Fire Fall

by Bethany Frenette

  “You may need to be the one to answer that,” she said. She helped me down the last few stairs, taking hold of my arm and guiding me toward the living room. Mr. Alvarez stood inside, near the mantel. He glanced toward the door, frowning, when I entered. Leon was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, his expression blank. He didn’t look at me.

  Mom settled me on the couch, then turned to Mr. Alvarez. “I would prefer to delay this until she’s feeling better, but it seems my daughter has other ideas.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. My voice squeaked out of me, sounding strange to my ears. I curled my hands, then felt a sharp pain. There was a cut across one palm, jagged and beginning to scab over. “How did I get home?”

  “How do you think?” Leon said.

  Mom’s brow furrowed. “You don’t remember? You seemed awake when I brought you up to bed.”

  “No. I just remember passing out. And…red stars. A sky the color of blood. Dreaming.”

  “I was in class,” Leon said. “It took me a minute to get out of sight to teleport. He was already gone when I found you.”

  “Who?” I whispered. My heart clenched.

  Mr. Alvarez turned to face me. He closed his eyes briefly. “Verrick. He’s alive, and he’s loose.”

  “She knows,” Leon said.

  My voice broke. “He’s Gideon.”

  His face flashed before me. His crooked little grin, the dimple that sometimes appeared in his cheek. His brown eyes were warm, full of humor. I heard him say my name. I heard him scream.

  Shane had warned me, I thought. When he’d still been Shane. The choice is yours, if you wish to plummet off this cliff, he’d said. I’m merely pointing out the edge.

  But he’d been wrong. I’d left the ledge far behind without even realizing it. There was no ground beneath me. There was nothing left to do but fall, and keep falling.

  I swallowed, feeling tears on my face. My whole body felt hot. I couldn’t seem to draw in enough air.

  “How long have you known?” Mr. Alvarez said.

  “Is that relevant?” Mom asked.

  There didn’t seem any point in hiding it any longer. “Since the day we killed Susannah,” I said, stumbling over the words. “When I figured out who the Remnant is. Was.”

  “Three months.” Mr. Alvarez sighed. “Well, we can’t do anything to change that now.”

  I made an effort to brush the tears from my face, then grabbed one of the couch pillows and hugged it against me. “Will you at least tell me what happened?”

  “He attacked Camille,” Leon said.

  I bit my lip, looking at Mr. Alvarez. “Is she okay?” Camille was Mr. Alvarez’s ex-girlfriend, and even though they’d broken up—which may or may not have had something to do with him using her as Harrower-bait—I figured he’d be visibly upset if she’d been seriously hurt, but I didn’t let out my breath until he nodded.

  “He doesn’t seem to be at his full strength,” Mr. Alvarez added. “He retreated when she fought back. But he told her who he was, and she called me.” He turned to Mom. “We don’t know where he is now. Camille said she didn’t think he’d gone Beneath, so we need to search the streets. We can’t rely on him retreating next time. Our window of opportunity here is brief.”

  Their opportunity to find him and kill him. Panic surged. Fresh tears streamed down my cheeks. “It’s not his fault,” I choked out. “He’s not Verrick any longer. The Circle did something to him. It changed him. It made him into something else. He’s not just a Harrower, he’s human.”

  Mr. Alvarez’s voice was gentle, but his words sliced into me. “Regardless of how he’s been living the past seventeen years, Verrick has been unsealed. Gideon is gone.”

  “No,” I said. “I won’t believe that. I don’t believe that. There has to be some way to save him.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be saved,” Leon answered.

  My eyes snapped to his. He was looking at me finally. His face was hard and angry.

  “What happened at Gideon’s house?” Mom interjected, sinking down onto the couch beside me. “How is it that he got released?”

  The scene replayed before me—Gideon’s fingers clasped in mine, our hands separating, the two of us flying apart, the look in his eyes in that final second before the world dimmed around me. If I could just rearrange events, I thought, reverse and rewrite them. This time, Gideon would stand, lifting himself up from the ground. He’d walk to me, take my hand. Shane would not appear. We would reach the stairs unhindered. We’d run.

