“Stop it,” I said.
“She didn’t get very far—the Order made sure of that.”
“Leave my mother out of this.”
“Your mother . . . she was so—gifted really is the right word for it, isn’t it? Even for one of my most trusted. It hurt when she left me for your father, Skye. It really did. So good, so talented at controlling fate, influencing minds, manipulating the lives of paltry humans. It was such a betrayal when your father convinced her that this wasn’t the life for her. Such a shame. It’s not for everybody, I suppose. Many jump. And many . . . Well, many get their wings torn off in the night.”
“Stop it!”
“Oh, you can handle hearing the truth. She was easily replaced. They all are. Your mother, Raven, Devin. As long as time beats on, as life begins and ends, the Order will persist. New Gifted will rise up, with new, stronger powers. New Guardians will carry out their bidding. It’s so easy, really, Skye. Just like a machine. Tick tock. Tick tock. The great, beating tide of time draws in and out. Surf beating against the rocks of the beach at the end of the world.”
The beach at the end of the world.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I can change things.”
“What makes you think you’ll meet a luckier fate? What makes you think you’ll beat us this time?”
“Because!” I shouted. “I’m stronger than my mother. I have powers that she never dreamed of having. I have her talents AND I believe in free will. Because of me, time stands still and destiny is unreadable. I can see the future and cause the earth to shake and trees to fall and mountains to move and the sky to come tumbling to the ground in great waves of hail and snow. I can do so much more than anything you’ve ever seen! And I won’t stop until I beat you!”
“Perhaps,” he said. His voice was too calm, unnerving. “You could be stronger. But you have a weakness. The same weakness that your mother had. And it’s the reason that the Order will find a way to get you. It’s the reason we’ll win, every time.”
I clenched my jaw. “What weakness?”
“Your heart,” he said. “Your dogged need to see the best in everyone. Your belief in love. It’s your great undoing.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s what makes me strong.”
“Is it really? It’s what made you trust Devin, the very thing that made you vulnerable to his sword. It’s what made you align with the Rebellion, despite the fact that you knew they didn’t care about you—that they only wanted to use you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I spat. “They were my friends.”
“Were they? And what about your Rebel boyfriend? Where is he now? He was ordered to kill someone he knew you cared about. And what was he doing at that fire, Skye? Could it be that he was a part of the attack on your Aunt Jo?” I felt the blood drain from my face. “I don’t foresee this ending very well for you, my dear.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, panic rising in my throat like bile. “You can’t see that. I’ve blurred out your ability to see how this will end. You don’t know what Asher’s capable of doing.”
“Hmm, don’t I?” He paused. “Either way.” His voice was razors and sharp lines. “It’s your love for him, it’s your wish for him to be good, that will prevent you from seeing the truth about him. You want so badly to believe, to love him, all of them, to not be alone at the end of the world with the terrible burden you bear. But it’s what’s keeping you from staying safe. From fighting true and fierce. Your love will leave you ready for the taking.” He laughed, a cold, hard laugh. “Everyone you love will leave you, eventually.”
“That’s not true,” I whispered. Though I believed it less now.
“No,” he said. “Even you know that’s a lie.”
A lie . . . a lie. Everyone you love will leave you. Maybe he was right. It was why I’d always worked so hard to keep people out, to not trust anyone more than I had to. You couldn’t rely on people. There was no telling when they might leave you.
“See?” Astaroth said. “You’re catching on. Don’t you want to finally be free from worrying about all this? Isn’t it better to cut Asher out—forever? He’s probably plotting their next attack right now. He’s still a Rebel. He hasn’t changed.”
Changed.
I blinked.
You might find your mind somewhat changed.
If my mother was right, my mind was changed. A portal was created between my mind and an angel’s, every time they tried to influence my mental energy. Astaroth had been infiltrating my mind, trying to shake me up, make me question what I thought was right and true. Was it possible that a portal had been created between us? That his mind was changed, too?
Because if that was true . . . maybe there was a way I could see what he was planning.
Fighting with every inch of my energy to continue to push him out, I got up and started to leave.
“Where are you going?” he said. “Don’t think you can end this just by walking away.”
“I’m not walking away,” I said calmly, opening the window and climbing out onto the moonlit roof.
“I’ll always be able to get into your mind, Skye. You can’t hide from me.”
“So follow me, then.”
Out on the roof, I spread my wings, just in case.
And what I’d hoped would happen did. Even though it pained me to do it, I steeled myself and felt my mind touch the cold, sickening steel of his—and slip through the rift.
It was dark, cold, like floating in space. There was an emptiness in him, and I felt it too, was swimming in it.
Images began to crystalize out of the void. Images I recognized. The small, twinkling lights I’d seen in another vision, blinking on and off. The sweep of a dress against the hardwood floor of a gymnasium. A dress that I recognized.
Because Aunt Jo gave it to me.
I’d seen it in my visions, stained with blood. And I saw it now against the backdrop of my school gym.
For prom.
