“And we still need some time to figure out your Gift. Teleportation could be pretty damned useful, you know.”
“If we can find the trigger.”
“I have an idea on that. Let’s go up to the roof.”
I tilted my chin. He quirked an eyebrow.
“Fine.” Over my shoulder to Rufus, I said, “Make the calls. We’ll be back in a bit.”
It took several hard shoves to open the roof access door. Rusty hinges squealed angrily. We only managed to move it three feet before it stuck on the tarred surface.
The city hummed all around us. Car engines and the occasional bass line drifted up from the streets below. A city that never seemed to sleep, no matter day or night—consequences of a population that preferred coming out after sundown.
I followed Wyatt across the spongy surface. It was the strangest roof I’d ever walked on, and I imagined it leaked like a son of a bitch during storms. “So what’s the trigger?”
“You tell me, Evy.”
I rolled my eyes. “You said you knew.”
“I have the same pieces as you. Just put them together.”
He was going all Sphinx-like Handler on me again. I hated that. Straight answers were simpler, but he liked proving his point. Challenging me to do the work myself.
“She was in the sandbox with other kids,” I said, thinking back over the information I’d read. “Probably not having fun. She wanted to go to the toy store and see her favorite animals. It was a place she liked and felt safe. She didn’t like her preschool, so she went out to the playground. She was shy, an introvert.”
“By nature, shy people are more likely to be what?”
I worked the question over in my mind until the answer came screaming at me. “She was lonely. You think loneliness is the trigger?”
“It’s a logical trigger.”
“Is yours logical?”
“Not really.”
“What is it?”
“Also not telling.”
“Come on, Wyatt, you need to teach me how to do this. I can’t just drum up loneliness and hope I land ten feet away. What if I reappear in between walls? That could hurt.”
He heaved a sigh dramatic enough to make a professional actor proud. “It’s arrogance, okay? Haughty, highbrow arrogance at its worst.”
My lips twitched. “So what? You forget to put your arrogance away when you’re done with it?”
His eyebrows scrunched. He opened his mouth to retort. I stuck my tongue out—a gesture guaranteed to force a smile. It worked.
A shadow passed my peripheral vision—a large bird shape that was gone before I turned my head. Too big for a pigeon, but what else? I thought of Danika and was struck by a sudden pang of sadness.
“Evy?”
“Yeah?” Had he been talking?
“Do you feel the Break right now? You said it felt tingly, like static.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled. It was there, but more distant than in First Break. The faintest hint of static just below the surface. I latched on to the buzz and urged it closer. Asked it to burn just a little brighter.
It ignored me and remained far away, the palest notion of power. “It’s there,” I said. “Barely, but it’s there.”
“Use your trigger to bring it forward. Concentrate on feelings of loneliness.”
“Uh-huh.” Hard to feel lonely when he was crowding me. He wouldn’t always be there, though. At the end of this day, one of us (or both) would be dead, forever parted. Alone.
Tears stung my eyes. Nostrils flared. Instinct told me to push those thoughts away and stay positive, but I needed that emotion. Needed to feel the loneliness. I held on, trying to imagine living without Wyatt. Spending the next five or ten or thirty years without him in my life. Without his voice in my head.
The faint buzz crashed on top of me like a waterfall, zinging through from head to toes and back out again. The hair on my arms tingled. My skin flushed, at once hot and cold. Every single cell in my body seemed to vibrate, threatened to fly apart at any moment and scatter me to the four winds.
“I feel it,” I said, tears spilling down my cheeks. “I’ve tapped in, Wyatt.”
“Picture the other side of the roof, Evy. Just a few feet. Let the Break take you there.”
I thought of a spot ten feet away, next to the edge. The tar seemed thinner there, ready to wear through at any moment and leak into the cheap apartment below. My body vibrated. The oddest sensation of movement was punctuated by a blinding headache. I wobbled, then toppled sideways when my hands found no traction.
Something slammed into me. I fell a short distance and hit the soft tar roof with a body on top of me. My eyes snapped open. Wyatt stared down, his eyes wide and fearful, mouth open and panting. The pain in my head subsided to a dull ache and settled between my eyes.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It worked. You overshot a little, though.”
We had landed on the soft tar roof, arms nearly touching the ledge. Ten inches to the left, and I’d have missed completely. My stomach knotted. “Holy shit, I almost killed myself.”
“We just need to practice.”
“Easy for you to say.”
He settled in, making no effort to get off me. I pushed my hips against his. He grunted and pushed right back, teasing. Jerk.
“You going to get off me?” I asked.
“You can get out from beneath me.”
Drumming up the loneliness took longer the second time, due in no small part to Wyatt. It was difficult to imagine being without him when he was on top of me, seriously affecting my concentration.
I thought about our time together in Amalie’s home. What if that had been our last opportunity to be together? Annoyance melted into sadness. I latched on and turned it until the tap opened. The static poured through me again.
Wyatt’s face faded. The ache increased. My vision blurred into a mass of swirling colors and unfocused shapes. I was moving again, but realized too late I hadn’t focused on a destination.
The ache flared into a sharp spike of agony that threaded through my skull from top to bottom. I shrieked. Movement stopped. I fell and hit a cool, slick surface and curled up into a little ball. The headache didn’t relent. Pain speared through me. Bright spots of color burst in my eyes.
It dulled in time and awareness returned. Familiar smells and voices. A hand on my shoulder, another on the small of my back, rubbing in gentle circles. I focused on those movements, let them calm my nerves and frazzled brain, then cracked one eye open.
The kitchen in Rufus’s apartment. Lucky transport. Wyatt was behind me, whispering soft words of support. And apology. I turned my head. Each muscle in my neck protested. Wonder and pride shined in his face.
“That was impressive,” he said.
“Hurt like hell,” I replied.
“Side effects are a bitch.”
I groaned an affirmation. “How’d you know I’d end up here?”
“I didn’t. When you didn’t reappear, I panicked and started looking. Nadia found me in the stairwell.” His hands continued to massage my back and shoulders. “But on the plus side, we know you can move through solid objects.”
“Yeah, and it feels like I’m being ripped apart.”
“Want to practice some more?”
“Fuck you, Truman. I need aspirin and a nap.”
He scooped me up into his arms, and I let him. The blinding headache had turned to a debilitating throb. My stomach swirled and threatened to empty. I imagined it was some sort of magic-induced migraine. Only time would fade the pain enough to let me think properly. Until then, I simply allowed Wyatt to settle me on the sofa, tuck a blanket around my shoulders, and watch over me while I tossed on the edge of agonized slumber.
The nap lasted longer than I’d planned—the bits of sunlight that had peeked through Rufus’s dark curtains were gone—but I woke refreshed. The ache still lingered on the very edge of my senses, no longer strong enough to affect me. I focused on the room and the soft hum of nearby voices.