Destiny

by Amanda Lynn Petrin

  Part of me expected Embry to go back to bed so it would be like last time, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen when I was this upset.

  It was hot in the house because Embry didn’t believe in air conditioning unless it was so hot there was a chance we would melt. Still, I felt a chill, so I brought the quilt from the bed down with me.

  “Do you want to take out the toppings?” Gabriel asked me while he worked the griddle.

  “I’ll set the table,” Embry volunteered.

  I took out peanut butter, Nutella, cinnamon, sugar, bananas, strawberries, lemon, cheese, and apples, then got chopping and slicing.

  “What kind of toppings are these?” Embry asked once the table was set.

  “It’s the middle of the night so I didn’t know if dessert pancakes or apple-cheese pancakes were more appropriate,” I explained.

  “You’re adorable.” Embry shook his head and started chopping the strawberries for me.

  Soon enough we had a pile of crepes and a table covered with possible toppings.

  “Delicious,” I said once I bit into my apple-cheddar crepe. I coaxed Gabriel into letting me put the toppings on while it was still in the pan, so my cheese was all melty.

  “I thought you were starting with your savory one?” Embry asked when I put maple syrup on it.

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” I warned.

  “Why are you wasting your time being smart when you could be a chef?” Gabriel had copied me, and clearly approved.

  “You’re both crazy,” Embry stuck to lemon and sugar. He sometimes splurged on a strawberry Nutella one, because he knew how good it was, but he was a traditionalist.

  “Speaking of weird dreams…” Gabriel brought it back to what had us all awake at this ungodly hour.

  “We weren’t,” I argued.

  “Is that the first one?” Embry ganged up with him against me.

  “I haven’t had that particular dream before.”

  “But…” Gabriel caught on.

  “But the ending is what I see all the time. Sometimes it plays over and over again and I can’t make it stop,” I admitted, using all my will to keep the tears in my eyes without letting them fall. I tried to sound like it was a minor annoyance, rather than something that kept me from sleeping most nights.

  “You’re right that we can’t speak for Sam…” Embry said delicately, like they did every time they used his name around me. “But both of us would gladly give our final lives to keep you safe, without blaming anyone but the asshole who did it.”

  “My brain knows that. But he didn’t give his life to save mine. He gave it because I chose not to go with Donovan. His death didn’t change anything. They still kidnapped me and then I got away. Maybe if I had gone willingly, I still would have escaped, but I wasn’t brave enough to take that chance.”

  “You had no way of knowing what would happen. The potential consequences of giving Donovan what he wants are much greater,” Gabriel insisted.

  “And now that I have this magic thing that came out of nowhere...maybe I could have saved him. Instead of being selfish and scared for my own life, I could have tried to protect his. Instead of killing a woman to save myself, I could have evaporated Donovan to save Sam.”

  “This is why you don’t sleep at night?” Gabriel was full of empathy, which somehow made it worse.

  “I sleep,” I argued. “Just not easily and not well.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to be feeling this bad over it for me,” Embry tried to reassure me with more things Sam could no longer do.

  “Even if you had a wife and a daughter who didn’t get to say goodbye, who would never see you again?” I admitted what weighed on me the most. My brain understood that Sam knew what would happen and still told me to go for it, but Deanna didn’t expect to lose her husband for me. I was the reason Clara would grow up without her father.

  “Sam didn’t die because of you, Lucy, he died because of the kind of person he was. The kind who insisted on being your guardian and refused to let us take you, even when we told him all of the dangers it entailed,” Embry said with such conviction that I nearly believed him.

  “That’s another thing that scares me. I might not get the chance to have them yell at me and hate me, because they could be the next targets the Big Bad decides to use against me.” I was failing to keep the tears from falling, but I fervently wiped them away as if that would prevent anyone from knowing they were there.

  “They’re safe,” Gabriel assured me.

  “Just because we know they’re at the Beach House doesn’t mean they’re safe,” I argued.

  “I don’t just know where they are, Luce. We have codes and signs to keep in touch. There’s something Deanna can do that would alert people we trust if something was wrong. Help would be there within minutes of her doing it. We have people watching the house, watching the town. And she checks in every three days to let us know they’re okay.”

  “Every three days?” I asked.

  “Without fail,” he agreed. “It’s not like a phone call where we talk and ask questions, but the last one was yesterday, and everything was good.”

  “And you know for sure that it was her, not someone trying to keep up appearances?”

  “I do.”

  “Have you read the book Ingrid left you?” Embry asked me, completely changing the subject.

  “The first few pages,” I played along.

  “If it’s the book I think it is, that’s the one that tells you how to track essences, rather than a location on the map. You could see what they’re doing rather than where they are.”

  “The one you said was dangerous?” I asked Gabriel.

  “For Donovan, yes, but we can work on it today for people you care about,” Embry took the lead.

  Chapter Ten

  We lasted until 10 a.m. before I fell asleep on the swing with Ingrid’s book, not long after Embry tipped his hat over his eyes and drifted off in the field. Luckily, my dreams were just dreams, that didn’t make sense, but didn’t upset me either.

