by Dean Murray
"Fine, you're on."
We shook out into our spots and waited while the other team served the ball. As fate would have it, the first serve went straight at Sally, but rather than getting out of the way like she usually did, she got under the ball and bumped it…straight away from the net.
I figured it was going out of bounds and the other team was going to get the first point in what was going to be a very short game, but somehow Jace made it across the court and casually hit it back over the net.
I'd been watching Jace the entire time, expecting him to bend time in order to make it to the ball, but he didn't seem to be moving inhumanly fast, he was just somehow better than anyone else I'd ever watched. The other team had started out over-confident and they'd already started turning away from the net when they saw that Sally had hit the ball in the wrong direction. They never even saw Jace's return hit coming.
"Good hit, Sally—that's exactly what I'm talking about."
From someone else the words would have come out condescending, but not from Jace, he was obviously just happy that Sally had hit the ball.
"Dang it, I should have thought to stipulate that you had to keep your cool for the entire game. Okay, you want your twenty bucks now, or later?"
"Keep your money. I really do just want you all to hit the ball."
What followed was the most enjoyable series of games I'd ever participated in. One by one Jace converted us. Initially he had to call out our names to get us to go after the ball, but before long we were all enthusiastically bumping and even setting, something that most of us probably thought would never happen.
It was just too fun watching Jace race across the court and dive for the ball not to try and hit the ball when it was our turn. It almost turned into a game to see how far we could push Jace, how bad our bumps could be before he couldn't get them anymore.
That almost cost us our second game, but when the other team started talking trash, we all started pulling together. Once Jace wasn't having to move so far out of position he was deadly. It seemed like the ball always went exactly where he wanted it to go. Sally sent the game-winning serve over the net, and from there on out we were unstoppable. We didn't shut anyone out, but we came close a couple of times. By the end of the hour, we were playing the only other undefeated team and all of the kids from the other teams were gathered around to watch us.
We were losing rather badly despite how awesome Jace was—right up until Jace made it up to serve, at which point he sent one bullet over the net after another. He racked up points like the other team wasn't even playing, and then botched what should have been his last serve.
Sally had long before given Jace permission to spike the ball so we returned the other team's serve with a quick bump, set, spike and then rotated Sally into the server's spot.
She served, the ball volleyed back and forth several times and then I managed to set the ball well enough that Pete Parks spiked it home for the game-winning point. There was a big, cheering hug-fest after that. It felt like the geeks had risen up to destroy the jocks and popular kids—which we had, but we all knew that it never could have happened without Jace.
I drifted over to where he was getting a drink of water.
"You botched that last serve on purpose, didn't you?"
"Of course I did. I played two years of college volleyball a little while back."
"Did you amp yourself up back then too?"
Jace gave me a sheepish grin. "Sometimes. It depended on what the stakes were. Today the stakes were making sure that a bunch of kids got a chance to feel like winners. That seemed worth losing a few minutes' worth of memories that I'll never miss."
"Won't you? I talked to Kat and I understand more of what's going on. At some point you aren't going to be able to remember her anymore."
"Remember Kat?"
"No, the other her—me, the other me. I know how you felt about her, I can see it in your eyes when you look at me. I don't want to be the reason that you lose your memories. They are all that you have left of her."
Jace took my hands in his and ran his thumbs over my skin in slow, almost sensual circles. It made my heart flutter and my mouth go dry, but I wouldn't have asked him to stop for anything.
"I'm going to lose those memories eventually, Selene. It's funny, but that's the only certainty of my—of our—existence. We may not die, but it's only a matter of time before we forget every single thing that's happened to us.
"I'm not going to live in fear, Selene. That may be what Kat chooses, but I'm going to live in a way that lets me be proud of the memories that I'm creating as I create them. I'm not looking forward to losing my memories of the time I spent together with you during your last incarnation, but I am looking forward to spending more time with you in this incarnation."
It was perfect. I could feel myself melting inside, but I tried not to make it too obvious. He might have been madly in love with me in a past life, but there was a part of me that was still worried that my coming on too strong would scare him away.
"I'll go get my clothes and then I'll meet you back here so we can wait for Kat to get back?"
"Sure. I'm not going anywhere, Selene."
The possible double meaning behind his words didn't go unnoticed on my part. Once again, he almost seemed to be reading my mind.
Most of the rest of the class had disappeared while we'd been talking, so the girls' locker room was basically empty by the time I made it to my gym locker. The last two other girls left while I was grabbing my clothes, and then I turned to find that Sandra was only inches away from me.
"I know it was you."
"What are you talking about?"
She gave me a cutting look. "Don't play stupid. You changed the note, rewrote it so that it looked like I was a complete slut."
My heart was racing. It was just the two of us, but I'd never been in any kind of fight before. I took a step back. "I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't do anything to your stupid note, but it would have served you right if I had. You've been nothing but nasty to me since kindergarten."