I heard Astaroth’s thoughts:
The battle will not end until one side has claimed her—or one side has killed her. It is the day of reckoning. The end of days—or the beginning.
I opened my eyes with a start. I was lying in bed, gasping. Sweat soaked through my T-shirt. The window was open, night air blowing the curtains back, and Earth was sitting up in her sleeping bag, staring at me curiously.
The battle we’d been waiting for. The battle over me.
It was going to take place on prom night.
16
“So.” Cassie’s eyes were sparkling. “I think I found a dress.”
“Huh?” I said, blinking to focus. I had hardly slept the night before. Once I’d gotten what I needed from Astaroth and pushed him out of my head, I had tossed and turned for hours. I had tried all morning to forget the sound of Astaroth’s voice, but his words wormed their way into the cracks of my brain, the empty spaces where before there had been only quiet. Could he be right? Would I always have to choose between love—and my life?
“For prom,” Cassie said. “Are you even paying attention?”
“Stop the presses!” Dan cried.
“You might want to take note, Daniel,” came the even reply, “as you’ll be wearing a matching boutonniere.”
“A booty what?”
“What does it look like?” I asked.
“Light pink. Short. Body-hugging. I kept telling the salesgirls, short and tight doesn’t have to be slutty, you know?”
“I know!” I agreed.
“I never know,” said Dan. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s all about proportions,” I told him.
“And footwear,” Cassie added. She whipped out her cell phone and produced a photograph of her modeling the dress in the store’s three-way mirror.
It was beautiful—and couldn’t be more perfect for Cassie if it had been made for her. A silky, satiny bandage dress in a pale pink, almost nude color that hit midthigh
. It looked impossibly glamorous paired with her red shampoo-commercial waves.
“You look a little naked.” Ian leaned over my shoulder, wide eyed.
“Thank you!” Cassie beamed.
“Let me see that,” said Dan. He took the phone out of her hands and studied it. We were all silent while we waited for his response.
“Dan?” She prodded.
“Dan?” I nudged him in the shoulder. “The world? It still exists.”
Dan looked up, dazed. “Can you send me this?”
Cassie blushed. “Let’s talk later,” she said under her breath.
“You’re right, though. Your booty does look hot—”
“Boutonniere!” She smacked him on the arm. “It’s a flower! You wear it in your lapel! Will you please take this seriously? Prom is in a few weeks and it might be our last dance ever and I want it to be perfect!” She sulked for a few seconds. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go finish painting the cows in the papier-mâché tornado before chem.”
Ian and Dan burst out laughing.
As Cassie walked away, I felt my stomach sink. They were so excited for prom. How could I tell them that the big battle we’d all been preparing for—that we’d been fearing—was going to happen on prom night? How could I do that to Cassie? I knew I’d have to tell her eventually, but for now, I decided to keep what I’d discovered in Astaroth’s mind to myself. It looked like I was back to keeping secrets.
“I have to go, too,” I said. “I have a scholastic reputation to maintain. Gotta go meet with Ms. Manning before next period.” I’d gotten a notice about it that morning. I almost wished I could go with Cassie to paint cows.
“Wuh-whoa,” Dan said.
“If it’s about those fireballs you threw in phys ed. . . .” Ian smirked.
“Can it, you guys. It’s about something normal, for once.”
“Let’s talk about your GPA, Skye,” Ms. Manning said, studying me over the top of her sleek wire-rimmed glasses. “Finals are coming up. I know you have your heart set on Columbia. So as your adviser, I just wanted to check in.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think I’m doing okay.”
Okay was a huge overstatement. What with visions of the future, connecting with my parents in the past, trying to find a missing Rogue, and plotting to save the world, studying hadn’t exactly ranked high on my agenda.
What had happened to me? Were my priorities totally screwed up?
“Well . . .” Ms. Manning took out a calculator and did some number crunching. “You need to get at least a 98 on three of your exams if you want to keep your GPA where it needs to be,” she said.
“Piece of cake.” I laughed nervously to show I wasn’t daunted by the task.
But I was, and now I had one more item I could add to the growing list I was worried that I’d really mess up.
I thought about it at length as I hurried down the hall to my next class. Grades, friends, prom—it was almost like the past six months had never happened. Except for the memory of Astaroth’s cold steel voice whispering in my ear. Threatening me.
Devin was as good a way to make that happen as any. I could have made him do much worse to you than he did.
I wasn’t sure it could really get any worse than stabbing me. But a lot had happened since then, while he was technically still under the Order’s control. He had warned me, helped me, taught me about my powers of the light. There was the time at the party in the woods after Cassie’s latest gig when I’d lost myself for just a moment and let him kiss me. Not just any kiss—the memory of it still made me shiver. Coming from Devin, someone who was normally so reserved, well—it had swept me up in its frenzy, and I’d been powerless.
Your dogged need to always see the best in everyone.
I did always want to think the best of the people in my life. I wanted to believe that Devin was good inside. That it was the Order that made him do and say all the things that made me not trust him.
I could have made him do much worse.
