by Matt Ryan
“You used a life stone on me?” Mark asked.
“Couldn’t let you die on us,” Niles said.
I crawled back to Mark and climbed into his lap. As I cried against his shoulder, he held me in his arms. I wanted to get lost in him; I was so happy to have him back.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes. Don’t do that to me ever again,” I said.
“I won’t.” He kissed my cheek, and we stood up.
I looked around at the crowd that had formed around us. Blane was standing not far away with Sarah at his side. She nodded and winked. “Why didn’t you use the life stone on him?” I asked my mom.
“I didn’t know Niles had one.”
Niles nodded. “I kept this one secret, saving it for this very moment.” He looked at Mark. “Just repaying the favor, my friend.”
“Who was the person?” Mark asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I need to know.”
“Just a dark alchemist who was dying anyway. It was his choice.”
Mark gritted his teeth and looked at the ceiling. Then he felt his body and shook his head. “It isn’t right, me living and others dying to keep me alive.”
“To be honest, Mark, if I’d known we had a life stone,” Mom said, glaring at Niles, “I’d have used it on Allie.”
Mark pursed his lips and looked at me. “You sure you’re okay?”
I felt my shoulder. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, great, everyone’s going to live,” Blane said. “Maybe you all didn’t notice, but someone beat us to the temple. That means they’re probably making their way around the world to collect these stones. So if we’re all done touching each other, can we get to the next location?”
I couldn’t help but smile. His tone of annoyance and his complete lack of empathy made Blane seem like a comical asshole. I couldn’t imagine a world run by him. The tyrannical terms of Blane’s rule would make Caligula look like an average day on Sesame Street.
“Yes, Blane. We’ve been waiting for you. Where to next?” Jackie said.
Blane looked around at the growing crowd. “I won’t discuss our next location in an open forum.”
Mom sighed and gave me a look before walking by and going to Blane. They talked for a bit, and when she came back, she addressed the entire crowd. “I think we’ve done enough damage for one night, so let’s all get some sleep and we can hit it in the morning.”
“I bet Allie wants to hit that tonight,” Jackie whispered, and I shoved her back, making her laugh.
The crowd dispersed and Niles, Mom and Sarah walked with Blane toward the teachers’ hall. I watched them as they huddled close in conversation. My mom looked back and made eye contact with me. Maybe I should go to them, I thought, but being near Blane seemed like the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t have the strength to fight off his thoughts, and hated the idea that more might enter my consciousness.
I turned to my friends instead. I felt more comfortable with them anyway. Jackie rubbed her chin and looked down the spoke as if she was searching for something. Mark watched me, and I got lost in the moment. I wanted to just stare at him sometimes, like an idiot. He held my gaze and I felt the heat building between us. More unspoken words. He wanted me; I saw it in his eyes. Maybe the fact we had both almost died gave us good reason, because who knew how many more nights we’d have together.
“Oh my god.” Jackie turned to us and her face lit up like a crazy person’s. “Block party!”
“No. Are you serious?” Mark said.
“Nothing makes you feel more alive than nearly dying,” she said. “Block party, people. Get your shit and meet us near the end of Red house.”
I smiled; I couldn’t help but find Jackie’s pure enthusiasm for throwing a party infectious. I glanced back at my mom and her group as they entered the teachers’ hall. They were up to something, and my gut was telling me to go check it out, but I really wanted a moment away from it all. Since we had landed back in the real world and out of Quinn’s house, I had wanted to be alone with Mark.
“You coming?” Bridget asked. “I’ve only gotten to hear about her parties from bitter Blues.”
“Yeah, sure.” I tore my attention away from my mom and Blane.
By the time we caught up with Jackie, she already had a crowd around her and was barking out orders. A group of guys pulled out the massive speakers and she inspected them, blew off the dust and had them plugged in. Then she ordered more alchemists and they all jumped at her commands, collecting different items.
In all the commotion, I felt Mark’s hand clasp mine.
“You think your old room is still intact?” he said, looking up to my window.
The glass had been broken out and the wood frame was hanging by a hinge. I was curious about it, but not enough to want to check it out. Then it struck me: Mark was trying to get me alone. I gave him a big grin. “You’re worried about my room? Maybe we should check it out.”
“I’ll leave you two alone.” Bridget excused herself from the conversation.
“Come on.” Mark pulled me along.
His forcefulness, and the fact we’d both almost died, sent waves of emotion through me. I glanced up at my window as we neared the front door to the housing units. The red door had fared well in the explosion, and Mark swung it open. He wasn’t saying a word and kept a tight grip on my wrist as he pulled me along. I looked at his back and felt giddy about what was to come.
Would he kick the door open and throw me on the bed? My heart raced as I kept up with his pace. We reached the top of the stairs and I felt heat rush through my whole body.
He reached the door of my old room and I imagined the few times we’d been in there and how close we were to getting serious. He glanced back at me and then shoved the door open and pulled me into the room.
I felt like I was floating under his control. I wanted him to lift me up and push me against the wall, carry me to the bed and never stop.
But he didn’t. He paced near the door. I shook my head and tried to clear the lust from it.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Mark said. “A freaking block party? We almost died back there, Allie.”
