Sitting at the lunch table and talking to Abigail, I caught a glimpse of flurries melting against the large pane window.
"So they said Jessica's still in Portland?" I had asked Abigail. A forkful of lettuce sat on top a plate filled with the leafy greens mostly abandoned. Sadly, it was the only thing I could stomach these days.
Between mouthfuls of chicken parmesan, she nodded. "Tests said she has a tumor, but it's weird. One day it's there, the next it's not. They've been re-running the same tests over and over to confirm it really is there before they do surgery."
I shook my head. How insane. I went to speak when Kayden interrupted. "Sounds like a flickering miracle. Maybe she could use a little help." He pointedly turned to face me. His eyes were different today, a shining chocolate brown that reminded me of my favorite candy bar commercial.
"Maybe a fundraiser?" Emily suggested, but Kayden shook his head.
"Essallie would know how," he said.
"Sorry, I'm busy curing Diabetes this week," I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair for a moment before standing and grabbing my things. "Excuse me."
"You forgot your tray," Abigail pointed out.
"Let Kayden get it, since he thinks he knows everything about me, he might as well just take my place." I left the table before anyone could catch up to me, getting to my classroom in record time. The door was locked, the inside dark with empty desks. No one would be back for an easy ten minutes.
Behind me there was a guttural noise. A deep throated cough that sounded a lot like-
I sighed. "How nice of you to join me."
"I'm only trying to help."
Spinning sharp on my feet I came face to face with Kayden. The white t-shirt he wore was covered in spirals of varying colors that left me dizzy if I stared at it too long. Between here and the Cafeteria his eyes had changed to a liquid blue that danced with every move of his face. All of him was a charm today, no doubt meant to make me give into his little game. I was furious. Who was he to think that by looking appealing I'd simply give into his whim? Rage blossomed in my chest like a flower in full bloom, the heat instantly extending to my fingertips and palms.
"Help? You're trying to help? Let me tell you just what you can do to help," I hissed. I pressed a hand into his chest, blue fire automatically jumping from my skin and racing over his clothes. The fire wrapped around his frame like rope binding a body to a tree.
His eyes bled back to the shining black onyx I had seen the first night we met. "It's eating you alive, you're drowning in the power."
Every hair on my body rose. The veins in my arms pulsed faster and faster as a warming rush of adrenaline spilled over my body. "To help me, you can leave. Or I will make you. Make your choice, demon. Fire or life."
The fire was growing, spreading past the bands that held him in place. Tiny rivulets raced over his face and burned into his cheeks and hair. "It will kill you, you know," he hissed under the burn of the fire. "If you don't get help in time there will be nothing left. You'll burn from the inside out. Your own blood betraying you."
My grasp on the fire weakened, the flames flickering and receding. He was bluffing, he had to be. Kayden burst outward into black smoke, returning to his human shape across the hall, away from my grasp.
The fire crackled inside my palms, slowly dulling to nothing. As soon as the flames died my knees gave out. My entire body shook and I struggled to breathe. Sweat coated every inch of my skin, leaving me feel like I had just dipped into a bucket of ice water.
Kayden came closer but still hung back. His expression was guarded. "It's already burning you out. Don't you feel it? Like the air will never return to your lungs?"
Slowly I slid down the lockers until I was sitting against them, gasping for breath. The room was spinning into one giant pile of color. I shook my head and blinked, trying to re-set my eyes before I passed out, or worse, threw up from the spinning sensation. "I don't need your help."
Amidst the colors came a laugh. "Of course you don't."
"Just because I'm passing out on the floor doesn't mean I can't still detect sarcasm you twit."
My eyes started to re-focus, the blurry image of Kayden kneeling before me came into view first. "You need help. Before you lose control and hurt someone."
"Like you?" I snapped. I tried to stand but slipped back down to the floor from jelly legs. "I don't know what this, this thing is, but I'm not going to let it ruin my life. You've already done enough of that for me." Another attempt to stand failed and I found myself back on the floor shaking. With one final push I stood tall, staring down Kayden as he continued to kneel.
