“To keep me here? The fact that anyone would even bother to try means a lot, but if I’m not part of the Cape program, I have to pay tuition, and I have no money.”
“How much money is no money?”
I gritted my teeth. “Six dollars and thirty-nine cents.” And I’d stolen all but a dollar of that from the slushy store’s cash register back in the day. “You think I wear Academy greys all the time by choice?”
“But…” she nodded to my suit.
“A hand-me-down from Jeremiah, in exchange for teaching him how to fight. Didn’t realize at the time it would come back and bite me in the ass.” I shrugged. “Anyway, no money means no tuition, and no tuition means I can’t be a student here, regardless of what anyone does.”
“Do they not teach Bakersfield kids about scholarships? You could—”
I almost let myself consider it, the possibility of a few more years at the Academy. Not as a Cape, sure, but still in the general vicinity of the handful of people I privately called friends. Then I remembered that this whole conversation was just a smokescreen. In less than a day, I’d be dead or taking my father’s place in the Hole, and all the scholarships in the world wouldn’t change that.
I forced myself to look amused and shook my head. “I’ve had tutoring every weekend since I got here, and I still think I failed my exams. Does that sound like scholarship material to you?”
Some truths are more evident than others. She blinked and looked away, broad shoulders sagging. “So this is it then.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed past the sudden lump in my throat. No tears—still no fucking tears—but something inside of me squeezed down like it was caught in a vise. “I guess so. Sorry I won’t be around to help in Brownsville. Thanks for everything, Sofia Black.”
“You’re a shitty friend, Damian Banach,” she retorted, wiping her own eyes, “but you are my friend. Take care of yourself.”
“I’ll try. Tell Debbie that if she doesn’t treat you right, I might just come back and sweep you off your feet.”
Silt snorted, but before things could get even more maudlin, Evelyn returned.
The Teleporter had pulled her dark hair back into a bun, and her face was scrubbed clean, but the first thing I noticed was that she’d changed into a fresh set of Academy greys… a set that could have easily fit the Viking. On someone as small as Evelyn, it was a ludicrous amount of extra fabric.
“What the hell?”
She scooped up her water bottle, dropped it into a messenger bag, and swung that bag over one shoulder, extending her other hand to me. “You’ll see, soon enough. Shall we?”
I nodded and took her hand. It wasn’t as soft as Olympia’s, but in my limited experience, nothing was.
“You’re sure you can do this, Evie?” asked Silt.
“Yeah. I don’t even remember the town, but my power sees Ludlow just fine. It’s not going to be fun, but I can do it. See you in a bit, roomie.”
And just like that, the world faded around us.
CHAPTER 67
Every Power is different. That’s what the Academy says about us, and as far as I can tell, it’s true. Two Weather Witches of the same rank will interact with the world in different ways, with different strengths, limitations, and even methodologies. Flyboys all fly, of course, but some do so by pushing against the earth, some do so by nullifying gravity’s effect, and some, like Rocket, just do it through a combination of forward propulsion and vast quantities of speed.
So I can’t tell you what teleportation is like. I can only tell you what teleporting with Wormhole was like.
It sucked.
Imagine a pit where no light has ever penetrated, where the very concept of light has never even existed. Strip away oxygen, strip away form and shape and weight and sound and every other sense you’ve taken for granted all your life. Then, make it really fucking cold, because heat, like light, is just an illusion from another world.
Finally, give time a kick in the ass right out the door. I don’t know how long we were there, in that place. In the real world, only a few seconds passed, if that, but in that dark pit, it felt like days, or even years. When I realized I couldn’t breathe, I started grasping for my power. Was still grasping for it, months later, before I’d even started to exhale.
And then we were through, out into a desert sun that seemed impossibly bright, dry arid soil rough against one of my palms, and Wormhole’s hand feeling grossly distorted in the other.
“Shit. There’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to get Silt to Texas in one hop.” Even Evelyn’s voice seemed different after that long silence. Usually borderline melodic—though I’d never tell her so—now it was almost as rough as Her Majesty’s.
It wasn’t until I looked over at her that I realized why.
The sweats that had hung on Wormhole’s slim frame now struggled to contain her girth. The hand I held was well past pudgy, each finger as thick around as two of mine put together. Even her features were almost unrecognizable under a thick layer of fat.
“What the fuck?”
“Stare a bit longer, asshole.” She shook free of my hand, her body quaking even with that slight movement.
“Sorry, I just…” I coughed. “Is this normal?”
“You mean do I swell up like a blimp every time I teleport?” She wobbled her head. “No. It’s a factor of distance.”
“I don’t understand. Are you… some kind of Shifter?”
“As if.” She shrugged. “I don’t know how real wormholes work, but I fix two locations in my mind, and… sort of burrow between them. But I absorb some of the excess energy along the way and convert it to mass. On short trips, it’s almost unnoticeable. A few hundred miles, and you get…” She waved an
