by Adam Silvera
Someone films me as I’m descending with my gold and gray wings of fire, and I jet around the corner when she asks for a picture. I go into an alley, dig through a dumpster, and fish out a Trader Joe’s paper bag to hide the urn. I don’t think I’m above the law as I melt a chain to steal a bike, but I can’t exactly get on the subway with trapped ghosts that our city’s greatest enemy needs to make herself indestructible.
I take off on the bike, the well-bagged urn hanging from the handlebars. No one is following me, and I stick to less traveled paths, turning a twenty-minute ride into an hour. I’m so banged up and drained, but when I pull in at Nova I’m ready to see everyone and hope that Wesley and Atlas are getting the healing attention they need. Eva, Prudencia, and Ma are waiting by the door.
“Password,” Eva says.
“Break Luna before we can’t,” I say, and we’re good.
I hug Ma and Prudencia, so surprised and grateful to be back in their arms.
“Why aren’t you with the others?” Eva asks.
“Turns out I can fly. They’re not back yet?”
“Should be any minute now.”
I show them the urn, which is depressing all over again. Luna was ready to bleed the ghosts of her parents so she could live forever. We have to find a way to free the Marnettes.
The front door bangs open. Iris is shouting the password with Wesley over one shoulder while also carrying Atlas’s legs as Maribelle holds him up under his arms. Why isn’t Brighton helping out Maribelle? Eva immediately gets to work on Wesley, howling as she absorbs his pain. Maribelle is rushing her. My chest tightens. There’s nothing I can do in here so I go outside to see what’s what with Brighton. Maybe he was banged up too and limping in. He’s not outside or in the car either and I run back inside.
“Where’s Brighton?”
Iris takes a deep breath and shakes her head.
“Where is my brother?”
“The Blood Casters grabbed him,” Iris says.
Ma sucks in a breath and she presses her hand against her heart. Prudencia is holding her up and I remain motionless.
“It all happened so quickly,” Iris says. “You flew away and we were losing the fight. Brighton got his hands on a wand and when he missed Luna they got him. We wanted to pursue them, but . . .” She looks at Wesley, who’s recovering.
“You left him!” Prudencia shouts.
“We had to act fast,” Iris says.
My brother is hostage to the city’s worst gang and death no longer seems like the worst thing that could happen to Brighton. This urn no longer feels like a victory.
I want out of this war so badly it hurts. I want to rip out my hair and my teeth and my nails and bones. I want to scream so loud that I lose my voice. I want to stay beneath the ocean until this phoenix fire is washed out forever.
I cross the hall to take Ma’s hands in mine. “I’m going to get him back, I promise.”
She’s inconsolable. “They’re going to kill him, Emil, they’re going to kill him.”
“No they won’t, they must need him,” I say. Brighton is the biggest idiot for not listening to me to hang back, but I’m the biggest traitor out of all my lifetimes. I promised Ma I would keep Brighton safe, her only son by blood, and I abandoned him when I flew away. “I’m going to bring him home and then we’re all done.”
Her arm is shaking and her breaths are sharp, and she grips me with one hand and slams her chest with the other.
She’s having a heart attack.
Twenty-Nine
Extraordinary
BRIGHTON
Stanton got me good with that punch.
The room is dark with no windows. I’m stretched across concrete ground. I could be underground. Probably not a sewer since it doesn’t smell like waste, and it’s too quiet to be subway tunnels. Wherever I am, the Blood Casters didn’t tie me up. Maybe they didn’t think I’d recover so soon. I stand, wobbling. I peek out the door and the hallway is cold with shafts of light coming from a flickering light bulb. This reminds me of every horror video game I refused to play at night, and I go right back inside because there’s being brave and there’s being stupid. The Spell Walkers are probably questioning how I ever became salutatorian since attacking Luna wasn’t exactly brilliant, but I had a weapon then, and I’m certainly not exploring this building without one. I open a locker, thinking this might be some one-star gym until I find a toolbox. I tuck the screwdriver inside my belt and carry the wrench and hammer out into the hallway.
