Chains of Fire (13 page)

“I can see that. But why? I loved—” She stopped. He did not need to know she loved his hair, so black and thick.

“Because it’s a liability when I fight.”

“You shouldn’t be fighting!”

“Yeah, princess. You
would
think that.” Putting his finger in his book to hold his place, he looked her over, a slow, appreciative sweep that lingered on her prep-school white shirt, blue sweater, pleated plaid skirt, and knee socks.

“Knock it off.” He’d started doing this, trying to distract her when she gave him trouble about stuff. His grades. His clothes. His attitude.

He patted the cushion. “Come in and shut the curtains behind you.”

She hesitated. They hadn’t met here in years, ever since he got too big to bother with her, while she turned eleven and went to St. Theresa’s Girls’ School.

“Come on.” He lifted the book and showed her the title—Machiavelli’s
The Prince
. “I’m just reading.”

He was going to bother with her now. She was going to
make
him bother with her.

She climbed in and shut the curtains. “I talked to Mother today. She said you had quit school!”

“News travels fast.”

“The saying is ‘Bad news travels fast.’ I guess that’s right.”

“Are you really surprised?”

“Yes, of course I am! How else will you be able to get into college and make something of yourself?”

“Why would I need to go to college to wait on the table while you have a party?”

She caught her breath.

“Had you forgotten? Or did you merely think it was nothing more than my proper place in life?”

Yes, she remembered. Every year at her birthday party, Samuel would be forced into a miniature suit and sent in to serve the other little girls at the table. None of the children or the attending parents thought anything was amiss; indeed, most of the mothers cooed over him. But Isabelle always saw his resentment in the flash of his dark eyes.

“I am not a servant,” he said. “Specifically, I’m not your servant.”

“I never thought you were. You know I didn’t. I told Mother to stop having you work at my parties, but she said—”

“She said it was Darren who insisted. Yes, it’s true. He believed I would realize how truly honorable a job it is to serve and serve well.” Samuel showed his teeth in what looked like a snarl. “I did not.”

“I know.” Isabelle looked down at her hands.

Eventually Mother had put a stop to using him to wait on Isabelle’s guests. It happened at Isabelle’s eleventh birthday party. One of the little girls wasn’t little anymore and she reacted to his dark beauty by flirting with him and he flirted back with a natural aptitude that upset the parents, upstaged all her mother’s carefully planned entertainment . . . and made Isabelle rigid with a tension she didn’t comprehend. “My mother’s a snob. I know that. But not as bad as your father.”

“No one’s as bad as my father.” Samuel was still reclining, but he was no longer relaxed. His whole body vibrated with suppressed fury. “My father honestly thinks that being a butler is the best I can aspire to. Doesn’t understand why I don’t. He won’t even listen to me.”

“But still I don’t understand what this has to do with your quitting school. Surely if you want to improve your lot in life . . .” She realized how patronizing that sounded, and stumbled to a halt.

“No. I’m determined to go to hell in a handcart,” he said bitterly.

Her temper flared. “You’re going about it the right way. Mother said you got a tattoo!”

Turning his head, he showed her. Five black marks on his skull, spaced like fingerprints from the back of one ear to the other. “It’s not a tat.”

“It is, too!” How stupid did he think she was?

“I got it last year. It came naturally. When I got my power.”

That froze her in place. “What power?”

He stared at her as if not sure how to explain. Finally, he said, “Do you remember the first time we met? Here in the window seat?”

She shook her head no, although the faintest memory niggled at her mind.

“You made me feel better. You healed me.”

“I shouldn’t have, I suppose, but I was little and didn’t know better.”

“I know. Your mother doesn’t like you to be different.”

“For my sake! So I can fit in!”

“Believe me, I know about not fitting in, and you fit in fine.”

For the first time she looked at him, really looked at him, stretched out there on the cushions.

He was tall, well over six feet, and fit, with muscled shoulders that strained at his short-sleeved T-shirt, thick wrists, and powerful, long-fingered hands. His nose was squashed from the soccer ball hit he’d taken full on the face in fourth grade, and his lips pouted like a young Jagger’s. Long, dark lashes fringed his brown eyes. His lids drooped with a knowing, cynical cast—and he was only seventeen. When had he turned into a man who viewed the world so scornfully?

“I do fit in,” she acknowledged. “I work at it. What about you?”

“Not so much. Remember last year, when my voice changed overnight? That wasn’t the only thing that happened. Not by a long shot.”