"Stay there, I like you better when you're bowing at my feet," I whispered as a throng of students came up into the hallway. Our teacher came down the hall and opened the door for class.
English was one of the few subjects I had no problem tuning into and focusing in. Kayden was seated out of my sight, Abigail right next to me, and anything the teacher liked to dish was relatively easy for me to handle, especially when I had already read all of Shakespeare's works in 6th grade out of sheer boredom.
"We're going to continue with our look into Othello today, so open your tombstones under your desks," the teacher muttered darkly. It was a never-ending joke with her class that she called the textbooks tombstones since they practically weighed as much as one.
As I reached underneath for my copy of the book I felt a stab in my stomach. Automatically I sat up straight and breathed, the hot-knife feeling only growing worse.
"You okay?" Abigail raised her eyebrows at me. I gave her a little nod and slowly reached back down for the book under my chair. Another stab sharper than the last hit my stomach again, the pain spreading into my chest with a burning sensation I'd never felt before. I doubled over and pressed my forehead to the cool desktop.
From the back of the classroom I heard Kayden. "Essallie doesn't look too good."
The teacher shot took one look at me and panicked. "Oh no no no, I am not having another kid get sick in my class. Abigail, take her down to the nurse, quickly."
An arm slipped around my shoulders and hoisted me out of my seat. It was all I could do to keep my lips pressed tight from screaming at the pain. "Get her things. She's on fire, I can feel the fever coming off of her in waves."
Wait, that was Kayden talking, not Abigail. Kayden was the one carrying me out of the classroom, and into the hall, and down to the nurse. I wanted to spit in his face, maybe even set him on fire in front of everyone for a little show. I was getting sick of him trying to play hero to my slips and falls.
Eyes closed, I felt him carry me out of the classroom and down the hallway, Abigail right by my side. "She was fine this morning," I heard her say. "Hell she was fine two minutes ago. What do you think happened?"
"My theory probably isn't the one you want to hear," Kayden replied truthfully. He lightly adjusted his arms to hold me up better. "She wouldn't like me to spread my ideas."
Too true. Letting everyone know I could potentially engulf them in flames if they looked at me crossways would probably put a damper on my mood. "What, do you think she brought something with her from New York? Like a Typhoid Mary of the modern era? Bad ass."
"Not quite, but sure, we can go with that," Kayden laughed.
"I'm right here, you know," I whispered through tight lips. Pain was driving down into my bones, stabbing like millions of scalded, jagged blades into my skin. He turned into the infirmary and followed the nurse's directions to set me down on a cot in the back room while Abigail explained everything in the other room.
"It's happening, you know," he whispered in a low tone.
"Nothing is happening," I managed to snap back at him. "It's just a reaction to lunch. I haven't been handling food well. Must be coming down with a bug."
He shook his head. "If she takes your temperature, it's going to show you should be dead. Your powers are coming in, like it or not. What happens next is how you handle it."
I raised my
head off the pillow as much as I could manage. "How about I just set you on fire and get it over with?"
"I hope you're still this feisty when the fever wears off," Kayden said, the corners of his lips twitching.
"You haven't seen a fraction of it yet," I laughed despite myself and let my head back down onto the pillow. Sweat beaded and trickled over my skin, suctioning the pillow and flimsy sheets to me like glue.
The nurse stepped in with Abigail and immediately shooed Kayden away from me. Both hung back as she ran one of the new thermometers over my forehead and waited for the reading. When the results came up she shook her head and reset it before running it over my head again. But the results left her face just as ashen as it had the first time.
"Can't be right," she smacked the device in her hands a couple of times. "Let me try again before I get the old one."
"What did it say?" I asked in spite of myself.
