“Sherry would have died if…” I said, my voice trembling.
“You could have yelled, could have said something, could have…” Blaze was flailing his arms. “I don’t know. Your damus friend can probably tell you what you could have done that didn’t…” He fell silent. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” I said, restraining myself from grabbing his arm. “It matters to me. You have to understand… you…”
“Do you really think saying ‘sorry, I didn’t mean it’ makes up for what River’s going through right now? What I’m going through? What Lee’s going through?” He was clearly trying to keep himself from yelling on our stairwell.
I retreated into the apartment, and Blaze followed me inside without thinking. “Lee. Of all the people in the world, you don’t understand… you…” He was waving his hands in the air again. “You don’t understand what he’s been through. You don’t get how much…” He unclenched his fists. “I expected you to understand,” he concluded in a dejected tone.
Dimitri had disappeared from the kitchen. I felt him sitting on the toilet, which he clearly didn’t need; he was simply taking refuge behind a closed door.
What had Lee told them about me? About us? It couldn’t have been much. It was Lee, after all. He wasn’t one to share intimate details of his life. It suddenly dawned on me that Blaze wasn’t really talking about Lee. He was using him as an excuse. He had obviously heard about Daphne’s vision, and was worried about me, and angry at me, and that was one thing I knew how to handle.
“Remember the first time you let me maneuver you?” I asked quietly.
Blaze shrugged. Of course he remembered.
“I had never before…”
“I know,” he said, his voice slightly thick.
“Nor since,” I said.
Blaze’s eyes flickered with surprise. “Not even with Lee?”
“With Lee it’s…” I couldn’t help but smile. “It’s different with him.”
“Different,” he repeated, mimicking my tone. I forgot how good he was at making me smile.
“Lee’s different.” I felt my cheeks flushing. Great. I was supposed to be apologizing, not getting dragged into an entirely different conversation.
“Are you going to apologize again?”
I shook my head. “I’m going to tell you that you of all people should know that if I maneuvered you without permission, it was because I had no choice.”
“You once told me there’s always a choice,” he said, his tone again reserved.
Back then I had been young. And no one was aiming his gun at a cop in a room packed with people. And my place of employment hadn’t been torched.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
“I know you’re sorry. I still feel shitty. River still feels shitty.” He was still there, hiding somewhere beneath his words, the Blaze I always knew how to talk to.
“OK. My head feels like it’s exploding.”
A faint hint of a smile crept over Blaze’s face. “You’re absolutely right. A headache is exactly the same as the nausea brought on by empathic penetration.”
I nodded. “So is the self-loathing and the questions about what I could have done differently. Exactly the same.”
“Could I have done anything differently?”
I wasn’t expecting that question, but there was only one answer. “You could have not been there.”
He slouched his shoulders. “Meaning, stayed away from you?”
“Yes.” I bit my lip. “I maneuvered everyone, and it wasn’t the first time, and I’ll probably have to do it again. I won’t have a choice.”
“Daphne said you’re going to die.”
I choked back my tears and nodded.
“How much time have you got left?” His eyes welled up. Warmth, longing and loss.
I couldn’t tell him about Sherry’s plan, or even her promise to keep me safe. “I don’t know. Not much.”
Blaze stuck his hands in his pockets. “What am I supposed to do? Pretend we’re just casual acquaintances? Take advantage of every moment we’ve got left?”
“I know which one I’d prefer,” I said quietly.
“I know which one I’d prefer,” he parroted, teasing me.
And once again, despite the tears, I couldn’t help but smile. I reached out my hand to him. “Want to be my friend?”
Blaze’s lips curved into a crooked smile designed to suppress his tears, and he shook my hand. He had come to a decision, and my hand was becoming painfully hot. Blaze knew me too well. He knew just when to stop. “You maneuver River one more time, and I’ll burn you. And that’s no threat.”
“Got it,” I said quietly. And I did.
The bathroom door opened and Dimitri emerged. “That took longer than I saw, and you still not call your blonde friend to say you not go.”
“Go where?” Blaze let go of my hand.
“Yoyo,” I said, and explained to him about the organization. Blaze let out a chuckle. “Still volunteering, huh?”
An idea flickered on the edge of my mind. I turned to Dimitri. “Blaze is a pyro.”
“I know,” he said. “I see what he do.”
“Someone who can respond quickly, and all those other things you’ve mentioned before.”
Blaze took a step back. “You’re trying to sign me up for something?”
I nodded, my smile widening. “Come, it’ll be worth it.”
“I’m still mad at you.”
“No, you’re not.” I tugged his hand. “You want to come with me to see kids trying to use their powers for the first time, and laugh at their miserable attempts.”
Blaze raised his eyebrows. “Depends. Will I get any inside information to use against that annoying tall guy from my office?”
“Inside information?”
“You know, stories I can use against him next time he decides to bitch about a report.”
“Depends. Will I get any inside information to use against him next time he decides to play hard to get?”
Blaze laughed. “Hard to get? You’re dating the wrong Lee.”
I looked at Dimitri. “OK?”