I obviously have a bad feeling about this, no need for my blood-and-bones instinct. The Blood Casters must want me to walk into some trap, but my options are limited, and I’m certainly not going to hang around in that room hoping to hammer someone to death. I turn the corner, and an acolyte crosses from one door to another with a crate of potions. I count to three and sneak along the walls until I’m inside the room he left.
It’s a lab that’s smaller and messier than my bedroom. The lighting is bright enough to worsen my headache. There are old-school cauldrons that reek of gas. Trays of feathers and scales and fur. Jars of yellowed fangs and human teeth. There are unmarked ingredients that look like tree bark and crushed rubies among others. I set down the hammer and wrench on the counter, inspecting these vials of glistening celestial blood and potions of all colors that are labeled with powers. There’s an open logbook with data in tight cursive, tracking where they received each power. So many have come from outside of New York. There are side effects listed, such as nausea, fever, and blood poisoning, that the drinker might experience.
Will drinking one give me power?
I don’t know how tested these potions are, but a fraction of power is more promising than using these tools to protect me. I probably shouldn’t try more than one, but I could escape with shape-shifting by posing as an acolyte or break through the walls with powerhouse strength. I hold a gray potion, dreaming about flying out of here.
The door opens, and Luna enters with Dione behind her.
“Ah, it’s the boy who tried to assassinate me,” Luna says.
My aim sucked with the wand, but maybe Luna is close enough for me to throw this hammer at her head. Do everyone a favor before Dione can tear me apart. My wrist is shaking as I keep close to the screwdriver in my belt. If they come near me, I’ll drive it into their necks, I don’t care.
“You’re dying anyway,” I say, lower than I hoped. “We won’t let you become immortal.”
“I truly hope you had to torture my dear Ness for information about the cemetery.”
“He’s on our side. He doesn’t want to see you rise to power either.”
“Fascinating. I didn’t see him fighting alongside you.” Luna coughs, wiping blood from the corner of her chapped lips with a handkerchief that’s stained red and brown. There are dark shadows underneath her eyes. Some of us stay up all night editing YouTube videos and others work on formulas for immortality. “You believe I don’t deserve to live,” Luna says.
“You brought your poisoning on yourself,” I say.
“Would you say the same about your father?” Luna’s mocking grin twists my insides and tightens my fist. “Of course I know all about Leonardo Rey’s illness. I’ve studied up on Keon’s scion, your adopted brother. It’s tragic what happened to your father.” She walks around the center table and tidies her station, rolling up a blueprint I didn’t get a chance to examine. “You like stories, yes? Do you know the one about how my younger sister, Raine, was sick, and every alchemist and practitioner I trusted to save her failed us? You’re so willing to dismiss me as power-hungry, when everything I do has been for life.”
I can’t believe that this queenpin watched my videos on YouTube.
“You’ve got a lot of blood on your hands for someone who cares so much about life.”
Luna is absolutely fearless as she walks past me, smelling like woodsmoke. Her back is to me as she trails a finger through some black powder, pressing it to her tongue and sighing dee
ply. “Unfortunately, life must be lost to figure out how to preserve it, restore it.” She turns around, and her thinning eyebrows narrow. “You aren’t worth killing in my grand design. You weren’t even worth locking up, unlike Emil, whose true power would require us to use the heaviest of chains. You are nothing but a pawn in my possession to collect the urn your brother stole from me.”
I grab the screwdriver and thrust like it’s a dagger, but Luna smacks it out of my hand. I shove her against the table and grab the lightning potion as Dione leaps across the room.
