by Lila Felix
My mind drifted to Collin. I knew he worried about us—about me. He was our column in a crumbling mansion. It was hard enough for Collin to handle Colby, now he had to handle Sanctum as well.
“Do you have a plan or did you come out here to annoy me to death? Wait, is that your plan—annoy the Synod to death? That sounds like a decent plan, but in reality, Colby has already tried it. It just makes them extra pissy.”
His silence buzzed in my ears. The voices quelled a bit in his presence, not silent like when Colby was around, but muted, like he’d thrown a wet blanket over them.
I’d never tell him that. He might stay longer—or leave earlier.
We were stuck between the devil and the witches in a battle that I thought no one would actually win.
I’d known for a while. I’d strategized the efforts. No matter which path we took, someone was going to get hurt.
And the guilt anchoring my soul pulled me further into the depths by the second. By not travelling to Paraiso, I was denying my privilege and duty.
Denying a calling directly from the source.
Those souls were stuck in the Fray. It was an ungraspable area between time and space, where hours didn’t tick by and the sun neither rose nor set. Everything was gray—floating and out of reach.
They were imprisoned and I was the key.
“I hear them too, you know. Of course, I want to drag them down to hell. It’s like an itch I can’t scratch—like having to wear one of those sweaters Gran used to make us for Christmas. But their cries—at least they would have some resolution, even if I dragged them to the pit. They’d surely shut the hell up.”
I kicked his leg. I meant it to hurt him, but a good breeze could’ve done more damage. “Sounds like empathy—maybe pity?”
He snorted. “Don’t forget, brother. I am not like you. I am evil to the core. You can twist my motives all you want, but there is no real good left in me.”
The clouds concurred, rolling in with their grief and grayness. It was my turn to roll my eyes.
“There was once some good in you.”
“Once—maybe. Not anymore. It was eaten away. You were enlightened by your gifts. I was plagued by mine. It’s a give and take world, Theo. When something is given to you—sometimes it’s taken from someone else.”
There were questions burning in me, and I thought there was no better time to ask. “When did you know? Why did you know so soon and it took me forever?”
For a long time, he looked to the sky and ground his jaw back and forth. It made me think he was making up a lie or figuring out a way to smooth over the truth.
“Because I sought it. I peeled away the layers and allowed the darkness to filter through. It was there all along. I just had to let it loose. Plus, I wasn’t clouded by love and Colby.”
I corrected him. “Love and Colby aren’t separate. They are the same.”
Torrent crinkled up his nose in what looked like disgust.
He got up to leave, but I stopped him. If I could restore the Resin, there was a possibility I could revive goodness into the shell of a man standing next to me.
“I don’t even know how to get them from the Fray—even if I wanted to.”
“How do you flash?”
His back was still turned to me.
“Same as the rest of them. I picture the place I want to go and then go. But this is different—I think.”
“The Fray is just another place, except it’s not tangible. And time doesn’t move there like it does here.”
He chortled. “You’ve never been there, brother. How would you know?”
“The stories.”
He flicked a piece of grass at me. “Come on. You and I both know that stories are nothing more than gossip. Some of it is sanded and some of it is bloated. Either way, none of it is even close to the truth.”
Torrent knew how to dismantle my bones from the inside out. All I had relied on were stories.
But his words weren’t bloated at all. They needled my chest. I had no idea what the Fray was about because I’d never surrendered to the pull. I was still fighting an unwinnable battle.
The tug to do what I was born to do wasn’t just a little pull anymore—it reached down into my chest and dragged me with it, demanding I heed the call. I had to know a little about what I was doing before I was lost myself—except there would be no hope of ever returning for me.
“Have you told her yet?”
As though her name, even the thought of her name, wasn’t enough to tether me here, I felt the Earth buckle beneath me, settling me in place.
I never should’ve told her. Minute by minute I regretted going after her, seeking her out in Brazil, though she’d told me to stay far away.
It was me this time that should’ve stayed away from her.
She wasn’t like me.
She could live without me.
I couldn’t live without her safe.
“I’ll take your silence as a no.”
“You can take it as none of your business.”
He chuckled. It wasn’t the laugh I remembered. This laugh was laced with venom. “Ahh, Theo, but you see, it is my business. Who do you think is going to watch over her in your absence? The Viking?”
Under Colby’s influence, everyone involved gradually started calling Collin ‘The Viking.’
I thought he liked it more than he let on.
The way I thought he liked Colby more than he let on.
In fact, I was betting everything on it.
“Collin can handle it. He was a Guardian once.”
“Yeah, because guarding books is the same as guarding Colby. He’d lose her before he even knew he was supposed to watch over her.”
“I guess you think I’m supposed to trust you with her?”
He snorted. “The last thing I think you should do is trust anyone. Besides, she’s not a puppy you leave for boarding.”
Trust—it was a word I couldn’t count on anymore.
The only people I trusted were me and Colby. Scratch that, just Colby. There were blips of time where my thoughts were so tightly fused with those in the Fray that I was already lost.
