by Amber Garr
****
An hour later, I woke with a start. Something heavy was lying on top of me, and when I looked down, I saw Noah’s arm draped across my chest. The quilted blanket cocooned me like a caterpillar, my legs stuck together in a way that I didn’t like.
Feeling me move, Noah shifted to the side. We were still on the couch, but it was large enough that he could give me a little bit of room. I tugged at the blanket, trying to free my legs. When I couldn’t seem to make my hands work, Noah did it for me.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
I took a second to assess the question. How was I feeling? My heart beat had slowed. I didn’t feel like I wanted to sleep for a year, and it seemed like my brain was kind of working again. “I think I’m okay,” I finally said.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” He lifted a glass of water from the coffee table and helped me take a sip. The cold liquid soothed my throat, helping me snap back into normal.
“River. He came to warn me again.” I filled in all of the blanks. Telling Noah every detail I could remember from tonight. But when he started asking me specifics about the trackers, I realized that I hadn’t noticed as much as I thought.
“That’s okay,” he said, rubbing my legs that were now propped over top of his. “I think you saw enough.”
“Do you know who he is?” I asked and Noah tensed.
“Who?”
“The other phoenix.”
Noah looked down at the floor and shook his head. “No.”
He was lying to me. I difn’t know how I was so certain, but he wasn’t telling me the truth. “Well, isn’t it strange that there’s another phoenix in human form in this small city?” I didn’t want to accuse him of anything, but there was no denying the clipped tone in my voice.
Noah noticed. “Yes, it is.”
“I thought that it was uncommon for a phoenix to be reborn as a human. Didn’t you say that was a form of punishment?”
Noah’s jaw clenched and he didn’t make eye contact. “Yes, I did.”
I let the silence stretch between us. There was too much going on right now for me to lose him. If he didn’t want to tell me everything today, I supposed I could deal with that. For at least a few hours.
“Look, Cressa,” Noah finally said, hand once again rubbing my leg. “You should really consider taking your brother’s suggestion and leave town for a while.”
“Why?” I asked. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and dropped my legs. “If the Imperium wants to arrest me, then fine. At least I’ll get to see my mother.” And find out why she turned herself in.
“You don’t want that,” Noah said.
“Well, I’m not going to run.” I didn’t know when exactly I decided that, but I knew it was the right choice. “I’m not going to stop using my necromancy and I’m going to get my mom out of the Reformatory.”
Noah stared out the window for a long time. For a while I thought that he was going to scold me like my brother, so when he spoke again, I was shocked at the words coming out of his mouth. “You only need two thousand more, right?” he asked quietly.
I nodded, wondering where this was going.
Noah sighed. A deep, long sigh that should have warned me for what was coming next. “I can give you that money if you can do one more job.”
Where a few minutes ago I was all ready to take on the Imperium and get caught if that meant I’d stood up to my principals, I now cowered like an abused puppy. They would surely be tracking me, just waiting for one more opportunity to pounce. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked.
Noah hesitated a few seconds before saying, “Not really.”
“But?” I knew there was more.
He shifted to the side so that he could fully face me on the couch. “But it’s a favor that I need. So I can right my wrong.”
Right his wrong. That was something he’d said so many times now that I’d started to wonder if it had more meaning to a phoenix. “You need to speak to a dead person?” I was really confused with how necromancy would ever connect to a phoenix.
He hung his head again. “Yes.”
“Why?” I blurted out.
Noah snapped his head up to look at me. The golden flecks were back, a sign that emotion was brewing inside. “I need to apologize.”
“Apologize?”
“It’s something that I can’t explain to you right now. I’m sorry.” He stood, hands running through his head, feet pacing on the living room floor. “I know it’s asking a lot but—”
“I’ll do it,” I interrupted.
“What?” he asked.
“I’ll do it for you,” I said a little quieter.
Instead of rushing to my side and giving me a bear hug, Noah continued to pace the living room. His eyes shot up only when I cleared my throat, and even then it seemed tough for him to make eye contact.
“I’m so grateful, Cressa. But I just don’t know…”
I stood and grabbed his hands in mine. “Stop. I said that I’ll do it for you.”
“It’s a bad idea.” His voice sounded certain but I could see in his eyes that a part of him was excited to be doing this.
“I know.”
“What if you get caught?”
“I won’t.”
“And how do you know that?” Noah’s lips turned up just a little bit.
“I just have a feeling,” I said. It was total and utter bullshit, but something in me told me that I should be doing this. Whatever Noah was hiding, this was the only way I would find out the truth.
And with so many lies in my life right now, this might just be the one part I could control.
“Where do we have to go?” I asked. We were still holding hands, but I dropped my head against his chest so I could feel closer to him.
He rested his chin on top of my head and let out a deep breath. “I finally found him in the mountains.”
Not sure what to make of the word “found”, I decided to ignore it. I was sure it would make sense soon.
“Then let’s go,” I said.
Without giving him a chance to bail on me, I pulled my jacket on and walked out the front door. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and when I thought I saw shadows shifting in the distance, I knew that it probably wasn’t good.
