by Blair Drake
“Yeah, well, I think I just made it clear just how much we are not alike. I’ve never seen sparks coming out of your hands.”
“You’ll laugh at me.”
His face tightened at his brow. “Laugh? No. Why would I do that?”
“I just know.”
He grunted. “You’re the one who doesn’t trust me.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I’m…” He gave her the space she needed to say whatever it was she had to say. He wasn’t so good with words and feelings himself. “I’m different.”
He sputtered. “What? You are not.”
“I am.”
“I could name half a dozen people at the Cliffs who I’d consider different. So it’s all good.”
She glanced quickly over her shoulder. “See? I told you. I’m not joking. Why won’t you just let this go? I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I told you about me. It’s all out there. It’s not like I can hide it.”
“My telling you about myself won’t change anything. It won’t help us get to the portal any faster. It will only complicate things.”
“Complicate what?”
“Have you ever thought of where we are? I mean, really. What is this place?” she asked.
“Of course, I have. It’s all I’ve thought about since I got here.”
“We aren’t from this world. We don’t even really fit in the world we came from. And if we stay here, for whatever reason, we need to adapt to fit into this world in order to survive. The hard part is knowing how to do it. We don’t know what this world is. That’s what makes it so dangerous for us. We rely on Endel to tell us things. But if he were going to tell us everything, he’d be talking to us all day. When he said there were minefields out there, he meant it. So he only tells us what we need to know, when we need to know it. Otherwise, it’s too much.”
“Are you telling me you think I can’t handle whatever it is you reveal to me?”
She shrugged. It was just the slight lift of her shoulder, and then it fell back in place. He didn’t see it. But he felt it just as strong as he felt her defeat.
“What are girls like where you’re from?” she asked.
“Is this a trick question?”
“No,” she said quickly.
“Because if I tell you that they’re just like you, that makes it sound like you’re not special. And I kind of think you are special. I don’t think there’s anyone I’ve ever known who’s quite like you, Raven. Or could do what you’ve done. I’m pretty damned impressed with the fact that you survived this long by yourself.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was muffled as if she turned her face towards the mattress to muffle the sound of her voice.
“Is that what you’re afraid of? That you won’t be like girls I know?”
“I know I’m not like them.”
He chuckled. How do you figure out girls? “Girls are the same all over. I mean, you must know guys my age from wherever it is that you came from, right?”
“No.”
“No?”
“There are a lot of boys where I come from,” she admitted. “You’re right about that. But they don’t look like you or act like you. They don’t…do what you do.”
“You got me there. I’ve never met anyone with sparks coming out of their fingers.”
“I don’t mean that. You care about me. You want to take care of me.”
He was suddenly uncomfortable with where she was taking him. Sure, he liked Raven. He’d admitted that to her. But he wasn’t a saint.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She chuckled softly. “You always surprise me. The question is, why would you? You didn’t even know me when I saw you in the tunnel. You didn’t even question staying by my side. Not ever. And you wouldn’t get out of the cavern until you found me.”
“I wasn’t going to leave you there. Did you think I’d be an asshole and do something like that to you?”
“No. That’s why you’re not like the guys from where I came from. The guys I know wouldn’t have cared that those men we saw earlier at the front door downstairs glared at me. But you were afraid for me. You protected me.”
“Yeah, well, I know the way guys think. Some are pieces of shit.”
Raven remained an enigma that puzzled him and intrigued him at the same time. It was infuriating, and really seductive. He didn’t know any girls who were seductive without acting like they were trying to be sexy. Girls who did that ended up looking like fools and making his friends act like bigger fools for falling for it. Yeah, maybe he’d fallen a time or two. He wasn’t immune. But Raven was different.
“Do you miss home?” he asked.
“No.”
“You don’t miss your family at all?”
“I miss my family. Even though they sent me here, I still miss them. I was angry with them for long time. But now I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Why they sent me here.”
He leaned up on the bed. “How can you act so calm? They sent you to this hellhole. Alone. Anything could have happened to you down here. I didn’t get it at first but after meeting some of these guys, I get it now. You act like it was nothing.”
“I’m not like you, Reese. I told you that.”
“Why? Because I’m angry that my father saw what I was and split when I was a kid? Because I’m pissed my mother married a jerk who wanted me gone from their life from the day he walked into our house and turned his nose up at the way we lived? But now I know it wasn’t me. It was them. They couldn’t handle it. None of us are the same. We all have something odd about us. They’re just as odd as I am but in a different way. You’re talking to me, Raven. You can’t shock me anymore. So just tell me what you’re trying to say in plain English so I can understand. I’m tired of all these riddles.”
Raven took a deep breath and then sat up in bed. “Can you put the light on? Just a little. I don’t have that spark that the old woman had.”
“The candle? Sure.” He focused deep inside him as he’d done many times on this journey. Within a few seconds, the candle glowed.
