Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GWEN

T he gates of Valeria Garcia's house seemed to stare me down like some heavy iron foe. I hadn't spoken to her since the night I controlled Thomas—or, more accurately, Valeria hadn't spoken to me. I'd tried a dozen times to catch her eye at school, but she breezed past me, her lips pulled into a tight line of worry. There had been no announcement, no official decree, but the rest of the coven seemed to be in agreement: I couldn't be trusted.

Luke had become an outsider by association, hiding away with me in some secluded hallway while the others ate lunch in their usual spot beneath the Palms. I didn't want to care about what Valeria thought of me, and yet here I was, walking up to her house, unable to deny that I did.

I didn't know exactly what I was going to say to her. I just wanted her to listen, and maybe when I was done, she'd stop looking at me with that wary expression on her face, like I was some kind of evil creature and not the other way around. With a sigh, I swung the gate open and climbed the old wooden stairs. The house was imposing in the dimming light, its color more blood red than strawberry. I rapped twice with the heavy golden door knocker.

After a long moment, Valeria opened the door, and I almost gasped aloud. I'd never seen her looking so exhausted, so human. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun that had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with utility. Dark circles ringed her eyes. She clasped the Book of Shadows under one arm.

"Gwen," she said. "What are you doing here?"

I fumbled for a casual reply, something about how I hadn't seen her around school, how I'd been meaning to drop in. But a tidal wave of awkward self-expression rose in my throat.

"We haven't been speaking," I said. "Things have been weird ever since you found out I have malevolent magic. And I totally get that, believe me, but I'm not the person you think I am. I'm still a member of this coven. We can work together."

"Thank you for sharing," Valeria replied. "You done?" There was no bold challenge in her expression—no sly mockery either. Her face was a mask of weariness, of heartache.

"Yeah. That was it."

There was an uncomfortable silence. My eyes traveled to the Book of Shadows under Valeria's arm.

"Any luck?" I said.

"What?"

"The Book of Shadows. Did you find anything? You know, about what Petra knew…or why my powers are back?"

"Not yet." She sighed. "But if you need a spell to make your chickens lay more eggs, I'm your girl."

"Who would've thought the Book of Shadows would be so PG?" Examining Valeria, I got the impression she'd been holed up with that book every night since Petra died. "Let me help you," I said suddenly. "I mean, what am I good for, if not copious amounts of reading?"

"Grand theft auto?"

I felt my muscles tense.

"Celeste hits the shops on Main Street practically every day after school. She saw you take that Mundane's car. Said he gave you the keys like they were yours."

I scrambled for an excuse, for some casual words that would make it seem okay. But it was a doomed effort. How could I explain the pull of malevolent magic to someone who'd never experienced it? I felt the divide between us grow. The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd spent years terrified of Valeria; now she was acting like I was the one to fear.

But of course I wasn't. She'd known me longer than anyone. She had to understand.

"I know how this must look to you, but I came here to tell you you can trust me." An unwelcome desperation crept into my voice. "Please. Trust me."

"I can't. Not while you're using malevolent magic," she said, grimacing as if it hurt her to say the words. This wasn't the bully I'd grown accustomed to. Standing in the doorway, Valeria looked more like the little girl I used to know. A pretty girl with sad eyes."I gotta get back to work," she said, stepping back into the house. "I'm sorry, Gwen."

The door closed, leaving me alone on the other side.

One dejected step after another, I descended the front stairs. Instead of heading home, I turned in the direction of Luke's house. I could have taken the road, but I went through the forest as if pulled by some desire for the peace that place used to bring.

I weaved between trunks and under bare branches. Past the clearing, the fallen tree lay dappled in shadow. The opening of the hollow gaped like a yawning mouth. I let myself mourn the days when problems could be solved and friendships forged with a carefully placed butterfly wing. Things would never be that simple again. If this was what it meant to grow up, I wasn't sure I wanted it. But I supposed none of us got a choice.

And if Valeria believed I was guilty of some awful crime, I didn't really have a choice about that either. I passed the hollow, resisting the familiar urge to glance inside. One thing was certain: she wouldn't be leaving me any secret offerings anytime soon.

