Chapter Twenty-Four

The fight between wake and sleep lingers over my pounding head, and just as I'm about to succumb to the latter, I'm stirred by the rumble of low, hushed voices, followed by the slamming of a heavy door.

In an attempt to sit upright, my weak arms buckle beneath my weight and I somehow fling my body onto the floor. My face lands smack into the coarse bristles of Nina's favorite rug. She'd be furious to see me, with dried blood matted on my hands and face, lying on her prized, five-hundred dollar designer rug.

Foreign body heat overwhelms my own as a pair of hands grapple my arms, attempting to pull me from the floor. Blood rushes through my bruised skull the second they move me, igniting nausea far worse than what I've experienced before.

"Shelland, take it easy," the person says, and I'm cut with rage at the familiarity of the voice.

"No!" I moan under my breath, struggling to get out of Dad's vice grip. I blindly feel for the couch again and plummet until I hit cushion. "Why am I here?"

Dad clears his throat before he answers. "Your friend, Beck. He brought you over a couple days ago."

"A couple of days?" I lean forward, letting another wave of nausea subside, but it comes with the metallic aftertaste of bloody memories.

I am you, you are me, and we are kindred. I swallow down hard on the bile rising up my throat. What did that mean? What was that thing, that faceless, creepy imitation of a girl—was that me?

"So I've been out this whole time?"

Dad nods. "How are you feeling?"

Annoyed. Resentful. Betrayed.

"Fine." I force out, but deep down I want to scorch everything in sight. "I need to go."

I lean all my weight on the arm of the couch in another attempt to push myself up. Dad quickly takes hold of my elbow to help, but I recoil, pushing away from him and launching toward the front door.

Dad straightens his spine. "And where exactly do you plan on going?"

"Anywhere but here," I spit. "I can't even look at you right now."

"Excuse me? You better check your tone." His voice is hard, and I cringe by habit. Normally this stern voice is followed by a lecture and grounding. "You're not leaving this house until your mother gets off work."

A laugh bursts out of me before I can catch it. "Of course! Just pawn me off on Mom, like always."

Dad frowns and the chagrin battles between his brows. His oblivious act only further infuriates me. "What's going on with you? You've never acted like this before."

"Oh, it's nothing of consequence," I sneer.

Part of me revels in how puzzled he is. Logically, I know I should stop snapping at him, but I've spent the last few weeks building up this wall—a dam, really—to protect myself. When I learned about his Elite secret, it was like strapping a bomb on the wall. Then the dam was detonated, and now the words just keep flooding out of me like a river of venom.

"Per usual, just ignore me and go work on some routines or something. Gotta practice, practice, practice for Nationals, right?"

"I pulled you out of Nationals," he counters.

"You what?" That familiar warmth prickles on my palms. "You made me get up at six am every day to run before school, and then meet you at the rink precisely at four-thirty to train, doing the same routines over and over for hours until my legs were practically Jello. You made me quit drama!"

Dad shrugs. "I told you that if you didn't take this seriously, I was going to pull you out. I've been saying this since the beginning, but you were too wrapped up in theater and this new boyfriend that you've been completely neglecting your responsibilities."

"I've been neglecting my responsibilities?" I practically scream the words at him. My body is trembling, I'm so infuriated. "That's so easy coming from someone who essentially abandoned theirs!"

"Shelland, you know that's not true," he grates.

"Yeah, tell that to Mom," I snarl. "You're not there when I have to drag her from the couch every other night because she drank herself to sleep. You don't hear her call out your name and sob for hours at a time, only getting up to grab the rest of her Merlot."

Dad winces as if I had slapped him. I might as well have. The solemn expression that befalls his tired eyes is enough to prove that I bruised him. As much as I hate to drudge up the things that I know are low blows to him, everything that I said is true. He couldn't possibly deny that Mom is still in love with him, but he's refused to acknowledge her feelings because of Nina.

"There are a lot of things—things about your Mom and I—that you don't—can't understand," he contends. "I wish I could explain everything to you, but it's just...useless."

Confront him. The whisper fills my head in a voice unlike my own, feeding into my already toxic rage.

I roll my eyes. "Why? Because I'll just forget about it the next time I take one of my pills?"

Dad goes so silent that I can practically hear the blood draining out of his face. I should feel guilty for treating him the way I am, but it's as if there's a thick veil—like the one in my dream—blocking the empathy from hitting my system. All I can feel is fire, mixed with this unnecessary sort of pride for being able to confront him after weeks of shying away.

