Silver Smoke (#1 of Seven Halos Series) (40 page)

Every fiber of Pilot's being ached for answers, anything that would make him feel less alone. Brie and Rykken were so silent and peaceful, his hand in hers as they walked. Pilot wasn't angry about the two of them together anymore, not really. He still didn't understand how it happened so quickly, or how every look between them seemed to have years of history behind it. He didn't understand why their thoughts, words, and movements seemed to be so perfectly in sync.

The only part he was still mad about was how he didn't fit in with them, the same way he didn't fit in to the Hallow world. Pilot tried to imagine a scenario where their trio could work: a scenario where it wouldn't always be two against one. A scenario where they wouldn't choose each other over him.

He couldn't.

The void left Pilot with a single thought—Kennedy. He needed to find Kennedy.

Exactly four chairs with thin, patterned covers surrounded the small, round iron-wrought table in the dining room. There was a simple abstract painting of tan, concrete buildings on the wall. The small room contrasted with the van Rossum's huge, formal dining room, but the warm, neutral colors used to make Rykken feel at home.

Rykken pictured sitting there with his foster parents, before things had gotten so terrible. In his vision, his mom—
Mrs. Wakefield
, he told himself—spooned red rice and Korean barbecue onto his plate. Mr.

Wakefield ate his food quietly, but never failed to tell Rykken the one lesson he'd learned that day.

Mrs. Wakefield was the chatty one—she asked Rykken how his day was, how his grades were, if there were any girls he liked.

When he moved in with the Wakefields at age twelve, he was a quiet kid, shy from being shuffled through schools and families the same way people change wardrobes or haircuts. The Wakefields weren't nearly as well off as his other foster families, but they worked hard and they actually spent time with him. Under their influence, he grew out of his shyness, figured out he was good at sports, and began to excel in school.

He never expected to get kicked out of the Wakefields before he was eighteen and done with the system. Technically, they didn't kick him out—he volunteered to move in with the van Rossums until he turned eighteen, about nine months from then. They protested, but neither of them hid the relief on their faces when he brought a few packing boxes home from school one day.

It doesn't matter
, he told himself.
It's over.

After burning the parting image of the dining room into his mind, he walked outside to the Camry where Pilot waited in the driver's seat. He took one last look at the blue and white house with the wrecked blue Chevelle in the driveway. The temperature was unusually warm for a November evening on the island. Rykken opened the car door and settled into the passenger seat. "Do you mind?" He held up his iPod.

"Sure man. Whatever you want to listen to."

Rykken spun the wheel of his iPod until he found the playlist he used when life overwhelmed him.

Soft-rolling, explicit lyrics exploded from the sound system. He felt like the Eminem song banging from the speakers—angry and raw, and underneath it all, lost.

Pilot turned the volume down as they pulled up to the van Rossum house. "You know you're going to be okay, right?" Pilot rolled his window down and punched in the code to open the gate to his home.

Rykken nodded, swallowing his emotions. "When I was young," he said, "I had this crazy idea that I was different from the other foster kids—that my parents would come back for me. I hoped and prayed every single day that I would meet them." Rykken gazed beyond the glass at nothing in particular, idly tapped his fingers along the rim of the car window, in time with the music. "As I got older, I realized they weren't coming back to rescue me, so I held out for the possibility of getting another family." He sighed. The garage door creaked open, revealing an empty spot where Annie's SUV was normally parked. The house lights were out; Rykken guessed Brie was with Annie, wherever she was.

"Did you think the Wakefields were that family for you?" Pilot asked. His tone was casual, but guarded.

The question pierced Rykken's thoughts, causing him to wince. "I guess not—they never talked to me about adoption. Doesn't matter though—the reality is I'm seventeen years old and still in the system. No one ever adopted me. Statistically, I should probably be in juvie right now, but I'm not."

Pilot twisted the key, killing the engine. His brows hung close to his eyes and his every move screamed of his discomfort.

