Seasons of Chaos

by Elle Cosimano

  I disconnect and carry my cell to the kitchen. Dropping my phone on the counter, I head straight for the knife block. The thick steel blade of the cleaver sings as I pluck it from the sheath. Kai stills.

  “Tell me everything you know.” I slam the knife down on the island, blade facing her, letting her get a good long look at it. “Starting with why you’re here. Did Doug send you?”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “I told you. I’m not one of them. I knew they were coming. I tried to beat them here to warn you, but I wasn’t fast enough.”

  “Warn me about what? What’s Doug planning?”

  “I don’t know exactly—”

  I grab her by her ear and turn her to face me. “Think hard.”

  She grits her teeth. “All I know is he hates you.”

  “If he hates me so much, why didn’t he just kill me?” Why take Fleur? And Chill? I would have been an easier target.

  “Because he doesn’t want to kill you. He wants to hurt you. He wants to make you suffer the same way he’s suffered! He blames you for everything he’s lost.”

  A horrible thought takes hold. Doug lost his best friend. And his girlfriend. But that’s not all Doug lost in that fight.

  My ears ring, the shrill echoes of an unanswered phone. “What has he done?”

  Kai shuts her eyes.

  She starts as I snatch the cleaver off the counter. “What has he done!”

  “He killed Lyon and Gaia, and he took the staff.”

  My hand shakes around the knife’s handle. “You’re lying. Lyon would have seen it coming. He would have found some way to protect himself.”

  “Doug broke into Lyon’s office and took Ananke’s magic before the Dismantling.”

  “Ananke? That doesn’t make sense. That magic is gone. All that’s left of her is the eye in the staff.”

  Kai shakes her head. “Doug and I found it. It was strong. Doug had no problem cutting Lyon and Gaia down. It was like they weren’t even trying.”

  I stumble away from her and set the knife on the counter. No. This can’t be happening. I would have known, wouldn’t I? Poppy, Marie, and I . . . wouldn’t we have felt it when it happened? It was Lyon’s magic—his control over Time—that kept us from aging and gave us our immortality so we could stay paired with our Seasons. If that magic is gone . . .

  My cell phone rings. I don’t recognize the number. Numb, I connect the call and hold the phone to my ear.

  “Who is this?” I ask, my throat thick.

  “I’m trying to reach Jack Sommers.”

  “You’ve got him.”

  “This is Officer Williams with the police department in Nelson County, Virginia. We were patched through by your real estate attorney in London. That was the only phone number emergency services had on file. He says you’re the owner of record for a cabin out by Wintergreen?”

  My grip tightens around the phone. “What about it?”

  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but there’s been a fire . . .”

  My grandfather’s cabin . . . our safe house, where Chill and I first met . . . where I first kissed Fleur.

  “. . . still waiting on the fire marshal’s report. There’s not much left standing, but considering the age and condition of the place, it was likely an accident . . .” No. This fire was no accident. “Mr. Sommers? Mr. Sommers, are you there?”

  I disconnect the call.

  Lyon is dead. Doug has Fleur and Chill. Our safe house is gone.

  He wants to make you suffer. . . .

  I grip the island. The puddle of water under Kai’s chair stretches toward my bare feet. Her clothes are drenched, her bruises from our fight blooming violet and gold under the harsh kitchen lights.

  “Why are you here?” I ask, my knuckles white around the counter. “Did he send you to deliver a message? Did he handpick you for the job just to rub it in my face?”

  “I already told you, he doesn’t even know I’m here!”

  “Don’t bet on it,” I say, struggling to contain my temper. “He has Ananke’s magic and he has the staff. What were you thinking, coming here?”

  “I didn’t have time to think! I just ran. I couldn’t trust Doug and I didn’t know where else to go. I have to get back into the Observatory, and I can’t do it alone. I need your help!”

  I nearly choke, white-hot tears of rage threatening to spill out. “You killed me. You shot me in the back! What the hell did you leave down there that you could possibly think you deserve? Your soul? Your magic? Your goddamn immortality?”