“I . . .” I didn’t know what to say. My thoughts were clogged with fading images that were rapidly slipping away, as if I’d been smacked with a memory stone.
“Blane and your mom are down in the dungeon, doing who knows what, and here we are, playing like we’re at the Academy again.” He pulled out a portal stone. “We can leave, right now. Get so far away from all this, it won’t matter what happens. I don’t care if we live in Cambodia as long as I have you. Don’t you feel the same way?”
My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. “Of course I feel the same way, but I can’t leave her. Not like this. Once we’re done, we’re out of here, I promise.”
“And what if she wants you to take the stone? You think it’ll end then? As long as we’re around these people, this will always be the way it is. I don’t doubt that this philosopher’s stone is just the next step to something greater. Alchemists like them will always think the next greatest stone is right around the corner, and they’ll stop at nothing to create them. I’ve watched it my whole life with my mom and the people around her.”
“Mark.” I was getting annoyed. Not just because of the splash of ice water he’d thrown on me, but the fact that he kept bringing this up. “Your mom and my mom are both down there, right now. Do you really want to leave them alone?”
“Yes. It was one thing to create these stones, but now our lives are on the line. How many more situations like the last one do you think we’re going to live through?”
“We’ve got each other’s backs. Nothing’s going to happen to us as long as we continue to.” This had started feeling like a break-up, and all the fun had been sucked from my body. I couldn’t even look at him.
“Your mom doesn’t have your back.”
“What do you know?”
>
“I know the Minis and I were the only ones looking for you that month.”
That bit of information stung. I glared at him. “My mom—”
“Your mom what? Cares about you? She left you as a child, all but forgot about you, and now you show up as a special and she embraces you again?”
“Shut up.” I really didn’t want to hear another word from him.
“Allie . . .” He reached for me, but I slapped his hand away, then opened the door.
“And here I thought you were taking me up here to be alone with me.” I looked at the bed, then slammed the door. I stormed down the stairs, past the entry and out the front door.
Jackie, Carly, Bridget, Kylie, and Wes cheered my arrival and the music kicked on. I wasn’t sure what kind of music it was, but it sounded like a mixture of house and rap. Jackie started rapping and staring at me, as if she was singing just for me. I wiped a tear from my eye and smiled.
She gestured for me to come to her. “You okay?” she whispered in my ear.
“Yeah.” I looked back up at the window.
Jackie started rapping again and dancing around me. Bridget and Carly joined in, and we jumped around through the song, each of us trying to one-up the others on who could dance more ridiculously.
I glanced at the window again, then did a quick look through the party to see if Mark had joined us. I couldn’t find him, and I wondered if I should have reacted differently. It was just too hard to accept how my mother felt about me.
Where was he?
The next song kicked on with a series of bass drops and Beastie Boys sound bites mixed in. Soon enough, my girls brought me back into the party and we had fun for the rest of the night.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed a break. The fear of being killed or abused, the fear of losing the ones I loved, the fear of drowning in it all, and being too scared to change anything about it—it had all added up. For a couple of hours, I was able to let it all go.
The lights flickered and then went out, along with the booming stereo system.
People yelled out boos in protest, and soon many of the young alchemists around me had glow stones raised over their heads.
“Party’s over, bitches. Get to bed!” Jackie yelled. Then she leaned close to me. “Not one hot guy here, anyway. Total vag fest. Speaking of hot guys, where’s Mark?” She crossed her arms as we stood near the middle of the street, where much of the fence dividing the two sides was still standing.
“We had an argument,” I said.
Jackie’s her eyes went wide. “Shut up. The perfect couple has a blemish on their record? Let me guess, was it an argument about who loves who more?”
“I love you the most,” Bridget said, piling on to Jackie’s comment.
“Oh, no, I love you more,” Jackie said.
“If the entire world combined all of its love and tripled it, I’d love you two times that.”
“My love for you could fill the universe and then some.”
“Take it back.” Bridget pointed a finger in Jackie’s face. “My love for you is grander than any canyon.”
“If I had been the first person to step on the moon, I would have said this was one small step for man, but my love for Mark is greater than all of mankind.”
“Get out of here with that.” Bridget pushed at Jackie. “If I was going to interrupt Taylor Swift, it’d be to announce I loved you more.”
“You’re losing me,” Jackie said.
“Are you two done?” I asked.
“Fine,” Bridget said. “What was the fight about?”
“He wants me to run away with him.”
They both laughed, and I regretted confiding in them.
“Oh, that old line,” Bridget said. “I met a guy who said he wanted to take me away from it all and take care of me, like I was a child. Now that I think of it, I was only thirteen.” Her face scrunched up. “Jesus . . . he had to have been, like, thirty.” She shook in disgust.
“I just don’t like leaving it this way between us.” I glanced up at my window. “I’m going to find him.”
Bridget walked closer to me. “Hey, I saw him walking down the spoke a couple of hours ago, not long after you came down. He walked right into the hub, but I lost track of him after that.”
I turned to face the hub. “Thanks. Night, guys.”
“Night,” they said in unison.