  “Audrey?” Mom asked.

  “It was the Beneath. It unsealed him. I don’t know how.”

  Mr. Alvarez gave me a quizzical look. “What do you mean, the Beneath?”

  “It was the Beneath that killed the elders,” I said. The words came out in a rush. “Iris found me just before I went to Gideon’s. She said—she said the Beneath got woken somehow. And that it’s been growing in strength. That’s why there wasn’t any sign that Shane had stopped being neutral. He didn’t. It just…sort of took him over, I guess. And Gideon—the Beneath can’t inhabit him, so it unsealed him. That’s what Iris told me.”

  Mr. Alvarez blinked. “A physical manifestation of the Beneath?”

  “I don’t know that you want to trust anything Iris has to say,” Mom said.

  I shook my head. “No. She wasn’t lying about this. It’s what she’s been trying to tell me, the whole reason she came out from Beneath,” I said. “And she’s right. I felt it, Mom. At Sonja’s house. And at Gideon’s. It was the same thing I felt when Iris and I went Beneath.”

  I didn’t know how to explain it. How to describe the abyss given form, a black hole that walked and breathed. And it wasn’t just sense or feeling, either. It had a smell. A taste. I could almost taste it now, in the stifling air of the living room, with the windows open and the humidity sticking in my lungs. Rancid and sickly sweet. My stomach twisted.

  My face must have conveyed what my words couldn’t, because Mr. Alvarez said, “If that’s true, I’m not sure how we’re meant to fight it.” He sighed, tapping his fingers against his leg. “The elders might have had a solution, or at least some idea if anything like this has ever happened before. Maybe the other Circles will have information.”

  “We fight Harrowers,” Mom said. “As many as it takes.”

  “It may take a lot,” Mr. Alvarez said. His voice was grim. “That could be why there hasn’t been any Harrower activity at the other Circles. It could be they’re all converging here.”

  I thought of Susannah’s army, the demons she had gathered just beyond the edge of the Circle, waiting to surge forth once the barrier was opened. That had been bad enough. Now I imagined all the Beneath teeming with Harrowers’ bodies, a sea of scarlet and silver clawing toward the surface.

  Mom must have had a similar thought. “That’s not good,” she said.

  “I don’t have any evidence to back it up,” he added. “It’s just supposition.”

  “A worrying supposition.”

  Leon’s eyes narrowed. “And so, just like that, you’re going to forget that Verrick is running free? Do you remember what Verrick did?”

  “I’m not forgetting anything, Leon,” Mom answered. “But if what Audrey says is true, we may actually have bigger problems.”

  “Audrey is not an impartial source in this.”

  I hopped to my feet. “You think I’m lying?”

  “You’ve been lying for months.”

  “I didn’t lie. I just didn’t say anything.”

  “It’s the same thing, and you know it is,” he shot back.

  “Argue about this later,” Mom said.

  But I didn’t stop talking. I had to make Leon understand. My hands balled into fists. “I couldn’t tell. The Kin would have killed Gideon. The elders would have killed him, the way they killed Brooke.”

  My words hung in the air. There was a long moment of silence, broken only by drone of an engine from outside.
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br />   Finally, Mr. Alvarez said, “Brooke Oliver’s powers were sealed.”

  I shook my head. “I asked Esther. She told me the truth.”

  “Audrey…” Mom said. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Jesus.”

  Mr. Alvarez stared at me. He looked as though he’d been slapped. Or like he was about to be sick. His dark eyes were huge in his face. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. Though I’d grown accustomed to seeing him outside of school, I still had trouble separating Ryan Alvarez, leader of the Guardians, from the stern, no-nonsense math teacher he always presented in class. Now, abruptly, I remembered how young he actually was. Too young to lead the Kin, Esther had told me. Too raw.

  Too innocent.

  He swallowed. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Then, without saying another word, he turned and left the room.

  Mom rose from the couch and followed him. “Ryan—”

  He quickened his pace. I heard the front door slam and then his car roll down the driveway.