  “Ruby!” Her head snaps up. “I left my sister, Ruby! She’s down there, and if Doug finds her, he’ll make her suffer just to punish me because I . . .” She averts her eyes. Her cheeks flush with shame.

  “Because you what?”

  “Because I chose to do the right thing,” she says quietly. “Lyon asked me to protect you, so I came.”

  A cutting laugh explodes out of me. “Bullshit. Lyon would never trust you with that. Not after what you did to me.”

  Her gaze swings to me. “I’m not proud of what I did. Lyon told me that facing you was the first step to forgiving myself. That this was my way forward. He said it’s not too late to make the right choice—”

  “Wait . . . what did you just say?” Those words . . . about facing our demons and forgiving ourselves . . . about it not being too late to choose a new path and find a way forward . . . Those words belong to Lyon. It was the same advice he gave me last week when we talked on the phone. “Lyon sent you? He said those exact words, and he told you to come here?”

  She nods. “He said if I keep you safe, you’ll help me free my sister.”

  I touch my back pocket, remembering the travel vouchers and passports Lyon sent right after that call. There had been two vouchers in that envelope. Three in Amber’s. But only one voucher in the envelope he’d sent to Poppy.

  Lyon knew. . . .

  He knew what Doug would do. That Kai would come. That we would all go to the Observatory to find Fleur and Chill.

  The second voucher he sent to me . . . it wasn’t for Fleur.

  Kai flinches as I reach for the knife and then slice through the rope between her wrists. They release with a sudden jerk.

  She doesn’t move. Doesn’t so much as breathe as I slip the knife back in the block.

  “There are dry clothes upstairs,” I say. “Pack whatever you can fit in a carry-on. We leave for the airport in an hour.” I feel her gaze heavy on my scars. Then I hear her shuffle out of the kitchen to the stairs. Only once I’m sure she’s gone do I let go of the cleaver’s handle.

  16

  Something Sinister

  FLEUR

  My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and I choke myself awake. Bolting upright, I gasp in a lungful of warm, dry air. My forehead slams against some unseen barrier that knocks me flat on my back again. I blink back stars, shielding my eyes from the glare of bright lights shining through a clear plastic dome just inches from my face.

  I press against it, my mind slow to process exactly where I am. Or how I got here.

  I was with Jack. Kissing Jack.

  No! My breath comes in rapid pants, fogging the glass of the stasis chamber as I struggle against the dome lid.

  “Let me out!” My hoarse voice is muted by the thick plastic as a barrage of images assaults me: blood on the walls, on my arms. Jack on his knees, flanked by Guards. A knife, a crash, a broken lamp. Then Jack, facedown on the floor. “Jack!” I have to get to him. Have to find him before they . . .

  Oh, Gaia, no. Please, no.

  My fingernails scratch uselessly against the slick dome. In a fit of rage, I throw my fists against it. I twist my head from side to side, struggling to see anything beyond the stone walls that surround me. There’s a door with metal bars. Through them, torches disappear down shadowy tunnels.

  I’m under the Observatory. In the cells, in the catacombs.

  “Let me out!” I scream. “If you lay one hand on Jack,
I swear to Gaia, I’ll—”

  “Gaia’s dead.” I suck in a sharp breath. Static crackles through the speaker beside my ear. “I killed her.” The gruff voice is cold and familiar, but I can’t place it.

  “You’re lying.” I don’t want to believe it. Refuse to believe it. If Gaia was dead, I would know. Wouldn’t I? If Gaia was dead, this place—the world and every creature in it—would be gone right along with her. My watering eyes catch on a deep, jagged crack in the stone above me. A thin film of clay dust coats the lid of the chamber, as if the earth’s been rocked, its contents shaken loose. “I want to speak with Chronos.”

  “I am Chronos,” the voice says.

  “You’re full of shit!”

  “And you’re locked in a very tiny prison.”

  “I demand to speak with Daniel Lyon! Where is he?” The answering silence is loud enough to shatter my soul. “Who are you? What have you done?”

  The disembodied voice is barely more than a whisper. “I think you know.”

