Source Fire: A Young Adult Fantasy (Arcturus Academy Book 5) Page 24

  “And what about him?” Targa pointed to Nero’s body where it lay in the grass, looking from a distance like someone taking a nap.

  “If we leave him, naturals will find him and study him,” Tomio said.

  “I can accelerate his decomposition,” Georjie suggested. “Give me ten minutes and there’ll be nothing left.”

  We agreed to let Georjie get rid of the body, and gathered the wet bedding and our things as she did so. I didn’t watch. I didn’t think accelerated decomposition was something I would enjoy seeing. When she was finished, she returned to us and handed me a black object.

  “Do you want this?”

  It took me a moment to realize it was the ghost steel knife, but the blade itself was gone. I took it. “What happened to the blade?”

  “It decomposed along with Nero. Melted away like snow.”

  I mused about this, and decided to keep the handle for now. Maybe Basil would want it.

  We wandered through the flattened landscape on our way to the cabins. The buildings had not been flattened the way the landscape had been; it seemed the departure of the Source Fire had affected only nature, not manmade things. But the cabins were nevertheless damaged from trees crashing down upon them. I thought that not straightening the trees and shrubs was the right call after I saw the flattened trailer and crushed cabin. At least the owner would know how their property had been damaged.

  There was the sound of a child crying, and a mother trying to soothe him. The sky had begun to brighten, revealing a few campers picking their way around the bent and broken forest. I hoped no one had been injured.

  We left the bedding outside the damaged cabin and returned the keys to the lobby, which was open but unmanned. The radius of flattened foliage ended just before the parking lot. But it was in the parking lot where we discovered another remarkable thing.

  Basil’s Land Rover had been parked in the open lot, too far from trees to have been damaged. But a few parking spaces over sat a Volkswagen Jetta with a hole blown through the side of its trunk. The metal was peeled back like the tip of an exploding joke-cigar.

  “What happened there?” asked Targa, as Tomio got behind the wheel of the Land Rover and we were tossing our bags into the back.

  The sight of the damaged Jetta pulled things together for me. “That has to be how Nero arrived,” I said. “He must have had the five orbs in the trunk when he was coming to get ours. I heard them come through the trunk and the alarm go off. I didn’t know what all the noise was about at the time, but now it makes sense. It was the orbs breaking out of his car and crashing through the trees.”

  Ryan said, “Let’s get out of here before the police arrive.”

  “Where should we take you, Targa?” Tomio pulled on his seatbelt as we closed ourselves in the car.

  “Ivan is waiting at a hospital just ten miles inland.” She rifled through her bag and produced a cell. “I’ll let him know I’m coming.”

  Georjie turned in the front seat to look at Targa where she was squished between me and Ryan. “Why a hospital?”

  “Helipad,” she replied, opening up her messaging app.

  “How did you get to the campground?” I asked.

  Targa tapped out a text. “Uber, of course.”

  Georjie and I exchanged a look. This was so Targa. Simple, direct answers explaining simple, direct actions. She’d utilized the resources she had to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. I wondered what the Uber driver had thought of her when she got into his vehicle.

  I was fairly certain she would have asked Ivan to park his chopper on the field behind the campground if the pilot had been willing to do it, but even Ivan had limits, and Targa had told me in the past that she would never use her voice on anyone unless there was absolutely no choice.

  “What about you, Georjie?” I asked as Targa’s phone zipped with messages sent off to her pilot, and probably to Antoni, or maybe she was saving that for a phone call.

  “There are trains to Edinburgh multiple times a day from Dover,” she said. “I have all my stuff already. Just drop me off at the station. Unless you think you might need me for something else?”

  Ryan, who was staring out the window, muttered a question he already knew the answer to: “Can you return fire to a snuffed mage?”

  Georjie’s brow pinched and she gave Ryan a pained look. “I’m afraid not.”

