The Cost of All Things (28 page)

Breathe in.

Heat and fire. A table saw caught on fire, then a stack of plywood. Flames licked the sides of my head and chest and legs, but I couldn’t move.

Breathe out.

Diana tried to reach me. I could hear her crying. I opened my eyes.

She wanted to pull me away from the flames. She pressed the fire out on the side of the cage with her shirt. The room brightened like we were back at the July third bonfire.

Breathe in.

My head hurt. Cal had hit me in the head. My brother.

Breathe out.

It was hot. So hot.

Breathe in.

Out of nowhere, the room chilled and darkened. The flames seemed to freeze in place. The air pounded with the heartbeat
of a creature much larger than us. In the corner, a single spot of light revealed Echo with her arm raised over a scrap of paper. She’d pushed up her sleeve, ripped off one of many bandages, and torn at the skin until a cut oozed over the paper.

The room seemed to shudder and something flashed in the smoke above Echo’s head. She screamed, and a second later the room was as hot and bright as ever. Echo stuffed the paper, wet with blood, into her mouth and swallowed.

Breathe out.

“What did you do?” Ari asked Echo as she dug her knees into Cal’s back, pulling his arms together past where they would normally stretch.

Blinking took effort. The smoke stung. I wondered what Echo’s new spell was for, in a remote corner of my mind that wasn’t in pain on the floor about to burn to death.

Echo looked dazed for a moment, then she snapped into action. She ran to the chain link cage and ripped the lock off in one quick motion. Diana stumbled out, coughing from the smoke.

“You got him?” Echo said to Ari. Ari nodded, though when she stood, pulling Cal up with her, she could only put weight on one leg. Echo turned next to Markos, smothering the flames covering his chest with her long black coat and hoisting him easily onto her shoulder. She went straight for the door to the woodshop, with Ari limping and dragging a moaning Cal behind her, and Diana shuffling last. Away from me and this hellish room.

Forgotten. The spell to layer over the hook worked so well.

I took a breath and tried to push myself upright.

The pain in my chest made me cry out. I couldn’t get enough air.

Diana heard me and turned around. She came back. She offered me her hand. I almost pulled her over, but then I was standing and coughing and gasping. I leaned on her, she leaned on me, and together we hobbled out of the burning woodshop.

Smoke had already started to fill the aisles of the rest of the store. I couldn’t tell my way around. We followed the sound of Echo crashing. She didn’t try to maneuver her way around the twists and turns; she kicked over shelving units and ripped up displays, taking the direct route to the door. Behind her, Ari dragged Cal, and Diana and I helped each other pick our way as quickly as possible over the mountains of junk. We passed the EMTs, but Echo didn’t stop, and they followed us to the exit, shouting, asking if we were okay, trying to figure out where the smoke was coming from.

The lock on the door had been smashed by the EMTs, but instead of pushing it open, Echo’s single kick sent glass and metal flying. We stumbled out onto the street.

Ambulances and fire trucks and police cars swarmed the street, the lights turning it bright as day. EMTs and cops swirled around us, shouting questions; firemen ran into the store with hoses. I refused to let go of Cal’s arm until an EMT pried my hand away; another EMT led him to an ambulance as he clutched his head and cried. I watched him, and my EMT had to repeat herself half a dozen times before I could answer.

“I’m fine,” I said, but she frowned and examined my bruises, fresh and old, as if I might be lying to her. She seemed particularly concerned about my knee. She said I might have torn my ACL. I heard her with only a part of my mind.

I was fine. None of my scars came from that night; none of my wounds were visible.

In the lights and confusion, I lost sight of Cal, and part of me wished I would never have to see him again. Dr. Pitts would say I was avoiding facing my trauma. Or she’d say it was healthy to move on. Either way, she’d have lots to say the next time I saw her.

On the ground near where Cal had been taken away from me I spotted a smushed sandwich bag filled with crumbs: the remnants of the spell Echo had made for me, the one Cal had taken because I told him it would make him forget. My spell. My gracefulness. My future. I didn’t know how long it would last—or even if there was enough power left in the remaining crumbs to do anything at all—but I couldn’t leave it there.

I clenched my teeth, put my weight onto my injured knee, and kicked the bag into the gutter and down the sewer grate.

Diana followed Markos into an ambulance—the first to leave, sirens flashing. Echo stood next to Kay and Mina, sentry-like, as Kay sat on the curb and held her ribs, gasping, and Mina held her hand and leaned Kay’s head on her shoulder. “Do you need me to get an EMT?” I asked.

Kay shook her head. “They’ll get to me.” She spoke in between shallow breaths. “What was in that spell he took?”

Echo answered. “Gracefulness. He’ll be a beautiful dancer.” With a huge exhale she sat on the ground, her sudden burst of energy and strength spent. Her arm was bleeding thick streams of blood onto the sidewalk: the fresh cut, and several others from earlier. She looked extraordinarily pale. When she spoke, her voice faded, word by word. “And it’ll mess him up. More than he already is.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, then closed her eyes and slumped over onto her side.

