by Jo Holloway
She crossed her arms and stood looming over him from the middle of the room.
Jory raised his palms with an innocent shrug. “Fine. Have you ever thought about you and Wes?”
“What? No.” Her cheeks burned at the unexpected suggestion.
“But neither of you have dated anyone else.”
“So what? Don’t make it weird.” The words were a kneejerk reaction. She spun back to the bed and picked up her laptop. “You guys are my best friends. Don’t make something where there’s nothing.” She sat down and shuffled back on the bed until she leaned against the wall.
“Why? Is there someone else you—”
“Jory!” Cara grabbed Wes’s pillow and threw it across the room at him. “You’re worse than Cassidy.”
Jory dodged the pillow with a laugh. “Okay, okay.” He held up his hands in defeat. “Pretend I never said anything.”
“I already am.”
Her mind flickered to the Skai run last year, to whoever had saved her from falling in the dark. She’d given up looking for the mystery guy around school. Maybe the magic effects of that night had tricked her memory, because whoever he was, he didn’t seem to exist. Tucking the thought away, she focused on the present.
As much as she tried to stop it, her brain wandered. It wasn’t the first time someone suggested she should date Wes. It didn’t feel any more right this time than it had back when Cassidy suggested it in September, and she’d been under the impression Wes hated her at the time. She stared at the laptop screen, pretending to study and trying to not squirm while her thoughts raced.
Aside from losing her friends, her worst fear was causing any friction between the two of them. They’d known each other longer and had been friends since way before she’d come along. She didn’t want to get in the way of that or do anything to cause jealousy. The idea of dating one of them was too complicated to even consider. Why would Jory suggest it? Either way, she definitely couldn’t picture anything with Wes, and her only concern for him at the moment was whether he was okay out in the woods right now.
With that thought, and with her blush back under control, she opened her chemistry notes again and tried to focus while she waited for Jenner. When she next glanced up, Jory’s grin was back, and she hoped that was the end of it.
CHAPTER 3
Stupid Stinking Raven
SHE HAD BACK-TO-BACK classes with the boys on Friday morning, and was relieved to see Wes exactly where he was supposed to be. Since they still sat on opposite sides of the classroom, she didn’t have a chance to talk to them. Instead, she took the opportunity to catch up with Cassidy and Tish.
“How was the rest of that evening at the grotto on Wednesday?” she asked as she slid into her desk chair.
“So fun.” Cassidy had been taking full advantage of the hot days and already glowed with a bronze tan. Her blonde curls framed her face, and her smile lit it up.
She and Jory were probably too similar to have ever worked out. With last night’s conversation still on her mind, Cara quickly cast about for non-dating topics.
“It must be great to have your summer wardrobe out again, right?”
Perfect, Cara, nice pivot.
She hadn’t even finished congratulating herself before Cassidy seized on the topic.
“So great! I love summer. No offense to you and your wardrobe, Cara, but Meygyn has a bunch of awesome clothes. This skirt is hers, actually.” Cassidy pointed to her frilly skirt.
Cara smiled. She could picture it on Meygyn, though the free-spirited girl would probably have worn it with a leather studded vest or some other starkly contrasting combination.
“Meygyn has real shoes too,” Tish added, “not just running shoes.” The reedy brunette cast a disparaging glance at Cara’s sneakers.
“These aren’t even . . .” There was no point mentioning that nobody could actually run far in these shoes.
Cassidy interrupted again anyway. “There’s a bonfire at the grotto tonight. Are you coming?”
“Can’t. We have our last race tomorrow morning, so I’m on the team bus into Portland tonight.”
“Oh, nice. Good luck, and say hi to your mom for me.” Cassidy beamed. “Hey, maybe we can hang out at the Treehouse one night next week instead.”
