Spark

by Rachael Craw

  “No.” Jamie shakes his head. “Not like that, not here. We need a plan.”

  Leonard backs out and drives up to the security gate, waving his pass at the sensor. The gate rolls slowly aside. Jamie starts the engine and slings his arm across the back of my seat to reverse. I tense with awareness, conscious of his scent. Leonard pulls out and the gate rolls closed. Jamie digs for the pass the secretary gave him at reception and draws up to the sensor. I watch through the bars, jolting when the Mercedes joins the flow of traffic. “He didn’t wait!”

  Jamie’s window slides down and he waves the card.

  The light doesn’t come on.

  Nothing happens.

  The tether stretches.

  “Jamie!”

  “It’s not working.” He waves the pass, bangs his fist on the console and still nothing happens.

  Anxiety grips me. “Jamie, something’s not right.”

  His head snaps towards me.

  Static explodes in my head. “Open the gate.”

  Tires squeal on the road, an engine roars, cars skid.

  A grey sedan tears past.

  My panic comes in quick. “Open the gate!”

  “The sedan?”

  “Now!”

  Jamie flings the door open, moving so fast his body blurs. He comes into clear outline, grabs the bars and wrenches the gate aside in one sweep, driving it back into the recess, causing a terrific grinding of metallic gears. Sparks erupt from a box on the wall. He lands behind the steering wheel, slams the door, guns the engine and I’m thrown back into my seat as we shoot out through a gap in traffic, skidding wildly.

  The tether has almost completely faded. “I’m losing her!”

  “It’s him?” Jamie’s knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “Richard?”

  “I don’t know, it’s not right.”

  “Read-the-signal!”

  “I’m trying!” But Kitty’s signal has faded so quickly that I have nothing to anchor my search. “I can’t feel her. They’re too far away. Hurry, can you see them?”

  I kick my heels off, scrabbling in the backseat for my high-tops. I jam my feet in one then the other, struggling to tighten the laces. Jamie drives so fast the speedo hits the red line. We’re all over the road, careening through traffic. Cars swerve and honk. I draw the band off my wrist, fumbling, numb fingers trying to pull my hair into a ponytail. My ears crackle and with all my might I reach to feel the threat.

  I can’t see Leonard’s car or the grey sedan that streaked past, tyres squealing so threateningly. I grip my watch, dreading any transmission that might confirm my fears. “I thought it was Aiden,” I say. “I really did, until yesterday. None of it makes any sense.”

  “Aiden? You said Richard!”

  “I tried KMH on them both! Okay?”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “We weren’t exactly talking!”

  He swears, pulling out to overtake a truck. “Well, what happened?”

  “That’s what I’m uncertain about,” the words tumble together. “I normally feel something when I touch people, static, you know? But when I touched Aiden it was like going deaf and blind. I couldn’t hear or see anything in the bandwidth.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “But … but the memory you showed me was Richard’s, right?” Jamie demands. “Then it’s him! It has to be him!”

  Our wrists light up simultaneously, a three-bell chime that drains blood from my body and air from my lungs. I hit the response tab so she knows, I’m coming.

  Jamie lifts his wrist to check the GPS. “They’re still on the road.”

  “They’re heading home.”

  “Dad’s going for the panic room.”

  “You think the sedan’s trying to run them off the road?”

  “If Kitty’s signalling us, he’s tried something!”

  Terror and rage consume me and then I’m screaming. “Damn it, Jamie! This is your fault! I should never have listened to you!”

  He flinches but keeps his eyes on the road.

  Then crushing guilt outweighs my anger and I groan like a woman in labour. “Why did I leave her? I should never have left her. Please, Jamie, hurry.”

  A trip that should have taken twenty minutes becomes ten, according to the readout on the dash. In terms of living through it, it feels more like some kind of time purgatory, endless and agonising.

  Before we even reach the estate, the tether snaps to life and I gasp. “She’s alive.” Jamie looks at me once then back at the road, his mouth set in a grim line. I would have cried with relief as we sped up to the familiar boundary wall but the scene is all wrong.

  “The gates are closed,” Jamie says.

  “They’re here! I can feel her!”

