Blue Violet (20 page)

She turned and
wrapped her arms around his neck, receiving an achingly sweet kiss.

“I missed
you,” Alex whispered.  He buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply.

“It was only a
few hours,” she teased, snuggling deeper into his embrace.

“There’s a
pack of murderous Vyusher wolves trying to kill all of us. Give me a bit of a
break here. I don’t feel right with you out of my sight. Especially given your
tendency to gravitate to near-death experiences.”

“I know the
feeling,” she agreed, ignoring his last comment.

With a
resigned sigh, they mutually pulled apart. “Better go in,” Alex said.

As they
entered through the kitchen and then walked out into the living room, Ellie saw
the whole family had gathered and stood waiting for her.

Hugh spoke
first. “We’ve discussed everything you suggested and agree that your ideas seem
to be our best option.”

Ellie glanced
at Alex, who frowned. “You don’t agree?” she asked quietly.

He shook his
head and pressed his lips together as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“I know you’re amazing. But the only time I’ve witnessed your powers is when
you were under a pack of wolves being torn to pieces. I just worry about your
being at the center of the fight. That’s all.”  He shrugged helplessly.

Nodding, Ellie
turned back to the room.

“How do you
want to start?” Hugh asked.

Ellie had
thought about little else all day… just one of the reasons she’d had such a
difficult time getting through her classes, and already she had a plan in mind.

“Well… I still
don’t know all of your powers, so I’d like to start by finding that out. Then
I’d like to spend a little time with each of you individually over the next few
days so that I can learn your abilities and try them out a little bit. We’ll
see where that gets us.”

“Whose powers
don’t you know yet?” Lucy asked quietly.

Ellie took her
time answering as she went into the dining room to retrieve a chair. “Here’s
what I know,” she began as she sat down. “I know Adelaide sees relationships.
Lila sees if people are being truthful. Lucy sees people’s intentions. And Hugh
has the ability to heal. I’m guessing the girls got their powers from you,
Lucy. Did they inherit anything from Hugh?”

She looked to everyone
questioningly. Hugh smiled. Actually, all of them smiled, seeming amused.
“We’re not sure yet,” Hugh answered. “Maybe you’ll be able to tell us.”

Ellie nodded.
It took years to discover what powers could do, and sometimes centuries to
master them.

 “Charlotte is
a teleporter. Nate is extremely strong…” she continued.

“I’m pretty
much indestructible and frickin’ fast.” Nate flexed his bicep and gave it a
kiss. Everyone laughed.

“So I guess
the only people I don’t know are Alex, who I think can either freeze things or
stop time. He refuses to tell me which…” She wrinkled her nose at him. “And
Dexter and Ramsey.”

“I’m able to
turn my body into metal,” Dexter explained. “Any kind of metal. And I’m
developing the ability to turn things I touch into metal. But that’s still a
work in progress.”

Ellie nodded, her
mind already spinning with ideas for that skill. But she held back her
multitude of detail-related questions until she could touch Dexter and find out
for herself. She looked to Ramsey. So far, Ramsey was the quietest one of the
bunch. The red-haired boy seemed to be extremely intense and generally
unsmiling, although Ellie got the impression that he loved all of his family
very much.

Ramsey
suddenly grinned, transforming his face from good-looking to wickedly handsome.
She saw everyone shift position. Ellie glanced toward Griffin.

“Smiles
from Ramsey are rare,”
he relayed to her telepathically.

  Her
attention returned to Ramsey as he snapped his fingers, and flames instantly
appeared in the palm of his hand.

“Wow!” Griffin
exclaimed, sitting forward. “Firestarters are supposed to be extremely rare. My
great-grandfather told me about them once.”

 “Did he tell
you why they’re so rare?” Ramsey’s grin hid behind his intense expression
again, as if the sun had disappeared behind the clouds.

Griffin
grimaced. “I remember something about it being a dangerous ability that is
extremely difficult to control. And it also goes along with volatile
personalities, which doesn’t help the control part all that much.”

Ramsey gave a
sharp nod. “Got it in one,” he said. A bleak expression momentarily flitted
across his face.

