He took a couple steps backward, trying not to limp but knowing he wasn’t completely hiding it.
“Good to see you all,” he said, “but I’ve got to get going.”
“Coop, I’m sorry,” Reggie said again.
If they had told him to suck it up, be a man, or laughed it off, that would have been normal. Maybe they would even have acted that way if Cooper hadn’t brought along his own little cloud of misery.
“It’s fine,” he answered. “I’ve just got to go. I’m late.”
He didn’t say for what, didn’t know for what.
“Hey, Cooper,” John called as Cooper attempted to walk away with some dignity. “Tomorrow afternoon, my place, opening-season game party. Hope to see you there.”
Cooper nodded acknowledgement, but not agreement.
He got out of eyesight of the team, rounding the block, and then had to stop and lean against the building and suck in deep drafts of air. Reggie had managed to hit him just the wrong way.
“Can you get home or back to the shop?” Brent asked him.
He had forgotten Brent was even there.
He started to nod, but then realized the answer was no. “Give me a hand?” he asked.
Brent didn’t hesitate, just threw Cooper’s arm over his shoulders and helped him limp back toward the shop. “My car’s right around here, if you’re okay with a short trip.”
“No highways?”
“We can do back roads.”
“Can you give me a ride home?”
“No problem.”
Tomorrow, Cooper knew he would have to swallow his pride and go back to Ryan, and hoped he would learn something useful. He couldn’t go on this way.
Delilah tried to keep up a cool front, but she was almost as nervous as she was excited. The warded circle she had created in the woods kept the scavengers out, but that wouldn’t matter if she had misjudged and Samantha was actually malevolent. Then the instant Delilah summoned power and lowered her defenses, Samantha could just reach in and hollow Delilah out, stealing power and mind and leaving Delilah’s body an empty shell.
She had just pressed her hand to the edge of the circle when Samantha, still locked outside for the moment, asked, “How powerful are you, anyway?”
Truth? Lie? Bluffing about the strength of her abilities might make her seem too dangerous for Samantha to mess with. On the other hand, if Samantha was really as powerful as Delilah thought she could be, then she might know perfectly well that she could overpower any firstgeneration sorcerer, in which case it would be more valuable to downplay her own power and its worth.
“Powerful enough that I think I can help you,” she finally answered.
With a tight breath, she parted the edge of the circle. Samantha did not wait to be invited forward. It took some effort to let Samantha in while keeping the pacing scavengers around her out where they were harmless, but Delilah managed.
She turned her eyes from the shadows and back to Samantha, and jumped with surprise. Inside her own circle, Delilah could see Samantha more easily and more clearly. She understood now why Cooper had been convinced his ghost was harmless.
Samantha—no, the illusion Samantha projected—was a couple of inches shorter than Delilah. Her hair and clothing were a style that could best be described as punk or scene, with bright, mismatched colors. Her faded blue jeans with splashes of pastel orange and pink paint had enough holes in them to reveal the green-and-yellow paisley tights she was wearing underneath. Her T-shirt was neon purple, with a cute line-art version of the Lenmark Ocelots’ logo. Delilah was pretty sure that if she copied it, she could get all the girls on the squad to buy one.
Delilah shook her head, trying to get some sense back in it. Samantha chewed on a lock of her blond hair as Delilah opened the cooler she kept her tools in. She used to keep them in the house, but after her mother confiscated sage for the fourth time and then had Delilah take a drug test, Delilah decided her tools should be a bit more hidden. Unfortunately, she couldn’t explain to her mother—who still called John’s mother before every game party to ensure adequate supervision—that she had a better use for spices than cooking.
“So,” Samantha said. “What do we do now?”
Delilah was wondering that herself. “Well, step one, we’re going to need to figure out what kind of power you have. Immortal power is sometimes called elemental power, since it tends to fall into one of four forms: earth, air, fire, and water. They link in different ways to mortal power.”
She wasn’t sure why her voice was wavering.
Suddenly, a piece of advice Ryan had once given her came to mind: When you find yourself about to raise power, and you realize your heart is racing and you’re shaking and pale, stop. We have instincts for a reason. They warn us when, for example, something is trying to eat us.
“What’s wrong?” Samantha asked.
Delilah looked beyond the circle again. Of course she felt hunted; the shadows were thicker out there now, swarming and hungry. But they couldn’t get in, and after this, hopefully Delilah would have the power to banish them forever instead of just holding them at arm’s length.
“How dangerous is this for you?” Samantha asked when Delilah still hadn’t responded.
Delilah shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “I know what I’m doing.” She did. “I’m going to start with fire, since that tends to be the most common and the easiest to invoke.”
Samantha nodded, once again sucking on her hair. She looked nervous, which actually made Delilah feel better.
Delilah took a deep breath, and then began building the fire. That was the easy part; she had a basin in the circle, along with kindling and small logs kept dry under a tarp. She kindled a small but steady flame, and then stared for a couple seconds at the very sharp edge of her pocketknife. Fire elementals were bound in blood, which meant that’s what she’d need to offer to invoke them.
