Ami wasn’t her real name. Her real name was Ameline Marion Lachance, and she was born to a French family in the Highlands. When she was nine years old, that same family ditched her, but her story was unlike any story I knew. Her mother had come directly to our house.
The panic in Robert’s eyes foreshadowed what we would see. By the time I followed his stare, the spring air had shifted to temperatures far beyond the worst summer heat. Parked at the end of our driveway was one black car. It looked more like a blockade.
I was about to run when he grabbed me. We had worked too hard for the house. He wasn’t going to give it up so easily, and he didn’t want me to either. We hid Catelyn and Niki in the alleyway, and Robert and I walked up to the car together.
Ami’s mother was the first person we saw. She stepped out, wearing the highest heels I had ever seen, and then she pulled Ami out gently, like she was a delicate doll about to break. When I first laid eyes on the girl, she was dressed head to toe in pink. Her blonde hair was threaded back into intricate braids, and a bow sat at the end of the braids where the golden strands came together. When Ami cried, she swung her head back and forth, and the bow swayed like a pendulum, all neat and tidy like a present.
Robert understood before I did.
“We’ll take care of her,” he promised without even a question.
The woman slipped him a few thousand dollars—hardly anything for people from the Highlands—and told him our house’s location was a secret. Even then, she never explained how she found the address. Robert suspected the woman was a bad blood herself, but he never asked Ami about her mother. He simply took her in.
She didn’t talk for two months, and she didn’t use her powers for three. Like many bad bloods, I was the only one she felt comfortable with at first. I attributed it to my powers. When I touched her, I borrowed her powers, and instinctually, I believed she—like most bad bloods—felt like she was a part of me just as much as I was a part of her. Due to this, Robert assigned me to train her.
One afternoon, we went to Shadow Alley for a lesson on control. We started slowly, seeing if she could stick her skin to a leaf on the ground, and then a brick wall, and then the fence. I never wanted her to climb the fence that separated us from where the Western Flock’s house once stood, but she insisted, and she climbed straight up it like gravity meant nothing to her. Back then, the second fence—a tree barricade—hadn’t covered everything yet, but when she reached the top, she fell down. Without speaking, she started walking home, and when I asked her what she saw, she said what Catelyn had said. It was just another field. Only one minute passed before she added the truth. There were no flowers.
When I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t seen any flowers in the outskirts of Vendona. They were rare and fleeting things. But today, one lay at my feet, waiting in its perfect condition on the back alleyway floor as if a couple had fought and one bloom had dropped from a bouquet while the person was returning home to apologize. Even worse, it reminded me of my parents. My father bought my mother flowers every full moon, and although the full moon was a week away, the single flower brought the memory back to me. Their house waited a few streets away. My father’s note, snug in my back pocket.
“That’s mine.”
I looked up to meet the owner of the squeaky voice. The young boy’s blond head was just like Ami’s, but it shagged over his forehead, tousled by the day. His blue eyes were too big for his face, too serious for a child’s, and he held a bouquet the size of his little body.
I knelt down and picked the flower up from the ground. I didn’t recognize the white petals—the ones like snow—but I held it out to him.
His baby blue gaze flicked back and forth from my face to the flower before a grin spread across his chubby cheeks. “You keep it.”
Right when I was about to thank him, a mass pushed against the veins in my head. My eyes crossed, but my vision didn’t blur. Instead, I saw Robert holding a ladder as I painted the kitchen. Catelyn was bandaging Steven in the corner. He had just arrived, and his eye was swollen shut. She kissed his bruised cheek. I saw Daniel heal my own injury. I saw blackness, and I pushed back against the mass. I saw Daniel fishing. Another guy sat next to him, black-haired and with a laugh like thunder.
Then, it all disappeared—the world, an odd and wavering place.
I blinked, and the little boy blinked back at me. Somehow, in some way, I knew he saw me in the same way I saw him. His powers lingered. I could see myself through his eyes, all pale and tense, and he could see himself through mine, delightful and awestruck. The child was a bad blood, and he was the first bad blood whose powers transferred to me without physical touch.
“Blake.” A preteen ran around the corner, only to stop when her black eyes saw me. She froze, but only for a moment. In a split second, her thin arm shot out, and she snatched the boy up, never once taking her targeting eyes off me. He never dropped the bouquet.
The gothic girl looked down at me still kneeling before focusing on the boy. “Don’t go running off, okay?” Her sweet voice was nothing like her exterior. Even when she softly pushed his bangs from his eyes, he kept looking at me. “It’s dangerous out—”
“She talks minds too,” he interrupted.
The girl tensed, and her black hair lifted, like she could hover in the air. I slowly stood up. Her gaze slid over to me, her focus on the single flower in my hand. I was about to run when her shoulders relaxed. “Serena, right?” She adjusted Blake in her arms. “You look different.”
My heart squeezed. “I don’t know you.”
“I know.” The gothic girl smiled, a peculiar sight. “I saw you that night.”
“What night?”
