“Don’t worry about the key – the two of you are much more important.” Deborah glanced over at Trey as if seeing him for the first time. “If you are as your friend says, then how are you sitting here now? You are supposed to be trapped at the school.”
Trey took the satchel from me and flipped back the blanket covering his rock. Deborah traced her fingers over Parris’ sigil. To my surprise, a trail of blue flame followed the line of her finger.
I leaned back, startled. The rock rolled off my lap and crashed onto the floor.
Trey scrambled to pick it up. “We’ve gotta be careful with this. I don’t know what will happen to me if it breaks.”
“Do you see it too?” I whispered.
“See what?” Trey frowned at the stone.
“The flames?” Deborah fixed me with a strange look. “I see them.”
“Do you know what they mean? I keep seeing them – they were on another sigil I saw back at Derleth.”
“Was that sigil also one of Parris’?”
“No, we believe it was placed there by Rebecca Nurse, but we don’t know why. Zehra saw it too, but the guys couldn’t.”
“Interesting.” Deborah studied my face, like she was searching for something.
“Is it?” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. My head spun. I was tired of all the wondering, tired of not having answers.
“Yes. I don’t know what it means, but it means something.” Deborah tapped her nails against the spines of the books as she searched through her titles. “What is it you want to do, Hazel Waite?”
“My friends, Greg and Andre, they’re still at the school,” I said. “I want to save them. I want to stop the Eldritch Club from ever hurting another person.”
“And…”
“And…” My nails dug into my wrist. Pain jolted down my arm, stoking the fire within me. “I want to free all the Miskatonic Prep students from whatever spell or curse or crazy voodoo has trapped them as revenants.”
“Are you prepared for what that might mean?” Her voice was gentle. “They have died. Their souls have been separated from their earthly bodies. To be free may mean they will pass from this world.”
The knot in my stomach tightened. I didn’t want to be without the Kings. Trey, Quinn, Ayaz… even Ayaz, because in the deepest recesses of my heart I still clung to the person I thought he was.
And anger, because they had their lives stolen. Trey should have had the chance to be the CEO of a super-important company. I could picture him now in an immaculately-tailored suit, all sharp edges and cruel intellect, going into battle in the boardroom like Caesar subduing the Gauls. Quinn should be in entertainment – a movie producer or talent scout or a comedian if he could ever suffer the idea of being poor, and Ayaz… he should have had the chance to pursue his art, to see where his creative mind might have led him.
I could have had a future with them. With any one of them. With all of them.
“That’s not fair,” I growled, my nails scraping over the stone. “Their lives were stolen. They should get the chance to live them out.”
“I agree, but that might not be the way it works.” Deborah went to her bookshelf and pulled out a slim leather volume, thumbing through the pages as she returned to her seat. “We’re dealing with uncharted territory here. No one has ever done what Hermia has achieved, so even if I had access to her lab there’s no way to know what reversing her Dr. Frankenstein work will do. Zehra called them edimmu – an ancient Mesopotamian myth that may be the origin of our modern vampire stories. Corpses buried without the proper rites who rose again with insatiable rage.”
“Yes.”
“From what little I understand about edimmu, there are spells and rites that destroy them, but in all cases, the dead will return to the ground.”
No. I wouldn’t accept it. I’d lost too many people I loved. I couldn’t lose more.
“There’s got to be a way. You have one of the edimmu you can test.” I pointed to Trey, who nodded.
“That’s helpful. However, I’ve shifted jobs recently. I’m an administrator now. I don’t have access to the kind of facilities we’d need to conduct experiments on your friend here. I’d have to get my friend Gail to help us. She’s a phlebotomist and could give us access to their lab and diagnostic equipment.”
Trey and I exchanged a glance. I didn’t like it. Deborah was talking about bringing another person into our circle of trust. I didn’t know this Gail from Adam. But what choice did we have? Besides, Zehra trusted Deborah, and I trusted Zehra.
“Fine,” I said between gritted teeth.
“Can you also test Hazel?” Trey asked.