Mr. Cook entered the classroom, and Cara could only nod quickly. But she did have all of English class to think about how glad she was that she and Cassidy could be friendly again. Going to the Treehouse to socialize, play pool, and watch movies was always a good time. Even if they weren’t going to be besties, Cassidy was fun to hang out with, at least in small doses.
Cara didn’t get to talk to the boys until lunch. She set her tray down at their table with a bang that made a few nearby students glance over. The noise even startled her. She’d misjudged how mad she was at Wes for taking off so abruptly the night before.
“I’m glad you’re back safe and sound so I can kill you. Are you insane, Wes?”
His long eyelashes fluttered as he looked up. “What’s wrong?”
She could have smacked him. Instead, she slid into her seat and leaned in closer. “What’s wrong? You take off, alone, into the woods, at night, without a plan. Are you seriously asking me what’s wrong? What if the guy was there? What if he saw you? What if you got caught out after curfew? There are at least a dozen things I can think of right now that could have gone wrong.”
She kept her voice to a harsh whisper so they wouldn’t be overheard. Jory was giving her some dumb patronizing smile, and now she wanted to smack him too.
“What are you smiling at?” she hissed at him.
His weird smile turned back into his normal sunny grin, and her eyes narrowed at him.
“Nothing,” he replied, “just happy you care so much.”
She glared. This had better not be about their conversation last night.
“Of course I care. If anything happened to you,” she said, glancing at Wes, “to either of you . . .” She looked back at Jory. The teasing glint in his eye disappeared.
“I know, Cara. Wes and I already talked about it when he got back last night. I wasn’t happy about it either, but he was back before curfew and nothing happened.”
Wes had made it back before nine-thirty? She eyed him curiously but chose to ask about the mansion instead. “So nothing happened?”
“No, it was deserted, as usual.” Wes’s low voice sounded sufficiently chastised. The last of her anger toward him dissolved.
“Good,” Cara said.
“Not really.”
His expression stayed dark and unreadable, but she knew what was behind it. Cara and Jory both sighed. They’d had this conversation before, and now wasn’t the time to rehash it when someone might overhear.
“You don’t have to sigh. I know what you’re thinking,” Wes grumbled. “Anyway, it didn’t matter. I talked to Ryx. He confirmed no one except the Whalton family has been there.”
Wes gave her a pointed look at his last statement, and she tried not to cringe. She picked up her sandwich and took a huge bite so she wouldn’t have to say anything. She had a pretty good idea what that look was about.
Stupid stinking raven.
The guilt over lying to her friends about her trips to the mansion was starting to eat at her. Jenyx knew she went—he was with her most times—but he wouldn’t tell anyone. He didn’t claim to understand why she wanted to go back so frequently, but he had adopted a plan of silence where the topic was concerned. Maybe he sensed her unease about her own feelings.
Ryx was a different story. She’d seen the raven there on Tuesday during one of her trips down the path. After swearing him to secrecy, she wasn’t the tiniest bit surprised he had immediately told Wes.
Now Jenyx knew all about it, Jory suspected, though he didn’t know how often she went, and Wes knew about at least the times Ryx had seen her. It wasn’t much of a secret anymore. She pressed a hand to the flutter that started in her chest, and shifted in her chair. The two boys t
alked quietly together, and it gave her a chance to think.
She assumed it was anxiety, but it had started even before Wes had gotten the alert about Stormyx, during the seven months of quiet. No news should have made her start to relax, but it had been the opposite. She started feeling worse and worse the longer she was away from the mansion, and her trips down the path became more and more frequent, like an addiction. She wanted to go right now. She blinked and picked up her apple.
The sheer beauty of the place definitely played a role. Starting in March, colors had swept across the overgrown meadows, surrounding the elegant grey stone walls as the different varieties of wildflowers bloomed. Delaney was overjoyed whenever Cara brought a new bouquet or a single striking bloom back to their room. She took some of the better flowers into her art classroom to paint properly. They had the amazing painting of the foxglove she’d done hanging in their dorm room.