"Yeah, you didn't think I knew about that, did you?" I scoff.

Seek the truth, the voice sings.

His whole body shudders as he inhales, and then exhales, a large amount of air. His hands are now shaking, but not from anger, that I can tell. He almost looks sad, but somehow I can't process this remorse. It only adds gasoline to the flames.

"When did you find out?" he asks.

"The day after that disastrous Christmas dinner," I confess. "Turns out there's a lot of things you've been hiding from me, Dad, like the fact that you've been erasing my memories since I was seven. And that you're a part of the Elite werewolf pack."

Dad sputters.

"Oh yeah, and while we're being honest here, guess what else I found out?" Without a second thought, I lift my hand up and mimic the way that the creature flicked her wrist in my dream. In a blink, my fingers ignite, each glowing bright with a single flume of fire equivalent to that of a lighter.

He lurches back a couple steps, his eyes wide and panic-stricken.

An overwhelming surge of power fuels me. This is the first time I've actually had steady control over my ability since it reared its fiery head, and the control feels incredible.

"Shelland...let's talk about this. There's a lot that you don't know. A lot that I need to explain to you—that I've wanted to explain but haven't known how."

"So you opted to just tamper with my memories instead? I knew you were a lot of things, Dad, but I never expected you to be a coward."

"Just a minute," he warns, cautiously standing upright. "I understand that you're angry. But regardless of what's happened, I expect you to treat me with respect."

Where was the respect for you as they poisoned you, pill by pill?

The flames in my hand hiss toward the ceiling, as if I poured a tablespoon of gasoline into my palm. I have to take a deep breath and concentrate to calm them down.

"It seems like you've only ever had respect for yourself, especially when you were feeding me memory suppressants to keep your secrets buried."

"We did that for you! Not for us," he says. "Do you honestly believe I would give you that poison if it weren't for a valid reason?"

"A valid reason?" I scoff. "What could possibly be so detrimental that it convinced you that erasing my mind was a good idea?"

His eyes fill with an overwhelming sadness as he points to my raised hand. "Shell, just look at you."

I take a hard look at the flames dancing along my charred skin. A week ago, I was recklessly blasting fire out of my hands. I burned down a building, and I still don't know for certain if the accident killed anyone.

Something heavy wells in the pit of my chest. I can't find the words to express how suddenly grave I feel, but this weight is dense enough to snuff the fire into thin strips of white smoke.

I take a ragged breath. I haven't felt this much like a helpless child since I was seven.

He glides over to me in three wide steps and then places his hands on both of my shoulders before pulling me into a tight embrace.

"No, let go!" I try to wriggle out of the hug, but Dad's got me locked in place. "You shouldn't touch me. My emotions are off the rails right now and I don't trust myself."

"You have to trust yourself, or you will never be able to control it. I know I should have prepared you for this instead of hiding it from you, but we didn't know what else to do. We were terrified."

The second he lets go, I back away. I can't shake this sick feeling that has erased the fury that previously engulfed me.

"What am I, Dad?"

"I'm not the one that could tell you, Shell," he sighs.

I brush back a few wild baby hairs from my forehead and come in contact with a patch of gauze taped above my right eyebrow. "What...what is this?"

Dad shakes his head, "I'm not sure. Your friend wouldn't tell me what happened."

A chill prickles along my skin as memories from the spell-casting flash across my mind. I take hold of the edge of my sweater with a trembling hand and rip the sleeve toward my elbow. My breath catches at the risen bruise on my forearm, adorned with scabbed-over nail marks and scratches, and in the shape of a woman's hand.

"What the hell—who did that to you, Shelland!" Dad lurches forward, his arm outreached as if trying to grab and examine my arm more thoroughly. "Was it that kid? Was it?"

I jump back, tugging the sleeve back over my forearm. "No! It wasn't him!"

"Don't you dare lie for him!" he bellows. "I'm going to kill him!"

"Dad, stop! It wasn't him!" I quickly move toward the front door before Dad can maneuver around the coffee table. "I'm sorry, I have to go!"

I'm out the door before he catch me and bursting into a full sprint down the cape.

I only stop when I start wheezing. The cold air stings my lungs as I rapidly inhale, desperately trying to catch my breath through the fog.

I'm so rattled by the bruises on my body that I'm basically relying on instinct and muscle memory to carry me home.

It's as if the hand print is burning on my skin, acting as a constant reminder of its existence. When I had cast the spell and found myself in that dark room with the creatures and the girl and that weird purple veil, I had totally assumed it was a dream.

