XXIII
The rain had softened by the time I slid behind the wheel, steady enough to blur the road into watercolor grays.
My hands were still shaking.
The key slipped once, then the ignition caught with a weak, uneven purr.
Heaton rounded the hood before I could shift into reverse. By the time I looked up, he was already at the passenger side, rain darkening his hair into a wet black crown.
But it was his eyes that made my breath catch—a quick, predatory scan of the parking lot, sharp as a razor.
Then he opened the door and slid into the seat beside me.
The temperature dropped. Not enough to freeze the windshield.
Just enough for my next breath to ghost white between us.
The car suddenly felt too small, crowded with wet leather, pine, and the cold mineral scent of the mines. The wipers dragged across the glass in a slow, hypnotic rhythm.
Left. Right. Left.
Heaton sat angled toward me, one arm draped along the back of the seat, one boot planted casually on the floorboard. His thumb tapped the glass of the window.
I couldn’t stop thinking about his grip in the mine. The impossible way his touch had branded my skin, leaving red, frozen blooms beneath my scarf. My wrist still ached where he had caught me—not bruised, not exactly.
Marked.
“You said you’d answer my questions,” I said.
“That is what I said.”
My fingers tightened on the wheel until the leather creaked.
“Then start talking. Why did you threaten me the first day of school?”
His head tipped back against the seat. A dark smirk touched the corner of his mouth.
“That,” he said, “is where you want to begin?”
“You didn’t flip me off.” I kept my eyes on the road because looking at him felt too much like giving something away. “You made a gun with your hand and put it to your head. That wasn’t a joke.”
The smirk vanished.
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
Rain ticked against the roof. The tires hissed over slick asphalt, and the car drifted slightly before I corrected it.
“I knew your last name before you stepped out of that truck,” he said, gaze fixed on the rain-streaked road ahead. “Our first encounter was never going to be harmless.”
My stomach tightened.
“There were reports your father had resurfaced in Mapleton over the summer,” he continued. “And that he wasn’t alone.”
“You mean me.”
“I mean there was supposed to have been a daughter . . . once.” His voice turned careful in a way that made the car feel even colder. “Years ago.”
The wipers scraped across the glass.
“But all the official records say she didn’t survive.”
The world stalled.
The rain, the engine, the low hum of the tires—everything faded into a dull roar.
“What?” The word barely made it past my lips. “That’s not—I’m right here.”
“I know.”
He turned his head, silver stare pinning me to the seat.
“Now.”
Static prickled over the back of my neck.
“So, when I saw you that day, I thought I was looking at a ghost. Or a lie.” His mouth hardened. “Either way, something that needed watching.”
“So, you threatened me?”
“I measured you.”
My laugh came out thin. “With a fake gun?”
“With a warning.”
“And?”
He looked at me then.
Fully.
“And you weren’t what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Your father,” he replied. “In a different shape.”
His eyes moved over my face with the same ruthless precision he had used in the parking lot.
“Gifted. Neurotic. Convinced the rules only exist to slow down people with less imagination.” His voice dropped. “The kind of person who mistakes damage for progress, as long as the thing breaking isn’t himself.”
My knuckles went white against the steering wheel.
“And now?”
“Now,” Heaton said quietly, “I think you’re far more dangerous than Harvey ever was.”
“Because I’m just like him?”
“Not even close.”
He studied me as if I were a locked door he could hear breathing on the other side.
“Harvey knows exactly what he is. You, on the other hand . . . ”
The road blurred through the windshield. For a second, I wasn’t sure where I was going, only that the car was still moving and my hands were still pretending they knew how to steer.
“When I was younger,” I said, voice barely rising above the rain, “I spent a lot of time alone. Hotels. Rentals. Places my dad’s research dragged us to.”
Heaton didn’t move.
“He’d disappear for days sometimes. Leave me with a key and enough money for pizza. Like that made it normal.” I swallowed against the bitter pressure in my throat. “A little bribe to keep me from asking questions.”
The car went silent, except for the wipers.
But the air beside me changed.
When I finally dared to glance over, Heaton’s profile had gone rigid. His jaw was clenched so tightly I could see the muscle ticking beneath his ear.
“He left you alone?”
I let out a shaky, self-deprecating laugh.
“Well. It’s the one thing I could always trust him to do.”
The tires hissed around a sharp turn. The car fought for traction, then caught.
“And me?”
His voice was low enough to thread itself under the storm.
“How do you feel about trusting me, Madeline?”
“We’ll see,” I said as I pulled to a stop at a red light. Rain drummed against the roof, steady as a pulse. “You talk a big game, Heaton. But the lab is protected behind layers of security. Deadbolts are one thing. The biometric scanner is another.”
I turned my head enough to look at him.
“So how do you plan to get past that?”
Outside, the light blinked green.
Then the next.
Then the next.
A perfect cascade of emerald halos cut through the gray, clearing the road ahead one intersection at a time.
Heaton gave the smallest shrug.
“Haven’t found a boundary I couldn’t cross yet.”
Every light ahead changed as we approached, a seamless green wave through Mapleton. The town itself seemed to bend, letting him pass.
“You’re kidding me.”
His expression didn’t change.
“What?” he said. “Maybe you’re lucky.”
But his right hand rested on his knee, index finger extended. It twitched once, precise and almost bored.
A light two blocks down obeyed.
The dash flickered in response.
I didn’t ask for an explanation. After the mines, I was beginning to fear that if I went looking for the science behind him, I’d find something that didn’t break the rules.