  Jamie scrabbles for the remote but I can’t bear to wait. I growl, throw the door open and, leveraging off the bonnet of Jamie’s car, I jump, landing messily, high up on the boundary wall, skidding on dewy concrete before leaping again. I hit the ground running, power in my legs, senses sharpened. As though Kitty reels me in, I follow the pulse of the tether up the sloping lawn, the house rising before me, brightly lit, bodies moving within. I hit the side door, springing the handle and bringing it with me as I skid into the kitchen where Miriam stands, her gun trained at my head.

  “Evie!” Her arms collapse. “Thank God.”

  “Where is she?” I cry, dropping the handle and pushing past Miriam to the butler’s pantry, answering my own question as I follow the tether. I beat the access code into the keypad. Leonard crashes into the kitchen behind us.

  “It’s Evie,” Miriam says.

  “Wait!” Leonard calls as the door unlocks, but I push through it, not bothering with the stairs to the wine cellar, leaping the rail to land softly on the floor. “Is it safe?” Leonard’s voice echoes off the ceiling. I skid to a halt at the concrete slider, thump my hand on the security panel, red light licking my palm. The door slides back and screams echo inside the cell. A gunshot cracks the air.

  WOUNDS

  “I don’t have any anaesthetic,” Miriam mutters, pawing through her leather case, scattering sutures, cotton swabs, medical tape. “How far is the doctor?”

  “Sullivan’s not answering.” Leonard paces the kitchen, hitting redial again.

  “It’s not that bad.” I struggle to sit up, igniting fire in my bicep, but collapse back on the counter, my head thunking on a rolled towel, rattling my skull. I wince against the light, my pupils still dilated from adrenaline. “Okay,” I pant, “maybe it’s a little bad.”

  “Jamie’s not answering either.” Kitty huddles on a stool beside me, her hands shaking so much I think she might drop her phone. “Just keeps going to voicemail.”

  “Where is he?” Barb says, her shoulders shaking with renewed tears. “Why won’t he call?”

  Poor Barb, she can’t bear to look at me, though I’ve told her over and over she has nothing to be sorry for. I couldn’t be happier she’d had the guts to pull the trigger, despite the lapse in reason. I’d been fast enough to bat her hand aside to avoid any major damage. At the time I felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing but Kitty where she stood backed against the panic room wall, a scream dying on her lips. I feel the bullet wound now though, white-hot pain.

  It’s been a half hour since we returned. We all guess Jamie has gone after the sedan. But that means he’ll be looking for Richard and what if I’ve got it wrong?

  “Did you see the driver, Mr Gallagher?”

  Leonard shakes his head. “It was too dark. He drove without lights. The car had no plates.”

  “No plates?” My head swims.

  “Shit,” Miriam mutters, bending over the bandage.

  Trying to peer down my arm makes me cross-eyed.

  A lot of red.

  “This is saturated,” she says.

  “Can you get the bullet out, Miriam?” Leonard stands beside his daughter.

&nbs
p; “It’s a lot of blood but the bullet is probably what’s keeping more in her body than out at the moment. Besides which, I only have Fretizine. It’s not a real anaesthetic.”

  “I’m calling an ambulance,” Leonard says.

  “No!” Miriam and I shout in unison; the effort nearly wipes me out.

  She squeezes her temple between thumb and forefinger. “We need Jamie.”

  “I don’eed Jamie.” Closing my eyes only makes the dizziness worse. “Jus’take it out, Miriam. Gimme the damn Fretizine.”

  “You’ll heal faster if Jamie’s here.” She purses her lips, somehow managing to look both worried and grudging. “Skin to skin contact with your Synergist would quadruple the rate of recovery and ease the pain.”

  Kitty fumbles her phone, trying for him again. It clicks to voicemail. “Turn your bloody phone on! Evie needs you! Barb shot her!”

  Barb’s sobbing becomes shrill. Leonard gives his daughter an exasperated look before crossing to his wife, wrapping his arms around her.

  Kitty cringes. “Sorry.”

  “Mrs Gallagher – Barb,” my lips move numbly, my tongue loose in my head. “Please don’be upset. It wasn’your – I shoulda warn … totally di’the right thing. Protecting Kitty – only thing that matters.”

