Cassie Harper jolted upright in bed.
On the nightstand, Carrie Underwood belted out a familiar chorus about revenge, slashed tires, and a well-aimed Louisville Slugger—and that could only mean one thing.
With a groan, Cassie snatched up the cell and muted it, annoyed that she’d forgotten to silence the device before falling into bed three hours earlier. She was ready to commit a crime against the caller that was far worse than the property damage being described in his customized ringtone.
After the hell he’d put her best friend through, he deserved worse. A fact she was eager to remind him of every time she got the chance.
He’d called her once a week like clockwork after Alex disappeared—and then kept up the habit even after Alex returned the month before.
Well, returned in the sense that she was home from the past, anyhow. Alex had called her only once since getting back. A thirty second phone call from a number Cassie hadn’t recognized, wherein Alex assured her she was fine, told her she loved her, said Aiden missed her like crazy, and then warned her that they’d be out of touch for a while.
Alex said it was to keep everyone back in Bay View safe.
Cassie didn’t think it would matter one way or the other to the Agency. They’d already proven that the people Alex cared about were fair game.
She stared at the phone’s illuminated screen for a full five seconds before giving in and answering it.
“Someone better be dead or dying, Toad,” she muttered. “Or I swear to God I’ll—”
“Cassie! ” On the other end of the line, Connor Talbot struggled to catch his breath. “Check the news.”
“What?” Cassie scrunched her face in confusion. “It’s the middle of the freaking—”
“Just do it, Cass!” he shouted. “It’s about Lexie.”
And with that, Cassie was wide awake and bolting out of bed, crossing to the laptop she’d left sitting on the cushioned folding chair in the corner of her tiny room.
Flipping it open, she typed in her eighteen-digit password with record speed (oh, the joys of nosey little brothers who enjoyed a challenge) and opened a browser.
“What site?” she demanded.
“Any site.”
Typing in the address for the first news organization that sprang to mind, Cassie was rewarded a moment later with the landing page for ZNN—and a headline that made her eyes widen and her heart stop.
She clicked the video underneath.
“A nationwide manhunt is under way tonight after the reported bombing of a government building in downtown Chicago. Authorities say that while no one was injured in today’s explosion, the terrorists responsible have been linked to multiple similar attacks and are wanted for a number of other serious offenses.”
At this point, the screen cut away from an exterior shot of a gleaming, window-lined building, and switched to a collection of six images.
The driver’s license photos of Alex, Aiden, Declan, Nate, Alex’s Aunt Cil, and John Grayson stared back at her from her computer screen.
At that, Cassie swore loud enough—and long enough—to wake her twin brothers in the next room. One of them thumped angrily on the wall in response.
“If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of these individuals, officials are asking that you call in to the tip line listed below. A $100,000 reward is being offered for any information that leads to their capture.”
“They’re calling her a freaking terrorist, Cass!” Connor was saying. “Lexie. Our Lexie! The same girl that can’t even kill a bug without developing a guilt complex. A terrorist! What did that family get her into?”
Cassie slumped to her bedroom floor and sighed.
This shouldn’t have been a surprise.
What did they expect would happen after the Graysons decided to fight back against a ruthless government organization? A war of words? Peaceful protests? Diplomatic negotiations?
But even still. Seeing her best friends’ faces making headline news wasn’t exactly an easy pill to swallow.
And truth be told, it did come as something of a surprise.
The Agency existed entirely in the shadows. They were a clandestine organization that valued secrecy above all else—the last thing they wanted was for the truth about Variants to become public knowledge. Keeping that secret was half the reason they existed at all.
They’d clearly been careful not to include details about the nature of the resistance’s supposed terrorist acts, relying on the label itself to ensure that Alex and the others were automatically considered the worst sort of criminal.
But what would the Agency do if the truth surrounding the resistance’s cause came out? What would they do if the truth about Variants became public knowledge?
Surely they had to know that going public with the identities of the Grayson family members would lead to an in-depth investigation by the media. How could they possibly hope to keep the truth hidden after this? Were they that desperate to stop the uprising?
Did Alex and the resistance have them backed that far into a corner?