I liked it better when they were irritating one another. This new Bridget/Jackie combo felt like too powerful of a combination. I wasn’t sure which one would be the worst influence.
Who was I kidding? Jackie was going to warp Bridget.
The teachers’ hall was a mess. I stepped over the broken stones. The smell of the place had changed as well; it reeked of dust mixed with sulfur and smoke. The painted door was standing ajar, so I slipped through it and walked into the endless hall.
A few hundred feet down, I found the entrance. As I was about to walk through, I heard voices. I crept low and had flashbacks of the time Mark and I had spied on Verity.
“We should tell her,” Mark said.
“She won’t be happy we left her. It’s better we just keep pushing forward and collecting,” my mother said.
“We’re wasting time debating this,” Blane said. “With Mark, we don’t need her. She gets in my head, anyway.” He grunted. “I can feel her even now.” He stopped talking, and I felt his thoughts. He knew I was there.
I walked down the last part of the passageway. They were all staring at me. “Hey, guys. What’s going on here?” I looked at Mark and tried to hide my glare.
“We picked up a second master stone in the Arctic,” he answered.
“You didn’t have to go and tell her,” Blane whined.
“You did what?” I stormed the last few feet into the room.
“Last time you almost died, Allie. I wasn’t going to put you in that kind of danger again. If you’re insisting that we finish this out, I think I should be the special who makes these last stones,” Mark said.
“And you went along with this?” I asked my mom.
“I thought we were going to lose you to that fire stone, Allie. I can’t let that happen again,” Mom said.
“But you have no problem risking the rest of them?” They all looked at each other but didn’t answer. “Where are we going next?” I asked.
“An island of savages, as Blane described it. Hawaii is what I think he means. Maybe New Zealand,” Mark said. “Going to a volcano!” His voice was laced with whimsy, emphasizing how ridiculous his words sounded.
“A volcano?”
“Oh, yeah. Blane here says we need to make the next stone there or it won’t work.”
“Damn right it won’t work. Just like the ice master stone,” Blane chimed in.
“Should we get the rest of the people? Quinn might be there, or the locals,” I said.
“Nope, we’re going in blind,” Mark said. “Blane is leading the portal. Yeah!” He pumped a fist with false enthusiasm.
“This is crazy. You could portal right into a wall or a tree,” I said.
“I’ll be making the jump next,” Mom said. “I’ve already checked out a spot and can jump us.”
“Good, let’s go,” Blane said. “I won’t let that other man get my stone first.”
“You have some stones on you, Allie?” Mom asked.
“I have most of the ones left over from China,” I said.
I looked around the room at the people who were going: Sarah, Niles, Blane, Mark, Mom and myself. We formed a powerful group of alchemists, and I was upset not to have been part of their last expedition.
I gave Mark a look, but he was looking at Blane. We’d never had a real argument, and I now felt foolish for walking out on him. Now, we were going to Hawaii to face a volcano and create another stone. Just another day in alchemy.
The moonlight shone over the rolling hills, leading down to the shoreline of Hawaii. It looked beautiful from atop the hill. The ground undulated
with soft mounds and patches of green that stuck out amid the dark landscape surrounding them. The soft sounds of waves crashing nearby drew my attention and I gazed at the whitecaps hitting the rocky shore. The smell of it struck me. It’d been too long since I’d stepped out of the cave of the Academy, and I hadn’t realized how amazing the outside air was in comparison. I lifted my foot and looked at the ground: a black, hard surface with pillows of texture spread over it.
“There,” Mom said, pointing. An orange glow in the distance danced and lit the smoky plum surrounding it. “Old lava bed,” she said, tapping her foot on the ground. “Blane, the lava’s over there. How close do we need to get?”
Blane didn’t answer; instead, he looked at the city behind us. A sprawling landscape of tall hotels and houses lit up the area in its own soft glow. Car headlights were running through the streets, and I imagined it all must have looked like an alien world to Blane.
“That’s what your cities are like?” he asked. “I’d like to visit one.”
“Blane, stay on task here,” Mom said. “The location. How close?”
He cleared his throat and looked at the orange glow. “Closer than this. Close enough to singe the hair on your arms.”
“Maybe we can lower one of us into the pit of lava and make the stone as we hover over it,” Mark said, and glanced at me. “I’m wearing two layers of clothing.”
Blane considered it with squinting eyes, rubbing his chin. “I think the risk is too great. The ingredients might catch fire.”
“Oh, yes,” Mark said. “We wouldn’t want a burning body to destroy those ingredients.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Blane said.
He wasn’t kidding. I got a picture of a flaming body in my head.
“Come on, and be careful where you walk. It wasn’t too long ago that the stuff we’re standing on was molten lava,” Mom said. She turned on her flashlight and led the way.
We walked single file toward the glowing lava pit. Mark walked behind me, and I felt his eyes on me. Half of me wanted to turn around and hug him, and the other half wanted to tell him off. I wasn’t sure how much I liked this sarcastic, snarky Mark.
As we approached the orange glow, bits of molten lava flew into the air and landed on the edge, quickly fading away. Smaller clumps of black rocks covered much of the surface and we all staggered over the path.