It erased them.
“The marks,” I said, voice barely audible over the wipers. “My wrist. My neck. What are they?”
His attention drifted down.
Slowly.
First to my wrist.
Then to the scarf at my throat. A flicker of something dark and knowing passed through his expression before he met my eyes.
“They’re what your body does when a ghost holds on too long.”
A panicked laugh broke out of me.
“Right. Ghosts and shadows. Should I check the glovebox for a hex bag?”
Heaton’s hand moved—a blur of shadow in the dim cabin—until his knuckles brushed the knot of my scarf.
“Don’t worry, October,” he said. “They’ll fade. Your skin will remember how to be ordinary. Clean, alive, and blissfully unaware.”
He turned back to the road.
“Until the next time I’m forced to clean up one of your messes.”
The car drifted toward the center line before I jerked the wheel.
“There won’t be a next time,” I snapped. “I need a rational explanation. I need this to make sense.”
I glanced at him—at the impossible silver depth of his eyes—and looked away almost instantly.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll use your language.”
“I don’t need a vocabulary lesson.”
“No,” he agreed. “You need a leash, but apparently we’re starting small.”
My mouth fell open.
His attention flicked to me, cool and cutting.
“Eyes on the road.”
I faced forward, cheeks burning. He didn’t move, but his fingers dug into his knee, denim pulling tight beneath a grip that looked capable of crushing bone.
“Lightning.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Lichtenberg figures,” he said. “That’s your first term. Patterns left when electricity maps itself through the body without killing it.”
My throat worked. “That’s—”
“Physics,” he finished. “Your favorite altar.”
The wipers dragged across the glass, too slowly.
“That’s not an answer. Electrical injuries leave burns. Entry points. Tissue necrosis.”
“Only when the current overwhelms the system.”
I let out another brittle laugh. “So, what are you saying? That you controlled the electricity?”
“I controlled the energy,” he corrected. “The current was a side effect.”
“You pulled me into a mine, hid us from scary masked men, and accidentally turned my circulatory system into a science fair project? And these marks are just a side effect?”
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
“That is not how bodies work, Heaton.”
“No,” he agreed. “But it is how systems work.”
The way he said it made my skin prickle.
He leaned closer, and static lifted the fine hairs along my arms.
“You believe in forces, don’t you? Gravity. Magnetism. Current. Pressure.” His eyes moved over me, too bright in the dashboard glow. “Your world calls them laws. For me, they’re levers.”
I stared through the windshield, gripping the wheel as the road gleamed black beneath the rain.
“You’re your father’s daughter,” he said. “I assumed you understood what energy does when it meets a barrier it can’t break.”
“I do.”
“Then you know it doesn’t stop.”
He lifted one hand, stopping short of the dashboard.
The radio snapped to life.
It didn’t just hiss with static; it scanned, the dial flying through stations—a fragment of cello, a weather report, a preacher’s voice—until it settled into a low, pulsing white noise.
I flinched despite myself, foot easing off the accelerator.
“When it builds,” Heaton said, watching the lights on the dash flicker, “it looks for somewhere to go. A ground.”
The radio died as his hand dropped.
My hand rose to the scarf around my neck.
“You’re saying I’m a ground?”
He leaned closer.
“I’m saying you’re a conductor.”
“A conductor?”
“Most people are resistors. Insulated. Their spark stays within the lines. So, in Winter Quarters, I thought I’d have to shield you.”
His gaze sharpened.
“But you didn’t just take the current, Madeline. You amplified the connection.”
The road blurred.
My pulse stuttered beneath the marks he had left.
“But how?” The question sounded small. Desperate. “I’m just a person. I run on caffeine and deadlines, not whatever this is.”
His mouth almost softened.
“Some people are just wired differently,” he said, voice a low, intimate murmur. “More sensitive to the world. Like a radio that can pick up stations others can’t hear.”
The cabin seemed to shrink around us.
“In my world,” he said, “we call them Anchors.”
I stared at the road, but all I could feel was the ghost of his hand at my throat.
“You think of energy as external,” he continued. “Something that happens to a body. But your body runs on it. Nerve impulses. Ion exchange. Every thought you have is a current choosing a path.”
His voice lowered.
“The marks on your skin aren’t from carelessness. They’re residue. A shared current your body was never meant to carry.”
I slowed for a turn, tires splashing through a deep puddle. The car swayed, caught, and righted itself.
“And you’re just telling me this like it’s nothing.”
His expression shifted then.
“I’ve had a long time to learn how much a body can tolerate,” he said. “Where it bends. Where it breaks.”
The words settled cold between us.
“But you?” His voice roughened. “I didn’t know how much you could take.”
My breath stopped.
His gaze stayed on the road, but his hand curled into a fist against his knee.
“And I didn’t know how much I could take before I let you break.”
For a moment, the car felt soundless.
No rain.
No engine. No road.
Just the terrible shape of what he had almost admitted.
Then he leaned back, the distance between us returning like a slammed door.
“I’m telling you this because I’m good with energy,” he said. “I always have been. So no, I’m not worried about your father’s little fortress.”
There was no pride in his tone, no ego.
It was just a statement of fact—a predator describing its reach.
I exhaled slowly, watching rain smear the windshield silver.
“Say I believe you,” I said. “Say I trade my sanity for your version of the truth. What happens now?”
His eyes dipped to the fabric hiding the marks on my neck.
“Now,” he said, “you stop pretending this is something soap and logic can take off.”
The next light turned green before we reached it.