Chapter 42
The shop is gone.
Gone are the towering shelves and burning incense and warmth.
Instead, there are bricks and car horns and the thick stench of nicotine. A violent shiver runs through me.
We’re outside. How did we get outside?
The crystal has gone cold in my grip. My body feels strange—tingly and unstable. My vision ripples, like the moment before a migraine, flaring bright, but it’s gone as quickly as it came.
Like nothing happened.
“What the hell was that?”
I stare at Lucky. I wish I knew.
I open my mouth to reply, then freeze.
Lucky’s gone.
My heart pounds. He was just here. I’m sure of it. I—
He reappears, slotting right back into reality like he never left.
“What … what is happening?”
Lucky’s eyes are wide. “I don’t know. One minute, I was here, and then I started thinking about home and”—he snaps his fingers—“there I was. Next blink, and I’m back.”
It can’t be …
Will it work anywhere? Or only places he knows?
“Think of somewhere you’ve always wanted to go.”
“Why?”
“I have a hunch,” I say.
Lucky smiles, and it’s so playful; it makes me briefly forget the spiky tendrils of heat that are steadily growing at my fingertips. I clench my fists.
“All right. Let’s try the top of the Empire State Building.” He closes his eyes.
A second passes, then two. When five have gone by and nothing has happened, he opens them again and shrugs. “Guess I can’t go anywhere I haven’t been before.”
I share the disappointment that’s tugging at his lips.
“Bit of a bummer, if I’m honest,” he adds.
I agree, although it’s probably for the best; there are some horrific ramifications once I start to think about it.
Who knows how teleportation works? What if you phased into a wall?
Would you die instantly? And what about the space you take up?
Does that disappear forever or swap places with you? What about moving through time?
“Whoa, that’s a nifty trick you’ve got there, love.”
Lucky’s voice drifts through the thick cloud of questions consuming me, and I must have closed my eyes at some point because I open them and find the world around us has shifted a few feet higher than before.
No, wait. Not the world, just every static object in a six-foot radius. What the fuck?
I jolt, and everything comes crashing back down with a resounding boom that shakes my bones. “How did you do that?”
“Not me, I’m afraid.”
My heart is pounding so fast; it feels like a blur in my chest. I need air, but we’re already outside.
“Deep breaths, love,” Lucky says.
The garbage beside me starts to rattle violently, an echo of my own strangled nerves.
“Let’s try this,” he says, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body through the thin material of his shirt.
Jeez, he’s burning up.
Taking the crystal from my hand, he meets my gaze. Earlier, his smiles seemed manipulative, but there’s nothing false about the soft curl of his lips. They’re red and tempting, and, oh God, I’m staring. I tear my eyes away. Sound quickly rushes back in.
The alley is quiet again, the objects around us settled and silent.
He slips the crystal into his pocket.
“Can you control it?” he asks.
I don’t know. My fingers are tingling now, pins and needles and lightning under my skin, but I take a deep breath and close my eyes, swaying on my feet.
Lucky’s hands come up to my elbows, his palms warm.
They are a little dry, a few calluses grounding me to his touch, and I hold on to that as I try to picture the trash can beside me.
Up, I think and wait for the sound of it moving.
Nothing.
Hmm.
UP. The word echoes louder in my mind, my teeth aching as I clench my jaw, but all I can hear is Lucky’s breathing and the distant sound of a bus stopping down the street.
I feel his whisper hit my cheek. “Deep breath. Relax. That’s it.” He smells like leather and shaving cream. “Now, picture it in your mind.”
Rather than imagining the can lifting on its own, I change directions and instead picture myself picking it up, raising it in the air.
It’s not light, spilling over with leftovers the restaurant couldn’t keep.
The tingles move up my arms, sparking lightly where Lucky’s fingers rest on my elbows, before concentrating in my biceps.
Metal scrapes against the pavement in a screech.
Did I just …
“You’re a natural,” comes Lucky’s voice, setting off fireworks under my ribs, and I open my eyes to see the trash can hovering a foot off the ground.
Holy shit!
For a second, my grip slips, and an empty Styrofoam box falls to the ground as the can tips on its side, but I quickly right it.
Then, all at once, it’s easy. The box hovers, frozen in the air between us.
Giddiness bursts between my ribs. What else can I do?
Keeping my gaze on the can, I shift focus to the box that fell out, imagining the feel of the foam, the lightness of its shape in my hands, until, in my peripheral vision, I see it float up beside the trash and settle to the top.
“Show-off,” Lucky jokes, his voice light. “What else have you got?”
Remembering the way the alley shifted before, I extend my mind out, reaching and touching everything I can see in front of me. With a deep breath, I lift.
It doesn’t happen straightaway, but after a few pounding beats of my heart, half of the disposals start to rise up off the ground.
“What the hell?” someone shouts in the distance, shattering my concentration and slamming everything back down to earth.
Lucky’s grip tightens. Between blinks, the world condenses and swells, and all of a sudden, the street is gone, replaced by a black leather couch and a bright red electric guitar mounted onto the brick wall.
