The Fourth Horseman, excerpt 3

In which shit starts to get real.

Previous excerpts can be found here:
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2

*****

Since we were going to call the Circle, I went right home instead of watching football practice. My parents and I had healed the rift that brought us out to Benowa in the first place, but my mother still preferred it when I was home when she got home. Even better if the dog was walked and fed and I had dinner started when she came through the door. My mother had high standards, but she was not above a little bribery.

She knew something was up, though, when she saw me chopping celery for homemade dressing.

"Okay, what do you want?" she asked, hanging her coat on the hook next to the steps.

"What?" I made my best innocent face, but I was lying my butt off and the woman knew it. "Fine." I sighed. "I want to go over to Gabriel's after dinner. If it's okay with you. I'm done with my homework. I'm making pork chops for dinner. I'll be home by ten thirty.”

"Nine thirty,” my mother said, and my heart leapt. She was letting me go without drama.

“Ten,” I countered.

"If you take Brady."

"Deal." I held out my hand but my mother shook her head.

"Don't touch others or your face while doing food prep." She crutched her way over to the kitchen table, her workbag swinging from one shoulder. I didn’t know how she carried that thing on crutches, but she resisted whenever my dad or I tried to take it from her. "That's a fundamental rule."

"Thanks, Mom," I said. The minute she turned her back, I fake sneezed into the crook of my elbow.

"Not funny," my mother said without missing a step, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

*****

The Beryls lived a few blocks from me, a walk familiar through repetition—Gabriel and I had made the trip hundreds of times a day over the summer—but in the fast-descending twilight, I couldn’t help but remember the first time. I’d been running, chased by a monster I ultimately had to kill. I glanced over my shoulder now, but Morgan was well and truly gone.

Brady, who’d been with me the first walk, was unplagued by demons. He walked out in front of me, tail high, nose to the ground. The best part of moving here in those early dark days had been how happy Brady was. His people were home more, he had a yard to explore, and the neighborhood kids knew his name and would come give him pets when we went by. Brady was living his best life.

My human best friend was not so lucky, though. I pulled out my phone and dialed him, counting the rings aloud. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four—”

“Jason’s Pizza and Shoe Emporium,” he answered.

“My mother asked me if I wanted to go on the pill,” I said.

I heard a gasp, then a clunk, then Jason’s laughter from far away. After a minute he came back on. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasped. “She what?”

“I know!” I said. “She’s making me an appointment.”

“You can’t just spring news like that, Suzy. I dropped my phone!”

“I thought you’d enjoy it.”

“I do, indeed. Do you think she means it?”

I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “It was her idea, so I guess.”

“And then you can boink like bunnies!” Jason exclaimed. “Do me a favor and take some pictures when you do. You don’t have to be in them.”

“Uh huh. That sounds totally appropriate.”

“Tell him it’s because you want to remember the moment.”

“Jesus, you’re a perv.”

“And you’re a prude.”

“I’m a prude because I won’t send you naked pictures of my boyfriend?”

“Yes! A true friend would do anything for me!”

“I saved your life,” I pointed out.

“You’re the reason my life was even in danger!”

“Okay, you introduced me to Morgan. So, technically, you’re the reason that I’m the reason your life was in danger.”

Jason thought for a second. “Fair,” he admitted. “So do you think you will?”

“Send you nudes of Gabriel? No.”

“No, girl. Although think about that. Do you think you’re going to bang the delicious Clark Kent?”

I glanced around, like anyone cared about my answer. A couple of little kids rode their bikes in circles in a driveway a couple of houses down, but otherwise my secret seemed safe. “I mean, we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. I really like him—”

“He’s great. And you know I don’t say that lightly.”

“I know!”

“And he’s hot.”

I sighed again. “That I definitely know.”

“And now you’re parentally sanctioned, so why not?”

I felt like all I could do was sigh. “I don’t know,” I told Jason. “Here’s the thing: I’m stuck here. The Circle, the powers, all of it. I don’t know if I want to add sex on top of everything else. It’s like my whole life is him and his family and maybe I don’t want to be so hooked in.”

“Okay,” Jason said. “But you might have thought of that before you started dating him.”

“It was all messed up!” I said. “Plus . . . I really like him.”

“He is super great,” Jason said. “And hot. But most importantly great.”