  I was half of a mind to reach across Targa and smack Ryan. I wanted to tell him to thank Georjie for everything she’d done for us, and Targa too. Neither of them had to get involved. But Ryan was in shock and bereft. There was a tension in the car, an uncertainty we all felt concerning his mental state, so I didn’t reproach him. But Ryan surprised me several long moments later when he looked at Georjie again of his own accord.

  “Thanks for saving my life. Our lives,” he said, simply.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied, and found the courage to ask what I’d been wondering, maybe all of us had been wondering. “What will you do now?”

  He looked out the window again. “Go home. My family needs me.”

  …and you need them. I conjured the words to follow these in the silence of the Evoque, as the tires drew us close to our destination.

  We exchanged hugs and a tearful goodbye to Targa at the hospital, then Georjie at the train station. Ryan didn’t get out of the back seat of the Evoque, but he did wave to the girls from the window.

  We were quiet as we pulled into the Academy’s driveway. Birds chirped and sunlight illuminated the bricks and made the windows glitter, almost like we were being welcomed home.

  I unlocked the door and we walked into the lobby, bedraggled and tired and dazed. I checked my phone to send Basil a message and saw that its battery was dead.

  Ryan tossed his backpack beside the nearest sofa and tumbled onto the cushions. He pulled a throw pillow under his head and stretched out, yawning.

  “You okay?” I asked him quietly.

  His eyes drifted closed. “Of course not, Cagney. Now go away and let me sleep.”

  Tomio took my hand and I followed him up the stairs. We beelined for his bedroom. I plugged my phone in to charge and joined Tomio on top of the blankets. With his arm curled over me, I was unconscious a moment after my cheek struck the pillow.

  Epilogue

  Dead leaves blew across the road as Tomio and I got out in front of the Wendigs’ house on Shaker Street. It hadn’t yet snowed in Saltford, but there was a bite in the air. Most of the leaves had fallen, leaving the trees largely bare. Seagulls screamed their lonely cries. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.

  I had borrowed my mom’s van, which she’d been happy to lend me when she heard we wanted to go visit the Wendigs.

  “That Mr. Wendig looked awful when I saw him last,” she’d said, and added that had been back in late summer, “shuffling after that pretty wife of his in the grocery store, like a poor lost child.”

  I had explained that if he’d been out in public and doing errands, he’d actually improved.

  Tomio folded my hand in his as we took the paved walkway up to the Wendigs’ front porch. A windchime jangled in the blustery fall air. The cushions had been removed from the wicker furniture for the winter. There’d be no more breakfasts outdoors this year.

  At the sound of our feet on the wooden steps, the front door opened and Angelica stood there, beaming. She pulled me into a hug, told me how beautiful I looked, then hugged Tomio.

  “Come in, come in. We’re dying to see you both.”

  The Wendig home smelled like vanilla and wood polish. They lived in a heritage home. It had been built in the early twenties and still had old-fashioned light switches, the kind you expected to see on an antique switchboard. Speaking of antiques, they were everywhere, naturally. Antique furniture, antique books, antique paintings, antique clocks. The hardwood floors squeaked, too.

  Gage appeared in the hall as we were kicking off our shoes. He came into the entryway wearing a thick, cott
on hoody with the hood pulled up over his head, a pair of black jeans, and thick woolen work socks. I’d never seen him so bundled up.

  He greeted Tomio first, with a hug, then turned to me. I hesitated, but he pulled me into his arms. My cheek touched his, skin to skin. No fire rushed beneath my skin. It was just plain human contact. It relaxed me to feel that he was relaxed.

  “You met Saxony’s family?” Gage asked Tomio as we followed him and Angelica into the kitchen. “RJ is a cool guy. I see him at the gym sometimes.”

  He said nothing of my younger brother, Jack. Probably because the first and only time they’d met, Jack had insulted me. He hadn’t meant it, but maybe Gage hadn’t forgotten.