“Echo?” She didn’t respond. I dropped to my knees—my
poor busted knees—and shook her shoulder. Kay reached for Echo’s wrist to check her pulse, and I held her other hand, just to hold it. The fire blew the windows out of the store with a crash, and she didn’t flinch. “Echo!”

Her eyes didn’t open, but she managed to murmur loud enough for me to hear. “It’s okay, Ari. It was too late for me and my mom. Not with the hook.”

“You could rebalance like you did to Kay—”

“Too many spells. Too many side effects. No more spells.” She exhaled. “No way out.”

“Echo, no—”

“Tell my mom I’m sorry, but it was too late.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “Echo, listen—you can still come with me to New York. Take your mom with you! Find hekamists together. Or if I don’t go to New York we’ll still find a way to save you.” I heard more sirens in the distance, and still Echo didn’t move. “You probably shouldn’t stay here to be questioned—you should get up. They’ll find you, they’ll find out about you, put you and your mom in jail. Please, Echo—you’ve got to get away. Echo—come on—”

No lightning fell from the sky to destroy me. My heart didn’t stop. And that’s when I got really scared.

Her mother’s hook didn’t work anymore.

Faintly, from far off, I heard someone calling my name.

“Ari? Ari!” Jess ran toward me, and I let go of Echo’s hand.

I tried to run to meet Jess but my knee would barely let me stand. She reached me and hugged me, almost knocking me back
onto the sidewalk, and I buried my head in her shirt.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jess said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Shhhh.”

No one came to hug Echo. No one came to carry her home.

Echo was in a coma on the way to the hospital, and she died a few hours later. Loss of blood, they said. But doctors don’t really understand hekame—not like I do, with my multiple spells. Echo made herself a spell that allowed her to break though doors, snap locks with her hands, and rip apart metal cabinets. The side effects of something like that would be disastrous.

The spell made her superhuman, ever so briefly. To balance that, she had to know what she’d give up.

The smell woke me up.
(Someone left meat on the grill too long.)
Then the hurt.
(I am a white-hot metal knife of pain.)
I tried to will myself back into unconsciousness, but it was like running headfirst into a brick wall. So instead I opened my eyes.

“Hello,” Diana said.

“You’re okay,” I said—barely. My vocal cords crackled.

She held my hand, which set off such pain that part of my vision went white, but I never would’ve told her even if I could.

“Cal?” I said, or at least shaped my mouth into the word. I couldn’t hear very well because of the sirens. We were moving. An ambulance.

“In another ambulance,” she said. He’d set fire to the hardware store. Would they arrest him for arson? For Ari’s house, nine years ago? Either way it was a relief, not only that he’d been caught and we’d gotten away, but also that he was alive. Dead is so permanent. You can’t actually summon the dead for pep talks, or to see what they think about your situation.

The ambulance went over a pothole and I started to fade—or the world did, at least, Diana and the paramedics and the pain.

—Win?

I wanted to tell Diana I was sorry, and that even if she never wanted to see me again, I would still be sorry, but I couldn’t open my mouth, so I squeezed her hand.

—Win?

I couldn’t see the real world anymore, but a room in my mind opened up, bright and cool, and I decided to lie down and rest in there because everywhere else was so noisy. But I kept the door open, so I could come back when it calmed down.

—Goodbye, Win.

Severe concussion. Second-degree burns on my face and legs. Third-degree burns on my hands. Part of my right eyebrow would never grow back, though they promised me the angry, puckered skin on my cheeks and nose would fade. I wouldn’t look so much like my brothers anymore. An unmatched set.

“You’re lucky your skull didn’t crack,” the doctors said.

Yeah. Lucky.

Diana slept in the chair next to my hospital bed. Her shirt was half-burned and her hair a tangled, charred mess. They’d given her fluids and a sedative, but she seemed mostly fine for someone who’d been locked in a cage and nearly burned to death. Better than the rest of us, for sure.

When my mind wouldn’t stop racing and I couldn’t sleep I’d turn my head and watch her breathing, shifting slightly in her
chair, red hairs curling at the back of her neck. I
was
lucky.

I couldn’t tell how long passed before Brian, Dev, and my mom showed up. Brian was out of uniform but he had on his full Cop Face, hardened and watchful. Dev wore pajamas and watched Brian and Mom with a lost expression. Mom—I couldn’t look at her. She had rivers of tears running down her cheeks and agony filled her face. Diana took one look at all of us and slipped out of the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

“Oh my god, Markos,” my mom said, crying more when she took in the bandages, the hospital bed, the IV running to my right hand. “I told you not to talk about the spell. I begged you. Why didn’t you listen?”

“Me?” It hurt when I breathed in; the doctors had failed to catalog a few broken ribs, probably from when Echo got me out of there. “Cal set the fire.”

“Only because you told him—”

“I mean the one nine years ago. The one that killed people.”

“Accidentally.” Her face twisted, as if she could hear how that sounded. “He was a boy. A good boy. He was acting out, and he made a mistake. Set off some fireworks—I don’t know why it was the Madrigals, and it was terrible—a terrible accident—but it didn’t have to be his whole life. They would’ve taken him away from us, Markos. He would’ve grown up in juvenile detention. That would’ve changed him. Ruined him. But instead I helped him—he started over.”

