Glass Heart (16 page)

It’s a weird soup, but Bay connects some more of the dots—Leah is a Saint Francis grad, which is how she knows Fiona and therefore Bay; Tommy is a tagalong. Antonia is a Summerhill student who had a crush on Bay, and one he milked for a while before he realized she was made of equal parts boobs and poison. Clay met Antonia at a party a few months ago, and either knows she’s a decent person deep down, or enjoys the naked parts of her too much to care.

“More than I needed to know,” I tell him, making a face.

Leah jumps up when a tiny Asian girl walks in, and waves her toward our lanes. “Alison’s here!”

“Now she’s a natural,” Bay says under his breath. “But she’s not sure what to do with it. Big-time repression.”

His running commentary is getting on my nerves, as well as his hovering. He’s always a little too close, a little too friendly, and trying to convince myself that he wasn’t jealous when I brought Gabriel to the party the other night isn’t working too well anymore.

Sometimes I hate boys.

Antonia reappears just after Leah introduces me to Alison, who’s so shy, she barely looks at me. It doesn’t matter. I’m determined to get through this.

And for a little while, I manage to at least ignore Antonia. Tommy is pretty amusing, even if he is herbally enhanced, and Leah is great. It isn’t until Clay gets up to help Alison improve her aim that Antonia lets her snark off the leash again.

“Aren’t you supposed to be able to do that on your own?” she calls, casually waving a chewed-on straw in Alison’s direction. “Put on some grown-up panties, sweetie.”

Alison blanches, hair hanging in her face, and Clay straightens up with a frown.

“Tonia, seriously. Turn it down a notch or seventeen.”

She snorts, rolling her eyes again. “Oh, come on. If she could turn me into a toad, or do anything halfway impressive, I’d like to see it. The girl can barely tie her own shoes.”

That’s it. A single tear is rolling down Alison’s cheek, and I don’t bother to think twice. I turn to Antonia and focus hard, power funneling up out of me in a single, precise blast.

Antonia chokes, coughs, grabs at her throat, and a moment later spits a tiny, gnarled toad off her tongue.

Even Clay snickers.

Antonia is snarling, and Tommy is busy chasing the toad when Bay drags me away, and I let him. He marches me past the snack bar and the rental desk, and down a short hall that leads to the bathroom.

“I think you just made a mortal enemy, sweetheart,” he laughs, and hugs me before I can protest.

“Don’t call me that.” I’m shaking with rage and the last trembling vibration of energy, and I’m not proud of myself.

Even if Antonia totally deserves worse.

“God, that was awesome.” He’s not even looking at me, but he’s grinning like a satisfied cat. “Quick thinking, thematically appropriate. Very hot.”

I blink and realize he’s turned to face me again, one hand reaching out to stroke my cheek. Gently, fondly, and I’m so busy panicking, it takes me a minute to get my hands between us and shove at his chest.

Not before he kisses me, though, and I want to spit. It’s cool, too wet, and so wrong, I’m stunned.

“Oh my God, what is your deal?” I shove harder when he doesn’t step right back. “I thought you were with Fiona!”

He shrugs, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand casually. “I am, more or less.”

“More or less? What does that mean?” I splutter.

“It means she amuses me, and she likes to get her freak on, and she spends her daddy’s money on me like it’s water,” he explains, and every trace of the friendly, slightly smarmy guy I know is gone.

His eyes are as cold and dead as Danny’s ever were.

“Oh my God, you are such scum.” I shake my head, and push him, hard. “I had no idea.”

“Oh, come on, Wren,” he says, grabbing my arm. For a moment, he tries on something that I think is supposed to look like pleading innocence, but it slips when I make a retching noise. “She can’t even do spell work. I do everything for her, just to make her happy and shut her up. She mumbles something in pigeon Latin, and I make it happen for her. But you. You’re the real deal, Wren. You have power like I’ve never seen, and unless I’m way off the mark, you haven’t even tried to spread your little magical wings. You have no idea what we could do together.”

“And you have no idea how very wrong you are,” I hiss, and this time I push with the power inside me. He staggers back against the wall, and I hold him there as I back away. “Whatever this was, it’s over.”

I run back to the lanes and grab my coat. Antonia and Clay are over by the jukebox, and Leah has one arm around Alison. Tommy pops up from beneath one of the tables with the toad in his hand, and chuckles. “Adam would have loved that. Dude, it’s so frigging tiny.”

I freeze at the name
Adam
, even with Bay striding toward me, his face sculpted into a mask of fury. It all makes sense now—Fiona going to Saint Francis, the violence Gabriel sensed in Bay, Jude’s warning to be careful.

For one horrible moment, I think I’m actually going to puke, right here in the middle of Memory Lanes.

But Bay is still coming at me, and Leah is saying, “Where did he transfer to again? We never hear from him anymore,” and I need to be not here, right now.

“Don’t even think about it,” I say to Bay, ignoring the others. I have one hand up, as if I’m going to hold him off with that. But he knows better and stops a good ten feet away.

“Wren?” Leah says, but I don’t answer.

And then I’m running, past Bay, past the desk, out the door, and away from all the brand-new mistakes I’ve made.