But I needed to do this for Noah. And my mom. And for me.
It took two hours to get there. I wanted to ask Noah three billion questions on the way to the secret burial place, but I could never seem to force the words out. It was like my instincts stopped me from learning truths I really wouldn’t be able to handle.
In the silence, I kept replaying my brother’s words in my head. If my mom had turned herself in, why didn’t our father tell us that? He’d lied for several years, giving us false stories about how she left us all behind. No one willingly turned themselves in to the Reformatory. And for my mother to do that, meant there was a whole other story that I wasn’t privy to yet.
“Cressa,” Noah’s smooth voice finally broke the tension in the car, “I feel like I should warn you.”
“Warn me?” I choked on the words, not liking how he sounded.
“You may learn some things tonight…” He paused and looked over at me. I swear I saw his eyes glisten in the soft glow of the car lights. “And it may change the way you see me.”
My heart clenched, chest tightening in a way that I didn’t like. “I don’t understand.”
He grabbed my hand and began massaging my fingers in his. “I really like you,” he whispered. “And I never meant to hurt you.”
“Noah, you’re freaking me out,” I said, panic gripping my throat.
“I don’t mean to. I’m sorry.” He let go of my hand so that he could turn the car down a dark, dirt road off to the side of the paved one we’d been driving on. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry. For everything.”
My mouth dropped, eyes filling with unshed tears. Of all the crap that was going on in my life right
now, Noah had been the only constant. If I was honest with myself, I think I’d even admit that I was falling in love with him. But the tone in his voice, the warning that something I was about to see would strip all of that away, crushed me more than anything my brother or the Imperium could do to me.
“When this is over tonight,” Noah said, “I will help get you out of here.”
“What do you mean? Of course you’ll get me out of here. I don’t have a car.” It felt as though I was on autopilot—asking questions without any reasoning behind them.
“No. I mean out of the state.”
While I absorbed that answer, Noah took us deeper into the forest. I was surprised that his little sports car could handle the road, but when we got to the bottom of a steep incline, I knew we’d reached the end of its limit.
“We have to walk from here,” Noah said. The clipped edge to his voice kind of angered me. Why was he mad at me?
“You don’t have to be so hostile,” I muttered to myself once he left the car. Had I known what was coming, maybe I would have understood that this was his way of saying goodbye. But ignorance had graced me this evening, at least for a little while longer.
The temperature had dropped twenty degrees up here in the mountains. My jacket kept me warm enough, but the speed at which Noah had us moving up the trail caused me to actually sweat a bit. Every time I tried to ask him about the person I was supposed to raise tonight, he answered with another question. Asking me which state I wanted to go to. Did it have a college with a good business program? None of which I knew the answer to. I had no intention of running away, but I decided to deal with that once we got through whatever waited for us at the top of this path.
I didn’t even know how long we hiked, but I was pretty sure we’d gained at least a thousand feet in altitude. My labored breathing and pounding chest didn’t like it. I’d stopped a couple of times to get my heart rate back to normal, and every time I had, I felt like something was watching us from the thick branches of the untouched forest. When we reached the small clearing at the top, the dancing shadows seemed to freeze for just a moment, acknowledging our arrival.
“Where are we?” I asked through my panting.
“I’m not exactly sure,” Noah said. But he was looking around the meadow, searching for something I couldn’t see. “Over here,” he said.
I followed closely behind, still sensing eyes on me. It’s your imagination, Cressa. A branch snapped in the distance and I stopped moving. It wasn’t my imagination. There was something out there.
“Are you okay?” Noah asked when he finally noticed that I wasn’t by his side anymore.
“Yeah. Sure.” Reluctantly, I trudged forward taking quick peeks behind me every other step. I accidentally ran into Noah’s back because I wasn’t paying enough attention. “Sorry,” I mumbled.
Noah lifted his head to the sky and took in a deep, slow breath. His arms gradually rose, outstretched to cover as much space as possible. The night air shifted and magic radiated around us. I hadn’t even noticed the large boulder directly in front of him until it began to move.
“Noah?” I asked hesitantly but he didn’t hear me. The giant rock, about half the size of his sports car at the bottom of the mountain, creaked and groaned as it lifted into the air. I glanced at Noah. His pinched face trembled in concentration, teeth grinding into his bottom lip like he wanted to feel the pain.
The more the boulder moved, the more Noah began to shake. I almost asked him to stop a couple of times, but the words refused to come out. Trapped inside my curious mind, they stayed silent in the hopes that answers would find us soon.
The ground shook when Noah dropped the rock in the meadow. Several birds took flight, scaring me and sending shock waves through my entire body. Noah stumbled forward toward the exposed ground, darkened with moisture and devoid of plants. I stepped closer, wanting to see what had been buried underneath a one-ton boulder.
When his foot hit the edge of the dirt path, Noah crashed to his knees. Reaching out to him, I tried to stop his fall. My hand landed on his shoulder but he didn’t acknowledge my touch. The pit in my stomach twisted some more. I knew the way things had been between us were about to change and they would never go back. And since Noah wouldn’t look me in the eye, I feared for the worst.