“Cassie?” Connor asked. “Still there?”
“What?” she asked. “Yeah. I’m here. I’m just trying to… process all of it.”
“What should we do?”
Do?
What could they do?
Her phone vibrated in her palm and she pulled it away from her ear to check the text message on the screen—and barely recovered from the shock in time to keep from dropping it.
After a quick fumble with the cell, she put it back to her ear and said, “I’m… uh… I’m going to have to call you back, Connor.”
“Shit,” he muttered. “I knew this was bad.”
“What?”
“You actually used my name, Cass. You haven’t called me anything other than ‘Toad’ since Lexie and I started dating almost two years ago.”
A flash of light illuminated the room and this time, Cassie did drop the phone.
She could hear Connor’s muffled voice calling her name, but it only barely registered. She was on her feet and lunging at her best friend before the violet glow of the jump could fade.
“You’re okay!” Cassie loosened her crushing hold just enough to push her friend back to arm’s length and give her a once-over in the light cast by the computer screen. “You are okay, right? Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, Cass.” Alex was smiling back at her, but even in the darkness, she could tell that the expression was strained at the edges. Her attention shifted to the laptop. “I take it you’ve heard?”
“Heard what? That my best friend in the world has transformed into a modern day Thelma while her ever-faithful Louise has been stuck here in Bay View? Yeah. I noticed. And while you guys have been out there forming your own little Rebel Alliance, this Louise has been scared out of her freaking mind over you.”
Alex gave her an odd look. “That was a really weird mix of movie references, but I get it and I’m totally sorry for the disappearing act, Cass, but we may not have much—”
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Cassie interrupted with a frown. “You look exhausted. And the news report mentioned some kind of bombing…”
Alex visibly cringed. “Yeah, I sorta lost a fight with a piece of Ozzie’s tech. It took out the electricity in the building like it was supposed to, but it packed a bit more punch than I was expecting.”
“Hang on. They sent you inside an Agency building to set off a bomb?”
“Calling it a bomb is a bit of a stretch. It was just a machine that … malfunctioned. I mean, it did sort of blind me for a while and I might have tweaked my shoulder a bit—but I’m fine now, see? All better. Holls fixed me. And the explosion really wasn’t that big… I mean, yeah I guess it did sort of fry the building’s electronics, but it’s not like it did any permanent structural damage, so I—”
Alex trailed off, having finally registered the open-mouthed look of shock that Cassie now sported.
In the silence that followed, Connor’s voice could be heard shouting through the cell on the floor, demanding that Cassie pick up the phone.
“Is that who I think it is?” asked Alex, glancing toward the discarded phone.
Cassie shook her head. “Ignore him. The better question is, what are you doing here? I mean, it’s not that I’m not thrilled to see you, even at one in the morning, but… why? I thought you said we wouldn’t be able to see each other again until things cooled down.” She gestured to the computer. “That is not cooled down. That is flippin’ nuclear.”
Alex frowned at the screen. “Yeah. It’s why I came. We needed to get you out of here before—”
Cutting herself short this time, Alex looked sharply to her left and stared with narrowed eyes at the wall as though she could see straight through the Harpers’ two-story home and out onto the road.
Was Superman-style X-Ray vision an actual Variant ability? At this point, she really wouldn't have been all that surprised.
Cassie stared blankly at the empty wall. “What are…”
Alex held up a hand and motioned for her to be quiet. Her head tilted slightly to one side and her forehead crinkled, as though she were straining to hear a faraway conversation.
“Crap,” Alex mumbled, then nearly tripped over Cassie’s backpack when she lunged for the closet. “I was hoping we’d have more time.”
She pulled open the door, grabbed a duffle bag from the top shelf, and dropped it onto the floor.
“What are you—”
“Pack, Cassie,” Alex said, ripping clothes from hangers and stuffing them haphazardly into the bag. “We’ve got about a minute-and-a-half before they make it to your front door and I kinda doubt they’ll be polite enough to knock.”
Abandoning the clothes for a moment, Alex shifted her attention to Cassie’s desk. She picked up the high-backed wooden chair and dragged it to the bedroom door, tilting it back to wedge it beneath the knob.