  Goose bumps rise over my skin. I stare through the dome, thrown suddenly back to an abandoned building, tied to a chair in a dimly lit room. Doug Lausks’s iron-and-copper breath is hot on my face, the blood I’ve drawn dripping from his nose.

  “I warned you once to be careful with me, Fleur Attwell.”

  “Where’s Jack?” Those Guards were in our house. In our bedroom. The power was out, our security system shut down. The Guards outnumbered us. Without his magic—without me—Jack was defenseless against them.

  “The world is ending, Fleur. Mother Earth and Father Time are dead, and all you care about is Sommers? I thought you were better than that.” The locks beside my head snap open. I flinch back from the sudden sharp sound as cold air rushes through the broken seal.

  I don’t move. Don’t breathe as the static dies in the speaker and the lights inside the stasis chamber flicker and go dark.

  “Doug?” I smack the inside of the dome. The lid rises on its hinges. “Doug, answer me!” A minute ago, I would have given anything to be free of the chamber, but now I’d give anything just to know what’s happened to Jack. I kick the lid open the rest of the way, dizzy and cold as I sit up and take in the high walls of the cell. My skin prickles. I hunch in on myself, arms crossed to conceal my bare breasts from the camera perched in the corner of the room. A single faded blanket and a pair of coveralls rest on a metal bunk on the far wall. I launch off the edge of the chamber, nearly falling on my face as my knees buckle and stasis sickness washes over me. My injuries must not have been bad—the queasiness is only mildly unpleasant—but whatever time I spent recovering in the chamber has left me drained and clumsy.

  I snatch the coveralls from the bed and throw my legs into them, turning my body away from the camera, sick at the thought that Doug’s probably been watching me this whole time.

  Once I’m zipped inside the coarse jumpsuit, I move toward the camera’s flashing red light. I stand under it, my chin high as I stare into the lens. “You thought I would care about anything else? You assumed I was better than that?” I spit his own words back in Doug’s face. “That was your first mistake. I promise you I’m far, far worse.” I press a hand against the wall, ignoring a wave of fatigue as I summon my magic. Static crackles in my hair. My fingers tingle with it as I reach out with my mind, but we’re too deep below the earth for roots to grow here.

  Determined and furious, I search the stone itself, seeking out the rhizomes of the mosses and algae hidden within its crevices. I’ve done it once before, at the border in Tecate. Only this time, I’m already so deep underground, I don’t have to reach far.

  I grit my teeth as the wall shivers. Chips of shale clatter past my outstretched hands. With a final push of my thoughts, the surface of the wall breaks away and slides into a heap of rubble. The camera crashes down with it, dangling upside down by its wires. I turn it upright, leaning close to the lens, certain Doug’s watching me. “I’ll ruin you,” I promise as I rip it from the wall.

  The red light winks out.

  I sink to the floor, too exhausted to stay on my feet any longer. It was just a performance, a show to prove I’m not as weak as Doug wants me to be. And now that it’s over, it feels even more like a farce. I drag the thin blanket around my shoulders and huddle at the foot of the bed, my tears falling silent and fast as I remember the terror on Jack’s face. I swat them away.

  Jack’s alive. He has to be. If he was dead, I would know it. I would feel it.

  But hadn’t I thought the same thing about Gaia just moments ago?

  The temperature in my cell drops. I lift my head as a dark gray smaze drifts through the bars in the door. It circles my cell and zips out again, leaving an icy draft in its wake. Doug probably sent it to spy on me.

  No, I tell myself with a firm shake of my head, Gaia can’t be dead. Doug couldn’t possibly have overpowered them both. And yet the longer I sit, the chill of the catacombs sinking deep into my bones, the more I wonder if he was telling the truth. If Lyon and Gaia are truly dead, who’s running the Observatory? Who’s watching over the Seasons and guaranteeing our Handlers’ health and immortality?

  If Doug is free, who’s watching out for Jack?

  I scramble to my feet. Julio and Amber . . . I have to find a way to reach them. They can travel. They can get to him. If I can shake the door loose and get out of this cell, if I can make it to the Control Room and get a message to Marie, the three of them can find him.

  My fingers curl around the bars. Static crackles as I rest my forehead against them, focusing my mind on the walls as I summon my magic.

