“Listen, Jeremy, I’m really sorry I got you arrested. I really was just trying to help you, but there were so many people around that saw what you did-”
“Don’t apologize, Shayna. If it had been the other way around, I would have been livid,” he said, dismissing what I’d said.
“Okay, if you say so, but listen, I was serious when I said I wanted to help you. If you let me help you, I would be willing to drop the charges,” I said, leaning in and lowering my voice as if I could whisper to him through the glass.
“Why are you so determined to help me? I’ve been nothing but an ass to you,” he asked.
“Because you need someone to help you. So many people don’t get the help they need when their powers or abilities manifest and they eventually lose control of them. More often than not, those poor people get labeled as crazy. If I can help stop that, then I will.” I watched him study my face, as if afraid I was trying to fool him or was looking for the trap I was laying for him.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said with a nod.
“What about Jodi? Would she drop the charges too?” I could tell he was trying to control his voice, but the doubt was there nonetheless.
“I think I could persuade her to,” I said carefully.
“It’s tempting to say ‘no’ so they’d throw me in jail and I could just get away from my dad,” he said, lowering his eyes not to look at me.
“Yeah, he seems like a real nice guy,” I let the sarcasm drip from my voice.
“You met him? When?”
“Earlier today. He was leaving at the same time we were. He came up to talk to my dad and apologize for everything,” I shrugged at the end, trying to make light of the situation.
“I bet he had a lot of nice things to say about me.” He shook his head and I saw his shoulders round forward as he drew into himself automatically.
“No, I mean…” I started to say.
“No! Don’t lie!” Jeremy snapped at me so suddenly that I jumped in my seat, nearly dropping the receiver. I glanced towards Officer Adams, who had stepped away from the wall as if he’d come over. I gave a firm shake of my head to tell him to stay. I could feel the channel still open between us, though it was thinning, so he stopped mid-step and waited.
“Jeremy, listen…” I said, but he wasn’t hearing me now.
“He’s always telling people what a screw up I am. He’s always letting everyone know he isn’t proud to be my father, like people will excuse him from blame for me being the way I am.” His voice grew progressively louder as he spoke. I could feel his anger rising as if it was always just under the surface, waiting to be prodded to life. But, unlike other people, his cheeks didn’t flush with color when he got angry. All the color in his face that had come with our conversation drained away, leaving a sallow, pinched look behind. “Jimmy! Jimmy’s perfect and I’m everything he’s not!” He slammed his fist down on the counter, the echo coming back through the corridor.
“Jeremy, calm down, please. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“He’s always doing this to me! Reminding me how embarrassing it is to have me as a son!” I looked up and saw the officer coming closer again, but I saw hesitation in his face, my earlier suggestions still working on him, but they were obviously starting to wear off.
I quickly peeled back a few layers of my shields and almost immediately felt the heat of Jeremy’s anger against my skin, a dry and biting desert wind in the middle of summer. His eyes were wide and wild now and I had the fleeting thought that he wasn’t even seeing me now. I reached out towards him until I felt his aura, just as I had done earlier with Officer Adams, but rather than feeling the heat of him, I felt something dark and pliable, sticky and slow. I had the sudden thought of cancer and realized his aura was coated in sickness, eating away at him just like his father’s harsh words ate away at his self-esteem.
I calmed the churning in my stomach and pushed back the taste of bile in my throat and started to force my way through the black mass that coated his energy, trying to find him. It was too thick. I gave up getting through it and just started projecting sympathy and empathy to him, letting him know someone was here and willing to help. He turned those wild eyes on me and I saw the years of pain and anger burning out of them.
“What are you doing?” he asked me in a voice heavy with distrust.
“Trying to help you Jeremy,” I whispered, careful not to break the channel we were forming.
“Lies, all lies, you’re just trying to manipulate me too!” he hissed at me and then spat at the window, making me flinch, even though I knew the spit couldn’t reach me.
“Don’t do this, Jeremy,” I pleaded with him, but he only shook his head and gripped the phone receiver so hard that white and red lines traced his knuckles. I heard the cracking and squeaking of the plastic just before the phone crumbled in his hand. I looked up into his eyes and realized Jeremy just wasn’t in there anymore, but I still whispered, “Don’t do this…” I was aware of Jodi, Jensen, and Steven behind me on the other side of the closed door, their anxiety like a weight on my back, and I saw Officer Adams moving forward towards Jeremy. I knew he was moving faster than I thought he was, but the world had narrowed down to just me, Jeremy in front of me, and the suddenly loud noise of a thousand thrumming wings.
Chapter 11
Three things happened all at once: Jeremy ripped the phone receiver out of the wall and slammed his fist into the Plexiglas window, actually causing it to crack; Officer Adams drew his Taser gun and fired, the sinister pins finding a home in Jeremy’s leg, bringing him to the ground in a writhing, twitching dance; and Steven, Jodi and Jensen forced their way into the little booth I was sitting in, grabbing me from behind and pulling me out backwards. I heard the commotion of Adams’ partner bursting through the door and rushing at Jeremy on the ground to handcuff him. I struggled to stand up with so many hands trying to lift me and I had a momentary panic attack from so much help.
