Sparked (12 page)

“Honestly, Clayton. What’s gotten into you?” Violet whispered. “I didn’t think you were that kind of man.”

“And what kind of man is that?” Clayton asked, still fuming.

“The kind to threaten your friend over a woman for one. And the kind to just be interested in getting your kicks for another.”

“My kicks?”

“It’s cruel. She probably believes you’re really interested.” Violet looked him square in the eye. “And honestly. When did you ever have to scrape the bottom of the garbage pail for your dinner?”

Clayton took a deep breath to keep himself from yelling at her. He might not have known much about Cora, but Violet knew even less. He made an effort to make the next words out of his mouth as even as possible. “Listen to me very carefully, Violet. Nothing happened. Cora is not that kind of girl. I won’t have her talked about like that. Do you understand me?”

“Won’t have her talked about like that? Listen to yourself, Clay. Your parents couldn’t possibly approve—”

“There’s nothing to approve of. I barely know her. I helped her out of the water. That’s all.”

Violet had known him a long time, and he could see she didn’t believe a word he was saying. It was his own fault. He had overreacted to Frank. His anger had betrayed him.

Clayton looked around the room—at the whole place now quiet, staring at him—and suddenly felt the air go stale.

“I have to go.”

Clayton stomped out of the drugstore. God. Why had he reacted that way? What was wrong with him? 

Violet. That’s what. Her words hadn’t been totally off base. He was treading a very dangerous line with Cora—leading her on, leading himself on—and he knew it. There was no way their relationship could go anywhere. If he was a wiser man he’d put an end to the whole thing now before either of them got hurt.

“Clay! Wait up!” The voice came from Will. He was jogging down the street after him.

Clayton stopped. He was in no mood to speak to his brother, but he knew Will wouldn’t let go of this until they talked. It was better to face him now.

“What was that about?”

“Nothing. Frank doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Come on, Clay. You can’t feed me the same line you fed everybody else. I know you better than that. And I saw you after the Murphy girl left. Something happened between the two of you.”

Clayton huffed, kept walking. But Will matched his pace.

“What do you want me to say?” Clayton asked. 

“The truth would be nice.”

Clayton stopped, turned to him.

“Fine. I kissed her. Is that what you want to hear?”

Will paused, studied Clayton’s face. 

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Jesus, Clay. Why do you always have to do this?”

“Do what?”

“Act out like this. Mom hosts one little mixer, and suddenly you have to make the most reckless possible decision just to prove you call the shots?”

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about? Because you can’t possibly believe Mom
or
Dad would be okay with this. They didn’t even approve of Violet a few years ago.
Violet.
Cora is so much worse.” Will shook his head. “This is just like college.”

“It’s not.”

“Really? Dad
made
you pick Chicago over whatever that party school was that you wanted to go to in Los Angeles. That whole year was about making him pay and you know it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Leave it to a Yale grad to think of UCLA as a party school. Clayton had been mad, sure. But it wasn’t because he didn’t get to go. It was because they all thought the reason he wanted to go there in the first place was to mess around. It wasn’t. He just liked the program better, the sunshine too. Chicago’s gray skies had felt like a prison cell all four years. So, yes, he’d lost control that first year in Chicago. But he was only living up to their expectations.

“Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Will continued. “But things just started to get better between you two. What’s going to stop him from yanking your trust fund the moment he finds out? He’s threatened it before for less.”

“I don’t know, okay? I just know …. Dammit.” Clayton pounded a nearby wall with his fist, sank his weight against it. He didn’t need the trust fund. He could make plenty of money on his own. But the money was a symbol of his father’s approval, and that was harder to toss away. “I just know I like her.”

“You don’t even know her.”

“It’s complicated. I don’t know how to explain it.” He knew exactly how to explain it. But he didn’t think Will would be any more pleased to hear that his brother could make weird glowing balls appear out of nowhere, either.