She could always tell the girls on the squad she cut herself during set construction, and tell her friends in the drama department she hurt herself during cheerleading practice.
She set the knife on the upper side of her arm. The cut hurt more than it would have on the fleshy side, but it would suck to accidentally send herself to the hospital trying to become immortal.
Holding her arm above the fire, low enough to feel the heat but far enough away not to get instantly burned, she focused her power into the blood and spread her attention to Samantha, trying to detect any change—
The instant her blood and the fire touched, the fire flared so high that Delilah had to fling herself backward to avoid the flames. Simultaneously, she heard Samantha cry out, and watched in shock as the fire collapsed into itself with a whumph that made the edges of the circle shudder. All that was left behind was cold, black ash.
For an instant, Samantha’s form rippled and darkened. When she solidified again, she looked frightened. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, and her clothing had become monochromatic.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“A response,” Delilah replied, though she wasn’t quite sure what kind. It wasn’t what she had expected. “Are you all right?”
Samantha hesitated before nodding. “I guess so. I don’t think I like fire.”
Delilah looked up as a raindrop fell on her head. “That’s good, since it looks like the weather isn’t going to let us try that one again.” She was about to suggest that maybe they should go inside until the weather had cleared when the obvious occurred to her.
The rain wasn’t a coincidence.
In fact, she suspected she knew the reason why the entire summer had been unusually wet.
Ryan said that water was the hardest of the elemental powers to invoke or control. Water-based powers were bound in tears, and therefore usually came from grief.
From death.
If Samantha’s element was water, that would explain why she had appeared after a devastating accident that had caused two deaths. It would explain w
hy she had attached herself to an individual who was experiencing so much pain and frustration.
It also meant Samantha was far, far more powerful than she could possibly know. Delilah had assumed that Samantha was the remains of a sorcerer who had found a way to survive death, but even Ryan could not manipulate weather without an incredible amount of ritual and energy.
But Samantha wasn’t a ghost, or a sorcerer, or any kind of human being that was or ever had been. She was power—pure, elemental energy, formed out of human deaths, but without enough mortality to make the shape solid.
Did Samantha know? That was the question. Elemental powers were not self-aware until someone called upon them and gave them will and purpose. It was possible Samantha didn’t remember her history because she had none.
Fog.
Delilah remembered the way the papers described the thick, blinding fog that had caused devastation on an otherwise normal highway.
“Delilah?” Samantha’s voice was soft, troubled. “What happened? Did something go wrong? Are you all right?”
Delilah nodded.
“Yeah. I figured out what I needed to,” she managed to say.
“You look scared.”
Did she dare go through with this?
Did she dare not? No sorcerer had ever bound to and worked with water. It didn’t usually respond well enough to human will to be commanded. But here was Samantha, seemingly willing to cooperate. The chance of Delilah ever again encountering a creature like this, who was apparently ignorant of its own nature, was nil.
If Samantha was lying, then Delilah was probably courting a quick and painful death. But if Samantha simply had no idea what was going on, then Delilah could gain power beyond even le Coire’s dreams, all in the guise of trying to help her. After all, water was the most abundant elemental force on Earth, with the ability to douse any of the others.
She would be a fool not to risk it.
The car ride home was short, and set Cooper’s heart to pounding, but he managed. That alone seemed like a big step.
By the time Brent pulled up to his house, Cooper felt able to walk on his own, but Brent hovered by his side, as if worried Cooper was going to fall over anyway. Cooper would have waved him off, if he hadn’t had the same fear.
“Not that I wanted to see Delilah again, but I wonder where she and Samantha ended up,” Brent said as they limped up the driveway. “I hope Sam’s having fun haunting her.”
Maybe … maybe not. Cooper bit his tongue rather than mention what had happened to Samantha after she talked to Brent in his sleep.
“She’s pissed at me for going into Ryan’s when she couldn’t,” he said instead. Of course, that was actually true; she had seemed cross. It wouldn’t be out of character for her to try to make him sweat a little in retaliation. Or maybe she was trying to get Delilah’s attention again like she had at the sandwich shop, now knowing that Delilah was mixed up with witchcraft and more likely to be able to see her.
Cooper’s mom opened the front door before they reached it, looking alarmed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, coming forward.
“I’m fine,” Cooper answered. “Really. I said hi to the guys at the car wash and forgot to warn them to be gentle.”
“Really?” she asked, sounding both optimistic and suspicious. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? Cooper, do I know your friend?”
“This is Brent,” Cooper said. Normally he would have added something involving “I met him at …,” but his mind went blank when he tried. There wasn’t a good explanation for why he and Brent started talking that didn’t involve ghosts.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Brent said, shaking her hand, the picture of what Cooper’s mother would call “good breeding.”
“Well, come in and sit down, both of you,” she said, reaching to give Cooper a hand up the two steps into the front hall.
“I should probably get going, actually,” Brent said. “Do you need a ride tomorrow, Cooper?”
Ryan’s. Cooper knew he should probably accept a ride. Otherwise, he was likely to chicken out or come up with an excuse to stay away from Ryan le Coire, with his less than gentle teaching methods and distrust of Samantha. “If you don’t mind, yeah.”
