“We are. I don’t know what’s happening to them. Something’s changing.”
“What about you? Is that what I saw? Those feathers?”
Aidan squeezed her hand. “No. I’m all right. I think those feathers belong to another sister.”
“Do we need to find her? Artemis?” Cassandra swallowed. The name felt clumsy coming out of her mouth. “Can we help her?”
“No.” Aidan shook his head. “No. If we go, they’ll find you. I think they’re looking for you already. And I don’t think she can be saved.”
“What do you mean, they’ll find her?” Andie asked. “Who’s looking?”
“I don’t know. Others who are dying. I think that’s what the dreams mean, and the visions. I think it means they’re coming for you.”
“Why?” Cassandra asked. But she knew. It was something about the visions, and the way she knew things. It was changing, and they could feel it, like a beacon. They’d use her however they could. They’d squeeze the contents of her head out into a glass.
“What are we going to do?” Henry asked. He hung back in the shadows, his broad shoulders slumped, arms crossed. The question sat awkwardly on him. Cassandra was surprised he hadn’t left. Henry was always so logical.
“Your hands are cold,” said Aidan, and Cassandra felt them start to warm, heat radiating from him into her fingers. It was sweet comfort. And it was an invasion.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“We’re going to do nothing,” said Aidan. “We’re going to hide, for as long as we can.”
“You’ve put too much phenolphthalein in it.”
“Huh?” asked Andie. Sam nudged her out of the way to examine the titration vials. Pink liquid danced inside the delicate clear tube. Dark pink liquid. He pushed his stocking cap farther back on his head like he could get a better view.
“You put in
Andie and Cassandra looked at each other vacantly. Poor Sam. Andie wasn’t much use as a lab partner on a good day. On a distracted day, she was a walking booby trap. Cassandra’s partner was luckier: Jeff Larson, a brainy kid who preferred she not do anything anyway. The pink in their liquid was barely visible, just a scant tint, like the rose coating on a pair of sunglasses Cassandra had owned as a child.
They were doing acid-base titration, ten lab teams of students neutralizing the pH of an unknown acid while Miss Mackay looked on, walking behind the stations in her rather unnecessary white lab coat. Cassandra sighed. She and Andie weren’t partners so much as assistants. They handed things to Sam and Jeff when asked, but mostly stayed out of the way. Cassandra kept her eyes on her station, trying to avoid eye contact with Andie. Whenever their eyes met it was there on the tips of their tongues; they had to clench their teeth to keep from screaming it. Aidan was a god.
The words were underneath everything else as Cassandra walked through the day, a day that felt stiflingly normal. At Andie’s locker that morning, her team had gathered around to talk about the game and Cassandra’s head had almost exploded. And when Casey seethed about Misty and Matt, Andie’s eyes bulged dangerously from their sockets.
Talking about anything else felt ridiculous, like talking about what to have for lunch back and forth across a black hole.
“Can you get me the handout?” Jeff asked.
“Sure.” Cassandra reached for it and her arm almost knocked the flask of base off the table. He looked at her irritably.
Aidan watched from across the room, standing with his own lab partner. He smiled. They’d seen him go headfirst out a window. She’d felt the inhuman heat of his hands and wondered why she’d never noticed it before. But she still loved him. He was still Aidan.
And he hadn’t changed.
“He’s still our friend,” Andie had said to her and Henry when Aidan left them alone. “We can’t treat him any different just because of his past. Right? If we say anything, he’d probably get locked up in a government lab or something.”
“He’s a god,” Henry said. “They’d never be able to hold him.” And then he’d shaken his head like he couldn’t believe the words out of his own mouth.
Cassandra wasn’t sure. He didn’t seem like much of a god. Who knew what he was or wasn’t capable of? She looked away, back at the glass tube, the liquid inside still slightly pink. The past was the past. But it stretched out so far, farther than even her imagination could go. How could she catch up? It seemed impossible that she could matter to a being like that. Her whole life would pass and to him it’d be no longer than a moment. Aidan would remain, and eventually their time together would diminish to a dot.
“Maybe we should give up.” Sam leaned against the table staring at their titration, which seemed an even darker pink than before. He raised his hand, the white flag for Miss Mackay. Beside Cassandra, Jeff kept working, adjusting drips and reading and rereading the handout. The flask of base on the table rattled with his efforts.
“Easy, Jeff. You’re going to lose something.” Cassandra reached out to steady it. Then she felt the vibration through her feet. She glanced at Andie, who had finally gotten into a real argument with Sam over how the mistakes had been made and whose fault it was. Neither of them noticed the shaking.
But there was shaking. Reverberating through the entire room. The glass of the titration stations blurred at the edges. Metal desk legs clanged against the linoleum floor; the back row of desks started to slide. Somewhere, a piece of wood split with a loud crack.
Around her, clear glass tubes bounced, and several Erlenmeyer flasks hit the floor and shattered. But everyone kept working. Even Jeff beside her, though she had no idea how he was able to.
“Stay still.”
“Cassandra?” Aidan asked. She heard him from across the room. The floor shifted violently and her legs buckled. She had to grab on to the table to keep from falling. Jagged cracks raced through the linoleum and up the walls, splitting it like an earthquake, and Aidan walked across the room. Dust from the ceiling fell into his hair. An intense heat grew somewhere below them, and the floor rippled like water.
The light fixture fell from the ceiling and sliced into Miss Mackay’s head, right through her pixie cut and into her brain, cleaving her skull open. Cassandra’s stomach lurched. Miss Mackay walked calmly toward Andie and Sam, talking while reddish fluid ran down her cheek and dripped from her chin onto her white lab coat.
Aidan grasped her shoulders. “What’s happening?”
Pressure. It built below them, sucking the air out of the room, and it built in her brain until she thought she might scream. Then it exploded, hurling her backward, boiling her insides. Only the strength in Aidan’s arms kept her on her feet, but she pulled him down, crouching against shattering and flying glass. Women screamed. They were screaming, and then they
Miss Mackay knelt by her side and Aidan said something; they each took an arm and dragged her to the eye-flushing station. She found herself bent over into two soft jets of water. The cool of it brought her back, out of the dust and broken things. Away from the blood.
“Hold your eyes open as much as you can,” Miss Mackay said. “How much got into them? Cassandra?”
“None,” she said shakily. “I mean, I’m okay. I thought it got into my eye, but it didn’t. It doesn’t hurt.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Miss Mackay sighed. “Okay. You scared me. We haven’t lost an eye in here in years.” She clapped Aidan on the back. “I’m kidding. Just to be safe though, keep your eyes in the water for a little longer. And rinse all over your face.” She stayed until Cassandra did it, then ordered the class back to work. Cassandra wondered if she’d ever be able to look at her again without seeing her head split open.
“Hey,” said Aidan, his hand on her lower back. “What just happened? What did you see?”
