Souljacker (10 page)

“I know what you mean.” I slump back against
the wall, my arms crossed over my chest.

Our eyes meet and Caddie shakes her head.
“The fire got hotter and hotter inside me, vying for a way out. It
made me angry and I just wanted to burn things. When I was seven, I
threw a fit because my brother tattled when I melted one of his
toys. I literally had a meltdown. The house burned down and we
barely got out. It was bad. Real bad. Then we realized I needed an
outlet. I needed to be able to expel the fire in a constructive way
in order to keep from flaring.”

“Like my surges.”

“But I have an idea.” I stare at her,
expecting her to continue, but instead she gathers up her bag and
books on the counter and unlocks the door. “Meet me at my house
after school and we’ll talk. I live on Eaden, back behind the Asian
Grocery. Tiny house. Huge ass fence in the back yard. Barky dog.
You can’t miss it.”

“Caddie—”

“Later, Luce,” she says with a grin and ducks
out the door. It clicks shut behind her, leaving me in the empty
bathroom. Crap. I have a couple of options. I can skip my last few
classes and have the principal call Mr. Rockwell, or I can bully
through the rest of the day even though people are going to gossip
and stare. Ugh. Not great choices.

I sigh and grab my bag off the back of the
stall door. Sync beeps inside and I open the flap. She whizzes
around the room for a moment before coming to hover in front of my
nose, a worried expression on her digital face. “What’s going
on?”

“I’ll explain on the way to Caddie’s, I
guess,” I tell her and stuff her back down in my bag. She lets off
another round of annoyed beeps and I can’t help but chuckle. I
sling my bag over my shoulder and pull the door open. I can get
through the rest of the school day. Mr. Rockwell would have too
much fun grounding me otherwise.

As always, the day sucks.

My destination’s the Asian Grocery, but I
find myself standing at the mouth of Freak’s alley. No. Iofiel’s
alley. I half expect to see him flopped on one side, ears perked
up, tail wagging. Waiting for me. I jerk my head up as there’s a
crash down past the dumpsters. My heart lifts with hope, but then a
mangy yellow tom cat comes padding towards me with trash in his
mouth and it sinks again.

Why am I even here, anyway? To apologize to
him for ruining our date? To demand to know why he’s even bothering
with me when he’s not even human himself? Can Fae-made creatures
even love?

I shake my head and keep walking. It doesn’t
matter. He’s not around and the way that cyberhound tackled him the
other night, I don’t blame him. I’m not safe for him anyway. It’s
better this way.

Still, it doesn’t ease the ache in my
heart.

Caddie was right, in the end: I really can’t
miss her house. It’s a cracker box with a roof, painted a sickly
shade of mint green. Old Christmas lights are strung around on the
front porch. I mill around out front for a few minutes, hesitating
about knocking on the door, before I head out back. Sure enough,
there’s a seven-foot high privacy fence shielding a large back
yard. I cup my hands around my eyes and peer through the slats.

A huge but skinny white pit bull lunges at
the fence, paws scraping wood as it lets out a barrage of
ear-piercing barks. I scramble back, my heart in my throat, and
kick at the fence. “Slag,” I hiss and Sync tutts at me.

“That’s what you get for marching around on
private property!”

“Lucy!” Caddie’s voice rings out and I back
away from the fence line. She’s got the front door swung wide open,
her head poked out and a grin plastered on her face. She shuts the
door behind her and hops down the porch steps. “I would’ve offered
to let you use my Portal, but I didn’t figure you liked them. Since
you walk to school every day and all.” She grins. “Wanna go out
back?”

“With the big, mean, scary dog? I’ll
pass.”

“Hope’s not scary!” She laughs, grabbing my
arm and dragging me through the gate anyway. The dog pokes her nose
in my crotch, but her tail is wagging. That’s a good sign at least.
Then Sync floats over the top of the fence and Hope goes crazy,
barking and leaping four feet into the air, trying to catch the
floating robot. “She thinks Sync’s a metal ball.”

“Are you calling me fat?” Sync huffs. “I am
not fat. This is just the way my shell was created! So what if I’m
a little round?”

“Sync, chill.” I scoop her out of the air,
away from gaping jaws, and tuck her into my bag. I turn to the dog,
who’s now looking up at me with excitement gleaming in her brown
eyes. “Go away. Mine.” The dog barks in my face, her breath blowing
hair out of my eyes, and I glare at her.

