“It took me a minute, or I’d have been back sooner.” She reached up to touch his chin, where the skin was darker and a bit blistered. “I’m sorry Tyler did this.”
He caught her hand and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “He’s definitely predictable.”
She reveled in the feel of his breath against her skin. Every time he touched her, his gentleness took her by surprise.
“Will you tell me what really happened last week?” she asked. “With Tyler?”
Michael looked back out at the water. “It’s not important.”
“It is to me.”
He sighed. “The twins were cutting through the woods to walk home. Tyler and Seth roughed them up.”
She frowned. “So you went after Tyler to get back at him?”
“I never went after Tyler.” His sudden fury was palpable. “Believe me, I’d leave you all alone if—” He stopped short. “Forget it.”
“Tell me.”
“In the woods, Nick got away. He ran all the way home and got me. By the time we made it back to them, they’d ganged up on Gabriel. Tyler and Seth ran when I got there.”
Emily frowned. “But Tyler had a black eye—”
“Yeah. You know who gave it to him? Gabriel.” He shook his head. “Of course he’d say it was me. Can’t be running around telling people he got decked by a twelve-year-old.”
She wasn’t surprised to hear her brother was a liar and a bully. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t start this fight, Emily.” He looked down at their joined hands. “Even this ... it won’t work.”
But he didn’t let go.
“We could try,” she whispered.
He stared back at her. “Emily ...”
“We could stand up to them. I could tell the others about you, that you’re not—”
“Wait. Shhh.” He put a hand to her lips, his attention focused up the hill.
She whispered around his hand. “What?”
His eyes snapped back to hers. “They did follow us. They must have had another car. Is there a different way back up the hill?”
Then she heard branches breaking, boys calling to each other in the darkness. Fear punched her in the stomach, hard.
Michael squeezed her hand. “Come on. Is there another way?”
She shook her head quickly. “No—we beat down this path last summer.”
“We know you’re down there!” Tyler’s voice. “We saw the truck.”
She could almost feel his presence through the air—he was close.
“Through the water,” said Michael. “We can swim across the quarry.”
“You go,” she said. “I’ll stall them—”
He swore. “You are out of your mind. I’m not leaving you to face them.” Then, before she could answer, he was dragging her down the hill, to the edge of the rocks, until the water was glittering below them.
“So we run?” she said.
“Yes. For now.” He glanced back at the darkened woods. “The underbrush will slow them down.”
“When we get to the other side—” she started.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Together,” she said.
He nodded. “Together.”
Then he took her hand, and they jumped into the water below.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at
Spark,
the second book in the exciting
Elemental Series.
Available this September.
CHAPTER 1
Gabriel Merrick stared at the dead leaf in his palm and willed it to burn.
It refused.
He had a lighter in his pocket, but that always felt like cheating. Clouds blocked the morning sunlight; no help there. He should be able to call flame to something this dry. The damn thing had been stuck in the corner of his window screen, had probably been there since last winter. But the leaf only seemed interested in flaking onto his Trigonometry textbook.
He was seriously ready to take the lighter to that.
A knock sounded on his bedroom wall.
“Black,” he called. Nicky always slept later, always knocked on his wall to ask what color he was wearing. If he didn’t, they ended up dressing alike.
Gabriel looked back at the leaf—and it was just that, a dead leaf. No hint of power. Behind the drywall, electricity sang to him. In the lamp on his desk, he could sense the burning filament. Even the weak threads of sunlight that managed to burn through the clouds left some trace of his element. If the power was there, Gabriel could speak to it, ask it to bend to his will.
If the power wasn’t, he had nothing.
His door swung open. Nick stood there in a green hoodie and a pair of gray track pants. A girl on the cheer squad had once asked Gabriel if having a twin was like looking in a mirror all the time. He’d asked her if being a cheerleader was like being an idiot all the time—but really, it was a good question. He and Nick shared the same dark hair, the same blue eyes, the same few freckles across their cheekbones.
Right now, Nick leaned on a crutch, a walking cast peeking from the hem of the pants, evidence of the only thing they didn’t share: a broken leg.
Gabriel glanced away from that. “Hey.”
“What are you doing?”
Gabriel flicked the leaf in the wastebasket beneath his desk. “Nothing. You ready for school?”
“Is that your Trig book?”
“Yeah. For a minute, I thought I’d told you the wrong assignment.”
A complete and total lie. Gabriel always attempted his math homework—and then he handed it over for Nick to do it right. Math had turned into a foreign language somewhere around fifth grade. Then, Gabriel had struggled through, managing Cs when his twin brought home As. But after their parents died when the twins were in seventh grade, he’d come close to failing. Nick started covering for him, and he’d been doing it ever since.
Not like it was a big challenge. Math came to Nick like breathing. He was in second-year Calculus, earning college credit. Gabriel was stuck in Trigonometry with juniors.
He was pretty frigging sick of it.
Gabriel flipped the book closed and shoved it into his backpack. His eyes fell on that walking cast again. Nick had cut the seam of his pants to make them fit. “You’re not going to make me carry your crap all day, are you?”
His voice came out sharp, nowhere near the light ribbing he’d intended.