"But you can't get physical marks from a dream," I whisper aloud. Reflexively, I lift my sleeve again to make sure I wasn't imagining it, and when I pull back the material the cuts, the marks, and the bruises are all there, etched into my skin. Gently, I take my free hand and layer it over the hand-print. I'm not surprised to learn that it's a perfect fit—that the girl's hand is the exact same size and shape as my own.

I yank my sleeve over the mark again and decide to keep my feet moving. I walk for what feels like a full mile before I hear the sound of engine coming toward me. Even with the low visibility of the evening fog, I can make out that the car barreling forward is my own—a suspicion confirmed when the driver passes me and makes a U-turn, only to block my path by crookedly parking.

    The door flings open, and Beck steps out of my car with a coat in hand, but I didn't need to meet those icy eyes to know it was him driving.

"Are you mad?" he yells across the way. "You'll be an ice sculpture by the time you hit town!"

"Yeah, my line of thought was more 'I need to get the hell out of here' versus 'oh, its cold out. Gotta make sure I'm toasty'."

He tosses the jacket at me once I close in our distance. To be honest, I was so distracted by everything else that I didn't have time to think twice about the pair of leggings I've been in for several days.

"Get in," he commands after I finish zipping up the coat. "I'll take you home."

The car ride home is so tense and quiet that I practically kick the door open once we've parked. The lights are out again, save the single bulb that illuminates the front door and two-person porch. This is the first time I've been home in days, and Mom is nowhere to found.

I sigh. I can't recall the last time I've had a conversation with her that wasn't in text format.

Inside, the house is surprisingly warm—for being vacant for several days, anyway. It's not until I flip on the lights and take a look around that I realize why. There's a pile of crinkled blankets layered over the couch, like someone had tucked a sheet into the crevices of the cushions and then layered several knit blankets over a throw pillow, in a sad attempt to make a bed.

"Sorry, I didn't get a chance to pick up the mess," Beck says, confirming my suspicion that he was the squatter. He scratches the back of his neck. "I didn't sleep much. Kept waking up every time a car passed by expecting it to be your mom or something, but I figured you wouldn't mind if I crashed here for the night."

"Why were you staying here?"

He drops his arm to his side. "I needed to hide out. The place was empty."

I groan, only to toss my jacket on his bed and make my way into the kitchen. "I'm surprised you didn't just Musk your way into another hotel room."

Beck laughs dryly. "Damn, I knew you were judging me for that."

Even though my back is turned, I can't help but roll my eyes. Somehow, I expect him to be able to feel my mood without seeing it, mostly because I don't want to look at him. I end up forcing myself to wipe down already-clean counters in order to avoid doing so.

"Conall?" He asks, definitely getting the hint. "So are we not gonna talk about this?"

I reply without making eye-contact, "Thanks for the ride. You can go now."

I hear what sounds like a grunt before Beck stomps out of the house. If he slammed the door any harder the wood would have splintered. The noise sets me off and before I can talk some sense into myself, I'm trudging through the snow behind him.

"Oh, come on! It can't be that easy!" I yell across the yard. "You just leave and without any protest?"

Beck whips around, his fingers retracting in and out of a fist. "Why would I? You don't want to talk about what happened. You'd rather verbally attack me with petty remarks. So yeah, no thanks. I'm not here to make you feel better about yourself, princess."

The way he emphasizes the last word makes me grind my teeth. "You're deceiving yourself if you think that I need you around."

Beck shakes his head as he scoffs. In the blink of an eye, he's suddenly less than a foot away from me, his hard eyes blazing into my own. "That's certainly not the impression I got the other night."

I glare, trying desperately to ignore the potent rush of crisp snow and pine filling my nostrils. "I don't...I don't know what you're talking about."

He chuckles again and his warm breath sweeps across my cheeks, blasting me with another gust of his inebriating scent. "You wanted me to touch you."

We're so close, our body heat entwining and boiling any snowflakes falling between us. "You wish."

"Yeah? So I must've imagined the part where you asked me to kiss you? How you were basically begging for it."

"If I sincerely wanted to kiss you, Beck, I wouldn't ask you to do it."

"So, what was that then?"

"Pity," I shrug, but I can sense he doesn't buy it by the snide chuckle under his breath, so I push on. "I guess you could say I felt bad for you. I mean, to get any attention from a girl, you have to trick her into believing she likes you."

Beck's eyes are wild on mine. So livid and fierce, and so close. His mouth is just inches from mine now, but still far enough that I can see how his lips keep trembling, like he's twitching with indecision.

