Little Spark

36 - Crisis

I see his lips move, and the sound waves strike my eardrums, but when I try to grasp the words, they slip through the fingers of my mind like sand.

"Did you hear what I said, B?"

It still doesn't register. "Which friend?"

He rolls his eyes. "Come on, New Girl. Use your head. Based on everything I've told you, which friend of yours would Oskur want?"

"Just tell me, Reign! It's bad enough your people are after my friends... you don't have to be a jerk about it."

He places his hands on my shoulders and looks me straight in the eye. His cold breath sharpens my focus. "I'm not being a jerk, Bliss. You have to stay one step ahead if you want to keep your cousin safe."

I gasp. "Luca!"

I barrel out of the room and down the hallway—no clue where I'm going, but I have to move or I'll completely lose it—but Reign stops me before I reach the door. "Hold on, I need to make sure the coast is clear."

As he steps outside and pulls the door closed behind him, my brain cuts back on like a newly unclogged faucet. The questions flow faster than I can process them: How did they find out about Luca? Where is she? What are they going to do to her? Can I really keep Ruby safe? Reign's sister wasn't safe, and she was the daughter of Shadows...

After about a minute, the door swings open. Reign beckons me outside, and we make a beeline for the woods.

"We have to stop them!" I say once we've crossed the tree line.

Reign sticks his hands in his pockets and slows down.

"Reign?"

"Yeah... just give me a minute, alright?" He runs a hand through his hair.

"God, do we even have a minute? What did that message say?"

He shoots me a look but doesn't respond. I can see that trying to rush him will get me nowhere, and since he's probably my only hope of saving Luca, I use all the willpower I have to clamp my mouth shut.

After what feels like a freaking eon, Reign sighs. "Alright send her a text and tell her the meeting she's headed to is a trap. She's on a bus right now and there's someone watching her, so you can't call because it'll be too obvious."

"Okay. Give me your phone."

He looks at me like I just asked for his kidneys on a platter. "Have you lost it? Use yours."

"I don't have one."

He stops walking. "You're joking—"

"No, I'm not. Look, we don't have time for this. Just let me use yours."

He bites his lip and looks away from me.

"Come on, Reign!"

"I swear you want me dead," he sighs, finally looking at me and shaking his head. "Look, you can use it, but you have to tell her to destroy her phone as soon as she gets home. Like, beat the thing with a hammer and incinerate the pieces; if anyone finds out she got a warning message that came from my phone—" all the color drains from his face.

I nod vigorously and hold my hand out. "Okay, give it here."

"Hold on a sec, B. You need to make sure she makes it look like she senses something's wrong. Tell her when she gets off the bus in Biloxi, she needs to, like, furrow her eyebrows and look around... make it looks like she's having a vision or something. Tell her to go straight to the counter and buy a ticket for the next bus home."

"Got it." My palm tingles waiting for contact with the phone, and I have to fight the surge—if I fry Reign's phone, there will be no saving Luca.

"One more thing you need to know: the people watching her will take the whole thing as confirmation that she's a Clairvo. Oskur's desire to capture her is going to shoot through the roof, and she will not be safe here. You guys will have to watch her like hawks. She may even want to play sick for a while. Homeschool or something. Here...."

He stretches the phone out to me, and my hand sparks just before I take it.

I stare at the screen and start to panic. "Mmmm... just occurred to me that I don't know the number."

Reign clears his throat and looks away. "It's in my contacts."

My hands are shaking so bad, I can barely get the message tapped out:

Luc, it's B. Biloxi mtg is a trap. When u exit bus, look around like u sense something's off, then buy new ticket and come str8 home. Destroy ur phone. I'll come 2 ur house l8r 2 talk.

As soon as the message is sent and we start walking again, the ugly implications of Luca's number in Reign's phone tap me on the shoulder. I clear my throat. "How did they know about her, Reign? And why do you have her number?"

When he doesn't answer immediately, I turn to look at him; I can see his inner struggle in the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. "We've been tracking her for over a year, Bliss."

"Wait, 'we'? Like as in you too?"

No response.

"Reign?"

The muscles of his jaw tighten. "Until recently, yeah, me too."

Shell-shocked, I stop and grab his arm, turning him to face me. "And all this time, you couldn't bother to mention that little detail?"

His expression darkens as frustration rolls over his face like a storm. "You have no idea what this is like, Bliss!" he roars. "I know I'm in pretty deep with you, but I'm still a Shadow! If anyone knew how much I've told you—" His voice gets deeper as it rises in volume, and he seems to grow in stature with each word. His eyes suddenly go black, and the edges of his body blur into shadow.

I gasp and stumble backward.

He regains control and solidifies, then turns away from me, embarrassed. "I'm sorry."

"What was that?" I ask, taking another nervous step away from him.

He puts his hands on his cheeks and sighs. "Lately, when I get upset, I start to morph involuntarily." I recall the cloudlike figure hovering over my terrified cousin and shudder. "I'll try to keep it from happening again, but please try to understand how hard this is for me, B. It's like a war inside me: my conscience hates my Shadow nature, my Shadow nature hates my conscience...." He shakes his head.

I try to switch the subject. "You said you were a part of tracking Luca until recently? What changed?"

"I took another job. Look, she gave herself away last year when she butted into something that wasn't her business. That's the problem with you good guys: you don't think before going all heroic." He steps up and takes my hands. "Promise me you'll consider what you're up against before making decisions, Bliss. It'll cost you your life if you don't, and I don't think I could handle that."

I open my mouth to respond, but the words jumble in my throat like a multi-car pile-up on an icy roadway, so I press my lips back together and stare at him.

"God, I hate when you look at me like that," he says, casting his eyes down.

I step forward and take his hands. "Thank you," I say, "...for helping me save my friend."

"Yeah, you're welcome," he says, pulling away and turning his back to me. "I need to go. I'm sure Cole will call a meeting the moment everything falls through, and I need to be with my own kind when that call comes in."

"Okay... I guess I'll see you around."

"Thanks for meeting me."

Without another word, he walks into the shadow of nearby boulder and vanishes.