The Prophecy of Shadows (13 page)

I eyed him cautiously. “And you go there to hang out a lot?”

“I used to with friends,” he said. “Usually it’s used by freshmen who want a private place to drink. It’s late enough now that it should be quiet.”

I nodded and looked out the window. There were practically no cars on the road at this time of night. Most people were asleep—like I should have been.

Then again, most people weren’t worried about fulfilling a possibly dangerous prophecy tomorrow.

Blake turned onto a dark winding road, and I spotted a three-story stone building with large white columns. The roof had a sharp slant, like the Haunted Mansions in theme parks, with gabled windows on the third floor. A bare tree curved around the side, its looming branches standing guard against unwanted visitors.

He parked the car near a sprawling wooden playground, and I brightened when I saw it. Now I understood why he wanted to come here. The playground must have had ten small platforms on all different levels, some bigger than others. The highest ones had roofs in the shape of fairy-tale towers. Narrow steps and bridges connected each platform to the next. Each platform had different ways of getting onto them—logs, ladders, tires, steps—and the one on the furthest end led out to a set of wooden monkey bars. It reminded me of the Robinson Treehouse.

Nearby was an old merry-go-round—metal, with bars to hold onto, and a thick pole in the center. It looked like it had been built in a different decade than the rest of the playground.

I walked to the merry-go-round, skimming my hand along the rail. Blake followed close behind. “I haven’t been on one of these since fourth grade,” I said, smiling at the memory. “I fell off the side from trying to make it spin too fast.”

“I can picture that.” He laughed. “This time, how about I spin it and you stay in the center so you don’t fall off?”

I tilted my head, like I was unsure, even though there wasn’t a chance I would say no. “Okay,” I finally said. “But if I do fall, it’s your fault for talking me into it.” I climbed onto it and smiled at him, tossing my hair over my shoulders and situating myself in the center.

“I won’t let you fall.” He grabbed the outside rail and started to run before I could say anything more. The playground and the surrounding buildings blurred around me, and it was like I was back in elementary school enjoying recess with my friends. My hair flew in all directions, and even though the wind rushed past my face, the cold didn’t bother me. I laughed and looked up at the stars spinning overhead, shining in the cloudless night. They looked like sparkling diamonds.

Blake jumped on to join me, sitting so close that his arm brushed against mine. Even though we were both wearing jackets, my skin tingled at the proximity to his. We admired the stars in silence, and the merry-go-round spun slower and slower, creaking a few times before going still.

“For a moment I forgot about the prophecy and what we’re doing tomorrow,” I said, running my hands through my hair in an attempt to untangle it. “It all seems so surreal.”

His eyes filled with intensity, and he leaned closer, leaving barely any space between us. “Everything’s been that way since you moved to town,” he said. “Surreal.”

My breath caught, and I was trapped in his gaze. “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Nothing’s been normal since you got here,” he said. “After all, if you weren’t here, I might not be able to do this.” He took out his lighter and flicked it on, shooting a fireball into an arc above our heads. It looked like a meteor, dying out before reaching the ground. Then he shot up four more. The sparks of light reminded me of a fountain show, but with fire instead of water.

I watched until they went out, amazed that all of this was real. My world had gone from normal to magical in only a few days. Everything I’d once believed to be true had been turned upside down, and even though it was crazy and possibly dangerous, I loved every second of it.

“I just don’t understand why my powers are different than everyone else’s,” I confessed what had been keeping me up all night. “You and the others can control the elements. That seems more useful than what I can do.”

“Maybe it’s because spirit is so different from the physical elements,” he said. “But I think your power could be the most useful of them all. I actually wanted to try something with it.” He pulled out a pocketknife, and before I could ask him what he was doing, he pushed back the sleeve of his jacket, lowered the blade to his arm, and made a small incision. A thin line of blood emerged from the cut, bright red against his skin.

“Why did you
do
that?” I asked, looking from the cut to his face and back again.

“So you can practice using your power,” he said. “I would never ask you to do that to yourself, so I had to do it to me.” He held his arm out and watched me expectantly. “Now—are you going to heal this or what?”

“Of course I’ll try.” I rested my hand over the cut, his blood sticky against my palm. “But I’ve only done this once, and I had no idea what I was doing. I’m sorry if it doesn’t work again.”

“It’ll work,” he said. “I believe in you.”

I wished I believed in myself half as much as he apparently believed in me. But since I didn’t want to leave him bleeding for any longer than necessary, I closed my eyes and tried to recreate whatever I’d done when I healed my own arm in class. I pictured white energy flowing through my body, feeling the warm tingle as it rushed through my arm and came out of my palm. Once the energy died out, I opened my eyes and lifted my hand.

The cut was still there. I watched, defeated, as a drop of his blood leaked out and dripped onto the floor of the merry-go-round.

Apparently I wasn’t as powerful as Blake thought I was. He’d had so much faith in me that he’d
injured
himself, and I couldn’t even heal him. I was a failure.

“Try to imagine what the cut feels like.” He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching mine, and my heart pounded faster. “Think about when you healed yourself. You did it before, so you can do it now. I know it.”

“Okay.” I closed my eyes and imagined the cut on my arm instead of on his, transferring whatever pain he was feeling onto myself. Calling forth the white energy again, I allowed it to flow out of my palm where my hand rested on his arm, picturing the skin knitting together and returning to normal. At the same time I felt the same thing happening to me, until the pain I’d created in my mind disappeared and the last bit of white energy flowed out of my body. Then I opened my eyes to see if it worked.

His skin was smooth, as though the cut had never existed in the first place.

“Perfect.” He nodded and pulled his sleeve back down. “Now if any of us get injured, we know you can fix it.”

