by Leigh, Jena
Declan glared at Cassie. “I tried to take her home, but she seemed to have other plans. Your friend can be quite persuasive when she wants to be.”
Persuasive? Declan wasn’t the sort of guy you reasoned with. And she was pretty sure that the two of them couldn’t stand each other. So how had Cassie convinced him to let her stay?
“Cassie stole his wallet,” Brian explained. “Said she wouldn’t return it until Declan brought her back here.”
“That reminds me.” Declan held out a hand. “Wallet. Now.”
“Seriously, Cass?”
“Hey, it got me here, didn’t it?” she said, fishing a battered leather wallet from the back pocket of her jeans. She threw it at Declan’s head. “Think fast, Grumpy.”
He caught it with one hand and opened it to check the contents before slipping it back into his pocket, mumbling, “Klepto.”
“You okay, kid? You look a little… singed,” Kenzie was staring at Brian in concern.
Brian rubbed the top of his head, causing a handful of ash to fall from his hair. “All in one piece. No worries. Although we can’t really say the same for Aiden’s apartment. Pretty sure that one’s a total loss.”
Next to Cassie, Aiden rubbed his hands across his face and groaned. “I knew… I freaking knew I’d regret helping you guys. If that asshat so much as touches Norma Jean, you’re the first one I’m coming after, Decks.”
Declan stopped coughing long enough to stare daggers at his cousin. His wet hair was still dribbling water into his eyes. “How the hell was I supposed to know that Brandt would be able to follow me from Florida back to Newport?”
“Brandt?” Alex echoed.
The soda can took off like a shot and embedded itself in the trunk of a nearby tree. The others flinched.
“Whoa!” said Kenzie. “Breathe, Alex. Breathe. Before you take someone’s head off with an adirondack chair or something.”
“Okay,” said Cassie, staring in surprise at the can’s remains. “That’s new.”
Alex tried to relax, but her nerves were becoming increasingly frayed around the edges.
It seemed ridiculous, but she was actually starting to miss the way things used to be, back when she only had to worry about the odd appliance getting fried.
Now she’d added flying projectiles to the list. What would she have to worry about next? Spontaneous combustion? Earthquakes?
Alex did as Kenzie suggested and sucked in a deep breath.
“I thought Brandt was with Grayson in Virginia?” said Nate.
“He is,” said Declan. “Or at least he was. When Grayson called earlier, he said that he was about to get some answers… But I’m still waiting on a phone call to find out what those answers were. All I know is that this was definitely the same guy that torched the bookstore and kidnapped Cassie.”
“Alright, but if Brandt’s still with Grayson… Then who just came after you? Brandt’s even-more-evil twin?” asked Kenzie.
Declan shrugged.
“How did this happen?” asked Alex. “How did he even find you, Declan?”
“He was waiting for me at your place,” he said. “After I dropped Connor off, I went to see your Aunt, like I’d promised. Nobody was home. I was stepping off your porch when I saw him standing at the end of your driveway, so I teleported back to Aiden’s. I thought I’d lose him with the jump.”
“Yeah.” Aiden’s voice was laced with bitterness. “Instead he rode your coattails back to Newport and started torching my apartment. Excellent plan, Decks. You’re a genius.”
“Dammit, Declan,” Nate spat. The anger Alex had sensed simmering quietly within him for the last hour had finally bubbled to the surface. “If he can follow you, then why the hell did you jump back here? You could have led him right to Alex.”
Brian shook his head, causing more ashes to fall from his brown hair. “We should be okay. Brandt jumped first,” he said. “Aiden had him pinned in a corner with this really big, really sharp chunk of ice.”
Alex eyed the soggy blonde sitting next to her, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. “Declan, why are you all wet?”
Instead of answering, Declan glowered at Aiden.
“So what happened to the apartment?” asked Kenzie. “Is it still burning? What about the other people in the complex?”
“Pretty sure that won’t be an issue,” said Cassie.
His anger momentarily forgotten, Aiden fixed Cassie with a rueful smile.
“Oh?” said Nate.
Aiden’s smile grew wider. “I, uh… Well, I sort of put the fires out before we jumped.”
His bad mood momentarily forgotten, Nate grinned. “Is there any water left in Newport? Or is it all in your apartment?”
Aiden gave a lazy shrug. “Probably safe to assume that I won’t be getting my deposit back.”
Nate and Cassie laughed.
“I don’t get it,” said Alex.
“Aiden can control water,” said Cassie, matter-of-factly, as though that were a completely normal thing for someone to be able to do.
Her friend seemed to be handling all these revelations with surprising alacrity. Alex wished she could say the same.
“Yeah,” Declan grumbled, shrugging off his moisture-laden coat. “And he can’t aim for shit.”
Aiden climbed to his feet and held out a hand to Cassie. “Hey, I told you to get out of the way, Decks. It’s not my fault you have the reflexes of an eighty-year-old woman.”
“Next time you need a quick escape, cousin, I’m going to remember you said that.”
Alex reached for Declan’s discarded coat and fished his cell phone from the pocket. It was damp, but it looked alright. She turned it on and dialed.