She laughed, nervously almost. "This new technology is so temperamental. It said you have a fever of 120 degrees, but there's just no way that's possible. You'd be dead." The reading flashed at her again and she jammed it into her pocket. "Now it's saying 122 degrees. I'm getting the old one."
I felt my stomach drop, the pain flaring through my body again. She turned around and sent both Abigail and Kayden back to class but not before I had a chance to steal a look at Kayden. His eyes were shining like polished coal, his lips curved into a tight-lipped smile.
After seven different attempts with both the old and new thermometers the nurse finally called Jayson to pick me up and take me home for the day. She stressed that ice baths, ice packs and cool rags would surely bring the fever down and break it within the day. He led me up to my room and made sure to bring rags in every half hour soaked in borderline frozen water. Nothing was bringing the fever down.
Between hazes of the fever and pain that forced me into blackouts I had fitful dreams. Creatures of all shapes and sizes continued to reach out to me as I used the fire to burn them past my path. By the time I would wake up the fever would be spiking higher, the pain so intense I'd throw up.
At one point I managed to drag myself to the tub and turn on the faucets, shoving myself in with my clothes still on. The water felt worse than the stabbing pain inside me, and I screamed. Jayson had run upstairs to pull me from the water and back to my bed, but he said my fever seemed to have gone down from the bath.
I felt like I was dying. Nothing wanted to work, from my legs to my heart, it all moved like an animal on its last leg. Each breath felt like I was putting all of my energy into it. Giving in suddenly seemed easier, plausible.
Jayson knocked on the door, startling me from my haze of thought. "I need to run out for a few hours. Are you going to be okay?"
Slowly I nodded. "Sleeping it off," I said.
He brought my cell phone over to the bed and rested it under my hand. "Just dial if it gets any worse and I'll be home in a heartbeat. I'll make sure to pick up more ice on the way home." He closed the door behind him. I gave into the waves of pain I'd been fighting back and fell into a dreamless sleep.
Sometime in the night I startled awake. My bedroom light had been left on, a bucket by the side of the bed, rags piled onto my nightstand. Curiously I didn't feel like I had a fever and the pain inside my body had vanished. Slowly I rose out of bed, ungluing myself from the sheets that had been soaked in water and sweat. I had only one thing in mind; water.
I tip-toed past Jayson's room in case he was asleep, down the steps and to the kitchen. My favorite cup I brought from home, a Jack Skellington mug, sat in the drainer with a couple other plates and silverware. I filled it with a little tap water and took my time sipping it, gazing out the window above the kitchen sink.
The cup half-slipped from my hands as I spotted a figure standing in the backyard. Against the glassy night the silhouette seemed almost impossible to spot. I reached for the baseball bat under the sink when I stopped and stared at my hand.
I opened the door and stepped outside in the still-soaked clothes I'd been wearing earlier, but the air felt soft and almost warm on my skin. Small snowflakes hung in the air, leaving little trails as they fluttered to the ground. My feet stepped onto the frost covered ground as I walked slowly, hands at each side ready to strike. The figure never moved, only stared straight at me as I came closer.
"Get off my property before I call the police," I warned the figure. I stopped walking to leave a small chunk of distance between us. "You won't get a second warning."
"What if I want a second warning?" The voice asked as the figure smirked, gleaming white teeth revealing themselves.
"You have got to be freaking kidding me," I swore aloud as my eyes adjusted to the dark, painting Kayden into my sight. He still had the same clothes on from school, still the same short spiky black hair, and still the same ridiculous smirk on his face I wanted to cut off with nail clippers. "Kayden what the hell are you doing on my lawn?"
"Waiting for you, what else am I supposed to do?" He shrugged and came over to me, tilting his head on one side. "Still feeling like you're on death's door?"
"In the middle of the night no less!" I screamed louder and threw my hands into the air. "You've got more than just a few issues here, you know that right? There's just no way I can't explain this to my brother in the morning."
"Brother?" He questioned, and I nodded. "Huh. Weird. Warlocks usually only adopt one child."
