“Mom, Dad? Are you home?”
It’s too much to hope for; he knows it before opening the front door. But he holds on to that flickering light, anyway. It had led him here by bus and on foot, across miles and miles of highway crawling with dead bodies and not-so-dead bodies. The thought of the monsters he’d had to avoid to get there makes his stomach lurch. The thought of what he’d had to do when he couldn’t hide made it worse. The news had said things were bad. He’d had no clue just how bad they were until leaving Silveron.
Thankfully, Water filled in the blanks when it came to fighting. He may have wanted to run; the Sphere, however, wanted to seek out blood.
Maybe that wasn’t something to be thankful for. He wasn’t a killer. He wasn’t a killer.
He only wants to save them.
Has to save them.
The house feels empty, and he knows it is in the pit of his gut. Not just empty. His house is hollowed, like someone stepped in and ripped out its heart.
He steps into the upstairs hall. His heart thuds in his chest and Water churns memories in his gut.
“No,” he whispers. “No.”
Blood smears across the walls in long streaks, straight to their bedroom. Straight to the closed door he’d knocked on every Christmas morning. Straight to the clean, bloodless door.
“No,” he repeats. He wants to run. He wants to turn around and never look back. But Water leads him forward, pulls him by his gut. It can’t be theirs, he thinks. It can’t be.
He presses his hand to the door.
It swings in on silent hinges, the only sound his blood in his ears.
It’s empty.
“Mom?” he calls quietly. “Dad?”
Their bed is made, the quilt from his grandma folded neatly at the foot. The windows are closed. Blinds open. It’s sunny. It shouldn’t be sunny. There should be clouds and storms and screaming. But it’s quiet. His whole damn town had been quiet. It was worse than the screams. Far worse.
He walks over to the nightstand and the photo sitting there, under the lamp.
He and his dad at Christmas. He’d been four when it was taken. They’re surrounded by crinkly wrapping paper, with a fire roaring in the hearth behind them. He can see his mother’s slippered foot at the bottom of the frame—she was always the one taking the photos. She’d sent him a box of them his second week at Silveron, complete with homemade cookies and confetti.
He sits down on the bed and picks up the picture, stares at his dad’s smile.
Then his heavy heart sinks.
There, in the corner, is a tiny smudge of blood.
Outside, a gust of wind slams the shed door. He starts. Looks up. Another gust, another slam—
“Tenn? Are you in there?”
Tenn opened his eyes, Water sloshing away with the sound of slamming doors. His heart was ice in his chest, though the shower was still scalding.
“Yeah,” he called. His voice was rough and his lips were salty. How long had he been standing there? How long had he been crying?
“You have been summoned,” Dreya said.
He wiped his eyes and peeked around the curtain. Dreya stood in the doorway in a new pair of faded jeans and a fluffy white knit sweater. Where she got fresh, mended clothes in a world of disrepair was beyond him. Maybe she had a stash from her travels. Her hair hung over her shoulders in waves, almost disappearing against the pale shirt. She was doing that hawk-gaze thing, which didn’t make him feel any more comfortable about being naked. It was like she could see through the curtain and into his thoughts.
“What?” he asked.
“Cassandra, our commander. She has summoned you.” A hesitation. “All of us. We are having a meeting. The entire guild.”
“A meeting?” The way she said it made him think the worst.
“Yes.”
He took a deep breath.
“It’s about what happened to us, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Shit.”
“I suggest you hurry,” she said. She gestured to a chair, which had a new set of clothes and a towel folded neatly on top. “I altered these for you. I hope they are to your liking.” She shook her head, as though realizing it didn’t really matter. “Cassandra called the meeting ten minutes ago, but we couldn’t find you. You’re already late.”
With that, she turned and left. Tenn shut off the water and grabbed the towel. He hadn’t even been here a day before drawing attention to himself. He’d been hoping to have a bit longer before they threw him out.
CHAPTER NINE
TENN WISHED HE’D had a moment to relish the fact that he was wearing the first new clothes he’d had since joining the Hunters—up until now, he’d been given hand-me-downs from the dead. New recruits rarely got anything better. His new clothes were black, but the jeans were slim and fit perfectly, and the long-sleeved shirt was snug. It was the coat, however, that made him want to stop and stare at himself—it was perfectly tailored and, like the white ones worn by the twins, covered in belts and buckles. Far above and beyond the guild standards he’d grown used to. Dreya must have been a seamstress or something in a previous life.
Dreya was waiting for him outside the bathroom, her arms crossed and her eyes closed. Devon was at her side, just as silent as always. She looked Tenn up and down the moment he was out, gave a quick nod and then headed down the hall. Devon followed close behind. Tenn didn’t even have the chance to thank her for the clothes, or ask how she’d known his size.
He wanted to ask them something, anything, to get them talking about who they were, and where they trained. If they were as powerful as they seemed, they had to know more about magic than him. He’d seen them both use Water, so maybe they knew how to control it. Maybe they knew how to control the visions, the flashes of power. At the very least, he hoped they knew how to keep it from controlling them. But the urgency with which they walked told him that now wasn’t the time.
It would probably never be the time.
The meeting took place in an old basketball court. By the time Tenn and the twins got there, it was already well under way. He knew it was all in his head, but he felt like everyone looked at him when he entered the room. Like they could tell he was new.
Like they could tell he was the cause of all this... Whatever “all this” was.
The twins edged past the open double doors and stood in the shadow of the bleachers, and Tenn followed close at their sides.
He assumed it was Cassandra pacing in the center—the command she radiated was more than enough to convince him she was the leader. She was in her late twenties, with dark ebony skin and long black braids that nearly reached her waist. The Sphere of Earth pulsed slow and green in her hips, the faintest trace of a glow. Most Earth mages Tenn knew were stocky, grounded, but not Cassandra. She was tall and stunning, with a perfect hourglass figure. She wore all black, from her knee-high leather boots and tight black leather pants, to her skintight top barely concealed by a sheer coat. It wasn’t an outfit meant for battle. That confidence alone spoke volumes of her power.