  Gage took us through the kitchen into the back yard where we stood on their rear deck in our socks. Ryan and Chad were raking and cleaning up random gardening tools and backyard detritus. Ryan held up a gloved hand in greeting but didn’t stop what he was doing. Chad, coiling a length of thin yellow rope, came over to say hello. He looked like a guy who’d been working in a back yard all his life. He was thinner than when I’d last seen him, but other than that, if he was still emotionally fragile, he didn’t show it. He even took off a work glove to shake our hands. His eyes were clear, his pupils soft and opaque, his brow relaxed.

  “How is Basil?” he asked.

  “We spoke to him yesterday. He seems well,” I told him.

  “About those kids?” Gage squinted, blinking in the late afternoon sun. “The ones who got their fire back?”

  “How did you know about them?” Tomio asked.

  “He calls Gage once a week,” Angelica said. “He’s the twin’s godfather. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared inside the house.

  Gage continued: “He said that he was thinking about putting Chaplin Manor up for sale, if you can believe it, after the memorial of course. But then he got a series of phone calls. Young mages whose fires were snuffed, but they’d ignited again. Out of nowhere.”

  Tomio nodded. “And all at the same time. Pretty strange.”

  In fact, they’d ignited on the same morning—or night depending on time zone—the Source Fire had left our world, like little random parting gifts. It was strange, but then again, in another way and possibly only to me, it wasn’t strange at all.

  “So, it’s true?” Chad let the rope hang at his side. “There are some natural-born magi again? Not just adopted folks like you two?”

  It was true. There weren’t many. The magi population was still a tiny fraction of what it had once been, consisting only of those who’d received fire by plenary endowment, and a handful of young people. After those phone calls, Basil had sent feelers out, and learned that this small group of individuals had something in common, none of them were over the age of fifteen, and all of them were known as quiet, even shy.

  The headmaster had asked me for my thoughts about it when we’d spoken yesterday. Why had their fires ignited? Why so few, and why them? Why only young, shy kids?

  I didn’t know. The only answer I could give him was that it had happened because I had, in a way, asked for the Source Fire to leave something of itself behind. I’d been asking for the people I had cared about, but the white god had decided that the people I cared about were not the people it would return fire to. Maybe it liked what I’d said to Nero about the meek inheriting. We’d never know the reason.

  “Is it true he’s not going to sell the academy because of these kids?” Angelica had returned to the porch with a tray of steaming mugs of hot chocolate.

  I took the drink she offered and thanked her. “There’s only fourteen of them, that we know of. All natural-born magi whose fires were snuffed. Seven girls, and seven boys.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “All over. Quite literally. There are two from each continent.” I didn’t need to specify that there were also two magi for each idle color. It was one of the first things Basil deduced upon meeting them when he’d arranged for the group to come to the academy in October, to meet him and each other. Idles were now something the headmaster paid a lot more attention to. These young magi were the future of the species, given that those who were not natural-born magi couldn’t pass on supernatural genes.

  Gage took a cup from his mother and hugged it between his palms. “It’s not like Basil can teach them anything anymore. I mean, he’s no longer a mage. None of the academy’s staff or former students got their fires back.”

  “He can teach them theory, and that’s why he wants me and Tomio to go back to Dover. To talk about the future of the school.”

  Basil was hosting a memorial at the academy to commemorate the memories of the magi who’d suffered or died. We’d get to see some of the academy’s staff and students, but I’d been surprised at the number of acquaintances who weren’t coming. Basil had told me he wasn’t surprised. Life went on. Some didn’t like to dwell on the past, and that was perfectly fine.

  “What future?” Ryan asked from where he was leaning on his rake. He didn’t appear to be interested in the hot chocolate.

  “He’s wondering if he should open the school up to other elemental kids, not just fire magi. See if he can get staff from other species,” I explained. “He’s got all that space, after all. So why not?”

  “That’ll never work.” Ryan went back to his raking.

  “Probably not,” Chad said, “but when Chaplin gets an idea in his head, he doesn’t give up. If anyone can make something like that work, it’ll be him. Mage or not.” He squinted at me and Tomio. “You going to help him then?”

