“I know she wishes you could have come home,” Miranda said.
Maia twisted her fingers together, her cheeks coloring a bit. “I know.”
Chloe knew that there was probably more to it, but obviously Maia didn't want to discuss it right then. If she'd learned anything during the craziness of the past few months, it was that you had to give people time and space to deal with things on their own sometimes.
“It'll be fun,” Miranda said, trying to break the melancholy mood that had settled in the car. “We always have a blast with Chloe and her aunt. And it'll be cool to have Wren there, too. The women of The Order.” She lowered her voice on the last bit, wiggling her fingers in the air, then grinned. “If it gets too boring, we can always watch a movie or something.”
“Speaking of The Order,” Maia said. “Professor Kennedy gave me the journal. He dropped the final translation in my campus mailbox while I was out.”
“Coward,” Miranda muttered, but Chloe shot her a quelling glance.
“Let’s not worry about it now,” she said. “Put it all on the back burner for Christmas, at least?”
The other girls nodded, and Chloe let out a quiet, relieved breath, glad to focus on family and friends for the next couple of days. The house was going to be full, but Chloe thought it’d be nice. Ethan was spending the holiday with his own family, and it would be weird knowing he was in the same town, but not seeing him for a few days. They'd been all but inseparable for the past couple months, so although they wouldn't be together, she was sure they'd be texting and talking on the phone.
Her phone buzzed, and she smiled at his latest message: Dad's going on and on about MBA vs. law school. Kill me now. Chloe shot back a quick reply and glanced out the window at the side mirror. She could see the headlights of Wren's mom's car following close behind. Since Wren and her mom were new in Gatesburg and had no other family around, Aunt Cara had encouraged her to invite them, and Chloe was glad. Not only because she liked Wren, but for some reason she felt settled having the girls around. Safe. She couldn't explain it, most likely because the reasons were not entirely of this world or whatever. The Order was a team, she supposed. It only made sense that they would feel better when they were together. She only wished Beck could have been there. And Dylan, but of course that was impossible at the moment. Beck was with his family and Dylan? Well, Dylan was forbidden to even see them, so Chloe figured spending Christmas together might have been pushing it.
The squat, brick rambler Chloe called home came into view and they pulled into the driveway, blinking red and green lights along the roofline reflecting off the damp concrete. They opted to leave the presents in the trunk until the rain let up, and rushed to the front door, coats pulled over their heads to protect them from the icy drops.
“Merry freaking Christmas!” Wren called out as she and her mom followed them in. The blonde hunched over a small poinsettia to try and protect it from the rain.
Chloe's Aunt Cara whipped open the door before they could even knock. “Come in, come in before you wash away!” she said with a laugh, waving them in. They hung their coats on the hooks by the door and Chloe shivered, shaking the damp from her hair. She made the introductions and Wren handed over the poinsettia, to Aunt Cara's delight.
A fire burned in the little fireplace, only used once a year for the Christmas Eve celebration, and mismatched stockings hung from the mantle—Aunt Cara made sure there was one for everyone. Chloe smiled at the sight of her own, decorated with a sequined reindeer with googly eyes. A Christmas tree stood before the picture window, trimmed with multicolored lights, handmade ornaments, and strings of popcorn sprayed with glitter. The air smelled of cinnamon, baked bread, and roasted turkey, and Chloe's mouth watered.
Miranda's parents were already there, wine glasses in hand as they welcomed their daughter home. It was . . . nice. Calming. A respite from the madness they'd all been dealing with since Chloe's first vision.
It was almost enough to let her forget, for a little while at least.
Dinner was a loud, festive affair, full of laughter and eating too much. For those precious minutes, thoughts of battles and danger fell away, and the younger members of the party enjoyed themselves.
“And then, these two—” Miranda's dad pointed with his fork toward her and Maia. “—came back in the house, covered in mud from head to toe!”
“We were having a spa day!” Miranda protested loudly to be heard over the laughter.
“It was very rejuvenating,” Maia added with a haughty sniff.
