BRIGHTON
A couple hours after casting fire, I finish editing the video of my dreams. I project the final cut from my laptop onto the TV and I gather everyone in the living room—Emil, Prudencia, Iris, Wesley, and Ruth with Esther, who’s asleep in her mother’s arms.
“I promise you’re not actually ready for this, but are you ready?” I ask.
I get an enthusiastic fist pump from Wesley and encouraging words from Ruth, but Emil, Prudencia, and Iris are a tougher audience. I respect that. As a creator, I always want people to like my work because they actually do and not just because they feel forced to pretend because it’s me.
I hit play.
The video opens with darkness. Then, my voice: “The time has come. . . .” I’m shown on the sand with a quick cut to me in the backyard. It must look pretty basic, but that’s the point. These were my last ordinary moments before I consciously cast my new extraordinary powers. Then the screen splits. On the left I’m running, on the right I’m flicking my hand, but nothing happens. “For another Spell Walker to rise . . .” The focus is back on me on the beach, minutes after I ran across the sea to save Wesley, and I dash away from the camera, edited slightly to show me returning sooner than I did in real time because I scrapped the voice-over idea. Then it moves onto the most glorious moment in the backyard. I get chills watching myself, eyes closed in concentration, as wisps of smoke snaking around my wrists grow into the silver and sapphire flames. My eyes open, and while I grew up dreaming of the day that they would glow like some godlike corner of the universe, I still find these burning eclipses absolutely beautiful. We linger on my smile before shifting to quick cuts of me demonstrating my speed as I chase after one of the country’s fastest celestials and me casting fire-bolts into the sky, the latter a talent that took us all by surprise. The video ends with me carrying fire in my hands before I dash out of sight; it took us a few tries to get that shot right, but we pulled it off.
“Incredible, right?” I ask.
“That’s the trailer to a movie I’d watch,” Wesley says.
“Very inspiring. You put all of that together so quickly too!” Ruth says.
“It’s a shame you don’t have footage of me sweeping sand in your face, but this works too,” Prudencia says.
“It’s pretty epic, Bright,” Emil says.
Happiness surges through me, like watching my follower count increase in the past. “This is only meant to be a teaser of what’s to come. My prologue, if you will.”
Iris scoffs. “Then maybe you shouldn’t open your story with a lie. I never cleared you to become a Spell Walker.”
In the past twenty-four hours, I have been intimate with Prudencia for the first time, had a second shot at life, tapped into my new powers, and put together this video so I can finally have the big moment I’ve been dreaming about for years. Of course Iris has to ruin that.
“But you’re down three team members,” I say.
“Believe it or not, that hasn’t affected my ability to count on my own.”
“I’ve been in this fight when all I had was my camera. Now I have Emil’s and Wesley’s core powers—all in one host! We’re trying to save Ma and Eva and you haven’t been successful tracking them down alone. You need me.”
Iris is staring at me but she seems to be looking through me. If I could read minds I’m sure all of her thoughts would be about Eva. “I might need you, but you won’t be making that decision for me. There’s nothing to suggest that our people haven’t been killed already. So if all I have left is the legacy of the Spell Walkers, I’m going to make sure we don’t do any more damage that will endanger celestials, and keep our numbers from decreasing any further so I don’t have to suffer through another math lesson. The truth is, Brighton, I don’t trust you.”
She gets up and walks toward her room and I’m very tempted to dash in front of her, but I control myself because I know that’s out of line.
Working with the Spell Walkers has had many lows but it’s also been a dream come true. As incredible as it would be to join the ranks like my brother and become even more famous than Bautista, I’m not going to let Iris put me in a corner like this. It’s tough enough feeling like I’m on probation with Emil and Prudencia, but I’m not letting Iris have that power over me too.
“Her loss,” I say.
“She’s not saying you’ll never be a Spell Walker,” Prudencia says. “Just not right now.”
I’m not going to sweat this because I have a lot to be proud of, even though I may never be an official Spell Walker and despite not getting all three sets of powers the Reaper’s Blood promised. It’d be so easy to let Iris’s slight get the best of me like when I didn’t get to be valedictorian, but everything about me now is undisputedly unique. Someone can get better grades than me—while my focus was down because I was grieving, don’t forget that—but it’s not as if there’s another specter running around who is going to stand a chance against me once I master my abilities.
I’m in a league of my own.
I grab my laptop and make a quick edit to the video, swapping out Spell Walker for hero. Before I do anything else I take a selfie, memorializing the Brighton whose extraordinary powers aren’t known to the public. I type out my caption—Brighton Rey just got a little Brighter. #BrightonOfNewYork—and upload first on the Celestials of New York Instagram. Then I get the video up on YouTube and Twitter and I even finally cave in and make a TikTok so I can dominate the primary online spaces. Every video has the event details for the livestream Emil and I are hosting in a couple hours on Instagram. I sit against the wall where I can charge my phone while hopping between all the apps and soaking up the comments. My views and following are skyrocketing, quickly catching up to Mr. Infinity Son himself.
There are so many questions about how I became a specter and I reply to some in my comments section, letting them know that all will be answered during the livestream. Followers around the world tell me all about their plans to watch—stay up late, be sneaky at school, take an early break at work.
I get a DM from Lore and they’re happy that I’m doing better and they would love to do a Q&A in the near future. Even though I have more followers than them, Lore still has an impressive social reach to other important influencers whose radar I need to be on. My growth will be huge as the Infinity Savior, but I expect that’s going to cap somewhere, so tapping into the audiences of the other influencers will be a great refresh. I promise Lore an interview when time allows; I have some missions to tend to first, after all.
“Someone wants to help make merchandise,” I tell Prudencia while checking out the user’s feed. It’d be helpful to have someone handle the administrative responsibilities and I can be the face of it all. “They seem legit.”
“Why don’t you follow up with them after getting ready? Your chat is in thirty minutes, superstar.”
“Please make that my new nickname,” I say.