“Stop,” I said as calmly and clearly as I could and all three of them froze in place, hovering over me, not much of an improvement. “Back off, let me up before I panic or suffocate.” Jodi was the first to move, grabbing both the boys by an arm and pulling them backwards awkwardly, but quickly, making them both stumble before regaining their balance. As soon as they had taken one step back, the air was lighter and easier for me to breathe. I pushed myself up and carefully got to my feet, assessing myself to make sure they hadn’t hurt me in their rush to put some distance between Jeremy and me. I ached a little, I might have some new bruises in the morning, but I was okay.
“Alright, guys,” Officer Adams said as he came into our side of the room. “You gotta go. I’m sorry, I didn’t think he’d react that way. Kinda weird actually,” he finished, shaking his head in confusion. He raised his hands up to usher us through the far door and out of Jeremy’s sight. I could still hear him moaning in shock and pain from the fifty thousand volts of electricity and the bite of the silver pins.
“What do you mean ‘weird?’” Steven asked as we made our way towards the door.
“Well, he seemed fine for so long and then, all of a sudden,” Adams just shook his head again and reached for the door to hold it open for us to troop past him into the anterior room before unlocking the next door to let us out. We were walking up the stairs we had come down earlier before he looked at me and spoke again. “What did you say before he got so angry?”
“Um,” I said, blinking at him stupidly, trying to go over the conversation in my mind. “Oh, he said something about his father and I told him we’d run into him in the parking lot earlier and he started going on about what he thought his father said about him and I was trying to tell him that didn’t happen and he accused me of lying and then everything went to hell,” I finished with a shrug.
“He reacted like a crazy person,” he said and I realized he was watching my face out of the corner of his eye, as if waiting for my reaction.
“Shayna, I’m a cop. There really aren’t any other people more politically incorrect than us besides Rush Limbaugh.” And that made me laugh.
“Fine, I suppose you’re right,” I said, stopping at the last door that led to the parking lot and turning to look at him. “I guess he did react kinda crazy. Is that going to affect his bail?”
“Oh yeah, we’re gonna have to call his parents and tell them what happened and keep him here. We may bring in a doctor and have him examined, find out if he’s on some meds or drugs he didn’t tell us about.” He sighed and shook his head, reaching for his keys to unlock the door for us. Steven and Jodi went through first with Jensen following after, but he stopped when he realized I wasn’t right behind him. I was torn; wanting to tell Officer Adams that Jeremy wasn’t in his right mind, that this wasn’t completely his fault, but at a loss for how I could explain that. I started to open my mouth to speak when he raised a hand to stop me. “No, Shayna, I shouldn’t have let you talk to him in the first place. I’m not even sure why I did, but there isn’t anything else you can do now, so just do me a favor and go home.” His voice had gone from that easy candor that reminded us he wasn’t much older than we were to that practiced cop voice that left no room for arguments.
“Thanks anyway,” I said and stepped past him. We started walking toward the car. It was close to ten o’clock when I started up the engine and drove us out of the parking lot.
“That was insane!” Steven said suddenly from the back seat, almost making me jump and the car swerve. “I mean, he was almost out of there on his dad’s dime and he throws it all away like that?”
“I don’t think he meant to,” I said, twisting my hands back and forth on the steering wheel, a nervous habit I had picked up. It seemed like I always had to drive when things started to go wrong.
“Then why did he summon the faeries?” Jodi asked from next to me.
“He didn’t summon them. I think they just show up when they sense him start to feel some volatile emotion so they can feed on it and make it worse,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Jodi asked, turning in her seat so she could look at me.
“You know what a Banshee is, right?” I asked, realizing I had been thinking about this example since Jeremy started explaining himself.
“You mean the Irish tale of the howling woman who screams when someone dies? And her wail could, in fact, kill you?” Jodi asked.
“Yes and no,” I said, turning onto the freeway to take the short cut across town to get to Jodi’s house. “A banshee actually shows up before someone dies, like a warning to let everyone know what’s going to happen. Some think that every family has their own banshee, like a family ghost that lives in an attic.”
“Okay, what does that have to do with what happened to Jeremy?” Jensen asked, sitting forward like Steven to listen closely.
“Well, banshees are emotionally connected to people and with death comes strong, volatile emotions. Maybe these things are connected to Jeremy by his emotions and when he starts to feel something, they show up and it gets worse,” I twisted my hands again, making the leather of the steering wheel squeak under my hands. “Maybe he has no control over these things.”
“So do you think these things are a type of banshee?” Steven asked.
“No, no, not at all, but they’re the only ones of the old Faerie Tales that I can remember that seem emotionally connected to a person. I mean it’s easy to upset any faerie, but this is so…” I searched for the right words, “out of control.”