“Me? Why would you test me?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” The corner of Trey’s mouth tugged up into a half-smile. “Maybe because you set fire to an entire building using only your mind.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue in shock before realizing he was talking about Dunwich Institute. I never told him I set that fire. He’d guessed I was responsible. Of course he had. Trey Bloomberg was nothing if not clever.
Deborah glanced up at me, studying my face. My cheeks burned under the scrutiny. “You never mentioned this before.”
“It’s not relevant,” I muttered.
“It might be very relevant. You can set fires with your mind? How long have you manifested this power?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I growled. My fingers flew to my wrist, where I pressed the scar.
Trey grabbed my arm, prying my fingers away one by one. He circled my wrist, jerking my arm in the air. “Don’t do that, Hazel. Don’t escape into your head because you’re afraid. What if this is the key to saving us all?”
“I’m not afraid, and it’s not the key.” I tried to snap my arm down, but he held firm. Tightness tugged at my chest. I felt cornered, like a rat scrambling to escape a maze with no exit. “We’re talking about a cosmic deity that’s older than time. I’m not going to hurt it with a little flame.”
“That’s assuming what you wield is ordinary fire,” Deborah muttered as she flicked through another book.
“Hazel.” Trey didn’t beg. He knew that wouldn’t work on me. What he did was fix me with an icy stare that said a hundred things neither he nor I knew how to say.
I swallowed hard. Trey let go of my arm. I dropped it into my lap, my fingers instantly pressing into my scar. A tremor started at the base of my spine and shook my limbs. “I’ve been able to call up fire ever since I could remember.”
“And it’s tied to your emotions?” Deborah asked. “How much control do you have?”
I held out my hand. My fingers trembled a little as I summoned a small flame. The orange orb danced on my palm as I moved my hand in a slow arc. Deborah followed the flame with wide eyes.
Trey stepped back, his shoulders rigid. He sunk his hand into Leopold’s fur for comfort. Of course, he’s afraid of fire. Fire took his life and the lives of all his friends. He sees this flame and he remembers smoke filling his lungs and pain burrowing into his skin.
I’d have to be extra careful to keep it in check around him. Luckily, now I had more control.
“I’ve only recently learned how to do this.” I commanded the flame to flare into a column of fire that reached nearly to the ceiling. Deborah’s pen clattered to the floor. Leopold whimpered and barreled for the kitchen. The other dog loped after him. Quickly, I commanded the flame to shrink, and I closed my fist, snuffing it out. “I can control the fire when it touches my body, almost as if it’s an extension of my skin. I can command a fire to start anywhere, or I can give a fire fuel and direct its power. But I had to teach myself how to do that. Before… I had no control.”
That’s putting it mildly.
Deborah clutched the edge of her book so hard her knuckles turned white. “It might be nothing. It might be a coincidence.”
“What is?”
She shook her head. “It’s probably nothing. I’m almost positive I’m wrong, but it’s just to
o much of a coincidence not to explore further. There’s so much here for you both to take in. I won’t concern you with my theory until I’ve had the chance to run some tests. Trey might be right, Hazel – you may be the most important piece of this puzzle.”
Chapter Twelve
Deborah made up an air mattress for Trey and me in the living room, covering it with more duvets and quilts than was necessary for an arctic winter. She only made up the one bed for both of us, assuming we were a couple. Neither of us corrected her.
What are we? I wondered as I watched Trey peel off his shirt and socks and lay them down in a tidy pile beside the bed. Are we a couple?
I’d never spoken aloud what had gone on with the Kings – Quinn and Trey touching me together during the movie night, Ayaz kissing me in the grotto like he needed me to breathe, and then taking my virginity the night he saw his sister again. Everything in my life was so fragile, so easily burned away to ash. I wanted to hold on to the three of them for a little longer. I wanted to live in the delusion that we all had a future together.