“Are you two going to the game party?” Cooper’s mom asked. The opening-season party at John’s house had been a tradition for six years now.
Cooper debated the merits of lying, and was grateful when Brent got to the question first. “If we’re lucky,” he answered, with that same easy, good-boy smile. “The Museum of Science has a special exhibit this weekend that we can get extra credit in our physics class for going to. Since I suck at physics, it seemed worthwhile.”
Brent shot him a don’t-screw-this-up look, so Cooper added, “Five extra points at the start of the semester seemed like a stupid thing to throw away. Hopefully it won’t take too long, and we can get to the game party in time for kickoff.”
Cooper’s and John’s moms talked regularly enough that he was obligated to show up now.
“See you in the morning, Cooper,” Brent said, moving into the doorway. “We should try to get there when it opens. Figure I’ll pick you up around eight?”
Cooper nodded. Brent’s posture as he backed out the door almost looked like he was fleeing.
“Is he always that high strung?” Cooper’s mom asked after Brent was gone.
“I don’t know,” Cooper answered truthfully. “I just met him this year. Anyway, I should probably get some homework done, since I won’t have much time tomorrow.”
His mother glanced at the clock. “I need to take over at the shop. Your father isn’t feeling very well. It’s nothing serious,” she added swiftly before Cooper could reply with a deluge of alarmed questions. “He’s just a little under the weather and asked me to watch the place for a bit so he could get to the doctor’s. There are sandwich fixings in the fridge if you’re hungry for lunch.”
Cooper nodded. It was about all he could manage, as Ryan’s warnings about harming the people near him came to mind. Cooper had been dealing with the shadows all summer, which meant they had been thick inside this house. What kind of shape must his parents be in, living in such conditions?
His father came home an hour later with a prescription for antibiotics, and went straight to bed. Cooper and his mother had leftovers in silence. She looked tired.
Cooper didn’t sleep that night. He just simply didn’t. He told himself he was waiting up for Samantha, but what he was really waiting for was some kind of peace, which he knew he wouldn’t find. Instead, the light rain that had been falling much of the day increased until the pounding on the roof seemed to match the thrumming of Cooper’s worry.
Around ten-thirty he got up. He managed to catch up with his schoolwork and finish everything that was due on Monday by midnight. Then he booted up his computer and tried to search the Web for anything on Ryan le Coire or the crazy stuff he had talked about, but there was too much online for Cooper to have any idea what might be real or not.
He pulled up a couple of articles on the accident, but couldn’t stand to look much past the headlines. He was grateful when he saw lightning through his window, and had an excuse to shut down the computer.
Ryan had asked if the accident was his fault. The answer was yes and no. The weather had been blamed; no citations had been issued. On the other hand, his car had been the one in front.
And where was Samantha?
He looked up at the clock, and realized it was a little past one in the morning. He saw that hour too often.
He hoped Samantha was all right. After what she had said about getting lost last time … what if it hadn’t had anything to do with trying to talk to Brent in his dreams?
What if she was truly dying, losing her connection to this world until she was actually absolutely gone? What if the shadowy scavengers Ryan thought Samantha was leading devoured her before Cooper could convince Ryan to protect her?
Needing something to di
stract himself, he walked to the kitchen. He had just started rummaging for a snack when he saw a flare of light, too sudden and brief to be passing headlights, out of the corner of his eye. In the dark and rain, it was hard to make out the silhouette of a figure, but the glowing tip of a cigarette was unmistakable.
He put down the box of cereal he had found and opened the door, eliciting a startled cry from his mother, who was standing near enough to the door that the eaves were keeping her mostly dry.
“I thought you quit,” he said inanely.
She started to say something, stopped, started and stopped again.
“Picked it back up over the summer?” he guessed, trying to keep judgment out of his voice. And guilt. He had spent most of his elementary school years trying to get her to quit, after learning about the dangers of cigarettes in some class presentation. She had finally given it up when he was a freshman.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged. How could he blame her for coping in her own way? Maybe the smoke burned away the shadows.
“You’re up early,” she added. “Or late, I guess.”
“You too.”
“I don’t sleep well lately.”
“Me either.”
He leaned against the wall next to her. She tried to wave away secondhand smoke, but he just ignored it. The falling rain was heavy enough to leave a fine mist on his face.
“It’s good to hear you’re seeing friends again,” she said. “Have I met Brent before?”
“I don’t know,” Cooper said. “He was at a couple parties last year with Delilah. We got to chatting the other day. He had a tough summer, too.”
“I’m glad you have someone you can talk to,” she said, and it was obvious in her tone that she meant it. She put out the cigarette and they both moved back inside. She went to the junk drawer, and asked, “Want to play a round of Go Fish?”
“Sure.” Anything to kill time.
The conversation was stunted at first, but at least they were talking for the first time in a long time. They started on neutral topics like how his classes and her job at the bank were going, but as the night wore on they ended up speaking about the accident, and everything that had happened since.