Briar: Through the Mirrorworld

by C. T. Aaron

  BRIAR

  C.T. Aaron

  Copyright © 2020 by C.T. Aaron

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover artwork: Consuelo Parra

  www.facebook.com/C.PBookCoverdesigns

  Model: Mirish.deviantart.com

  Wolf: Castlegraphics.deviantart

  First Printing, 2020

  ONE

  I lounge against the side of my giant black wolf, Ezzy, in the middle of a junior high soccer field near my house. There’s no place more dark in the entire city of Phoenix, as far as I know. Even light from the nearest houses, with their lamps blazing inside and fairy porch lights turned on, doesn’t come close to reaching us. For as public a place as it is, this field—at night—is the most private place I know. There’s no better place to bring Ezzy, since I obviously can’t have him roaming around with me during the day.

  Which is too bad. I would if I could.

  I reach behind me to scratch one of Ezzy’s ears. He gives a low growl of appreciation, his way of saying Thank you. Being a wolf, his mouth isn’t articulated to actually speak anything other than barks and growls like any dog. Which is also too bad. I’d love to hear him speak. I’d love to know more about where he goes when he’s not with me.

  I cuddle in to him, inhaling the dry thunderstorm scent of his coat, trying to cheer myself up. It hasn’t been the best day. First school, then Mom . . . I should wear a T-shirt that says Angsty Teen in case anyone can’t tell.

  Ezzy turns his head to give me a quick sniff.

  “Yeah, I’m pissed. How could you tell?”

  He whines, once, softly.

  “Just . . . school, I guess. I got a C on a calculus test.”

  I watch his golden eyes as he tries to fully understand what I’m talking about. As with all Familiars—at least the two I know about—Ezzy is pretty smart and can understand everything I say, but it’s not like he takes AP Calc with me. I imagine his canine brain pondering, What is a . . . calculus?

  “Hey, Big Dog,” I mutter into his coat. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t’ve gotten a C.”

  I’ve never heard Ezzy laugh, of course, but I get the feeling he would have when I say it. I snuggle closer into his flank and stroke his long black hair. He always looks like he’s just been freshly groomed, but I don’t see how that’s possible.

  Then again, I don’t see how it’s possible that I can summon a giant wolf to my side any time I want, so . . . here’s me not thinking too hard about it. It’s just something Counterparts like me can do. I don’t know how it works, and I don’t know why everyone on Earth can’t do it—summon their Familiar to their side the way I can. It’s just this rare thing, like albino tigers or double joints.

  I’ve known Ezzy since I was eight, right around the same time it was dawning on me that I didn’t care about all the crazy boy stuff my friends always talked about. I didn’t really hang out with them these days, and not just because we all went to different junior high and high schools. I never exactly told them I didn’t like boys, but I think they knew. We sort of went our own ways eventually.

  Luckily, I have Maebry. I send her a text.

  Still at church?

  A thumbs-up icon instantly pops onto my screen. Maebry goes to a church called Dayspring where no one cares we’re dating, or if they do, they’re not saying anything about it, not that it’s anybody else’s business in the first place. She’s asked me like five times to come help out at this monthly event they call Open Table, which is for LGBTQ people and friends, but I never do. It feels hypocritical to do something at a church, even hers. God and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms lately.

  After I’ve played several particularly terrible iPhone games, Ezzy lifts his head. I feel his massive heart beat a little quicker.

  Someone is coming, he seems to say. His ears are tall and alert.

  I’d sensed Maebry coming before he did. It’s not a girlfriend thing, it’s a Counterpart thing. We can sense other people who can call their Familiars to this world.

  “It’s just Maebry, Ez. No worries.”

  Ezzy chuffs once and keeps his guard up. I appreciate that about him. He’ll do anything to protect me.