“I— You— Pack? Lexie, what the crap are you talking about? Who is about to reach my front door?”
Alex had moved to the dresser and was now lobbing handfuls of Cassie’s undergarments into the open bag.
It was difficult to tell in the low light, but the look on her friend’s face seemed to have turned vaguely sheepish. “Um… Homeland Security?”
“HOMELAND SECURITY?!” Connor’s voice roared through the phone on the floor. Apparently he could still hear their conversation just fine. “Will one of you please pick up the damn phone?!”
“Pack, Cass.” Alex tossed the jeans she was holding into the bag and moved to pick up Cassie’s discarded cell. “Fast as you can.”
Swallowing a sudden onslaught of panic, Cassie turned in a frenzied circle, trying to decide what she should take with her. She reached for her laptop and Alex let out a strangled sound.
“Not that,” said Alex, pausing with the phone halfway to her ear. “No tech. Nothing that they can trace.”
Nothing traceable. Right.
Okay.
She knelt beside the bag and sifted through the contents in the pale light, trying to see if Alex’s frenzied grab for clothing had missed anything crucial.
Cassie was reaching into the drawer for a pair of pajamas, when the sound of her best friend’s voice brought her up short.
“Connor, I need you to do something for—No, but… You know I can’t tell you tha—Dammit, Connor. Shut up and listen, would you?”
There was something in Alex’s tone that Cassie didn’t recognize. Something that her friend’s voice had never held before. Something entirely new.
It was the sound of authority. The sound of confidence.
It was a tone that brooked no argument.
It was the cool composure of a girl who had somehow grown accustomed to these moments of chaos, and now knew exactly what to say and do to make sure that she—and that everyone around her—lasted long enough to make it to the next moment.
How, exactly, had that change come about?
And when?
Just how much had Cassie missed in the months since she’d last seen her best friend?
“Are you listening?” Alex asked. “Good. Sometime in the next few hours you are going to be interrogated by agents from either the FBI, the DOD, or Homeland Security. Possibly all three. When they ask you about me, about the Graysons, about anyone, you are going to tell them all the exact same thing: you don’t know. Got it? You haven’t spoken to any of us since school let out last May. You. Know. Nothing. Is that understood? … Good.” Alex paused and her mask of confidence began to slip. “Be safe, Connor.”
Alex pulled the phone away from her ear and enveloped it in a crackling violet ball of electricity. The phone suitably fried, she dissipated the charge and tossed it into the chair.
“Time’s up, Cass,” said Alex. She grabbed the straps of the duffel bag with one hand, and Cassie’s elbow with the other. “Brace yourself.”
“But what about my fam—”
Cassie’s question was cut short not by the suffocating sensation of the jump that she’d been expecting, but instead by the hollow click of the power in her house shutting off and the unsettling sensation of static electricity washing over her bare skin… before disappearing altogether.
Alex’s sigh bordered on a groan. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken those extra seconds to talk to Connor.”
“What just happened?” Cassie asked.
“Short version?” Alex crossed to the far wall, peeking through the blinds of the bedroom’s lone window down into the backyard below. “The Agency has a device that sends out a pulse and makes it impossible for jumpers to teleport. And someone just set one off.”
“Oh,” she said. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” said Alex. She released the blinds and stepped back. “Oh shit about sums this up.”
A violent thud reverberated through the walls, radiating upward from the first floor, and Cassie spun to face the door to the hallway. A second collision followed close behind, this time accompanied by the sound of shattering wood. Someone had just broken down her front door.
Whoever was coming for them was on their way inside the house. And their only possibility for escape was no longer an option.
Heavy footsteps sounded in the living room downstairs.
Cassie eyed the barricaded door with apprehension. “Now what?”
Behind her, something exploded. Cassie instinctively covered her head as a fine dust rained down throughout the room.
She spun toward the sound and discovered that a gaping hole now sat where half of her bedroom wall once stood. She stared at the destruction slack-jawed and mute, too surprised to speak.