"It was no more than you deserved. I could always see the real you behind the innocent façade that you tried to fool everyone with. I always knew that you were nothing more than a scheming little slut who couldn't wait to get her hands on any guy I wanted."
"Do you hear yourself? You sound like a crazy person, Sandra. I'm seventeen years old and I've never had a boyfriend. I've never even come close. You've slept with at least half of the varsity football team—in what bizarro world am I a threat to you?"
She hit me. She'd probably meant for it to be a slap, but she hit me so hard that my shoulder hit the lockers. I never even saw the blow coming, and the force of it was shocking.
The old Selene, the one who had let Sandra get away with years of torment without ever standing up for myself, was cowering in a corner of my mind, but the new Selene, the one who was starting to believe she was on the cusp of becoming a demigod, grabbed Sandra by the hair and slammed her head into the closest bank of lockers.
Sandra stumbled away from me with surprise written across her features. I was shocked too—despite years of fantasizing and the incidents of rage lately, I hadn't realized I was capable of that kind of explosive violence. My surprise didn't stop me from stalking towards her though.
"Don't you ever hit me again or I'll do a lot worse to you. I'm tired of your crap. Things are going to be different starting right now. You leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. You screw with me and I will bury you. If you have your friends mess with Ari or if you have your dad fire my dad, then I will come for you and make you sorry in ways that you can't even imagine."
She was beyond surprised now. I could see the fear in her eyes, but I couldn't blame her—I was scaring myself in that instant. I could see it balancing on the edge of a knife as she wrestled with her fear. For a second I thought I had her, thought that she was going to be scared enough to finally back off, but something pushed her
the other direction and she curled her fingers into claws and practically hissed at me.
"I knew it. You can protest all you want, but now he is here and it's happened just like I knew it would. You stole him away from me before I even had a chance to get to know him. Every bad thing that I suspected about you is true, and you're kidding yourself if you think that I'm going to let you get away with this. Things are going to be different because I'm different. Don't say that I didn't warn you, Selene."
Chapter 16
Sandra spun around and ran out of the locker room before I could muster a response. Her threatening me wasn't anything new, but she'd always seemed somehow petty before. This time it felt different.
I was shaking by the time I made it out to the gym where Jace was waiting for me. He took one look at me and dropped into a slight crouch as he scanned our surroundings for a threat capable of throwing me into tears.
He reached up and cradled the side of my face as soon as he reached me, covering the smarting skin with his cool, tingly hand.
"Selene, what happened?"
"It was Sandra. She surprised me in the locker room and started saying all of these nasty things. I basically called her a whore, so she slapped me."
Jace visibly relaxed. Obviously he didn't consider Sandra a real threat. "Do I need to go dispose of the body?"
"What? No, of course I didn't kill her. I slammed her head into the lockers, but that just made her madder. She threatened me, Jace. It wasn't like her. Usually she enjoys trotting out all of the nasty stuff that she might do to me. This time she just left it open-ended and then ran out through the other set of doors."
Jace pulled me into a hug. "Well, on the scale of worst encounters between the two of you over the last few hundred years that's pretty far towards the bottom of the list. Usually there are explosions and fire. I'd say a slap and someone being slammed into a locker is almost progress."
I pushed him away, breaking his grip on me. "This isn't funny, Jace. I think she's going to do something to Ari or my dad. I'm really worried."
Jace sobered instantly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make light of your concerns. We'll take precautions this weekend. You and Ari will be with Kat, and I'll make sure that nothing happens to your dad."
"Okay, thanks. She just seemed so different this time."
"Who seemed different?"
I turned around and had to look twice to realize that it was Kat who was walking up to us. She'd said that she was going home to change and touch up her makeup, but this was something else altogether.
Kat was wearing black slacks and a white button-up blouse. It was like something you'd expect a bank teller to wear, and her makeup was suitably understated, making her cheekbones look more prominent and adding at least two or three years to her appearance.
Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun that still looked sexy without looking juvenile. The net effect of all the changes was to make her look like a completely different person, someone older, more responsible and very respectable. It was going to be interesting to see how my dad reacted to her.
Jace got a response out while I was still trying to pick my jaw up off of the floor. "Sandra. She caught Selene alone in the locker room and made threats. Selene is worried that something might happen to Ari or her dad."
Kat frowned at Jace. "Seriously? Can't you even watch over Selene for one hour without letting prissy skanks threaten her?"
"It happened in the locker room, Kat."
She waved away his explanation. "So make yourself invisible. Selene's safety is more important than the privacy of a few teenage girls."
"Jace is not following me into locker rooms, Kat. I'll be fine. Sandra isn't going to try anything in the middle of the day in a public place."
And I wasn't about to go exposing him to all of those young, nubile bodies. I was going to have a hard enough time keeping him interested in me as it was.