Chapter Twenty

I’M HALFWAY HOME WHEN I CAN’T TAKE IT
anymore. Sometime during the afternoon it started to snow, and I’m not dressed for such a long walk. My scarf and boots are soaked, and the only gloves I have are my fingerless ones. I duck under the shelter of a gas station and get out my phone to call home for a ride.

There’s a text from Darcia, short and sweet:
TALKED 2 T. AGAIN!!!
I’m so distracted it takes me a minute to realize she must mean Thierry. Which is cool, but something to deal with later.

When I dial the house, no one answers. That’s strange, since it’s Sunday and I know Mom is home. I try her cell, and it goes to voice mail. Perfect.

I’m shivering, lips and fingertips numb, even though the cold hasn’t iced over my fury at Bay. That’s still burning, a low, steady flame. I just wish it would actually keep me warm.

It’s already getting dark, and in the soft fog of snow, it’s hard to see. I pull out my phone one last time and try Mari, who picks up on the first ring.

“Wren?”

“Hey.” I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. “Could you possibly give me a ride?”

“I was just on my way to your house, actually.” She sounds distracted. “Where are you?”

I tell her, and when she pulls up ten minutes later I’m bouncing from foot to foot and rubbing my hands together. “Thank you so much,” I say as I climb into the car, holding my hands out to the heating vents once the door is closed. “I don’t know where Mom is, but I was all the way over at Memory Lanes.”

Mari pulls back onto Mountain Avenue, the tires skidding in the first slushy coat of snow. “She’s home, with Robin. That’s why I was heading over there.”

I’m not following, and I’m still too cold to concentrate. “What do you mean?”

Mari frowns, and pushes the car into the next gear. All I can do is hold on.

I can feel the magic as soon as Mari and I walk in. The air is trembling, echoes of power still shimmering and settling. It smells like ozone and burnt sugar, and there’s no question whatever happened is Not Good.

“Rose?” Mari unwinds her scarf slowly, glancing into the kitchen and then up the stairs.

I peel off all of my wet things and my boots, leaving them in a heap by the door. There’s movement upstairs, and I take the steps two at a time.

Mom is just coming out of Robin’s room, and she looks like the victim of a battle. Her hair is coming out of its clip in a million crazy directions, there’s a smudge of soot on one cheek, and a book in her hands.

One of my books. The one no one is supposed to know about.

“Downstairs, now.” Her voice is a shredded husk, and I swallow hard.

Mari is standing in the middle of the kitchen when I follow Mom into the room. Her mouth is hanging open, and mine follows. Smoke has left burnt trails on the wall, and the table is pushed up against the pantry door. One chair lies on its side, and the seat is splintered. Melted candle wax is stuck in hard, white clumps all over the table and the floor beside it, and the kitchen counter is a mess of herbs and spices and other things I can’t identify. Our biggest pot is still on the stove, a bubbled crust dripping over its lip.

Holy crap.

“What happened?” Mari asks before I can. She steps over a broken dish and a pile of feathers and rights the chair.

“I left Robin here so I could go to the grocery store and run a few other quick errands, and I came home to this.” Mom sets the book down on one of the table’s few clear spots and leans against the counter. “And what I think was a ghost, as well as a hysterical twelve-year-old.”

“Oh my God.” The words are barely audible around the hand Mari’s holding to her mouth, but the tone is pretty clear.

Meanwhile, I’m still stuck on
ghost
. “What was she trying to do?”

“Summon your father, apparently,” Mom says, turning hard brown eyes on me. She points at the table. “With a spell she had no idea how to use, not that it was the right one anyway. What I want to know is what the hell you were doing with a book like that? Robin told me she found it in your room.”

I can’t lie my way out of this one. I mean, I
could
, but I can’t. Not anymore.

Even if I don’t plan to admit exactly why I needed those books.

“I was, um, curious.” The laser glare of Mom’s gaze pulls my spine straighter. “I just wanted to see what magic was all about, you know? All kinds of magic.”

“Sam?” Mari is saying, shaking her head. She’s still stunned, all of the color drained from her face. “Sam is . . . not dead. You can’t summon a living person! I mean . . . can you?”

“If you can, that’s a kind of magic I want absolutely nothing to do with.” Mom scrubs a hand over her face, and her exhaustion is right there in the way her hand shakes, the faint shuddering breath she draws.

Summon your father
. I still can’t believe it. I want to strangle Robin and hug her and scream at her all at the same time.

“There was a . . . ghost?” I manage to ask, trying to picture it. “Whose ghost?”

“I have no idea,” Mom says, and she actually laughs a little. “I’m not even sure where I sent it. I haven’t done magic like that off the top of my head in a long time. Maybe never.”

Mari stands up and pushes the table aside to get into the pantry for the broom. “And Robin?”

“Is asleep.” Mom sighs and pushes off the counter to help. “She’s grounded into her next three lives, but she’s okay. She didn’t hurt herself anyway, and she didn’t burn the house down.”

“Well, that’s good.” I shake off the fog of shock and get the pot from the stove, intending to take it to the sink to soak it. I’m holding it, and the nasty stench coming from it, away from my body when Mom says, “Wren? There’s something you should know.”