  When I woke up, I was lying on the swing with a blanket over me and Ingrid’s book on the table beside me. I looked around, confused because Embry fell asleep before I did, but then I saw Gabriel a few feet away, keeping guard.

  “Do you always take turns sleeping?” I asked, not ready to be awake yet.

  “I’m not tired,” he held in a yawn, which made his face look ridiculous and revealed his lie. “At night, inside the house, we take precautions so there’s at least an overlap, but outside, when the rest of the world is awake and plotting, I would rather not chance it,” he tried to say in a nonchalant way so I wouldn’t feel like I was in danger, but it was ever-present.

  “I can keep watch if you want to take a nap,” I offered, yawning with a stretch. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face the day or to go back to sleep.

  “I’m good,” he assured me with a smile.

  “I know I’m not useful yet, but I can definitely manage to wake you if someone shows up,” I defended myself.

  “You’re incredibly useful Lucy, don’t sell yourself short.”

  “True, an entire league of super soldiers wants to use me to take over the world.”

  “You’re useful alive too,” he told me. “There’s more to you than looking like Annabelle.”

  I wanted to ask him what the more was, but he was looking at me in that intense way that made my heart beat faster and my cheeks flush. “I’m thinking I should get a tattoo and cut my hair in a really weird way,” I said instead.

  “They know what you look like. A haircut won’t trick them,” he argued. “Unless you were planning on a face tattoo?” he kept his distance and would lean back as if he wanted to end the conversation, but then he would lean in again.

  “Face and neck,” I played along. “That way I’m unrecognizable from the front and the back.”

  “Not the craziest idea I’ve heard,” he leaned back and got comfortable. “Wha
t would you get?”

  “The face is hard, because it has to be big, and my mouth and eyes have to fit into it, but I feel like skeletons and spiderwebs are overdone…”

  “People actually do that to themselves willingly?” he stopped me, leaning close.

  “They do,” I laughed. “And in the back either a rainbow or a skull with crisscrossed bones.”

  “Please elaborate,” he asked of me.

  “Depending on the face, I either need the rainbow to tone it down, or the skull to ensure no one will ever approach me.”

  “I’m not sure a face tattoo would be enough of a deterrent.”

  “Paired with my personality?” I used self-deprecation because he wasn’t teasing anymore.

  “You don’t stand a chance at scaring people away once they actually get to know you.” I swallowed, feeling my heart pound before he went on, “You need to scare them away before they can get close.” His eyes lingered on me.

  “Hey, you’re awake!” Eric interrupted, causing Gabriel to retreat, the moment gone.

  “You saw me sleeping?” I asked, putting on a smile, but I couldn’t help but wish he had come by a few minutes later.

  “I saw you out here earlier. I wanted to see if you were up for a ride, but you were snoring.”

  “I don’t snore,” I argued, though I didn’t have a clue if I did or not.

  “Don’t worry, it was cute,” he smiled before looking awkwardly to Gabriel, kind of nervous. We weren’t technically kids, but the guys gave off a vibe that told people to stay away from me.

  “Don’t mind me, I was just leaving.” Gabriel got up, but he looked at Eric in a way that made him even more nervous.

  “I think we were supposed to work on stuff,” I argued, nodding towards Ingrid’s book.

  “Embry can help you with that when you get back. You two should go have fun!” Gabriel walked off, but it was weird. I felt like I did something wrong, or I upset him, and I didn’t like it.

  “Did you not want to come?” Eric looked at me expectantly.

  “A ride sounds perfect,” I assured him, heading for the stables.

  I chose Donner again and got him saddled, then Eric mostly let me lead. I think he felt that I was in a weird place and needed to clear my mind, because there was a lot of galloping and I was out of breath by the time we got back around mid-afternoon.

  “It’s like you’ve been riding your whole life,” Eric smiled while he unsaddled Rudolph and I brushed Donner.

  “I had an excellent teacher and an amazing horse.”

  “You can also take credit.”

  “I do, when it’s deserved,” I assured him.

  “You’re pretty special, Lucy Owens.”

  “Thank you, Eric…Finch?”

  “Finch,” he agreed.

  “I didn’t even know your last name.”

  “Don’t sweat it, you know the important stuff.”

  “Like your favorite Care Bear?” I brought up one of the random things I knew about him. Daydream Bear for him, Grams Bear for me.

  “It doesn’t get more personal than that,” he teased. “Although it’s a lot easier to find people with last names.”

  “Find them…” I pressed, my brain going straight to the people hunting me.

  “You know, after you go home, when you realize you miss me,” he got a huge smile that I couldn’t help but reciprocate.

  “Yes, last names would help at that point.”

  I shook my head at him before Embry walked over, smiling at the two of us.

  “Ready to try some stuff?” he asked me, holding Ingrid’s book.

