Raven rolled her eyes. “I think somebody could use some help,” she said, and stood up. “I’ll let the two of you talk.”
We sat in silence, the only sound the hum of the refrigerator.
“Why don’t I remember?” I asked softly. “You, the cabin, the Uprising. If I was six when all this took place, how come I remember none of it?”
Something flickered in his eyes, but I could sense him beating the flicker back.
“Look,” he said awkwardly. “I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you all this. Shouldn’t Josephine do it?”
“She’s told me things. She told me about you. What you meant to each other. What my parents were trying to do. But I know she hasn’t told me everything, and I don’t know if she will. Please,” I said to him. “There’s still so much about myself and my family that I don’t know.”
He took a thoughtful sip of water. “Your mom was very powerful, Skye. She could . . . see things. Visions of events that would happen. And she could do this thing . . . mess with your mind a little. One of her powers of the light.”
“She used mental manipulation?” I said quietly. “My mom?”
“She was pretty good at it,” he said. “Even on earth, even as a regular person. I guess the stronger you were as an angel, the longer those powers stay with you, a part of you. She lost her wings, but her powers never really left her.”
I stared at him, trying to process what he was saying.
“She messed with my mind,” I said. “She made me forget.”
Aaron looked away. “I know that’s probably hard to hear,” he said. “Look, I’m really sorry. Maybe I’m not the best person to talk to about all this.”
“No,” I said sternly, looking up. “You’re the person I need to talk to.”
“I wanted to keep trying,” he said. “After your mom and dad died. But Josephine insisted against it. She had you to look after. She promised your mother she would protect you from all this. That you would grow up like a normal kid.” He smiled ruefully. “I guess you know now. Looks like the Order got their way after all.”
“Aaron,” I said. “You know why my parents were trying to protect me, right? About my powers—the mix of dark and light?”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
“I have powers that I inherited from my father—dark ones. And I also have powers that I inherited from my mother. Gifted powers. I can see things too, just like she could.”
“Oh,” he said, his eyes softening into awe. “Is that so?”
“Yes, and no matter how much they want me to, I can’t join either side, the Rebellion or the Order. I’m starting my own group. I’m going to finish what my parents started.”
“Skye,” he said seriously. “We failed. Your mom saw a fourth Rogue in those visions of hers, but she couldn’t tell us who it was.”
“I can use my own visions. I can find out who it is. But we need you, Aaron. And,” I added, trying not to smile, “so does Aunt Jo.” I hoped I sounded subtle.
He looked up. “She does?”
“Please come back to River Springs with us. We’ll figure this out. We’ll find a way to keep the Order and the Rebellion in balance, prevent any more lives from being destroyed. We can only do it with your help.”
He stood up and stretched, leaned against the kitchen counter with his back to me. I saw his back rise and fall in a sigh.
“It’s not that easy. That was my old life. It’s taken a lot for me to put it behind me.”
“But wouldn’t it be worth it?”
“You don’t understand,” he said, turning around. He had that same fierce look in his eyes as Asher and Aunt Jo. “That life, it follows you. My wife—”
I flinched. What was I thinking? Of course Earth had to have a mother.
“My late wife,” he corrected. “She was followed by Guardians, every day. She didn’t know it, of course. Didn’t know what they were. They tracked her as a threat to me—to keep me in line, to prevent me from ever going back to Josephine and James, finishing what we began. Or from starting some kind of uprising on my own.” He looked pained. “I couldn’t live like that, with the constant fear anymore. I went back to River Springs, to beg your aunt to think about joining forces again. She said no, and by the time I got back, my wife—” He broke off, his voice going for a moment. “They killed her.”
I sucked in a breath. “No,” I whispered.
He nodded.
“Earth found her, in the car with the windows up. Those bastards made it look like she did it herself, but I knew it was them. The kid’s learned to grow around the pain, push it down. But she’s a special one. Strange, but special.” He looked at me. “I think you two have quite a bit in common.”
“I could teach her,” I said. “I know she has powers. She must. I can show her how to use them.”
“I told her about the angels at a young age. Didn’t want to lie to her about how her mom died, you know?”
“Please come,” I said. “It’s safe with us. We’re protected.”
“Are you?” He looked skeptical. “How protected are you, really?”
I felt a chill spread across my skin, prickling it with goose bumps.
“You don’t know what they’re capable of,” he whispered.
I stood up quickly, suddenly scared to be away for too long. “I have to get back,” I said. “You’ll come, right? Isn’t this what you wanted?”
He sighed deeply. “Just give me some time to think,” he said. “For my daughter.”
When I got to the door, I paused. “They killed my parents, too,” I said without looking at him. “I don’t know about you, but I have to fight.”
Raven and I stood on the sidewalk in front of the house. A light still glowed in the kitchen window, but otherwise it was dark. We could see Aaron’s silhouette behind the curtains, sitting with his head in his hands.
What are you doing, Skye? I asked myself. Is this worth it?
But I knew that it was—that any small pain I caused now would save us all from the greater pain that would be caused when the Order and the Rebellion clashed.