He had still been under the Order’s control when he’d done all those things. Warning me. Kissing me. Telling me he loved me. I thought he’d been acting out, but now it occurred to me for the first time how impossible that would have been.
The Order made him do those things. They preyed on my weakness.
The Rebels thought he had been controlling the way I felt. They believed that was the reason why I felt so calm around him.
Why I trusted him.
We were interrupted before we’d had the chance to find out.
But now I had a way to know for sure. And it was all thanks to my mom.
I was determined to find out the truth and put that chapter of my life to rest, once and for all. It was what I needed, to fight.
It was hard to get Devin alone. He didn’t go many places without Gideon and Ardith these days. I could feel the three of them watching me as they swept down the halls.
They had to be planning something new. Some attack of the elements on Aunt Jo or my friends. Or—I shuddered to think it—Earth and Aaron. They had come back to River Springs to help me. If I was the reason they got hurt, or worse, I would never be able to forgive myself.
The last vision I’d seen of the elements was the flash flood that trapped Cassie and Dan in Foster’s Woods. But the weather had been beautiful—balmy and warm, not a cloud in the sky. How would I know when the flood was coming? I was determined to keep myself open to my powers of the dark, in addition to the light visions that had been helping me so much lately. I was a balance of both, if nothing else. I had to allow myself to be balanced, if I was going to succeed.
So I kept an eye out, and Ardith knew, and Gideon hid behind his dark sunglasses, and Devin—well, Devin was the only one who I couldn’t quite get a handle on.
But that was about to change.
If he could lull me into a false sense of trust, I could do the same right back at him.
After school, I found him in a rare moment alone by his locker.
“Hey,” I said, leaning against the locker next to his.
Devin looked at me, then glanced around to make sure he was really the one I was talking to. His face lit up when he realized he was.
“Hi.”
“Where’s the rest of your crew?”
“Why . . . ?” He looked wary, like it might be a trap.
I put my hand on his arm and smiled up at him. I could feel the warmth under his skin. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I just want to talk.”
The locker door shut before I’d finished blinking, and soon we were sitting on the purple velvet couch in the back of Love the Bean—the one where I’d taught him how to make small talk all those months ago.
I sipped on my favorite—a chai latte—iced, now, for the warm weather.
“I’m confused,” he said. “I thought we weren’t speaking.” He took a sip of his ginseng green tea. “That you were mad.”
At the hurt and hesitation in his voice, I looked up—and suddenly, my script and everything I’d planned to say evaporated.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” I said, letting the side of my knee touch his. “I guess I’m not ready to just say good-bye and never speak again.” He let his knee linger near mine. “Even if we’re fighting against each other now.”
His voice dropped, low in my ear. “Skye, I meant what I said. About doing what I can to make it up to you.”
I glanced at him, and my heart shuddered. I couldn’t help it—my body still reacted to being this close to him, whether my heart and mind wanted to or not. I had always felt a magnetic pull toward Devin. It made it hard for me to stay away, even when he was yelling at me to do better, even when he was frustratingly impassive and hard to read. A montage of our stolen moments together flashed before me:
The snowball fight this winter that had ended in me falling on top of him, my hands on either side of his head, the steam of his breath against my cheek and his rare laughter in my ears—
Waking
up next to him in his bed, the pull toward him strong even then, as he lay on his side, watching me, a shy smile playing on his lips—
That moment in the woods—
And then it was like the force of the world was at his wings, pulling him toward me. And his lips touched mine, and his hands were running through my hair, and his body was pushing me up against a tree that was hidden in shadows. And he kissed me.
“Skye?”
“Huh?” I blinked. Devin took a sip of his tea, and watched me.
I steeled myself. I had to put all that behind me now. Because if I understood Astaroth correctly, none of it—not a single moment—was real.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I put my hands on his shoulders and stared deep into his eyes. Devin cocked his head, just slightly, and that look of hope I’d seen in the woods returned.
“For what?” he asked, surprised.
“It’s just that I have to know.”
The blue pools of his irises suddenly opened up, expanding until the inky centers edged out everything else, and I was swallowed by them.
I was back in the tiny, cramped hallway outside the bathroom at Love the Bean.
And I was staring directly into Asher’s fiery gaze.
My heart leaped. I knew I missed him, but I didn’t realize how desperately until I found myself face-to-face with him again. I wanted to reach out to him, to wrap my arms around his neck, but I was trapped within the confines of Devin’s memory.
This is the night of my birthday, I realized.
“You want to play by the rules? Fine. Be a good little Guardian. But I’m going to talk to her.”
“Don’t!” Devin said helplessly, grabbing his arm. “It’s not time. She only just turned seventeen today. We have to wait.”
Asher’s eyebrow shot up, his eyes glinting. “Nothing interesting ever happened by waiting, Dev,” he said. “I can’t wait anymore. This girl is special. We’ve been waiting for too long, and I don’t want to miss another minute of the fun.”
He brushed past Devin, toward the door, and into the night, where I was about to meet Asher for the first time.