Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
ANTIMONY
“The best thing about being adopted is knowing, with absolute certainty, that I was chosen by the people who raised me. They wanted me more than anything. The worst thing is not knowing who I might have been. That version of me died so I could be born.”
—Evelyn Baker
In the jungle near the Johrlac city called Ka’krin, and really, I do not understand a damn thing about their language
WHEN SAM JUMPED OUT OF the tree, my traitorous limbic system cheered.
Having a fiancé who can throw me around like a sack of potatoes—and does, on a fairly regular basis—has done some strange things to my emotional wiring.
It was almost a pity my sister lived on the other side of the country these days; our mutual delight in being dropped from great heights might be the first real thing we’d ever had in common.
Arthur, on the other hand, screamed and clutched at Sam’s neck, trying to hold on as tightly as he could. Sam swore, pushing his hands away, and Arthur transferred his clutching to me, getting a handful of hair and boob.
We hit the ground, Sam bending his knees to absorb the impact as much as he could, then dragging us both behind the tree. We had landed distressingly near the sidewalk, and needed to hide before any of the nearby pedestrians could figure out where that scream had come from.
What’s the point of having a jungle if you’re going to fully integrate it with your city? It just makes everything a liminal space, neither here nor there, and confuses everyone.
Once we were safely out of sight of the street, Sam let us both go, although he rewrapped his tail around my ankle immediately after, still holding on. I looked down at Arthur’s hand, which was also still holding on.
“Ahem,” I said blandly.
“What? Annie, your boyfriend just threw us out of a tree,” he said.
“He didn’t throw us, he jumped down and took us with him,” I replied. “And if you could let go of my boob before he punches you in the throat so hard you taste cartilage, that would be cool too.”
“Wha— Oh!” Arthur yanked his hand back like it had been burned, dancing backward a few feet for good measure. Shaking his hand as if to cool it, he stared at me in obvious mortification. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I was just trying to find something I could hold on to.”
“They’re pretty great, aren’t they?” asked Sam, his natural urge to boast about my tits winning out over the impulse to be offended by what had just happened.
With the way he could sometimes go on about them, you’d think he grew my breasts himself.
Which was fine, really. It was sort of nice to have a fiancé who was so totally into my body.
I elbowed him anyway. “Sort of nice” didn’t mean I wanted him discussing my breasts with my cousin. “Maybe try trusting the trained trapeze artist next time, and keep your hands to yourself,” I suggested.
“I will, I promise!” said Arthur. “You’re my cousin. That’s gross. I would never—”
He trailed off, cheeks burning red. I could almost see him remembering that Sarah was his cousin too, even if she wasn’t a blood relation. He absolutely would, under the right circumstances, with the right cousin. Which wasn’t and had never been me.
“Standing around and being embarrassed at each other is fun and all, but it’s not getting us home any time soon. Let’s go find your grandparents,” said Sam gruffly.
“Good plan,” I agreed.
“I just want to get back to my basement and never go outside again,” said Arthur.
“Sounds like a great idea,” I said.
We started walking, circling the tree we’d been hiding behind and angling ourselves toward the back of the still-smoldering administration building.
Smoke clouded the foliage around us, chokingly thick and strangely herbal thanks to all the burning brush.
We were careful to avoid coming too close to the street or moving back into view; Alice might still be content to rely on the anti-telepathy charms to keep us hidden with everyone on edge from the fire, but I wasn’t, especially not out in the open.
There had to be kids here. Sarah was a child once, and logically, that meant all Johrlac started out as children.
Kids didn’t care if they couldn’t see the source of a strange noise.
They cared about the strange noise, and finding its source.
One of us would sneeze and we’d have a whole damn Johrlac kindergarten hanging off our arms, shouting for their adults to come and see the funny things they’d found.
We needed to be cautious, even if we had a layer of protection on our side.
As if to illustrate that thought, something came crashing out of the canopy above us, slamming through the green until it hit the ground in front of us and bounced back up, revealing itself as a Johrlac in a red-and-brown jumpsuit, clutching what looked like a broom in both his hands and looking frantically around.