“What would you do?” I asked. Asking Jason for relationship advice was a spectacularly bad idea—his love life was always a complete mess—but that’s what best friends are for, to give you advice, even if it’s horrible, and then support you whether you follow it or not.

“I would hit it, for sure,” Jason said. “Worry about the complications later. I mean, who knows? Maybe he’ll be so wonderful all of your concerns will melt away.”

“Or so awful I have to invent a spell to forget.”

“Or maybe you’ll be so bad that he breaks up with you while the bed is still warm. Problem solved!”

“Shut up,” I said. “It’s actually complicated.”

“Yep,” Jason said. “Look, seriously, Suzy, do what feels right. You like him, he likes you . . . if you want to do it, do it. If you have doubts, don’t. You don’t know what happens in the future. Wait, you can’t tell the future, right?”

I chuckled. “No,” I said. “But Merri can.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jason said. “You guys are too weird for me. Just ask him for advice, then.”

“Nah,” I said, like I hadn’t already considered it. “That’s a little too creepy and weird, even for me.”

“Speaking of weird,” Jason said. “How is my little freak Spencer?”

“Still little,” I said. “He’s not even fifteen until next April.”

“Ugg,” Jason said. “Aging takes too long. Can you fix that?”

“I cannot, and I wouldn’t even if I could, you perv.”

“Fine. I don’t even know what use your magical powers are if they can’t help your friends.”

“Ha!” I laughed. “Subjecting Spencer to your advances is not helping him.”

“No, it’s helping me,” Jason said. “I am having the most unbelievable dry spell. No one cute lives in Milwaukee.”

“There are plenty of cute guys there,” I said. “You’ve just worked your way through most of them and now you’re fishing for jail bait.”

“I guess,” he said, but his sigh was tinged with real emotion. His last serious boyfriend, Ethan, had moved away at the beginning of summer, and not sort-of away, like I had when I moved from Milwaukee to the suburbs, but Real Away, to Arizona.

“Have you talked to him,” I asked.

“A couple times,” he said. “We keep forgetting about time zones.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Oh my God! I almost forgot to tell you—Viva’s pregnant!”

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, my breath gone. Viva was our age, one of our friends, a gorgeous Hispanic girl with a sharp tongue and a 4.3 GPA. She was the last person after myself I could imagine pregnant. “For real?”

“For. Real. She won’t tell us who the father is, so you know it’s one of those college guys she bangs, and she says she’s keeping it.”

“Holy . . . Wow.”

“I told you it was big news!”

“Do her parents know?”

“She told them last week,” he said. “They flipped. She’ll have the baby before she’s ungrounded.”

I tried to laugh, but I didn’t really feel it. A baby. She was my age. Suddenly, sex with Gabriel didn’t seem like such a great idea.

“Yeah,” Jason said in response to my silence. “It freaked me out, too.”

“Freaked out isn’t even the word for it,” I said.

“Come visit me this weekend and we can speculate about who the father is.”

“I’ll ask.” I wasn’t grounded anymore, but I wasn’t exactly free; my parents still had to approve all my plans. I certainly wouldn’t be telling them about Viva if I wanted to be let out of the house anytime soon.

“Cool, let me know.”

“Totally. Ciao.”

“Do you have to go?” he asked.

“I’m on my way to Gabriel’s,” I said.

Jason sighed dramatically. “You get a boyfriend and forget all about me.”

“I’m sorry, who is this again?”

He snorted. “Bitch. Let me know about this weekend. Ciao.”

I pressed END. Jason was lonely, but beyond hanging out with him and calling him and texting him, there was nothing I could do. I wondered if this was how he’d felt when I’d been calling him and calling him last spring, leaking my sadness all over him. Probably. “Poor Jason,” I told Brady, who turned one ear at the sound of my voice, but otherwise kept moving. 

I was tying him up on the Beryl’s porch—Gabriel’s mother didn’t allow dogs in the house—when the front door opened.

“—told you why, Ana!” Clarissa, Anastase’s girlfriend. When she saw me she whirled around to Anastase, who was right behind her, wearing jeans and nothing else. “Great,” she told him. “Just great.”

I watched her rush down the front steps to her car. If she wasn’t already crying, she was about to judging from the fumble of keys and the slam of the car door behind her.

“Trouble in paradise?” I asked Anastase as she roared off.

“Paradise? I wouldn’t know.” He held the door open for me.