  Mom stopped in the living room doorway, her hands on her hips. “Perfect,” she sighed. After a second, she turned to face Leon and me. “I need to see what I can do to handle this mess. I’m going to speak with Esther. Don’t go anywhere, either of you, until we figure out what’s going on.”

  “Wait,” I said, as she headed for the door. “Just…so you’re aware. Iris is no longer Beneath. I don’t know where she went, but I think she stayed up here.”

  Mom sighed again. “Any other complications you want to throw my way?”

  “Esther said we’re being Harrowed.”

  “Well, that isn’t a surprise at least,” she said. “If the Beneath is suddenly sentient and hijacking bodies, I doubt it’s doing it to make friends.”

  I gripped my arms. “You think this is the start of a Harrowing?”

  “We’re going to end it before it gets that far.”

  “Are you still going to kill Shane?”

  She didn’t answer. I would have said more, but I suspected I’d already used up my It’s Not His Fault argument on Gideon, and any other words of that nature would not be well-received. I watched her leave.

  And then turned to face my reckoning.

  We watched each other in silence, the length of the living room between us. I lingered near the edge of the couch, my fingers grazing the soft fabric of the upholstery. I wanted to go to Leon, but I sensed he would retreat if I did. There was a wary look in his eyes, and his entire body was tensed, like a deer ready to bolt. It reminded me of the night he’d first arrived in the Cities, nearly four years ago now. In the late-summer twilight, the moon above us had been hazy and glazed with heat, the stars hidden by the glow of the city. I remembered how Leon had parked his motorcycle at the end of the driveway and stepped slowly forward through the grass, a backpack slung over his shoulder. His helmet had matted his hair to his head, and in the thin half-light, the blue of his eyes had been darkened to black. There had been a hint of bewilderment within his serious expression—a sense of puzzlement, like he wasn’t certain where he was, or if he should be there. But then he’d looked at me, and we’d smiled at each other, and the lost look in his eyes had dissolved.

  I studied him, noting the differences four years had brought. He was just as skinny as he’d been that night, but he was taller now, and his shoulders had broadened. His hair was shorter, though the ends still curled slightly. There was a spot of blood on his shirt, a faint streak turning brown. My blood, I realized, from when he’d found me at Gideon’s. And I knew a smile wouldn’t solve this problem.

  I felt hollow. There was a sudden emptiness within me that seemed to keep growing. It had edges, sharp enough to cut. But I couldn’t explain that. I couldn’t tell him how it had felt, that morning when I had done my final reading for Gideon. To look into the blank card and see Verrick’s face. How hard I’d been trying to forget.

  Eventually, I just repeated: “I couldn’t say anything.”

  His jaw tightened. “No. You chose not to say anything.”

  “I told you why.”

  “Because the elders would have killed him. Which is exactly what needed to happen.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but Leon continued before I had the chance.

  “The last time he was loose, he started a Harrowing,” he said. “He threw the Kin into chaos. He slaughtered his way through the Cities. You knew who he was. You knew he was a threat. And you chose to protect him.”

  My temper flared. “Of course I chose to protect him! I couldn’t even kill a Harrower. You think I’d let the Kin kill my best friend?”

  “What about all the people he’s going to kill?”

  His words knifed into me. I froze. My stomach plummeted. I looked away from him, keeping my focus on anything but his face: the afternoon light that lingered on the walls, Gram’s garage-sale coffee table, the worn carpet that needed replacing, the space between us. “You don’t know that will happen,” I whispered.

  “What else do you think is going to happen? He was unsealed for maybe an hour before he went straight for a Guardian. Camille survived—but what about the next person he attacks? And the next? He’s not going to stop until we stop him. Every person he hurts—that’s your choice.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less true.”

  I felt heat on my face. Anger bubbled up once more, but anger was better than guilt. I didn’t even try to contain it. “I thought it would be okay!” I railed. “I thought he would be okay. I just wanted things to be normal. He’s not just Verrick anymore. I thought if no one found out, he’d just be able to live his life. As a human. That’s what he wanted. He didn’t want to be a Harrower. He wanted to be Kin. That’s why he was trying to do all along—to become Kin.”