  “I know you’re pretty badass and all, but are you sure that’s such good idea?”

  I lift my head. The hoarse voice comes from a cell farther down the tunnel. I peer through the bars to see a pair of eyes staring back at me.

  “Chill?” His name comes out on a sob.

  “In the flesh.”

  “What happened? How did you get here? Is Poppy with you?” The bars press into my forehead as I crane my neck to see into the other cells, but as far as I can tell, they’re all empty.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure how I got here,” he rasps. “Poppy was locked onto my coordinates. I slipped into the ley lines, expecting to wake up at home. But I woke up here. Same as you, I guess.” I breathe a sigh of relief that maybe Poppy is okay. That she might still be safe in Fairbanks. “What about you?” Chill leans against the bars of his cell as I sink down against mine, too tired to hold myself up anymore.

  “Jack and I were at home. We were . . .” My throat swells at the memory of Jack’s lips on mine, both of us oblivious to what was happening around us. “A team of Guards broke into the villa. I tried to fight them off but there were too many of them. They were wearing the old patches on their jackets. I think they’re working for Doug.” My eyes lift to Chill’s. I wonder if he knows what happened to Lyon and Gaia, but I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer. Or what that would mean for Poppy and Jack. “The Guards must have brought me here through the ley lines. I don’t know what happened to Jack after that.” My voice cracks on Jack’s name. I don’t want to imagine what Doug’s friends might have done to him.

  “How many of them were there?” Chill asks.

  “I counted four.”

  “Only one team on his home turf? My money’s on Jack.”

  The thought of Jack fighting four Guards steals my breath. “What if he’s dead, Chill?”

  A dark laugh rumbles from his cell. “A better question is, what if he’s not?”

  My mind spins over that possibility. I hadn’t stopped to consider that Jack might be strong enough or quick enough to escape the Guards on his own. If he did manage to make it out of there alive, where would he go?

  “Oh no,” I whisper, gripping the bars. “Jack can’t come looking for us. Not here.”

  Chill doesn’t answer. We both know exactly what Jack will do. Doug’s laid a perfect trap. And we’re the bait.

  Silence falls
over the cells. The only sound is the whoosh of the torches down the hall. I feel adrift in time. This far below ground, I have no sense of day or night, no idea how many days or weeks have passed since the Guards dragged me through the ley lines. Jack could have already come. Doug never answered me when I asked where Jack was.

  “How long have we been in stasis?”

  “No idea,” Chill says. “I just woke up a few hours ago. The stasis sickness isn’t so bad. Not nearly as bad as Jack used to go through. And I was fine when I got pulled into the ley lines—a little tired, maybe, but I wasn’t hurt. I don’t think I was out very long.”

  I was injured, but definitely alive, when I felt the ley lines tow me under. Maybe Chill’s right, and we weren’t asleep very long. Maybe there’s still time to reach Amber and Julio and stop Jack from coming.

  We both stiffen at the sound of boots marching in the tunnels. Two Guards pause at the entrance to the holding area, and a tall shadow stretches toward my cell. A pair of shiny black dress shoes stops in front of me. My eyes climb past them, up the carefully pressed pleat of a pair of slacks and the lapels of a crisp suit jacket. The torchlight flickering in the tunnels behind him casts strange shadows over a hard jaw and the sharp cheekbones above it. I scramble back from the bars at the sight of the black patch over his eye.

  Michael’s dead. I watched his ashes blow away into the wind. This . . . this is impossible.

  The face moves closer to the bars, revealing a crown of blond hair. Doug’s left eye twinkles with his smirk. It gleams like a diamond. Like Gaia’s eyes.

  “What have you done?” I stand, coming closer to the bars, searching his hands for Lyon’s scythe. He holds up a finger when I open my mouth to speak.

  “You’re wondering if I’m telling the truth,” he says smugly. “You’re asking yourself, if I really did kill Daniel Lyon, then why aren’t I holding his staff?”

  “Was it too heavy for your conscience to carry?” I glare up at him through the bars. “Or are you too afraid to bring it within arm’s reach of me after what I did to Michael?”