A bitter feeling settled in my stomach. She's jealous, I told myself. Jealous of me and Luke. Jealous of my power. That was the only logical explanation for her behavior. When had Valeria Garcia ever cared about anyone but herself?

I marched on until Luke's house came into view. I felt a little silly emerging from the forest and walking up to his back door, but I didn't care. I wanted to see him, wanted him to hold me. Wanted that simple peace I used to find beneath the trees.

The back door opened into Luke's white-tiled kitchen. Mr. Nichols stood in the doorway, wearing a pair of bright red oven mitts. The scent of something sweet filled the house.

"Gwen! What a lovely surprise!"

"Hi, Mr. Nichols," I said shyly. "Is Luke home?"

"What's with the formalities? Please, call me Alexis. I can tell how happy you make my son. That makes you family in my book." He went to the oven and removed a tray of slightly charred blueberry muffins. "Oh dear, I'm afraid I lost track of time on these. Oh well, a little burnt crust never hurt anyone."

"Gwen? Is that you?"

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, then Luke stood in the kitchen, dressed in his usual wardrobe of denim and leather. I temporarily panicked, wondering if he'd be weirded out by my unannounced visit, but he looked at me as casually as if he'd been expecting me all along.

"Cool, you saved me a trip. I was about to go pick you up."

"You were?"

"Yeah. I have a surprise for you."

"What is it?"

He grinned. "You know how surprises work, right? Let's go. I'll show you."

"Leaving already?" his dad called as we headed for the door. "Take a muffin for the road!"

Luke shot me an exaggerated eye roll, but I turned back to the kitchen. "Thanks, Mr. Nichols—I mean, Alexis."

Heating up a frozen dinner every now and then was the extent of my dad's culinary skills. I wondered how different my life might have been if I'd grown up in a house like this, with a father who made blueberry muffins.

The faint light of the new moon did little to illuminate Cascabel Road as Luke and I sped into town. My talk with Valeria had left a pit of worry in my stomach. When I closed my eyes, I could see the dull, glassy expressions of the Mundanes I'd controlled. In my fingertips, I could still feel the magic coiled around their minds. I knew what I'd done was wrong. I just hadn't wanted to deal with it until now.

"I'm not going to use malevolent magic anymore," I announced to Luke as we turned onto Main Street.

Even as I said it, there was a tug of protest in my heart, a small part of me eager to hold onto the power I'd been given, to clutch it in my fists and never let go. After all, it was mine.

Luke turned to me. "All right," he said as casually as if I'd told him I was going to get bangs. "If that's what you want, that's what you should do."

He had a maddening way of making everything seem so simple. I smiled in spite of myself. I took his hand and let the shop windows fly by in my periphery. We drove another few blocks before he parked in front of the Hotel Dorado. It was an old brick building with white columns and giant palms in the lobby. At a whopping seven stories, it was the tallest building in town. On its rooftop was a huge, Las Vegas-style sign announcing its title in neon letters.

We stepped onto the street and I followed him inside, but instead of heading to the lobby, he made a quick right down a hallway of first-floor rooms. I almost asked, but we'd already had one conversation about surprises. I followed him into a stairwell at the end of the hall. Its stark gray banisters and concrete steps told me it was definitely not intended for guest access.

He put a finger to his lips with a playful smile and we climbed all seven flights, careful not to let our footsteps echo. When we reached the top, I was breathless but smiling.

Before us was a door marked staff only . But when Luke pushed the handle, it turned easily.

"Did you just—" I began.

"Did I just do some magical lock picking to gain access to the best view in Dorado?" he replied. "No, I did that earlier."

He swung the door open to reveal a rooftop decorated with dozens of flickering candles. Beyond the low metal railing, the lights of the town glowed like hundreds of tiny flames. The river sparkled under the streetlights. Everything that seemed so ordinary on the street below was magical from up here.

The giant letters of the neon sign beamed at us, bathing the entire scene in a surreal glow. He took my hand and led me to the edge. As we drew closer, I saw there were vases of delicate white flowers set among the candles. Their pale petals seemed to shine in the surrounding dusk. I lifted one. Its scent was strong and intoxicatingly sweet.

