Inherit (27 page)

A wave of nausea creeps up my throat. The headache that brackets my brain takes my nerves hostage and tortures them until they scream. My heart throws itself at my ribs, demanding to be let out, wanting away from the damage I’m doing to my own body.

I untangle the burning lines of green light from my shoulders and wrists and force them to align in the most complicated shield I know. I cast a
smør
over the perimeter of Vee’s thoughtscape, but this shield isn’t pure and white like the ones I’ve made with my mother. It isn’t stable and radiant. It snaps and electrifies whatever comes near it. There is no hum of concentration or steady flow of power to ground me. This snarling, clawing power shocks me so hard in such violent flashes, my neck snaps back and my knees buckle as I work to keep it contained.

My wrists twist unnaturally, almost in complete circles, until I’m sure they’re going to rip from my body. My elbows extend straight and shake in their joints, and my teeth chatter so hard, I know I’m going to wind up with shards of broken teeth flying down my throat.

I scream, and the tear of my voice from my throat shakes the shield’s walls, ripping gigantic holes in the force field. The gulls pause in midair, their squawks lodged in their throats before they’re sucked with feather-loosening violence out of multiple expanding and contracting portals like dustbunnies discovered by a powerful vacuum cleaner. The black clouds roll into a dark reverse funnel and whirl and twist out of widest, gaping opening. The wind falls like a giant with its throat slit and the air stops its insane, unrelenting cacophony and goes dangerously still.

I fall into the ocean, cold and rough, my body seizing violently, letting water churn down my throat and plunge me further under.

Jonas’s hand knots in my hair and drags me, coughing and hacking, back to the surface, warm with the reappearance of the sun.

I vomit sea water and bile, retching without worrying what Jonas will think. I brace my shaking arms on my knees and register with shock the sickly bruises that purple them, the limpness of my wrists, and the bloody, broken-nailed state of my fingers. Before I collapse back into the waves, Jonas wraps his arms around me.

“Wren?” His voice is on the cusp of being a full-on scream. “What did you do? What the hell did you do?”

I squint against the bright sunlight. Vee’s mindspace wriggles back to life, all gentle breezes, neon fish, and waving corals with just tiny hints of darker waters. “I fixed it.” I shade my eyes and look up at the power shield, flickering and buzzing, the holes expanding and contracting in a patternless carousel.

“We need to get out of here.” He closes his eyes and the incantations come strong and fast.

“Not yet,” I gasp, my fingers clawing at his chest. “I need to do a
ferdig
—”

“Are you fucking insane?” he growls, his harsh words strangling mine. “I still don’t know if what you did hurt Vee. And I hope to hell that mess of a shield breaks down on its own before it fries everything around it.”

“Hurt Vee?” I stumble away from him, not sure where I’m headed, when he yanks me back by the waist.

“Stay put! What’s the point of my being here if you’re going to ignore everything I say?” He tightens his arms around me, and this time, there’s no preparation or focus. His words are deep, guttural, and incomprehensible. I feel the water rush back like lowtide on steroids, and the sand under our feet cracks and erupts. My arms, already weak and battered from making the shield, slide off his neck, and my head bumps against his chest heavily. Weak-kneed, spaghetti-spined, I sink low and let him grab at me and hold on with rough, impatient hands. The light shifts. I can tell how bright it bursts even behind the closed lids of my eyes, and then the pull and pop of the suction sends us hurling back. We get whisked back out of the bubble of Vee’s thoughts with a whiplash-inducing jerk and tumble onto the couch we were sitting on before.

My brain feels like eggwhites whipped into a meringue, and I’m not sure I can trust the reality of the dark, rustic cabin. “Are we really here?” I run a hand over the back of the faded plaid couch, my body pressed along Jonas’s.

He heaves me off of him and growls, “Yes, we’re really here. Where the hell else would we be?”

“I don’t know.” I lie on my side and curl my legs to my chest. “Maybe in a weird ocean world that’s actually the inside of my best friend’s mind? Or a diner on the way to a magical birch forest? Are any of those places real?” I feel like it’s time to blink, but my eyes stay wide open.