Raven sat on the edge of the bed clutching her arms around her stomach as if she were trying to brace herself. “You asked me earlier where I was when we were in the cavern.”
“Yeah.”
“I was there.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t see you. Even when I was on that bridge, I searched for you. I was calling for you. Why didn’t you call back?”
“Because…I was on the bridge.”
“You were on the bridge,” he repeated her line. But it didn’t make any more sense when he said it. He shook his head. “What you talking about? I was there. You weren’t anywhere near me.”
“I knew you were in trouble. The magnetic field you created was stronger than I thought it would be.”
He blinked hard, struggling to understand. “You mean you were there the whole time? Where? On the ledge?”
She puffed her cheeks with frustration. “Do you want to hear this, or not?”
“Go ahead.”
“I thought when I couldn’t find the doorway to the tunnel, we might be able to go through the cavern. I didn’t count on how strong a force you are. Things got out of control fast.”
“Wait, you’ve been to the cavern before?”
“No, but you hear things when you’re down here as long as I’ve been. Stories.” She rolled her eyes and chuckled softly. “There are so many unbelievable stories. You never know what to believe. Sometimes something simple becomes some giant thing. You turn it into a monster. But it’s just something little. And then you hear things that you wonder about.”
“Like a magnetic field.”
She nodded. “They’re down here. That’s what makes it so dangerous for you and not me. I can move around and it doesn’t have any effect on me. But you…”
He scratched his head and looked down at the b
ed, remembering how bad it had been on that platform. “You almost died because of me.”
“No, I underestimated you. That energy field was tremendous. I shouldn’t have let you go through it.”
“I insisted.”
“But I knew better.”
Her words were sinking in slowly. So much had happened. There was so much to absorb. “How? Had you been on that platform before?”
“No. There is so much you don’t know. So much I don’t even know. That’s what makes it even more dangerous. We know nothing. That’s why I should have listened to my instincts, and gone back to the scrap yard instead of going through that cavern. The cavern would have been quicker.”
“Not necessarily. We ended up here instead of on the other side of the cavern.”
Her face grew red. “Will you stop interrupting me? I’m trying to tell you something important.”
“Okay, okay.”
Raven took a deep breath. It was clear she was struggling with something she was having a hard time revealing. “I was there with you the whole time.”
“You weren’t. I was on the bridge and looking down at the liquid magnet. I called for you. I thought you were dead. The next thing I knew you were walking on the ledge coming at me out of the fog.”
“I was right there with you the whole time, Reese.”
“You mean you were invisible?”
He chuckled. But Raven’s expression collapsed and her lips thinned.
“Stop making fun of me. This isn’t funny. This is what I tried… Never mind.”
She turned her back to him and hovered over the candle, about to snuff it out again.
“No, wait. I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just like the others. You just want to make fun of me.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. Really. I said I wouldn’t laugh and I…I’m sorry.”
“You’re not going to understand because it sounds crazy.”
“Crazier than sparks coming out of my fingers?”
Tears filled her eyes. “Yes.”
“Try me.”
“Let’s just be clear about this. What I did back there in the magnetic field saved your ass. So don’t turn this around and start making fun of me when you’re the one that kept asking me to tell you more about myself. You’re being a jerk, you know that?”
The abrupt change in her startled him, but only till until he realized that she was right. The tears were real and he’d caused them. He had pushed her to tell him the truth. It was hard on her, whatever it was she was trying to say, and he’d laughed at her.
With remorse eating at the pit of his stomach, he said, “You’re right. I’m an asshole.”
She turned back to him. “I called you an ass, not an asshole. Get it right.”
They looked at each other for a few seconds and then they both burst out laughing.
A heavy knock on the door startled them. “If you don’t quiet down I’m going to need to throw you out of here. You’re keeping everyone awake,” the old woman said. “And I mean more than Rocher’s snoring.”
They continued to laugh, but Reese muffled his laughter with a fistful of the blanket. Once they composed themselves, he asked, “You’re really gonna make the distinction between ass and asshole?”
She shrugged and smiled. “We can’t afford not to be truthful.”
“I know you’re trying to tell me something, but am I supposed to understand it?”
“Maybe I’m just used to people getting it. It’s hard, Reese. It’s a little unreal to someone who’s never had to live this way. I have powers to,” she said turning to him on the bed. “Not the same as you, but they are very powerful. Like you, I didn’t always know what I was doing. When I was little, I used to sing. I thought it was just baby singing like my mother used to sing to me. I loved to hear her sing. But when I sang she would look at me with this horrified expression.”
“Horrified? Why?”
“I guess I wasn’t singing the songs that she was singing to me. I was singing something else. Different words. A spell of some kind. But I don’t know how I learned it and I don’t know what it was.”
“You mean like a witch’s spell?”
