“Yeah.” She glanced between him and Michael. “He said they were his mom’s. He said they were for silly things, like ... like ... confidence, or clarity of thought.” Then she realized what Gabriel had said. “Wait. He got into it with Chris?”
“Yeah. Nicky, too. I don’t know what happened, because all hell broke loose, but he said they had a run-in.”
“What were they fighting about?”
Gabriel snorted and gave her a look. “Guess.”
“These rocks are for a lot more than confidence or clarity of thought,” said Michael. “Take them off.”
idn’t falter until she noticed the ground knitting itself together, mending the break between them.
“That’s all you know?” said Michael. His tone implied it wasn’t very helpful.
“Yeah. That’s all.”
“Was there gunfire last night?”
She thought back, to the chaos on the field. “No. I don’t think so—but the thunder was loud.”
Michael looked out across the field again. “Tyler came after you with a gun because it’s one of the few surefire ways to kill us.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe they wouldn’t tell me.”
She could.
She was beginning to sweat beneath her dark hoodie. She pulled it off and knotted the sleeves around her waist, glad she’d worn a tank top underneath.
Michael glanced at the sky. “I’m going to walk the rest of the field.”
He walked, and she followed, stopping at points where lightning had scorched the earth. She wished she could do what he did, that the ground could whisper secrets to her and create a path for her to follow.
She swiped a hand across her forehead. Crazy hot for September. It had been sixty the day before.
Then she felt the heat trickle along her skin, as if the sunlight had fingers. The hair on her arms stood up. She held her forearm in front of her eyes. “Michael? Do you feel that?”
“Yeah.” He turned in a slow circle as if expecting to find someone. The field was empty. He frowned at her. “You do, too?”
Did she? She rubbed her arms to get rid of the sensation—but it didn’t help. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
That morning at her house when the brothers had fought with Hunter, she’d felt Nick’s power like the tail of a kite, a tangible thing she could grab hold of. This felt like nothing so substantial—it lacked direction and force.
“Can you follow it?” she asked.
Michael took a step forward, his hand held out. “It’s vague. Weak. It might not be anything.”
But he walked anyway, and she followed him. Sweat developed between Becca’s shoulder blades, running a line down the center of her back. Michael had been stopping at the scorch marks, but now he kept walking, moving more quickly as they neared the edge of the athletic field and the woods that led to the creek. It felt stronger here, a definite wash of power in the sunlight.
Michael didn’t hesitate, he strode into the underbrush as if a clear path was carved there. Becca saw nothing move, but she could swear that plants shifted out of the way of his boots, leaving her to scramble after him in the tangles of vines and thorns. The heat made her feel like they were fighting through the rain forest.
Just as she was about to snap at him to slow down or make the foliage move for her, too, he stopped short. So short, she nearly ran right into him.
Then she brought her gaze up from the solid line of his back, to see what had made him stop.
“Gabriel,” he said, his voice full of something like wonder—and relief.
Gabriel sat against a tree. His eyes had been closed, but they cracked open when Michael said his name. He still wore dark-colored slacks from Homecoming, but they were damp and filthy. He’d lost his dress shirt somewhere along the line, but he still had a white tee shirt, also wet and clinging to his chest. Water dripped out of his hair, tracing lines though the dirt on his face. He looked like he’d crawled through a pile of leaves soaking wet. He didn’t move.
All the heat in the air seemed to be pulling toward his body.
“Are you all right?” asked Michael.