But the beauty wasn’t enough to explain Cara’s obsession either. There was something else drawing her to the place. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.
The sound of scraping chairs brought her back to the moment. The boys were standing, waiting for her. She blinked at her empty tray. She had finished eating without noticing a single bite.
Outside, Jory peeled off for his math class while she and Wes walked together to chemistry. A strained silence stretched between them until Cara couldn’t take it anymore.
“I know that you know,” she blurted.
Wes watched her with raised eyebrows, but his eyes didn’t hold a question.
She swallowed. “I know Ryx told you I was there on Tuesday, okay?”
“And several other times,” Wes confirmed.
She marveled that he didn’t have a more accusatory tone to his voice. After all, she’d just finished yelling at him for doing the exact same thing. Of course, she hadn’t just gotten confirmation of an abducted pyxis and taken off at nighttime, but still.
Wes held her gaze. Now the question was there in his face as his eyes searched hers. She didn’t look away. She wasn’t ashamed the way she’d expected she would be, but this was Wes. He was a Pyxsee too. Maybe he would understand. Maybe he even felt a bit of the same pull. She was tired of all the secrets.
“I don’t know why I go. I can’t explain it,” she started. “I feel anxious all the time, like I need to go check again. Then when I’m there, watching the place, even when it’s empty, I feel better somehow. I feel calmer. Do you ever get that? Like you’re drawn to something you don’t understand but you can’t help it?”
“Not this exactly, but I know what you mean.”
“Oh. I hoped it was a Pyxsee thing. Then you’d understand, at least.”
“I do understand.” He held open the door to the science building and motioned for her to go through. “It doesn’t bother me that you go there, you know. The sooner one of us finds the guy, the better.”
Not this again. This was what she’d been afraid of and why she’d been so mad at him for going last night. She swiveled in the doorway to tell him not to be stupid and was shocked to find herself face to face with him, looking up into his gold-flecked eyes. Looking up?
When did that happen? Some observation skills, Cara.
“When did you get so tall, Wes?” she asked.
“I’m barely taller than you.”
“Exactly. When did that happen?”
Wes shrugged, but she noticed the tiny crinkle beside his eyes. Now that she was paying attention, his face had lost some roundness too. His high cheekbones boasted his heritage more than ever before. In fact, his whole body had been stretched.
It was like she’d missed the memo that her little brother was now her big brother. That wasn’t fair. In some ways, he’d already felt older and wiser, with his constant calm and serious outlook, even though she was technically two months older than him. Her head tilted to one side as her eyes appraised the subtle changes. Then she remembered her earlier surprise that he had made it back before curfew.
“I’m impressed you made it back so fast last night. You must have run both ways if you spent any time there at all,” she said.
In November, Wes had to gasp for breath every time they stopped during their mad dash to the mansion. Maybe she wasn’t the only one with secrets. They stepped into the classroom, and she paused beside his desk. He still hadn’t offered any explanation after another moment of silence went by.
She hesitated. “If there’s anything you want to—”
“You’d better go sit down.” He waved a hand toward her desk on the other side of the room.
“Fine, but if you want to talk—”
“Miss Ransome, kindly take your seat,” Mrs. Johansen called as she swept into the chemistry classroom.
Cara hustled across to her desk. Mrs. Johansen was not the type of teacher to keep waiting. She did cast a few more questioning glances toward Wes, but he sat a little more stiffly than usual and didn’t look back.
CARA STOOD ON THE STARTING line at the race, letting herself feel the butterflies in her stomach. After a year of races—from the cross country season in the fall to this spring’s track season—she still got nervous before a start. She closed her eyes and let the feeling wash through her. She visualized actual butterflies streaming out from her core to her arms and legs, increasing the blood flow and powering her muscles. The more she tried to use her nerves like this, the better she felt, and she could use all the extra power she could find today.