“Now, I start putting together the perfect apology for your parents,” said Alex, shouldering the duffle bag and holding out a hand to Cassie, “and you and I pull a Peter Pan before the feds make it up the stairs and burst through that door.”
“I… They… Hang on. Pull a what?” she choked out.
Alex closed the distance between them, took hold of Cassie’s hand, and gently dragged her toward the opening in her newly demolished wall.
Finding her voice, Cassie said, “Lexie, what about my parents? My brothers? I can’t leave them like this, I can’t just—”
“Cass. Your family will be okay. But you won’t be. We have to go. Now.”
Cassie swallowed.
She could hear her little brothers, Runt and Danny, shouting in the hallway and the pounding of feet on the staircase.
Slowly, she stepped to the ledge. “You’ve done this before, right?”
The look on Alex’s face wasn’t exactly a confidence builder.
Her friend shrugged one shoulder. “Think happy thoughts, Cass.”
And then the ground fell away and she and Alex we’re traveling up, up, up, faster than Cassie could react. For an instant, it felt as though the gravity that formerly held them earthbound had increased at least tenfold, swallowing her in an intense envelope of pressure before letting up just as quickly. They jolted to a stop seconds later, causing her stomach to dip in a nauseating fashion. She heard Alex mumble a word that sounded a lot like “whoops.”
It was then that Cassie made what was, without a doubt, the worst mistake she could have made in that moment—she looked down.
With her stomach already reeling from the ride, the vista that unfurled endlessly below them was almost, but not quite, enough to make her sick. It was, however, more than enough to elicit a scream of terror.
“Whoa! Hey! Cass!” Alex was suddenly floating in front of her, both hands gripping her shoulders. “Look at me, not at that.”
The “that” to which Alex referred was a seemingly endless expanse of wispy gray clouds, tinted orange in places further out from the scattered lights of Bay View below. A section of the ground beneath them was inexplicably dim, creating a strange, lightless circle that stretched for a long distance before being illuminated at its edges. All around and above them was an ocean of darkness, gradients of pale gray and pitch black, the stars hidden behind impenetrable clouds.
“I thought you were good with heights,” said Alex.
The genuine sound of confusion in her friend’s voice prompted a hysterical laugh from Cassie.
“Heights, sure,” she managed. “Cloud surfing, not so much. Please. Please, Lexie… just take us back down.”
“Alright,” said Alex. “It’s alright. I’ll have you back on the ground really soon. I just need to go… sideways for a bit before we head back down. No more going up, I promise. I have to move us to an area that wasn’t affected by the EMP so that I can recharge and we can jump somewhere safe. Is that okay?”
Cassie nodded in the darkness.
Alex must have registered her assent, because she added, “Okay. I’d say close your eyes, but I’m not sure that would really help in this situation. Just… um…”
“Happy thoughts,” Cassie mumbled. A gentle breeze washed over her as they slid through the air. “Happy thoughts.”
It felt a bit like riding on one of those moving walkways you find in an airport, shuttling people from one terminal to the next. Mild compared to their sudden ascension, but equally unsettling nonetheless.
Happy thoughts, Cassie reminded herself. Kissing Aiden for the first time in the pouring rain, the warmth of the sun on my skin and gritty sand between my toes, the feeling of paste covering my fingers while working with the papier-mâché tonight, that unexpected half-off sale at Neiman Marcus last week…
“What’s an ‘imp?’” Cassie asked, her train of happy memories derailed by the sudden realization that, in this particular instance, her friend probably hadn’t been referring to little red men sporting horns, wings, pointy tails, and pitchforks.
“What?”
They lurched to such a sudden stop that Cassie instinctively clenched Alex’s right arm in a death grip.
Note to self: don’t distract the designated flier.
They began moving sideways again, a bit more slowly this time as Alex split her focus between flying and answering the question.
And oh, holy crap on a cracker, her best friend could fly. This was insane.
Cassie wondered, briefly, if perhaps she was still asleep and this entire series of events was nothing more than a dream—and then she looked down again, experienced a renewed wave of nausea and realized that she, most decidedly, was awake and that all of this was actually happening.