“Well, it took three baths to get it out of your ears,” Miranda's mother said with a wide smile. “How old were you anyway? Five? Six?”
Maia cleared her throat and looked down at her lap. “Six. Miranda was five.”
Miranda had told Chloe the story. It was the summer Maia's father had left for the first time. Her mom had been devastated, unable to care for the little girl in her grief, so Maia had spent a month of the summer in Lamsden with Miranda's family. He'd come back, that time. And everything went back to normal, at least for a while.
The laughter stopped and Chloe could feel the instant the joviality turned sad, as memories emerged of the reason Maia had been there in the first place.
“Well, I can highly recommend the regimen,” Miranda said, trying to break the tension. “I mean, look at this skin.” She waved her hands toward her own face. “Not a wrinkle in sight!”
And with that, the somber mood lifted and the happy conversation continued. Maia shot her a grateful smile and Miranda grinned in response, nudging Maia's shoulder with her own.
After dinner, Chloe and Wren came in from the kitchen and whisked Miranda and Maia away to Chloe’s room as the adults settled around the fire with glasses of wine.
“What's going on?” Miranda asked as Chloe closed the door behind them.
Chloe shrugged. “Looks like our vacation from The Order will have to wait.”
Wren glanced at her before she spoke. “Dylan called me. His dad isn't too thrilled with all of—” she waved a hand “—you know.”
“I got that impression,” Miranda replied. She crossed the room and sat on Chloe's bed. “Professor Kennedy contacted Maia earlier.”
Maia nodded. “He basically told me we're on our own, from here on out. Then he said he'd already translated the journal.”
“Well, that was fast,” Wren said.
Maia huffed out a laugh. “No, I mean he'd already done it. Before he ever met us. Remember he'd had the thing for years—you think he could resist knowing what it actually said?”
Chloe crossed the room and sat on her bed. “So he lied.”
“I guess he wanted to make sure we were worthy or whatever before he passed it on.” Maia shrugged. “Anyway, like I told you guys earlier—” she waved a hand toward Chloe and Miranda. “I have the translation now.”
“Why you?” Wren asked. “I thought Miranda's the Scribe.”
“My guess? He didn't want to face her,” Maia replied. “Or maybe he's trying to keep it professional, you know, since he's my advisor. Pretending this is still just research for a project that he promised to help me with.” She'd brought up her satchel and rifled through it. “Anyway, I have it here.” She pulled the translation out and offered it to Miranda. “I’ve been going through it, but haven’t found anything new yet.”
Miranda took the stack of pages, flipped through them absently, and let out a frustrated breath. “Sure would be easier with the help of someone who’s been reading it for years. Jerk.”
“Oh, don't be too hard on the professor.” Wren leaned against the desk and tucked a strand of pale blonde hair behind her ear. “He's worried about his kid. Trying to protect him.”
“Well, we need all the help we can get,” Miranda snapped. “The chest supposedly gives us who we need, but because of Dylan's dad, now we're down one.”
“Not really,” Wren said quietly. “Dylan still plans to join us. I saw him yesterday afternoon.”
“Not really,” she replied. “We didn't have much time before his dad came looking for him. Maybe you could try to help.”
Maia winced. “I really don't want to tick off my professor.”
“Then don't get caught,” Miranda said.
Maia's lips quirked. “Yeah, I just meant maybe we should keep working on Professor Kennedy. He knows what's on the line here. Maybe he just needs some time to come to grips with everything.”
Chloe got up and started to pace. “Yeah, you're right. But we need Dylan, so even though I don't like lying to his dad, I think we—” Her head snapped to the side, a shiver running down her spine.
“Chlo?” Miranda crossed to her and reached out slowly. “You okay?”
“I don't—” Tingling raced along her skin, familiar, and she suddenly realized why. “I feel like—” Before she could finish the sentence, the room around her vanished, melting away like a film image caught in the heat of a light bulb, and suddenly she was standing in an open field.