"Epidendrum nocturnum. Night-scented orchid. I thought you'd like them."

"They're beautiful," I replied. "But you didn't have to do all this."

"I didn't have to, but you deserve it," he told me seriously. "In fact, you deserve much more than a few candles and a stolen view."

The sky was dark now, and the neon behind us painted it in hues of artificial yellow, like the backdrop to some strange play.

"Look," Luke said, pointing to a spot in the eastern sky. "See those five brighter stars? That's Cassiopeia."

I squinted. "It's hard to see with the light," I told him, gesturing at the neon letters behind us.

A wicked smile crossed his lips. I smiled back at him, though my nerves began to tingle. It was like that with Luke sometimes. There was magic between us; like the pull of the tide, it drew me to him, even as I sensed something crazy was about to happen.

"Then we'll shut it off," he said.

We turned to face the sign. Each letter was about a story high, illuminated by hundreds of bulbs. I couldn't imagine commanding them all to go dark. It made my head spin.

"I—I don't think we can. It's too big."

He took my hand. I felt the warmth of his skin on mine, magic dancing between us like electricity.

"Trust me," he said and closed his eyes.

I did trust him. More than I'd trusted anyone before. I couldn't explain it, but I was beginning to understand we belonged together. Just as surely as my magic was a part of me, so was he. All the years I'd wandered through life wishing for a place to belong, that place had been by his side. Those nights I'd spent gazing at the dark sky, the dull yearning in my heart had been for him.

I closed my eyes and willed the light away. I felt Luke's power beside me, felt the elements answer to us.

I squeezed his hand. Through my closed eyelids, I saw the yellow glow fade and disappear. I opened my eyes. The sign had gone dim.

"We did it!" I cried.

I whirled around to face the horizon again, only to see lights flickering out beneath us. Every light on the block below died. We watched in a hush as the next block went out, then the next. Traffic lights, shop windows, and the lanterns on the riverwalk disappeared one by one. Darkness spread through the town, the faint twinkle of the farmhouses blinking out across the river. For a second, I feared it would never end, that we'd envelop the whole world in darkness with our power.

We stood there in stunned silence until it finally stopped. When it was over, a curtain of black stretched several miles in all directions.

I knew what we'd done was only possible because we'd done it together. It wasn't a logical conclusion but a visceral knowledge that I trusted more than logic. We stared at the darkness at our feet like a king and queen surveying the realm under our command. Above us, the five stars of Cassiopeia shone clear and brilliant.

"I love you," Luke said, his voice carrying over the rooftops.

"I love you too." They were the truest words I'd ever spoken.

He kissed me. I thought I'd be used to it by now, the feeling of when his lips met mine. Instead, every time was more powerful than the last. Everything around us disappeared—the rooftop, the river. We were two heavenly bodies colliding in the night sky.

Luke pulled me closer, his touch like fire on my skin. Then I saw it in the blackness of my mind: the meteor.

Its heat made my eyes water. Its beauty overwhelmed me. At first I thought it was speeding toward me, but my body was weightless now. Perhaps I was that burning orb, hurtling through darkness, the solid earth growing ever closer below. Let it come, I thought, and kissed him harder.

Back in Luke's car, we were quiet as he drove me home through unlit streets. I wondered vaguely when the Mundanes would get the power back on, if they'd scratch their heads and declare it was the strangest thing.

As he pulled into my driveway, I noted with dismay a familiar car parked behind my dad's on the gravel strip. The house was as dark as the shop fronts on Main Street, but I made out two figures standing in front of my door. One was my dad. The other was a man I'd seen once before—the man who'd been at the house the night I'd discovered my dad bleeding on the living room floor.

An urgent fear gripped me. Without a word to Luke, I got out of the car and hurried up the driveway toward them. As I grew closer, I could make out the tension in my dad's voice, the cool anger in the other man's.

"What's going on?" I demanded.

Moonlight glittered in the stranger's eyes. "Hey there, Pop-Tart. You wouldn't happen to have the money your daddy owes me, would you?"