“I don’t know how much I can do,” I said, leaning back against the pole to stop my head from spinning. “It wears me out pretty fast.”

“It’ll get easier with practice,” he assured me. “The same way that athletes get stronger the more they work out.”

“It works the same way for us?”

“It’s why the Elders are so powerful,” he said. “But I have a feeling that it’ll come naturally to you. There’s something different about your powers—something I’ve never seen before. You shouldn’t have been able to
capture
energy on your first day, and now, a week later, you have that mastered
and
you’re healing people. It’s incredible.”

“There’s something different about
all
of our powers,” I reminded him. “Me, you, Kate, Chris, and Danielle.”

“True,” he said. “So I guess none of us know what to expect now.”

We stared at the stars again, the mention of Danielle’s name hanging in the air. I couldn’t put off asking about her any longer.

“What did you mean in your text?” I asked, needing to get the question off my chest. “When you said that things were complicated between you and Danielle?”

“I’m surprised it took you so long to ask,” he said, and I leaned forward, waiting for him to continue. “Things between me and Danielle … haven’t been great recently. I don’t know how much you know, so I’m just going to put it out there—there’s a group of us that get together privately to practice using gray energy. It’s not illegal, but we’re not taught it in school, so we wanted to train ourselves to use it. We never thought we would need it, but teaching ourselves something we’re not allowed to learn in school was fun. Then, last semester, Danielle started using it on humans. At first it was small things, like putting gray energy into the pens of people she didn’t like right before they took a test, so they would mess up.”

“And putting gray energy into my tennis racket?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said. “But then, in November, she put gray energy into a girl’s drink, just because the girl was talking to me at a party.”

“Were you … interested in that girl?” I didn’t want to accuse him of anything, but I was curious if Danielle had an actual reason to be jealous. It wouldn’t make what she did okay, but I still wanted to know.

“No,” he said immediately. “Not at all. We had woodworking together, and we were talking about our latest project for class. She was shy and seemed uncomfortable at the party, so I didn’t want to leave her by herself. Then Danielle saw us, jumped to conclusions, and put gray energy into her drink right before she drove home …” He paused and looked out at the trees, his eyes pained at the memory.

“Kate told me about what happened to her.” I reached for him and rested my hand on his arm, glad when he didn’t move away. “I hope you know it’s not your fault.”

“It’s Danielle’s fault,” he said, snapping back into focus. “And I haven’t been able to look at her the same since.”

“But you’re still with her,” I said. “Why?”

“I ended things with her right after it happened,” he said. “She’d changed too much from the person she was when we’d first started dating, and I didn’t like who she’d become. But she came crying to me a week later, promising she wouldn’t use gray energy anymore, and begged me to give her another chance. So I did. But after what she pulled on you during your tennis try-out the other day, I’m done. She loves using gray energy too much to give it up, and I hate thinking that anyone I talk to is at risk of getting hurt by her. I was planning on telling her tonight, but then everything happened with the prophecy, and I couldn’t risk it. Because whatever we have to do tomorrow is important, and I have no idea
what
she’ll do when I tell her it’s over.”

“Wow.” I let out a long breath, and realizing how long my hand had been resting on his arm, I pulled it back onto my lap. “I had no idea. But thank you for telling me. For
trusting
me. It means a lot.”

“And it means a lot to me that you gave me a chance tonight and heard me out,” he said. “Danielle’s so jealous of you—I’m worried that after I end it with her, she’ll blame you. And I don’t want her to do anything that might hurt you.”

“I have you, Kate, and Chris on my side,” I said. “The three of you will protect me. And I have ways to protect myself now, too.”

“True.” He smiled. “You do.”

“But Danielle’s so confident and strong,” I said. “Why would she be jealous of
me
?”

“Let’s see…” He leaned back and looked up at the stars, as if he had as many reasons as the lights twinkling up above. “You’re more powerful than her. You’re better at tennis. Your element—the aether—is the center of all of ours. You’re the one who Darius entrusted with the prophecy. And using your powers is so natural to you that it seems like you have more potential than any of us. It’s impressive.” He smiled at me, and my stomach did that whole flipping thing again.

Hopefully the cold air disguised the redness creeping onto my cheeks. “Thanks,” I said softly, glancing down at my hands.

“I mean it,” he said, scooting closer to me. I shivered, unsure if it was because of the wind or the fact that Blake’s hand brushed softly against mine. “Still not used to the cold?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” I said. “Especially at night. Not that the night isn’t pretty, but it’s warmer during the day. I love being in the sun.”

“So let’s create our own sun.” He flicked on the lighter and grabbed the flame, floating it above his palm. It grew into a yellow sphere the size of a snow globe, and the heat warmed my face, stopping my shivering. The fire had taken on a life of its own.

He put the lighter back in his pocket and held his other hand underneath the fire as well, balancing the orb of light in his palms. It grew to the size of a basketball and floated up until it was right above our heads.

He’d created our own personal sun.

“Wow.” I stared up at it in amazement. “That’s incredible.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve been practicing.”

He was watching me so intensely, and I wondered if he was about to kiss me. My heart fluttered at the thought. I’d never been kissed before—that one time during truth or dare at tennis camp last summer didn’t count—and I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that I wanted this—I wanted
him
.

But just when he started moving closer, a twig snapped behind us, and I glanced over my shoulder to see what it was.

“Is someone there?” I whispered, panic flooding my veins. Were we even allowed to be here right now? What if the cops found us and were going to get us in trouble? Hopefully they wouldn’t call my parents. I would definitely be grounded if my parents found out that I’d snuck out
and
had gotten caught for breaking and entering. Well, we hadn’t
broken
anything, but we did
enter
.