Seasons of Chaos

by Elle Cosimano

  “Only if you don’t kill us both first.” The park swims as I rub my chest, willing the pain to subside. I’ve seen some of the scant video footage of Jack and his friends while they were on the run from the Observatory. I know, in theory, how one weak Season and one strong Season can touch and share magic . . . how they can share power and heal each other. But nothing could have prepared me for this. The sudden loss of energy’s left me woozy and weak. Fleur, on the other hand, looks like she could summon every tree in this park to level me.

  Her eyes dart to a branch above my head.

  “Buckle up, Chronos,” she says, as I reach for my transmitter. “It’s going to be a very long night.”

  30

  Against Us in the Dark

  JACK

  Kai runs, dragging me behind her, her bow jostling on her shoulder as she whips through the tunnel. Julio’s swearing, hollering for Amber to give them some light. A flame roars, and we break right at a fork, out of reach of the fire, my friends’ voices fading behind us. The blackness ahead is suffocating, disorienting. I can’t tell if my eyes are open or shut.

  “How did you do that?” I pant.

  “Humans can make magic, too. Sleight of hand. Rabbit out of a hat. Trick of the light. Anyone can do it,” she says, pulling me around another corner.

  “But—”

  “Keep your voice down. They’ll hear you.”

  Kai hangs a sharp left. My shoulder scrapes the wall, the fresh stitches snagging on the rough stone as we change direction. I bark out a swear and jerk her to a stop.

  “Do you even know where we’re going?”

  She claps a hand over my mouth. I don’t hear Julio, Amber, Marie, or Poppy anymore, and a ripple of panic washes through me. I tear her hand away and hiss, “We can’t just leave them in the dark like that!”

  I shield my eyes from the glare as her flashlight flicks on. The soft yellow cone shines up from her pocket, casting creepy shadows over her face.

  “If you wanted to go back, you wouldn’t be whispering. You don’t want to be stuck in some dorm room any more than I do. We’d just be twiddling our thumbs while Amber and Julio get lost down here, looking for your girlfriend.”

  I grit my teeth, glancing back the way we came.

  “Don’t worry about your friends. Doug won’t be looking for them. He’ll be too busy looking for us. They’re safer this way anyway.”

  Torn, I give the tunnel behind me one last look. It all but disappears beyond the glow of the flashlight.

  “I’m doing you a favor,” she says with a shrug, “but if you don’t want to come, don’t let me stop you.” She slides her bow over her shoulder and starts walking, taking her flashlight with her. I follow, still feeling the pull to go back. But she’s right. If they’re all busy worrying about me, I’ll only slow them down.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as the tunnel narrows, forcing me to walk behind her. I duck my head to avoid smacking it on the stalactites hanging from the low ceiling.

  “The Winter wing should be about a quarter mile north of us.”

  My chest feels tight, the walls too close around me, as I consider how easy it would be to get lost down here. To wander through the maze of tunnels until the battery in her flashlight dies and this place becomes one big tomb.

  Kai pauses, shining her light at her compass when we come to a fork in the cave. “There’s an incinerator duct behind the kitchens under each wing,” she explains. “We can climb up and hide in the Winter dorms until we figure out where they’re holding Fleur.”

  “I thought you wanted to find your sister. Isn’t her wing directly above us?”

  “My sister’s a Winter,” she says, picking a tunnel and disappearing ahead of me.

  “A Winter?” I jog to keep up, stubbing my toe on a rock. “How?” It’s rare for siblings to come to the Observatory as Seasons. I’ve only ever known of one set, twins who came together after an accident when their car skidded off a bridge and plunged into an icy creek. Gaia made them both Winters, assigning them to adjoining regions so they could stay close.

  “My sister and I died together. A house fire,” Kai explains. “When Gaia found us, we agreed to go with her, but we didn’t understand the cost. That we would be different, separated forever. She even put us in different hemispheres. I haven’t seen her since.” Kai picks up her pace as the tunnel widens.

  “When was that?”

  “Christmas Eve, 1973.”

