Aiden
Only the sound of my footsteps on the white tile echo in the training room. I survey around me, taking in the view of the high arched ceilings and the sterile white walls, but an invisible punch could fly at me at any moment. Only one person could disappear in here, even with his black training suit on. Maybe I should erect a forcefield? But I’m up for some good hand-to-hand combat.
I stretch my arms over my head, trying to flex. “C’mon, Billy…” I scan the room for any shift in movement. “Are we going to practice or not?”
A spot near the wall slowly morphs from shades of white to black and brown, mixing with a cream color. Billy appears, wearing the same full-body training suit as me, but it’s tighter on his buff frame. He leans against the wall, crossing his arms, and his face is uncharacteristically tense.
“Hey, what’s up?” I ask, feeling slightly worried. “Is everything okay?”
The crease in his forehead deepens. “I guess that depends on your definition of okay, man.”
“Did you break up with Carly?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet. I’m going to talk to her later.”
Worry crawls up my throat. “Is it your brother? I thought he was doing better.”
“It’s not Ian. He’s actually walking again, thanks to Dr. Sarcio.” Billy narrows his gaze. “It’s about you.”
“Me?” I point a finger at my chest. “What did I do?”
“It’s more about what you didn’t do.”
“Just tell me,” I say frustratedly.
Billy steps toward me; his stare is firm. “Were you ever going to tell me about the curse? The serum? That it’s in you?”
Confusion rushes through me, along with fear. Even knowing these walls are soundproof can’t keep me from looking over my shoulder, making certain we’re alone. “How did you find out about that?”
He inhales slowly. “Ember.”
“What?” I wrestle with an abrupt sense of betrayal. Of course, it was her. She’s the only one who knows other than Valentino. “Why did she tell you?”
“I think the bigger question is…” Sadness fills Billy’s brown eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Apprehension inches its way into my chest. “I didn’t want to drag you into it. It’s dangerous information.”
He scoffs. A mixture of humor and disbelief crosses his face. “Villains have poisoned you with some shit that’s causing you to lose your marbles, and you don’t think you should tell your best friend? Let me guess. Your parents have no clue either, do they?”
“Of course not,” I say, like it’s a no-brainer. “Why would I tell them?”
“I don’t know? Maybe because you’re their son?” Billy acts like I’m the one who’s being unreasonable. “They could help you.”
“No.” My lips quiver, and a couple sparks shoot from my fingertips. “I’m not going to put this on them. Or you. Ember shouldn’t have told you.”
“She didn’t want to, but I pushed her too hard, and she broke,” he says with a sense of regret. “She’s worried about you, especially after your little breakdown yesterday. It’s clear you need some help.”
“And you think this is how you’ll help me?” Lightning cracks madly around my arms. “By talking to me like this?” This was supposed to be fun training with my best friend, not an interrogation.
“It hurts, man!” Billy’s skin swirls faster between black and brown. “That you didn’t trust me with this, especially after everything we’ve gone through.”
“I wanted to protect you.”
“Secrets never protect anyone but the person who’s hiding them!” Billy shouts, his growing frustration taking over. “Isn’t that what you were really doing when you hid your connection to Ember’s parents from her? It wasn’t about her. It was about you!”
“I want to stop talking about this.” My eyes sting with electricity, and I form one of my blasts between my hands, it’s the size of a blue bowling ball but translucent and pulsates with electrical energy. “Let’s battle already!”
Billy’s lips curl into a snarl, and he fades, blending in with the room.
I chuck my blast into the wall a few feet from where Billy was standing, wanting to get some of my anger out before it becomes too uncontrollable.
“I guess if you won’t open up to me about that, I might as well tell you something else,” Billy’s voice echoes around the room. “After Ember told me everything, we broke into the dean’s office.”
His revelation stuns me into silence. My brain doesn’t want to accept that he’d put himself and Ember in such a dangerous situation.
“I thought if we could find something tying Warwick to the villains, it could help you,” he continues, but a ghost might as well be speaking to me. “While helping Valentino with her investigation.”
