by Laura Winter
“Hey there, cutie,” Finnley said, winking at my Nate as a smile creeping over her face. I saw the black now, creeping over Tom’s shoulder. It wasn’t blood, it was some sort of energy. No, it was Evil Nate using a shadow.
“Aw, babe, do you have to flirt with him in front of me?” Evil Nate groaned. “Look how nervous you make him.”
“What do you want?” I spit in anger, squeezing my hands into fists. I looked for something, anything, to separate the Cold Souls from Nate’s parents.
“Oh, I’d be careful with those powers of yours, sister. I’d hate for someone to get hurt in your blast. We all know how you can’t control your tricks.” Finnley’s fingers dug deeper into Tom’s shoulder and he winced.
C, what do we do? I heard Nate in my head, panic in every word.
“‘C, what do we do?’” Evil Nate mocked him before his face turned cold. “We can hear you, idiot.”
“Oh, would you look at that! Hi there Mom, nice to see you’re alive.” Finnley actually looked surprised for a second as my mom ran up next to us before her eyes locked on the book my mom was holding. Her eyes narrowed. “Good, we were looking for that. I guess poor Jeanie died for nothing. She refused to tell us where she hid it. I propose a trade.”
“What are you going to do with the book?” Nate asked. He shifted, bumping into the wall Finnley was still holding up.
“The book for your parents.” Evil Nate didn’t answer the question. I could tell we weren’t going to get their answer.
I took the book out of my mom’s hands and stepped forward through a gap in Finnley’s wall. Finnley popped it back up quickly to separate me from my mom and Nate.
“Let his parents go and I’ll give you the book,” I growled, glaring at Finnley.
“Why would we trust you to hand it over? These two are our leverage,” Evil Nate hissed.
“Because you can read my mind and you know I’m not lying.” I let the wall down around my thoughts, letting them know the truth. I was going to trade, no tricks.
The Cold Souls lifted their grips as Finnley pushed Angie and Tom forward with force, pulling the book out of my hands with her power. She caught it and the Evil Nate dropped them down into the shadows before I could fight back.
Nate ran forward, sliding on the grass as he grabbed his mom in a hug. My mom stepped up behind me, her hand resting on my shoulder.
“Why would they want the book?” I asked, shaking my head.
“They probably don’t know how to empty out the people with powers. The Cold Soul doesn’t know how to create a black hole. They need the book to see how it was done.”
“Now they know we can stop them. They’ll find out Nate can make a black hole and use him before we can trap them. Worse if they can make the black hole themselves.” Our plan was ruined, but my mom didn’t seem as worried as she should have been.
She shrugged. “Joke’s on them. The book went blank as soon as we left the Original Complex. They can’t read it.”
61
Nate
The New Year came with no Cold Soul appearance. Then another week passed. Then another two weeks.
Ellie kept the empty Blue Soul power source protected in House. We couldn’t risk the Cold Souls destroying it before we had a chance to trap them, and House was the best protection.
It was somewhat relieving to have a name for our powers. The Blue Star. Things just started to make a little more sense. Now the strange part was going back to school and pretending like nothing from winter break had actually happened. Ellie was back, Clara was alive, and Glitch was overjoyed that we were all together again.
Middle January weather got colder and darker, but never cold enough for snow, much to Clara’s disappointment. Our lives pretty much returned to normal. We walked to school, did our homework, applied to college, and annoyed our parents incessantly when we tried to sneak out of the house to see each other at night. I mean, if they were worried the Cold Souls would kidnap us or something, we had a better chance of fighting them together. But they could also potentially use me to create a black hole if we weren’t careful, and I was starting to suspect they couldn’t do it themselves or they would have done it already.
I rolled over and stared at the clock. A few minutes past midnight, and I had been trying to sleep for the last two hours. I missed turning over to see Clara next to me. Our connection made it so much easier to relax. That buzzing from our touch calmed the nerves of the Cold Souls. We were right back to playing the waiting game, just like we had done with Richard when he used the Ruby to kill Clara.
In the darkness, the window creaked. My heart clenched, picking up the quiet click as the latch unlocked. I had no time to be afraid, I just had to act. I shot out of bed as someone slid inside, but before I could run into it, the dark figure grabbed me and spun me around, slamming me into the wall.
“Wow, you ass,” Clara growled, flipping on my desk lamp without moving. Her face was just inches from mine, her blue eyes sparkling. She readjusted her body to keep me pinned to the wall. “That’s no way to greet your girlfriend.”
I let out a half groan. “You climbed through my window in the middle of the night with the Cold Souls still running around. How did you expect me to react?”
She shrugged. “I can leave.”
I rolled my eyes. “You could also tell me when you’re coming over. Or come in the front door like a normal person,” I said, reaching up to tuck a strand of purple hair behind her ear. She had colored it again, which meant it was brushed and free of knots. A rare sight.
