "Right." He rubbed a hand down the side of his face, key chain tinkling. "Screw exposure."
I drew in a stunned breath. That was so unlike him. "And if there were witnesses?"
Luc's head shot down, bright eyes bearing straight into mine. They paled the surroundings and consumed the distance. Over time, they became less startling, but the effect never wore off.
"One fire at a time."
No further detail, except for a fleeting smile in the moonlit darkness.
I stayed curled on the cold slate, still clawing my knees, but that soothed a bit of the raging mess inside. I forced out a tired laugh, flushing out the pressure. When will I ever have my crap together?
"What a night," I whispered.
The silvery shark and crystal starfish glinted in the palm of his hand as he closed it. "And it's still not finished."
➹➹➹