Jace sighed. "No, she's right, Selene. I won't follow you into the girls' locker room, but it's getting too dangerous for you to be running around by yourself. From here on out, if Kat isn't around, then you don't go places where I can't follow. I should have had you just wait out here until Kat arrived or you could have just gone home in your gym clothes."
I looked back and forth between the two of them. "I don't get it, what changed?"
"You mean other than Sandra threatening you?"
Jace shot Kat an unhappy look. "Can it, Kat. You're not helping." He turned back to me and ran his hand through his hair. "Your gift is in the middle of manifesting. It's to the point where Kat and I can both sense you from several dozen feet away."
"Wait, you mean the Awakened can sense each other even if they can't see each other?"
"Yeah. The stronger the two Awakened are, the further away they can sense each other. There are things you can do to suppress your signature, but it's always there to some extent. The fact that you are starting to generate a signature means that your gift is manifesting. Kat can start training you tonight assuming we can find a way to distract Ari."
That shaky feeling was back, and this time it wasn't because of my physical proximity to Jace. It was actually going to happen. I was finally going to become one of the Awakened for real. Realistically there hadn't been any going back since the day I'd been born, but this still felt like a big, irrevocable step.
Kat raised her hand in an attention getting wave that I had a sneaking suspicion normally would have ended with flipping Jace or I off.
"This still doesn't deal with a certain loose end that needs taken care of. If Sandra is making threats then we should just get rid of her. It will be easy enough to make it look like an accident."
My blood ran cold. I'd known that Kat had some dark places in her soul, but hearing her talk about casually murdering someone was still a shock to my system.
"No, you're not killing her."
Kat raised an eyebrow. "You'd rather Jace does it? Or maybe you'd like to get your own hands dirty this time?"
"No, nobody is going to kill her. She's just making threats. If she attacks Ari or my dad then all bets are off, but I'm not going to just go around killing people for what they might do."
"So instead you're going to expect Jace and me to guard all three of you at once? For being concerned about us burning up memories in your behalf, you're oddly eager to overcommit us."
Jace raised his hand. "That's enough, Kat. We aren't killing Sandra and that's final. Even if you make it look like an accident, the whole school knows that you were the one to turn her in for that note. If she dies right now you're going to be a suspect, and the last thing we want is for the cops to start trying to poke holes in these identities."
"So we take her out and then pack up and leave town before the body is found. It won't be the first time we've done something like that."
Jace didn't get mad very often, but I could see the twitch starting back up just above his upper lip. "That's not the plan and you know it. This is a good place to use as a base. It's far away from all of the major population centers, and it's not on any of the major highways or airline routes. If we keep a low profile there isn't any reason that we can't stay here for years. Moving around right now just makes us more likely to run afoul of another pantheon. That's why we sank so much of our money into the house here."
Kat gave him a cold smile. "You're hoping that Sandra's the real deal, that she's not just another mimicry. You're hoping to be able to recruit her. Are you really so uncertain of Selene's affections that you're already trying to arrange an emotional fallback?"
She looked over at me. "Did he tell you that the two of them used to date back in the day? They were quite the item before you…became available."
"Don't! Don't say another word, Kat. I'm warning you."
I could feel their abilities pushing out against each other and their energy had gone cold and prickly. They were only seconds away from fighting and it was up to me to stop them.
"Jace hasn't told me, but I
already knew. Sandra basically said as much just now, but frankly it's a non-issue for me. If Jace says that we need her then I'm not going to second-guess him."
"Of course you're going to side with Jace. I should have known."
"We aren't going to abandon you, Kat, and we aren't going to replace you with Sandra of all people—even assuming this one is the real deal and not just another mimicry—but you have to meet us halfway. Stop being angry all of the time and trust us for once."
Kat looked at me for several seconds and then stormed out of the gym. Jace started after her, but I grabbed his arm.
"I'll go talk to her. The two of you are just going to strike sparks off of each other. Besides, I need you to go check on Ari for me. Sandra is a lot more likely to go after someone her own size than she is to go after my dad."
Jace pulled me into a hug. "Okay, but if Kat doesn't respond well to seeing you again just back off and drive to the junior high. We'll regroup and come up with another way to get some teaching time in. If nothing else you can just start sneaking out at night. It's not like you're going to need a lot of sleep in the near future."
I found Kat standing next to a silver Lexus in the parking lot. I stopped several feet away and cleared my throat. "Kat, I know you don't want to have anything to do with me, but if we're going to make it to my house in time to talk to my dad before he has to go to work, then we need to leave now."
"I'm fine. Get into the car and let's get moving."
The drive out to my house went by quickly, which was good because the silence was even more awkward than I'd been afraid it would be. Kat didn't speed, but she didn't waste any time either.
My dad was waiting down in the kitchen for us. "So, Kat—it is Kat, right?"
"Yes, Katherine actually. Kat is an unfortunate childhood nickname that my brother Jace has refused to let die off."