“Actually,
it’s dangerous for me to even be around my family.” Ramsey glanced around the
room. “If I lose control, I could kill them. So I try to stay fairly separate
from them and not use the fire. It’s why I’m not in school.”

Ramsey darted
a look at Lila, who lowered her eyes and turned her head away subtly. Ellie
wasn’t sure if anyone else caught that interaction, but she suspected there was
something going on there.

“He finds it
easier to control it when he’s with us though,” Dexter added.

Ellie made a
snap decision. “Let’s start with you then, Ramsey.”

“No!” Alex and
Griffin both shouted.

Ellie frowned.
“I have to start somewhere--”

“Then start
with a less dangerous skill, Ellie,” Griffin interrupted. “You just finished
healing from potentially life-ending injuries…
today.”

The frustrated
look he leveled on her couldn’t have been clearer. He thought her decision was
rash. Then he heard what she was thinking, crossed his arms over his chest and
grumbled, “Fine!”

“Nothing’s
fine
,”
Alex said, glancing back and forth between the twins.

“You’ll soon
learn that my sister has the ability to reason away every decision she makes,”
Griffin said, and glared in Ellie’s direction.  “And most of the time you can’t
argue with her logic… It’s
very
exasperating.”

Ellie shot him
a superior look. “How many good reasons do you need, exactly?”  She then ticked
off her reasons to the rest of the room, holding up a finger for each. “I’m
done healing. We’re short on time. This skill would be extremely useful in a
fight. If it’s hard to control, I’ll need to practice with him longer than
anyone else. I might be able to help him learn to control it.” She paused and
glanced around the room. “Any other arguments?” she asked sweetly.

“You’re right,
Griffin.” Alex obviously felt unhappy about this decision but was just as
obviously resigned to it. “That is very frustrating.” He softened the comment
with a squeeze of her hand.

 “Okay, for
this one, I think we take the practice outside.” Ellie hopped up. “There’s a
clearing about five miles from here that would be perfect.”

Ellie turned
to Charlotte.  “Do you mind?” she asked, indicating the need to use her
teleportation.

Charlotte shook
her head, holding out her hand.

“I’d like to
try something,” Ellie began. “I want to see if I can use my power, but not
necessarily with you all touching me. I’m hoping it’ll work the same if we’re
linked together just holding hands.”

Once Ellie saw
everyone was connected, she closed her eyes, pulled Charlotte’s power into
herself, and suddenly they were in the clearing. All of them.

“You really
need to show me how to do that without noise,” Charlotte murmured, impressed.

“You got it,”
Ellie assured her.

“That would
be a very handy skill to use in the fight
,” she heard Griffin think.

“Agreed
,”
she thought back. “
Stay close while I’m working with Ramsey. If he or I get
out of control, you’ll need to try to contain it.”

After
receiving his nod of assent, to the others she said, “Griffin’s on standby in
case I need help. You guys might want to hang back, though.”

Ellie led
Ramsey to the middle of the clearing and then turned to face him. The solemn
boy was nervous, although he hid it well. She gave him a reassuring smile.
“This won’t hurt.”  

She held out
her hands. After a miniscule pause, he grasped her hands in his, and Ellie
closed her eyes. The glow inside Ramsey appeared as a deep red light. She
reached out with her mind and pulled it into herself.

With a gasp
Ellie felt the power surge through her wildly. She and Ramsey both literally
went up in flames. But they weren’t harmed by the fire.

Ellie felt
Griffin tense to use his shield. “
No,”
she thought at him. “
Give me a
minute…”

He backed off.

Ellie relaxed
into the power. She could immediately feel why firestarters had such a hard
time. Volatile emotions of hate, anger, fury, and rage threatened to consume
her wholly, and Ellie concentrated on controlling her newly wild and foreign
feelings.  She felt her control slipping further and further away, and her fear
deepened as her emotions grew more intense.

Suddenly, an
overwhelming sense of serenity pulsed through her. It felt almost like being
washed in cool water on a scorching hot day… exhilarating and peaceful all at
the same time. And exactly what she needed.

