Fates Unsparing

by K. J. McPike

  The microwave dinged, startling me out of my thoughts. Nelson hopped up to dig a plastic bowl from the cabinet and pour the popcorn into it while I put the chairs into place under the table. We headed to the living room and found my brothers and sisters bickering.

  “Does this mean you haven’t decided on a movie?” I asked.

  Before they could answer, the doorbell rang.

  I cringed. “Crap. That’s probably Mom and Dad.” If they’d realized we weren’t home, Nelson’s was the first place they would look. I walked over to the door and pulled it open, ready to plead my we-needed-a-break case.

  But it wasn’t my parents.

  It was Kai.

  My stomach plummeted into my feet. I stared at him, stunned into silence. What was he doing here? He must have used his ability to find me—there was no other way he would have known where I was. But why now, after he’d stayed away from me for nearly a month? And what could possibly make him think I would want to see him? I’d made it clear the last time that I wanted him out of my life forever.

  “Lali.” His voice quivered, and panic read in his green eyes. “I need to talk to you.” Even in the dimming light of the evening, I could tell his tawny skin had a sickly pallor to it. His shaggy hair looked wild, as if he’d been pulling at it for hours. And…was he shaking?

  All the times I’d envisioned telling Kai off, I pictured him strolling up to me with his usual cocky demeanor. I wasn’t prepared for this broken, disheveled version of him.

  “Please,” he said. “It’s about Kala.”

  I flinched. As much as I hated Kai for deceiving me and putting my family through hell for his own selfish reasons, I couldn’t help the guilt that came with the mention of his sister. The Eyes and Ears had abducted Kala when she was a baby and taken her to Alea. Even after everything Kai and I went through to get there, we hadn’t been able to rescue her. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but my conscience plagued me with an irrational feeling of responsibility—a feeling I fought as best I could. I had already done everything in my power to help him.

  Besides, Kai kidnapped my mother. He’d caused nothing but anguish for my family and me, and he put all of us in danger. I didn’t owe him anything.

  So why couldn’t I find my voice to tell him that?

  “Hey, Kai.” Nelson walked up behind me. “What are you doing here?” The tension in his shoulders was obvious as he looked at our unwelcome visitor. Despite my mother and me teaming up to convince my friends that Kai was a young detective on her kidnapping case, it was obvious Nelson still hadn’t warmed up to him.

  Not that it mattered; Kai didn’t bother acknowledging Nelson at all. He honed in on me like there was no one else around for miles.

  “Please,” he repeated. The tremor in his voice was noticeable even with that single word.

  I dropped my gaze to the wooden planks of the porch, hoping it would help me focus. “Now’s not a good time.”

  “It’s an emergency!” Kai’s shout made Nelson and me jump.

  “Whoa.” Nelson stepped in front of me, shielding me with his arms. “Take it easy.”

  “I can’t take it easy,” Kai said, though his tone came out softer this time. “It’s an emergency.” He leaned around Nelson and tried to penetrate my mind with his stare.

  “Dude, she said now’s not a good time,” Nelson reminded him. “You need to respect that.”

  I grabbed Nelson’s elbow, urging him back toward the door. At six-foot-one, he wasn’t short, but Kai still had a good four inches on him. Not to mention, Kai’s muscular build meant he had a decent amount of weight over Nelson’s lean and lanky frame. If things got physical, I wasn’t confident my friend would come out the victor.

  “Lali.” Kai’s angular features twisted. “Please.”

  “You need to go.” Nelson stepped backward, guiding me into the house. “Good night.” He closed the door and locked it before turning to face me.

  “Please!” Kai pounded on the door, startling both of us. “It’s an emergency, Lali. And it involves your family, too.”

  I sucked in a breath. Was he just saying that to get me to agree to talk to him? He knew better than anyone that I would do anything to keep my loved ones safe, and he was manipulative enough to use it against me.

  “Does this have to do with the ransom case?” Nelson asked, frowning at the door. “Do we need to call the police?”

  “No!” I bit my lip. Even if Kai was bluffing, I had to hear him out just to be sure. I would never forgive myself if something happened to one of my family members because I was too stubborn to give Kai the time of day.

  Oxanna turned around on the sofa to look at Nelson and me. “What’s going on?”

  “Just give me a minute,” I said, starting for the door.

  “Are you sure?” Nelson’s eyes darted toward the window like Kai might come crashing through the glass at any minute. “He seems a little off.”

  “I’ll just go see what the big deal is,” I insisted. “I’ll only be a minute.” Bracing myself, I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

  Kai exhaled loudly when he saw me. “Thank you."

  “Don’t thank me yet.” I shut the door and glared at him. “You have thirty seconds. What’s going on?”

  “I need to take you somewhere we can talk.” Kai nodded toward the window where we could see Nelson pretending not to watch us. “Privately.”

  “We can talk here,” I said. “I’m not about to go disappearing into the night with you.”

  “Please, Lali. I’ll bring you right back. I need your help.” He reached out to grab my hands, taking me by surprise. “I’m begging you.”