I uncork the vial. If I’m struck with blood poisoning, it won’t go away with rest and water like some common fever, but desperate times call for desperate measures—Luna knows it, my father knew it, I know it. I drink the potion, and it tastes like cough syrup, rotten berries, and iron. I gag, but I don’t spit it out, even when I get instantly dizzy, like whenever I was a kid and Dad would spin me around in his desk chair at work. I fight back a cough as Dione grabs me by the throat and slams me against the wall.
“I have no problem snapping his neck,” Dione says with her menacing eyes.
Luna balances herself against the table. “He remains not worth it.”
Blood rushes to my head the tighter Dione squeezes, and there’s a charge running through me, crackling throughout my arms. I think back to Atlas coaching Emil on how to call his power. I’ve heard it all a thousand times from editing those clips. I focus on bringing the lightning to the surface, can feel it right beneath my skin, needing just a little more of a push. . . . I press my hands against Dione as if to shove her and bolts of white lightning blast through her. Dione’s eyes widen and her grip loosens and she falls at my feet, smoke rising around the hole in her stomach. I expect flesh to regrow and piece her back together, but she’s still.
It was self-defense. I killed her in self-defense like the Spell Walkers have. I’m more in shock over how quickly it happened than I am having had the power to protect myself in the first place. Dione has done a lot of harm, so I’m not going to twist myself up over this, especially when I can slay the monster who underestimated me.
I step over Dione’s body, and Luna backs into a corner.
She thought I was harmless. The acolyte I saw before with the crate returns, and I hurl a bolt directly through his heart. He crumples with his mouth open.
I’m a first-timer calling my power with more ease than Emil ever has; this is what I’ve been saying all along. He may have been reborn, but my blood comes from a long line of power that’s beginning again with me. Luna tries escaping, and I strike her down with bolts of lightning.
“I was wrong,” Luna whispers while pressing down on her bloody arm.
“About what?”
“You’re extraordinary.”
I nod. “Unfortunately, Luna, life has got to be lost to preserve it.”
I stand over her and cage her in lightning until she’s dead.
I’ve done what no one else could do. I killed the one Blood Caster who Eva feared confronting on the battlefield, and I executed the queenpin before she could become unstoppable. I can’t wait to bust out of here and get back to Nova to celebrate with my family and Prudencia. I’ll ask the crew what we can do about getting me some proper Spell Walker gear and then we’ll take down the next threat.
The room spins and everything reverses in rapid flashes—what little color there was returns to Luna’s face as lightning retreats back inside my hands, she’s running backward, the acolyte’s corpse rises and exits, I’m pressed against the wall again and Dione’s hand is back around my throat.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” I say in choked breaths.
“Never,” Luna says. “Especially not at the hands of some fool who cannot tell an illusion apart from reality.”
“Illusion?”
Luna eyes one of the vials. “These are potions of mine that failed to convert humans into celestials and were revealed to have hallucinatory side effects. I couldn’t keep risking the health of my acolytes, so we’ve been selling them on the streets and filming the drinkers in the event one proves to exhibit actual powers so we can study the subjects. We’ve been marketing it as Brew—Ness’s idea, but surely he told you this given that he’s on your side, correct?”
I’m powerless and speechless. Of course I was drinking Brew like those clowns in the park. It was so lifelike, but the reality of Ness being a traitor is just as crushing. My brother thinks Ness is trying to turn over some new leaf and make an honest guy out of himself.
Dione drags me through the hall with ease, even though I’m resisting and dragging my feet. She throws me into a room where I skid across the concrete, scratching my arms and face, and rolling into Stanton’s feet. June continues reading through a dusty book, not glancing up at me once. Luna is the last one in and locks the door behind her, as if I stand any chance at getting that close to escape with three Blood Casters here.
“Your fantasy of what makes someone a hero is your downfall,” Luna says. “Not a long fall, of course, since you’ve never known great heights. To save and rebuild the world demands a soul that will do what is necessary. You don’t possess the nature or the heart that I do. But that’s okay. Everyone has their role.”
Stanton lifts me by the back of the neck and forces me into a chair against the wall.