“Do you feel
that?” she asked Ramsey.

“Yeah,” he
breathed. “Are you doing that?”

Ellie shook
her head. “It’s not me.”

A suspicion
formed in Ellie’s mind about where that feeling of peace had come from, but
she’d have to deal with that later. Right now she needed to focus on mastering
this power.

“Okay, Ramsey.
I think I’ve got control at least,” she finally murmured. “Give me a little
time to see what you can do.”

To the others
who were watching from afar, she appeared to simply stand, unmoving, eyes
closed, and engulfed in flames. After about twenty minutes of working through
things, Ellie smiled and opened her eyes. She also felt Ramsey starting to
shake as his control threatened to slip out of his grasp.

“Okay, Ramsey,
I’m going to take over completely now. You ready?”

At his nod she
pulled the glow completely into herself. The flames moved off Ramsey and solely
onto her. Not even the hands still linked with hers were touched by the fire.

As soon as she
had full control, Ellie started playing. First she extinguished the fire
completely. She heard Ramsey’s small intake of breath and felt him relax for
the first time since they’d begun the exercise.

“Don’t worry,”
she assured him as her face took on a mischievous look. “I’ll show you how
after I’m done.”

“Oh, jeez,”
Griffin muttered. Then he added louder, “Watch out. She’s about to get feisty
with it.”

Ellie gave the
onlookers a sassy wink. “You ready for this?” she asked Ramsey.

 “I guess,” was
his less-than-enthusiastic response. Ellie grinned at his doubtful expression.

“Here we go!”
Still holding one of Ramsey’s hands, Ellie let go with the other and extended
her palm up, where a small flame appeared. “Eventually, as you master the
skill, you’ll have very specific control.” She shrunk it to a small ember. She
then grew it so that it danced about six inches above her hand.

“You can pick
what you are burning quite precisely.”  She changed the color of the fire to
green, then purple, then white, as she forced it to burn minute amounts of
copper, potassium, and then magnesium from the air.

“I guess you
actually paid attention in chemistry!” Griffin called across the field.  She
stuck her tongue out at her brother and then continued unfazed.

“You’re also
pretty unlimited in the size you can expand the fire to.”  It shot up into the
air about a hundred feet in a long skinny column of dancing color. “I’d go
higher, but I’m afraid it would be seen.”

She brought
the flame back down. “And you can control the shape and placement of it.”  She
shot the fire out to circle the clearing several times until it spiraled around
them. Then she pulled the spiral in so that it crackled within inches of the
two of them.

She doused it.

“You can
control it away from your body.”

A small tree
about 30 feet away burst into flame, popping and crackling. Then, just as
suddenly, the blaze was gone.

Ellie looked
at Ramsey. “You’ll be able to do that for anything, any size, in about a
hundred mile radius eventually.”

Ramsey’s face
broke into a huge grin. “That is awesome! Can you teach me all of that?” 

Ellie shook
her head. “Not all of it immediately. You’ll still have to learn things at your
own pace, but I can help you along. What I can teach you right now is how to
control it so that it can’t overwhelm you or hurt anyone.”

“Show me,”
Ramsey breathed, his wide eyes impressed.

“You bet.” She
glanced at Griffin, sending him a telepathic request. He sent her a surprised
look, but immediately turned and talked quietly with the family watching from
their distant spot across the clearing.

“We’ll need
Lila,” Ellie said.

Ramsey cocked
his head. “Why is that exactly?”

“I’m pretty
sure she’s the reason you’ve been able to hang on to your control as well and
as long as you have, especially around your family.”

Ramsey shook
his head vehemently. “I don’t want her anywhere near me!”

Lila, crossing
over to them, heard his statement. A devastated look passed over the poor
girl’s face before she managed to control it.

“Too late,”
Ellie murmured to Ramsey. He turned and saw Lila right behind him. Silently, he
returned his attention to Ellie, his expression grim.

Lila took a
deep breath, trying to collect herself.  “You wanted me to come over?” she
asked Ellie, refusing to even look at Ramsey.

“Lila, I think
you may have an untapped power,” Ellie stated.