  I pull ahead to walk beside her, but I don’t know what to say. “That sucks. I know Gaia was all about balance and everything, but that seems pretty heartless, even for her.”

  “Yeah, well . . . she and Lyon had their reasons,” she mutters.

  “Why would Lyon have had anything to do with your placement?”

  Kai looks at me askance. “It’s not important. Water under the bridge, right?”

  Maybe. But I can’t shake the feeling that something is odd about it. “What’s the deal with your sister’s name? Not that I’m one to talk, but I thought Ruby was a Summer name. You know, like the birthstone.”

  “Ruby’s her real name,” Kai says curtly. “And that’s how I remember her.”

  “Believe me, I get it.” If anyone understands the significance of a name here, it’s me. “What does she go by now? I know most of the Winters in my hemisphere. Maybe I can find out which room she’s in.” There are only a few hundred Winters on campus. She shouldn’t be hard to find.

  “Professor Lyon said she goes by the name Névé. Névé Onding.”

  My breath leaves me. Kai plods ahead, turning over her shoulder to see why I’ve stopped. My eyes dart over her face . . . her cheeks, her nose, the dip in her chin. I swallow hard, my mind pushing away all the small resemblances that seem so obvious now. This can’t be Névé’s sister. Not the same Névé that Amber killed at the cabin.

  My throat’s tight as I remember the feel of Névé’s limp mouth against mine, the magic on her breath when I took it as she died.

  I look away. At the wall. At the floor. Anywhere but at Kai’s face, so I won’t have to see traces of her sister in it. “You talked to the professor about her?”

  “In secret. He helped us exchange letters for a while.”

  It sounds like something Lyon would have done for one of his favorite students. Like something he would have done for me. That knowledge stirs a fresh wave of guilt inside me. Lyon knew Kai and Névé before I even got here. Not just in passing, but closely. Maybe as closely as he knew me. Yet when I’d called him from the pay phone behind the bar in Oklahoma—when I’d confessed that Névé was dead and I had taken her magic—he hadn’t said a word. Not to me or to Kai. Why didn’t Lyon break the news to her when she came out of stasis? Unless he was just trying to protect me. . . .

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

  Her sister. My smaze.

  Did Lyon send Kai to find me—to help me—because he knew we’d be searching for the same thing?

  “When was the last time you heard from her?” I hear myself ask.

  “A long time ago. We had an argument.” Kai glances up, mistaking my stunned silence for curiosity. “Ruby blamed me for what happened to us. The fire was my fault. I left a candle burning in our room and the window was cracked, and the curtain . . .” She closes her eyes with a shudder. “Ruby could always hold a grudge, but after that . . . well, she never really forgave me for that. She never wanted to be here, but I thought maybe . . .” Kai’s sigh is heavy. “I thought maybe we could get past it, but Ruby stopped writing back, and after a while, Lyon stopped offering to pass letters for me anyway.”

  I swallow back the sick taste in my mouth. Kai thought her sister stopped writing because she was angry. But what if she stopped writing and Lyon stopped offering to be their go-between because her sister was dead?

  Kai’s gaze drops to her hands. “When I was promoted to the Guard, I thought I’d get a chance to see her. Guards have so much more freedom of
movement, down here and up top, but I was thrown into training so fast and there wasn’t any time. Before they’d even issued me a key to the Crux, I was sent to Cuernavaca to find you. Next thing I knew, I woke up in a cell. And then, when everything blew up with Doug, I had no choice but to run. But I’m here now,” she says defensively, as if she’s afraid I’m judging her for her choices. Only it’s not her I’m judging. I’m judging myself for things she doesn’t know I’ve done. And I’m judging Lyon for keeping them from her. “I came back for my sister,” she says with a stubborn lift of her chin. “And we’re going to find her.”

  The hope in her voice is an arrow to my heart. She walks on ahead of me, oblivious to the fact that the person she trusted to bring her here, to help her save her sister, is the very same person who watched her sister die and stole her sister’s magic. No matter how long I’ve spent wanting to jam knives into Kai’s back and make her suffer the way I have, how do I tell her that a piece of her sister’s soul was once tangled up with mine? That it was inside me, staring back at her on that mountain in Cuernavaca?

