by Ryan La Sala
Poesy was still holding the tray and, as though nervous, the teacups atop it rattled.
Elliot’s voice was firm. “What mechanism?”
Poesy dipped her chin. “The sacred process of turning a person’s pain into power, of course, but I see no point in entertaining the curiosity of a few failing prototypes. I see now that the powers I have granted you have made you too bold, and we can’t have that for our new world, now can we Ms. Daisy?” She looked over them appraisingly. “I suppose I could try taking you each apart and putting you back together, but that’ll take some time. And it’s a rather painful process. I’d have to get changed.”
The light was fading in Kane’s palm. He had been so wrong. This person, the only person he saw himself in, was supposed to protect and help him, but she had used him like a prop. She had isolated and manipulated him, and now they were all going to suffer.
“You’re not hurting anybody,” he said weakly. “You said you would protect me. You said you needed me!”
Poesy’s eyes were glass marbles in her painted skull. Airily, she said, “I need no one. I need power, only, and you’ve brought it to me. I had envisioned a partnership with you, yes, but this newfound disloyalty will not do. You have chosen your friends. You have chosen poorly. You are my biggest disappointment.”
A black blur lurched from the carpet and pounced on Adeline, dragging her and Kane to the floor. Without aim or discretion, the pent-up magic burst from Kane’s grip.
Poesy dumped the tea set and snapped up the tray, deflecting the bolt into the chandelier above. Sparks and glass hailed upon them. Kane heard a dog snarl then yelp as Elliot threw Ms. Daisy to the side, and then they were all running.
“Get them out of here!” Poesy screamed as they dashed into the halls beyond the sanctuary. The corridors filled with clicking claws on marble, the Dreadmare unfolding from the shadows. Elliot cried out and vanished. Ursula vaporized a second later.
Adeline shoved Kane to the right, and a spidery leg sliced the air between them. He pivoted and ran down a new hallway, running hard through Poesy’s labyrinthine lair. He opened doors at random, cutting through a room full of blazing stars, an armory plated in black blades, and finally ending in a greenhouse.
Kane slipped through aisles of ivy and ferns, whipping past flowers that looked as surreal as they did poisonous. He tore away from their nettled grasps, only slowing in the far reaches of the massive greenhouse where he found a forest of upright, woody stalks. He slid inside, panting.
Had he escaped?
The Dreadmare must have ran after Adeline instead. What had happened to the others? Their screams had cut off like clipped film.
Kane’s nose burned with an incoming sob. He forced it down when he heard the door to the greenhouse open.
“Perhaps in here?” came a voice that was distinctly Poesy’s, though now it simmered with the song of cicadas. Hearing this, Kane wondered how those two sounds had ever sounded different to him. He backed farther into the stalks.
Footsteps advanced upon the greenhouse floor. He heard the sniffing of a dog, and Ms. Daisy whined. Water hissed from turgid hoses. Past the opaque glass of the walls, shadows as big as whales drifted and turned.
Kane’s lungs burned for air. His vision was going gray. He was so focused on the footsteps he did not notice the odd vines encircling him. Vines that were steely and black, with hooked hooves at the end. It was only when one wrapped around him that he thought to look up into the great, shining beak of the Dreadmare as it opened.
There was no chance to scream. The beak closed over Kane’s shoulder, as certain and deft as a kiss, and Kane was dragged into blackness.
• Twenty-Seven •
IN THE IN-BETWEEN
When Kane was twelve, Sophia convinced him to turn up their parents’ treadmill all the way to see if he could run on it. Arms braced on the bars, he had hovered over that rushing track, knuckles white as he guided himself downward. For the briefest second he kept up! And then, inevitably, he tripped into that breathless moment between rising and falling—a place of reckless momentum without any movement.
That’s what Kane felt as the Dreadmare closed around him. There was no gravity, no direction. Only momentum and the sick inevitability of impact. Kane had to get out. He clapped his hands and light fractured open the darkness, catapulting him outward with terrific speed.
The impact when he landed was softer than it should have been. Kane sat up on a bed in a dimly lit room. He felt for his backpack straps before remembering he’d ditched it during the escape. The thing wrapped around his shoulder was actually another person.
Kane scrambled away from the figure coated in a bodysuit of pliant leather, black like the Dreadmare’s hide, with plates of obsidian armor jabbing into the whirled sheets. A pointed, full-head helmet had replaced the beak, but the horns remained. It was the same beast in a new form. It sat up, watching Kane. Waiting to see what he’d do.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Kane said.
The Dreadmare slid from the bed and gave Kane its back. It flexed its shoulders, causing the armor to pull and slide on the thin leather.
This room smelled of boy, of detergent and a hint of cologne. Pine, or something close. It made Kane’s instincts itch, made his head fill with fog.
“Show me your face,” was all he could say.
The Dreadmare turned. As it did, its armor transformed, billowing and then unraveling into inky rivulets that flowed rapidly into the Dreadmare’s palm. And then it wasn’t the Dreadmare anymore. It was Dean Flores, holding a small chess piece—the knight, carved from black obsidian. A charm, like Poesy’s, locking away his armor. Dean pocketed it and said, “You’re bleeding.”