“Then it wouldn’t be a surprise. Also, your parents are still awake and watching TV in the front room,” she replied, hopping up to sit on my desk as her feet planted in the chair. She tugged at the sleeves of my old sweatshirt, gripping them in her fists. “Happy birthday, by the way.”
My shoulders finally relaxed. Clara watched carefully as I set my hands on either side of her and leaned forward.
“If it’s my birthday, where’s my present?”
She raised her eyebrow. “I snuck out of House, walked here, and climbed through your second-story window so I wouldn’t get caught. Where was I supposed to hold a present in all that?”
In a swift move, Clara kicked her feet out, tripping me so I dropped into the chair with a thud. She slid off the desk and sat on top of me, pressing her lips against mine. Her hands reached around my neck as I moved mine under her sweatshirt, feeling the buzz swirl around my body. I could feel the tingling through my fingers, aided by our cool touch.
Clara didn’t pull away, whispering softly in my head. Wanna play hooky from school today?
Of course I do. I smiled as she moved her lips down my neck.
No parents, no Glitch. Let’s run away for a day, just the two of us.
The TV downstairs shut off and we pulled away from each other as my parents started shuffling downstairs. I reached over and shut off my lamp quickly while Clara held in her laugh. The stairs creaked, probably them coming to check on me. Clara hadn’t exactly been quiet coming in.
Clara’s breath was warm as she nuzzled her nose in my neck again.
Would you cut it out? There was silence outside but Clara didn’t listen. Her hands slid down my chest, moving under my shirt and around my back.
They aren’t coming up here. Your mom is turning around.
Great. You’re listening to my mom’s thoughts while making out with me.
Sure enough, the stairs creaked again and I heard their bedroom door close. I felt Clara smile into my jaw as she kissed me again. My hands slid to her hips, picking up the hem of her sweatshirt, but she stopped me.
“First, we have to run away,” she whispered as she stood up, dragging her hand slowly along my arm as she moved toward the window.
“We’re sneaking out the window?” I asked, snagging her hand.
She yanked me up. “You can hold onto my back as I climb us down, or you can use a shadow. Your choice,” she said, a grin growing on her face.
<
br /> “Shadow,” I replied, shaking my head. “Are you sure we should be doing this?”
Clara patted her jeans pocket. “I have the Blue Soul cage just in case we need it.”
I sighed. “Fine. Do I need a change of clothes where we’re going?”
She leaned up, biting her lip. “Nope.”
I smiled and picked her up, dropping into a shadow as Clara directed me away from the house.
◆◆◆
Burn It Up All Night. Sweet Talker.
Clara danced her hand through the air, playing with the stars she had made on the ceiling. The sleeve of my shirt hung loosely over her arm, drifting with each movement she made. If I wasn’t careful, she’d steal all the clothes from my closet.
She had found the treehouse we were in just beyond House. The hatch in the floor didn’t have a handle, but it opened for her without any effort or powers. It didn’t have the same ‘bigger on the inside’ magic that House did, but it still had plenty of room for us giants. I wouldn’t mind spending the day locked away in here with her.
The night sky started to fade from the ceiling as she dropped her hand back to my chest. “One day, when this is all over, we should run away for real,” she sighed.
I slid my fingers through hers. “There’s no more Complex so no one will come after us. We really could get away.”
“Think you can put up with me?” she asked, clearly smiling even though I couldn’t see it.
“Only because you have great tasted in music.”
Stay with Me. Sweet Talker.
Her head pressed harder into my shoulder as she fell asleep. The gentle energy buzz lingered on our touch as I drifted to sleep with her.
“Nate! Wake up!”
I expected to be blinded from the sun when I opened my eyes but it was still dark. In fact, it was completely black, only it was like a bubble around us. Clara had her hands pressed on the surface of something, pushing hard and grimacing from the strength she was using.
“Nate! What are you doing?” she shouted, her eyes wide in fear as she waited for me to do something.
I sat up and realized that Clara was creating a shield to protect us from… a shadow? But that wasn’t me. I threw my hand out, easily connecting with the darkness, or at least most of it. The part that responded melted away and the room filled with sunlight.
Clara continued to shove, a black figure outlining a body pushing back from the foot of our bed. I tried to push again, unable to connect with the shadowed figure. Finally, Clara sucked in a breath to shift her strength into her left arm, grabbing me with her right. I felt her power surge as she punched forward, knocking the black figure and pinning it to the wall.
“The cage!”
Shit, this was the Cold Soul. Back in The Assembly room, I hadn’t kicked something in the shadows, I kicked someone. I rolled over the side of the bed and picked the empty marble out of Clara’s pocket.