  “How can you be sure she’s still alive?” I call after her.

  Kai stops. She turns over her shoulder. “How do you know Fleur’s alive? Or Chill?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Neither do I,” she says quietly, waiting for me to catch up.

  31

  How the Cold Creeps

  JACK

  The walls of the tunnel widen suddenly, opening into a cavern laced with icicles of stone. Kai stops just inside, her flashlight sweeping over the room. She digs in her pocket for a packet of matches. With a snap and a whoosh, she lights a torch and nests it back in its hole in the wall.

  I turn in a slow circle. More stone coffins, just like the others. “Where are we?”

  “Under the Winter kitchen,” she says, sliding off her backpack and bow.

  For all the years I spent poking around down here, piecing together sections of hand-drawn maps, I can’t believe I never found this room. “Who do you think are in these things?” I ask, trailing a finger over the cold stone.

  “Where do you think the faculty and staff are buried when they die? Apparently, if you make it through retirement without pissing anyone off, you get to choose.” She gestures from the coffins to an incinerator on the far wall. The furnace is identical to the one we just left under the Summer wing, with a wide silver duct rising up from the top.

  Kai points to my arm. “Can you climb?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  She yanks open the incinerator’s iron grate and pokes her head inside, aiming her flashlight up the duct. She tucks the light in the front pocket of her jacket, the beam pointed up. “I’ll go first,” she says, shrugging on her gear. “Once I’m sure the coast is clear, we’ll make a break for the dorms. You’ll need to move fast. We’ll only have a few seconds to make it past the cameras before someone sees us. Where do you think we’ll find Boreas?”

  When Kai had asked me where we would start our search once we made it down here, Boreas’s name had spilled from my mouth like contraband. He’s the go-to guy of the north wing. He hears everything that happens down here, and he’s got contacts everywhere, both above and below ground. He’ll know where Doug’s holding Fleur and Chill.

  He’ll also know which room was Névé’s.

  And I’m betting he knows what happened to her.

  “We should check the kitchen.”

  Kai ducks into the incinerator. I peer inside. A ladder runs up one side of the duct, disappearing into the blackness above it. Every word I haven’t said rises like bile as she starts to climb. “Kai, wait . . .” She hangs from a rung by one hand, twisting back to look down at me. “Before we talk to Boreas, there’s something you should know.”

  “I already know how Boreas operates, if that’s what you’re worried about. His reputation wasn’t limited to the Winter wing, you know. Don’t worry,” she says, turning back to the ladder and scurrying up a few rungs, “Auggie refused to keep the cash I gave him. There should be more than enough to convince Boreas to tell us where Doug’s holding Fleur.”

  “It’s not just that, there’s something else.” I climb inside and grab the first rung, hissing as a stitch in my shoulder pops. A warm trickle of blood slides down my arm.

  Kai pauses. “Sure you don’t need any help?” she asks, frowning down at me. “It’s a long way up. Maybe you should go first.”

  “Thanks, I’m okay.” I let her climb a few more rungs before I follow, careful not to put too much strain on my arm. It feels good to be moving. To be doing something. To have the beginnings of a plan: find Boreas, figure out where Doug’s keeping Fleur and Chill, reclaim my magic from the orb in Lyon’s office, and then get us all out of here. But what happens once I tell Kai about her sister?

  I climb faster to keep up, determined not to think about the pain, or the possible alternative endings to this story. I’ll tell Kai everything. Just . . . not now. There’s nothing I can do to change what happened to Névé. But if we hurry and stay focused, there’s still a chance we can save Chill and Fleur.

  We climb two stories, passing through the administration floor to the cardinal wings above it. I nearly collide with the sole of Kai’s shoe when she stops.

  She presses her ear to the duct before wedging a pocketknife into a seam. With a grunt, she pries a panel loose. Dim light pours in, illuminating a swath of her face as she eases the panel to the floor.

  I climb out after her into some kind of storage closet. The shelves are packed with cleaning supplies and kitchen uniforms. Mop buckets and brooms line the walls.

