by David Estes
“Wait,” I say, but they’re already disappearing into the shadows, leaving the lantern burning on the floor behind them. “Xave! Xave! Where’s Beth?” My hands grip the bars until they ache, and I shout and shout until my throat burns and my voice starts to crack.
And then I slide down the bars and weep into my hands until exhaustion takes me away.
~~~
I’m ten years old. The foster system doesn’t want me and I don’t want the foster system.
I keep my head down, don’t talk to anyone but Xave, who’s in the same compound as me, awaiting our next foster home. This life will harden you if you let it, but not Xave. For all he’s been through, he’s just a happy-go-lucky kid who hides his scars beneath the biggest smile in the world, which is eclipsed only by the size of his heart.
But despite all my efforts, trouble is the leech that just won’t let go of me.
“Hey loser,” someone shouts as I hurry down the narrow walkway between the dormitories, attempting to make it all the way through the facility to Xave’s building without talking to anyone. When I try to ignore the voice and keep walking, it gets louder. “HEY LOSER!”
I push my glasses up further on my nose and start to run, but slam to a stop when someone steps out from an open corridor. A teenager who looks like a man. Everyone says he’s fifteen, but he looks more like twenty-one, with thick meaty arms and ropy beard that he ties into a braid in front. His birth records also say his name is Hugh, but call him that to his face and you’ll quickly find out why everyone calls him Hammer.
“Going somewhere, Brainiac?” Hammer says.
“Uh, just to my…uh, to my room.” My hands start to shake and I clamp them together.
“Isn’t your room back that way, loser?” the voice from before asks from behind.
I wheel around to find another teenager. They call him Jay Money. Jay is for Jayson and Money is because if he talks to you, you have to empty your pockets.
And he’s talking to me.
“I, uh, I mean…I’m going to my friend’s room,” I say, my unchanged voice rising pathetically high.
“Ha! You hear that, Hammer? He thinks he has a friend! That’s the funniest freaking thing I’ve heard all day.”
“For being so damn smart you’re a real moron,” Hammer says, kicking the back of my knee so I stumble forward.
“Leave. Him. Alone,” a voice commands.
I clamber to my feet to find Xave, who’s now shorter than me but still bigger by about thirty pounds, staring down the two meanest kids in the whole facility. He must have been coming to find me at the same time as I was looking for him. Figures.
My heart falls. This is a scene that has become all too familiar. I get picked on. Xave stands up for me. Xave gets a black-eye and a bloody nose, taking the worst of it while I get knocked over and shoved aside. Xave’s been fighting my fights since the moment I met him.
“I got this, Xave,” I say. “Get out of here.” The words come out with all the strength of a wet paper towel.
“This is too good,” Jay Money says. “We’ve got a two for one deal. Listen, fatso, we’ll forget about this misunderstanding if you pay up. Both pockets—turn them out.”
I’m already starting to rummage through my pockets when Xave says, “Make me.”
Silence drops like a bowling ball thrown off a roof. Even the walls, which normally blare with radios and foster kid chatter, become quiet, as if listening.
“Say what?” Jay says. “Hammer, tell me I’m hearing things. Did that chubster just invite me to beat the living crap out of him?”
“Hell yeah,” Hammer says, smacking a fist in his palm.
“Forget fists,” Jay says, reaching behind him. “I’ve wanted to try my new toy for a while.”
The gun is small and black and pointed at my head as Jay stalks toward me, holding it sideways like a gangster. My heart is skipping beats all over the place and my head suddenly feels like it’s full of ants scurrying through my brain. I’m going to die I’m going to die
I’m. Going. To. Die.
The five years since my first foster family died have sucked, but that doesn’t mean I want my life to be over. Not when I have Xave. Not when we can crack each other up so bad our sides hurt for the rest of the day.
But I can’t speak, not even to plead for my life. My mouth is so dry it’s like it’s full of sawdust, my tongue twice its normal size, my spit gone on vacation.
And I feel warm…down there.