“Well, that was productive,” Raven said. “You caught up with Aaron Ward, and I got to read a bedtime story.”
I pressed my fingers into my eyes and breathed deep.
“Skye,” she said. “Are you okay? I swear I’m not being bitchy when I say this, but you look awful.”
“It’s been a long day,” I said. “Let’s just go home.”
But even as I said it, the edges of my world began to blur out of focus, into something darker, hotter.
Tiny, dark stars bloomed into life in the air around us. They smoldered like the glowing embers of a fire, igniting the air, causing smoke to unfurl in plumes.
“Skye?” Raven’s voice faded into the snap and crackle of flames.
My heart beat faster.
My vision began to swim, to fill with thick, black smoke, as the rest of the street faded away.
Please make her be all right, I found myself thinking.
Who?
Flames exploded around me, shattering glass, filling the air with acrid, heavy smoke so thick it felt solid. Sirens shrieked somewhere off in the distance, and someone was yelling. Wooden beams above me glowed bright with fire, raining sparks and ashes down around me, and glossy papers burned and fluttered to the ground. Panic and smoke filled my throat and lungs. All I could think—the one thought that rang through my every fiber—was I have to save her.
“Skye!” Raven’s voice pierced my thoughts, and the vision dissolved into wisps of smoke. Sycamore Street was quiet and dark. A dog barked in the distance. “Are you okay? Was it a vision?”
I blinked. “There was a fire. I had to save someone.”
“Did you see who?”
I shook my head.
“Well.” She paused. “There’s no use standing around here, is there? Can you fly?”
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly itching to get back home. Aaron’s word
s burned like those flames in my mind.
You don’t know what they’re capable of.
“Let’s go.”
We took to the sky. It was dark now, but clear and scattered with stars. The moon shone a path for us toward the mountains, toward home.
And then, all of a sudden, it was less clear.
“Is that smoke?” Raven asked, coughing.
Smoke.
“Can we get closer?” I urged. The smoke was gathering in the sky in billows of soot. We descended. “It’s coming from downtown,” I said. “See?”
Through the rising smoke, I could make out the buildings along Main Street, a crowd gathering. And then my heart lurched as I pinpointed exactly where the fire was coming from.
“It’s Into the Woods,” I said, my voice going hoarse. “It’s Aunt Jo’s store.”
8
The fire raged.
Main Street was clogged with fire trucks and police cars. Raven and I touched down around the corner so that no one could see, and ran down the block toward the commotion. It was impossible not to think of the night of my seventeenth birthday—the night Asher and Devin showed up at Love the Bean, and the boiler had exploded. Shattered glass covered the street, and angry smoke poured from the front windows.
I could feel the heat pressing into me the closer I got to Into the Woods.
“Skye!” I whipped around. Raven pointed across the street—Aunt Jo’s pickup truck.
“Oh my god,” I yelled. I broke my way into the throng on the street. Police cordoned off a group of spectators that had gathered to watch as firemen hosed down Into the Woods from the outside. “Let me through!”
“Hey, you have to step back.” An officer stepped into my path, blocking me from the front door. “It’s not safe.” He was young and shockingly attractive, with hair as dark as the soot rising into the night sky.
“My aunt is in there!” I shouted at him. “You have to let me in! Please, you have to get out of my way!”
“I can’t let you do that, it’s not safe. There’s all kinds of structural damage in there. The firemen are inside; they’ll find anyone who didn’t make it out.” He looked me in the eye, and there was something off about him. Familiar—and yet I’d never seen him before. I shivered despite the intense heat.
Raven ran up alongside me. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she hissed, grabbing my arm. She noticed the look in my eyes. “Oh, no. No. I know what you’re thinking. Do not go in there.”
“I have to. She needs me.”
“Skye, there are trained professionals in fire suits. They have gas masks.”
I stared into the flames, looking for the best way in. “But none of them have powers like mine.”
“Skye, you really are crazy, aren’t you? If you go in there without any kind of protection, they’ll come looking for you. What are they going to think if you make it out alive?”
“We’ll just have to change the way they think, then, won’t we?”
Raven squinted at me. “You know,” she said. “I think I may have underestimated you.”
We ran together to the nearest police officer. He, too, had a strangely familiar look to him—but in the chaos of smoke and flame I couldn’t place it.
“Have you ever done this before?” Raven whispered.
“I’m part Gifted. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it out.”
The officer looked down at me, the fire reflected in his black eyes. And I stared right back into them. All I had to do was influence his thoughts. Make him forget he ever saw me—or what he was about to see.
His eyes grew vague, far-off. He whispered something I couldn’t hear, and then turned his back to me, walking away in the other direction.
Raven and I looked at each other. I was just as surprised as she was.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” Raven said. “I couldn’t even do that. Only the most powerful, the Gifted—”
“Flatter me later,” I said. “I have to go.” I should have felt panicked, but what I felt instead was a fierce determination to save Aunt Jo. And so I did the only thing I could think to do. I ran straight into the fire.