He slumps in a hard-backed chair and runs his hands through his hair over and over. “Yes. All real. Just different dimensions of reality. I know it’s a lot. I know it’s too much. There’s just no explanation that makes any sense. I thought I was ready, and now? What you did in Vee’s space? I’m—” He stands up and hammers his fist into the solid log wall, then kicks at it like a lunatic for a few long, grunt-punctuated minutes.

I’m not sure what reaction he expects from me, but I’m literally too worn out to blink. My eyes are tearing, and I wish I could just will them closed and sleep. But I might be too tired for sleep, too.

Jonas strides over and crouches low, right at my eye level. “What the fuck were you doing back there? Even after I told you to stop, what was going through your head?”

A slow breath rolls through my lungs. “Saving Vee,” I answer. “Not letting her wind up like Bestemor.”

My little declaration takes the fighting wind out of his sails. He sits back with a thump. “We’re in this way over our heads, Wren. I don’t even know who we’re fighting. I don’t even know why. Do they want you? Is it the Kochis or the Baltos? Or someone else? Why not just grab you? Why this whole damn cat and mouse game?”

“Fox and mouse,” I correct. “I wish I’d been nicer to Loki.”

“You were nice,” he mumbles to placate me.

“No. I wanted her gone. I didn’t want to deal with the whole mess. The power. My power. But I played with it. Just enough to get everyone riled up. Just enough to get everyone hurt. Not enough to learn how to help them.” I hold my hands out in front of me, knuckles up, and direct pure hate at them.

I barely hear Jonas get up and walk away, because my mind is back on the first few days I had Loki. My powers were so new and raw, I could have changed this. I could have bonded with her and Bestemor would be zipping around the house and my parents might have come out of hiding slowly, to help me. Vee and Zivalus would be dragging me to parties, and when Jonas watched me dance, I wouldn’t stop until he was on the floor with me. Sakura would have crawled back to Japan with her tail between her legs, and all this would have been—

“Wren!” Jonas’s hands grip at my shoulders and ease me down onto the couch cushions. “There you go. Lay down. I’m going to wash your cuts.”

He has an ancient bottle of iodine and some paper towels with sudsy soap on them. He takes my one hand in his and rubs it with gentle strokes. I try not to wince, but my fingers are sore and torn.

“What’s the plan, Jonas?” My eyelids keep bumping shut, then swinging back open, elevator doors that want to close, but keep getting interrupted by the hands of eager passengers.

“I don’t know. What’s the plan, Wren?” He dabs the orange-y red medicine on the split ends of my fingertips, and I suck air between my teeth to hold the whimpers back.

“I’ll fix every…thing.” This time the elevator is going down, down, down. Oops! One more over-eager passenger. “Down, down, down.” My voice is so groggy it’s almost a croak.

I feel the scratch of a wool blanket pulled under my chin, and imagine, but maybe also don’t imagine, Jonas’s lips on mine for one worth-remembering second.

Deep, deep back, at the triangulation of the core and the stem and the center of my brain, there’s a tiny, black space, pitch black, but all mine. Solidly mine. I owned the only map, and I peeked at it one time before I ate it and let my stomach acids melt it apart. I wander there now, because there’s a voice calling my name.

“
Wren! Wren?
”

“Loki?” There’s no more light at this spot in my brain than there would be in the bottom of the ocean, so I don’t expect to see Loki, but I can’t feel her either. “Where are you, Loki?”

“
Escaped.
” I can hear the doggish pants of my fox, running fast. “
I ran away from Sakura before Hina came back, Wren! I’m going to wait for you at Bestemor’s.”

“No!” I flail in the black, trying to find her, trying to tell her why she can’t. “Loki, no! No one will be there! Mom and Dad are gone. Bestemor is gone with them. I’m gone. Jonas is gone. Turn around.”

“
I can’t.
” It’s a strange mash-up, her ethereal voice and her stubborn words braided together.

“You have to.” I think of the
Kråke
with their black wings and tearing beaks. “I’m not there to protect you.”

“
Come protect me.
” Like a severed phone line, the connection goes dead, and I’m jolted awake, covered in sweat, and frantic to get to Loki before Sakura and Hina get her, before the
Kråke
hunt her down, before I screw up the life of one more thing I love.

I kick the scratchy blankets away and wonder who I can call, who I can connect with.