  People on Earth would go nuts if they knew about Familiars. No Counterpart has revealed their Familiar in hundreds or even thousands of years, I don’t think. If they had, everyone would have heard about it. Well, no; there’s one chump in northern California who keeps bringing his Bigfoot-like Familiar to our world now and then, generating enough sightings to keep his History Channel reality show running. What a scam. Familiars shouldn’t be used like that.

  My phone buzzes, tickling my palm. Maebry’s text shines bright in the darkness.

  Are you here? I can’t see you.

  Head to the middle, I write back.

  She sends me another thumbs up.

  Ezzy and I see her at the same time. He gives a little whine of recognition. I get to my feet and so does Ezzy as my girlfriend, Maebry Rosado, ambles across the field toward us. Her hands are stuffed into the hip pockets of white walking shorts, her low-top pink Vans soundless on the grass.

  “Hey you,” she says, giving me a hug.

  I hug her back and mutter “Hey” into her ear. She leans in and kisses me, and I taste some kind of fruit punch on her breath.

  Mae holds a hand out to Ezzy. “How you doing, Clifford?”

  Ezzy, who stands more than five feet at his shoulder, slips the tip of his big pink tongue across her palm, making Mae giggle. Not that anyone else knows about Ezzy, but if they did, I sure as hell wouldn’t let them call him Clifford. Mae gets a pass. She’s Mae.

  She and I sit on the grass, legs crossed, facing each other. Ezzy flops beside me, scanning the dark field.

  “You can pop Aison over, you know,” I tell Mae. For about the hundredth time.

  She shrugs and pulls off her red leather backpack. “I think people could at least grasp the idea of a big wolf if they saw Ezzy. Aison showing up here? Not so much.”

  “Fair point, Maisy-Mae.”

  Mae is a Counterpart too. It’s how we met last year. Counterparts can sense one another from a certain distance, and there are not many of us, not that I’ve ever noticed. The sensing is kind of like a sneeze that never happens: tickling and irritating, and would feel so much better if you could just get it out. If one is within, say, fifty yards or so, that “sneeze” reflex kicks in. Of course it’s not a sneeze, that would be weird. It’s just a tickle in your head, or in your brain maybe.

  One morning about half way through sophomore year, I was shuffling to my lab science class, head down as usual, when I caught the unmistakable sensation of another Counterpart near by. I lifted my head and found Maebry staring straight at me from a drinking fountain where she’d stopped.

  I’d kept walking, but our eyes stayed locked right up until I ran into a teacher. When I sensed other Counterparts in the past and made eye contact, we just sort of gave each other a little nod of recognition. That’s just how it goes. It feels instinctive not to group together and form little Campus Counterpart Clubs. Just safer to keep to ourselves.

  With Mae, though, it had been something different right away. For one, she was beautiful: shoulder length black hair she kept straight, dark eyes that never seemed to blink, and she always seemed to smell just a little like autumn leaves. None of which—

  Okay, maybe not none, but very little of which is what made me fa
ll for her in that moment. There was something else, and not just that she was a Counterpart.

  There’s always been something different with her. I’m still trying to figure out what it is, exactly. To be honest—it’s a little intimidating.

  Maebry puts a hand on my knee. “What’s up? You’re pissed. What happened?”

  “How could you tell?”

  “You’ve got that Bert and Ernie uni-brow thing going on that always happens when you’re mad.”

  Automatically, I touch my face. Yep. Mae’s right.

  Maebry scoots around—carefully, to not get grass stains on her shorts—and scratches my back, which she knows I love. I bow my head to curl my back where she’s scratching. “A little higher, please . . .”

  Mae laughs, a shiny alto as clear and unfettered as a kid. “Talk to me, B. I just saw you after sixth hour, what could have gone wrong since then?”

  “That was, like, six entire hours ago, so, plenty.” Despite myself, I let out a big theatrical sigh. I try not to do stuff like that, but I sort of feel it’s okay with Maebry. “So that C I got on the calc test? I told Mom. And she had this big flip out, like I’m never going to college or something.”