She clutched the end of my bed, arms shaking. “All that money . . . all your dad’s insurance money and money from the
store, for all those years. It was for nothing now. He remembers. He told the EMTs on the way here—he’s telling the nurses, he’s telling everyone. Everything I did for him . . . for all of you . . . was for
nothing
.”

“Look at me, Mom.” I raised my broken hand and tried to gesture at my burns. “He did this to me.”

She closed her eyes rather than look at me. “I would’ve saved you, too, you know. I would’ve done the same for any of you.”

I swallowed with difficulty. “You would’ve spelled me—without my knowledge—for the rest of my adult life?”

“I
gave
him a life. I gave it to all of you.” She kept crying, snot mixing with the tears and dripping onto her shirt. “Why did you have to
ruin
it?”

She seemed to totter, and both Dev and Brian—and me, reflexively, from lying down—moved to help her stand. She was crying too hard to talk anymore and so she allowed herself to be led out of the room by Dev, leaving me alone with Brian.

Brian watched them go.

“They’re going to prosecute her for obstruction of justice,” he said, as if to himself. “I resigned.”

My stomach sank. “She’s going to jail?”

“They want to do something. Statute of limitations is up on the Madrigals’ fire, so this is all they have.”

“I didn’t think . . .”

“Of course you didn’t.” When he turned to me, his face had lost some of the cop stiffness. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

“You didn’t want to know.”

“That’s not—”

“Sure, you want to know now—now that something’s happened.” I took as deep a breath as I could and tried to speak quickly before he could interrupt. “But back before—when you thought I was pissed and sad about Win—you wanted me to shut up and be cool.”

His eye twitched. “I wanted you to be happy. That’s what everyone wants for their family.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

He looked out the window into the just-rising sun. “You’ve always been so angry with us. I never understood why. You didn’t have a bad life, you know.”

I wanted to tell him that the life he and my brothers had given me wasn’t ever truly mine. But even though he was trying his hardest to listen, I didn’t think he’d understand.

He exhaled. “We could’ve fixed it together, if we’d known. But not now.” My eyes drifted closed; it didn’t block out his voice, which stayed eerily calm. “You really have no idea what you’ve done, Markos. We had each other’s backs, but do you think anyone’s going to have your back again, after this? After what you did to me and Dev and Mom and Cal?”

I kept my eyes closed. It was easier not to see him. To think of him only as a voice. “I think you should go.”

“I’m your brother.”

“Just go away, Brian.”

I kept my eyes closed until I heard footsteps and the door
close. I couldn’t be sure if that was it—if it was over, if I was no longer a Waters, if we were done. I’d asked him to leave and he’d left. It seemed too easy.

But not easy at all. Because now I was alone.

When I opened my eyes, Diana was standing in Brian’s place at the head of the bed, looking at me.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Everyone I love is either dead or hates me.”

She smiled for a second and then her face crumpled like she was going to cry.

“Diana—what’s wrong?”

Her eyes flitted over my face—my burns, underneath the bandages. Probably full of pus and blood, stinking of rot. I was hideous, obviously. But it shouldn’t have made her that weepy.

“Where are your parents? What did they say?”

She shook her head. “They checked in on me while you were asleep. They’re worried, but it’s okay. They understand.”

“Understand what?” I’d been pumped full of drugs so that nothing hurt physically, but it still tore me up to look at her and see her upset. “Please. Tell me.”

She took a shuddering breath and came around the side of the bed, where she sat carefully, without touching any of my damaged skin, and then curled up on her side next to me and rested her head on my pillow next to my bandaged face. “I’m scared, because”—she swallowed—“because I’m going to trust you again and that’s totally terrifying.”

I held my breath and managed to raise my arm so that she
could lean her head onto an unburned part of my chest. She could probably hear my heart beating all over the place, but for the first time in hours I smelled something other than lighter fluid and flesh and gauze and hospital. I smelled her hair.

The only thing that could make her leave was me. It had always been that way since the night of the bonfire, when I could’ve crushed her spirit or made her night, and I chose to do neither. The fate of this—us—was in my hands. I could make it work or fuck it up again.

The difference now was that it wasn’t only her fate at stake anymore. It was also mine.

“I’m scared, too,” I said.

She must’ve understood all that because her breath lost that hesitant catch and she settled into my chest more comfortably.

And I was happy. So happy.

At that moment, I would’ve spent the rest of my life in the hospital wrapped in bandages if it meant I could have her head next to mine forever.

But all the same, I felt my chest caving in, because I missed Win.

It hurt that I could not tell him about this. That he wasn’t here to see it. It killed that I couldn’t talk to him anymore.

I had loved him so much. I never imagined that I would have to grow up without him.

Was I a coward for admitting it? I don’t know. It felt brave, actually, no longer keeping up appearances.

I cried all over Diana’s red hair, heart breaking with the bigness of Win gone, and she didn’t move away. She stayed with me all night.