The Awakening of Ren Crown (10 page)

“You live in a creepy neighborhood,” Will said as I jogged along the wooded path behind our house.

I hesitated, then held up a thumb in front of the sketch again, the rest of my hand wrapped around my closed utility knife. The trees had never seemed creepy before the night we'd been attacked. Now shadows jumped and parted everywhere.

It was a fifteen minute walk to school. Jogging, I made it in eight, with one hand wrapped around my can of pepper spray and the other around my knife.

The sidewalks in front of the school were brightly lit, which threw darker shadows farther out. The wall of bushes Will and I had stumbled behind was not near a light. I darted looks in every direction as I quickly made my way toward it. I crouched down with the bushes at my back, the sound of my short, quick breaths filling my ears.

“Ren?” Will asked, voice concerned.

I held out a thumb in front of the sketch. Pull it together, Ren. Reaching back, I withdrew my flashlight from the open side pocket of my pack.

Flashlight stuffed between my ear and shoulder, I rummaged under the bushes. Sitting between a familiar brown hair clip and ballpoint pen was a plain white tube of paint with a blue smudge around the lip of the cap—shining brightly beneath a gnarled branch.

My fingers clumsily closed around it.

“Yes,” Will crowed. I could almost hear him dancing about. “Let's get out of here.”

I pulled my small backpack off of one shoulder and unzipped it. I nudged the charcoal pencil aside and heard it tap against Christian's lock pick set in the bottom of the bag. Mine had been confiscated by my parents in the hospital while I had been comatose. Luckily, since they hadn't known we'd had one set, they didn't know we had two. I dropped the tube in along with my other forgotten items and moved the gopher sketch so that I could zip the bag back up. The gophers were still zipping and zooming about.

“You. Hold it.”

I jumped at the sudden voice and the heavy Scottish accent. A large man dressed in black was quickly advancing down the sidewalk toward me. His brows were furrowed as he looked down at some sort of scanning device in his hand.

A device just like the one Christian's killer had had. I crouched, frozen, staring at it.

“
Run.
” Will yelled.

The man reacted to Will's muffled shout, narrowed his eyes, and pointed the scanner at me. A light shot from the sketch on my chest and impacted the scanner, sending it flying through the air. I scrambled backward and the gopher paper fell to the grass. The Scottish man didn't waste any time going after his scanner, though, and threw something in his hand at me instead. I dove to the side, rolling with the motion, and came up behind a tree.

Like playing paintball—except there was no Christian to flash signs to, telling him the best field positions. And, again, the enemy wasn't throwing paint.

A bolt of green shot past and a chunk of the tree three feet to my left exploded. At the point of impact, a net stretched nearly invisible tendrils through the air, then slowly collapsed to the ground when they found nothing but wood chips in their embrace. I couldn't catch my breath, so I clutched my pepper spray with tight fingers.

The ground shook all around us.

“A kid?” The heavy Scottish accent sounded irritated. “They left me here for a kid? Well, come on. Whatever little trick you have there won't work for long. I can just destroy that tree too—give you a good concussion or worse. Don't make this more difficult.”

“Do
not
go,” Will warned in a low voice.

“Whatever you've done wrong, they'll work it out with your parents, after your questioning.” When I still didn't move, his voice changed perceptibly. I could hear the soft crunch beneath his feet as he slowly approached. “You don't want to get me irritated. Every capsule that you make me waste costs a hundred slaw, and I'll rip each loss out of you.”

I peered around the other side of the tree to see him reloading something, my rodent sketch at his feet. Blue seeped oddly from the edge of the rodent sketch, the color growing fainter and blending in as it spread across the page threads. I looked down at my fingers. They were clean. But I had touched the lip of the tube...the blue smudge at its closure.

The man smirked at me and stepped forward. “There now. Just come along and—”

The edges of the paper crumpled around the sides of his boot.

Schwoop
.

I pulled back, harsh, unforgiving breaths issuing from my chest.

“What is happening?” Will's voice was stressed. “Why aren't we running?”

An owl hooted, and the area grew brighter as lights popped on in the houses across the street from the school. I could hear voices yelling down the street about an earthquake and lightning strike. I peeked back around the tree. Only the paper remained. I turned fully so Will could see. “I think...I think I gophered him somewhere.”

Will was silent for a long moment. “Well, I do believe, I feel better suddenly.” I looked down to see him smirking at the other paper. “Hurry, go look at it.”

I slowly walked over and cautiously glanced down at the paper that was now completely blank save for the gopher platform.

“Where do you think he went?” I asked, unnerved.

“I don't—”

“Aiyeee!” A gopher made of paper dropped from the sky. An
animated
gopher made of paper. If a gopher could have a silly, happy grin, this one did.

“Holy—”

“Grab the sketch, quickly,” Will said, his voice high. “And the gopher...paper...thing.”

I didn't waste any time on thinking and scooped up the sketch. The paper gopher started to merrily toddle off, but I grabbed him and stuffed him in my pocket.

“Aiyeee!” Another paper gopher dropped from the sky, this one wearing goggles and shoes and doing little twirls. I nabbed him as he hit the ground, then stuffed him in my pocket too. My pocket started moving.

“Get us out of here,” Will said. “If the Department spook falls out of the sky too, I want to be long gone.”

The last intent on the paper had been happy transport. The ridiculous image of the Scottish man wearing the gophers' euphoric grins flitted through my mind. I threw the crumpled paper into a trash bin three streets over. Will hissed at its loss, but instinct urged me to toss it. The paper gophers had stopped moving in my pocket.