Her lips cracked open like she was about to clarify, but her ears perked up, and she glanced to her left—the same alley Calhoun lived on. Footsteps echoed around us, and the girl stepped back to make way for the person. I recognized the voice before I even saw him.
“What are you two—” Daniel walked around the corner, and he stopped speaking to the kids. “Serena.” His eyes trailed to the flower just like the girl’s had, and then a smile broke his expression. He patted Blake. “Did you give Serena a flower?”
“Yep.” The little boy nodded so enthusiastically I half-expected the gothic girl to drop the child.
“And who are the other flowers for?” the raven-haired girl encouraged the child.
He practically fell out of her skinny arms to lean toward Daniel. “For you.”
When Daniel took them, he exposed why the bouquet appeared to be huge. Blake was hiding a teddy bear behind the flowers, but now he tried to give the toy to Daniel too.
“It makes me smile,” the child said.
Daniel chuckled. “Keep the teddy bear, kiddo,” he said before turning his attention to the girl. “Vi, take him inside. We’ll be in soon.”
The shadowy girl obeyed Daniel without argument, but Blake clutched her shoulders and peered over at me. A mass pushed against my head again, but I pushed back. My memories didn’t come out this time. I had blocked him, and he grinned. It was only then that I realized what happened between us. He’d seen my memories, and I had seen his. He went fishing with Daniel, and there was another boy with them. A boy I had yet to meet.
I followed the two kids with my eyes until they left my line of sight. That’s when I dared to face Daniel. Dozens of questions flooded my mind, but I didn’t want to ask them. I didn’t want to know the answers. Still, the beginning escaped me. “Is Blake—”
“Not my son,” Daniel finished, even though that wasn’t what I was going to ask. I wanted to know if Daniel knew about Blake’s powers. I had never met a bad blood who could read minds, let alone a child so powerful. This time, though, I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t here to question him anyway.
“Thank you for helping me the other day,” Daniel continued, but his unsteady voice matched his nervous habit of touching his hair. “I’m feeling better.”
It had only been two days.
His thumb pointed over his right shoulder—the one with the scar, the one injury I had seen on him, the one that almost killed him—and I was almost positive I knew exactly what happened to him. I breathed to stabilize my heart, to keep my guess at bay, and was grateful Blake was no longer around to force it back up.
“We’re about to make dinner,” Daniel’s voice crept through the loud voices in my head.
“I’m here to say goodbye,” I blurted out, speaking over my deafening thoughts.
He blinked, startled, and I knew I had yelled it at him, but his expression softened as he stepped closer to me. He took another step, and I couldn’t move. He even reached out and touched my hand, wrapping his fingers around the flower until it was in his grasp instead of mine. “You keep saying goodbye,” he said, “yet you keep coming back.” He tucked the white flower behind my ear.
“I know.”
Daniel never stopped looking at me. “Because of Robert?”
His name reminded me of why I needed to say goodbye and why I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Either way, I couldn’t explain it to Daniel, but he looked at me like he—not Blake—was the one with mind-reading powers.
“You keep talking to me because you’re trying to understand him,” Daniel guessed, aware of my intentions and sounding oddly disappointed by it.
My fingertips twitched with temptation to touch the flower behind my ear. The little plant was all I could feel. “I need to understand Robert if I’m going to understand myself.”
A half-sigh escaped him. “I guess that’s another thing we have in common.”
I stared directly at his shoulder. He turned his back to me as if he knew what I had seen: the seared flesh, the obvious explosion. It was burned into my memory the same way it was scorched into his skin, but when he glanced over his shoulder, I saw the dimple on his cheek appear. “I need to understand how he relates to you,” he confessed it like secrets were simple to share.
My face burned like my secrets were full of fire, lingering beneath my skin, ready to burn the world at any moment.
“We can talk about that after dinner.” His hand swung backward, and his palm lay upward, facing me.
I grabbed his hand before I even realized I had. His fingers wrapped around mine, but he didn’t move. He just touched me, held me there, keeping us still in a hateful world that never stopped moving. It was as if I had absorbed his ability to move, but my powers didn’t work like that. Still, Daniel’s eyes moved to the sky. It was gray like every day before it.
“Every time I touch you,” he paused, “I feel like you’re the one healing me.”
I couldn’t breathe, but I managed to speak with my last breath, “My powers don’t work that way.” Not yet anyway. I could never use someone’s abilities on him or her. I could never heal Daniel, not even if I wanted to.
His lip bent up anyway. “Maybe my powers work differently for you.”
I had nothing to say to that. It was possible. Everything was possible. Since our existence was illegal, there were few public studies about how we worked. On top of that, even if there was a study done directly on how my abilities functioned, I wouldn’t have been able to read it. I was illiterate, and I wondered if Daniel was too. Something about the way he spoke told me he wasn’t. Maybe it was his patterns. Maybe it was his vocabulary. Maybe it was simply instinct. But he could probably read what my father wrote. Even more importantly, he could teach me how to read what my father wrote on my own.