“Aw, did the little baby piss his pants?” Jay says, the gun so close to my head that I can see the letters tattooed on his knuckles. LIVE, they read. I know from experience that the tattoo on the knuckles of his other hand spells DIE. Funny that he would aim a gun at me with this hand.
I’m too scared to be embarrassed at wetting myself, and any second none of that will matter anyway. All he has to do is pull the trigger.
But I step in front of Xave. For once, I’ve got to protect him the way he always protects me.
“Rhett, what are you—”
“No, Xave,” I say, cutting him off.
He grabs me roughly and moves me aside. I try to struggle back out in front of him, but his superior strength holds me at bay. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” he says to the bullies. “I didn’t mean anything. I was just sticking up for Rhett. Please don’t hurt us.” His voice is pleading, begging, and when I meet his eyes, I’m surprised. The steel in them doesn’t match his words, his tone. He looks the same way he did when he attacked Marty Williams in the first grade because he was stealing my lunch. We both got suspended for three days for the brawl that ensued.
“Oh, now you’re such a nice guy, huh?” Jay says, pointing the gun at Xave. My friend doesn’t blink, just stares straight ahead.
“No,” he says. “But you’ve got a gun so you can have everything we’ve got.”
“That’s right,” Jay says, shoving the gun hard into Xave’s gut, doubling him over. “The man with the gun is the boss. And since you offered, we’ll take everything.”
We strip down. They take our shirts, our pants, our shoes, our socks, my glasses—they even take our underwear, including the pair I peed in. Humiliation tax, Jay calls it.
We get laughed at by the other kids all the way back to Xave’s room, where he lets me borrow a change of his slightly too short and slightly too wide clothes.
The next day a random search is conducted of Jay’s and Hammer’s rooms. In Jay’s room they find the gun. In Hammer’s they find a whole pouch full of marijuana. Both kids are sent to a juvenile detention center.
At lunch, Xavier smiles when I tell him what happened to them.
“Must’ve been an anonymous tip,” he says with a familiar wink.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Hey Four Eyes,” Laney says, startling me from sleep and the dream about Xave. But I don’t answer her. I have nothing left to say to anyone, not when the Xave from the dream doesn’t exist anymore. Of course, that doesn’t stop her from talking.
“Very smooth acting,” she says.
I draw in a shuddering breath. If I didn’t fool her, who I haven’t known that long, could I possibly have fooled Xave, who I’ve known most of my life?
Beth, where are you?
“Do you believe him?” Laney asks. “About the whole trying to make peace thing?”
“No,” I say.
“Neither do I. Make peace against whom? The witches are the ones destroying everything. New America’s got the right idea. Blow them all back to whatever hole they crawled out of. Xave’s as crazy as the rest of them.”
“That’s not the real him,” I say defensively.
“It is now.”
“No!” I shout, my voice echoing through the empty dungeon.
There’s silence for a minute and I hang my head, ashamed at my outburst. Laney’s not the enemy. But neither is Xave, right? Laney says, “I guess Xave’s a touchy subject.”
I blow out a breath. “Look, you don’t know
him the way I do. Xave’s been my hero for a long time. He’s protected me more times than I can count. He would take a bullet for me.”
“Maybe the old Xave, but that guy—that warlock—who was just here with his warlock boyfriend? That’s not your friend.”
I crane my neck because I hear light footsteps approaching. Or it could be an echo from far off. “Shh,” I say.
“I won’t shh, Carter. I won’t. They’re using your friend and they want to use you, too. And me? Who knows what they’ve got in store for a human. Nothing good, I’ll tell you that much.”
She keeps talking, but I’m not really listening, because I hear the footsteps again, getting closer. And then I feel it—the pull. Although my mind knows it’s impossible, my body strains toward the bars, wanting to smash through them. I tense every muscle in my body, pushing back against the invisible force. The Call fades, just like it did in the field of sunflowers.