Another block over, a good-looking man around my parents' age walked down the street carrying a handheld device. There was something familiar about him. He looked around, eyes peering into the shadows where I was hiding. For some reason I knew his eyes would be blue, though not quite ultramarine. The older man from that night. The uncle. I started to rise.

“Stay down,” Will hissed.

“But—”

“Shh!
Don't
let him see us.”

The man finally moved away, and I slipped through a park—a longer route, but less likely to be populated.

Will stayed silent for five more blocks. “Is he gone?”

I looked behind me for the thousandth time. “Yes. Why? Maybe he could help us.” He had helped last time. Well, actually he hadn't wanted to help me at all, come to think of it. But even reluctantly, he had let his nephew do so.

“Not likely. He's one of the Dares.”

“Is that a cult?”

He snorted. “A family. An old, powerful family. High society. Prideful. They stay out of public politics and barely leave their private island, but like all of the old families, they play deep games. None of them work directly for the Department, but my Dad said they occasionally send family members to infiltrate organizations. That one looks like a hunter. Probably hunting Verisetti. One of them goes to Excelsine—my school.”

Alexander. Alexander Dare?

The fractured conversation from the night of Christian's death wound through my mind. They had checked my wrist. I looked at the sapling drawn in clear brown lines. The dots that had been there before were now smoothly connected, and the sapling looked bigger. That night might have gone far differently if this had been on the inside of my wrist.

“He'd scan you at the very least, and...there is something weird about your magic,” Will said. “I don't think most art mages can trap people in sketches. That isn't good news for us.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, it's just as bad for me at the moment. I can't trust that guy not to simply lock me in the family library vault and enslave me in this black-and-white prison for all eternity.” Will cocked his head, eyebrows raised. “I'd be tempted to keep me for testing purposes.”

“What are you, a mad scientist?”

“Someday, I hope.”

“Great.” I shook my head. Just what I needed. Another me. “We have three more blocks, and you're freaking me out. By the way, how did you perform magic from in there? Something hit that guy's scanning device.”

“Yeah...that...wasn't me. I don't know if I mentioned it, but I'd kind of like to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

All told, even with the stop, we made the fifteen minute trip home in six.

Chapter Five: Really Unwise Actions

I looked at the clock blearily and cradled my umpteenth Coke. It steadily showed 5:32 a.m., then the final number blinked to three. Will and I were taking turns watching the draperies in the sketch. I had set up Will with an alarm clock and some cymbals while he stood watch, but even then, with the sketch lying on my pillow, I had woken in a panic every fifteen minutes thinking he had been impaled or eaten. He had had no problem dropping off to sleep, though, after I'd drawn garlands of bells over the drapes and tested to make sure they worked. The sword rested beside him on the bed I'd drawn, and his hand was wrapped around a knife under his pillow.

I didn't know whether it was from too much sugar and caffeine in my system, or something else, but the energy under my skin had steadily gone from a trickle to a torrent, raging through me, seeking an outlet.

Will and I had tried the paint, but a single dot had caused the circles on the drapes to start rotating and battering to commence behind the drapes—forcing them outward, as if by punched fists. I had quickly captured the spreading dot in a container. It had taken all of my focus and intent to do so, and the energy inside of me was raging to get out. The battering and rotations had abruptly stopped. The container now sat in the corner across from Will. We would figure out how to test it in the morning. The blue dot inside the container looked as if it were waiting.

The tube of paint was calling to me and freaking me out in equal measures.

“
Ren
.”

I started violently, looking around me. That had been Christian's voice.

“Christian?” I whispered.

No one answered.

A good panic was working its way over me steadily. I was sure Will had noticed, but neither of us had said anything aloud about my last piece of magic charcoal being worn to a nub after all of the interim drawings and failed experiments. Using a regular pencil, I could eke out the barest of sketched movements—producing little half-alive automatons—but it was obvious that I wouldn't be able to fight off anything magical with a standard No. 2.

The responsibility for Will's safety was not something I was ready to deal with. I wanted Christian back.

I rolled off my bed and lifted the paint tube. It vibrated in my shaky fingers.

“
Help me.”

I closed my eyes tightly together. Christian's voice. I clasped the sound to my heart.

“
Help me.”

I sneaked a peek at Will, who was sleeping soundly, his back gently lifting. I wondered at the depth of his sudden sleep. Wondered if perhaps I had magically influenced his snooze in my sketched world.

All for the better, at the moment. I couldn't take this anymore. I would make something work.

I picked through the mountain of papers covering my desk and finally decided on a simple one—a detailed sketch of a butterfly. It reminded me of the one I had drawn earlier in the day, battering at the edges of the paper. It reminded me of Mr. Verisetti calling me that very thing. That thought made me more determined. I threw the clothes that had been hanging over the top of my small standing easel to the floor. My whole room was a sty. Had been for six weeks now—in contrast to my mother's suddenly pristine world. But as long as I kept the clutter within the boundaries of my room, my parents wouldn't say a word.

I clipped the paper up and, after another quick check on Will, squeezed a bit of the shiny ultramarine onto my fingertips. I rubbed them together—marveling at the strange glittering of the charged hue.
So like the eyes of the boy who had saved me
. I ejected a dollop into a small cup attached to the side of the easel. I chose a short flat brush from my scattered collection, and dipped it. The first small sweep on the paper produced an echoed feeling of heat inside of me. I stopped and examined the paint. It glittered.
Waited
. That was absurd, but I felt the streak of paint was waiting for something.

I dipped my brush and spread another streak. Everything lit inside of me.

It was almost hard to breathe. Painting the butterfly was quick. The paint was alive, pulling together to darken the lines, making a strange sort of electric pop art piece. I rubbed my finger lightly along the surface. My fingertip brushed something soft, and the edge of a wingtip bristled up onto the page.