"I know I'm one of the luckier ones," Rykken said, trying to keep his voice nonchalant. "But I think about the rest of my life and realize that I'll never have a mom and dad. I'll never have siblings. I'll never have people to fly home from college for on the holidays."

Pilot frowned. "You might have a Hallow family, I thought."

"Like I said, if they wanted me, they would have found me." Rykken unclenched the fists he didn't know he was tightening. His palms had dotted lines across then from where his fingernails dug in. He pressed down on his fingers, stretching the muscles in his forearms. "I have to accept that they either died or abandoned me." His voice caught, and Pilot looked up, finally meeting his eyes.

"Then you have me," Pilot said quickly. "You have my family, however messed up it is."

"Thanks." Rykken wiped the corners of his eyes. Pilot pretended to fumble with the handle on the door.

"We should unload," Pilot said, practically falling out of the car.

Rykken inhaled the evening air to collect himself. Pilot was doing him a huge favor, and he didn't want to make things more uncomfortable for his friend. They both circled to the back of the car and Pilot popped the trunk. He handed Rykken a box of stuff, one of three that Rykken brought to the van Rossums.

It pained him that he only had five items to move—the three boxes, his guitar, and his surfboard. His life's possessions could fit in someone's car.

Pilot grabbed the other two boxes and they walked up the sidewalk to Pilot's house. "You know why I put up with James?" he asked. Rykken's eyes still brimmed with wetness, but he looked up anyway.

"Because I've seen what you've gone through, not having parents." Pilot shrugged. "James isn't much of a dad, but I'm lucky to have him. I hope you know you can ask him for anything you need."

Rykken nodded; he wasn't comfortable with asking James for anything, but he knew Pilot was trying to help him.

They set the boxes down in the guest room where Rykken usually stayed. Rykken pivoted in place, turning a full 360 degrees. The bed looked inviting, with light green sheets and a fluffy blue comforter covered in palm trees. The walls had paintings on them—the humdrum kind that hotels used to give a room that expensive feel. There was a flat screen TV on the wall and a dark, wooden desk in the corner next to a bookshelf with random ceramics and seashells instead of books. He had slept in that same room so many times before, but he had never really
looked
at it. Now that he was, he felt like a stranger, intruding on the generically appealing accommodation.

"Are you sure James is okay with me staying here long-term?" Rykken asked.

Pilot nodded, but his eyes didn't seem convinced. "Well, I didn't tell him about you and Brie. So yes, for now. But if he figures out..." Pilot let the sentence die. He tackled stacking the three boxes in an empty corner of the room with renewed energy. When he finished, a non-judgmental but questioning smile flashed across his face. "Won't it be weird living with your girlfriend?" he asked. Pilot's eyes flickered to Rykken's, but then he redirected his gaze to something on the floor near Rykken's feet.

"Yeah," Rykken admitted. He sighed, thinking back to the awkward conversation with Brie earlier that week. When he told Brie about his predicament and asked if she minded, she said it was fine; but he could tell she was just as nervous as he was.

"We're leaving anyway," she had said. "So it doesn't matter where you leave your stuff."

He wondered how true that was, but before he got very far with that train of thought, he was distracted by Pilot's intense, drilling stare.

Rykken felt something hot in his throat and coughed to dislodge it. "Nothing will happen with Brie,"

Rykken said, once he'd pounded his chest a few times. "If that's what you're worried about."

"I'm not." Pilot puckered, like he'd swallowed a salted lemon. "I mean, if you're dating her... I'm assuming you'll eventually want to, you know,
be
with her."

The heat in Rykken's throat burned to his head and chest. Rykken forced the thought of fooling around with Brie out of his mind, almost as quickly as it came. He was getting better at not thinking about her that way, at least not when Pilot was watching him.

"Are you still mad about us?" he asked tentatively.

"I don't know," Pilot said, his forehead creased across the center. "I want you both to be happy, but I wish you'd take things slower."

"We are," Rykken said, confused. "I haven't..." Rykken couldn't finish his sentence. He hated how lately, his conversations with Pilot could quickly take an awkward turn.

