Next time, he was so making Gabriel play bait.
Gabriel choked out a sound, half laugh, half sob. “I will, Nick. I promise.” It felt like he was patting Nick’s cheek. “Come on. Wake up.”
Nick opened his eyes and looked at his brother.
Gabriel was kneeling there in the charred leaves and undergrowth, holding him up against a tree, his eyes tense and worried.
Nick was struck with déjà vu. They’d been eight or nine, riding bikes through the woods, jumping the creek the way they’d done a thousand times. A storm had washed away part of the creek walls, leaving the ground soft and muddy. Gabriel, in the lead as usual, made the jump with little difficulty.
But his bike had made a rut. Nick’s bike caught it and sank into the mud, stuck. It had stopped. Nick hadn’t. His head had cracked into a tree.
He’d woken up just like this, staring into his twin brother’s panicked eyes.
“My bike broke,” he mumbled now.
“Not this time.” Gabriel smiled, but there was still a shadow of worry behind it.
Of course he’d share the exact same memory at the exact same moment.
“How do you feel?” said Gabriel.
“Oh. Stellar.”
“No—I mean, can you walk?”
Nick thought about it. “Not yet.”
Gabriel sighed, but he didn’t let him go.
“Tyler?” said Nick.
“He ran,” said Gabriel. His voice grew dark. “As soon as you collapsed. If you think you can stay upright, I’m going to find him and kill him.”
Nick struggled to find his hands, and he grabbed Gabriel’s wrist. “No—no.” He paused, trying to make his addled brain sort out the evening’s events. But one thing was clear—they’d come here with the intent to out Tyler’s abilities. Nick remembered the power in the air, the way his fear had manifested itself in damaging winds that attacked Tyler until fire consumed him.
He’d been the bully tonight. Not Tyler.
It should have been satisfying. It wasn’t.
“Our fault,” he said.
Gabriel shook his head. “My fault.” He paused. “I should have helped you.”
Now Nick remembered. His thoughts were straightening out, finding true clarity. “You let him burn! You called lightning! You let him—”
“I didn’t call that lightning, Nick. He did.” Gabriel looked away. “I should have helped you before it got to that point.”
Nick shoved his hands away. “Yeah, thanks. Thanks for making me play bait, and forgetting to snap the trap.”
“An hour ago you got all shitty because I wanted to defend you! What the hell do you want from me, Nick? What?”
I want you to know what I want.
Nick put a hand against the ground and pushed himself to his feet. He wavered for a second, but Gabriel didn’t grab him.
He looked down at himself. Pieces of leaves clung to his jeans, and his jacket was smudged with bits of soot where Tyler had grabbed him, but really, he didn’t look any the worse for wear.
The air was happy he was awake. He felt better with every breath, as if he inhaled pure power.
He started walking toward the car.
After a moment, Gabriel jogged to catch up with him.
“Give me the keys,” he said. “You’re in no shape to drive.”
Nick wanted to protest, but his twin was probably right. He pulled them out of his pocket and handed them over. He didn’t look at Gabriel when they climbed in to the car.
This whole evening hadn’t solved anything. So Tyler was a full Elemental. So what? When the next round of Guides came to town, they could add him to the list. When Tyler came after him again, he could mess with Nick all that much more effectively.
This sucked.
Nick pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to see if fate had inspired Adam to send him a message.
Fate told him to go to hell. The phone was completely dead. Either the lightning had killed the battery, or it had killed the phone completely.
Great. Nick slammed it into the center console.
The tension in the car was thicker now than when they’d first left the house. Nick’s skin crawled with it.
After a few minutes, Gabriel pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it out. “Here. Use mine.”
Yeah, right. Nick shook his head.
His brother sighed and shoved it back in his pocket.
Silence again. This time, more strained than before, if that was possible. The temperature in the car dropped ten degrees. Nick was almost shaking with the effort of sitting here calmly.
“Fuck this,” said Gabriel. He yanked the wheel abruptly, sending them careening into a parking lot along Ritchie Highway. By some miracle, they avoided striking a parked car.
“Are you insane?” Nick grabbed the handle over the door. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Parking.” Gabriel jerked the car into a parking place in front of a coffee shop. It wasn’t Starbucks, but instead a huge café with leather couches and oak tables and hot sandwiches.
Nick had brought a girl here once. After a movie or something. He couldn’t remember her name. Tonight, it was packed.
“What are we doing here?” Nick said.
Gabriel kept his eyes on the windshield. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I can’t do this, Nick. I know—” His voice caught, and he took a second to get it together before continuing. “I know I deserve it. After keeping the fires from you. But this—this doesn’t feel like something you’re doing.” He peeked over at Nick.
Nick couldn’t move. He couldn’t even look at his brother.
“What happened last night?” Gabriel said. “When you were talking to Hunter?”
Nick’s head snapped to the side. Gabriel was referring to whatever had led to Nick looking like a hot mess on the stairs, but all Nick heard were Gabriel’s words. My brother has enough freaks pining after him.
He must have looked fierce because Gabriel put his hands up. “I don’t want to fight with you,” Gabriel said. “Christ—I don’t even know why we are fighting.”
Nick swallowed and looked at the windshield.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Gabriel said after a minute. “I—I wish I knew why you won’t.”
It sounded like it cost him something to say that.
“I want to tell you,” said Nick.
The words fell out of his mouth almost against his will.
And as soon as he said them, he realized how true they were. He wanted to tell Gabriel about Adam. He told his brother everything, and now he felt more strongly about another human being than he ever had, and he couldn’t breathe a word about it. The mental strife was choking him.
No, the terror of losing his brother was choking him.
But wasn’t he doing that anyway?
I can’t do this, Nick.
Nick couldn’t, either. He cleared his throat and nodded at the front of the café. “I probably should have picked coffee when you suggested it earlier.”
“Pick coffee now.”
Sit. Talk to me. That’s what his brother was saying.
Nick took a breath. He nodded. “Okay.”
The café had looked crowded from the parking lot, and getting up close to the front door confirmed it. Every table seemed occupied, but the line for the register wasn’t too long.
Still, someplace this packed wouldn’t exactly be conducive to the kind of discussion Nick had in mind.
Then again, Gabriel probably wouldn’t flip out in the middle of a crowd of people.
“We can come back out here to sit,” said Gabriel. “Plenty of room.”
Nick looked at him. It was barely forty-five degrees, so all the tables were deserted. But sitting in the fresh air would help—Gabriel knew that. This was an olive branch.