No, not just any field. The field.
She turned in a slow circle, astounded to find herself in the place she'd seen so many times in her visions. She was in the center of the clearing, the grassy field butting up to thick forest on three sides. In the other direction, she could see a hill, the front face scooped out to form a cliff maybe twenty or thirty feet high.
It was quiet. The sun shone overhead, a light breeze swept through the grass and she could hear the faint sounds of birdsong and nature. There was no sign of the mob of people or the swirling black cyclone. Still, she knew this was the place.
“Chloe.” A voice she didn't recognize hissed behind her. She spun around, but there was no one there.
“Hello?” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed before trying again. “Is someone there?”
“Chloe.”
She whipped around again and the air filled with a vicious cackle, the disembodied voice taunting her, whispering her name over and over.
Chloe clapped her hands over her ears. “Stop it!”
In a flash, the clearing was gone, a stifling darkness enveloping her as the voice grew louder. Invisible bonds wrapped around her chest, making it difficult to breathe, and she dropped to her knees. The voice screamed, a chilling sound she could feel to her very bones, and she clenched her eyes shut and fell to the ground, curling into a terrified ball.
“Chloe!”
She looked up, startled by the familiar voice.
“Ethan?”
He stood before her in the darkness and gasped for breath, matching her own strangled inhales. The bonds tightened around her—around him? She couldn't tell anymore. She couldn't breathe and Ethan's pleading eyes bore into hers as she felt herself fading away into unconsciousness, her eyes fluttering shut as the darkness closed in.
She drew a breath, and realized that the pressure on her chest had eased. Her whole body trembling, she inhaled deeply . . . desperately . . . and finally opened her eyes.
She was back in her room, Miranda hovering over her as Wren and Maia watched with concern evident on their frightened faces.
“Jesus, Chloe, are you okay?” Miranda asked.
“I—” She sat up and her head spun. Chloe closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I think so. What happened?”
“You tell us,” Wren said. “One second you were talking, the next you zombied out and fell to the floor.”
“Come on,” Miranda slipped an arm around Chloe and helped her to the bed. She sat down and the dizziness finally receded.
“I saw—” A knock at the door made her jump, still on edge after what had happened. A moment later, Aunt Cara poked her head in.
“Everything all right?” she asked. “I thought I heard someone yelling.”
Miranda opened her mouth to reply, but Chloe squeezed her hand, silencing her.
“Sorry,” she told her aunt. “We just got to laughing and things got a little out of hand.”
Aunt Cara raised an eyebrow, but nodded after a moment. “You girls ready for pie?”
Chloe could tell the others wanted to decline, wanted to talk more about what had happened to her, but she couldn't do it. She needed a moment to absorb it herself.
“Pie?” she said, forcing cheer into her voice. “You don't have to ask me twice!”
They trailed down the hall after Aunt Cara, but Miranda grabbed her wrist to stop her before she could enter the kitchen.
“Chlo, what the hell happened?” she whispered.
She knew she wasn't going anywhere until she gave her something of an answer. “I think—I had another vision.”
“Here?” Miranda looked shocked. “I don’t know why, but I thought we’d get away from all that stuff when we came home.”
Chloe shrugged. “I kind of thought that too,” she said. “But the professor said my gift may be getting stronger . . . ”
“Then it doesn’t really matter where you are,” Miranda said quietly, dragging her back a little from the kitchen doorway, and motioning for Wren and Maia to go on. “Later,” she mouthed to them. To Chloe, she said, “What did you see?”
A chill ran over Chloe's skin at the memory. “It was more than seeing,” she said. “It was pretty overwhelming, like I was right there—” Laughter from the other room drew her attention and she tugged at her wrist to free it. “We'll talk about this later?”
Miranda looked like she wanted to argue, but nodded instead. “Later, right. Just don't forget anything. I'll want to write it all down.”