  “Grr. That sucks. ”

  And it did, but for more reasons than just Mom giving herself a hernia. And suddenly, I don’t want to bring it up. No, wait—I do want to bring it up because time is running out, and if I don’t get some answers from Mae, I might just go full-on nutso crazy.

  Instead of actually talking about it, of course, I stand so I can pace and cross my arms, which I do a lot. Honestly, I’m too nervous to talk to Mae about what’s really bugging me. So I keep blaming Mom instead. “I wish she’d just freaking calm down! It’s a C, it’s not the end of the world.”

  Mae nods. She knows when not to say anything. Another reason I love her so much.

  “And I mean, it’s AP. It’s not like a C in Consumer Math or something. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then why’s she always yelling at me?” I . . . yell.

  Mae stands and takes both of my hands in hers. “Because it’s not about the grade, is it?”

  “I don’t want to be empathetic right now, Mae.”

  “That’s cool. You need coffee,” she announces. “And quite possibly copious amounts of chocolate.”

  I look into her bright brown eyes, and see her expression is utterly serious—and maybe a bit mischievous. Not a word I think I’ve ever used out loud, and definitely not to describe Maebry. She tends to be a goody of the two-shoes variety.

  I’m more of a goody one-shoe, at best.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  She squeezes my hands. “Let’s go then. It’s on me.”

  It’s “on her” more often than I like, but I’m too cranky to say it.

  “You good, Big Dog?” I say to Ezzy.

  He gets to his feet.

  “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “Bye, Ezzy,” Mae says.

  Ezzy nuzzles my shoulder. I pop him away. He disappears instantly, like he’d never been there.

  I don’t know where Familiars go when they are sent away, or where they are coming from when we summon them. Calling Ezzy is just like flexing a muscle. It’s an act of will, like writing something down or taking a step. No big deal, and not the kind of thing that can happen on accident—or it never has, anyway, except for that first time when I was little. I was in our tiny backyard. Mom and Dad were screaming at each other, and I’d gone out there to try and get away from it. One second I was by myself, the next a huge wolf was standing in front of me, head lowered, his golden eyes burning into mine. No clap of thunder, no blue electricity. First he wasn’t there, then he was.

  I didn’t scream, and I wasn’t scared. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Right away, even at that age, I somehow knew he was a secret. An important secret. I’ve got others since then—secrets, I mean—but I’d sooner share them than ever tell anyone about Ezzy. Mae had the same experience with Aison when she was a kid.

  We walk to Pair A Dice Coffee, a crappy little place attracting game geeks, RPG nerds, and assorted other doofuses . . . like us. It’s busy for a Wednesday, but not so crowded that we can’t find a small square table in the far corner when its vacated by a couple of guys dressed like vampires. We could walk to a Starbucks nearby—because there’s always a Starbucks nearby—but not going is part of Mae’s personality. “Standing up for the little guy” and all that.

  I toss myself into one chair while Mae orders for us. She knows what I like: a very large blended ice thing called Chocolate Death Throes. It’s every bit as good as it sounds.

  Mae slides my Death Throes across the table. She gives my arm a rub and scoots the opposite chair closer to me. Mae ordered a pumpkin spice latte with coconut milk, because she’s Mae.

  “Is that helping?” Maebry asks as I drop a strawful of chocolate into my upturned mouth.

  “Mmm-hmm. Wait, helping what?”

  “To calm you down. You looked like you were going to do some straight-up ultraviolence back there.”

  I am still pissed, but the chocolate helps. “Better, I guess.”

  “Good. Ready to talk?”

  “About what.” Like I don’t know.

  “About your mom.”

  I pantomime spitting out my drink.

  She licks her blue plastic stopper, like she needed one on the walk from the counter to the table. She’s so careful. “Listen B, this whole ongoing thing with your mom . . .”

  I roll my eyes and sink in the chair, bracing for a pep talk. She’s very good at them. But it’s not Mom—or not just Mom—that I’m upset about.

  “Mae, wait. Look, we both know I can ace calc. That’s not the problem.”

