The Prophecy of Shadows (9 page)

“No,” he said. “This is something that needs to be seen. Come with me after class and I’ll show you.”

His eyes darkened, and my breath caught with the realization that whatever he was planning on showing me was serious—and that for whatever reason, he was choosing to come to me with it. He trusted me.

And even though I knew I shouldn’t, I trusted him, too.

The rest of ceramics class dragged on forever.

“Are you ready for what I’m about to show you?” Blake asked after the bell finally rang.

“After all of this build up, it better be good,” I joked, although I was only halfway kidding.

We gathered our stuff and headed out of the classroom. “Come on,” he said, walking the opposite way down the hall—toward the back of the building. It led to a dead end, but I followed anyway, trusting that he knew where he was going. He stopped at the door to the back stairwell, opening it and tilting his head for me to go first.

My arm brushed his as I walked through, a rush of heat flowing from his skin and into mine. My breath caught in my chest, and I pulled away, moving aside to give him space to enter. The stairwell was dim and unfinished, and he inched the door shut, closing out the rest of the world.

The chattering of the last kids walking down the hall quieted, and it was just the two of us. Alone. My heart was pounding so hard that he could probably hear it, and even though I’d wanted to be alone with Blake since the moment I first saw him, I needed to control whatever I was feeling for him. Nothing could happen between us. At least not right now, while he had a girlfriend.

“So … what did you want to show me?” I asked, pulling my sleeves over my hands and wrapping my arms around myself.

“This.” He removed something from his pocket and held it in front of him. It was a clay pendant of a miniature sun, about the size of his palm. The dark gray color of the clay made it obvious that it hadn’t gone in the kiln yet.

“It’s beautiful.” I let my fingers hover over it, afraid to touch it. “You made it?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “I did.”

“But why take it now, before firing it in the kiln?” I asked. “If you don’t fire it, it’ll eventually crumble.”

“I’m going to show you something,” he said softly, his gaze so focused on mine that I had to lean against the wall to steady myself. “Promise me you won’t freak out.”

“I promise.” I somehow kept my voice from shaking. “Given everything that I’ve learned recently, it would take a lot to freak me out now.”

“Fair point.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a black lighter. “You ready?”

“Yes.” I swallowed and held his gaze. “I’m ready.”

He flicked on the lighter, and it sparked to life, casting a glow across his face that made him look like he was from another world. Then he lowered the flame to the pendant—which was still sitting in his hand.

“What are you doing?” I gasped and reached forward to stop him. “You’ll burn yourself.”

“No.” He pulled away from me, and as the flames touched his skin, he didn’t even flinch. “Watch.”

The fire grew taller and brighter, and then he turned the lighter off. The flames should have gone out. Instead, they turned blue, growing hotter and burning stronger than ever, fully surrounding the pendant. He was holding fire, and his hand wasn’t burning. He was
controlling
the flames. Which, according to what I’d learned this week about how our abilities worked, wasn’t supposed to be possible.

But I couldn’t deny what I was seeing in front of my eyes.

Finally the fire died out, and he held the pendant up for me to see. The clay sun had hardened completely. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that it had been in the kiln for hours.

“How did you do that?” I brushed my finger over the pendant, but it was scorching hot, and I yanked my hand away.

“I don’t know.” He stared at the tiny sun, looking as transfixed as I felt. “Yesterday I was lighting the fireplace in my house and it felt like I could make the flames move like I wanted. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, so I went to my room to experiment.” His jaw hardened, and he raised his gaze to meet mine. “I wasn’t imagining it. I could control the fire.”

“But that’s impossible,” I said. “We can’t affect the physical world like that. Right?”

“The only explanation I could come up with is that something happened when we felt that jolt under the comet, and whatever it was changed us,” he said. “It gave me this ability.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe this was something you would have been able to do even without the comet.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” he said. “Then I remembered a bit about Hephaestus—the Greek god of fire—and I looked him up. Not even
he
could control fire with his mind.” He glanced at the pendant again, and then re-focused on me, his eyes burning with intensity. “I thought that since this all started when you moved here, you might know what’s going on.”

“Last week, I didn’t know that witches existed,” I reminded him. “All of this is new to me. I’m the
least
qualified person for you to ask.”

“But you were with us under the comet, and I know you’re picking up on how to use your abilities abnormally fast,” he said. “That’s why I had to talk to you today. Have you been able to do anything like I just did with the fire? Anything that affects the physical world?”

Disappointment surged through my chest as I realized why he’d brought me here. Until now, despite the complications, I’d hoped he was interested in me and wanted to spend time with me. That he thought I was someone he could trust. That he was as drawn to me as much as I was to him.

But he didn’t feel that way at all. He was just trying to get information from me.

I shouldn’t have expected anything more. And as I was standing here, crushed, he was waiting for me to explain his newfound ability. I had to set him straight. I was no one special. And I certainly didn’t have the answers he thought I did.

“I haven’t been able to do anything like that.” I focused on the pendant, purposefully avoiding looking at him. “Even if something
were
different with my abilities, I wouldn’t know, since I didn’t even know I had abilities until a week ago.”

“What about Kate or Chris?” he asked. “Have they mentioned anything unusual?”

“No.” I shook my head. “But something strange did happen at tennis yesterday…” I paused, hoping I wasn’t about to say something totally off base. But he nodded for me to continue, so I did. “I was getting a drink of water, and the fountain went all crazy on me, like it was possessed. Danielle was standing right behind me. She was upset that I might get her spot on the team.”

