Page 47 of Bound By Fury

“Malachi.”

He stares down at me with suspicion, and I regard him with the same. We’re two predators encountering each other in the wild.

My heartbeat still hasn’t stabilized from the terror in the woods, and the silence between us only reminds me of how alone we are. I do not find the same comfort from his presence that I did before. Craning my neck, I continue searching for the hooded men. Where did they go?

“Hey,” I say, spreading my arms out wide. “What the fuck?”

“Wait—” he pleads. His words are hushed, strained as he holds out his hands, his eyes darting around. “What happened to you? I heard screaming—”

My shoulders stiffen.

“—and then all of a sudden you came running out of the woods?”

I run my hands over my curls in frustration, unsure how to explain what I just saw. What I just read.

“Those people, there was—did you see them? The hooded men? Their robes? They… are you—”

“What?” he asks, his eyebrows yanking together harshly. “Hooded men?”

“Ugh!” I groan. “The men! The hooded men! With the robes and the lanterns? Looking spooky like the headless horseman is about to clomp his way through campus.”

“Oh, you mean the Midnight March? It’s just that stupid tradition they were talking about earlier. Students put on these old, sweaty robes and walk around campus while the counselor tells a story about the school’s founding. It’s a whole thing…,” he trails off, noting the confusion on my face.

His next words are deathly quiet. “But that’s not what you were really running from though, is it?”

Once, he would have been the first person I wanted to tell. He was the one who read fantasy novels, who believed in ghosts and dragons and vampires and werewolves. He was the one who indulged everything that’s fundamentally strange about me, even though neither of our families thought our friendship was a good idea.

I search for that boy now, in the reflection of stars in his darkened eyes, and sigh.

During the gangly, awkward summer between sixth and seventh grade, I’d taken to copying what I’d seen from Gigi through the fog-shrouded glass of the greenhouse.

Circles of stones and feathers, plucked flower petals and a crystal bowl full of water, a mortar and pestle dusted with ground something or other. At twelve years old I still wanted to play, I wanted to escape the intense feelings of being a preteen, of wondering if liking girls as much as I liked boys made me a freak. I wanted to be more than almost thirteen.

Kai never, not once, made me feel weird for that.

“Pass me the willow bark,” I called, hand outstretched as I stared intently at the circle of foraged lizard bones and overripe berries.

Silently he placed the bark into my hands.

“Okay,” I mumbled, adjusting my knees in the dirt. “I think next we probably need something like…” I looked all around, trying to imagine what Gigi would do.

“Well, what’s the circle even for?” Lucas called from somewhere in the trees.

“It’s a summoning circle.” I’d seen something about them on TV. “It’s gonna help me find my dad.”

They both were quiet for a moment.

“I thought you didn’t want him to come back?” Kai asked, an uneasy sadness in his eyes.

“Yeah, well, maybe if he comes back, my mom will stop being such a bitch all the time.” It wasn’t fair, but neither was the way she looked at me. Like I was a ghost, too.

His neck flushed red like it did when he was holding in something he really wanted to say, but I pretended not to notice.

“This is stupid,” I whined, flopping onto my butt. “It’s not gonna work anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” Kai muttered, his expression distant.

Suddenly he leaned forward. “I’ve got it!”