“I guess. Not like a witch on a broom or cauldron. I don’t have a cauldron and I don’t ride around on a broom or anything like that. I learned to shut my mouth and keep things to myself out of self-preservation, and to protect my family. But they never felt comfortable. It became clear that they feared me and what I could do. It was only when I came to the underground city that I felt comfortable enough to purposely use this power. It’s how I’ve survived this long. So many others are gone, maybe even disappeared. I don’t know. But I’m still here.”
“Why didn’t you ever leave?”
“Because I have nowhere else to go. No place that will accept me as I am. There didn’t seem to be a point.”
Reese remembered the long days and empty weeks that followed after he’d arrived at the Gray Cliffs Academy. He’d been so angry with his mother that he wouldn’t write her. He’d received letter after letter from her telling him how much she missed him, and how much she loved him. But he never wrote back. He didn’t want a damned letter. He wanted to see his mother and talk to her and ask her how she could just abandon him at a place with total strangers, all of whom he hated.
Yeah, he hated everybody when he’d first arrived, especially the headmaster who he’d managed to knock heads with on a daily basis. He didn’t want to make friends, and he didn’t want to do anything. He rebelled and refused to do homework thinking that that would be the quickest way to get him expelled from school.
The one time he actually participated in class, he’d managed to blow up a few bottles in science class. He knew he was going to get in trouble, and he did. Lalane was furious with him. And disappointed. He knew that because she said it every time she’d seen him for a week after that, as if that was going to somehow make him feel bad or make a difference.
Reese had hated everyone and he’d made everyone around him miserable. And he’d been mean. He could see that now. His cheek still flamed whenever he remembered some of the names he’d called the other kids. They were just as scared and lonely and upset as he was. They were trying to make the best of it and he was trying to make them miserable because he couldn’t stand anyone else being happy.
Yep, those first years at the Gray Cliffs Academy were banner years, and pretty horrific. But only because he’d wanted to go home. He wanted to see his mother. He eventually stopped being angry with her, but only when he’d finally convinced himself he didn’t want to see her and didn’t care anymore.
“Things are quieter here,” Raven said. “I can’t explain what that means or why it is. Maybe because the walls are all concrete around us, and it keeps out the noise in my head. I don’t know. But I found that it’s easier when it’s quiet.”
“Dinner wasn’t that quiet,” he said with amusement.
Her smile widened. “Different kind of noise. I don’t mind that type.”
“Even from Rocher?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t tell me what your powers are.”
She drew in a deep breath and wouldn’t look at him. She was still afraid he was going to laugh.
“I’m…a mutant.”
For a split second, Reese was glad Raven wasn’t looking at him to see his reaction. And then he remembered how she’d gasped when he’d reacted to Endel talking about mutants before they’d left the shop.
“A mutant. What does a mutant do?” he asked in a much calmer voice than he felt.
“I can…change into things.”
“Things? Like what?”
She looked at him then. The fear in her eyes was so strong that it almost scared him, too.
“Like…bridges.”
“Bridges. You mean, like the one in the cavern.”
She nodded slowly, staring at him as if she were gauging his reaction. “I was the bridge.”
He let her words sink in as he replayed everything that happened in the cavern. It was surreal. But nothing more surreal than anything he’d been through in the last few days.
“You were the bridge. That’s what you meant by saving my ass.”
Raven nodded.
Reese didn’t know how to deal with the strange feelings that were coursing through him. Confusion and gratitude were a weird combination.
“Thank you,” he finally said.
She smiled then, and her smile lit up the room more than the light of the candle.
“We should get some sleep.”
She nodded, snuffed the candle, and then curled up next to him on the bed.
“Are you still cold?” he asked.
Her voice broke as she said, “I have a feeling I’d never be cold around you.”
Chapter 14
Only darkness lay ahead of them. The last legs of the journey had been surprisingly easy compared to the first half of it, Reese thought as they crawled out of a side tunnel onto a set of stairs leading down to an empty road. Unlike all the other sections of the city that had homes and businesses, this part seemed like untouched real estate.
The closer they got to the edge of the underground world, the more Reese’s nerves skittered through his veins. What if the portal wasn’t open when they got there? What if there wasn’t even a portal for him and Raven to go through?
“We have to be careful,” Raven said. “Soldiers patrol this whole section. You never know when one will suddenly appear.”
He nodded. They had yet to see a soldier since they’d left the holder’s house. The only things resembling soldiers were the dudes on that first bridge. Raven had said they’d been lucky. But it could also mean that although they couldn’t see soldiers, it didn’t mean the soldiers couldn’t see them.
During most of their journey, Reese had had a difficult time controlling his energy. Lights went on when he wasn’t paying attention. Things got out of control at the cavern. He was infinitely thankful they’d been able to find that tunnel door Endel had told them about so they could skip a repeat of magnetic overload again.
But it was still with him. Reese glanced over his shoulder, and saw the light was immediately fading as soon as they walked away, which was good. That meant he was controlling his energy and might actually be able to make it over that last bridge without any incidents.