Nick took it in stride, as usual. “Not if you’re going to cry about it.” He turned for the steps, his voice rising to a mocking falsetto. “I’m the school sports hero, but I can’t possibly carry a few extra books—”
“Keep it up,” Gabriel called, slinging the backpack over his shoulder to follow his brother. “I’ll push you down the stairs.”
But he hesitated in the doorway, listening to Nick’s hitching steps as he descended the staircase, the creak of the banister as it supported his weight.
Gabriel knew he should help. Christ, he should probably be taking the place of that crutch. That’s what Nick would do for him.
But he couldn’t force himself through the doorway.
That broken leg was his fault. Gabriel hadn’t been strong enough to protect his brother from the Guide that night. He’d let Nick call storms that were too strong, begged him for more power. The fall had practically shattered his leg—if they weren’t full Elementals, he probably would have needed surgery.
Even then, Gabriel couldn’t keep him safe. The Guide had kidnapped Nick, held him prisoner.
Nick didn’t seem to mind. He picked up the slack, just like always. Life’s good, move on, no use complaining.
Just like with math, Nick was used to his twin being a failure.
Gabriel pulled onto Becca Chandler’s street and glanced in the rearview at his younger brother. Chris was chewing on his thumbnail, leaning against the window.
“Nervous?” said Gabriel.
Chris looked away from the window and glared at him. “No.”
Nick turned in his seat. “Make sure you open the door for her. Girls eat that crap up.”
“Nah,” said Gabriel. “Play it cool. Make her work for it—”
“For god’s sake,” Chris snapped. “She just broke up with Hunter, like, yesterday, so it’s not like that. Okay?”
Jesus. Someone was worked up. Gabriel glanced back again. “But she asked you for a ride.”
Chris looked back out the window. “I offered.”
Nick turned his head to look at his twin. “Very nervous,” he whispered.
Gabriel smiled and turned into Becca’s driveway. “Very.”
“Would you two shut up?”
Becca was waiting on the front steps, her arms around her knees and her hands drawn up into the sleeves of a fleece pullover, her dark hair hanging long and shining down her back.
“She looks upset,” said Nick.
She did, her eyes dark and shadowed, her shoulders hunched. Or maybe she was just cold. Gabriel wasn’t one for figuring out emotion.
Her face brightened when she saw them, and she sprinted for the car almost before Chris had time to jump out and hold the door for her.
She stopped short in front of him, spots of pink on her cheeks. “Hey,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Hey,” Chris said back, his voice soft and low.
Then they just stood there breathing at each other.
Gabriel hit the horn.
They jumped apart—but Chris punched him in the shoulder when he climbed back into the car.
Becca ignored him and buckled her seat belt. “I’m glad you’re all here.”
Her voice was full of anxiety. So Nick had been right.
Chris shifted to look at her. “You all right?”
She shook her head. “My dad just called. He wants to see me. Tonight.”
No one said anything for a moment, leaving her words floating out there in the warm confines of the car.
Her dad was an Elemental Guide, sent to kill the brothers because of the powers they’d grown into. He’d been the one to kidnap Nick and Chris after Homecoming, and he’d almost succeeded in destroying them all—including Becca.
When they escaped and didn’t hear anything for two days, they’d all started to think he’d run off again, the way he had when Becca was eleven.
Chris took a breath, and his voice was careful. “Do you want to meet him?”
Gabriel glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She was practically hunched against the door, staring out the window. “I want him to get the hell out of here.”
Chris was still watching her. “He is your father.” He paused. “You sure?”
“He might have made a ‘contribution,’ but that man is not my father.”
“I want to see him,” said Gabriel. His shoulders already felt tight.
She hesitated. “Wait. You’d ... go with me?”
“Yeah. I owe him a little payback.”
“We,” said Nick. There was heat in his voice, too.
“Did he say why he wanted to meet?” asked Chris.
“He said he wants to help us. That they’ll send another Guide if he doesn’t report back that you were ... um ...”
“Killed.” Gabriel hit the turn signal at the end of her road.
She swallowed. “Yeah. Hey, make a left. We need to pick up Quinn.”
Gabriel glanced at her again. He wasn’t a big fan of Becca’s mouthy best friend, especially when there was so much left to talk about. “Quinn? She can’t get a ride from Gutierrez?”
Becca shrugged. “They’re having issues. Something about him misunderstanding that they didn’t have an open relationship.”
“Anyone else?” said Gabriel. “Should I pick up Hunter, too?”
Becca faltered and glanced at Chris. “I’m sorry—I should have asked—”
“It’s fine,” he said, his eyes on his brother. “I’m sure he’s not intentionally being a dick.”
Gabriel ignored him. “What time tonight? Did he say where?”
She blinked, and it must have taken her a second to come full circle and realize he was back to talking about her father. “Annapolis Mall. Eight o’clock. Make a right at the stop sign. She’s down at the end of the block.”
“We’ll come,” said Chris. “Find out what he wants.”
“If we let him talk that long,” said Gabriel.
K TEEN BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2012 by Brigid Kemmerer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and KTeen Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7582-8005-3
Storm Page 38