Dimitri shifted his gaze between us. “You not leave my sight. You not leave Blaze, no matter what happen.” He pointed at Blaze. “And you watch over. Clear?”
Blaze nodded.
We took Dimitri’s car. It had ‘undercover cop’ written all over it, but Dimitri wouldn’t even consider taking Blaze’s car and I was so desperate to leave already that I didn’t try to argue.
I gave Dimitri directions to the community center. It was the only place the municipality would allocate for our meetings. The parking lot was spray painted with Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live – let me help! and graffiti of a naked woman, her head blown, her shadow with horns and tail. Blaze was oozing disgust. I didn’t feel any intense emotions coming from Dimitri. I assumed he had grown accustomed to it, like me.
“You don’t see these kinds of things in the Confederacy?”
Blaze shook his head. “We all live on reservations, and there’s a special task force that prevents any run-ins with normies.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said quietly.
“These are people who prefer going through life with a blindfold over their eyes instead of facing reality. And it’s been that way for nearly a hundred years.” A streak of anger infiltrated his calm demeanor. “Better the shit over here. At least you get to see the truth.”
Dimitri parked the car. “Shit here better than back home too.”
Blaze and Dimitri exchanged glances in the rearview mirror.
The smell of urine hit us as soon as we stepped out of the car. Blaze scrunched his nose. I heard the sounds of vomiting somewhere close by. I put out my feelers and poked around. It wasn’t a moody.
Just some drunk. Dimitri followed close behind us, pulling off the ‘undercover’ look almost as successfully as his car.
There was a guard on either side of the white-pa
inted gate, directing the thin stream of teenagers filing through it. Dimitri gestured at them with two fingers, and was greeted with a similar gesture. I wondered whether Sherry was responsible for stationing these two damuses here.
“These kids look like us,” Blaze whispered, and I knew what he meant. Clad in oversized clothes with their eyes fixed on the ground, they refused to make eye contact. A few of them had their hands in their pockets, avoiding touch, unaware this was exactly the telltale sign of damuses and moodies. Even fewer of them exchanged more than two words with one another.
I poked around. Terrified, twitching consciousnesses. Two of them were sealed off. Not one of them responded to the others, and there was no affection between them.
“No, it’s much worse,” I said to Blaze quietly as we proceeded towards the gate. “They have no friends.”
Blaze squeezed my shoulder. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
Aurora was waiting at the entrance, Forrest beside her. They were handing out origami flowers, a different color for each teenager, and calling cards. The phone number was the same on all of them, but the names and addresses varied. Some were for dentists and florists and others for SAT courses. One calling card looked like an invitation for a modern poetry writing class.
The girl in line before me got a red flower, and so did Blaze.
He smiled. Then Aurora handed him a blue flower and said, “And this one’s for River. Tell her I said thanks for the help, OK? I didn’t have time to call her.”
Blaze radiated flickering happiness and stroked his flower.
Aurora handed me a paper violet. “I’m happy you came. I was afraid you’d bail because of all the…”
“Bail?” Blaze chuckled. “You think there’s anything that could stop Reed from volunteering for something? You don’t know each other that well, huh?”
I laughed. “I’m not that bad.”
Blaze tugged on my sleeve. “I remember at high school I had to physically force your hand down when they asked who wanted to join student council, even though we were about to graduate.”
Aurora smiled at me and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I’m glad you’re here.” She gestured at Blaze with the rest of the flowers in her hand and asked, “Will you be joining Reed or taking on a group of your own?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Offering Blaze to volunteer for something is like…” I searched for an apt metaphor.
Blaze nudged me with his elbow. “I’m not that bad.”
“I remember I had to physically force your hand up when they asked who wanted to sign up for college prep math courses, even though you were already planning to apply to do a MSc in math.” I pretended to shiver in horror. “They almost picked me instead of you. It was awful.”
Aurora laughed. “Now I understand why I had to do all your assignments for Statistics 101.”
“Hey.” I raised my finger. “I repaid that with interest in Structures and Spaces.”
Forrest cleared his throat loudly. Five teenagers were standing behind us, eyeing us up with the belittling looks only adolescents can shoot at people a decade older than them.
Aurora gestured behind her back. “Room three is yours.” She looked at Blaze. “And if you change your mind…”
I took the paper lilac from her hand and linked my arm with Blaze’s. “Don’t worry, he won’t.”
I led Blaze to the small room, Dimitri following our every step. A hot water dispenser stood on a side table with a pile of teabags, a stack of disposable cups and a plate of lemon flavored wafers next to it. The tables were pushed up against the walls, and the chairs were placed in a circle in the middle of the room. There were about eight teenagers in the room, including Gaia and Guy, holding paper lilacs similar to mine.
I sent Gaia an introductory wave. She turned around, purple-pink hair swinging. “Here, the geriatrics came to teach us the law of the land.”
“Hey,” I exclaimed, raising my hand. “I’m not that old.”
Gaia blew a bubblegum bubble and popped it. “Yes, you are.” She smiled at me. “But you’re OK.” She sent me a playful wave. It was more precise than the ones she had sent me previously. She was a quick learner.
A girl in jeans and a shaved head opened her hand, producing a tiny, flickering flame. Blaze repeated the gesture, and they smiled at each other.