Vee.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I close my eyes, grab the
boble
around my neck, and race across the solid bridge of white into her mind. I hardly notice the suction and pop as I enter the ocean and sand of her mind’s inner reality. My shield is still buzzing in the blue sky, small chunks getting sucked and hurled back into the void every few seconds. I wade into the shallows too fast, my splashes scaring the scores of neon fish from their tiny pools.

The water laps around my shins, and I can see reflections of my sweet best friend in the shimmering here and there under the surface. For a long second, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to tangle her in this. But I have to.

“Vee, lovey, I’m in deep shit!” I call into the sky, into the breezy air. I wait, but I don’t hear or feel her. I have no clue if she can hear or feel me, either. “Loki is headed to Bestemor’s house. Go to her, but please don’t go alone. Please don’t. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

The waves chop and agitate, and I’m not sure if the nauseous feeling low in my gut is because I’m hungry or nervous or aware that something isn’t quite right with this entire situation. Before I can think about it anymore, a few more pieces of my snapping, shocking shield disconnect and whip back, and I close my eyes and let the pull of the warp drag me away from my friend and back to the panicked race of the new reality I’d rather not face.

Chapter 26

Jonas’s glasses are crooked on his face. There’s a book half-sliding off his leg, and his neck is bent at such a weird angle, there’s no way he’s comfortable. He has his boots off and I see the black and blue checkered socks I still wouldn’t have expected. I finger-comb his hair back, tuck the book under one arm, and shake his shoulder with my hand.

“Jonas. Wake up.” My voice is low and soft, sympathetic to the fact that I’m about to ruin his plans, unleash a nuclear missile’s equivalent of information on his brain, and probably get into a knock-down-drag-out fight over going back to Bestemor’s.

Soft noises come from his throat, and he moves his head from side to side. Jonas delivered a perfectly reasonable and sensible lecture to me on the reasons why we absolutely, no doubt, cannot get romantically tangled. Even if I wanted to ignore his logical debate, right now, with Loki and Vee’s safety on the line, it’s not the correct time. But no amount of solid thought and rationalization can make up for the fact that his kisses are still seared into my brain, and he’s not waking up from being shaken or called to.

What harm can one kiss do?

One kiss.

It occurs to me that this may be the one and only kiss I get from him for a long, long while. I decide to make a
boble
, my own secret
boble
and seal it the way Jonas taught me. Creepy? Maybe. But, because I can and want to, I will.

My wrists ache and my singed, torn fingers burn and shake, but I manage to throw a
boble
around the two of us and close it tight. Instead of being perfectly round, it wobbles on one side, but that’s because my right ring finger has the fingernail blown off and spasms like crazy every time I try to cast.

“Jonas?” I raise my voice a tiny bit, which makes a huge difference in this little insulated space. I want to give him one more chance to wake up before the kiss, for the benefit of my own teetering conscience.

His eyelids flicker, but he’s out.

I run my hands from his chest up to either side of his neck and follow the curves of his ears with my thumbs. I lick my lips, wishing I had access to some lips gloss, and lean forward. His lips part, and I hold stone-statue-frozen still, but he doesn’t wake up. I dip my mouth and glance my lips over his.

Just one soft kiss. One tiny brush of my lips on his was all I wanted.

The reason it goes any further is because I’m busy trying to pull the
boble
down around just this one sweet, perfect kiss, when Jonas wakes up with a vengeance.

A moan tears out of his throat and bursts into my mouth, and his teeth catch my bottom lip in a nip that makes me pull him closer. His hands run up and down along my back and under my shirt, then tangle in the stretchy constraints of my bra. His fingers move along the edges of my underwire, toying at the skin underneath with such quick, fumbling readiness, I lose my grip on my lopsided
boble
and hold on tight when he pulls himself to the edge of the chair, lifts me on his hips, and eases me to the floor, the seal of our mouths never broken.

His body presses tight over mine, his tongue flicks and presses at my lips, encouraging me to lick and suck back. I curl my hands over the rounded strength of his shoulders, lay them flat and let them ride down every ridge and bump of his back muscles, and cup them over the perfect curve of his ass. I pull his hips to mine hard and love the moan that vibrates from his vocal chords and ricochets into my mouth, full and decadent as a spoonful of homemade whipped cream.