“Do us all a favor and don’t just disappear on her. No one wants to deal with that drama. I came for the fight, not for the antics or the drama,” he offered.
“I’ve never needed you before and I don’t need you now.”
He patted my shoulder before flashing away and said, “Yeah. Sure you don’t.”
When in doubt, go to Tahiti—seriously.
There are beaches.
And no one knows about flashers.
If they do, they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut. No one wants the Synod around.
Ari and I flashed into the ocean. It was easier that way. People thought it was a storm on the sea and when we swam in, it was assumed we were just another set of tourists. It helped that there was already a storm on the horizon and our lightning blended in perfectly.
I was running again. But at least this time I was aware of it. My cells felt revived and reinvigorated as the power of the lightning left its tracks in my veins. It wasn’t like Theo was going to come after me. He was too busy with a greater purpose.
A greater purpose that was killing him minute by minute.
“I’m going to get us drinks.” Ari tugged on my hair as she passed. I tugged off my white dress so it could dry while I watched the waves from under a random umbrella someone had left on the beach. We’d thrown on swimsuits before leaving—we didn’t have to discuss the location. The ocean was always, and would always, be my first choice.
I waved her off. I didn’t want anything to drink, unless she was serving me a tall glass of alone time. That was what I needed—some good old-fashioned alone time.
Ari was smothering me—and Theo was abandoning me.
They all thought I needed a babysitter. All the sudden, everyone around me assumed that I was breakable when before they afforded me all the alone time I’d
wanted and some I didn’t care for.
Though I should’ve been careful what I wished for—there was a chance I would be alone for the long run after all. When I’d wanted him around, I’d distanced myself for his benefit. And now that he could be around me—I felt him slipping from my grasp by the day. I wasn’t stupid—far from it. My voice was no longer louder than those in the Fray.
Our love was only so strong—their hold was stronger.
He spoke to them in his sleep—or that fitful almost-rest he called sleep.
He woke to their alarm, louder than any annoying ringtone.
There was nothing I could do.
I now knew why Sevella was so sorrowful—there was nothing but sorrow for the female of the Eidolon.
“I don’t know what this shit is, but the guy put a crap-ton of coconut milk in it. It has to be good.”
The thought of coconut made my stomach turn. Coconut was like eating sweetened grass. If I wanted to eat grass, I’d become a cow. “I hate coconut. And I said I didn’t want anything.”
She never listened to me, except when I didn’t want her to, and then she went all Dumbo ears on me.
She sipped for a while and then rolled her eyes back in her head in some kind of coconut-induced coma. “Yeah, well, I don’t really know how to convey a bar order in Tahitian. Get over it. Plug your nose and chug to your toes.”
Ari was on a rhyming kick. She claimed it was the only thing keeping her from dying of boredom at the house. We’d spent weeks waiting on something to happen—what, I didn’t know.
“If Theo was here, he probably knows the language. Sorry.”
Everyone thought they had to tiptoe around me. The whole idea of that enraged me.
I claimed it would be the death of her—the rhyming. She’d choke on her own words and die a poetic death.
I took a test sip and nearly gagged. “It tastes like someone pissed in the ocean and then threw it all in the blender with a can of condensed milk.”
She threw the rest of her drink back in one gulp. “Like you’ve ever tasted condensed milk.”
“I did. Collin was making some cake thing and I tasted it.”
Finally, I had been convinced I didn’t have to remain a waif in order to flash.
“Gross. He has a thing for you. He wants you to taste more than his cake.”
There was no point in responding. Collin did not have a thing for me other than a protective streak. He treated me like his library. His own personal, chatty, needy, sarcastic as hell, library.
I saw a flash of lightning in the distance and could almost feel the reflection in my eyes. All I wanted in that instant was simplicity—which was ridiculous. There was never a time in my life that I’d been a simple girl. I was frantic at best—careless at worst—and perfectly selfish right in the middle.
I missed that lightning, that constant jolt of pure raw energy. The less I flashed, the less I felt it.
There were places Theo and I hadn’t seen—things we hadn’t done.
“No one says that anymore—he has a thing for you. And he does not.”
As I finished my sentence, Ari was already up and on her way for another ocean-piss cocktail. The least she could do was make her self-medication taste good.
I watched the ocean for a while, allowing my torso to rock with the waves, lulling myself to the Earth’s lullaby.
I didn’t know what made me turn around to check on Ari—maybe the passing of too much time or a hint of raised voices, but when I did, I knew what was happening. As if the Almighty was giving me backup, the clouds that once hung in the distance barreled in along the coast and thunderous roars rang over the music causing all the beings on the beach to run.
I needed the cover of lightning.
They hadn’t seen me yet—the Resin.
A group of them must’ve already been in Tahiti, waiting. They couldn’t flash, so there was no way they could’ve gotten here that fast.
There were too many of them—at least ten. Ten was a lot for a group of people who, according to the government and the murmurs of the Lucent, were under the radar—or a myth.