  We didn’t know. We’d only committed to going to Dover. I was actually dying to see Basil in the flesh, but I hadn’t thought any further than a visit. After Dover, we’d go on to Japan so I could meet Tomio’s relatives. While we were there, I wanted to visit where Akiko had been born, have my own private memorial, and also see as much of Japan as I could.

  “He told us where the ghost steel came from,” I said.

  This caught Ryan’s attention. He stopped raking, but didn’t come over.

  I told them what the headmaster had said. “It was found laced through volcanic rock in Northern Turkey. Only a few hundred kilometers from where they found the green idle. It’s unique to the area. No one mines it or anything, it’s not worth much as a rock. Basil thinks it was where the Source Fire first landed.”

  Ryan listened, nodded and went back to raking without comment.

  “How about that,” Angelica said politely.

  It was clear the Wendigs weren’t much interested in mage-lore anymore.

  “Can we go inside? I’m freezing,” said Gage.

  “Nice to see you,” Chad said. “Ryan and I have an appointment at the harbor, so we’ll leave you to visit with Gage and Angelica.”

  We said goodbye and went inside the house, carrying our mugs of hot chocolate. We sat around their dining room table.

  “I won’t lie to you,” said Angelica. “It’s been hell for Chad and Ryan.” She leaned over the table and squeezed Gage’s forearm. “And Gage, too.”

  “I’m alright.” Gage dimpled and dismissed his mother’s sympathy good-naturedly. “I’m learning a lot. I have ideas.” Gage told us that while the antique business had always bored Ryan to tears, he himself had always felt an affection for old things.

  Angelica smiled. “You get that from me, sweetie. You have your grandfather’s radar for treasures.”

  “I just got why your company is called Radar,” I said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, you should see some of the stuff we have in those old seacans out on his property.” Gage shook his head. “I still have trouble going into those cans though. I think we should move everything into a warehouse here in town. It’d be easier to access.”

  “Gage was once locked in a seacan for several hours when he was a kid. He’s never liked them since. Understandably,” Angelica said.

  “How did you manage that?” Tomio asked as he took the last swig from his mug.

  Gage rolle
d his eyes. “How do you think?”

  “Ryan,” I guessed. “Wait, is that why you’re afraid of the dark?”

  “Took you long enough,” Gage replied, with a touch of sarcasm.

  It struck me that while Gage hadn’t asked me much about my life, family or history, I hadn’t been that curious about his either. I sent him an apologetic look and he waved it away with a grin.

  “How are those lovely girlfriends of yours?” Angelica asked as she got up to put the empty mugs into the dishwasher. “Tell us how it all went down.”

  So, we relayed the story to Gage and Angelica. It was a spectacular story, with water, earth and fire magic, but I got the sense they were listening mostly out of good manners. They were no longer part of the supernatural world, not that Angelica had ever been supernatural, but she’d been married to one and had given birth to two. Now her family consisted of naturals, and I suspected that she was secretly thrilled with the outcome. I didn’t share anything about my experience inside the white fire, it felt too intimate to divulge, especially with those who seemed only marginally interested. But I did plan to tell Tomio everything, when I was ready.

  “It’s the end of an era,” Gage said when we’d finished, pulling up his hood and shifting in his chair. He checked his watch.

  I’d never seen him wear a watch. It looked expensive. Magi didn’t wear cheap watches, let alone expensive ones. Now that I was looking, I also noticed that he’d had an ear pierced. This discovery shocked me so much that I hardly said anything for the next several minutes. Gage, with an earring? How weird.

  We carried on chatting until Gage had checked his shiny new watch two more times, then we said goodbye, and headed back to the van. We sat in the vehicle for a minute in silence.

  “He’s changed,” I said. “Not for the worse or anything. He’s just different.”

  “Maybe he is just who he always would have been if he hadn’t been born a mage,” said Tomio, his eyes focused up the street.