Just when I think he's going to close in the space between us, Beck rips his body away from mine, sucking all the heat from my space. He brushes back loose strands of hair.

"You drive me insane, you know that?" He says with his back to me. His hands are resting atop his head. His chest rapidly expanding and decompressing with frustration. "Since we've met, I've saved your life multiple times. I've sacrificed my own family, my life, my home, to help you. But then you find out that you may not be the only person on this planet that I care about, and suddenly it's the end of the world."

"Hold on! Are you forgetting the part where you used me?" I yell. "I don't care that you have some secret girlfriend. I'm mad that you lied. That you pretended to want to help me when the reality is that you only wanted to help yourself."

He shakes his head. "I didn't intend to use you—"

"Oh, yes you did. Don't even try to lie to me. You saw an opportunity in my situation and ran with it." I clench my fists at my side. "I have to say, that's pretty low for you to take advantage of a girl with memory loss, even for an Elite. Though, I'm sure Boyd's proud of your manipulation skill building. That'll sure come in handy as one of his henchmen."

"I am not one of them." Beck whips around, his voice and expression ripe with fury. "I wasn't trying to lie to you, Conall."

"Just don't. I don't want to hear it." I step back to pivot toward the house, but Beck takes firm hold of my arm.

"It happened so fast. I was going to tell you once I knew more, but then Olivian starting spilling everything—way more than I what I was ready for." He suddenly frowns, a realization seeming to strike him. "Hold on, why aren't you mad at her, too? You've been so quick to judge me, but Olivian was just as much a part of it as I was."

I clench my teeth, refusing to look at him. If I do, I might erupt.

"You don't even care that she was a part of it, do you?" He shakes his head. "You're just projecting all of this shit with your dad on me. I just have the misfortune of being your damn scapegoat, right?"

"It is about you, you idiot!" I rip my arm from his grip and slam my fists into his chest. I use as much strength as I can, but Beck doesn't even budge. The less of a reaction he shows, the harder I hit him. I keep hitting him and hitting him until my fists and arms feel like rubber.

"I trusted you, Beck! Not her. I knew from day one that she didn't want to be a part of this. But you...you made it a point to befriend me! To convince me that you cared and wanted to help. It took me awhile to realize that if you actually cared about me as much as you cared about yourself, you would have never told me where to find you. You wouldn't have followed me home after I saw you in the café. You would have let me take my pills and forget that you ever existed!" The frustration bubbles out of me in tear form, and the cold wind freezes them to my cheeks.

"I do care about you...you idiot," he says, repeating my own endearing pet name. Beck grapples my wrists and holds them against his chest, incapacitating any further punches. He exhales and squeezes my hands gently, frustration pained across his face. "I'm not good at this shit, alright. I've never been good at it cause I don't always have the right words stored in my head."

"So you do this a lot, then?" I bite, struggling to free my hands from his. A few days ago I would have melted into the floor if he had held onto me like this, but now all I can think about is Cruxley. Would he still act this way if she was here? Is this some manipulation tactic to get me back on his side?

"I wasn't trying to use you."  He groans, letting go me to rub the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, I admit that I had selfish intentions at first, but that changed—"

I take a few steps back again, finally safe in distance from his earthy smell. "Seriously, do not go into some cheesy tangent about how meeting me changed you."

"Can you just let me talk for a second? Jesus." He shakes his head. "Look, how I went about this wasn't okay. Yeah, I was there the night of your accident. Hell, I'm the reason why it happened in the first place, considering I was following Olivian's Supernatural locator and Tripp was trailing me when I found you." He moves forward, counteracting the distance I had just put between us. "But, I can't really explain my actions after that night. I was drawn to you. It's like there was this invisible force guiding me to you and when I finally met you, I couldn't just walk away. It may have started out selfishly, but it's sure as hell not like that now."

I open my mouth to reply, but I'm so taken back by his candor that I can't formulate a cognitive sentence. My heart is beating so wildly that I can feel it throughout my body—a completely different kind of warmth than the more familiar one fueled by my anger. This is frightening, intense, and I don't want it to dissipate.

Beck lingers close, his heat overwhelming my own again, filling my lungs with snow and dirt and pine. He leans in, his lips twitching as if preparing to press into mine. My nerves ignite, alive and buzzing with this new sense of nervousness.