It was as though speaking my desires would take everything away again. Because, of course, I couldn’t keep all three of them. If Deborah was right, I wouldn’t even be able to keep any of them. If I set them free, I’d have to say goodbye three times over, and I’d never even told them how I felt—
I squeezed my eyes shut. No. I wouldn’t accept it. They wouldn’t die on me.
I opened my eyes, my gaze falling on Trey’s face as he punched his pillow. The mattress sank where he lay and I rolled against him.
I bet he’s never slept on an air mattress.
Leopold slunk over and claimed a position on Trey’s feet, pinning him in place. His sister, Loeb, curled into his armpit. Trey tried to shift Loeb toward her brother, and she responded by covering both of us in slobbery kisses. Despite myself, I laughed. Trey looked so ridiculous with his rich-boy pout as he wiped slobber from his cheeks.
“I always wanted a puppy,” he said as he patted Loeb’s head and allowed her to settle back into his shoulder. “Dad wouldn’t allow it.”
Trey rarely offered details about his life. From the way he looked now, like he wanted to claw back the words, I knew this tiny detail had rarely – if ever – escaped before. I took this proffered piece of his heart (I’d say soul, but apparently he didn’t have one) and turned it over in my mind, slotting it into place as another puzzle piece in the mystery that was Trey Bloomberg.
“I bet if Wilhem had asked for a puppy, he’d have got it,” I ventured.
“Yes, but then he’d have forgotten to feed it, or worse – deliberately starved it. Either way, it would die, and neither he nor my father would shed a tear.” Trey’s arms tightened around me, and I felt the tug of a boy who had wanted to love and to be loved.
Wasn’t that what we all wanted? In Trey’s pain, I felt a kinship. I remembered all the nights Dante and I climbed into bed together, warm bodies pressed tight to fight off the chill of freezing Philly winters with no heat. Our breath hung in the air as clouds of mist, my heart rigid and my fingers desperate to explore him. But I was too afraid to destroy our friendship, as if what we had was so fragile that it could be broken with a single kiss.
Turns out, it was.
And that memory made my head fill with images I never wanted to see again. Dante’s fingers laced in her hair, his lips brushing her shoulder. Her leg curled around his back. Smoke curling around them as I—
No.
I gulped back the memories. Ever since I’d chosen to embrace the fire at Dunwich and claim for myself what had haunted me my entire life, I’d been walking on eggshells around my old crimes. How long could I be Hazel Waite the firestarter without acknowledging what that had cost?
Trey studied me with those ice eyes of his – as calm and cool as the winter skin of a lake. Through their glassy surface I could see right through to the Trey inside – that brilliant mind that ticked over as he studied me. For the first time, my lips itched to talk about my past. Even though he feared what I could do, I had a feeling that if anyone would understand, it would be Trey Bloomberg.
Fire and ice. Trey and I were opposites, and yet, we were two sides of the same sad story. What was inside us kept us trapped, and when we unleashed the hunger we kept hidden away we learned how destructive we could be. We were monsters created by circumstance and cruelty. He was the bully who’d been raised on indifference and fed with his father’s savagery. Trey lashed out because he hungered for everything he’d never had. I was the firestarter cursed with a power I didn’t understand, a power that fed on the rage and injustice burning inside me, that never seemed to dim.
In Trey’s arms, I felt like maybe being a monster was okay. Maybe even monsters deserved love.
Trey pulled my head into his other shoulder, and my chest did this weird swelling thing where I felt as though I was filled not just with fiery heat, but also light. And that made me think of another time when I’d felt so full and light and loved. Back in my room at Derleth Academy, when Ayaz had held me in his arms and told me I was beautiful.
I bit back the foolish urge to unburden my secrets, and instead begged for his. “You know Ayaz better than anyone. Why did he betray me?”
Trey’s fingers dug into my shoulders. He didn’t say anything for a long time. I was starting to fade into sleep when he finally said, “From the very day I met him, I wanted to hate Ayaz. When my father brought him to our home, he all but said ‘this is the son who will replace you.’ He pitted the two of us against each other, and in every instance, Ayaz would come out on top. I should have loathed him. I might have killed him – I had so much hatred inside me burning for release.”