“What were you thinking?” Electricity cracks madly from my hands. “You could’ve been caught!”
“I wanted to help!” Billy appears near the opposite corner. His black suit makes him an obvious target against the white wall. “I figured the dean’s office was the best place to start.”
“What did you do?” My breathing grows shallower, and my heart thumps harder with anxiety.
Billy pushes his hair out of his face. “Honestly, man, we couldn’t do anything, because the dean’s secretary turned up with her husband.”
The thought that Susan appeared, the very woman who was pushing the dean to choose a candidate for the curse, paralyzes me with distress.
What’s worse is that she wasn’t alone.
“Her husband?” I ask, scared of the answer.
“Yeah.” Billy swallows loudly, and his chest seems to quiver. “Seems like the chick is married to Twisted Bill.”
My eyes grow to double their size. Twisted Bill—the man who can kill anyone if he holds their gaze long enough.
Ember was near him.
Fury charges my abilities, and my veins pulsate, turning blue. “You idiot! You not only risked your life but Ember’s too!”
“I didn’t want her to come with me!”
“You should’ve stopped her!”
“She’s a big girl, Aiden! She can do what she wants!”
I form a forcefield around me, more for Billy’s protection than mine. Thin blue lines of energy connect me to my barrier, electricity scurries throughout it. “I can’t believe you were so stupid!”
Billy narrows his eyes. “You know what’s stupid? Thinking you can handle this all on your own.”
“Valentino knows!” I snap. “She’s going to help me!”
“That’s great! But you need your family, Aiden. We’re brothers!”
“You’re no brother of mine!” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret them, but my anger about the situation doesn’t let me apologize. “If you really cared about me, you wouldn’t have risked Ember’s safety. Or your own!”
Billy frowns; his skin swirls wildly into white and spreads over the suit, camouflaging in the air. An invisible force runs into my barrier, rippling it inward, like sonar waves, and I stumble.
“Billy! You’ll get nowhere doing that! You’ll just get hurt!”
A slight ripple of colors exposes his location in front of my forcefield.
“I can see you.” I cross my arms. “You’re being stupid.”
He appears in front of my barrier. “I’d rather be stupid than a total ass like you!”
His jab hurts, but it also irritates my anger. My veins light up brighter, surging more energy from me to my barrier. It glows intensely while electricity bounces aggressively around the forcefield.
Billy’s eyes brighten, reflecting the bolts. “I get why you’re upset about what I did, but I needed to try to do something to help you.” He drops his shoulders.
“What would you have done if you guys got caught?” I ask, not hiding my irritation. “How would you two have explained yourselves?”
Billy’s upper lip twitches sheepishly. “We kind of did get caught. Well, Ember did, but—”
“What!” Panic overrides all my senses, and bolts shoot from me. I get the urge to rush from the room to check on Ember, half expecting to find out she’s been arrested, but if that was the case, there’s no way I wouldn’t have heard about it.
“Don’t worry. She handled it like a pro.” Billy waves his hands like a white flag. “Susan came back after we thought they had left for good, but Ember told her she was looking for the dean, and the chick seemed to buy the story.”
The room lights up. My forcefield breaks apart as the electrical storm inside rages outward. The fact that it seems like they somehow miraculously didn’t get in trouble should calm me, but it doesn’t. “The villains are eyeing Ember for the next test subject. Susan could’ve taken her!” My blood burns like lava in my veins, and my vision blurs while a mad rush of energy consumes me. “Do you know what you’ve done? There’s no way Susan bought Ember’s story. I may be the poisoned one right now, but this has put a larger target on her back!”
Billy dodges a lightning bolt cracking madly his way and grunts when he hits the floor. “Aiden, calm down.”
“What else happened?” I step toward him. A blast forms in my hand, and electricity bounces madly around inside it. Billy’s skin and black training suit take on a bluish hue. “Tell me!”
“You know what? No!” Billy’s fury masks his face. His entire body swirls with colors of white and blue, camouflaging into the floor again.