All three of us froze, trying to emulate the trees around us.
There were charred holes in the sleeve of his jumpsuit, and the bristles of his broom were smoking. He’d clearly fled the building through an open window to get away from the fire; given the way some of the trees overhung the structure, it was impossible to guess how far he might have fallen.
Carefully, I looked him up and down. He didn’t seem to be armed, and from the way he was still looking around, eyes bright and unfocused, he hadn’t managed to spot us yet.
Our camouflage, such as it was, was still holding.
He looked up into the branches above him, then over his shoulder toward the administration building.
Spinning on his heel, he started running in the direction of the sidewalk, crashing through the undergrowth between us and it.
I exhaled, sagging in relief.
“That was close,” said Arthur.
The man stopped running.
We all froze again, and stayed frozen as the man slowly turned and started walking back toward us, lowering his broom so that it was held almost like a spear.
He was moving slowly, scanning the greenery around him as he did, and I realized he was really looking at everything, each leaf and vine, with the sort of attention to detail I hadn’t expected to see from anyone native to this world.
For whatever reason, he’d learned to see the world around him, not just focus on the nearby minds.
Maybe it was the broom. Anyone who thought to bring their broom with them as they jumped out of a burning building would have to be good at paying attention to their surroundings. Dust doesn’t have a mind, but it still needs to be swept up.
Of course, that raised the question of how much not seeing us was a choice the other Johrlac made, a more advanced version of the way Verity had never been able to see the dirty dishes clogging the sink when she didn’t want to deal with them.
If it was a choice, then it was presumably one they could stop making any time they wanted to.
Oh, we needed to find my grandparents. But before we did that, we needed to get away from the man who was still moving closer and closer to where we stood frozen.
Sam could move faster than the Johrlac could react.
And if he moved at full speed, he’d be hitting like a freight train: he could very well kill this man without intending to, and even though the stranger represented a threat to us in the moment, he didn’t deserve to die for the crime of being able to pay attention. That left me and Arthur.
Arthur’s main defense was his pheromones, which didn’t work against Johrlac. And mine …
Well, mine wasn’t very far away at the moment.
I reached out for the fire, feeling my way through the smoky air.
We were still very close to the administration building: there was nothing that could keep me from getting to my goal.
I extended the tendrils of my magic, and the fire answered me, ready to come at my command as always.
If I pulled it into the jungle, things were going to get a lot more exciting, very quickly. The man was getting closer. I didn’t really think I had a choice.
Come, I commanded the fire.
The fire came so fast and so hard that it blew a hole in the back of the administration building, bursting through the papery wall like it had been fed with some sort of accelerant—which, in a way, it had been.
My magic was better than gasoline where the fire was concerned, twice as flammable and infinitely more pure.
The jungle was alive and growing, wet with sap and juices.
It didn’t want to burn. I pushed more magic into the flames, and what the jungle wanted didn’t matter anymore, because it was burning, bright as a candle and fiercely hot.
Its joy was palpable, and I took a heartbeat to glory in it, letting the ecstasy of the flames burn over and through me.
The man with the broom yelped and whipped around, raising his arms to shield his face as he stared, horrified, at what was rapidly becoming an inferno.
Then he ran again, faster this time, away from us … and away from the fire, which was coming right at us.
“You can turn it off now, right, Annie?” asked Arthur.
“It doesn’t work that way, dude,” said Sam. “Once she sets the fire, it’s pretty much out of her control.”
Not entirely. I could call it closer if I wanted to, could bring it to where I could wrap it around myself and let it warm me. Everything in this world was alien, but the fire was so familiar. The fire was here for me, and because of me, and I loved it so.
I didn’t say any of that. Loving the fire was irrelevant. No matter how much I wanted it, I was still flesh and bone, and even an elementalist can be consumed if they linger too close to the flame. “We need to get out of here,” I said, looking up at Sam. “Can you carry us both?”