My camera that I dropped at the cemetery for the wand is here and facing me.
“You crave the spotlight so badly,” Luna says. “Go ahead and give us a smile.”
Thirty
The Brightest Fire
EMIL
I’ll never forgive myself for putting the world before my family. Turns out Eva can’t heal hearts, but Wesley was quick to grab Ma’s nitroglycerin, and we’ve got her stabilized down the hall while the rest of us are working away in the boardroom. I’m about to check in on her again when I get a notification alert on my phone.
Celestials of New York just uploaded a new video: Return the Urn.
“Brighton!”
Everyone turns to me. Prudencia snatches my phone. He’s got to be alive. No one else knows his super complicated password for any of his accounts. Unless they tortured it out of him. I’ve imagined so many nightmares for what they’re doing to Brighton the past four hours I’ve been without him. If Luna was so cruel with her parents and their ghosts, she would be merciless with my brother. Not going to lie, if things are as horrific as my gut thinks, death might be better.
“Play the video,” Prudencia says.
Atlas projects it onto the wall, and all the Spell Walkers are still.
The thumbnail shows Brighton with a scratched cheek and swollen eye. I thank the constellations that Ma took the sleeping pill so her heart could have a break. If she almost died imagining what was happening to Brighton, this video would finish the job. Prudencia is shaking, and when she grabs my hand, I don’t have the strength to clutch hers.
In the video, Brighton is in a chair with a grimy wall behind him. I’m immediately hit with all those memories of when Brighton watched wild spectacles, and how I never thought he would be the subject of one. My heart is slamming when I hear Stanton’s voice from the other side of the camera.
“Tell your brother what has to happen,” Stanton demands.
Brighton sits up. “Go to hell.”
“Do what they say!” Prudencia shouts as if this is a video chat.
Stanton comes around the camera, growling, and chokes Brighton. Brighton’s face is a deep red in moments and his eyes are bulging. I almost look away, but I’m never turning my back on my brother again.
Stanton releases him and he gasps for air. “Do it,” he says through clenched teeth.
Brighton is near tears, all stoic broken. “Emil . . .”
I have no idea what he’s going to say. Maybe that this is all my fault or how he’s about to die because of me.
“The only way to get me back is to return the urn and prisoner by seven a.m.” Brighton is shaking. “If you don’t, I’ll be exe
cuted on a live feed. Meet us at the place where we spent the last few minutes of our birthday.” Stanton brings the camera closer to Brighton, and he flinches. “If you don’t bring the real urn, they will kill me. If you show up without the prisoner, they will kill me. Do not play games. His life isn’t worth mine.”
Stanton clocks Brighton so hard that the chair rocks back and Brighton hits the floor, laid out.
The video ends.
This was never fun and games, especially not since I joined the Spell Walkers, but it’s never felt realer. I’ve never wanted to set another living person ablaze the way I do now. I’m not a killer, but I’m already so outside of myself that I could become one to save my brother’s life.
Prudencia sinks to the floor, crying. Maribelle slams her fist against the table. Wesley stares out the window.
Stealing powers from creatures didn’t mean the Blood Casters had to be monsters. Threatening Brighton’s life wasn’t enough; no, they had to go ahead and humiliate him on his own channel. No doubt waking him up from Stanton’s lights-out punch to upload the video himself. The views are coming in fast, and I wonder how many of these people have reported it or called the authorities. I bet people are sharing links left and right like our lives are some drama series they can’t believe is unfolding in real time.
“Brighton’s talking about the rooftop of our building,” I say. No one says anything. Too stunned, I guess. I’ll get the phoenix singing. “I don’t know if I can fly again, but I’ll show up with the urn, and once we trade for Brighton, then we can ambush them. Come back with Brighton and the urn.”
Iris holds the urn with a grip so tight I’m surprised she’s not crushing it. “We can’t risk losing the urn. We may not be able to stop Luna if she has the ghosts again.”