Despite everything, I'm torn. I've been harboring these intense feelings for him since I met him, even if it took me a while to realize what it was that I was feeling. I mean, I had to watch him flirt with another girl before I realized that I liked him and that, deep down, some part of me was always a little envious of the relationship he shared with Olivian. But then again, no matter how intensely I feel toward him, who's to say that he's honestly reciprocating it? I just found out that he's been trying to use my magical connection to find his old girlfriend, and he still hasn't explained why it's so important that he does.

Just when I think Beck is going to close in the space between us, I pull away.

"Conall?"

"Why do you want to find Cruxley?"

His shoulders deflate. "Conall, let's not get into this right now."

"Why? What are you hiding?"

"I'm not hiding anything! I just don't want to talk about it."

"Yeah, that's really convincing," I sneer. "I'm done with this, Beck. If you can't be honest with me, then you can find someone else to help you. I'm done. I'm not risking my life for a stranger with a magic problem."

His jaw drops, only to quickly retract and clench together out of anger. He then says, "I think you should take your medication tonight."

And then my heart drops into a puddle of acid.

"What?" I gasp, expecting him to confess that this was just a horrible and ill-timed joke, but his irritation doesn't falter. "You can't be serious."

"I am, Conall," he states. "Take the easy way out. Forget about all of this and live your normal, human life. You have a chance that a lot of Supernaturals would kill for. You can live a normal life and forget about all of this—the Elite, the witches, the war. You can forget about your power and not live in fear of accidentally killing the ones you love! You could graduate, go to college and live out whatever dream you want. Maybe you'll meet someone who loves everything that you do and you can move away from this cursed town."

Beck's eyes are full of sincerity, hinted with something else I can't place. I guess I've never realized it before now, but it suddenly makes sense that Beck dislikes magic. From the moment I met him, he has had unfavorable things to say about Supernaturals, including his own species and afflictions. How did I not see it before?

"Whatever you decide, I'll support you," he tries to assure me, "but, really be honest with yourself and figure out what you want long-term. Yeah, you won't remember shooting fire out of your hands or spell-casting or me, but you'll get to be human."

"Human," I test the word slowly. I would get to be human—something that Beck would never, but always yearns, to be.

"Just think about it," he says, this time with a smile that doesn't meet his eyes. Though his delivery seems genuine, something doesn't feel right. After everything, he just wants me to forget about him and my powers and all the secrets my parents have been hiding? What would have been the point of all of this?

He's lying. The foreign whisperer fills my head again. They will always lie to protect themselves.

"How many times have we met, Beck?" I question, fire burning through my trembling fingers.

He frowns.

"How many times have you approached me and asked for my help? How many times have we done this same routine?"

"What? Conall, no, you're being paranoid," he tries to step forward, but I raise my palm up and aim it at his chest.

The air has been ripped out of my lungs. "How many times!"

"Conall, breathe. I promise you, it's not like that!"

The imprint on my forearm begins to sting. Energy pools beneath it, surging into my fingers tips with a steady current.

Beck stretches out his arms as if trying to reason with me, but all I can see is the deviation behind his mask of concern.  How many times has he tried to get me to help him over the years? What if he contacted me years ago and I denied him, only to start another cycle of Ironide so he could start fresh? I mean, how else did he know what was plaguing me the day he came to my house?

You knew to be cautious, the whisper continues. You knew he was dangerous, untrustworthy, a monster.

"Conall, you look sick," he says, that false concern still prominent on his brow. "Let's get you inside."

"No!" I readjust my aim, raising it to his heart. "You need to leave! I don't want to see you anymore."

"Shelland?" He cries, and I cringe at the intensity, releasing a ball of fire at next to his feet.

"Go now! Or next time I won't miss."

"Alright! I'm gone." Beck nods as he backs away. I keep focus on him, refusing to drop my aim until he disappears into the lining of the forest.

It's when I relax that I am finally able to focus on the intense heat emanating from my forearm. I peel back my sleeve again and nearly throw up at the sight. Black veins, like spider legs, web out from the scabbed slashes on my arm and seep down as far as my middle knuckle. The cuts look infected, but instead of puss, there's a sticky, black substance oozing from the cracks.

I rip my sleeve back down and pull my arm into my chest as I look around the neighborhood, praying that no one had been watching the exchange that went down between Beck and I.

What is happening to me? Is this the warning that Olivian delivered about the consequences of Umbra magic? I shudder at the thought before pivoting back toward the house. All I know is that of everything I've learned today, only one thing was solidified: I can't trust anyone that I previously could, and honestly, I'm not even sure I can trust myself.