It didn't matter though; Pilot seemed to hear the words Rykken couldn't say. Pilot scrunched his eyebrows, concentrating very hard. Rykken guessed the conversation was just as awkward for him.

"Not
physically
," Pilot finally said. "But emotionally you seem too serious. It came out of nowhere."

"I care about her," Rykken said. The words couldn't even begin to describe how he felt about Brie, but he didn't want to get ahead of himself.

"For the record, I'm glad her first real boyfriend is a good guy that I can trust. But I don't want to see either of you get hurt, and I don't want to get left out."

Pilot's admission stunned him. "You'll always be my best bro. You know that, right?"

Pilot exhaled. "I guess I should be glad, because she needs someone to take care of her and I can't anymore." He cringed involuntarily, but tried to fold his arms across his chest to cover it up. "At least not with this Hallow stuff."

"Right," Rykken said. He waited; Pilot had a look on his face—

"Do you think Brie and Sirena have any chance of finding these stones?" Pilot asked, rushing through the words. He was visibly upset—more upset than Rykken had seen him since the last time they were at Thessa's house.

Rykken sucked in, buying himself a few seconds to think carefully about his words. "No," Rykken said finally. "But I can't let Brie go by herself. Hopefully the trip will give her closure for your mom's death, and she'll agree to come home."

Pilot's expression was a mixture of confusion and gratitude. He opened his mouth, the worry in his eyes lessening. His mouth formed the beginnings of a sentence, but before he spoke, he shook his head, changing gears. "Will you help me talk her out of the trip altogether?"

"We can try." Rykken shrugged, unsure why Pilot was asking. "We both know she won't change her mind though."

Pilot nodded emphatically. "I can handle this though," he said, more to himself than to Rykken.

"You'll go with her, make sure she doesn't get hurt, and convince her to come back as soon as possible so we can go back to our normal lives."

"That's the plan," Rykken said. "I think I can convince her that the stones are impossible. We still don't know why Milena would want them."

"She wouldn't have wanted them," Pilot said with conviction. "Thessa wants them. My mom just wanted a family."

Rykken didn't engage the subject further. He didn't want to get into another argument about Thessa's motives. He was used to Pilot's overprotective outbursts when it came to Brie. Their sibling relationship had always fascinated him, probably because he was so alone in the world. It seemed like they were always at each other's throats, but underneath every argument and complaint was teasing. They never hung out with the same group of friends, but they always had a pulse on each other's lives. They said terrible, brutally honest things to each other that could rip normal friendships apart, but an hour later they'd be laughing again. No matter what, they knew they'd always have each other.

Rykken wondered if that's why most Hallows were born as twins—so they always knew they had someone else who understood the changes they were going through. He was lucky he had Brie, since he didn't have a brother or sister—

"Oh my God," he said, putting his palms on the sides of his head. Twins. Hallows were born in pairs... how had he missed it?

"What's wrong?" Pilot asked.

"Nothing," Rykken said. "Can I borrow your car? There's something I need to check out."

*****

His heart-to-heart with Rykken reassured him about Brie, but there was one topic they hadn't covered

—Kennedy. His last few evenings had been the same—he sat at James' desk and stewed over what he knew about the Hallows and Silver Smoke. Anything he could pull from his conversations with Kennedy, Brie, Rykken, and Thessa could be of use to understanding what Kennedy's motives were. He stared at the maps canvased across James' office walls, speckled with color-coded pushpins. He had finally figured out that the red pins represented the places Milena travelled without James. Did Kennedy know about Milena?

Kennedy hadn't hurt Rykken yet, but maybe it was because he wasn't the target. Maybe she'd found out about his mother's past.

Pilot shook his head—he couldn't believe that Kennedy was evil. Misunderstood, maybe; but he didn't think he could fall in love with a murderer.

He heard a soft tread on the carpet, and he knew it was her without turning around.

"I guess I shouldn't bother asking how you got inside," Pilot said, facing the map on the wall. "I know all about Silver Smoke and the Hallows and Nephilim."

The footsteps coming toward him stopped abruptly. He took her silence for guilt.