I hurl the blast. It crashes into the spot where Billy was, exploding like a firework on impact. Steps rush past me, too quickly for me to react, and the pressure of an arm wraps around my neck, putting me into a chokehold. I grab the invisible force, trying to pry it away.
“You don’t like it when someone won’t tell you something, do you?” Billy says next to my ear. “How does it feel?”
I clench my jaw, amping my voltage but not to my full potential. Electricity crackles from my fingertips around Billy’s invisible arm. He tenses, locking me in his hold, and I gag, struggling to breathe.
His arm appears in my hands, swirling madly between colors. “Aiden,” he pleads. “Stop. I can’t let go.”
The pain in his voice acts as an off switch to my abilities. A loud thud echoes behind me as Billy drops to the floor.
“Billy!” I kneel next to him, shaking with worry. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Billy’s arms twitch while faint tendrils of white smoke rise from him. “Sometimes I just forget how… how powerful you are.”
I sigh in relief and try to lighten the mood by saying, “This is a bad time to remind you that you’ve never been able to beat me, is it?”
He nods, tightening his lips in annoyance. “Yeah. Kind of a dick move, man.”
My energy calms in my veins, and they fade into my pale skin. “Seriously though, are you okay?” My throat burns with guilt about letting my anger get the best of me. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I couldn’t breathe.”
“I didn’t quite realize I was holding you that tight. Sorry.” Billy rubs his arms. “I don’t think I have any muscle tears, but I won’t lie; that shock hurt!”
“I’m sorry too.” I look to the side, feeling ashamed. “I let my anger get the best of me—again.”
Billy sits upright, exhaling loudly. “Eh. It’s not like I wasn’t egging you on.”
“Why were you?” I ask and sit across from him. The white tile is cool. “Especially since you know about the serum now.”
He shrugs. “History has shown that you’ll only talk to me if I’m a little aggressive with my questioning, especially about something you’re hiding.”
“I guess… you’re right.” A memory resurfaces. Of me sitting in my room, months after the murders of Emerald Blaze and Digger, and Billy yelling at me to open up to him. He didn’t understand why I was becoming such a recluse. He felt like he was losing his friend and had no clue as to why. It was only then that I finally broke, telling him everything that I swore I wouldn’t tell another soul, but I needed someone to confide in other than my parents. I needed a peer. A friend. “Just, let’s promise not to fight like this again.”
“Okay, man.” Billy chuckles. “But only if you promise me that I won’t learn about something like this from your girlfriend next time.”
“I wish you didn’t learn it like that,” I mumble.
Billy leans his head against the white wall. “You still haven’t really said why you didn’t tell me.”
“I was scared. Valentino warned me that if too many people found out about what’s going on with the curse, it would be easier for Warwick to discover we’re onto him, and I didn’t want to put a target on your back,” I answer, letting the gravity of the situation pull me down. “It’s bad enough that Ember is involved with all of this, but there was no stopping that from happening. I could at least try to keep you safe.”
“Aiden, it’s what friends do. We’re here for each other when shit gets rough.”
“I know,” I say, feeling a little defeated for some reason.
Billy frowns. “So, you really think it’s in you? The serum?”
“Yeah.” My throat grows tight. “There’s no other explanation for what happened yesterday. I got angry too quickly.”
Silence grows between us—a horror brewing in the stillness.
“How can I help?” Determination forms in Billy’s gaze. “What can I do?”
I rub my forehead, feeling fatigue drenching me—especially after everything yesterday and now this today. “The only thing you can do is try to stop me if you see me losing it.”
“Okay,” Billy says with a quick nod. “I can do that. It’s what I’ve been doing already, even without knowing what’s going on.”
“Thanks.” I try to smile, but a sense of depression weighs me down.
“Can I say something else?” Billy asks, almost fearfully.
It’s not like there’s anything worse he could tell me. “Sure.”
“Don’t be mad at Ember,” he says almost like a plea. “She didn’t want to tell me, but I think it took her off guard that I didn’t know.”
