CHAPTER 11
After that little episode, Gabe’s invitation to join me in the mountains had been revoked. And if he wasn’t going, I saw no point in dragging Kendall along. I shoved supplies—a couple flashlights, bottled water, bug spray, matches, and a sweatshirt—into a backpack for a solo excursion. The feathered woman had answers. I was going to find her and learn how to stop the man-panther. Manther?
Heaven help me!
That’s the only way to describe the emotion that jolted through me. My hands white-knuckle-gripped my backpack, and I doubled over as a swirling, tumultuous mess of emotions slammed into me. The heavy heart of deep seeded humiliation. The outstretched compassion of sympathy. Gnawing isolation. Gut wrenching pain. One by one they came at me with a speed and strength that took my breath away.
I didn’t have to reach out for these. They pounded into me like waves against a rocky shore line. I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t hold them back. But I knew who they were coming from. She was coming this way. Something had happened to Kendall. My trip into the mountains was coming too late.
I dashed across the room intending to track her down. It wasn’t difficult. I swung open the bedroom door, and there she stood. I couldn’t hold back a gasp at her ghostly, haunted appearance. Her normal peaches and crème complexion had turned stark white, her trembling lips a pale shade of blue. She stared past me with glassy, unseeing eyes.
Despite the door already being open, she extended her hand and turned a knob that only existed in her mind. She shuffled into the room, completely unaware of my presence. She bypassed both beds and the chair at our desk. Instead, she zombie-walked to the farthest corner of the room. With her back pressed up against our lilac-colored wall, she slid down and landed on the floor with a heavy thump.
“Kendall?”
“I…I…I…” Her mouth opened and shut, but she couldn’t make it any further than that.
I squatted down next to her and stroked her soft hair. “You what?”
Slowly, her head turned toward me, her eyes wide and unblinking. “I flew.”
As I had never heard a declaration like that before, all I could think to say was, “Huh?”
She shifted her gaze back to the wall. “Nothing beneath me but air.”
The bird-woman’s warning echoed in my mind. “The changes will start now, Celeste. Not just for you, but for Gabe and Kendall as well.”
I shifted and sat on the floor next to my traumatized sister. With one arm around her slender shoulders, I drew her to me. When her head settled on my shoulder, I asked, “How did it happen?”
“Keith kissed me. My first kiss…”
“Your first kiss?” I interrupted. “Guys follow you around like puppy dogs.”
“Just friends,” she explained vacantly. “Keith’s special.”
Really? Sweaty, twitchy Keith? “Okay, you kissed. Then what?”
“He was the first to notice. He looked down and screamed. I didn’t understand why. He pushed me away from and fell. At first I thought we had somehow moved to the edge of the porch, and he’d stumbled off the edge. But then I looked down. I was floating.” Her questioning eyes probed mine, looking for a logical explanation to this impossible scenario. “How is that possible, Celeste?”
“I don’t know, Keni. I honestly don’t.”
“It only lasted for a second…then I came crashing down. Keith was petrified. He ran inside and locked the door behind him. He looked at me through the glass like…like I was a…”
“Freak?” Gabe’s harsh interjection startled me. Not just because I hadn’t heard him enter the room, but also because of the sharp way he spit the word out. Hostility brewed just below the surface, barely contained.
Kendall either missed the tone or ignored it. “Yeah, like a freak. I feel so bad for him. He was terrified. I don’t know…what happened? How…how did I…?”
I hugged my baby sister tightly. If I hadn’t been so slow to put the pieces together, Kendall wouldn’t have had to endure this. This was my fault. “I’m so sorry,” I muttered.
“You should be sorry,” Gabe hissed, his voice pure venom.
I made no attempt to hide my exasperation as I shot back, “What is your problem, Gabe? Do you have something you wanna say?”
“You bet I do. Why don’t you tell Kendall the truth? Or are you completely incapable of that anymore?”
“What exactly is it that you think I’m withholding?”