Walking as swiftly as I could, I got close to Ari without drawing attention to myself. I wanted to run, but those assholes didn’t need any more of a clue than someone had already given them.
And then Ari saw me and screamed my name.
My best friend was not meant to be a spy—or anything close. Someone needed to windpipe-punch her.
That’s when I ran—sprinted to her as fast as I could.
And just when it finally registered on their faces that Ari wasn’t the only flasher on the beach, I grabbed her and got the hell out of there.
Something was way off. I hadn’t told anyone where we were or where we were going.
“Were those…” she stuttered once we’d reached our destination—Portugal—again. We were both in our bikinis and shivering, not from the cold.
“Does it matter? What were you going to do—just stand there and let them take you? Jesus, Ari. We have the ability to disappear into thin air and you just stood there! You’re going to be effing useless when the zombies come.”
Trembling wracked me as I spoke. We had enough going on without Ari getting herself kidnapped—or worse. I had meant the last part to make her laugh, but there was no smile to be had.
She lashed back at me. “I screamed—screaming is not just standing there, damn it.”
I popped the bikini string on her neck, hoping my words would sting as much as that string. “You screamed after you saw me. Before that, you were just going to order them a drink and go quietly.”
The door slammed against the wall after being violently opened. Collin was in full force. “Whoa! It sounds like two feral cats in here. What the hell is going on?”
Ari and I both turned around and pointed at his husky face and in perfect sync said, “Butt out, Viking!”
“For the last time, I am not a Viking. My ancestral line is not Germanic.”
Ari mocked him verbatim. She was actually spot on. I’d have to get her to teach me how to do that.
Obviously, the adrenaline had finally kicked in.
“Run along, Guardian. There are no books to protect here. Just two girls about to throw down because one is a raging wench because her boyfriend is caught in la-la land. I had that shit handled back there.”
I’d still been facing Collin when she let that little undercover comment fly. If I had been looking at her, she’d have seen my tears. There would be none of that. I had to be strong for Theo.
“Your idea and my idea of handling shit must be way different. I’m surprised you didn’t flash them to the place they wanted to take you.”
She threw a dress at me, but the thing landed a foot from her, aggravating her even more.
“You shut up. I’m leaving you and your whiny ass.”
The last weeks of hell welled in me and I let it go in her direction. “Tell us how you really feel, Ari. Guess what? Last time I checked, no one was forcing you to be here. If you’re so unhappy and you need a Resin boyfriend, go back to coconut hell and find them. I’m sure they are waiting.”
She stomped her foot and yelled back, “Don’t make me claw your eyes out again.”
Ari forever referred to that incident in second grade when she accidentally scratched my eyelid as the memory of when she took me out—like she was a Barbie lunchbox toting hitman. It didn’t even require a bandage. We put antiseptic on it because she was fond of mud and nose picking back then and my mom was afraid I’d contract the plague.
“Oh, I’m shaking in my stilettos. You’re so badass. Last night I saw you run from a fly—a fly! It wasn’t even a big fly, it was one of those fruit flies. And you didn’t claw my eyes out. You barely scratched me with your baby-pink fingernails.”
“Whatever, we can’t all be perfect like you.”
I turned on her so fast that I almost fell down. “I’ll say it again. If you don’t want to be here, no one is forc
ing you.”
Inside my words held a blazing rage, but they came out like chirps from a bird’s nest.
“You want me to leave?”
“If all you’re going to do is complain…”
She repeated her question and I let it hang itself with the noose of frustration in the air. I didn’t want her to leave.
And she didn’t want to leave. I knew that.
The fear of being alone made me cling to her—no matter how annoying she was. She was my best friend and one of the only people in the world who I could speak to without distrust that it all would be passed on to the next person. The weight of her potential departure choked me, held onto my sternum and didn’t let go. My knees hit the floor and I wrapped my arms around myself. It was a motion I’d grown to seek comfort in. All I had were my own arms to protect me. My only comfort was myself.
“No, of course not.”
Collin stomped out of the room grumbling. I’d faintly heard the words “crazy females” being spat from his mouth.
As soon as he left, I got up and collapsed on the bed. The stress of what was to come was even more compelling than what had already occurred. It was all too much. Ari curled up beside me and tugged on my hair. Before long, she covered me with a blanket and pressed a kiss to my forehead.
There was just so much I could handle without adding Ari leaving to it.
We were expected to embark on an operation to kill people.
I’d stolen from people before. No one knew about that little operation, even though we are supposed to pass all employment opportunities by the Synod.
I’d stolen—killing wasn’t very far from that.
Rebekah used to say that—one sin was just a step away from the next, like a set of spiral stairs descending into hell.
“I’m sorry. I want to be here. I have to help you—both of you—all of us. We have to do this—so they can’t kill anyone. I don’t want the humans to die.”
I smirked. Ari was the most snobby of them all with respect to humans and our kind. I would’ve thought she’d want them all exterminated. She sat next to me on the bed after throwing on a dress over her bathing suit.
“Ari, there has to be another way.”