“It’s a non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse… thingy… that the Agency developed. We started calling them ‘EMPs’ for short. They’re about the size of a briefcase and when they set one off it can temporarily strip a jumper’s ability and knock out the power for a pretty big area, depending on how intense they want the pulse to be. They must have had this one dialed up to eleven, because I still can’t feel any electricity and we must’ve traveled at least half a mile by now.” There was a long moment of silence, followed by, “Hey, Cass? I know I promised not to go up again… but how do you feel about going down, exactly?”
Again, Cassie tightened her grip around Alex’s arm. She’d be surprised if the other girl could even feel her right hand at this point.
“That depends,” she said slowly, “on exactly how quickly you plan on sending us in that direction. Because if it’s at roughly the pace of a tranqed-up snail, I’ll be good. But if it involves any sort of swan dive, I’m just gonna have to go ahead and veto that motion. Loudly and violently, if necessary.”
“Right. Got it. No swanning about.”
“If that was your attempt at a joke, I’m embarrassed for the both of us. I really thought I trained you better.”
They started their descent, slow and steady, until they breached the lowest bank of cool, wispy clouds and emerged high in the sky, adjacent to a still-illuminated swath of Bay View. Twenty seconds more and they were above the darkened canopy of a copse of pine trees.
Alex stopped. “Okay,” she said finally. “Got what I needed. Brace yourself, and we’ll be back on terra firma and roughly eight states further north in no time at all. Ready?”
“For the love of God, Lexie, just do it already and get us back on solid ground before I pass out.”
The ensuing jump put the pressure she’d felt earlier utterly to shame. Thankfully, it was over almost as quickly as it began and Cassie opened her eyes to discover that Alex had kept her word.
They’d reappeared out of doors next to a blazing campfire, far from the nearest city, judging from the clear array of stars shining overhead.
The hard-packed dirt was cool and dry beneath her bare feet. It was, without a doubt, the most glorious sensation she’d felt in her entire life. She resisted the urge to drop to her knees and give it a kiss.
Exhaling long and low, she clung to Alex’s arm for fear that her wobbly knees might give out at any moment.
“Cassie!”
In the next instant Cassie was, quite literally, swept off her feet and into Aiden’s strong arms. She held on tightly, relishing the warm embrace and the familiar scent of the beach that seemed to cling to him no matter how far he found himself from the ocean.
Setting her down, he leaned forward and kissed her full on the lips—a greeting she happily returned.
“Glad you’re okay, Cassie,” said Nate. His tone was relieved, but also unexpectedly gruff.
Breaking off the kiss, she turned to find Declan standing beside his brother, staring at Alex with his arms crossed and an equally stern look on his face.
“But next time, Lex, wait for backup,” said Nate. “Don’t just jump headlong into a situation you know nothing about.”
Ah. Okay, well that explained the serious look on their faces.
Alex tensed and opened her mouth to protest, but Cassie beat her to the punch.
“Hey, now,” said Cassie, feeling a sudden need to defend her friend. “If Lexie hadn’t shown up exactly when she had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We only barely escaped in time as it was. I, for one, am kinda grateful she didn’t wait. Lexie totally saved my butt and I owe her. Big time.”
Her testimony caused the others to relax slightly. Declan and Aiden even summoned a smile.
Nate appeared to realize that his sour demeanor might not make for the best greeting. He allowed his scowl to dissolve into something resembling a smile.
“It really is good to see you again, Cass,” he said.
“You too,” she replied. “I kinda missed you dorks.”
Aiden pulled her closer again.
“Missed that smile of yours even more than you know, beautiful,” he said, grinning. Aiden picked her up a second time and spun her around before putting her back down again.
She laughed, then added, “I’m glad to see you, too, but please… If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep my feet on the ground from now on. I’ve had my fill of weightlessness for one night—and I never, ever want to fly with you again, Lexie. Even if it is the only means of escape we have left.”
The innocent statement hung heavy in the air and then, like a sudden downpour dissolving the muggy stillness of a summer afternoon, everyone around her immediately stopped smiling.
