“Brighton Miguel Rey! How . . . ? You . . . You’re smarter than this! The hydra blood ruined your father. What made you think you were the exception to the rule?”
“So many reasons, Ma! For one, your mother was a celestial, so I hoped it would better brace me to welcome other powers into my system.” Everyone’s eyes are on me, and Emil is approaching. He reaches for the phone, and I smack his hand away. “I could’ve saved lives if this had worked. I could’ve been safe from death forever.”
Ma is sobbing, and it immediately transports me back to when I called her to give her the news about Dad. I never thought words could hurt someone so much.
“I can’t lose you too,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m losing you because you were so selfish—”
“Selfish?!”
“Yes, selfish! You are always putting yourself before others, Brighton, and your father and I didn’t raise you to be so high and mighty! You—”
I’m burning hot, like I swallowed a star and I’m milliseconds away from exploding. “This is why Dad was always the better parent! If I told him I was dying, he wouldn’t have been shouting about how little he thinks of me!”
I throw the phone across the room, and the screen shatters against the wall.
Emil is staring at me like I’m a hydra that chewed up a phoenix and spit out its bones. Wesley’s jaw has dropped and frozen in place. Iris is staring at her broken phone and probably dreaming up which arm of mine she’s going to rip out first so I can’t ever destroy her property again.
“Don’t look at me like you know how she was talking to me,” I spit out.
Emil stares me dead in the eyes. “Bright, if you need to swing at someone, I’ll be your punching bag, but don’t go off on our mother like she spoon-fed you the Reaper’s Blood and expect me to take your side. You crossed the line, big-time.”
He storms out of the room.
Iris picks up the phone and examines it before dropping it in the bin. “That was my last phone. Wesley, do you mind getting some new ones?”
“We’re low on funds,” Wesley says.
“Then cash in on favors. Someone somewhere has to have a connection to a bulk buyer,” Iris says on her way out too.
“You got it.”
Wesley comes to the foot of my bed like he’s about to say something, but he gives me this look of pity before taking off. He’s got it so good being born with power. When he was living on the streets, he used his swift-speed for his own selfish means, but no one is ever calling him out on it. But when it comes to me, I’m the bane of my family because no one believes I could be just as good and powerful, if not better and more, than any Spell Walker in this building.
I’m left alone. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force myself to rest so I don’t have to think about how little my own mother and brother think of me.
Nine
Oblivion’s Edge
MARIBELLE
I slowly wake up, wondering why I don’t feel his chin between my shoulders or his breath on my cheek or his hands locked in mine. I’m not actually in bed with Atlas. I’m alone in his car. I begin shaking as I realize it was only a dream. I scream and punch at the wheel, the horn honking a dozen times. I don’t know how long I was asleep. Minutes, I’m guessing. When I parked the car outside of the Aldebaran Center, reclined the seat, and used my power-proof vest as a pillow, I doubted I would get any rest. But it seems my body will only take my revenge into account for so long before it shuts down.
I wipe my eyes dry and go inside the hospital. Immediately I see Prudencia, Wesley, and Iris being escorted into a faculty cafeteria. Great. I won’t have to deal with any of them when I get upstairs to check on Brighton. I ride the elevator and go to the room everyone crowded last night before I sought air on the sky deck, and I let myself in.
Brighton is watching TV on this cart that someone must have brought in for him. “Good timing. We made the news,” he says.
I stand by him and watch.
Senator Iron’s pick for vice president, General Bishop, is on site at the Alpha Church of New Life. His tie is loose, and his sleeves are rolled up, revealing the dark green arrow tattoos on his pale skin. He keeps trying to remind the public that he is one of them, that he’s gotten his hands dirty. People overlook that General Bishop was never working-class. His family lived luxuriously from all the riches his grandfather made by creating the Bounds.
“Am I surprised we’re here again?” General Bishop says to all the reporters. “Of course not. These gleam gangs only care about winning their war, not the well-being of your neighbors, your homes. These young acolytes, all aspiring to become specters, were slaughtered in this church last night. Let that sentence sit with you. . . . Is no life, is no place, sacred to these Spell Walkers?” His expression is furious, leaning into the tough-guy persona their supporters are cheering on. “It may not have been your child killed last night, but what’s to stop them from being seduced by power and ending up dead?”
Brighton looks down.
I turn off the TV.
“If there’s a bright side to all of this,” Brighton says, “I probably won’t be alive to see Iron and Bishop win this election.”
He’s right. Senator Iron and General Bishop will most likely take the White House. If they’re going to do everything in their power to take away ours, I’m going to make sure I don’t go down alone.
I’m dragging June into the grave with me.
I dig my thumb into my palm for the first time in months. It’s a technique Atlas passed on to me, one he taught himself after his parents were convicted for using their powers to rob a bank and sent to the San Diego Bounds. If I press my thumb into my palm, I’ll feel how real I am. It worked even when I was in the haze of grief from losing my parents.
“You would’ve been a great partner,” I say, taking a seat. “The Casters weren’t ready for the storm we were about to unleash on them.”
“Nice to know someone believed in me,” he says.
“That didn’t work out in your favor.”
“You gave me a chance. Emil, Prudencia, Ma, and the others didn’t.”
“Maybe not, but love gets in the way.”
“I’m not sure how much they love me,” Brighton says. “I said some really horrible things to Emil and Ma, and Prudencia hasn’t visited me once.”
“Prudencia cares. I see right through her act,” I say. It’s not my business. But Prudencia protecting her heart so Brighton can’t be used against her the way Atlas was killed because of me seems pointless. Brighton is already dying.
He tries to sit up. “What do you mean? I—”
Spellwork thunders outside, and I rush to the window to see what’s going on. There are a couple vans and four motorcycles blocking the entrance. I identify acolytes by their gray jumpsuits. They’re battling the hospital’s security guards, both sides firing spells out of their wands. It’s hard to make out any faces from the fourteenth floor, but there’s no mistaking the six-armed girl holding her own wands—Dione. If one Blood Caster is here, the others can’t be far off.
“What’s going on?” Brighton asks.