“Leave it, Hope,” Caddie says in a stern
voice. The dog drops her head and tail, casts one look at me over
her shoulder, and trots off into the back yard to attack a poor,
innocent tree branch. Caddie smiles at me. “She’s just a puppy
herself. We got her from the shelter a couple months ago. She’s
going through her terrible twos, but she’s harmless, really!”

“If you say so.”

The back yard is nothing to write home about;
it’s mainly grass needing a buzz-cut and a hundred holes dug into
the dirt. The trees look like they’re trying to get away from the
holes exposing their roots, the ends of them gnawed on. Hope barks
and dashes across the yard, a bright white streak, leaping straight
up. Hell, no wonder the fence is so tall—it’s to keep Miss
Jumps-A-Lot in.

“I’m gonna tell Mom I have company. Be right
back,” Caddie says, opening the sliding glass door and disappearing
into the house. I peer in through the window after her to see her
chatting with a shorter woman with a mane of frizzy blonde curls.
Like mother, like daughter. At least before Caddie’s dye-job.

I sit down on a patio chair. The cushion’s
been chewed on, but it’s still intact. More than I can say for the
other chair, whose leg looks like a toothpick.

She comes back out a minute later, handing me
an unopened cola. “Hope you don’t mind; we hate the diet kind.” She
pops her tab open and takes a gulp, setting it down on the glass
table. She sits in toothpick-chair and surprisingly, the leg
doesn’t give out. She leans across the table, elbows on the
glass.

“So. Like I was saying. The fire builds and
builds inside of me with no release. If I let it burn out of
control, we have chaos. But if I dispel it little by little…it’s
tiring, but it works. Like this.”

She opens her hand and the glowing ball of
flame reappears, swirling in her palm. She swings her arm back and
chucks it across the yard. Hope shrieks with, what I’m guessing is
joy, and tears off after the fireball. Just as her jaws open to
snatch it, Caddie closes her fist. The fire dissolves into smoke
and Hope’s teeth click together on air. The poor dog looks confused
for a moment, then races back for more.

“I try and use my powers for good. I’ve
stopped two muggings just by setting the bad guy’s pants on fire.
You should see how they scream when they realize running away with
a stolen purse is the least of their worries.” Her eyes gleam with
mischief. “If I create the fire, I can put it out; it just takes a
lot more focus. But burning myself out is tiring. By the end of the
day, I’m exhausted and sore.”

“That’s how I feel if I don’t get a boost
during the day,” I say. “Maybe we’re opposites, somehow.”

“Exactly what I’m thinking. I give, you take.
Which makes me curious. I want you to take soul from me.”

“
What?
”

“You heard me. Just take a little. I wanna
know what happens.”

“No! Just…no.” I rise to my feet. As if on
cue, the Need wells up, reaching out, fingers pressed against my
skin. I need it. But not Caddie. I can’t risk it. “That’s insane. I
won’t do that to you.”

“But you’ll take from Jale?”

“It’s complicated! Jale doesn’t matter to
me.” The truth is out before I can suck it back in. “You’re my
friend. The first friend I’ve had in years. You have no idea what
that means to me, Caddie, what I could risk and…no. Please.”

Her eyes soften at this. “You’re not going to
hurt me, Luce. Think of this as an experiment.”

I waver on my feet and am reminded of my
weakness once again. I didn’t get enough from Jale to really
matter. But what could a taste hurt? I swallow back the lump in my
throat and scoot my chair over to her side. Then I sit down. “Okay.
Fine. Just a little. I’ll stop myself before I do any damage.”

“I’ll be fine.” She offers a dazzling smile.
“Give me a minute, ‘kay?” She opens both hands, resting her elbows
on her knees as she scoots away from the table. Once again, heat
trickles out of her, radiating off her skin in waves. “Do it.”

“You’re sure?” Panic burns in my throat.

“Touch me, Lucy.”

“Sounds dirty,” I mumble, then place both my
hands in hers. Our eyes lock, hers dark with fire and mine rivaling
in their icy coldness. Then it hits me.

If I thought the warmth she was putting off
was hot? I was dead wrong. Suddenly I’m burning up, my skin on
fire, hotter than the Need’s ever burned before. It licks through
my veins, liquid flames, and I can’t stop the whimper from erupting
from my throat, pain mixed with so much pleasure, a masochist’s
orgasm.