In the six months I’d known the Beryls, I’d had maybe three conversations with Clarissa. We’d never gotten along, in part because we never tried. Anastase had made his interest in me known, even after Gabriel and I were together, and Clarissa’s jealousy was compounded by the fact that I was an Elemental and she was not. She knew what he was, what we all were, but she had no power. It must be hard, I thought, to be on the outside of your boyfriend’s clique looking in, but she wasn’t interested in accepting my sympathy, so I didn’t spend any time trying to give it.

“They’re ready?” I hung up my jacket in the hall closet and took out my robe. “I have to be home by ten.”

“Pretty close.” He shoved his hands in his jean pockets and leaned up against the wall. Unlike Gabriel, Anastase wasn’t an athlete. He was thin, almost painfully so, the impression of his lower ribs obvious through his skin, his collarbones jutting. Standing up against the wall with his hair in his eyes, he looked like a model, one of the party boys of New York who showed clothes because he was basically built like a hanger.

And he just stood there, his eyes on me, saying nothing. He observed me a lot, and sometimes it was flattering and sometimes annoying. This time, it was on the annoying side of the dial.

“Did you want something?” I asked.

A smile, slanted, ironic. Definitely annoying. “No.”

“Great.” I went into the hall bathroom and shut the door behind me. After a second, I heard him move off.

Gabriel had been my first friend in Benowa, but Anastase had been the first person I noticed, and I’d spent weeks crushing on him, waiting for him to notice me back. He had, but he hadn’t approached me, and by the time things were all figured out, with the powers and the danger we were in and my feelings about Gabriel, the whole situation had been hopelessly complicated. I had chosen Gabriel, and I didn’t regret the decision, because Gabriel was probably the best human being I had ever known, but there were some moments when I wished he wasn’t related to someone who matched my fantasy of my ideal mate so exactly.

I took off my clothes, folding them neatly into my bag in the reverse order I would need them later. We had robes for the ceremony, but besides them, we wore nothing. Merri said some Elementals called their circles totally nude (sky clad, they called it, which I thought was both dorky and beautiful), but those circles weren’t located in a suburb where they could be easily observed. I, for one, was grateful we had robes.

The robes were black silk, like choir robes, except for the embroidery around the hems. Mine hung down to the tops of my feet and the front of the sleeve hit at my wrist, now. It had been too big the first time, but since then Gabriel’s mother had hemmed it to the right length. I had stitched the designs around the bottom hem in colored thread. There weren’t very many of them, yet, because I was a terrible and indifferent seamstress, but I had started by sewing the symbol for each of the Beryls on the robe in the general place they stood when we were in the Circle.

Once I had my robe on and adjusted, I opened the bathroom door. Gabriel sat on the bench in the hallway in his own robe. He smiled when he saw me. “Ana says you have to be home by ten,” he said.

“Correct.” I stepped between his knees. He hugged me, arms around my thighs, face pressed into my belly, and it was delicious, the feel of the silk robe against my skin and his warm hands through it, even though he was careful to keep them low on the backs of my legs. I slid my hand through his dark hair.

“Okay!” He leaned back, his tone of voice telling me I wasn’t the only one thinking about being naked under our robes. “Let go of me, woman!”

I stepped back, smiling, and took his hand. “Come on.”

The rest of them were already out in the growing dark. The Beryls’ backyard was mostly hidden by the high privacy fence and a gigantic tree, but it was still better to do this kind of thing in the darkness, where someone peering out their attic window wouldn’t be able to see much.

We all took our places in formation, them gathered around me, Spencer to the right and Merri to the left, Anastase in front of me and Gabriel behind.

“Ready,” Anastase asked us, and then nodded to me.

I took a deep breath and extended my hands, placing them on the chests of Merri and Spencer over their robes, feeling the independent beats of their hearts. I could tell them apart by touch in a dark room if I had to. After a second, Gabriel placed his hand firmly between my shoulder blades. Then, finally, Anastase, his left palm resting against my sternum in the V of my robe. I took another deep breath.

“I am Anastase,” Anastase said, looking into my eyes. “The First of the Beryl Circle. I am the master of Fire, and the South, and summer, and all that burns. I call the Circle.” His hand grew incrementally warmer on my skin.

Under my left hand, I felt Merri clear his throat. “I am Meriwether,” he said. “The voice of the Water and the West. I am the fall and the waterfall. I call the Circle.”

Behind me, Gabriel spoke. “I am Gabriel,” he said. “I am the power of the North, of the Earth, and of the winter that gives us peace. I call the Circle.”