It takes me a moment to grapple with my emotions about Ember. I assumed and trusted that she wouldn’t talk to anyone about these things. There’s a sense of betrayal but, even if it’s hard to admit, the tiniest sense of relief. Billy knows now. I have someone else to confide in. “I guess I’m not mad, but I am hurt,” I answer honestly. “I wish she would’ve talked to me first before talking to you.”
Billy shrugs with a nod. “I guess that’s fair.”
But is it fair to expect Ember to have carried this heavy burden by herself? The very villains who are tied to her parents’ murders have poisoned me, and she’s scared that she’ll lose me. How can I fault her for wanting to talk to someone? Especially since she talked to Billy—someone she probably assumed knew about the situation.
“How about your parents?” Billy asks, taking me off guard. “Will you tell them anything?”
“I–I can’t,” I stutter, feeling overwhelmed with even the idea of talking to them. “If I can spare them some worry, I’ll do it, especially after all I put them through in the past.”
“Y’know, you never took my advice about going back to your therapist last semester, and—”
“It’s not that I don’t want to go back, Billy,” I say defensively. “I don’t have the time, and it’s not like my therapist could get the serum out of me.”
Billy drags his hand over his face. “I won’t argue with you about this, man. At least give it some thought.” He rubs his arm and winces. “I don’t know if I can battle anymore today.”
I stand and proffer my hand to him. “How about we call it a day, then, and hang out at the Coffee Bar? We both could use a break. Valentino is busy teaching the rest of the class anyway. She won’t notice if we stop. The benefit of this special training I guess.”
He takes my hand, and I pull him up. It requires a little more effort than I care to admit. He must be around 300 pounds, with all his muscles, especially after all the extra training since coming to the university.
“Thanks,” he says and stretches his arms behind him.
“I should be thanking you.” I rest my hand on his shoulder. “For not giving up on me.” A sense of guilt envelopes me. “And I’m sorry for what I said about you not being my brother. Maybe not by blood, but you are in any way that matters.”
He pats me on the opposite shoulder. “Yeah, that was a dickish thing to say, but emotions were high.” A faint hurt reflects in his stare. “I’ll always have your back, man. Don’t forget that.”
I’ve let way too many emotions cloud my judgment for way too long. Even with the serum inside of me, there’s no excuse for excluding Billy. He’s always been a friend who I can rely on and trust. “I promise, I won’t forget that again.”
* * *
Ember silently picks at her meatloaf dinner next to me, avoiding my gaze. Her pale skin glows even with us sitting at a round table, away from the cafeteria windows. Or maybe her abilities are a bit restless, since we’re not used to having this kind of tension between us.
“Billy told you everything, then?” she asks, finally meeting my eyes.
I set my fork on my tray next to my plate and keep my voice even when I say, “He did.”
Ember bites her lip nervously. “I’m so sorry, Aiden. I was shocked that you hadn’t told him, then he was questioning me and probing, and before I knew it, I was telling him everything, then he took off for Stu’s office.” She looks around to ensure no one can hear us, but all the other tables are closer to the windows in this part of the student center. “It spiraled out of control so quickly.”
I stay quiet, trying to get a handle on my feelings about everything.
“Okay, maybe I should’ve urged him not to go to Stu’s office, but he’s stubborn!” Ember’s cheeks simmer with anger.
I suppress a smile. It’s kind of funny. That’s almost the same thing Billy said about her.
“I guess,” she says softly. “I was hoping we would find something—something we could use to get Stu removed and help you. You can’t blame me for that.”
I frown, reflecting my disapproval.
“What? You can’t. Of course, I want to help you in any way I can. And I’m tired of doing nothing.”
I feel my objection reflecting in my eyes. Not that what she says isn’t true, but about her risking her safety to help me.
“Stop looking at me like I’m crazy,” she hisses, and her eyes flicker. “We found out that Twisted Bill and Susan are together. You can tell Valentino about that. She could use that information to help get Stu removed.”