It was just like in my vision. The tin ceiling had peeled back in an evil grin, revealing a mouthful of smoldering wooden beams. Flames licked the walls hungrily, leaving a trail of char and soot in their wake. The floor beneath my feet was so excruciatingly hot, it felt like the soles of my shoes were melting.
But I was half Rebel. And I’d learned how to handle fire ages ago.
As I stretched my hands out, I could feel the cooling liquid silver pour through me, forming a protective barrier of some sort around my skin. Then before I knew it, the barrier erupted into flame itself, creating a fiery suit of armor that somehow kept me cool and dry.
“Aunt Jo!” I called. My vision began to swim, and my eyes watered. “Where are you?” I could hear glass shattering in the distance, and the sound of someone screaming. I booked it in the direction of the screams.
Amid the snap and crash of falling wood, someone called my name. And I used it like a beacon, homing in. I found her crouched behind the counter, with her arms over her head. The fire was closing in around her, jumping out, licking at her arms and legs and face—but remarkably, it hadn’t engulfed her completely. The area behind the counter was untouched by flame. Aunt Jo was okay. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said Aunt Jo was working some similar powers to mine. There were definitely some otherworldly forces in action, keeping the fire from encroaching on the small circle of floor where Aunt Jo sat.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. “You have to get out!”
“I came back here to save some papers!” Her eyes were watering from the smoke, and tears streamed down her face. “But now I can’t get out.” Through the smoke, she stared at the strange force field of fire I’d surrounded myself with. “How are you . . . ?”
“Come on.” I extended a hand to her. “I can get you out.”
Aunt Jo eyed it dubiously, then took a deep breath and grabbed it. The minute she made contact the cooling silver snaked up her arm, spreading over her entire body. The fire-armor enveloped both of us.
“Skye,” she said hoarsely. “You continue to amaze me.”
Together we made our way back through the smoldering store. Firemen were just beginning to pour in, spraying water over the flames. When we came trudging over the doorstep, I focused on the crowd and let my mind penetrate theirs.
Nobody saw us leave.
I took Aunt Jo down the street to her truck, where we knelt on the ground and I grasped her hands in mine—healing her minor scratches and burns with my touch. I couldn’t help but flash back, one more time, to the night when the boiler had exploded at Love the Bean during my seventeenth birthday party. Cassie had knelt beside me in the snow behind her car, clasping my mittened hands in hers. And I had tried to explain how I felt. The panic, the fear—knowing something was happening, that I was changing, but not knowing how or why.
The last time I’d knelt in this spot, I had been so lost, helpless. But as I held Aunt Jo’s hands in mine and felt the power surge from my fingertips into her wounds, closing them, healing them completely, all I could do was marvel at how far I’d traveled since that freezing January night.
I might not have known everything about myself yet, might not have known every bit of truth about my parents, who they were and what they were trying to do. But I knew who I was. I was a force to be reckoned with.
“You saved my life,” Aunt Jo wheezed, looking up at me with a shaky smile.
“And I’d do it again, Aunt Jo,” I said. I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I would do anything for you.”
“There you are!” Raven’s blond hair flew behind her in a sheet of corn silk as she ran to us. “What am I feeling? What is this? It’s not good. I feel . . .” She put a hand on her chest and stopped for breath.
“Worried?” Aunt Jo said drily.
“Don’t ever scare me like that
again,” Raven said. “Come on, I’ll drive us home.” She paused for a second, as if realizing what she’d just said.
Home.
In a way, it was something we were all searching for. I smiled, and then Raven smiled too. She reached out her hands to help us up, and Aunt Jo and I each took one.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile, Raven,” I said as she pulled me to my feet.
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.” But she grinned awkwardly, and I could tell that she was blushing.
Raven got in the driver’s seat of Aunt Jo’s truck, Aunt Jo squeezed in next, and I followed. The blond fallen angel revved the engine. I leaned my forehead against the window and watched the last glowing embers of the fire float up into the night sky, fade to ash, and float away on the wind.
As we pulled away from the curb, the hair on my arms stood on end, and a shiver went up the back of my neck. I looked out the window. A familiar silhouette stood in the shadows, partly obscured by several police cars. He turned to face us as we drove off, and there was no mistaking those flashing dark eyes, the sense that he wasn’t just inhabiting the night—he was a part of it.
Asher.
I slammed my hands against the window, but the sirens wailed and the crowd swallowed him, and we drove away before I could call his name.
The headlights cut a swath through the dark night of our driveway. The house was still and silent when we entered. It was only this morning when I’d been here last, but it felt like I was returning from an epic journey. I’d learned things about my past that changed the way I thought about myself and my life. I saw things differently now.
“I’ll make us some tea,” Aunt Jo said, padding off to the kitchen.
“Shouldn’t I?” I called after her.
“You saved my life,” she called back. “It’s the least I can do.”
Raven and I were alone in the living room, curled up on the couch. Moonlight spilled through the plate glass windows, and the jagged outline of the mountains cast shadows on the floor.
“How am I going to tell her what we saw?” I wondered aloud, half to myself. “How am I supposed to tell her that Aaron’s still in danger? That he was married? Oh my god—that he has a daughter?”
A Radiant Sky Page 6