  “You matter too.” Barb turns in Leonard’s arms. She comes to the counter, her face grief-stricken. “Not just because of what you can do for Kitty.”

  Fog pearls at the periphery of my vision and Barb’s shuddering speech dims in my ears …

  Agony pierces my arm and I jerk back to consciousness, a cry ripping from my throat. Miriam leans over me, her eyes drilling mine. “No fainting.”

  “Okay, damn it.” I shiver and then can’t stop shivering. “Just get it out.”

  Miriam swallows. “Try to reach Jamie.”

  “What?”

  “Like you did when the Warden came, the same way you Harvest or Transfer.”

  “That was through a wall,” I groan. “I have no idea where Jamie is … He could be miles away.”

  “Try.” She grabs supplies from her kit. “I’m going to give you some Fretizine. Kitty, if you think she’s about to faint, I want you to pinch her – hard.”

  Kitty’s hand slips coldly under mine, her grey eyes round with fear, her trembling blending with my own. “Evs, you hear Miriam? I’ll pinch you.”

  “I heard.”

  “Leonard, can you …?” Miriam nods at Barb then the door.

  He nods and leads his wife out through the dining room.

  I close my eyes, trying to think past the pain in my body, reaching into – “Ouch!”

  “Sorry.” Kitty’s shoulders pop up by her ears. “I thought you were fainting.”

  I grit my teeth. “I’m trying to tap the psychic hotline.”

  “I said, sorry.”

  Still frowning, I close my eyes again and take a wild leap into the bandwidth, a cliff-jump-arms-flailing leap into a sea of static. I draw Jamie to the foreground, demanding from my sense-memory the most potent details I have stored there, two days worth of electric touch. I imagine my signal like a magnet extended into the ether, to which only the right frequency will respond, and I pour myself into it. Jamie … Jamie … Where are you? I need – it grates me to think it – help. Jamie, please. I’m hurt. I need – damn it – you. Something spikes, making my ears crackle and roar. For a split second I find him, a lightning strike of recognition and my chest fills, arching my back above the counter, then the fog rolls in and I collapse again.

  Distantly, I feel pressure in my arm, the prick of a needle, the pinch of skin on the back of my hand. I hear a cry and a cell phone ringing, Kitty’s desperate voice, then I slip beneath the film of a dream.

  I rush the stairs two at a time, not feeling the slap of my shoes or the jarring in my knees. Pain, static, rage roars in my head, consuming everything. I give myself to it, heedlessly, abandoning hope, letting the darkness take me. There’s no fighting it, not any more. I ram the security door, blundering into darkness. Three cars. The left. I skid to the ground, hooking my fingers around the licence plate, the corner bolts popping …

  I twist the steering wheel, breaking hard, bracing my arms to keep my body from slamming forwards, then the whiplash back, my head on the upholstered rest, headlights flash, brake lights red as blood. The Mercedes pulls ahead, swerving over the centre line. The sickening pulse throbs back to me, and I grind the ball of my foot into the accelerator, gunning the engine. My black eyes flash in the rearview, then another jolt, the shriek of metal, as I ram the tail guard …

  “I don’t want to take my shoes off.” I would fold my arms but my bicep burns too much and I need them out for balance. The Fretizine and painkillers love gravity and my body keeps trying to give in.

  “When was the last time you slept under covers?” Miriam lowers me by the elbows onto the edge of Kitty’s bed. I can hear Kitty in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, an act so outrageously normal against the unreality of the night.

  “I want to be ready.”

  Miriam fixes me with troubled eyes; I’ve never seen her so completely drained. She looks older. “If you want to be ready, you need to heal, which means you need sleep … and Jamie.”

  Due to Fretizine and blacking out, I have no memory of Jamie returning or of his hands holding me down while Miriam dug in my muscle. Only when she completed the last stitch did I lurch my way back to consciousness. Jamie held me still and said my name, terrifying me with his pallor, his undisguised fear. Something in that moment, in the raw nakedness of his expression, unlatched the clamped box in my heart. I wept, horribly, and let him think it was the pain instead of the futility of wanting him.