Alex drew in a breath, her face pinched as though preparing for the argument she knew was about to break. Declan tilted his head back and stared at the sky, looking simultaneously aggravated and defeated. Aiden winced as though he knew something unpleasant was about to occur. And Nate…
Well, Nate’s expression teetered between furious and dumbstruck before settling into a steady glower.
“You did what?” Nate demanded. “There’s a reason that each time you asked me to teach you how to levitate I refused, Lex. Dammit, you could have crushed the life out of yourself and Cassie! Did you even think about that?”
Wait, wait.
Hold up.
Alex could have accidentally crushed them when they attempted to fly earlier?
Cassie thought back to the intense pressure she’d felt when they’d first taken to the air. At the time, she’d assumed it was just the natural resistance of gravity. Now she wondered if it might have been something else entirely.
“Of course I thought about it, Nate!” she snapped. “And then I thought about the EMP they’d just set off, the sound of the footsteps in the hallway, and the image of Cassie being locked up for the rest of her life, just for being my best friend.”
Alex began to pace, a roil of pent up anger and a surge of adrenaline suddenly—blatantly—begging for an exit. Cassie eyed her movements warily.
“It was reckless, Lex.”
“It was my only option, Nate,” Alex bit back. She stopped her pacing and spun to face him. “You know what else I thought about while I was risking my best friend’s life in my attempt to save it?”
Nate stared stonily back at her, but said nothing. Behind Alex, Cassie could just make out Grayson, Cil, and Kenzie approaching from a cluster of buildings that stood in the distance.
“I kept thinking, if only… If only Nate had trusted me enough to teach me this move sooner. If only he’d prepared me for this moment, instead of playing it safe and leaving me desperate and defenseless because he was too busy protecting me to teach me how to protect myself when it mattered the most.”
Whatever was fueling her friend’s anger, this wasn’t something new. This was something that had been building.
For a while, from the looks of it.
Alex gave a humorless laugh. “All of you. You’re all so damn busy trying to protect me that you refuse to teach me the things I need to know in order to actually help you,” she said. “And you know what? Fine. The next time one of you is at risk of having their cover blown, or stuck hiding under a cubicle desk in an Agency building, or about to be arrested by federal agents for absolutely no crime at all… When the moment finally comes that I can’t help you, I want you to remember that I fucking tried. I tried to. And you were the ones that stopped me from being ready. You were the ones that kept holding me back.
“When I finally fail to save someone, you’ll be the ones who are truly to blame. But I will be the one who’ll get to live the rest of my life saddled with the guilt.”
Seemingly spent, Alex deflated, her shoulders drooping as she turned and stalked off toward the lights of the largest house in the grouping. Cil tried to slow her niece as she stormed past, but Alex easily shrugged off her aunt’s hand.
Cassie stared at her retreating back, too stunned to react and too taken aback to even think about chasing after her.
Never—not once in the ten years they’d been friends—had she ever seen Alex go off on someone like that. Before tonight, Cassie would have sworn her friend didn’t have it in her to go on such a tirade against people she cared about.
Cassie turned an accusing glare toward Nate, Aiden, and Declan. “What. The. Hell. Was that about? What did you do to her? It had to have been something pretty unforgivable, because that?” She pointed a finger toward the direction Alex had vanished. “That is not my friend. That is not Lexie.”
Cil, Grayson, and Kenzie finally reached them, observed the tense silence, and wisely said nothing.
For a long, leaden moment, no one else spoke either.
Finally, Declan started walking toward the building. Nate snagged him by the elbow before he could take more than a few steps.
With a terse “I’ll talk to her,” Nate left the group behind and trudged toward what must have been the compound’s main building.
That boy better have one hell of a speech in mind, she mused.
Or one hell of an apology. She got the distinct feeling Alex was more deserving of the latter.
Cassie turned her attention toward Grayson and narrowed her eyes. “Two things, Mr. Grayson. The first—I want you to do everything you can to make sure my family is okay after what went down tonight.”
“Of course.” Grayson nodded. “You have my word.”
“And second… I need to know exactly what Lexie’s been through since I last saw her. And I do mean everything. So one of you better start talking. Now.”