It was true. Scrapes all along Kane’s arms had dotted the sheets with blood. Dean was no better. Red rimmed a split in his lip, and a cut on his neck slowly stained the collar of his shirt.
The shock of the revelation lay furious and bare between them. Even though Kane had been daydreaming of this exact moment, he found the sudden reality oddly surreal. What happened now?
“What just happened? Where are we?”
“We teleported. Or we were teleporting when you let out that blast. It got us both pretty good. Do you think you broke any bones?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. That could have gone much worse.”
“What could have gone much worse?”
“Your rescue.”
Kane laughed. “You call this a rescue? You just…abducted me into your bed.”
Dean shrugged. “I needed a soft place to land you after you built up all that momentum.”
“And where are my friends? What have you done with them?”
Dean looked unsure. “They’re mostly safe, but—”
He’s stalling.
Kane dashed from the room, expecting to find himself in some dank dungeon under Poesy’s lair. He called for Ursula, for anyone. He stopped when he reached the end of a long corridor and found himself not in a dungeon, but in the middle of a sparse room of glass and steel. An apartment, clinically immaculate, with windows that leapt from floor to ceiling and overlooked a river Kane knew.
“This is…” Kane realized the lights across the river were those of East Amity.
Why do I know this place? Why does this view look so familiar?
“My house,” Dean said from behind him. He emerged from the kitchen with two large bowls of water and several cloths. From the bathroom he fetched a plastic bin of bottles and bandages. He motioned for Kane to join him at the table. “You know this place as the Cobalt Complex, right? They are building condos here. I am one of the only tenants right now.”
“This is where you live?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“For now.”
“Where are your parents?”
&
nbsp; “Visiting my grandmother.”
Kane sat across from him. His panic had resolved into, of all things, triumph. He had a hunch. His hunch was right. The proof sat before him. The urge to gloat rose, fat and content in him, which reminded Kane to again ask, “Where are my friends?”
“They are safe. I teleported them to the high school. On the roof.”
This thrilled and terrified Kane. Even if they knew he was here, it would take them at least twenty minutes to cut through the entire town and get over the river. He was truly alone with Dean. With the Dreadmare. With Poesy’s henchman. But right now, Dean was not henchman-like. He was wringing out a washcloth and dabbing at his cut-up arms. He nodded for Kane to do the same. The bowls of water blushed to rose as they sat in silence, the plinks of dripping liquid holding their ceremony intact.
“How do you know when I draw the number eight?” Kane asked.
“I see it.”
“But how?”
“It’s one of my powers. I can see things in my mind.”
“So like clairvoyance?”
“Something like that, yes.”
Kane rung out his cloth. “You were watching us tonight?”
“I was. But I got shy when Adeline and Elliot arrived. Then I wasn’t going to show up at all, but when Poesy called I had no choice. It was a mistake to go to her sanctuary. It’s where she’s most powerful.”
“Where is it?”
Dean nodded, as though he liked that Kane had asked this. “It’s unknown. An in-between space.”
“Like a reverie.”
Dean thought about this. “Similar, but with some key architectural deviations of Poesy’s own devising.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for instance, people can enter and exit it.”
“Like through those doors?”
“And teleporting, like we did earlier.”
Kane felt sick at the thought of that stretched oblivion. He was not eager to reenter that space between spaces that were between other in-between spaces.
“I don’t get it.”
Dean blotted his elbow. “Teleporting is actually very simple once you get the hang of it. Distance matters, but not as much as trajectory and momentum. You have to be able to see your entry clearly. That’s why I can’t teleport in and out of reveries, which warp distance in a similar—”
“No, about Poesy. She’s your boss, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” Resentment flashed in Dean’s eyes, but he stayed focused on his cuts. Kane understood that. He was angry with himself, too, for being taken in by Poesy’s authority.
“But you saved us from her.”
“Yes.”
Dean’s tenderness was gone now, replaced by a face as cold and faultless as marble. And Kane realized he wasn’t resentful toward Poesy. He was resigned.
“Are you disobeying her right now?” Kane asked.
And, like the first crocus breaking winter’s frost, Dean smiled. A confession. An unspoken yes. Kane was smiling, too.
“Give me your arms.”
Kane put out his arms, and Dean gently washed out the scrapes, erasing the drying blood from Kane’s skin. Then he applied some hydrogen peroxide to another cloth and dabbed. “This will sting,” he said too late. Kane didn’t mind. He watched the bubbles fizz under his skin, as though their effervescence was his excitement escaping his body. Then it was Dean’s turn. They sat close, Dean tense as Kane cleaned the scrape on his neck, Kane doing his best despite the distraction of Dean up close. His jaw, the brownness of his skin, and the browner brown of his freckles.
Kane got to count them this time. There were twenty-nine, total.
“We’ll need to change,” Dean said. He left and then returned with two fresh shirts. He began to peel off his bloodied clothes but stopped when he saw Kane’s expression. “Did you want to change in the bedroom?”