As the figure squirmed under Clara’s strength, I focused on the power instead of the shadow. I just had to pull that into the cage. I picked through the energy I could feel, connecting with something as it started to respond. The blackness sunk into the ground, sliding toward my outstretched hand.
The power slid through my fingers as I pulled it through my body and into the cage. It was metallic tasting, and it pulled like a thick liquid through my chest and down my arm as it filled up the cage. But the light that started to swirl inside wasn’t black.
It was red.
I looked up at the figure Clara still had pinned against the wall. The blackness was gone, revealing the thin, hollow frame of a man. His eyes sunk into his face, pale and weak against Clara’s power as she continued to grip harder.
Richard.
He thrashed and tried to yell, weak raspy moans escaping his mouth. As Clara pressed him harder into the wall, I could hear the wood cracking against his back.
“Clara!”
She didn’t listen, her nostrils flaring as her eyes narrowed. Swinging one arm back, she loaded and punched her fist forward. The wood exploded and splintered behind Richard as he dropped out of the tree. There was a loud crack as his body hit the ground below.
I scrambled forward to confirm what we had just heard. His body was tangled and crushed in a mess of wood from the treehouse wall, no longer moving.
My eyes were wide as I turned to look back at Clara. Her body was shaking as she gasped for breath, one hand pressed into her forehead with the other against her chest. It sounded like she was choking back tears as I jumped back on the bed to keep her from having another panic attack. I pulled her hand away form her chest so I could help her but I froze. A light red mark was already fading into a blue bruise, creeping out from the neck of my shirt that she still had on. The bruise looked like fingers.
Clara looked down as I ran my hand over the mark, stretching the collar as I found the entire handprint on her chest. She coughed and pulled my hand away, rubbing her thumb over my wrist as she stopped shaking.
“I woke up because I couldn’t breathe,” she said, her voice raspy and strained. “The blackness was crushing me and I thought you might have been having a nightmare. How did Richard do that?”
I lifted my other hand, white from how tightly I was gripping, and opened my fingers. The little marble glowed with red light.
Clara coughed again. “He was using the Ruby to control the shadows? He didn’t die.”
“He is now,” I replied, wrapping my hand back around the marble as Clara pressed her head into my shoulder.
“Now we don’t have a cage to trap the Cold Soul. None of the other power sources are strong enough to hold it,” she said, her voice full of despair. Even the energy through our touch changed.
We sat, stunned and silent in a half-destroyed treehouse while Richard’s lifeless body was down below.
62
Clara
My mom was quiet as she sat on the couch. Nate was in the training room, probably getting ripped to shreds by his parents for sneaking out and skipping school. I’d almost rather my mom yell at me too. Finnley always got in trouble, but she never put anyone in danger. Clara, on the other hand, did both.
I knew what I did was stupid and reckless. Who else would think it was okay to sneak away with the power source cage and skip school? Now that it wasn’t empty, we had no way of stopping the Cold Souls. They were free to continue their rampage of destruction, and that meant Nate was an even bigger target. It was all my fault.
“Could we use another power source to hold the Cold Souls?” she asked, not looking up from the floor.
I shook my head. “I doubt they are strong enough. Kinsie and Isaac only used those two sources.”
I picked at my caffeine charm as Mom sat still. It was only a matter of time before she yelled at me. She should be furious with me, but instead she just sat there.
“And your father…”
Oh.
That’s why she wasn’t yelling. I had only known Richard as a psycho, hell-bent on stealing my power and killing me. Mom had loved him at one point. I should have realized that sooner. I should have known what I had really done. I killed my dad. I really killed him this time. Was that something I did now?
“He was using the Ruby to control the shadows. He must have been learning, or maybe getting stronger. The lamp that knocked over without us touching it, Nate kicking something when we were spying on The Assembly… he was following us.”
“But you’re okay, right?” she asked, finally looking up at me. Even if she had loved him once, I saw the anger in her eyes. The green eyes that I used to share with her. Richard was trying to kill me, and that was enough to make any mother furious. I brushed my hand over my chest, making sure that the bruise was still hidden. I didn’t want her to see the second failed attempt Richard had at killing me.
“I’ll be fine,” I swallowed, hoping she didn’t see my hesitation.
“Then what the hell were you thinking?” she screamed.
There it was.
“I know what I did was dumb. We just wanted a day to be us again.”
“You can’t afford that luxury right now! What if that had been the Cold Souls?” she yelled, her hands gripping the couch cushion.
“Then we would have trapped them. We were prepared. If they need Nate to create a black hole, wouldn’t it be better if I was with him so I could contain it? They want us separated. They want to use him when I’m not there to stop it,” I replied, trying not to raise my voice.
“This isn’t about that. How could we ever know if you were in trouble if we didn’t know where you were or what you were doing? You can’t do this alone.”