“Who are you calling?” he asked.
The others were headed inside, but Declan remained, watching her movements with interest.
“Aunt Cil,” she said. “I want to make sure she’s okay.”
Brandt had been at Alex’s house. Was that why her aunt wasn’t picking up the phone?
There was no answer at home or on her aunt’s cell. Alex left messages on both machines and wondered if there was anyone else she could call.
The phone buzzed in her hand. A text from her aunt.
DWBH, LEE-LEE. AM FINE. WILL CALL SOON.
“D. W. B. H.?” asked Declan.
She gripped the phone.
When Alex had first gone to live with her aunt she’d been a wreck. For days Alex had cried nonstop, had refused to eat, and had been unable to sleep for anything more than an hour or two at a time.
Aunt Cil had been at the end of her rope, desperate to find something that would stop the deluge of tears.
And then, one night after tucking Alex tightly into bed, Aunt Cil had started humming a song.
Alex had recognized it instantly. The song had been one of her mother’s favorites. She’d started humming along and, within minutes, had fallen into the first night of restful sleep she’d had since her parents’ death.
“It stands for ‘don’t worry, be happy,’” she explained. “You know. Like the song. It means that she’s okay.”
Alex stared at the phone for a long moment before trying a third number. Declan was still watching her. She turned away from him and waited for an answer.
“Hello?” came a groggy voice.
“Connor!” she breathed. Alex ignored Declan’s derisive snort. “Are you okay?”
“Alex?”
The sound of rustling sheets reached her through the phone and she knew she’d woken him. Alex could picture him there in his darkened bedroom, sitting upright in bed, hair tousled from sleep, clutching his cell phone as worry set in and he struggled to wake up.
She hated that he’d been dragged into the middle of all this.
Was this what it was going to be like from now on? Always worrying about the ones she loved? Always fearing for their safety?
How was she supposed to keep them all safe when she could barely hold it together herself?<
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“I’m fine, Lexie,” he said. “Declan brought me home. Why? Is everything alright? Are you okay?”
“No, no,” she said quickly. “Everything’s fine. I just… I just wanted to make sure you got home alright. That’s all. I’m sorry to wake you.”
Declan was mumbling something under his breath.
“Goodnight, Connor,” she said softly, then hung up.
Alex handed the phone back to Declan. His expression was unreadable.
“What?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he jumped.
Exhausted, Alex got to her feet and trudged back inside.
— 20 —
Her cell was ringing again.
Cecilia Cross stared at the phone vibrating in her right hand, frowning as she recognized the area code. The phone stilled and the call went to voicemail.
Not answering was growing harder every time the phone rang.
Trouble was, she still hadn’t decided on what she would say when she finally found the courage to answer it. She couldn’t seem to come up with anything that wouldn’t potentially make the situation worse than it already was. So instead, she’d opted for silence.
She felt like a coward.
The light turned green and she hit the gas, dividing her focus between the rain-drenched roads and her cell phone, waiting impatiently for the message alert. Two minutes passed and still no notification. With a small sigh of relief, she slipped the phone back into the cup holder beside her.
If something had happened, Alex would have left a message. Cil was banking on the notion that no message meant there was nothing to worry about.
Well.
Nothing new to worry about, anyway.
Cil chewed at her thumbnail as she drove, squinting to see the blacktop through the torrential downpour and wishing, for the millionth time, that she’d handled all of this differently.
To hell with what Nora and James had wanted. Alex should have been told the truth about the family months ago.
Cil spent twelve years waiting for the day when her lies would fall apart. Waiting for the day when Alex would discover who she really was and what she was capable of.
When Alex hit sixteen, Cil had stopped worrying.
Sixteen years old and not a hint of either of her parents’ abilities. No electrical disturbances, no mysteriously moving objects… Just a beautiful young woman with a budding social life, a bright future ahead of her and an unwavering determination to make something of herself.
At first, Cil couldn’t believe her luck. She wasn’t sure what the odds were against two Variant parents giving birth to a child without abilities, but somehow, they appeared to have done just that.
Alexandra was wonderfully, impossibly, average, and Cil couldn’t be happier.
She was going to have that normal life her parents had wanted for her from the start—and she would never have to learn the truth.
In this instance, ignorance truly was bliss.
And then came the accident at the school.
Cil had hovered over her niece for the next week while she healed, under the pretense of keeping her still so she wouldn’t pull the stitches in her side. In reality, she’d had a second motive for sticking close to her niece: she needed to know for certain if the accident had been Alex’s fault.
For the first three days, nothing happened.
On the fourth day they had an argument. What it was about Cil couldn’t remember.
What she did remember was that bitter moment of surprise and the intense pain she experienced when, after laying a hand on Alex’s shoulder to calm her, her niece absorbed her energy and used it to short out every piece of electrical equipment in the room.
She should have told Alex the truth, then and there.
Instead, she’d kept her mouth shut. Cil told herself that she was keeping up the facade of normalcy for her sister’s sake, because it was what she and James had wanted so badly for their little girl.