  “O-okay,” I spluttered, thrown off by this pleading version of the boy who’d acted first and asked later just a few short months ago. Seeing him like this was more unsettling than dealing with his pushy side had ever been. “Just let me come up with a good excuse to leave. You’ve already freaked Nelson out enough.”

  “We don’t have time for excuses. They’re gonna kill her, Lali.”

  A chill crawled up my spine. “What?”

  “They’re gonna kill my sister,” Kai choked out. “Unless I turn your family over to the Eyes and Ears.”

  Chapter 2

  Desperate

  The porch seemed to sway beneath me. Taking a step backward, I reached out to steady myself against Nelson’s front door. “No,” I whimpered, gulping the warm evening air. “They wouldn’t. They can’t.”

  “Yes,” Kai growled. “They would, and they can, and they’re gonna if I don’t do something to stop them.” Shoving his fingers through his dark mess of hair, he clutched the porch railing like it was his last source of support. “Solstice showed up at my house just now and gave me forty-eight hours to turn you guys over.”

  “Solstice?” My mouth went dry. Though she had been Mom’s friend many years ago, she teamed up with Kai’s uncle, Cade, to try and deliver my family to the Eyes and Ears. After the two held us at gunpoint, we barely escaped with our lives. “I thought she was gone,” I said. “It’s been weeks since she disappeared.”

  We had assumed she went back to Alea, and since we hadn’t heard from her in so long, I’d hoped the Eyes and Ears imprisoned her. She would have been the first one from Mom’s secret activist group, XODUS, to return to that realm after stealing Cade’s astral energy all those years ago. And she deserved prison for a lot more reasons than that.

  “Well, she’s back.” Kai spat the words like sour milk. “And she said they’ll kill Kala if I don’t give them your family. I have no doubt she’ll see to that herself.”

  I didn’t doubt it either. But the scarier thought was that I wouldn’t put it past Kai to surrender to her demands if he didn’t have another way to his sister. He’d spent the last year trying in vain to rescue Kala. With his ability to project his physical body, along with people or things he touched, Kai could turn us all over to the Eyes and Ears within seconds. All he had to do was grab us and vis
ualize where he wanted to go to make it happen. If he decided to give us up for the sake of saving his sister, there wasn’t much I could do to stop him.

  I curled my fingers around the doorknob behind me. “What are you going to do?” I realized it was a stupid question as soon as it came out. If he was planning to betray me, he wasn’t going to announce it.

  “I’m gonna get Kala out of there.” His prominent brow bunched. “But I need you to help me. Please. I’m desperate.”

  “How?” I asked. Despite his devastating betrayal, I wanted to help if I could. Kala didn’t deserve to die, no matter what her brother had done to me.

  “I just need you to project me to her so I can see her face.” Kai’s voice shook on the last couple words, and his hurt traveled right to my chest. He hadn’t seen Kala since she was a baby, and I knew it killed him. He didn’t know what she looked like now, which was why he couldn’t project to her himself. He could only project to people or places he had seen and could envision in his mind.

  I, however, did know what Kala looked like. I’d seen her briefly after the first time I made it to Alea. The Astralii guards caught me and dragged me off to the lab for testing, and I got a glimpse of Kala in one of their classrooms. Typically, I could project to people and places I visualized, but the lab had an astral energy block around it like the one Mom had put up around our house. I couldn’t project past it even if I wanted to.

  “Kai,” I started, hating that I had to shoot him down when he was already so low. “I wish I could. But you know I can’t get past the block.”

  He studied my face for a long moment. “Actually, I think you might be able to with this.” Reaching beneath the collar of his black t-shirt, he tugged out a necklace. I recognized the oblong purple stone instantly. We’d stolen it from one of the guards after I saw similar pendants being used to penetrate the energy block around the lab. But unlike full-blooded Astralii who could manipulate objects in their astral forms, I had an intangible astral form that repelled anything I tried to touch.

  “I can’t put that on,” I reminded Kai. “I can’t pick anything up in my astral form, remember? You were the one who pointed that out when we first got that necklace.”

  He shifted his weight, and the wooden porch creaked under his flip-flops. “Well, I was thinking maybe I could help you with that.”

  “Help me?”

  “Yeah. What if I try putting it on your astral form for you.”

  “Oh.” I blinked twice. Why hadn’t we thought of that before?

  “If it works, I’ll get a good look at Kala,” he added quickly. “Then I’ll project to her and get her out of there before they even realize what happened.” He looked so determined, I didn’t want to remind him that the necklace hadn’t worked for him, either. But if his plan hinged on something that wasn’t possible, I had to keep him grounded so we could come up with a way that could actually work.

  “Kai,” I said softly. “You hit the block around Mom when you tried to use that stone before.”

  His gaze fell to his feet. “I had to pretend it wouldn’t work for me. For obvious reasons.”

  “Wait. What?” It took me an extra moment to process what he meant. When it finally clicked, I let out a shocked laugh. “You faked hitting the block?”

  His jaw tensed, and I had my answer.

  “How—you know what, forget it. I don’t want to know.” I clenched my hands into fists. I was such an idiot for not realizing it before. As soon as Kai had gotten the necklace from the guard, I asked him to project me to my mother. But he claimed to have hit the block around her, even going so far as to throw himself to the ground to convince me. Given that he was the one holding Mom captive, I should have figured it was all an act. He’d convinced me that Mom was hiding in Alea, so taking me to her would have ruined his plan to manipulate me into helping him get to the alternate realm.