His eyebrows knit together. “Do you think she got jealous and doused you with water? That she
controlled
it? Like I controlled the fire?”

“I don’t know.” I ran my hands through my hair, since it sounded silly when he put it that way. “Maybe. Or maybe the water fountain was faulty, and the timing was a coincidence.”

We both looked at each other, saying nothing. I could tell that neither of us believed it.

“Thanks for telling me,” he finally said. “I’ll ask Danielle about it later.”

I nodded and glanced around the empty stairwell. “We should head to class,” I said, shifting my feet. “We’re late.”

I didn’t actually want to leave—I would have skipped class entirely to spend time with Blake—but being alone with him was just going to get my hopes up. I had to be stronger than that. I had to fight whatever I was feeling for him. Because he didn’t return those feelings, and it would be easier for me once I accepted that.

I reached for the door, determined with my resolve, but he held his hand out to stop me.

“Hold on,” he said, and I was helpless to do anything but still at his touch. “I didn’t make this for myself. I made it for you.” He lifted the sun pendant, motioning for me to take it.

I grazed my fingers along its surface, studying the details he’d engraved. A small face sat in the center, and two layers of rays extended in all directions. It was beautiful.

“Wow,” I said softly, taking it from him. It was still warm from the fire, and it pulsed at my touch. “Thank you.”

“I made it for you because you remind me of the sun.”

I took a sharp breath inward. If he were anyone else, I would have thought this meant something. That
I
meant something to him. But he had a girlfriend, and I didn’t want to be a side-girl, or a fleeting fascination.

I wanted the real thing.

So I stepped back and slipped the pendant into my bag. “We should go,” I said.

Disappointment flashed over his eyes, but he opened the door, motioning for me to go first.

Everyone stared at us when we entered class late. Luckily, Darius believed us when we said we had extra clean up duty at the end of ceramics. We took our normal seats and settled in, but it was impossible for me to focus. My thoughts kept wandering to Blake and the small clay pendant in my bag.

I reminded him of the sun.

For some reason, the comparison just felt … right.

In homeroom on Friday morning, every desk had a glass of water on top of it. I sat next to Kate, eyeing my glass curiously. I suspected that I wasn’t supposed to drink it.

“Something strange happened with my lab experiment for bio,” she said the moment I sat down. “You know how out of the three plants we’re growing, the one with no direct sunlight is supposed to grow the slowest? And the one with the most sunlight should grow the fastest?”

“Yeah…” I said, wondering where she was going with this. It didn’t take a genius to figure out how the results for the lab would turn out.

“I got to school early to check on my plants.” Her eyes went distant, like she was seeing what had happened again in her mind. “They were larger than anyone else’s, but get this—the one with no light grew just as much as the one
with
light.” She wrung her hands together, chewing on her lower lip. “That’s not how the lab was supposed to turn out. It doesn’t make sense.”

I searched my mind for an explanation, but couldn’t think of anything. “Maybe someone moved your plants around?” I finally said.

“No.” She shook her head. “We labeled them ahead of time. They weren’t mixed up.”

The bell rang before I could come up with another possible answer, and Darius walked to the front of the room. He clasped his hands behind him and looked around.

“Today we’ll be working on directing energy into a drink, such as water, to affect someone’s mood when they ingest it,” he told us. “I want you to focus on an approved color of your choosing. If you’re an upperclassman you should have this down by now, so this should be practice. I’d like to see the sophomores getting the hang of it, and freshmen, don’t feel badly if you find it difficult.” He scanned his eyes over the freshman in the front row. “If you still haven’t succeeded in gathering energy, please work on that instead. Skills build on each other, and you’ll need that one to be successful with this.”

He sat down at his desk, which I took as a cue to begin.

I decided to use the color orange. A main quality orange represented was strength, and with everything going on in my life, it couldn’t hurt to have more of that.

Ready to start, I looked around to see what everyone else was doing. Some students had closed their eyes, and others stared at their glasses with such intensity that it looked like they were trying to make them combust with a single thought.

I closed my eyes and immediately sensed the orange energy around me. The tingling started in my palms—rushing inwards like waves of light traveling through my body. The orbs of energy grew larger, swirling together until they felt like they were going to burst through my skin. Unable to contain the energy for any longer, I opened my eyes and touched the glass, shooting orange beams of imaginary light out of my palms.

A loud crack echoed through the room as the glass exploded, shards and water flying in every direction.

I stared at the place where the glass had been, my eyes wide, my palms flat on the table. Shards of glass were everywhere, and there was a puddle of water in the center of my desk, inching closer to the edge.

Had I really been responsible for
that
? Everyone stared at me, and heat rushed to my face, but this time it wasn’t because of the energy. I just wanted my classmates to stop gaping at me like I was some sort of freak-witch.

“I knocked over the glass,” I lied. “It was an accident. I’m fine.”

Kate appeared in front of me with a roll of paper towels, and she did her best to gather the glass and mop up the water. I tore off some towels to help.

“Nicole.” Kate’s voice wavered, and she pointed at my wrist. “You’re bleeding.”

I looked at where she was pointing and froze. A piece of glass had embedded itself inside of my forearm, blood seeping out from the sides. The shard was about the size of my baby toe—big enough to cause damage, but small enough that you had to be close to notice it. It stung, but it didn’t hurt. Not as badly as I would have expected. It was like I was looking at someone else’s injury—not my own.