  “Time for your daily homework I guess,” Eric sounded disappointed. He always called it my homework. We never openly discussed magic or the Gifted or any of that stuff around him, so I couldn’t tell if he was oblivious and really thought we were doing quizzes and science experiments every day. The guys were overprotective and could be overbearing, but I doubt either of them really cared how well I did in school. Especially since it was highly unlikely I would ever be stepping foot in a Harvard classroom. I winced, trying not to think about what this year was supposed to look like.

  “We won’t be too long. You can probably have her for supper.”

  I turned to Embry, not sure what was going on, but he gave me a head nod and something resembling a wink.

  “Then I guess I’ll see you later, Miss Owens,” Eric said before heading to Charlie’s.

  I followed Embry to the other side of the barn, where the blanket was already laid out on the ground.

  “What do we need for this one?” I asked, seeing nothing but the checkered picnic blanket.

  “Nothing but you,” he said simply. “Even for the other tracking spell, all you really need is the crystal, the string, and the map. The rest was to make you feel like you weren’t on your own, but you just need a clear picture of the person you’re scrying for. Most of the words to these simple spells become superfluous when you know what you’re doing. It’s all about intention.”

  “I will things to happen?” I severely doubted his assessment of my skills.

  “There’s a little more finesse to it. It’s not like you can will yourself to win the lottery or fly, but things don’t happen because you channel a candle’s energy or say something in Latin...they happen because you set the intention for them to,” he explained.

  “Ingrid’s book has pages of instructions. It would be way lighter if all you needed was intent.”

  “There are methods to help channel your intentions. I’m not knocking them. I’m saying the way it worked for Beth, and seems to work for you, is that you don’t need that extra boost.”

  “No pressure,” I sighed.

  “I don’t want you to be somewhere and need to use a spell but hold back because you don’t have the right crystal,” he explained.

  “Didn’t it also say I needed something from the person I was tracking?” I asked, mentally going through the pages on tracking people. I saw them in my head like chemistry labs; a set of ingredients and the steps you take to combine them into something better. It was pretty easy to figure out what ingredients were used to boost the magic signal, but I felt like the object of the person you’re tracking was essential to not track the wrong person.

  “You have your ring, so we can start with Clara.” He sat on the blanket. “But I’m pretty sure it will work without objects for people you have a strong emotional connection to.”

  “Only love, or fear and hatred too?” I thought of Donovan, not wanting any kind of connection to him.

  “I wouldn’t use this version for someone you didn’t feel positively towards. My car broke down when I was driving back from a trip to see Caleb and Etta, so Beth got worried. She used this tracking spell and... I don’t have powers, so I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but it was like I could feel her in my heart and all around me. Not in an overwhelming way, but I think that if I was someone who did have powers and wanted to hurt her, it could have been dangerous.”

  “What exactly am I doing?”

  “Why don’t we try with Clara, then you can tell me if you want to use it for other people, or Donovan,” he suggested.

  “Is it safe?” I was nervous now.

  “For Clara, it should be,” he said reassuringly. I trusted him more than anything in this world, but the magic…not so much.

  We opened Ingrid’s book to the appropriate page, and I closed my eyes. I slid the ring into the palm of my hand and held it, picturing Clara laughing as she dragged me through the garden, wanting to show me some creature she discovered, or a fort she built us in the trees. It was all so real that I could hear her laughing outside my head, then everything changed. It was like I suddenly zoomed in on her from outer space. She was building a sandcastle on a somewhat deserted beach, wearing a bright yellow swimsuit with an overly large sunhat.

  “It’s not a real cake because it’s made out of sand,” Clara explained, checking on the mounds she laid out on
the rocks behind her to cook in the sun. “Maybe we can make real ones after supper, with sprinkles, and I can lick the spoons?” she asked.

  “Only if you eat all your food,” Deanna warned, but she was smiling.

  “We can keep some for daddy and Lucy,” Clara tried, keeping her head down, but bringing her eyes up to see Deanna’s reaction.

  “It’s not like we can eat all the cupcakes ourselves,” Deanna agreed, but I felt like her smile was forced. Thinking of Sam broke her heart as much as it did mine.

  “So?” Embry asked when I came back to him.

  “It was like I was there and felt her. She was making sandcastles and... I could feel the sand, and the warmth of her sun.” It sounded crazy, even to me, but crazy was relative these days.

  “That’s how Beth described it,” he agreed. “She said it was like---”

  “Like a part of me went to her,” I finished for him.

  “She said a part of her essence, but yes.”

  “I would never want to do that for Donovan.” I shivered just thinking about it.

  “That was my assumption.”

  “How does it feel for Clara?” I asked, not wanting her to freak out as he had described for himself.

  “Like a hug.”

  “From me, or from someone?”

  “I felt like it was from Beth, but I might have made the assumption based on the limited number of people who felt that way about me and could do magic.”

  We did it a few times, so I got to see Deanna making brownies with Clara, and Keisha working on a research paper before Embry called it a day.

  “What are our dinner plans?” I asked when he said I was free to go.

  “I didn’t have any, but it sounded like you and Eric…”

  “He’s nice, but I don’t know how much he knows about me, if I can trust him, or if getting close to him just puts him in danger,” I admitted.