“I just don’t get it. Is she worth your family? Your entire future?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then I think you know what you have to do.”

Clayton sighed. Will was right. He’d been foolish to think any differently.

“I’ll put a stop to it. Soon. Just give me a chance to do it the right way, okay?”

“What does that mean?”

“A few days. Please, Will. She’s not like the rest of her family. I don’t want to hurt her.”

Will met Clayton’s eye.

“Fine. I won’t tell Mom and Dad. But if they ask me, I’m not going to lie either.”

“Fair enough.”

After Will went back to the drugstore to be with Meg, Clayton took a drive. He needed to blow off some steam. 

As he drove, he cursed his instincts. Why did he always have to make the wrong decision with the people in his life? Money he could handle. Money couldn’t lie. Money was like a puzzle—something that was solvable, followed patterns, bent to his will. And unemotional too. But his family, his personal life? That was entirely different. The only pattern there was a map of his failures.

Now he would have to hurt the one person who might be able to help him unlock the mystery of what he had done in the garden. And after he had fought so hard just to get her to trust him enough to go out on a date. He would deserve her hatred when it came.

He found himself at the family boathouse—a small cabin on a swath of beach-front property. He got behind the wheel of his Tritone and charged through the dark waters.

He was more and more certain what he’d seen Cora do under the water today hadn’t been a trick of the light. It had been her. She stayed under so long because she didn’t need air at all—she had brought it with her somehow, like a diving helmet only without the helmet. It suddenly put his own strange incident into a new light. They were the same. The two of them could do things no other human had ever done before.

But, why? And how? What did they have in common? Better yet, what had changed in him that had suddenly made him capable of such a strange thing?

The answer came to him as soon as he asked it. The fog. That damned fog. It had done something to them both. Changed them somehow. And perhaps they weren’t the only ones. Or maybe they had just been hit hardest. Hadn’t Jan Clarkson also been on the island, near the shore where they had both been headed? Would he and Cora have suffered the same fate if they had reached the shore? The thought made him feel both lucky and unlucky all at once.

Dammit. What had happened to them? And what were they now? Some sort of circus side show? Or some anomaly straight out of a comic book? Clayton knew that he couldn’t deny it any longer. He had to know more about what he had done at his mother’s party. Especially now that he would have to end things with Cora. He had to see if he could—or would—do that bizarre thing again.

He slowed the boat and slid over the lake until he found a small inlet with a wide meadow, far away from town. The water looked too shallow for the boat near shore, so he anchored it, kicked off his shoes, and swam the short distance. The shock of the cold was just what he needed, and he met the land with a clearer head.

In the moonlight, the meadow grasses looked mystical, almost bewitched. The thought flashed in his mind to take Cora here one day, to kiss her with the swirl of the grasses all around them, whispering to them as they made love. 

Stop it.

He had to concentrate, focus. It wasn’t often that he was alone. And this was something he definitely had to do alone. He shuddered at the thought of what he had done to the lawn. What if he had thrown that thing at a person? Would they end up the same? The thought was terrifying.

Clayton plucked a long blade of grass. He held it in his hand, but nothing happened. Not a single thing.

What had made the rose shrivel? Perhaps his touch was only lethal on flowers. But that didn’t feel right. He couldn’t place why, but he knew it was wrong. He had felt something when it happened. A desire for something, and some sort of a flash—an instant of connection with more than just that rose. 

Maybe it was the time of night, or the temperature, or the fullness of the moon. God, what was he saying? Was he some sort of warped werewolf or something? A slave to the movement of the planets?

No. It wasn’t the circumstances surrounding the moment. It was the moment itself. He had felt it. Felt something. He’d been angry at the time—angry about how distrusted he felt, how trapped.

He had been angry.

He had been angry and he had wanted to destroy that rose.

Destroy it.

That must be the key—his intention.