  “You think his intentions matter? That it somehow absolves him?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  Leon’s voice was hard. “You’re saying he should get what he wants.”

  “Gideon should. Gideon is innocent.”

  “You can’t just erase who he is. What he did. Do you even know?” he demanded. I wouldn’t have needed a Knowing to read the fury that blazed all around him. His face was taut. I could see his fingers digging into his palms. “Twelve,” he said. “That’s the number of Guardians he killed. Eighteen. The number of Kin. Should I name them for you? I can give you two off the top of my head. Do you think they wanted to die?” He turned and stalked out of the room.

  “Leon,” I said. I chased after him, catching his arm. “Wait.”

  He jerked out of my grip. “Don’t.”

  “Just listen to me, please,” I said. “You don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand. He killed my parents, Audrey. Do you get that? He killed my parents.” He backed away from me, into the arch of the doorway, and this time I didn’t follow.

  “I know. But—”

  “No. You don’t get to talk right now. He killed my parents, and you knew it, and you still chose to protect him.”

  “And you want revenge, is that it? Why do you even care? You told me you hated your parents!”

  I knew as soon as I spoke that it was the worst thing I could have possibly said. Leon had made that admission to me when I was upset about my own father, when he was trying to comfort me—and now I’d thrown it back in his face. I clapped a hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  His voice was quiet, almost inaudible. “I don’t want revenge. I wanted to be able to trust you.”

  “You can trust me.”

  He looked at me. It wasn’t his Hungry Puppy look, the sad eyes I always accused him of using to get his way. It was the other one, the kicked-puppy look, all lost and wounded and alone. And the most horrible part was that I was the one who had kicked him.

  I was crying now, but what was worse was that he was crying. He lifted his arm to cover his face and turned away.

  “Leon, I’m sorry,” I said again.

&nbs
p; His voice was thick. “I can’t—I can’t be around you right now.”

  The distance between us had turned solid. I couldn’t have crossed it if I tried. “Please don’t leave,” I sobbed.

  “I…” But he didn’t say whatever he’d intended to.

  He disappeared while I stood there, hugging my arms, still pleading with him to remain.

  Mom found me in my bedroom.

  I was sitting in bed, the covers pulled up over my legs, even though my window was still open and the warming evening air was thick around me. I was waiting for time to pass, for the tightness in my chest to ease. I kept checking my phone, to see if Leon had texted me. I wondered where he’d gone, when he’d come back.

  There was no if to that statement. He had to come back. He was my Guardian. He couldn’t escape me, even if he wanted to. Which he probably did.

  I’d tried calling Gideon, but I wasn’t certain he even had his phone on him. I’d texted him, as well—but after a moment the absurdity of texting a Harrower had struck me, and I’d started laughing in a raspy, croaky sort of way that reminded me of Iris, and that only made me laugh harder. Eventually, that had stopped, too, and I sat in silence, staring at my wall. Gram and I had painted my room the spring before she died, covering up the pastel pink with a blue so pale it was almost white. I wished she were there now, telling me stories and secrets, telling me it would be all right. Even if I wouldn’t have believed her.

  I turned to the sound of footsteps. Mom paused in my doorway, looking at me.

  Fresh tears welled up in my eyes. I felt my lip wobble. “Are you here to yell at me, too?”

  She sighed, stepping into the room. She had her Morning Star hoodie on, but it was unzipped, showing the bright yellow of her shirt beneath, and her hair was still down. She crossed the room and sat at the edge of my bed, scrutinizing me.

  “You can’t blame Leon,” she said.

  “I don’t.”

  She reached a hand toward me, grasping the end of my hair. She let the curls slide through her fingers. “You’ve got your father’s hair, you know. I used to tease him about it. I always said it would look better on a girl.”

  Through my tears, I gave a snort of laughter. “That’s…mean.”