“Why didn’t you?” I whispered.
“Hatred for my father won out. I realized Ayaz and I were both the same – desperate to please the people who were supposed to love us unconditionally, to be accepted by elders whose morals we never shared. And probably because more than I was angry, I was lonely, and Ayaz made that horrible house tolerable.” Trey laughed, his eyes shining as he lost himself in memories. “He had more imagination than I ever did. I only knew about the world inside my prison – my gilded cage – but Ayaz had these wild ideas about life, the universe, everything. He thought I was worldly because I had this big house and lots of toys and my dad was rich and important, but he’d been to places like Damascus that I thought only existed in storybooks. He’d walked in a desert and swam in the Red Sea. He’d stood at the foot of a pyramid and walked in the footsteps of ancient kings. When he spoke Turkish to his parents on the phone, I would listen to the musical rise and fall of the words. He was lonely and I was lonely and when we were together we both forgot about that for a while.
“So no, I can’t believe it of him. But I believe you, Hazel. If you say Ayaz did those things, then I believe it. But it’s the why of it that’s killing me as much as it is you. Every atom of me says there’s something else going on here, especially considering the way Ayaz has been since you left. He hasn’t even talked to me. I think he knows that if he gets too close, I’ll see right through him.”
I shuddered. “It’s what you’ll see that I’m afraid of.”
Trey traced a line over my breast with his finger. “I don’t believe he had a choice. They wanted you out of the way. They wanted to break your mind, and they knew one of us had to do it. They couldn’t convince Quinn or I to betray you. So our question should be, what did they do to Ayaz to make him turn against you?”
“You mean like, they tortured him?”
“Oh, I bet they did that.” Trey winced. “But they did that to me. Ayaz wouldn’t have broken because they hurt him. So it must’ve been something else. Maybe they’ve drugged him, somehow? Maybe they used something against him to force him to obey. Or someone.”
Zehra.
It was the obvious answer, because she was probably the only person on earth Ayaz truly cared about. But if he knew she was dead, he’d never have given them anything. Bu
t if they threatened her life unless he cooperated…
Maybe… maybe she had survived the cave after all.
Trey’s words were bleak, but they made a bright flare of hope arc across my chest. I hated the thought that the Eldritch Club and the school might’ve done something to Zehra and Ayaz, but if Trey was right and Ayaz had been corrupted… then perhaps I could bring him back.
“I won’t give up on him,” I whispered.
“We won’t give up on him.” Trey’s voice cracked, and I felt his love for Ayaz. They might not have been brothers by blood, but they were in every way that mattered.
In the still of the night, in a stranger’s house with two dogs snoring on a giant cushion beside us, we explored each other’s bodies with silent reverence. Trey’s touch was tender, his kisses soft as silk, like he was afraid of breaking me, or of breaking himself.
My dreams that night were ringed in fire. I was back in the cavern beneath the school. I stepped toward the trapdoor. If I opened it again, maybe the god would give me some answers. But as I bent to slide the bolt, voices sounded in the tunnel behind me. Familiar voices that stood my teeth on edge.
I dived for the cover of the alcove just as Vincent Bloomberg and Ms. West walked into the room, arm in arm. They looked the same but different. Instead of her black Morticia Addams dress, Ms. West wore a grey pantsuit and blood-red stilettos, the jacket plunging between her breasts. Vincent wore the kind of clothes movies told me rich people wore on a golf course. Ms. West’s eyes caressed the cavern, her head craning to see every angle as if she’d never been there before.
“This is what you wanted to show me?” She faced off against Vincent, her back ramrod straight as she placed her hands on her hips. She looked as if she was about to scold him. “When you said you had a job offer for me, I didn’t expect something so… damp.”
“Indeed.” Vincent’s graveled voice trembled in the cavernous space. Ms. West shuddered as a wave of the god’s hatred escaped the trapdoor and rippled across the room. I leaned against the wall in the alcove, bracing myself until the onslaught was over.
Possessed: A reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 3) Page 8