  Miriam slips my shoes off, helps me to stand, unzips the skirt from my hips, leaving me in my underwear and tank top. She pulls back the covers and helps me lie down, turning me on my right side, propping pillows beneath my damaged arm. I groan, partly for the pain and partly for the bliss of unbound feet beneath crisp laundered sheets.

  I want to talk to her, tell her something of the confusion in my head, but Kitty comes shuffling out of the bathroom in flannelette pyjamas, looking thirteen and making me ache with her smallness, her vulnerability. She doesn’t say anything, just turns down the quilt and slips like a stone under the covers, sighing like she can’t bear her own weight any longer. She reaches for my good hand, her fingers icy, keeping no heat from the shower.

  “Ow.”

  “Sorry.” Miriam withdraws the needle from my shoulder. “Last dose of Fretizine. Hopefully, Dr Sullivan can provide us with more pain relief in the morning.”

  “Thanks,” I grumble.

  “Jamie will be in shortly.” She nods at the over-stuffed reading chair Kitty keeps by the window.

  How will I sleep with him sitting there?

  “Love you, kiddo.” She kisses my forehead. “Kitty, your father and I will be keeping watch tonight. You’re safe.”

  Kitty nods and Miriam slips away, the door clicking behind her.

  Kitty squeezes my good hand. “Barb gave me sleeping pills.”

  “Good.”

  She stares at me, glassy eyed, heavy lids sweeping low. “Is it Richard or Aiden?”

  My mouth dries, my mind too slow in a Fretizine swamp to handle denial and reassurance but my face has already given me away. “I’m sorry … I don’t know.”

  Her lips quiver. “I hope it’s not Aiden.”

  My throat aches.

  “I liked Aiden …” Her tears spill.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  I wish I knew.

  “Jamie and I will come up with a plan. Miriam will help us. We’ll stop him, Kit. There’s three of us, only one of him. You’ll be safe.”

  Her whisper thins. “I don’t want to die.”

  “You’re not going to die.” I knit my fingers through hers and she slowly unravels. I shape my lips to soothe, praying my promises won’t be empty ones
. “Shhh. You’re safe, I’m here and you’re safe.”

  We stay like that, hands linked. Soon her breaths lengthen and I know she’s asleep. I hold on for as long as I can but Fretizine and fatigue push me down and I fall into sleep darkly.

  My dreams are formless but menacing and at some point I must have rolled onto my back, the white-hot pain knifing me awake. Kitty snores softly on her pillow and though the drug-haze still fogs my brain, I can sense Jamie in the room. I open my eyes on darkness; he must have turned the lamp off when he came in. He sits in his sister’s reading chair, the curtain open so he can look out at the night in silent vigil. A gleam of light on metal rests on his thigh; one of Leonard’s guns, Jamie’s hand loose around it.

  He turns, his eyes meeting mine, moonlight and shadow dividing his face. If I could crack open his thoughts and dip my head in …

  I rise on my good arm, heavy in my bones. Far off, in the back of my head, a whisper of warning, don’t be a fool … stay where you are, but I disable the alarm simply by folding back the quilt and lowering my feet to the floor. I wonder if I have strength to get up and then, somehow, I stand. Almost trancelike, I move through a black-and-white dream, my blissfully naked feet padding from rug to polished boards, instinct, need, inevitability automating my limbs.

  Jamie straightens in the chair, his dark eyes wary.

  I stop before him, cradling my injured arm. “It hurts,” my voice muffles. “Miriam said …”

  He places the gun on the floor then pulls his shirt off over his head, mussing his hair. He bunches the fabric in his hands, looking up at me beneath a knotted brow, waiting.

  I swallow thickly then brush my knuckles over his cheek, letting it mean what I can’t say. One stroke dismantling a blockade, releasing my slow hot tears. He closes his eyes, exhaling like he’s been holding his breath, tension lifting from his shoulders. The shirt falls at my feet and he slides his hands around my waist, leaning to press his forehead against my stomach.

  One armed, I dig my fingers through his hair and curl forwards to follow the broad slope of his back, tracing the angel, mapping his scars. We both sigh, moving like we’re under water, his hands gliding over the swell of my hips, my fingers relearning the curvature of his shoulders.