The favor burned in my throat as Daniel guided me down the alleyway and up Cal’s stairs. I didn’t breathe until the door opened, and then it was even harder to breathe.
Mini Cal stood against the far wall. He was the same boy Daniel was fishing with in Blake’s memory, but it was only now, in the dim lighting of Cal’s home, I realized he looked like the one-armed veteran. He wasn’t the only person in the room either.
Cal opened the oven, while two children set silverware around a small table, unfolded from the wall. On the couch, Blake cuddled with his teddy, and Vi sat next to him, examining the ends of her hair. But the most beautiful one was the woman. She was tall and willowy, with long white hair and gray eyes like mine. Unlike me, though, every part of her seemed soft, like a warm glow followed her around wherever she went.
The snow angel was the first to step toward me. “Serena, right?” Even her voice was delicate.
I managed a nod, once more surveying the amount of people in the room. Three young kids, four teenagers, including Daniel, and Cal. Definitely not big enough for a flock. Maybe I was wrong, after all.
Before I knew it, hands were on either sides of my arms, and the snow angel wrapped me up in a hug. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said against my neck, but her skin never touched me. She smelled like honey. I didn’t have time to hug her back before she pulled away and gestured to the couch. “Why don’t you take a seat? Everything’s almost ready.”
I glanced at Daniel, but he focused elsewhere, warning the two kids by the table to be careful. Mini Cal nodded at me. I wondered what all of their names were, but no one volunteered the information as I sat next to Blake.
He scooted closer, and his pudgy arm rested against mine before he looked up at me. “Ryne got me this.” He lifted his teddy bear and grinned. He had a missing tooth, just like Huey. They even had the same color of hair.
“It’s very cute,” I managed, noticing the gothic girl’s hollow stare. She hadn’t budged from Blake’s other side. “Vi, right?”
Her lips twisted like she wanted to ask how I learned her name, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. Daniel had said it in the alleyway once, but once was enough. I paid attention, and Vi looked back at me like she knew it.
“Yeah.”
I smiled, wondering which one was Ryne—the miniature version of Cal or the little boy helping set the table. I was careful not to look at either one, cautious not to let them know how much I wanted to figure them out, but Vi reached over and grazed me.
Everything changed.
My veins went cold, my molecules tingled, my skin felt like it was melting. I sensed every bit of her abilities, and I had to grip the couch to keep myself solid, to prevent myself from dissipating into the darkness. Even my vision shifted. The world was much brighter, almost painfully bright, and I understood the difference between Vi and other bad bloods—a terrifying thing.
Her shadow form was her true form. Her human form was the magical one.
When her powers settled, and my world turned back to my world instead of hers, she gazed back at me like she was waiting for my reaction. Her eyes weren’t black at all. They were shadows.
Blake’s head swung back and forth as he looked from her to me. I could feel his mind pushing against us both. He knew what I knew. She was a different kind of bad blood, a kind that made me wonder if she were bad blooded at all.
I wanted to puke.
“You okay?” Daniel’s voice helped me fight my nausea, and as he slid into focus, I realized he was all-too aware of what was happening to me. He was familiar with how my powers worked.
When I didn’t respond, he slid into the empty space next to me. With Daniel, Blake, Vi, and I on the same couch, it was impossible not to feel squeezed into the group. A goofy grin broke Mini Cal’s face—an exact replica of the first one Cal ever gave me.
“You okay?” Daniel asked again.
“She is,” Blake answered for me, like it was the polite thing to do.
Daniel began to lecture the boy—something about speaking for someone else being rude—but the little boy standing in front of us distracted me. His hand was bleeding, sliced open across the palm, and he held it toward Daniel without speaking or crying.
The girl by the table was already shouting excuses. “I didn’t do it,” she promised. “Ron tried to use his—” She stopped, only looking at me once, before continuing, “He lost control of the knife.”
“Peyton
,” Snow Angel started lecturing the girl, but I was forced to focus on Daniel.
He grabbed Ron’s hand, and the child’s slit skin slid back together. The boy flinched, but the cut healed completely, leaving only a trace of blood behind.
“He says thank you,” Blake spoke right as Ron beamed.
Daniel held up a hand for a high-five, and Ron completed the gesture with his clean hand before running back to the table. I followed the boy, but Cal’s eyes caught mine. He cleared his throat. “All right, Peyton,” he started as he focused on the girl. “Can you get Ron cleaned up before dinner?”
Peyton agreed before grabbing Ron’s arm and dragging him down the hallway. Mini Cal followed them like they needed guidance, and Snow Angel lingered in the living room as we fell into silence. Daniel had healed Ron in front of everyone, including me, and everyone’s eyes were on me as if they expected me to react.
I didn’t, but my eyes ended up on Daniel, the most obvious question leaving my mouth, “He knows about you?”
Daniel’s lips pulled up, a dimple appearing on one cheek. “They all know,” he whispered. “Every single one of them.”