I can’t think of what else there could be on top of what I learned about Bay and Adam, and the fact that my baby sister apparently lost her mind this afternoon. I set the pot in the sink and turn around. “Yeah?”

“I called your dad. He’s coming to see you both.”

Gabriel is heading toward me when I round the corner twenty minutes later, and I don’t even pretend to have pride. I run straight into his arms. I have no idea how he happened to be right there, but I don’t care. Maybe he could sense the ginormous freak-out brewing in my head.

“Hey, whoa, what happened?” he says after a minute, pulling back to look me in the eye. “You didn’t answer your phone, and I was coming to talk to you.”

My only answer is a muffled sob, and he holds me tighter. “Just tell me . . . are you okay?”

I finally step back, wiping the hot tears off my cheek with the back of one hand. “I don’t know. Can we go somewhere?”

He smiles and smoothes my hair out of my eyes. “Always.”

“Better?”

I’m wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa, with a pair of Gabriel’s thick socks on my feet and a hot mug of tea. I nod, trying not to sniffle. “A little.”

“Okay, so.” He sits down and puts his arm around the giant lump of me inside the blanket. “What happened?”

I take a deep breath and set the tea down on the coffee table. “Robin tried to . . .
summon
our dad. Which, you know, would be like teleportation if it even worked, and that’s just insane, so what she got was a hot mess all over the kitchen and apparently a ghost, which my mom had to . . . I don’t know, banish or something, she’s not even sure, but after that, I guess because Robin is having some kind of dramatic preteen meltdown about it, she called him, our dad, and he’s coming. Here. To see us.”

Gabriel blinks and opens his mouth. He shuts it again, and then looks up at me. “Um. Wow.”

“Yeah.”

It’s too much, all at once. Everything I believed about Bay, and even Fiona, was just an illusion, some pink, pretty lie I told myself to get away with using magic when and where I wanted to. And I can’t help wondering if my memories of my dad are nothing more than that—an illusion, a half-remembered fairy tale I embellished with a strong, handsome father and a happy little girl.

If one more thing shatters, it’s going to be my heart.

I’m shocked to see that, now that the surprise has sunk in, Gabriel looks relieved.

“Um, I’m having, like, major trauma here,” I say, curling deeper into the blanket.

“I know, I’m sorry.” He hugs me tighter, kisses the top of my head. “But maybe it won’t be so bad. I mean, you were going to face this eventually, right? So now you’ll, you know, get it over with.” His gaze is far away, and he still looks strangely pleased. Like this is the answer to all of my problems or something, which I really doubt.

“I’m just not ready for this. Not with . . .” Now I’m the one who’s not telling all, and at this rate we could probably talk around each other all night.

“With what?”

I smile weakly. “Just . . . everything. It’s been a weird couple of weeks, you know?”

He bites his bottom lip, gray eyes searching my face. “Trust me, this will be good. I mean, it’ll help. It’ll . . . really. Believe me.”

Suspicion curls like smoke in my stomach. “How can you possibly know that? How can you—” And then it hits me. I’m so stupid, so very, very stupid. “You
do
know. You know something about this, about my dad. Don’t you?” When he looks away, I fight my way out of the quilt and grab his arm. “Don’t you?”

He starts to shake his head, and I glare at him. “Don’t even lie. Not now. Just
tell
me.”

He lays his head on the back of the sofa to stare at the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to. I swear, Wren, I didn’t mean to. But at Christmas, when your mom started talking about my dad, I was . . . I was just so pissed off, and I wasn’t trying hard enough to control it, and I . . .” He takes a shaky breath, and I dig my fingers into his arm.

“Gabriel, come
on
. What is it?”

“I just had this flash from her, and it was all this stuff about your dad.” He picks his head up and looks at me, and I shiver. The relief is gone.

“What about him?”

“It’s more impressions and feelings, remember, but . . .” He takes a deep breath this time, but he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t chicken out. “He has powers, too, Wren. And he can’t use them anymore. He . . . it’s like he poisoned himself with them or something.”

Even when Ryan called to tell me Danny had died, I didn’t feel this dizzy. I’m sitting, but the room seems to spin away from me anyway, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

It makes all the sense in the world. It’s why I’m more powerful than Mom and Aunt Mari, and why Robin is, too. I can’t believe I never even considered it.

Now I understand why Gabriel has been so worried about me doing magic, and I think of all the things I’ve been doing with Bay, the things Robin did today. I can hear Gabriel’s voice in my head:
Poisoned himself . . .

“Oh God.” I push away the blanket, kicking my feet free, and Gabriel grabs my arm.

“Wait, Wren, just think about it for a minute. I don’t know everything, I only get impressions unless I’m trying, you know that.”

I wrench my arm free and stumble to my feet, fighting to see the room in focus. It swims in shifting shadows instead, and I lurch away from the couch. All these years, and Mom never said anything. Never even hinted. If anything is a betrayal, that’s the worst.

“Wren, let’s talk, okay? I mean, maybe it’s not that bad, but at least you’ll know. Wren?”

I can hear him following me, but I can’t answer. I’m crying too hard.