"What?"
"Nothing, never mind, never mind." He puffed out his cheeks for a moment. "So, are you ready to finally accept it?"
I rolled my eyes and sighed despite myself. "Really, Kayden? I feel like I nearly die and the only thing you want to know is if I'm ready for your little game still? You get old fast." I turned around and started the walk back to my house. Kayden caught up and fell in silently by my side.
"And here I thought maybe feeling your insides burn up would make you curious about the new unbridled power running rampant through your veins, but hey, that's just me," he said sharply.
I turned to say something to him when I tripped and fell onto the ground. A sharp pain shot up my right elbow as I felt the skin scratch itself apart. I got back up to my feet easily and took a look at my elbow. Fresh blood bubbled out of the scrapped skin staining the skin and my sleeve.
"Go figure I spend a whole day convulsing to death and don't have a scratch on me, but then I step outside and manage to hurt myself around you," I grumbled stiffly under my breath. I turned to look up at Kayden but he vanished into thin air. "Kayden?"
The air around me rippled and before I knew it something was hurtling towards me. I crossed my arms and covered my face before screaming. The rippling grew with force then suddenly stopped just as a burst of bright light illuminated the backyard.
I waited for whatever was going to hit me, only it never came. I opened my eyes slowly and moved my arms down, but I definitely wasn't ready for what I saw.
The entire backyard was cast in a soft, angelic white light. Kayden stood across from me, his face contorted and twisted with the horns and scales of the face I had first seen. His mouth was open and growling, showing his razor-sharp teeth. Only his eyes held the tiniest shred of humanity as they bled a color of melted gold through the onyx. He didn't step closer to me or make a move, but his eyes stared all around me as if something was right beside me. That's when I saw them.
Two long, see-through crystal wings arched around me, their shimmering glamour eerily hypnotic. Both wings spread out, spanning nearly the whole backyard. It was then I realized that they were what had protected me from whatever had tried to attack me. I wanted to thank the creature, the angel that had saved me, but when I turned around I saw no one. I spun back to look at Kayden who still stood unmoving across the yard, a knowing smile spread sickeningly wide across his face. Carefully I reached behind my back and stopped in horror as I felt the extension of something from my back. The wings were mine.
My eyes rolled into my head and I blacked out.<
br />
E I G H T
Cold. Everything was cold. I couldn't shake the feeling I was under water. My skin felt wet, slick with the chilling liquid that rolled over me in swallowing waves.
Another wave hit. "Wakey wakey, Ess-uh-lee."
My eyes snapped open and came into view. Kayden held a bucket just above my head, water dripping from the rim. Well, at least explained why I was soaking wet.
I sat up slowly, shivering from the breeze I created with each move. My clothes and hair were soaked to the bone as if I had jumped into the ocean for a midnight swim.
"How long was I out?"
He sat down across from me and tossed the bucket to the side. Within second it had disintegrated into nothing, as if it had never even existed. "Three, five minutes maybe?"
I nodded absentmindedly as I started to wring out my hair as best my frozen shaking hands could do. When our eyes met, the question quietly slipped out of my lips. "What just happened, Kayden?"
The smug smile I had seen only minutes ago turned thoughtful, almost pensive. "Are you saying you're finally admitting to there being something off?"
My eyes drifted down to ends of my hair. Admitting something was off would mean he was right. Admitting something was off would mean I believed everything I had just seen and felt for the last few days. The fire, the emotions, the wings. Was it all real or was he just playing a trick on my mind?
I looked back at Kayden. "What am I?"
The smallest of smiles touched his lips, but his eyes were shining. Swirls of obsidian and slate weaved in his eyes. "You should get inside before you get sick. Magical or not, you can still get a cold."
I nodded and stood up, shaking my arms of the excess water drops that clung to my skin. Everything felt so surreal, so fake, as if any moment I would wake up and find myself still in bed shaking from a broken fever and clinging to drenched sheets.
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