Chloe almost laughed. Like she could forget any part of the frightening vision. It was seared into her brain . . . appeared behind her eyelids whenever she dared to close them. What she'd seen may shed more light on what was to come—if she could bring herself to analyze it—but it also shook her badly . . . more than anything else had so far. She couldn't help wondering if they were in over their heads.
And for the first time, Chloe was starting to wonder if they could come out of all of this in one piece.
On the west side of Gatesburg, a sleepy little college town currently undergoing a rather disturbing transformation, a woman heading home from a late-night trip to the grocery store spotted a homeless man camped by the side of the road. He sat huddled under a tarp, a shopping cart overflowing with stuffed plastic bags and boxes close by.
The rain had slowed to a quiet drizzle, but still the woman worried about the man, out in the cold on Christmas Eve.
With a wary glance up and down the empty road, she pulled over and fumbled in the back seat for the blanket she always kept there. Pulling her hood up, she ran to the man's makeshift campsite, hunching over to protect the blanket from the rain. She crouched down at the entrance to his tarp-tent and smiled, trying to appear nonthreatening.
The man sat hunched, knees pulled up to his chest and his head tucked down. She wasn't sure if he might be asleep.
“Hi there,” she said. “It's kind of cold out here, so I thought you might be able to use this.” She held out the blanket and waited.
Slowly, the man raised his head, and the woman gasped at what she saw. It wasn't the man's weather-worn skin or his unkempt hair and beard. Not his threadbare shirt or the missing tooth evident between his barely parted lips.
It was his eyes.
They were black, fathomless, swirling with something that looked like smoke, although that didn't make any sense, at all.
It only took a moment for that smoky darkness to take advantage of her frozen, shocked state. To reach out to her, wrap around her, and slither into her wide, shocked eyes and gaping mouth. To settle under her skin until she inhaled sharply at the rush of power running through her blood.
Only a moment for her to spot the knife sitting by the homeless man's booted foot, the metal glinting under the streetlight.
Only a moment for her to grab that knife and slice it across his throat.
He didn't
even fight back. He just sat there, staring at her with those black eyes, blood spurting from the open gash beneath his chin. She watched, head tipped, as if observing a particularly interesting bug.
The sound of a siren and shouts in the distance finally caught her attention and she stood and tucked the bloody knife into her purse. She walked, unconcerned, back to her car, and drove away in the direction of the disturbance, drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
A man stepped out of the shadows and approached the homeless man's encampment. He bent over to peer under the tarp and frowned, taking in the scene and categorizing what he saw.
Then, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call, walking away from the scene until he disappeared into the night.
Miranda was worried.
Chloe's vision had significantly affected the festive atmosphere on Christmas Eve. She'd done her best to disguise her concern, and with Maia and Wren's help, diverted attention from Chloe as much as possible. For her part, Chloe had tried to fake a smile and upbeat attitude, but it was obvious—to Miranda, at least—that she was putting on a show. Feigning a headache, Chloe had gone to bed early. Miranda, however, felt like it was her duty to keep up the facade and stayed up late with the others.
Eventually, Wren and her mom, Tonya, had left for their hotel, planning to return in the morning for brunch. Miranda's own parents were a little taken aback when she'd said she would stay the night at Chloe's, but shrugged it off. The two girls had been joined at the hip most of their lives so sleepovers were customary, even if Christmas Eve made it a little more unusual. Maia opted to go with them, the Summers’ guest room more attractive than the Blake’s sofa bed.
It was midnight by the time Miranda could find refuge in Chloe's room and the old air mattress and sleeping bag she'd claimed as her own since she was a little girl. Chloe was already curled up under the covers, but for Miranda, sleep didn't come easy, and it wasn't for lack of exhaustion.
Chloe was restless, tossing and turning most of the night, with whimpers and gasps giving evidence of nightmares. Once, she sat straight up in bed with a muffled scream, crying out Ethan's name. Miranda met her terrified gaze, Chloe's face lit by the streetlight outside. Her blood ran cold at Chloe's expression, stricken and pale, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.
Super Natural: The New Super Humans, Book Three Page 3