Chapter 1
CHAPTER
ONE
EMBER
The absence will live inside you. It is not a pleasant feeling, this longing which occupies the blood. It is like burning for a touch that’s never enough, or screaming for help that never comes.
— Charley Starvos, Echelon to the
School of Creation Magic
The sun was a long hour away from rising when I jolted awake, my skin burning from the phantom flu. The symptoms were always the same — headache, nausea, fever — but I was never actually sick, and they always wore off within an hour or two.
I swiped a bead of sweat from my temple. I was so tired of washing my sheets. Almost as tired as I was of never getting a full night’s sleep. Not since Dad’s accident. The night the nightmare started.
I stared out my window, trying not to think about Gray’s car parked at a wild angle along the curb, or how it hadn’t been there when I’d finally fallen asleep last night.
I let my head fall back, dinging my skull on the wood frame of my headboard with a dull thunk. Some deep-down part of me knew I shouldn’t be the one who always sent the last text message, that the silence on his end wasn’t a problem with his service, but because he didn’t care enough to respond.
I sighed at the thick curl of paint peeling off my windowsill. Predicting the weather based on the texture of the paint in my room was one of my skills. Today was going to be another long summer day, the forecast soggy, the air heavy and swimming with mosquitoes.
If my sister were here, she’d say I was spending too much time in my room. Ash was always good about that. Getting me out of the house, taking me somewhere.
I rubbed a hand over my upset stomach, slowly exhaling as my attention drifted to the giant oak tree rustling in our yard. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, except our street was fully lined with mature, leafy trees, and only the one in our yard was moving.
Years ago, on a school field trip, I saw Washington DC’s largest tree.
It was a colossal chestnut oak with a historic plaque in front of it, but there was no doubt in my mind ours was bigger.
Hollowed out, its trunk could easily fit our round kitchen table, plus Dad and I sitting at it, along with the other two empty chairs.
As a child, I was so enamored by the size of it, it was my favorite spot to play.
Every fallen branch was an enchanted sword.
I’d stay out there for hours, slashing my stick-swords through the air as I played a witch in my make-believe wars.
I guess I hoped Helen would notice, remember I was one of them, and invite me to live with her in Everden.
Eight months ago, I’d turned eighteen, and the witches were supposed to come get me. I had a few guesses why they didn’t. I didn’t like thinking about it, though, so I flipped my pillow over, planning to catch a few more hours of sleep — when I saw the oak tree glimmer.
I scrambled to the end of my bed and squinted at the towering silhouette. I wasn’t completely sure, but it looked like there were two tall figures standing beneath its branches, gazing up at me.
I blinked, my vision fuzzy and my head pounding because of the phantom flu I’d woken up with.
It was dawn, still mostly dark, and whatever I thought I saw was gone by the time I finished blinking.
I flopped onto my back and stared up at the wobbling ceiling fan.
Add that to the list of my phantom flu symptoms — now I was seeing things.
I couldn’t fall back asleep after that, so I stayed in bed and waited an hour for my nausea to pass.
I stared at my messy room and frowned at the dusty pile of ancient texts I’d stolen from Ash.
I looked away, my eyes trailing over teetering stacks of cups and plates, the scattered paperwork left out from the morning I’d torn my room apart searching for my birth certificate.
As it turned out, I hadn’t needed it.
That was a tough day — new student orientation for Penn State Harrisburg. I’d walked downstairs to Dad raising his fist high in the air, punching upwards and cheering, “U-Penn! U-Penn!”
Not for the first time, I’d had to break it to him. I wasn’t going to Penn.
Harrisburg was cheaper — and wasn’t where Gray was applying for medical school. And Penn was just too hard to justify when I could go somewhere closer to home.
Dad hadn’t left the house since his accident, and if I wasn’t living here, I didn’t know who would go to the store, mow the lawn, check the mail.
His accident had been so bad, his car had looked like a crushed soda can when they found it.
Miraculously, he was fine, but everyone agreed it should have killed him.
I didn’t remember much about that night, other than it happened on my birthday, while I was at Gray’s, after I’d accidentally fallen asleep. I remembered I’d lied. I remembered that every day.
I swallowed tightly and pushed the memory away. I got up, threw a sweatshirt over the sports bra I’d slept in, then padded down to the kitchen. Dad’s favorite dark roast coffee was just finishing brewing.
He was in his usual spot, sitting in the living room recliner in front of the television.
His sandy hair was ruffled the way it always was when he slept there.
We had the same hair, along with the same tanned, white skin, broad shoulders, and — as everyone liked to point out — similar facial expressions.
Reserved. Distant. The only trait I might’ve inherited from my mother was my eye color, but if my gold eyes had come from one of Helen’s ancestors, I couldn’t be certain.
I poured a mug of coffee and nodded to Dad, who wasn’t shy about studying my washed-out appearance.
He shifted in the recliner, the leather groaning as he frowned at my hair, still damp and tangled from the sweat that had poured out of me earlier.