***
Half an hour later I was sitting alone in my room over my circle of protection hidden under the area rug with my journal in my lap. I had started to detail the events of the last few days in my journal while sitting at my desk and felt a cold, creeping feeling on my back, making me uneasy, but as soon as I stepped into my circle, the feeling slipped away. It was more difficult than I had thought it would be to record the details about the faeries themselves, considering I only had sound and movement to go off of, not even having a feeling about what they may or may not look like. I was like a blind person, having to depend on my other senses to tell me what they were and what to do.
Just as I decided to meditate on the problem and had set my book aside and was settling into a comfortable position inside the circle, my cell phone vibrated loudly against the wood of my desk. I got up on my knees and reached for it as it danced close to the edge, threatening to jump off. “What’s up?” I asked, seeing on the screen that it was Jodi calling.
“Turn on the news, right now, channel three,” she said, quickly but calmly. I stood up and walked to my bedside table and grabbed the TV remote, turning on the TV and changing the channel as I walked back inside my circle. That creeping feeling was trying to slide its way up my back as soon as I was outside of it.
“Police are refusing to comment on the incident, but an insider has confirmed that one prisoner has escaped. Who he is and why he was arrested are still unknown,” a well-dressed field reporter spoke into her microphone with a serious face and almost angry eyes.
“Oh. My. God.” I said, punctuating every word.
“I know!” Jodi said in a whispered scream.
“Did they say how they knew about the breakout?”
“There was a freaking explosion!” she said frantically. “There’s a hole in the wall and he just walked out.”
“But he was cuffed!” I said quickly.
“Dude, he blew a damn hole in a prison wall… do you really think handcuffs mean anything to him?” she asked, her voice dripping with incredulousness.
“And Steven thought what happened earlier was insane…” I said, staring wide-eyed at the TV screen.
“There’s something else, Shay,” Jodi said slowly, sounding a little afraid to tell me.
“What?”
“They said one of the officers inside was injured and they showed him being wheeled into an ambulance and rushed off.” She said it all in a rush, trying to get through it as quickly as possible.
“Did they say who?”
“No, but I saw his face when the camera tried to zoom in and focus on him.”
“Adams?”
“Yeah…”
“Damnit!” I swore a little too loudly and waited to see if either of my parents would be knocking at my door. When no one came, I let out the breath I was holding and let my shoulders relax.
“So do we go to the hospital or do we find Jeremy?” Jodi asked, reminding me I was still clutching the phone to my ear.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to go to the hospital. Even if we can get to Adams, what is he gonna tell us that we don’t already know?” I said. I was already pulling on my jeans.
“Good point, but do you have any idea where Jeremy would be now?” she asked.
“No clue,” I said, tying my shoelace.
“Great, at least we have a plan.”
“That joke is getting old,” I said and then hung up the phone, tossing it into my purse and rushing out the door. My parents were usually in bed pretty early by a teenager’s standards, but my mom was in the kitchen sneaking a midnight snack when I came to the end of the hall.
“Going somewhere?” she asked with a raised eyebrow when she saw me.
“Yeah, if it’s cool?” I said, making a show of checking my purse and trying to look sufficiently annoyed. “Jodi got into a fight with Jay and she just called asking for a ride,”, rolling my eyes and shaking my head at the ceiling as if I were a parent praying for strength.
“Another fight? I swear those two get into it almost every other week,” my mom said, reaching for something in fridge.
“I know, but you know how she gets. Now she doesn’t want him to drive her home, but she has no other way to get home.”
“Where is she?” My mom asked into the fridge and I realized I hadn’t thought
that far ahead. I searched my mind frantically for a plausible location that was far enough away that would put my mom back to sleep before I came home so she wouldn’t notice how late I came back.
“State Street,” I said quickly, remembering Santa Barbara’s main drag, popular on the weekends with restaurants, movie theaters, and dance clubs, was my best bet.
“State Street?” My mom said, sounding shocked enough to knot up my stomach, and then she turned and glanced at the clock over the oven. “At this hour?”
“I guess they went to dinner and a movie and were gonna go dancing, so that’s where she’s at now,” I explained, hitching my purse on my shoulder and reaching for my keys.
“I don’t think your father would want you going all the way up to Santa Barbara this late,” she said, but I could hear the uncertainty in her voice. She was close to the edge of either agreeing to let me leave or making me stay. How I played it would push her one way or the other.
“Well,” I said, blowing out a breath as I jiggled my keys in my hand, carefully not looking at her. “I mean, if you don’t want me to go. I don’t want to go myself. It’s just that Steven doesn’t have a car, so he can’t go get her and you know how her sisters are.”
“What about her parents?”
“She’s afraid her parents will get mad and they’ll tell her she can’t see Jay anymore if she’s willing to get this angry with him,” I looked up at her again, raising both eyebrows. “And you know all that’ll do is make her sneak around with him.”
“Yeah,” she nodded, sounding tired. “You’re right.”
Elemental Series Omnibus Edition Books 1-4 Page 42