  Besides, he lied about everything else; why was I surprised he’d lied about that, too? I couldn’t believe I was helping him.

  “Lali, I’m sorry.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re always sorry after you get caught in a lie.” Too bad you haven’t figured out you wouldn’t have to be sorry if you stopped lying in the first place. I wondered if he would ever learn that lesson. But I had no reason to care. He was nothing to me but a constant source of pain and betrayal. As long as he left my family and me alone, I didn’t care what he did anymore.

  He took a step closer, and I flattened myself against the door. If he thought he was going to pull the reassuring touch move, he was dead wrong.

  “I mean it.” He sighed. “I regret everything more than you know.” Anyone else might have believed the sincerity in his eyes or been suckered in by his perfectly chiseled face, but I knew better. I refused to get pulled into his web.

  “Yeah, well, your regret doesn’t do much for me,” I told him. As if he could just claim to feel bad and erase what he’d done. How could I be sure he had any remorse at all? He was clearly an impeccable liar, and I was clearly a big sucker. But not anymore.

  Apparently giving up on whatever he had been hoping to do by approaching me, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “I’m not denying I’m a jerk. I know you have every right to hate me, but Kala doesn’t deserve to die just because I made a lot of bad choices trying to save her.”

  “I know,” I snapped. “And I’m only helping you for Kala’s sake. When this is all over, we’re going back to the part where you and I don’t talk to each other. Ever.”

  His nostrils flared, but he quickly regained his composure. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is. It definitely is.”

  Silence passed between us, and I seethed. From now on, I would assume Kai had lied about everything—including his feelings for me. My heart clenched, but I refused to dwell on that thought. I didn’t care how Kai felt about me. I didn’t care that I might have felt something for him—before I found out who he really was and what he was capable of. It didn’t change anything. We just had to pull off getting the necklace on my astral form so I could project him to Kala, and this would be over. Once I knew for sure that Kala was safe, I’d never have to see Kai again.

  And that was exactly how I wanted it.

  A car rolled past us on the road less than twenty yards away, reminding me that we shouldn’t be talking about this in the open. It was bad enough that Solstice was bent on giving us up to the Eyes and Ears; we didn’t need to risk leading them straight to us by being careless and talking about our abilities in public. Even in Browshire—which I was pretty sure was the smallest town on the East Coast—it was stupid to take the chance.

  “We shouldn’t be talking about this out here.” I looked pointedly at the street, and Kai noticed the car.

  “I can take you somewhere,” he offered. “Lanai?”

  I hoped the sting of that word didn’t show on my face. A small, secluded beach in Lanai became our special hideout while I honed my own astral projecting abilities a few months prior. It felt like a lifetime had passed since then, and I wasn’t keen on the idea of going back there. All it would do was remind me of more deceitful things he’d said to me.

  He reached for my hand, and I recoiled. “Just wait for me at my house,” I said. “I’ll talk to Nelson and be there in a bit.”

  “Okay.” He gave me a long look. “Thank you.”

  I cleared my throat, resenting my choice to help him. But his sister’s life was on the line, and I couldn’t just stand by and let something happen to her.

  “I’ll see you in a few.” I twisted the doorknob and backed into Nelson’s house.

  He was sitting at the bottom of the staircase on the other side of the door. “Is everything okay?” he asked, getting to his feet.

  “Everything’s fine.” At least, I hope it will be. I ran a palm along my bare arm to chase off the chill that had taken hold inside me. “But we have to go.”

  His face fell. “You just got here.”

 
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll explain later.” How, I had no idea, but that was the least of my worries.

  “At least let me walk you home.” He leaned past me to look toward the window again. “Kai seemed kinda unstable, and I don’t want him jumping out of any bushes at you.”

  I forced a smile. “Thanks.” I glanced over to where my brothers and sisters were all settled on the couch, fighting over the popcorn. Some protective big sister instinct didn’t want to leave them here when Kai could show up and project them straight to the Eyes and Ears in two seconds flat.

  At least there was a block around our house that would stop him from projecting them out of there—provided I could wrestle the necklace away from him. And if Nelson walked us to the door, Kai wouldn’t show up until after he was gone, which meant my siblings would be inside and somewhat protected by the astral energy barrier. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could do.

  “I’m going to drag the rest of the clan home, too,” I said.

  Nelson chewed the inside of his cheek. “So much for my Friday night. I guess it’s back to playing video games in my underwear.”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I promised, though something told me it would be a while before I could fulfill that promise. If Kai was in my life again, that meant things were going to get a lot more complicated. I just hoped we could figure out a way to get to Kala and uncomplicate everything as soon as possible.

  Chapter 3

  Heroes

  Seconds after I said good-bye to Nelson and closed our front door, my brothers and sisters began their interrogation.

  “What’s going on?” Oxanna demanded, plopping into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, where our homework still sat unfinished. She pulled Gottfried into her lap to quiet his barking. “You’re being weird.”