Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Leo and her mom had agreed to use Papa’s home for the Order meeting; apparently headquarters for all things writing, bingo, and secret societies.
As they pulled up, Lia noticed how red the leaves were as they twirled to the ground.
Red like sunsets, similar to the one that illuminated the darkening sky.
Like fire, crackling above abandoned tables and shopping bags.
Like blood staining tile floors. And her fingers.
Lia blinked, shoving yesterday’s mall debacle away.
But she could hear those roars, feel the bone-melting heat.
From the front seat, she glanced up at the rearview mirror.
Kayce was already staring at her, absently rubbing his palm.
His cheeks were still pale, shoulders tense despite the hands loose in his lap as he listened to Marcus prattle on about some cosmic event forecasted in a couple months.
She looked away first. Fisted her hands, hiding the bitten nails, the scabbed nailbeds.
Since their fight yesterday, Kayce and Lia had hardly spoken, the silence fraught between them. It was the longest they had ever fought. She knew Kayce hated it as much as she did. He’d tried to catch her alone several times. But she couldn’t face him, his disappointment. Not yet.
Coward. So much for Lioness Silva’s pep-talk.
She claimed it was because she didn’t want to “bleed” on him, as Norenth’s queen had so eloquently put it.
But this meeting could dictate that he needed to be sent back immediately.
Life continued onward in the Emperium; had the queen noted Kayce’s absence?
Fight or no fight, noted absence or not, Lia couldn’t see him go.
She wouldn’t. And she knew with how often she caught him staring at her, he felt the same.
Her mom parked the car. “Listen, you three.”
Marcus groaned, but ceased at the raised finger their mom pointed.
“You are to listen, to learn. Speak only when spoken to,” she warned. “Don’t mention our suspicions about Papa’s death. Am I clear?”
Lia frowned. Wouldn’t she want the Order’s help with this? Still, all they really had were suspicions. Dragons crashing into public buildings took priority.
Once she got a nod from everyone, the boys piled out. Kayce hesitated, the moment constricting Lia’s chest before he left.
Mom put a hand on Lia’s shoulder. “When you said a gremlin attacked you,” she hedged, her hand warm. “What happened to it after you got away?”
“It was weird.” Lia shifted, looking down at her lap.
She bit her lip, but the earnestness in Mom’s gaze, the way she leaned forward attentively, prompted Lia to continue.
“There was this moment where my blood and its, well, gunk got smeared together under my hands. Kind of like what Leo did with that wand. That’s when every trace burned away like it was never there.
” Lia suppressed a shudder, pulling her sleeves over her hands.
While the tenderness in her ankle was gone, the scars would remain.
At that moment, she was glad for them. For the proof.
“Leo mentioned you hadn’t seen anything besides Kayce,” her mom said.
“Because I didn’t tell him.”
Mom nodded to herself. “I told him about the gremlin, but you sending it back to its sphere needs to stay between us. At least for now.”
Lia’s brow furrowed. This was not the reaction she’d expected to her lie. “Why?”
Mom was no longer looking at Lia, but past her, her gaze distant. Blinking back to the present, she squeezed Lia’s shoulder. “That tool Leo used on the dragon? That’s the only way Flamehearts can get beings back into the Emperium. At least, that’s what I had thought.”
It took a minute. Then the implications settled into Lia like stones sinking to the bottom of the sea. Like she needed something else to prove she was different. Was that why she could see better? Why scars appeared on her hands, the muscles hard beneath her soft curves?
Mom was still talking. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
Lia stared out the window to the cherry trees peering around the house from the backyard. How could she have forgotten it? But with how much she’d been dealing with, maybe Lia needed to cut herself some slack.
“Before Papa died,” she murmured, “there was this owl. I swore it had six eyes. Papa got all cagey, shooing me into the kitchen. I remember this flash of light, the smell of burning paper.” Lia dragged her eyes from the tree to see her mom stiffen. “I don’t think it belonged here.”
It’d been on Captain Luddeck’s ship, too. And she thought she’d heard an owl hoot in the castle gardens during the ball. Had it really been in Norenth—or was it her mind replaying what it had already seen?
“We’ll figure it out, you and me. But that should also stay between us.” Mom moved her hand to Lia’s knee. Her nails were cut to the quick. “I know you don’t understand. You are going through so much right now.”