“This might be difficult for you,” he said.
I swallowed all of the distracting thoughts. “Why?”
Bending forward, Noah pushed several handfuls of dirt to the side, searching for something in the moonlight. When his fingers scraped on a hard surface that sounded metallic, he used his telekinesis to release the small box from the ground. It floated up into his hands while I watched.
“Because this body is different.” Noah twisted to the side and held out his arms so that I could see the box. Flipping open the lid, I gave him a questioning look when I saw what was inside.
“Are those ashes?”
He nodded. “This is Iain. And I need you to raise him.”
For a brief second I smiled. Surely this was some kind of joke. But my amusement faded when Noah’s eyes met mine. “I can’t do that,” I said. “He’s been cremated!”
Pushing to his feet, Noah placed the box of Iain’s ashes gently in my hands. “He has not been cremated,” he said with a sad smile. “He was a phoenix.”
“I’m not following.”
Taking a few steps back, Noah began to pace in front of me like he had in the living room hours earlier. It was a sign of something bad to come. “A phoenix will be reborn when it is their time. They will rise from the ashes and begin anew.”
“Unless they are being punished?” I asked. “Like you.”
Noah hung his head. “Yes, unless they are being punished.” He walked over to the dirt area and stared down at the small empty hole. “But there is another reason why a phoenix would not be reborn.”
I glanced at the pile of ashes in my hand knowing that something important was about to be revealed. “Like Iain?”
“Like Iain,” Noah confirmed. “And that’s only if one is killed by another phoenix.”
Blame it on my blind affection for Noah, but it took a moment for his words to make any sense. “So Iain was killed by one of his own kind.
Noah nodded slowly. He still wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“But how do you kill another phoenix?”
“There are several ways,” Noah said cryptically. “In this case, Iain was killed with the fire of another phoenix.”
The truth slammed into my chest like a piece of that boulder lying on the ground beside us. I couldn’t breathe. Was Noah confessing to me? “How…how do you know that?”
This time, Noah finally looked at me. His lavender eyes had lost their sparkle and now seemed to be glazed over with the weight of what he was about to say. “Because I was the one who killed him.”
I almost dropped the ashes. My hands shook with fear, shock, and disgust. Noah did this? The same Noah who’s been helping me and loving me and… “Why? Why would you do that?”
When he took a step in my direction, I tripped backward over my feet. My instincts shrieked at me this time. Did I think Noah would hurt me? I wanted to say no, but I found it hard to accept.
His face dropped when he sensed my fear. “I won’t hurt you, Cressa. I couldn’t do that.” Noah retreated far enough away that I would have a good start if I made a run for it. “But I do need to set things right with Iain.”
“I can’t raise ashes, Noah.” If I kept my mind on the analytical part of the magic, it helped me squash the emotional turmoil and pack it away to deal with later.
“You can, Cressa. You are the only one who can.” At his last statement, Noah’s eyes darted up at me in shock. He’d said more than he wanted but it was too late to take it all back.
“What do you mean that I’m the only one who can?” I feared I knew what he meant, but my heart refused to accept it.
With a slap of his lips and a decision that snaked across hi
s features like one of my scars, Noah sat down on the boulder. “I’ve been watching you for a while. No other necromancer has the control you do.”
“You’ve been watching me?” I questioned.
“I really didn’t want to get you involved because…,” his voice trailed off and he looked out over the meadow. “Well, for many reasons. But you’re the one I need. It has to be you.”
I hadn’t forgotten that he’d ignored my question. “What are you getting me involved in, Noah?” Thinking about the trackers and the Imperium, there was no way I should be pressing my luck with even more supernatural issues.
“I just need you to raise Iain for me. That is all.”
I didn’t care about the pained looked etched on his face or the way he tried to sound sincere. He had used me. “When did you know?”
“What?” Noah asked.
“When did you know that I was the one you needed?”
“Oh,” he said with a sigh. Pausing several seconds, I almost asked again when he finally answered. “The night you raised the kitten.”
“What?” My voice barely reached a whisper while my head spun with information.
“When I saw the way you handled yourself under pressure. That’s when I knew,” he said with a sad smile.
“Pressure?” Apparently I could only speak one word at a time now.
“You remember Peter? The one that brought you the kitten?”
“Of course I do,” I snapped, anger racing to my mouth faster than I could stop it.
Noah lifted his brows but didn’t comment on my attitude. “He was a test.”
“A test?” Perplexed and sick of toying around, my skin started to boil. I could feel the heat growing from my chest to my face. “For me? Peter was a test for me?”
Noah simply nodded.
“He’d acted strangely,” I mused, thinking about the Peter I’d met outside versus the Peter that had brought me the dead kitten inside. “I thought that maybe he’d been spelled. Or he just had multiple personalities.” I continued mumbling to myself until realization suddenly smacked me over the head like a cold shower. “Wait. Are you telling me that you spelled Peter? As a test to see if I was the necromancer you needed for your own personal issue?”