As the tension in the group reached a peak, the starter gave the signal, and the line surged forward. Cara was in the thick of it, working hard for a good position. A familiar figure with long black hair swishing across a Valley Green High shirt cut across a step ahead of her. With an extra boost from her butterfly superpower, she breezed by the girl’s shoulder to pass her into an opening along the inside.
Ha, take that! The girl had had it coming ever since Cara’s first cross country meet when she’d elbowed Cara in the ribs to beat her at the last second.
The corners of Cara’s mouth crept up in a small smile as she ran. The wind brushed her face, and her footsteps hammered a rhythm with her heartbeats, perfect and steady. Twenty-five laps around a track wasn’t as much fun as the sweeping, hilly cross country races, but the five thousand meters gave her plenty of time to enjoy the rush and the burn in her legs. She didn’t mind the three thousand either, but the meets where she got to run the five-k were where she shone.
As she pushed down the backstretch for the final time, she spotted another familiar shirt a few yards ahead. Not all her cross country teammates opted for track in the spring, but there were a bunch of them. This girl had red hair, and it hung in a ponytail down a green-and-gold shirt like the one she wore. The only difference between Cara and August’s shirts was the extra band of gold across the shoulders. She’d never finished this close to August before.
She pushed her legs harder. She pictured herself running down the path to the mansion—
No, not that.
She pulled her thoughts back from the distraction. The runs with Jory instead—she focused. Jory always had to end with a sprint. It happened every time, and she never beat him when he decided to take off. But these girls around her now didn’t have the advantage of his long legs. Borrowing Jory’s competitive streak for herself, she dug deeper, determined to catch August. Forget personal best; now she wanted to beat someone from her own team.
Her legs burned through the last corner toward the finish line. August drew tantalizingly close in front of her. She pushed harder. Ten more steps to catch her, eight more, six—August started to pull away again. She still had an extra boost of her own. Cara kept stretching, and August dragged her along in her wake. The redhead was no longer pulling away. She was so fixated on August’s back that she nearly ran into her when she slowed. She had followed the girl right across the finish line.
“Wow, Cara. I could feel you breathing down my neck there.” August turned around, red-faced and out
of breath.
Cara quickly rearranged her frustrated features into a smile. She had really wanted to beat her teammate. A bit of disappointment settled in her, but she looked for Coach Francis to see if she had done what she’d originally set out to do. She spotted the green tracksuit and started over. Coach raised the stopwatch over her head in triumph when she caught Cara’s eye.
“Flattened it, Cara!” she shouted. “You beat your old best by seventeen seconds. What was chasing you out there?”
“Wow, seventeen seconds? Really?” The disappointment flew right out of her, and a growing pride took its place.
“Yep, really.” Coach grinned down at her.
Emma came over to congratulate her. “See, Coach? I told you that boyfriend was good for her.”
“I don’t have a boyfr—” Cara stopped when Emma burst out laughing. “Ha ha. Thanks, Emma.”
Cara gave up and walked away, shaking her head. Her smile came right back. Had she really beaten her best time by a whole seventeen seconds? How was that even possible? She should go thank August for making her sprint so hard for the finish, but the person she really wanted to tell was actually Jory, in spite of all the teasing. It was thanks to him, after all, that she was able to sprint that way at the end.
A pair of arms caught her up in a tight, bouncing hug.
“Mom! Ouf, I can’t breathe.”
“Sorry, sorry, sweetie. You were so great! That seemed really fast. Was it fast?”
“Yeah, new personal best. By a lot, actually.” She tried again to catch her breath.
“That’s amazing. I knew you could do it.” Sandra Ransome bounced with excitement for her daughter.
“Thanks, Mom. I didn’t know you were going to stay after you dropped me off.”
“Of course. I haven’t seen you in forever, and I love watching you race. Besides, it’s your last weekend visit before I come pick you up for the summer. I wanted every second with you,” Sandra answered.
“It’s only two more weeks, and then I’ll be home all summer. Besides, it’s Saturday.”