“Remarkable,” the Siren says as she steps into the circle of light provided by the lantern. “Truly remarkable. Most humans would be beating themselves against the bars by now.” Although I can hear the light pitter-patter of her footsteps, she looks as if she’s gliding, her rose-red dress whisking along the stone floor elegantly.
The Siren. The very Siren who forced me from my cabin hideaway and later helped us escape from Flora. The Siren who’s been trying to get me to Pittsburgh. The Siren who’s in league with the Reaper.
“Leave us alone, Pouty Lips,” Laney says. “The two-thousand-and-tens texted me and asked for their silicone breasts and lip injections back.”
“Charming,” the Siren says, glancing toward Laney’s cell.
“I’d suggest you go play in traffic, but there isn’t traffic anymore…so just get the hell out of here,” Laney says.
“I won’t try to match your wit,” she says.
“Good, because you can’t,” Laney says. “What do you want, witch?”
“Want?” she says, responding to Laney but looking at me with sparkling green eyes. Her hair is blond and reaches all the way to her waist, shimmering as if plated with gold. “I have all that I want,” she says.
“Listen, you murderer, you might think that just because your magic allows you to look like a supermodel that you can just waltz in here and say whatever you want, and break my friend’s heart…but let me tell you something, if these bars weren’t between us, I’d—”
“Laney,” I say. “It’s okay.”
“Oh great, even the great Rhett Carter can’t resist her charms forever, I guess,” Laney says sullenly.
“It’s not that,” I say. “She holds no power over me. I just want to hear what she has to say.”
“A wise choice,” the Siren says, her eyes changing color to turquoise blue. I realize her facial features are changing slightly, too. Her eyes getting bigger, her lips fuller, her cheekbones more pronounced. She’s trying to find the face that will tempt me.
To my relief, I feel nothing for her.
“Just get on with it,” I say.
“Remarkable,” she says again.
“Why? Because I can resist you? Because I won’t bow down and kiss the feet of the beautiful and powerful Siren? You want to know the truth? You make me sick. I watched your kind slaughter three farmers for no reason at all. None. Drew them in and then cut them to ribbons. They seemed to enjoy it. So forgive me if I’d rather see you dead than in my arms.”
The Siren takes a step back, as if physically shocked by the ferocity of my words. A tear dribbles out of one of her exquisite blue eyes. “I—I didn’t know,” she says. “My people…we don’t usually do that.”
“You tried to kill me when you pretended to be a Volt in the cabin, didn’t you?” I say, a pinprick of accusation in my voice.
“I was just trying to get your attention,” she says. “My control over electricity isn’t more than amateurish. You were never in any real danger.”
“Right,” I say. “Your talent lies in trapping your victims and treating them like your personal slaves for the rest of their miserable lives. These Sirens were working for the Necros, just like you.”
Either what I’ve said has truly saddened her (not likely), or she’s a damn good actress (more likely). She wipes away the tears and says, “I didn’t come here to talk about any of that. I came here to warn you.”
“Yeah, right,” Laney says. “Warn him right off a cliff.”
“Silence!” the Siren screams, her unblemished face contorting in a rare show of lines and anger. A second later, she’s plastic perfect again. “Bil Nez,” she says.
I wrinkle my nose. “What about him?” I say.
“You can’t trust him,” she says.
“No kidding,” Laney says.
“If that’s what you came here to tell us, you should’ve saved yourself the trip. We already don’t trust Bil Nez,” I say.
“He’s not who you think he is,” the Siren says, her hair turning brown and somewhat frizzy. My heart beats a little faster.
“Who is he?” I say, avoiding looking at her hair, which looks so familiar all of a sudden.
“He works for New America,” she says.
“We already know that,” I say. “He helps the military blow up entire gangs of witches, which we’re entirely in favor of.” I watch in horror as the blue in her eyes transitions to a warm chocolate brown. No.
“No,” she says, as if echoing my thought. “That’s not his job.”
Her face is changing, and I find myself mesmerized and horrified, unable to speak. Laney says, “He had proof. He knew all about the missile attacks. When and where and how. It was him.”