She’s right. That could be useful. “I’ll let her know, but I still wish you didn’t risk your safety like that.”
She scoffs. “Billy wouldn’t listen to reason, so, of course, I had to go. But… I didn’t try too hard to stop him. Like I said, I’m tired of doing nothing. Hopefully, Susan didn’t think too much about seeing me, but even if she does, I don’t care. All I care about is making sure you’re safe and—”
My lips cut her off, softening around hers. She melts into my kiss.
I nuzzle my forehead against hers. “Thank you.”
Her emerald-colored eyes glimmer. “For what?”
“For going with Billy and for being here for me.”
“You’re not mad?”
“I was,” I answer truthfully. “And I’m still a little hurt that you told him, but I can’t fault you for thinking that he’d know. Just next time, please check with me first, especially about something sensitive like this.”
“Of course.” She nods slowly. “And I’m so sorry. If it makes you feel better, I haven’t told Stella anything about the serum either. I haven’t wanted to get her involved, so I get why you didn’t tell Billy. It just surprised me.”
“I forgive you.” I caress her cheek and behold her gorgeous green eyes. “But maybe we should tell Stella? Our friends deserve to know. They’re strong and can handle it. We can trust them.”
“You’re right.” Ember looks behind me with a slight smile. “Speak of the devil!”
“Hey, you two!” Stella appears around me and sets her tray, containing a plate of meatloaf and a separate dish full of chicken tenders, on the table. Her springy hair is tied up in pigtails with yellow glitter scrunchies that match her top. “Sorry, I’m a little late.” She eyes Lime with an amused smile. “This little guy decided he wanted to chase a squirrel on our way here.”
Lime waves sheepishly from her shoulder and slides down her arm onto the tray. He dives into the chicken tenders, squealing with excitement.
“Oh, it’s fine,” Ember says with a small wave. “We had some things to talk about anyway.”
“Oh?” Stella looks between us. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I answer and tighten my grip on Ember’s hand. “We’re fine, but we’d like to talk to you about some stuff.”
Ember glances at me, and I nod, reassuring her.
“Okay, sure—crap!” Stella eyes her tray. “I forgot to get a drink. I was too focused on making sure I got Lime his chicken.”
Lime munches happily on a tender, and chunks of the food litter around him.
Stella picks him up, and he secures his hold on his food while she places him back on her shoulder. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll be right back. Then we can chat.”
Ember smiles. “Sure.”
Stella heads toward the food line.
“That reminds me,” Ember says, her smile turning almost bashful. “Stella’s going home tomorrow night. She won’t be back until Friday morning.”
“Why’s that?”
“She’s going out with her family to celebrate her mom’s new job with the city as the head ecologist. She said you guys had plans to train this weekend, and she didn’t want to change that, so Thursday was the best option for her.”
“Oh, that makes sense, then. That’s cool about her mom’s new job.”
“Yeah, definitely. Her mom has some kind of ability to revive plants and to make gardens grow twice their sizes, so she’ll be great at it.” Ember’s smile grows, as does the pink in her cheeks. “I guess that means I’ll have the room all to myself.”
I smile, picking up on her hint. “Do you think you’ll get lonely?”
“Well, you know,” she says, playing along. “Maybe I shouldn’t be by myself, since all these villains are running around, leaving notes and forgetting their credit cards and whatnot.”
“You’re probably right,” I say, my cheeks pulling tighter with my smile. “That could be very dangerous.”
“So dangerous.” Ember’s tone is light, and her smile widens. “Do you know of a strong man who could keep me safe? Extra points if he can make forcefields.”
“Hmm…” I rub my chin. “I may know of one.”
She leans closer, her eyes shimmering with seductive intentions. “Would you tell him to stop by my dorm room tomorrow evening? Let him know I’d make it worth his time.”
A tingle rushes through me. “Oh? How?”
Ember kisses me softly and lays her hand on my thigh, warming my deepest desires. “He’ll just have to stop by to find out.”