And, finally, Spencer, under my right hand. “I am Spencer, child of the Air,” he said. “I am the light of the East, the dawn, and the spring. I call the Circle.”

Then it was my turn. “I am Suzanne,” I said. “The Fifth of the Beryl Circle. I am the crossroads, where all directions meet and become one. I call the Circle.”

It happened the same way every time, but it never failed to thrill me, the click of the connection. I could feel the power humming through me, through all of us, like a power line. If we had something to do, some spell or task, we would do it now, but on most days, like this one, the Circle was only to strengthen the bond between us, making it (and us) more and more powerful each time. I sighed, relaxing into it. It usually didn’t last long, a minute or two, but while it—

Merri jerked away, gasping, almost screaming, and the Circle snapped.

“Merri!” Anastase shouted, but I could only fall to the grass in pain. I felt like I’d been slammed in the ribs with the world’s largest rubber band and I clutched at my chest, hardly able to breathe. Gabriel hunched over on his knees, panting for air. The rest of them, like me, were on the ground, hands over their hearts.

“What was that?” Spencer gasped, rubbing his chest through his robe.

“No, nothing.” Merri shook his head. Behind his glasses, his eyes brimmed with tears, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“C’mon.” I reached for him, the pain so bad I could barely lift my arm. “No secrets.”

He shook my hand off his shoulder. “It’s nothing.”

“You fell out of the Circle for nothing,” Anastase asked. “Because it’s fun?”

Merri sighed, wiped his face. “It doesn’t mean anything.” It was his standard warning, every time he was about to tell us one of his visions. The power of Water includes clairvoyance, but from the way Merri talked about it, it seemed more like guessing.

“We know.” Gabriel knelt on the grass beside me. “The future isn’t fixed.”

“Exactly!” Merri said. “So there’s no need to talk about it.”

“Merri,” Spencer said gently, his way of warning Merri that either he had to tell or Spencer would. There were no secrets when you lived with a telepath.

“Fine.” Merri hitched his knees up and put his arms around them. The dim light from the kitchen window flashed off his glasses, but the rest of his face was lost in the dark. My ribcage throbbed in time with my heartbeat.

Merri cleared his throat. “I want to remind everyone before I say anything else that clairvoyance is as much an art as a science, and the visions are often—”

“Merri!” Spencer and I said in unison.

“Okay!” Merri said. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I saw our Circle breaking.”

“How?” Gabriel asked. “What happened?”

“It’s hard to describe,” Merri said. “We were all here, in the Circle, and then some of us weren’t.”

“Which of us,” Anastase asked.

Merri shook his head again. “It changed,” he said. “It was Gabriel, then Spencer, then it was me, and then I went dark, and then I fell.”

I groped for Gabriel’s hand. When a person went dark in one of Merri’s visions, it meant they were dead, all possible futures erased. “Going dark” was death.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Spencer said. “Right, Ana?”

But Anastase was never the reassuring one. “It doesn’t sound fine.”

“It felt . . . I was gone,” Merri said. “I don’t have a better explanation. I’m sorry.”

“You’ll look again, though,” Gabriel said. “You’ll try to figure it out?”

It was an easy question—of course Merri would try to repeat the vision, to figure out what it might mean—but Merri stayed silent for longer than I liked.

“Of course,” he said finally. His hand went to his chest. “But . . . not tonight.”

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” Spencer said, rising to his full height. “Maybe it’s just about you guys graduating and people growing up.” But he was lying to himself and to us and none of us were convinced.

Anastase stood, too, but Gabriel and I stayed on the grass, huddled together. “You don’t know anything else?” he asked Merri.

Merri shook his head. “It came to me all of a sudden. I told you everything I saw.”

“But I was first,” Gabriel said. “You’re sure I was first.”

Merri grimaced. “I don’t know if that means anything, though. We all vanished one at a time.” He pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll look again later. I’m sorry.”

He headed for the house, followed by Anastase and Spencer, who twined together as they walked, their heads close in conversation.

“Hey.” I rubbed Gabriel’s arm. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I don’t think it will.” Gabriel watched as Merri slid the glass door closed behind them.

“C’mon,” I said. “Sure it will. How do you know?”

“Because.” He met my eyes. “If it were fine, Merri wouldn’t have seen it in the first place.”

*****

end excerpt 3