For once in years, the Need peters out before
I can pull away. I gasp, jerking my hands out of Caddie’s, throwing
myself backwards with so much force that I tip the chair and slam
my head against the patio cement. My body buzzes and hums, full for
the first time, but it’s nothing compared to the panic that’s
tearing through me as I scramble to my feet, afraid of seeing
Caddie staring at me with dead eyes, her soul trapped within
me.

No. Please. Anything but that…

“Holy crap,” she says, one hand touching her
head. She’s very much alive. Relief rushes out of me in a whoosh of
breath and I sink to my knees, wrapping my arms around myself. I’m
so…warm. “Lucy? Look, it’s okay? I’m alive.”

“I took too much,” I whisper, shaking my
head. “I should’ve stopped. Caddie, I’m sorry—”

“What are you talking about? I feel fine!
See?” She flicks a fireball through the air and it poofs out an
inch from my face. I blink at the residual heat that burns my eyes.
“More than fine. I think you just proved my theory correct,” she
says with a wolfish grin.

“What theory?”

“My fire and my soul are, in essence, the
same thing. You absorbed my soul—and took most of the burn away. I
feel like I’m at a comfortable level. It’s not trying to get free;
it’s just kind of simmering, ready to be called upon.” She snaps
her fingers and sparks flutter through the air, dying out before
they can touch the ground. “I feel amazing, Lucy. What about
you?”

I shake my head, my heart still pounding from
the scare. “I thought… I thought I’d taken too much, that I’d
killed you or something. But I feel good. I’ve never been this full
before.” Her earlier words dawn on me. Wait. “You said your fire
builds back up?”

“Yep, in a matter of days, I’ll be ready to
burn out again.” She laughs. “Which meaaaans you could use me as
your own personal battery and I’ll never die on you. You take a
little soul, I lose a little fire. Win, win.”

“Holy slag.”

I know that it has to be too good to be true,
that I should shoot Caddie down and tell her never to talk of this
again, but honestly? My body is positively humming. It feels
amazing. The idea of never having to take from Jale or Mrs.
Rockwell again? That the soul will be given to me, rather than
stolen?

Iofiel…

I could touch Iofiel. I could hold his hand
and kiss him and I’d never hurt him! We could date and I could have
a real boyfriend. Maybe make real friends. Excitement bubbles up
like a fountain and I bounce on my heels, unable to sit back down.
Caddie laughs. “Feels good, huh?”

“Yeah,” I admit, feeling a little
sheepish.

“Then it’s a deal. We can do the trade here
at my place whenever we need it. Oh, and Lucy?” I look at her and
she smiles. “Thanks.”

“For what? If anything else, I should be
thanking you!”

“I feel almost normal. I mean, yeah, I know
I’ll never
be
normal, but it’s nice to feel like it
sometimes. Yanno?”

Do I ever.

Chapter 12:

Lucy

This week has been heaven. No. Better than
heaven. It’s been heaven, dipped in milk chocolate and rolled in
walnuts. For the first time in a long time, I walk with a bounce in
my step, the energy inside me swirling and contented. The Need
doesn’t rear its ugly head, not even when I brushed up against a
girl in Phys-Ed. Despite the nasty look she gave me, nothing bad
happened.

I feel…alive. And if we’re honest? I
do
feel almost normal.

I haven’t seen Iofiel since that night. I
wonder if maybe he’s been assigned to another city or something, to
do whatever cyberhounds do, without my interference. Then,
morbidly, I wonder if that big hound killed him, ripped him to
pieces, and his corpse is rotting in the woods somewhere. Not a
happy thought.

“Earth to Lucy.” Caddie’s voice is a buzz in
my ear. I blink back to reality, looking at her from across the
table. She’s swirling her fork around in the myriad of
something-stew on her tray, her eyes locked on me. “Hellllooooo in
therrrrrre.” She makes a knocking motion on her head.

“Can it,” I mutter, but I’m grinning.

She laughs and shoves her tray away from her.
I nibble at the corner of the waxy butter bread and stack my tray
on top of hers. The stew sloshes over the side, forming a
congealing puddle of ew on the table. “So, you’re coming home with
me tonight, yeah?”

“Uh…” How long have I been spacing?

“Say yes.”

“Yes?”

“Good girl. You’re so meeting my mom.”

I slam on the brakes, staring at her. “No.” I
shake my head. No parents. Parents remind me of my dead mother and
never-been-there-ever father. I’m glad Caddie has someone to be
there for her, but no. No thanks. “I’d rather not.”