by Emme DeWitt
“Sorry about that,” I said, my cheeks burning. “I’m still working on controlling it.” My fingers twitched nervously in my hair, not wanting to give up the comfort, but having no alternatives available for my nervous energy.
“No, I mean, I felt pity for Henry and his life and the struggles he’s likely faced,” Aleks said. “I’ve never felt that strong of an emotion for anyone before. But your wave made me feel, just for a second, as intensely as you did.”
“They put me on medication to dull that,” I said, clearing my throat. My eyes darted around the room, trying desperately not to maintain eye contact with Aleks. I was so embarrassed about the outburst. Continuing to talk about it made the heat flare in my cheeks and down my neck. “I had no idea it was that strong. I’ll try better next time to keep it in.”
“Evangeline.” Aleks moved his hand from the tabletop to my wrist, holding it lightly as it was entangled in my knotted hair. He moved his face to be directly in front of mine, and I was forced to lock in on his determined gaze. “I’m trying to tell you that you externalized your power. Empaths should not be able to do that.”
“Abuela said that if you meet your counterpart, they can help teach you the other side a little and help balance you out,” I argued, my voice squeaking again in agitation.
“A little,” Aleks said. “Your powers go beyond a little.”
I frowned at him, refusing to take the next step in his logic.
“Evangeline,” he said softly, squeezing my wrist. “I don’t think I got your brother’s powers. I think you did. All of them.”
“What are you even talking about?” I said, a scoff burning my throat on its way out. “That’s impossible. One person cannot hold that much power. I asked Birdie. Even she said it’s too much.”
“Maybe not all of them, but I’m betting enough for it to really matter,” Aleks said. “Your abilities are too strong and too diverse to just be an empath. I’m sure the timing is no coincidence either. Maybe I’m just supposed to hold on to a little of the energy until you’re ready or until whoever is meant to share them with you in this lifetime comes around.”
The timing.
I had broken down completely after Tomas had died. That was true. My sensitivity to others’ emotions went haywire when I couldn’t even tame my own. I had blown up in front of Mags. Our big falling out had happened then, but the next few weeks I had been heavily medicated in the hospital off campus. What little I could remember of that time was fragmented and hazy.
Had there been some aha moment where I had become both commander and empath?
“There’s no way,” I repeated, my eyes still locked with Aleks’. “No one person could handle all of that.”
“You can,” Aleks said. “You are. You just need more practice. If I remember correctly, the de los Santos line is one of the strongest out there. Henry and Jasleen think you can do it. Birdie thinks so, too.”
“You’re all out of your minds,” I said. “There has to be another explanation. I can’t possibly—”
“One afternoon with Birdie and you came back able to block me and my bad juju energy,” Aleks argued over me, throwing my old phrase back at me. His eyes shimmered with intense confidence, and my mouth snapped shut, my argument drying up. “I don’t want to hear that you can’t. You are clearly capable of much more than you imagined.”
“That’s great and all, but what am I supposed to do? I’m a runaway. A big, bad evil corporation is after me, and I can’t even buy cold medicine legally,” I replied, trying to bring Aleks’ big ideas back down to reality. His hold on my wrist started to burn, and I shook off his loosening grip.
“The world isn’t going to end today,” Aleks said, leaning back in his chair. “Jasleen’s pretty good at these sorts of things. You just need to get on board.”
“Get on board what?” I asked, my fingers pulling through and unweaving my half-completed braid. My stomach was doing backflips nonstop. Everything felt unstable and unsure.
“Well, we don’t have a cool nickname,” Aleks said. “But there are a few of us dedicated to bringing down the Association. David versus Goliath, if you will. We could really use your help. Apparently, empaths are in really short supply these days.”
Aleks’ face was filled with a mischievous smile, his dimple crowding toward the lines near his eyes. My heart stuttered, and my mouth dropped open, at a loss for words again. Any semblance of an argument I had gathered scattered haphazardly to the corners of my mind like spiders escaping the beam of a flashlight.