She arranged the pleats on her plaid skirt. “You don’t need to spell it out. I know about the other stuff.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you all that stuff. Prude.” He laughed at her, but kindly. “The thing is, every other guy at the gym had already hit puberty, so I was glad to finally stop squeaking when I talked. For lots of reasons, but mostly because there was this kid. Little, skinny shit with a smart mouth that never stopped, and he picked on me all the time, razzing me about being a Gypsy orphan.”

“What was he?”

“Greek, I think, but his parents were married, so in his opinion, that made him hot shit.” Those beautiful lips, the ones she had just noticed, folded into a grim line. “I couldn’t do anything about it; he was too short for me to beat up and he knew it. So after this overnight transformation, he saw what was going on and he was just relentless.” He imitated a falsetto voice. “‘Hey, Faa, did the hairy fairy visit you?’—and that was the cleanest of it. So I very politely suggested he beat himself up. And I really, really, really”—he put his fingers on his forehead—“wished he would.”

She leaned forward, intent on his face. “And he did?”

Samuel sat up, crossed his legs, and stared back into her eyes. “Yeah, he did. At first we all thought he was trying to be funny again, but then he started crying and he had bruises, and I wished he would stop, only this time I didn’t wish it so much as command him with my mind. And it worked.”

When Isabelle heard Samuel’s confession, she knew she should say something comforting. Something about him. Instead she blurted, “Thank God I’m not the only freak in this world.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” He grinned at her.

She punched him in the arm.

“Good shot.” He rubbed the spot. “I did the research. Do you know who we are?”

“Who are we?”

“We’re the Abandoned Ones. We were given gifts because our parents, our real parents, threw us away.”

Each word was like a stab to her tender heart. “Why do you think that?”

“Ever heard of Joseph Campbell?”

“Of course. He did research on pervasive myths that cross cultural boundaries and appear to be part of the human psyche regardless of background or geological location.”

“So they taught you a few things in that fancy school of yours, huh?”

He didn’t seem to expect an answer, which was good, because she didn’t have one. She was the Masons’ only child. He was the butler’s only son. She went to a posh private school. He went to one of Boston public’s finest. The disparity made her uncomfortable, but what could she do? Her mother told her she’d offered to pay for private school. Darren had refused. And Patricia Mason had said she’d interfered enough when she urged the reluctant Darren to adopt Samuel.

Isabelle had hotly replied that Darren should give Samuel the best start possible, but Patricia said that was a line she could not cross.

“The thing about the Abandoned Ones,” Samuel continued, “is that it’s an ancient legend that crosses cultures. Trust me. I’ve read a lot about that legend now. Supposedly, our gifts make us possible recruits for the Chosen Ones, which is this ancient society of do-gooders.” Samuel’s cynical face was abruptly more cynical. “We can also be recruited by the Others, which is this ancient society of assholes.”

He was distracting her. Or she was pretty sure he was. “What does this have to do with your hair?”

“After I made Jermaine beat himself up, I got this itching on my head. I reached up and my hair was falling out in clumps. So I got Steve to look, and he said it looked like fingerprints on my skin.”

“Let me look at them.”

He turned around. “I was . . . well, I was scared. I covered up the bald spots no problem, my hair was long enough but Steve told one of the guys, and pretty soon it was all over the school that I was a . . . freak.”

His head looked like the sheets she used when she volunteered at the school carnival to fingerprint little kids for their parents’ records, except these marks weren’t made by small fingers. It looked as if a man’s hand had pressed hard to make these prints, even leaving little indents in the skin.

“This is so weird. Did you tell your father?”

Samuel laughed, a short burst of nasty amusement. “Oh.
Cara.
Like he would understand or believe me.”

She bit her lip. Samuel and Darren had always been at loggerheads, more so now that Darren’s wife had left him and blamed the divorce on Samuel.

“Have you compared these prints to yours?”

He sighed in exaggerated exasperation. “It’s a little tough for me to get a good look at them.” He held his right hand up. “You do it.”

She did, examining each finger and comparing it to his head. “They’re your prints.”

“So I am a freak.”

“I guess we both are.” She returned to the subject at hand. “But that’s no reason to quit school.”

He turned. Leaned in until they were nose-to-nose. “I’m not stayin’. They haven’t taught me a damned thing for years, and the whole world is out there calling me.”

She leaned right back. “No. No! You can’t do anything without a high school diploma.”

“I can’t do anything with that high school diploma. People don’t get into college from that school.”

“Listen to me!”

“I will.” Putting his hands on her arms, he smiled at her. No . . . he smirked. “If you tell me one thing.”

“What?”

“What are you wearing under that extremely hot skirt?”