Kane blushed. “Oh, no, here’s fine.”
Dean turned away. Dutifully Kane removed his own shirt and thought of something Ursula once had said about Dean being on the swim team. It showed. His body looked meticulously drawn, like an anatomy diagram. It was not because he was especially bulky, nor because he was especially skinny. It was the way his muscles moved beneath his skin; there was such a beauty to them that it was hard to imagine Dean had not been designed with lovely intent.
He saw a cut he’d missed on Dean’s collarbone.
“Wait, come here.”
Shirt halfway on, Dean slid back onto the stool and Kane dabbed at the cut. Yesterday Kane had been trapped within the imaginings of who he and Dean had been to one another, and what they might have done. Now, he was singularly focused on pretending they were perfect strangers. Dean, half-naked, was doing the same.
Dean winced, his hand grabbing the back of Kane’s thigh.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry, too,” Kane said.
“For what?”
“For trying to blow you up.”
“You were scared,” Dean murmured.
Kane nodded.
“Are you scared now?” Dean asked.
Kane thought about this. He thought about the way he held the Others and Dean apart, like they could never be combined. He thought maybe part of losing his memory was letting go of the distrust that defined it. He thought about how Dean had not let go of his thigh.
The sound of Kane’s phone vibrating saved him from answering. Dean slid into his shirt while Kane fumbled with the device.
“It’s Ursula,” Kane said.
“So, aren’t you going to answer it?”
He knew he should be concerned about the Others, but here he was more concerned about ending this moment too early.
Dean took the phone and answered it on speaker. “Hallo?”
There was a great deal of shushing. Then Ursula, in an contrived tough voice, said, “Listen up, Flores, and listen good. We know you’ve got Kane. We don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but you’ve made a gregarious mistake—”
In the distance Elliot whispered, “It’s egregious, Urs.”
Ursula was back. “You’ve made an egregious mistake. If you don’t return him in the next hour we are prepared to—”
“Ursula, it’s me. I’m okay.”
“Kane?”
After some scuffling, Adeline was on the line. “Where the hell are you?”
“Dean’s apartment,” Kane said. “He’s…he’s…”
Dean nodded.
“He’s the Dreadmare. He teleported us out of Poesy’s sanctuary. He saved us.”
Adeline’s voice did not conceal her incredulity. “He separated us. Where are you? The condos at the Cobalt Complex?”
“How did you know that?”
“We may or may not have broken into the school to get his file. Seemed as good as any other hunch you’ve had lately.”
For all the animosity between them, Kane had to laugh along with Adeline at this. His triumph swelled further.
Elliot entered the conversation. “Tell him to bring you back.”
Kane felt his defiance flare.
“No.”
“Then we’ll come to you.”
“No. You won’t.”
“Kane,” said Elliot, all fatherly. “We know his address. We’re already on our way. Don’t get any ideas.”
Boop. Kane hung up the phone and noticed about a hundred texts from the Others, along with a handful from Sophia. Great. On top of everything else, she was mad at him, too. He powered down the phone before it started ringing again, then turned to Dean.
“Can you teleport us again?”
• Twenty-Eight •
DARK WATERS
Poesy had once referred to East Amity as a tapestry. From above Kane could see she was right.
From horizon to dark horizon, the cloth of the suburb whirled and sunk, kissed together and tore apart. It smoothed to an ironed grid and then bunched into soft hills against the forested mountains. Streetlights dotted the cloth like sequins, sparkling in the clear navy air, and the moon illuminated the occasional river, drawn through the dark like silver stitches. Other pricks of light moved—cars, working their way through the folds and toward the bridge, rushing beneath where Kane and Dean watched.
“Why the bridge?” Kane said, kicking his legs into the drop. Drafts from the river pushed into his sleeves and nipped at his ankles, but he was past the chill now. Dean had nestled them into the crisscrossed girders overlooking the water. He was holding Kane’s hand. For “safety” reasons.
“We used to come here,” said Dean. “To practice your flying.”
This surprised Kane. Not the flying but the openness with which Dean mentioned their past, as though asking Kane to ask for more. And Kane found he couldn’t. What if it wasn’t what he wanted? What if the fiction in his head was better?
The bridge wasn’t falling; the feeling of collapse was within him. Kane focused on the cold metal beneath him, and not the gathering warmth held in his hand. He grabbed for the next question he could think of.
“How does the whistle work?”
“It’s a beacon. It beckons the threshold—those large doors.”
“And it always leads to that place with all the charms and artifacts?”
Dean nodded. “Poesy’s sanctuary.”
“Are all those charms made from reveries? From people?”
“I’ve never had the courage to ask. I assume so.”
Kane’s heart clenched thinking of all those stolen lives. He veered again. “Your eyes. Are they actually that color?”
Dean laughed. “No, my eyes are brown. Like yours. They turn when I use my second sight, and I guess I use it all the time now. I’ve gotten so used to seeing things from every angle, it’s hard to just be stuck with my own point of view.”
“Ursula’s eyes turn pink when she uses her powers. Elliot’s turn yellow. Adeline’s go all gray.”