“Two pyros,” I said, and then gestured at myself and Gaia, “and two moodies.” Then I waved across the room. “You want to group up in cardinal points so I’ll know who else we’ve got here?”
Blaze and the girl with the shaved scalp settled in the southern side of the room, next to the hot water dispenser. They kept sending little flames back and forth.
A boy in a black faux-leather jacket, another in overalls and a girl in a basketball jersey stood beside the western wall. There really were a lot of splashers this year. A girl wearing giant glasses and Birkenstock sandals sidled up against the northern wall, hands on hips in a defiant gesture that reminded me a little of Sherry.
A girl in a red dress remained alone in the middle of the room. I reached out my hand to her, and she flinched.
“It’s OK,” I said, giving her my nicest smile. “I won’t maneuver you, I just want to show you where ideally you should stand.”
“I know where. I’m just …” She lowered her gaze without completing the sentence.
“She’s on neutral,” Gaia said.
I exchanged glances with Blaze. He shrugged. I didn’t know how to phrase the question without Gaia calling me a geezer.
“It prevents sorcery,” the splasher in the black jacket interjected. He ran his hand up his cheek. “Can’t you tell?”
I looked at the girl in the red dress again and focused. I felt the cloud of sorcery engulfing her. The gentle tug at the pit of my stomach indicated another presence similar to mine.
The girl looked up and tucked her hair behind her ears. A gentle, almost invisible line was drawn in a skin tone colored pencil on her jawline. I reached out to touch her cheek and she blanched.
“It will affect you too. It passes through touch,” she whispered and lowered her gaze again, her hair veiling her face.
I lowered my hand.
“They say it passes through touch,” Gaia said. “It’s not true.” The shaved-head pyro said, “You’ve never heard of neutral?” I felt the criticism in her tone, concealing a layer of fear.
The term rang a bell. Something Gaia had mentioned in the past.
“It makes us normal,” the girl in the red dress whispered. She looked up at me again, and this time I noticed a fluctuation in her sorcery. It wasn’t moving around her as it should. She wasn’t using it at all. Something was blocking her. It wasn’t depletion, otherwise she would have been drawing sorcery from everyone in the room.
She spread out her arms. “I can’t feel the air. I can’t feel you breathing. I can’t feel the wind outside.” A smile flickered on her lips. “It’s perfect.”
I sealed my feelings well, so that Gaia wouldn’t accidently pick up on my criticism. “And it doesn’t bother you?”
She shook her head.
I felt the pain in some of the teens, and the yearning in others. I swept my gaze across the room. “Anyone else on neutral?”
The boy in the black jacket pulled something out of his pocket and opened his fist. “I’m taking it later, before I go home.”
The pill in the boy’s hand reminded me somewhat of the one I had been administered at the police station, but its effect was different. Deeper. I still needed my power when it was blocked. The girl standing in front of me clearly wasn’t touching her power at all. Not to mention that the pill from the station was a regulated substance. Neutralizers were always state regulated. More than they feared us, they feared substances that could prevent us from using our powers and then stop working all at once. No one wanted sorcerers draining everyone around them, accumulating power so as to pose a danger to their surroundings.
r /> “Where did you get it from?”
“My dad gave it to me.” He sounded defensive. “Because then I don’t flood our house when I have a bad dream.”
The splasher in the basketball jersey next to him giggled.
“And how long does the effect last?” I tried to control my voice, to sound genuinely interested and nonjudgmental, and not betray the horror I was feeling.
“Twelve hours,” Gaia said behind me.
“But why would you want it?” The words flew out of my mouth.
“That’s what you don’t get,” Gaia said, stepping forward and attracting everyone’s gaze. She straightened up, slender and almost drowning in the long dress she wore. “You never had to truly fight.” She waved her hands. “We don’t even know if they’re going to take our powers into consideration when we apply for college, like they did with you.”
Blaze shot me a look. I clenched my jaw, considering my group. “OK.” I sealed in my anxiety and glanced at Blaze. “You want to try it?”
He smiled. “Hell no. Our oven hasn’t been working for a week. River will kill me if I can’t warm up dinner.”
The girl next to him smiled. He was ten years her senior, but had already won her over. Deep inside, I resented him for it.
I looked at the girl in the red dress. “What’s your name?”
“Tempest,” she whispered.
“That’s a very pretty name.” I smiled at her. “Could you stand near the eastern wall, just so I can get my point across?”
She shrugged and shuffled eastward, standing under the large windowpanes. I could feel the sorcery move inside the room, swirling into vortexes when it hit the barriers Tempest had erected around herself. I nodded towards Guy and Gaia. “You guys are with me.”
They walked to the middle of the room. I turned around, gesturing at the entire group. “Circle.” I lowered my hand. “Can you feel it? The waves flowing through us?”
Gaia put on her usual expression of indifference, but I could feel the wonder inside her. The splashers were feeling it too. The pebble perked up her shoulders, ignoring everyone. Tempest kept her eyes on the floor. Of course she wouldn’t feel anything. She was detached.
The Heart of the Circle Page 22