Lia pulled on a loose thread of her shirt. She wanted to say she understood. That she trusted her. But that new warmth in her chest burned, the heat worming up her throat to her cheeks. Blood pumped in her temples. She was tired of the secrets.
At Lia’s silence, her mom pressed a kiss to her curls. Lia managed a strained smile that would have to be her answer. She didn’t trust what would come out if she opened her mouth.
Exiting the car, they made their way to the porch where the boys were waiting. Unlike the other day, several cars parked in the driveway and on the street.
“How many are in the Order, exactly?” Marcus asked when they approached.
“I don’t know the global numbers offhand. But when I was first inducted, seven representatives were in this chapter. We make up the West Coast, outside Canada. They have a couple of their own.” Their mom opened the door, the foyer greeting them with warmth from the sitting room fireplace.
“But isn’t the gift generational?” Marcus said.
Mom sighed through her nose. “Yes, but there is only one representative in the chapter per family. Papa was ours.”
And will you be the next? Lia wanted to pry, but her mom strode for the sitting room.
Down the hall, voices echoed and the air carried the warm scent of tomatoes and cheese. Marcus inhaled deeply. “Smell that, Kayce?”
Kayce took a sniff. “Skies, Chef Rosalind makes a pie that smells like that—”
“Pizza, my friend.” Marcus patted Kayce on the back. “It’s pizza.”
Lia smirked, her own stomach rumbling in response.
Inside the sitting room, the fire crackled.
Lia recognized Mirel, sitting in a designer pantsuit.
She was glaring at Adrian, who was cleaning his glasses using the hem of his sweater.
Leo nursed a cup of coffee, granting the three teens a smile as they paused in the doorway.
There were three strangers in the room.
Two stood beside the fire in intense conversation.
One was a short, balding man. The woman’s willowy figure trembled with barely suppressed emotion as she hissed in his face some remark Lia neither heard nor cared about.
Only another woman seemed to pay the spat any mind, smirking from the corner closest to the foyer.
“Cordelia!” Mirel exclaimed, hopping from the bay window seat. “Thank heavens—I was about to lose my mind explaining to Adrian how much Washington’s senator doesn’t need to know about our ‘gas leak’ at the mall yesterday. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in paperwork.”
“Gas leak?” Marcus questioned, glancing at the man lounging with his leg crossed over a bouncing knee.
Their mom sent a sharp look at Marcus after pulling from Mirel’s embrace. He flushed.
Leo answered all the same. “All those startled people, they needed something that explained the shared hallucination. Gas leak ruptured by a terrible tremor. It helps that once creations are returned to the Emperium, the memories of ignorant humans fade like a dream.”
Lia couldn’t help but nod appreciatively at the man, earning her a conspiratorial wink. She had assumed as much before the dragon stuck its head through the ceiling.
“Though it would seem more are remembering them as fact.” Adrian twitched on the far end of the sofa, adjusting his glasses. “I was merely inquiring that, well, perhaps a tale of an escape from the local zoo would also be prudent.”
Mirel rolled her eyes. “No reptile is that big. Stick to your books and leave the damage control to me.” Adrian opened his mouth, but before he could get another word in, Mirel cut him with a glare.
“And all social media has been wiped. Gone are the days where the images would blur and they could be written off as a hoax. We don’t need another Rio incident. ”
“Or Hammerfest, Norway,” Leo tacked on with a groan.
The squirrel—Adrian still had that twitchiness like one—gave two nods in concession.
“What happened in Brazil and Norway?” Lia asked.
“Our senator isn’t the first to use rabid animals as an excuse for the inexplicable.
Not that he knows any different, just what Mirel tells him,” Adrian said in a rush.
“But people are more apt to believe it in a city than a small costal town where not much happens. Certainly not when someone caught a selkie transformation on their Ring camera, the woman then knocking and asking for shelter from the cold. Norway’s Order chapter couldn’t swipe that footage fast enough. ”
A throat cleared, and everyone eyed the new arrivals. The silence was heavy, full of secrets that were now being forced into the open. Gremlins in Seattle. Dragons in the mall. And now, selkies in Norway and skies knew whatever had happened in Rio.
Was this normal? Or were tears between the realms everywhere? Dread filled Lia’s mouth with bile. Seekers were likely waiting for such a time as this.