  “Okay?”

  I play with my straw. We need—I need—to have this conversation, but I don’t want to, because what if I’m wrong? About her, and about us? Instead of enjoying the next year and half, bringing this up could end it all right now for all I know.

  Frowning at my Death Throes like it’s the drink’s fault I’m here, I say, “It’s about graduation. And college.”

  I shut up, hoping like hell she’ll say what I want her to without me pushing.

  But Mae is silent.

  I peek at her. Mae is sitting straight, eyes widened a bit, staring at the entrance. She didn’t even hear me.

  “Oh, wow,” she says.

  I sit up and turn. And, I don’t know why, but my heart shudders a bit when I see who she’s looking at: A tall, commercially attractive boy with deeply tan skin and a mess of squirrely black hair, dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt but bright white shoes. He wears a thin gold chain necklace.

  He’s staring right back at Maebry. Honestly, it reminds me of the first time I saw her myself—that intensity, that sense of something different about her.

  He sees it too.

  But . . . so does she. In him.

  And he’s a Counterpart.

  “What?” I say. “Who’s that?”

  “Oscar,” she says.

  The guy slowly walks our direction, like he’s afraid of stepping on a land mine along the way. Mae toys with a napkin, moves her cup from one side of the table to the other, smooths her shorts across her legs, moves her cup again.

  “Okay . . . so who’s Oscar?”

  Mae clears her throat and does not look at me.

  “My ex-boyfriend.”

  TWO

  Every muscle in my face melts as I stare at Mae.

  She still does not meet my eyes.

  The guy standing beside our table is, I can acknowledge, hot. Not my type, being a boy and all, but he ain’t hard to look at. I’ll admit that much.

  And this is her ex?

  “Hey, Maebry,” Oscar says, shaking black hair out of his eyes. “I thought that was you. How’s it going?”

  “Um. Good! Good. Wow. Hi.”

  My eyebrows crash together, no doubt making that uni
brow again. Mae sounds flustered. A word I’d never thought to use to describe her.

  Pointedly, I hold my hand toward Oscar. “I’m Briar.”

  “Hey. Oscar.” His hand is warm and soft. I get the impression he’s either in a band or wishes he was.

  A full-on Bitch grows under my skin. I hate this guy with the fiery heat of a million burning suns. And I’m furious at Maebry. At my girlfriend.

  My girlfriend who never mentioned she’d had a boyfriend.

  “How do you know Mae?” I ask, not even trying not to sound bitchy. Maebry seems to have suddenly lost all powers of speech.

  Oscar’s eyes narrow as he glances at her. “We dated for awhile. Last year. So . . . I guess she’s my ex. Or, maybe I’m hers. Whichever.”

  I level my gaze at Maebry. “Wow. You don’t say. Wow. Who knew?”

  Oscar grins with one half of his mouth. “Never mentioned me, huh?”

  “You could say that.” I tap my plastic cup against the table, hard. It splashes cold on my hand. “Dated, huh? Well. That is . . . news.”

  Maebry gives herself a shake. “Sorry. Um. Yeah. We went out for awhile before I moved here. It was before we met, B.”

  I cross my arms. “Uh-huh.”

  Oscar holds up his hands. “Well, hey, I just wanted to say hi.”

  Except based on his expression, that is not all he wanted. He squints a little at my girlfriend.

  “Does she know?”

  Maebry relaxes. “Yeah. She’s a Counterpart.”

  I suck in a breath even as Oscar nods and says, “Cool. What do you have?”

  I choke on air and my pitch raises three octaves. “I’m sorry?”

  “What kind of Fam?”

  Way too much happening way too fast. “He knows about Aison, then?”

  “I was still learning how it all worked,” Mae says. “I was scared. And Oscar—”

  Mae stops short and shoots Oscar a glance I can’t interpret. He meets her gaze, still with that little half smile on his face.

  “—knows stuff,” Mae concludes.

  “Stuff? About Fams? What kind of stuff?”