Perhaps if he made himself angry, it would happen again. He conjured up the first thing that came to his mind: an image of Frank peeping at him and Cora on the trail. In an instant the blade shriveled in his palm and what was left was exactly like the other night: a blue sphere of energy, floating a few inches above his hand. It was a little smaller this time, though. Where the other sphere had been the size of a golf ball, this was more the size of a grape. Perhaps the larger the source, the larger the sphere. 

He tried to poke the sphere with his other finger, but it only moved away from his touch. He flipped his hand and the sphere stayed in the same place, hovering above the back of his hand instead of his palm. He bounced the sphere toward the other hand and it moved. He threw the thing back and forth between his palms several times, like a juggler. Every time the thing moved, he could feel a pull to it, as though his hand was a magnet. And yet, it never actually touched his hand.

Clayton chuckled. It was remarkable. Not only did it move like it was made to be in his hands, but it was completely weightless. And it looked incredible too—electric and pulsating and alive. Dark blue in the center and lighter around the edges with small lightning bolts undulating from the middle. As he looked at it, he realized he was holding energy—perhaps the actual life force—from the plucked blade of grass. It was mesmerizing.

As incredible as the thing looked, felt, he knew the danger was in what happened next. And he needed to see it again to really understand.

Clayton threw the ball to the ground, watching closely this time. Just like before, the sphere made a
zap
sound as it hit, then dissipated into nothing. And in its wake—where tall grasses had once waved under the moonlight—there was nothing. Only dust.

It was an intense feeling knowing what he was capable of—powerful and terrifying and confusing, too. He had so many questions. How large could the balls get? How big of a source could he pull from? Was it just plants? Or other life sources, too? Would his control of them change if they became too large?

He loped across the meadow to grab something larger—a wide, fallen tree branch still green with leaves. But his fingers made contact with something else. Something furry. A raccoon had darted out just as his hand was extended, perhaps frightened by the sudden movement. It scurried under his fingers, then immediately stopped where it stood.

It felt so strange, ten times as powerful as the blade of grass. Twenty. He could feel the energy gathering in his fingers as the raccoon seemed to wither in place in an instant. 

Clayton wanted to rip his hand away, but couldn’t. The pull was too strong. The raccoon crumpled to the ground and lay completely still. 

It wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving at all.

Panic struck him. What had he done? 

He looked at the ball in his hand—much larger than the others had been, the size of a melon. And the feel of it was wrong, different somehow.

He wasn’t supposed to have it.

It wasn’t supposed to be in his hands. 

He had to get rid of it. He had to give the energy back to the little animal.

He crouched down next to the raccoon and pressed the ball against its fur. But it didn’t bring the creature back to life. The orb wouldn’t even leave his hand.

Clayton’s heart was racing. What was happening? He could feel the pulse of it more intensely than with the others, could feel the desire to use it overtaking him. It was seductive, frightening, the taste of a stolen candy in his mouth—sweet and rotten all at once. He felt himself on the edge of something, a precipice, a choice.

He had to get rid of it. Throw it. Get it away.

Maybe if he threw it
at
the animal, the animal could reabsorb it somehow.

Clayton hurled the ball toward the raccoon.

There was a
zap
, followed by an instant sense of both relief and loss.

He looked over to where the raccoon's body had been, but it was gone. What had been a husk of a living, breathing animal was now turned to dust.

“No,” Clayton said. “No.”

He pressed his hand against the ground where the raccoon had lain, hoping against hope that his eyes deceived him. But they had not. 

The raccoon was gone, along with a wide swath of grass around it.

Clayton had stolen its life. He had stolen its life and then used that life to destroy whatever was left of it.

He fell against a tree and stared up at the moon, gasping for breath that suddenly seemed short. He had never felt more low, more base, more selfish. The power that had seemed so incredible just moments ago suddenly felt so wrong, and so much more dangerous.

Yet as much as he hated what he had done, he felt a sick longing to have it back. To taste that power again.