  Kai cracks the closet door and peeks down the hall. “The cameras are going to be hard to dodge,” she whispers.

  “Hold on. I have an idea.” I grab a couple of white kitchen smocks and elastic caps from the shelf, just like the ones Boreas gave Julio and me the day he helped break us out of here. Kai and I drag them on over our clothes. I hand her a gauzy germ mask with an elastic band and draw a second one around my head.

  Kai’s petite frame swims in the smock. An obvious lump protrudes from her back.

  “Ditch the bow,” I tell her.

  She angles away from me. “No way,” she says, narrowing her eyes at my arm. A red stain is already seeping through my smock. “You’re not perfectly disguised, either.”

  I grab an apron off the shelf and sling it over my arm.

  She rolls her eyes, grumbling to herself as she strips off her bow and tucks it behind a stack of brooms.

  We slip out of the closet and head toward the kitchen. The hall is quiet. Too quiet. No clatter of steam trays. No buzzing timers. No hum of exhaust fans sucking up the food smells wafting from the serving stations. A line of abandoned meal carts is parked against one wall, piled high with sandwiches and fruit cups. “Where the hell is everyone?”

  “I don’t know,” she says warily.

  The kitchen is dark. Kai tucks herself close behind me, as if she senses it, too—the wrongness of it.

  “Boreas?” I call out. His name echoes off the stainless-steel ovens.

  The door of the walk-in freezer hangs slightly ajar. A sliver of light spills out of it, stretching toward our feet. I turn toward the high-pitched whine of a camera on the wall. It rotates slowly toward us. Before it catches up to us, I sling the freezer door farther open and usher Kai inside. She sucks in a sharp breath.

  “Relax,” I say, ducking into the freezer behind her, “it’s not that cold in . . .”

  Kai’s rigid, a hand clamped over her mouth.

  “Shit. No!” I rush past her and kneel in the swirling fog around Boreas’s feet. He’s propped upright on a vegetable crate, his chin resting against his motionless chest. The bald crown of his head is a strange shade of gray, and the chilled air reeks of blood. I press two fingers to the soft, cold flesh at his throat. Boreas’s eyes are open, wide and unblinking. A slow trickle of blood leaks from a gash in his throat, trailing into a drain in the floor.


  A note is pinned to the front of his shirt.

  WELCOME HOME, JACK. I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.

  My hands clench into fists. Boreas and I weren’t exactly close, but this . . . this death is on me. Doug literally pinned my name to it, killing the one person—the only person—left here who could help me and leaving his body in a freezer to taunt me, just to make a point. That even in the coldest room, I’m powerless. Completely vulnerable without my magic. And Doug knows it.

  Boreas’s head lolls as I tear the note from its safety pin. A lock of bloodred hair falls from the creased page to the floor. The ends are pink.

  “No,” I whisper. My hands shake as I stoop to touch it. “Fleur?”

  Kai drags me back by the elbows. “We have to go, Jack. We have to go now!”

  “Where the hell is she?” I croak. “What has he done to her?” I jerk free of Kai and bend to pick up the lock of hair. To clean it off. I can’t catch my breath. Can’t drag my eyes from that small stained piece of Fleur as Kai takes me firmly by the arm. My stitches pull as she drags me out of the freezer and up against the wall, directly under the camera where Doug can’t see us. But it doesn’t matter. He’s seen enough. He saw that Boreas helped us. He saw that we were coming. Kai said it herself. He’s Inevitability. My inevitability.

  I’ve been waiting for you.

  Kai leads me back down the hall into the closet. She rips off her smock and slips on her bow. “Where do we go, Jack?” she asks, her movements quick, her voice frantic.

  I shake my head and drag my fingers through my hair. Doug knows exactly where we are. What we’ll do next. He’s waiting for me to find him, like this is some kind of game.

  “I have to find Fleur and Chill.” It’s what I’ve been telling myself since we got on that plane. And now we’re here. So close, I’d be able to smell them if I had any magic. But I have no idea where the hell they are. “We have to find them. We have to hunt them.”