“Just say yes,” Aleks said.
My mind was fuzzy, devoid of any thought other than dimples.
“Yes.”
I tapped the middle of my forehead savagely, scolding myself for my flippant answer.
Boys are the devil.
Dimples are dumb.
You’re dumb, for letting dimples get you into this mess.
I sat across from Eli in the middle of a sparsely furnished room. The table and set of chairs reminded me of every interrogation room I had seen on TV. This one just so happened to be on the basement level of the Navratil mansion. Of course. What powerful supernatural family didn’t have their own torture room?
Eli’s smirk radiated from her core, so even though my eyes were shut, my finger poking me in self-punishment, I could see her so clearly in my mind’s eye I still wanted to punch her in the mouth. I knew I could land it exactly where I want to, eyes open or not.
“Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart,” Eli said. “Haven’t got all day.”
“Yes, we do, and that’s even more unfortunate,” I muttered, my voice low enough not to betray my words.
“Play nice,” Niko’s voice clicked over the intercom, the sensitivity of the microphone giving away my snark to the watchful big brother. I growled. Why did everyone have the same fritzy intercom system? The feedback noise made me itch. Another shock of adrenaline coursed through me.
“It’s supposed to be subtle, Eli,” I said through clenched teeth. “You egging me on is not exactly setting me up for success.”
“You should be able to do this in high-stress situations,” Eli countered. “Not everyone is going to go nicely when they feel their emotions being manipulated.”
“I wish I were a dream walker right now, so I could take you under and leave you there,” I spit back at her, her animosity coloring my own feelings instead of the other way around.
Eli laughed, her arms and legs crossed. Her right leg bounced lazily on top of the other, and all outward appearances pointed to her calm and affable attitude. At the end of her laugh, however, I caught a slight hiccup. Fear.
Had Eli dealt with a dream walker before? I couldn’t think of a reason why she would have crossed paths with Adair, but it wasn’t like he was the only one. Maybe being a creep ran in Adair’s family.
Just like that, Eli’s tiny flicker of doubt was the in I needed. There was always a chink in the armor, especially if the armor seemed impenetrable. I opened my own barriers a little, allowing my consciousness to walk in through the opening Eli had unwittingly left.
Waves of pictures flooded me, and I pawed through them quickly, finding an innocent one. Even if Eli was being a complete bitch, I didn’t need to ruin her day. The exercise was meant for practice for me, and I didn’t want to abuse the privilege. Just because Eli was a pill did not mean I needed to stoop to her level. I would save my destructive capabilities for the real bad people.
I was tempted, though.
I thumbed through one memory that I thought would suffice. It was a young girl playing with a puppy. Daisy. It was an adorable golden retriever puppy, and the memory was soft and warm, clearly a happy memory. I brought it up to the surface of Eli’s consciousness, letting it play for a while.
Eli’s outward bravado cracked a little, and I could sense her stiffening as she relived the memory briefly. Just as I was beginning to turn up the nostalgia, hoping for a smile, the doors slammed shut in my face. The memory fell away
, and I was shoved unceremoniously out of her head.
I growled in frustration as the cycle continued.
“Nice try,” Eli shot back at me.
A burst of air escaped me, and I pursed my lips, trying to hold in a sassy comment.
“You’re acting like I tried to make you relive puberty or something,” I said, my lips exploding with my pent-up frustration. So much for keeping it in. “I’m just following orders.”
Eli let out a sharp laugh.
“Yeah, right,” she replied. She switched her crossed legs to the opposite side, her top foot still waggling freely.
“For the record, I dug up a memory of playing with a puppy,” I directed at the intercom box on the wall, my eyes sliding to the two-way glass mirror. “I don’t know how many more tame memories she even has. I won’t be able to continue being nice at this rate.”
“Again,” Niko’s voice directed through the box. Eli and I squared off again.