I never told Dad what the nightmare was about — that it was about that night, about him.
“Something came for you,” he said.
I furrowed my brow, knowing he wouldn’t have brought in a package.
Dad jerked his head toward an area of the kitchen I generally had no reason to pay attention to. “A letter in the letterbox. There’s a dragonfly on the wax seal.”
My breath hitched. I felt a flicker of hope for a second, but I’d been let down too many times before, so I forced myself to squash it.
I exhaled slowly, and, with lowered expectations, set my red Penn mug on the table and calmly walked to the cabinet with the letterbox on it.
Ash used to stamp her letters with a dragonfly, but it had to be a coincidence. She hadn’t written in three years.
The copper letterbox, the only magical object in our house, was used to send small items between here and Everden.
It was the size of a toaster oven and had one small drawer big enough to fit a large book, which was the only reason I knew as much about magic as I did.
Helen once used the letterbox to send letters and textbooks to Ash.
I wasn’t allowed to read them, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking into Ash’s bedroom, stealing her books and digging her letters out of the trash.
At first, after Ash went to Everden, she regularly wrote to us, until three years ago, when, with no explanation, she stopped.
The last thing she sent wasn’t even a letter.
It was a children’s book about Counterparts.
I didn’t even know if Helen would tell us if Ash was in trouble. Helen, who didn’t respond after Dad wrote to her about my appendix bursting.
I slowly pulled open the letterbox’s ancient copper drawer. Dad wouldn’t joke about Ash, but I still couldn’t help my surprise — or the way my heart jolted — when I saw crisp parchment the color of light tea, folded and sealed with a wax dragonfly.
I paused, vaguely hearing the sound of the footrest drawing in, followed by Dad’s footsteps crossing the hardwood. It wasn’t until he pushed a letter opener toward me that I realized I’d been frozen, not ready to read whatever my sister had written.
Ash wouldn’t be the one to say my time in the human realm was up, would she? It would have been an Echelon, someone in the government.
“Go on,” Dad said, shifting his weight. “I want to know how she is.”
I read the letter, and any hope I hadn’t managed to kill quickly flattened to disappointment. I turned the parchment over in my hands, inspecting the now broken seal.
At first glance, it looked like Ash had signed and sealed the letter, but after reading it, I knew it wasn’t from her.
It might have been her dragonfly, but — smudged and stamped off-center — it wasn’t put there by my sister.
The letter lacked her voice and elegance.
The writing was sharply slanted, every letter crushed.
Ash was composed and articulate. She didn’t scrawl. She was a perfectionist whose lettering belonged in a calligraphy guide. This wasn’t how she would break this news.
Apparently, the witches did remember my existence. In three days, they were coming to get me. That much had been hastily penned in purple. No further details were provided.
I paced to the trash and tossed the letter on top of yesterday’s coffee grounds. Dad looked like he wanted to say something, his mouth struggling to decide what shape to form.
“I’m not going,” I said, avoiding his long look. My life was here. College was here. Dad needed me here. We both knew if I went to Everden, I wouldn’t return to the human realm.
“I think you have to,” he said, then plodded back to his chair and kicked out the footrest as I remained in the kitchen.
“If that was the case,” I said, bracing my hands on the smooth granite counter, “they would’ve come eight months ago like they were supposed to.”
If that were the case, my mother, Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the School of Mental Magic, would’ve prepared me the same way she’d prepared Ash.
Dad gazed out the French doors to the dark-green tree line of the forest. “What I meant was” — he cleared his throat — “I think you have to go for you.”
“Dad.”
“Em-bear.” He’d been saying my name that way since I was a kid. “You can’t stay here. You’ve gotta go” — he waved a hand around in the air — “get a life, see the world.” Trying to be humorous, he added, “The other one.”
“I have a life. I run. I read. I take care of things — ”
“Of me, you mean. You take care of me. That’s not a life, kid. Not as long as you keep making it about me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” he countered, “and it’s making you miserable. I know you like to think I’m not paying attention, but I see fine from my chair. You’ve got the blues. The same ones your mother had.”
“Dad.” My voice was sharp, agitated. “I’m not blue.” He meant well, but he was wrong. I was fine. I liked my life as much as the next person.
He laughed to himself, shaking his head like I wasn’t hearing him.
“You’re as blue as they get.” Absentmindedly, he flicked through the television channels, eventually landing on some baseball highlights and turning up the volume.
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” he said, raising his voice so I could hear him over the TV.
“You won’t be happy here. Your glow is gone, and it’s not coming back unless you go. ”
I pretended not to hear his words over the crack of the baseball bat, the muffled cheers of the crowd, the commentators aghast as a home run replayed on the screen.
I grabbed my lukewarm coffee and went to the fridge to add some ice to it — and jumped, splashing myself, at the sudden sound of fists pounding on our door.
“Open the door! Police! Open the door!”