But that was a lie.
In reality, she’d been afraid of how Alex would react to learning the truth. Afraid of how Alex would feel about the fact that she’d been lied to for so many years.
Cil was afraid of losing her.
And now?
She turned the car into the driveway of their home and cut the engine. The blue, two-story Victorian that she shared with Alex glistened black with rainwater in the pre-dawn gloom. Sighing, she stared up at the empty house.
Well, she might just have lost her, anyway.
The phone shook violently against the sides of the cup-holder, startling her. Only one pulse—she had a message.
Heart in her throat, Cil checked the phone.
It wasn’t Alex.
Grayson had sent her an image.
Before the image could be downloaded completely, there was another pulse. A text message appeared below the image, reading:
WE NEED TO MEET. BE HERE AS SOON AS YOU CAN.
The image finished loading and she scrolled up to examine it… And very nearly dropped the phone in surprise when she recognized where the picture had been taken.
The photo was of the dilapidated entrance of a disused mineshaft, burrowed into the side of a mountain and lit harshly by the flash of Grayson’s camera phone.
No, she thought desperately. Please, God, don’t let this be happening.
Phone still clutched in one hand, Cil was out of the car in the next instant. She took a breath to steady herself… and jumped.
The muggy coastal air had been replaced with the dry chill of a Virginia night in early spring. Cil crossed her arms over her chest as a breeze rushed through the branches of the trees overhead and realized, belatedly, that she really ought to have grabbed a jacket before she left.
Thoughts of outerwear fled her mind when she registered that there were, in fact, two figures waiting for her at the entrance. Grayson hadn’t come alone.
A flashlight was aimed in her direction. Cil raised a hand to cut the glare and tilted her head to see below it as she hesitantly approached.
“Grayson?” she called out. “Who’s—”
“Cecilia!” a familiar Scottish brogue replied. “Well, well… It is a night for surprises.”
“You!”
“It’s alright, Cil,” Grayson’s voice called. He pointed the light at the ground, illuminating her path as she approached. “Brandt’s not the one after Alex.”
She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved by that announcement, or terrified.
Judging from the fact that she was currently approaching the entrance to a place she only ever visited in her nightmares, she was leaning toward terror.
“You’re looking good, Cil,” Brandt drawled as she came to a stop next to Grayson. “The years have certainly been kind.”
“Stuff it, burnout,” she replied. Brandt was definitely the same letch she remembered.
“Lost none of that dazzling charm, I see,” he quipped.
How Grayson and the others had tolerated him back when they’d both worked as consultants for the Agency had been beyond her. Working with scumbags like Brandt was exactly why she’d only consented to work with the Agency on an as-needed basis. And even then, she’d only agreed to do so to appease her sister.
Brandt, on the other hand, had simply been in it for the money.
Cil had never trusted the Agency, even when the organization had still been in its infancy.
As it turned out, she’d been right not to.
“Alright, you two,” said Grayson. “To your corners. We’re all on the same side here.”
Grayson had swung the flashlight around to focus on a patch of brush near the gate. He pushed aside the branches to reveal a hidden keypad.
“How’s Alex?” she asked as he typed in the code.
A heavy metal click resonated from the rust-covered door that sealed the entrance. Grayson swung it open. Only darkness lay beyond.
“Fine,” he said shortly. He led the way into the black, vanishing complete
ly before being illuminated by a motion-activated florescent light. “At the cabin. Same as she was when I called to update you earlier.”
Cil followed Brandt across the threshold. The stone walls of the passageway seemed to insulate the cold, making the cramped entryway feel a good twenty degrees cooler than the air outside. She shivered.
Up ahead was a second door, this one equipped with a retinal scanner. Grayson ducked down to peer into the device.
“And after what happened with Cassie, do you really blame me for asking again?” She rubbed her arms in a futile attempt to warm them. “I just spent the last two hours apologizing to her poor mother, who called me—frantic—at midnight tonight, wanting to know where her daughter was. Do you know what I told her? That they went camping. Camping! Cassie hates camping! They both do! And it’s pouring down rain!”
Cil was aware that she was rambling. She couldn’t help it.
She knew what was waiting for them on the other side of that door. And she had a sinking suspicion that what they were going to discover when they finally made it past all the security protocols would be far more frightening than the wrath of Cassie’s irate mother.
“So this is a nice little reunion,” said Brandt, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Had I known we’d be getting the gang back together, I would have dressed for the occasion.”
Cil took a moment to look at him—to really look at him—and then appraised Grayson as well.
Brandt had a rip in his jeans and dried blood spattered across his wrinkled black dress shirt. Even Grayson looked worse for wear in his Burberry trench and designer suit, though he’d at least attempted to pull himself back together. His lip was split and he had the makings of a real shiner blossoming around his left eye.
“What on Earth happened to you two? Jesus, Grayson, you look like you just went five rounds with Mike Tyson.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Brandt. “She’s right, you know. You really do look like hell.”
Grayson didn’t answer. He was too busy glaring at the retinal scanner, arms akimbo and a scowl on his face.