“Any requests?” I asked, my own arms now crossed to mirror Eli’s posture.
She snorted in response.
“Good luck with whatever you can find,” Eli said. “You’re not getting in again.”
It was true. The last time had been a fluke. We had been at this exercise all afternoon, and I had only broken through to her consciousness a handful of times. Eli was difficult to read, her barriers strong and extra fortified by some misplaced hatred of me. Other than botching the accident and dallying before breakfast, there wasn’t anything I had done that should warrant such strong feelings.
Maybe if I cracked it again, I could find out why. It was always good to have goals, right?
I exhaled, trying to center myself. I ignored the rude noise that came from the other side of the table, letting all Eli’s drama fall away as I focused on her mental barriers.
What I had always found interesting since discovering my gift was that the barriers we put up are full body. Sure, it might make sense for it to be a concentrated bubble around our entire heads, much like a fishbowl or an astronaut’s helmet, but somehow it came down to the entire energy field of the body containing our core selves and sensibilities. It’s a large area to cover, even on a good day, and Eli had spent a good portion of her day feeding her energy and concentration into being as indestructible as possible. That much concentration was beginning to take a toll as our practice session extended into its third hour.
And as Eli’s foot began to fall asleep.
In a pinch, I was back inside. This time, I didn’t waste my time being selective of a happy memory. That’s what had booted me before. I searched for the strongest feeling I could find. The memory was crisper than a high definition movie. The colors were extra bright, the lighting saturated to a blinding level.
It was Eli and Aleks. He was squatting next to her in the alley out back. He was putting a blanket around her, taking her hands in his as he tried to warm them up. I started to delve further into the emotion that was behind the memory, but, sensing Eli’s restlessness, I threw it up into her consciousness quickly. Her reaction would be telling enough, I thought to myself.
Eli jumped up from her seat, the chair thrown violently behind her.
There was a stitch in the memory though, as if it were linked to another. That memory came up in the middle of this one, as if queued to play next. It was Aleks, this time with me. Last night in the club, our heads bent close to one another.
I heard Eli yell loudly, but my senses, clouded by my internal focus, seemed deadened and far away. My body felt detached from my senses, but I could still feel the breeze against my skin from Eli’s guttural yells. I just couldn’t hear them well.
Instead of withdrawing from Eli’s memory, I turned up the volume. The actual noise of the scene didn’t turn up, but rather the emotions connected with the memory flared to life.
Jealousy.
I cranked it up, letting the feeling fill the room. I could feel the energy teetering on the brink of something, but I was so enamored with it, I followed it to the very edge. What would happen if I pushed it that much more?
Suddenly, I felt my body falling.
My consciousness snapped back into my own head like a rubber band. Suddenly, I was just me, my head bouncing on the ground as my chair bore the brunt of the fall. My neck snapped uncomfortably as the force redirected itself, but I was too concerned with Eli looming over me, her eyes wild with rage.
The cloud of jealousy was thick in the room, and I realized I had caused Eli herself to slip over the edge, or just nearly. Her body shook with rage.
“Pull it back, now,” Niko said forcefully over the intercom.
I nodded quickly, ignoring the twinge in my neck as I focused on Eli’s savage eyes. Even though the cloud of emotion was created from what lay within her, I would have to eat the energy to dissipate it. I swallowed hard, unhappy at the prospect of ingesting so much jealousy and rage.
It couldn’t have been the puppy, huh?
Suddenly, Eli tensed, her body one second away from lunging at my throat. It was now or never.
Eli launched herself in the air, and I slammed my barriers down, allowing the room full access to myself. The negative energy rushed toward me, and I could sense the cloud being sucked into my aura, cleansing the room immediately, like some horrendous reverse gas chamber.
The wild gleam in Eli’s eye vanished midair, and I pulled all the negativity from her as well before I slammed the barriers back shut. Losing her immediate desire to maim me, Eli caught herself as she landed, rolling to the side to avoid a violent collision.