My gaze darted from him to my dad and back again.

"You leave her the hell alone!" My dad tried to sound intimidating, but his words were choked with fear. "I told you, I'll pay you. Just give me a little more time."

The man shook his head as if he'd heard a bad joke. "You've had enough time."

From his jacket he withdrew something dark and metallic. He pointed the gun at my father, one finger on the trigger.

Before I could think, before I could move, my dad pulled something from the waistband of his jeans.

No. When had he gotten this desperate? My dad had always kept a rifle in the house, an old rusty thing he used to take rabbit hunting in the forest. This gun was shiny, brand new. It trembled in his hand.

"Gwen, get out of here!" he cried, but I didn't move.

The night went still. The sound of the wind faded until all that was left was those two men and their silly, deadly toys. I didn't even need to speak this time. I waved a hand, and they both froze. With another glance, the stranger tossed his weapon into the damp grass.

I knew I should tell my dad to do the same, but magic coursed through my veins like adrenaline, unstoppable now. I steadied the gun in my father's hand, his finger firm on the trigger. I watched the fear of death rise in the other man's eyes, heard his gasping breaths. A strange giddiness swept over me. Even in this horrible moment, it felt good to hold this much power.

Then I saw my dad's eyes, wide and panicked. He didn't want this man dead, didn't want to see him suffer. The other Mundanes seemed unable to recognize what was happening to them when they were under my control, but I knew by my father's face that he did. Some long-forgotten memory of magic lingered in his blood, making him understand. He struggled against me, tried to lower the gun, to loosen his grip on the trigger.

"Please—let me go, Gwen." His eyes held mine in a desperate plea.

I wavered, but the magic inside me resisted. I turned to the other man, taking in the sweat that glistened on his brow, the way his mouth gaped in terror. Just a few moments ago, he would have killed us both. Why, I wondered, should I show him mercy now?

Luke was behind me, so close I smelled the leather of his jacket. He put a hand on my shoulder, his touch careful as if I were a bomb that might go off at any moment.

I felt my grip loosen at last, my knees trembling. I clung to the spell long enough to turn to the loan shark.

"You're going to get out of here and never trouble my dad again, do you understand?"

He glanced at me, then at the gun my dad still aimed in his direction.

"Y-yes," he coughed out the word. "Yes."

He disappeared down the driveway. I heard the turn of his engine, the sound of rubber on gravel, and he was gone.

With an exhale, I let the magic go. Pain shot into my temples, worse than anything I'd felt before. In my periphery, my dad fell to his knees, the gun skidding into the dirt.

I was aware of Luke helping me inside, the sound of our footsteps in the house's quiet interior. My bed seemed to rise to meet me, my cheek landing against the pillow. After that, I knew nothing but darkness for a long time.

The sun was high in the sky by the time I woke the next day. My head rang with the echoes of last night's pain. I walked through the house as if still dreaming.

The TV was missing from the living room. My dad's bed was stripped, his closet empty. On the fridge, a note read simply: you'll be all right without me. love always, dad

For a long time, I sat at the kitchen table, exhausted and utterly alone. I called Luke.

In ten minutes, he was there to take me away from that house with its stale air and empty rooms. Back at his place, Luke led me upstairs. He closed his bedroom door behind us, and we sat together on his four-poster bed.

"Stay here with me," he said. "You're welcome to as long as you want."

"What?" I replied over the pounding of my temples. "You want me to stay… here ?" I glanced warily at the expansive bed with its rich coverings. "I'm not ready—I mean, I've never?—"

"That's not what I'm asking," he said quickly, removing his hand from my shoulder. "We have a guest room. It's all yours."

In my aching heart, I knew what I wanted. I longed to sink into the softness of his bed and sleep for a week, numb and safe by his side.

"I want to stay," I told him, my voice trembling. "In this room. With you. Please, will you just hold me?"

Wordlessly, he slid his arms around me. My head rested on his chest. Tears stung my eyes but didn't fall. I listened to the gentle beating of his heart. He didn't have to answer. I knew I was home.