“No,” the Siren says again, from darker lips, flashing pink on the inside. Her body begins to change, too, growing shorter, less voluptuous, her dress morphing into jeans and a t-shirt.
No.
“That was someone else. Bil knew about that mission and claimed it as his own, because he couldn’t possibly tell you the truth.”
Her skin darkens.
No. God. No.
“Just spit it out, you witch,” Laney says. “Enough of the dramatics.”
The Siren smiles the most familiar, beautiful smile in the world and my heart snaps in two. “Bil Nez’s mission was to kill you, Rhett Carter.”
And as my heart stops and tears stream down my cheeks, I watch the Siren, who now looks exactly like Beth, walk away, no longer gliding, but walking the same way my girlfriend does.
Chapter Fifty-Four
I’m all cried out. My eyes and cheeks sting. My chest hurts. My head is full of fog. My glasses are streaked and blurred.
Laney’s been trying to talk to me for an hour. Or maybe ten minutes. Or maybe ten hours. It’s hard to tell time in this place.
I’ve been ignoring her, running through the same dismal mental blog post over and over again, as if that shred of normalcy will keep me from slowly going insane:
Today’s Geekologist Report
Book title: I Hate Xave’s Father
My teaser synopsis: While uncovering the Necromancers lair, Rhett Carter is shocked to discover his best friend’s real father is a psychopathic warlock set on bringing about peace by killing everyone.
Geekyness: 1/10
Happy ending: No
Cliffhanger: No
Overall rating: 1/5 techno-gadgets
If my proposed post wasn’t so bleak, I’d almost find it funny. Ha ha.
Unable to wallow in my self-pity any longer, I finally open my cracked lips to speak. My voice comes out as a croak, so I run my tongue along my teeth and swallow, and then try again. “Bil could’ve killed me several times,” I say weakly. “But he didn’t.”
“We don’t have to talk about this right now,” Laney says. “I’m sorry. So sorry. You shouldn’t have had to see that. If I ever get the chance, I’ll kill that nasty witch—with my bare hands if I have to.” I give a tired half-smile. I’m not sure what I’d do if Laney wasn’t here. She’s holding my spirits in her hand
s, buoying them up until I get the strength to do it myself.
“Thanks,” I say. “But I’m ready to talk now.”
“She’s pretty,” Laney says. “Beth.”
Oh. “That wasn’t Beth,” I say, digging my nails into my palms.
“I know,” Laney says. “But I’m glad I got to at least see what she looks like.” I silently thank her for using the present tense when speaking about Beth.
“She is beautiful,” I say.
“You know what it means, don’t you?” Laney asks.
What it means? “Uh, that the Siren is a cruel, sadistic devil?” I ask tentatively.
“Well, there’s that. But it also means the Siren has seen Beth.”
My heart stops and then starts hammering double time. “I didn’t think of that.”
“I thought of something before Smarty Pants Carter did. I should almost pat myself on the back,” Laney says. “Don’t worry about it. You were traumatized.”
I don’t want to poke a hole in Laney’s neat little theory, but… “She could’ve just seen photos. I had plenty of them. Mr. Jackson might have taken them, showed them to her…”
“I don’t think so,” Laney says, and I almost want to kiss her for it. “There were too many details. More than someone looking at a few photos could have conjured up. Right?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes.” I want to believe that the Siren has seen Beth, maybe even recently, but it could have been weeks or even months ago, back when the whole world was being flushed down the toilet. “Thanks for the hope,” I say. “Back to Bil…”
“Yeah, he could’ve killed you if he’d wanted to.”
“So you don’t believe her?”
“The Siren?” Laney says incredulously. “Hell no. She could win an Oscar for her tear-filled performance.”
“But why would she come down here to tell us about Bil Nez?”
“She’s acting on orders. The Reaper is probably trying to turn you against New America. If you thought the government was trying to kill you, maybe you’d consider joining the Necros.”
“I never will,” I say.