“That you know exactly what’s going on,” he snarled through gritted teeth. My heart momentarily forgot to beat. He knew. I didn’t know how much. But judging by the way he was pacing, it was enough to make him fume. “I just figured it out. That’s why you’ve been acting so weird lately. But instead of cluing us in on what was going on, you left us out to dry. Oh, but not before you took a minute to accuse me of doing drugs. Plenty of time for that fun little conversation.” His body language dared me to challenge him.
My mouth fell open to say…what? I couldn’t deny it. He was right. I hadn’t even thought that his recent growth could be mystical, but it had to be. My chin fell to my chest. “I don’t know much yet.”
Kendall’s head whipped back and forth between Gabe and me. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Kendall and I have turned into freaks. What about you? Are you a member of the freak brigade?”
“Wait! You can do weird stuff, too?” Kendall perked up at the idea that she wasn’t the “lone freak.”
“Yes. Try to keep up!” Gabe snapped.
I grabbed my sister’s hand to comfort her, and then fixed my gaze on my pushy brother. “I can feel people’s emotions, and I think I may be able to alter what they’re feeling.”
A smug smirk spread across Gabe’s face. “Doesn’t that put a fun twist on this story. You could even feel the confusion and stress we were going through as we…” he struggled to find the right word “…changed. Still, you said nothing.”
I jumped up off the floor, stood on my tiptoes, and went nose to nose with my monstrous brother. “What did you want me to say, Gabe? That night I came home from the woods covered in blood, should I’ve told you that the real reason I fell was that I saw a feathered woman in the clearing? And that she told me stuff was going to start happening to all three of us. What do you think you would’ve said if I had done that?”
“You still could’ve given us warning…”
“What would you have said?”
His mouth snapped shut. The fire in his eyes simmered down to embers. “I would’ve told you that you were crazy.”
“Exactly. Truth be told, I thought I was. So I didn’t feel inclined to announce it to the world. And just so you know, I just put all the pieces together tonight.”
Gabe rubbed the back of his neck. Even a casual motion like that caused his giant pecks to dance. “I was just looking for someone to blame. Sorry. But, you can change how people feel? Really? That’s kinda cool.”
“Hold on a second!” Keni scrambled off the floor. “Feathered woman? Feeling people’s emotions? What the heck is going on?”
Gabe’s head jerked in Keni’s direction. “Can’t you use your voodoo to calm her down or something?”
“I’m not real sure how I did it the first time.” I shrugged.
“I don’t need to be calmed down!” Kendall stomped her foot. “What I need is for you two to tell me what is happening and why I am suddenly able to float!”
I didn’t know how to explain it, especially when I really didn’t understand myself. To the best of my ability, I started at the beginning and laid out the whole story of my experiences over the last week. I ended by declaring that to find answers we needed to find the bird-woman.
Gabe peeked into my backpack, inventorying what I’d packed. “It took you this long to figure all that out? Little slow on the uptake?”
“Definitely, yes.”
“That’s sad,” he taunted. “So, we need to go back to that spot in the mountains and look for her. When do we go?”
“Tonight. After Grams crashes for the night. We’ll head up to the clearing. Hopefully, she’ll be there.”
With resolute nods, we all agreed.
“Wait, I have a question.” Kendall plopped down on her bed and grabbed her big stuffed zebra, Mr. Hoofington, that she’d had since she was four.
“Just one?”
“To start with.” She looked up at Gabe as he zipped my backpack. “You didn’t say what you could do.”
“In addition to this…” He made a flippant gesture at his new, alarming frame. “I’m wicked strong.”
“Cool.” She picked a fuzzy off Mr. Hoofington and cocked her head to the side. “Wait. In addition to what?”
Now it was Gabe’s turn to look puzzled. “What do you mean ‘what’? This!” He extended his arms and pointed blatantly at himself.
Kendall sucked in a shocked breath. I bit down on my lip to stifle a laugh. “Holy crap, Gabe!” She exclaimed. “You’re huge!”
“You both suck,” he grumbled.
The Conduit Page 13