Both of us were left gasping on the floor. I was the first to recover, the thick cloud of jealousy and anger rolling through me, leaving me wound tighter than a spinning top. It was a little too much, and I released a roar of my own to ease the pressure. I sprang up from my overturned chair, storming toward the door.
The handle turned, but the bolt left me shaking the door with no way of getting out. I banged my tiny fist on the door in frustration.
“Let me out!” I yelled. “Now!”
“You need to calm down a little before…” Niko’s voice began, but I cut him off with another scream.
“If you don’t let me out right now, Eli won’t have eyeballs in two seconds. Let me go!” I yelled, trying my best to keep my jealousy and anger contained. I opened my fist, switching to an open palm smack on the door. Anything to keep the energy focused on inanimate objects versus people.
My mind began to think crazy thoughts, more paranoid than it ever had before, which was astonishing to me. If I was left alone with Eli much longer, my tenuous grip on my actions would be tested past its limits. I knew in my gut that if I didn’t leave, I would cause irreparable damage.
The bolt clicked, and I was able to wrench the door open.
I sprinted out of the room and down the hall, using my sense of the bodies in the house to find the most secluded area devoid of any life. I needed to make sure I couldn’t hurt anyone else until I could work through these poisonous emotions. I let myself get lost in the large mansion and ended up in a linen closet on an upper floor. The mountain of fresh sheets and towels was comforting, the scent of lavender surrounding me as I buried my face in my hands, letting the cloud of negativity slowly eek out with each falling scream and tear.
My energy spent, I curled up into a ball in the nest I had created for myself and fell asleep. Thankfully, only the blackness of unconsciousness greeted me. At least for a few hours, I felt safe and out of harm’s way.
“Is she in there?” I heard the muffled voice from the other side of the door.
“Yep,” Eli said, her tone hard to read through the door. I focused on the scent of lavender that surrounded me instead. Much more pleasant.
“Has she come out yet?”
“Nope,” Eli replied. She sighed. “If she had, I would have gotten you sooner.”
“I know,” the voice said.
“And yet,” Eli said. A long pause stretched out between them, my brai
n belatedly assigning the first voice to Aleks. My half-asleep state left my barriers down, and I felt the intensity of his agitation through the door. I buried my face deeper into my makeshift pillow, willing it to go away.
“Is she okay?” Aleks asked.
“How am I supposed to know?” Eli replied. “She’s in there. She’s alive. That’s about all I can tell you.”
“You’ve been out here the whole time?” Aleks asked, skeptical.
“Since you told me to go find her and not leave her side? Uh, yeah,” Eli said, the bite in her tone softened a little. “I’ve been out here. She’s been in there. The whole time.”
“And you’re sure she’s in there?” he pressed.
“Do you want to bet money? How is it that I can find someone halfway across the world and you believe me, but some little girl in your own house is just too much for me, huh? Explain that to me,” Eli said, the softness gone from her tone. Whatever slight affection she had for Aleks broke as soon as he pressed too far. I could tell she was cranky though, and I wondered if she had slept at all last night. I sighed internally, not ready to start my day with that level of guilt. I was so tired of holding things for others.
“You can trick radar,” Aleks said. “We don’t know what all she can do.”
“I’m a little more sophisticated than radar, okay? Just like I know Birdie is sitting in the kitchen in the safe house in Iceland, Jasleen and Henry are currently running through Terminal 2 at O’Hare to catch their connecting flight, and how I know your uncle is on his way, but thankfully is stuck in morning rush hour traffic. Which is why I called you,” she grumbled, “as instructed.”
“Thank you,” Aleks said.
Eli snorted dismissively.
“Yeah, well,” Eli said, her words strained as she pushed herself up from her spot against the wall. “I owe you.”
“Is that what yesterday was all about?” Aleks asked.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Eli said, evading the question.
“You did volunteer to be Evangeline’s guinea pig,” Aleks said. “You said you had it under control.”