Light streams in from floor-to-ceiling windows, pooling at our feet in a puddle of heat, like a cat purring in greeting.
I swallow hard, trying to shift my stomach down from where it lodged itself in my throat.
“Next time,” I choke out, “warn me first.” I think I might have left my kidney back there.
“Sorry, love. Just wanted to bring us somewhere safe.”
I throw myself on his couch, desperately trying to wrangle my wild heart under control. “Got a beer?”
I’d prefer vodka, but there’s a better chance Lucky has a case on hand.
I’m right, of course, but when I go for the bottle, he puts it out of my reach, knocking my hand away when I sit forward to grab it.
“Nuh-uh. You need the practice.”
With a groan, I know he’s right. I just hope he’s ready to lose a lot of beer.
* * *
Two spilled bottles and a broken lamp later, I can successfully move an object from the coffee table to my waiting hand. It’s not perfect, but I’m getting better.
Between blinks, Lucky appears in the kitchen and then the living room. He’ll forget how to walk at this rate. “Picking pockets would have been a breeze with this.”
I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “Chores certainly would have been easier if I could have done them all while sitting down.” I stifle a laugh, thinking about how my uncle’s old hen Mabel would have taken to watching her eggs float out of the coop.
“Nah,” Lucky corrects, escalating the test by replacing the pen with his half-finished tea. “You don’t strike me as the type to like sitting too long.”
It should surprise me that he knows me this well already.
Shaking, the mug rises. Tea sloshes against the rim, but doesn’t spill.
“Did you ever get caught?”
“A guy almost broke my wrist while I was trying to take his wallet, but he let me go with a warning when he realized he was hurting a kid.”
The mug hovers in the air between us, still now. Holding it is becoming easier.
Lucky smiles when it arrives at his waiting hand. “Ready for something trickier?”
My wide smile mirrors his. “Hell yeah, I am.”
* * *
“Where are we now?”
The beach stretches out as far as I can see, a fine layer of snow dusting the ground. Dead grass climbs the dunes behind us. The ocean knocks against the land like it’s asking for entry.
It’s like standing in someone else’s dream.
Lucky has been silent for a long time.
“It’s, uh”—he blows out a breath—“somewhere my ex used to talk about. His parents grew up 'round here, and they visited a couple times when he was a kid. It was one of the few good memories he was hanging on to. Always said he'd come back someday. So, about a year after I moved to Chance, I packed a bag and drove out; I had this absurd idea he’d be standing here, waiting for me. He wasn’t, of course, but …”
“You wanted to see him again.”
He stares out at the ocean, chewing over his memories. “Yeah.”
Closing the gap, I slip my arms around his waist, holding tight. Lucky hugs back.
I hope, one day, he’ll get to meet his friend here. The view is beautiful.
“I used to think the hard part was over,” I say. “I’d found someone who wanted to be with me, so I was set. I didn’t know the hard part was choosing to stay.”
“Everything good in my life took effort to get. Love’s the biggest win of all if you can find it, so I figure it deserves all of me. All in, through good times and bad.”
I ride the rise and fall of his chest as he takes a deep breath.
“Mac used to say I could form an opinion on anything, but I just liked seeing him riled up. I’d find him in the library, hunched over like a gremlin, hissing at people if they got too close.
It took a month of sitting there, talking at him, until he finally cracked.
Then he wouldn’t shut up. Fuck, I had known he was smart, but hearing him talk was something else.
He just lit up. Most beautiful thing I’d ever seen—before you. ”
“You still love him.” I don’t ask because it was obvious from the moment we arrived. This guy is special. A once-in-a-lifetime love.
Lucky turns away from the view, staring deep into my eyes as he raises my hands to his lips. “That’s the great thing about love though; it isn’t limited. I’ll always love him, but it doesn’t mean I can’t feel it for anyone else.”
“I feel the same way.”
A shiver I can’t account to the wind runs through me. When I next blink, we’re back in his apartment, and the burn of his lips against my knuckles lasts the rest of the day.
* * *
We hear the sirens before we see the news. A robbery in action at Chance’s Reserve Bank. At least three assailants are confirmed, but likely more. Hostages are estimated at fifty or more.
“We should help them,” I say.
“I’m loving the gung-ho attitude, but what’s the plan here? Free the hostages, stop the bad guys”—he blinks to life behind me, nosing the sensitive skin under my ear—“get the girl?”
I step away. “I’m serious. We need to help.”
“What? We’re only civilians. We can’t just rush in there when we barely have any control over these powers.”
That’s exactly why we should be helping. Right now, people with power and money use it for self-interest. If they have any inclination to change the world, it’s for the worse. There’s no all for one in a world of what about me?
It’s time to evolve.
“Why not? We don’t know how long these will last, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t like my chances of sleeping tonight if I could have helped and didn’t.”
There’s no choice. I’ve been given this gift, and I might not understand how or why, but I do know what I’m going to do with it.
I’m going to make a difference.
* * *
Make Your Choice:
go be a hero (go to 66)
stay here (go to 64)
go back (go to 32)