Cursed

What the hell had I been thinking? Sneaking out with Hayden and holing up in a cozy, little love-cabin? The spontaneous part of my brain spewed out all kinds of images, none of them even remotely possible in reality. He wouldn’t have brought me out here for something like that. We couldn’t even touch.

But we could, right? For a few seconds, maybe even more. I shook my head to get rid of the image that popped up.

“Ember, are you all right?”

Summoning up my common sense and purpose, I pulled off my gloves and dropped them on the back of the couch. Even though my hormones had totally picked a bizarre time to come alive, I wasn’t here to drool over Hayden. “Tell me what you know,” I said.

“The accident wasn’t an accident, Ember.”

My heart jerked. I tried to say something, but nothing would come out.

“You weren’t supposed to know. My father thought it would be best if you didn’t. No one wanted you to worry, to be scared. He thought it would be the best thing, but now…”

“What happened to my dad, to me? None of it was an accident?”

“All that we know tells us it was on purpose.”

I lost it. “You knew this! Didn’t you think I had a right to know?” My whole body tensed with emotions I couldn’t even begin to name. “Someone killed my father? Killed me? And none of you thought you should tell me?”

Hayden shook his head. “You already had so much pain, I—we wanted to protect you.”

“You don’t know what’s best for me, Hayden!” I paced to the side of the bed and stopped in front of him. “I can take care of myself.”

He looked away. “What good does knowing do you, Ember? Doesn’t it make it all the more painful? Does it change anything for you?”

“It changes everything!” I shouted. I was close to tears, close to breaking down. “Do you know who did this—did you have something to do with it?” As soon as the words left my mouth I wanted to take them back. The idea of living with my dad’s murderers—my own murderers—was too much to consider.

I kicked the edge of the bed, but that didn’t help. I threw myself at Hayden.

He must have expected it, because he caught me around the waist and flipped me onto the bed in one fluid motion. I reared up, catching him in the stomach with my elbow before he pushed my shoulders, pinning me down.

“Stop.” He made a low sound in his throat as I continued to struggle. “We had nothing to do with it, Ember. My father is not about killing innocent people or taking children away from their parents. I know you don’t trust him, but you trust me. I know you do.”

I drew in several deep breaths and stilled under him.

“Ember?” he asked softly.

“If it wasn’t your father, then who was it?”

His hands flexed on my shoulders, again and again. “We don’t know. My father even went to the Facility to see if they had any ideas, but even with all their means of finding out things, they had no answers.”

My hands curled helplessly at my sides. “Then how do you know it wasn’t an accident?”

“We didn’t. Not until we brought you guys here.” He took another deep, steadying breath and tried to smile. “Liz has a unique gift. She can sense when a gifted is born—down to the exact location and time. But my father doesn’t just swoop in and intervene. He checks it out first, and if things aren’t right, then he tries to help out.”

“I don’t get it.”

Hayden eased off me and sat. “We always knew about Olivia, because Liz sensed her. But then, two years ago, Liz felt a new gifted being born in the same location as Olivia, except she said it felt ‘off.’ She couldn’t place what it was. Of course, that made my father curious, so he wanted to check it out. Kurt and I went along.”

I made my way to the top of the bed and pulled my legs to my chin.

Hayden turned to face me. “The directions Liz gave us were to the exact intersection of the accident. We knew right off that something was very different with this. We hung around a few days. Then we saw a newspaper article about the accident that… killed a local doctor, and how one of the passengers had miraculously survived. The article listed the intersection Liz sensed. It got us curious, and we started watching, but we only ever saw you, then Olivia.”

“Never Mom.” I remembered how despondent she’d been. Mom had gone home, locked herself in the bedroom with Olivia, and shut me out. The last thing she’d ever said to me had been in the car, right before the accident.

“It took us a while to figure out what happened, that you were what Liz sensed. But my father thought that since your Mom was alive, we shouldn’t step in. It was the day you went to the bank that I knew something wasn’t right.”

I blinked. “You guys didn’t realize my mom…wasn’t right until then?”

“You’ve heard Kurt say it.” He looked away then, his eyes downcast. “I kept checking in, even though they’d stopped. I knew something wasn’t right, and when I told my father how you’d acted afterwards, he asked around.”

And the rest was history, but it didn’t answer one thing. “How do you know the accident wasn’t… wasn’t an accident?”

Hayden pushed off the bed and came around to where I was huddled. He placed his hands on each side of my legs. Candlelight danced across his features, softening his mouth. “After I drained your powers, Kurt found your mom. That was what he was trying to do when you came home. Once he saw her, he knew what’d happened.”

Dread from earlier resurfaced, and suddenly, I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to hear this.

“Your mom had been wiped, Ember. It had to have happened right after the accident, and it was a really bad job. It damaged her mind, destroyed her ability to process things properly. Kurt thinks whoever did it was interrupted, because she remembers Olivia, but she thinks you’ve… passed away.”

And then it hit me. The day Adam had been wiped, the blank stare he’d given me—why it’d been so heartbreakingly familiar. The look had felt like a punch in the gut, only worse. Numbness settled over me.

“Ember, I’m sorry.”

I scooted across the bed, but Hayden followed. “No.” I held up my hand, holding him off. My whole arm shook. “I need a moment.”

Hayden backed off, but I felt his gaze on me.

“Can it be undone? Can my mom get her memories back? Can someone… fix her?”

“No.”

“Of course not,” I whispered. My mind continued to spin, slow to process any of this. My dad was dead. Mom had been wiped. I was one giant freak. And all because of Olivia’s gift?

Rage, hot and sweet, swept over me. For a moment—just a moment—I hated Olivia, hated her for something so beyond her control. Guilt was immediate, but it didn’t dull the raw hurting. Or stop the rush of relief from washing over me.

My trembling hands moved through my curls, pulling them back. “I always thought she hated me, blamed me for the accident. And I’d hated her for it—hated that she pretended I was dead when I needed her. This whole time she couldn’t help it. Why didn’t you all tell me?”

Hayden rocked off his heels and sat down beside me, shoulder against shoulder, leg against leg. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “There isn’t a good enough reason for not telling you.”

The sound that came out of me sounded strangled. “Why? All of this because of what Olivia can do?” My hands fell to my lap and I stared at them. “They ripped my family apart. And for what? A gift—a gift that turns people into the Grim Reaper?”

He grasped my wrists and brought my hands to his chest, to where his heart beat under his sweater. “None of this is your fault, or Olivia’s. There was no way you could know what had been done to your mom.”

Another thought struck me. Pure ice flowed through me. “Do—do you think they wanted me dead, too? And Mom? What—what if they still want us dead? The stuff with the locker—”

“No. Don’t even think that,” he said.

My eyes met his for a beat, and I pulled back. “Kurt can wipe memories. How many others are like that out there?”

“There’s no way of knowing how many share the same sort of gifts. We have a general idea how many gifteds have been born in the last few years, thanks to Liz’ gift, but we don’t know what they can do unless we investigate them.”

I took a deep breath, but the air felt like it got stuck in my lungs. I flopped down on my back and stared up at the shadowy ceiling. “Do you think whoever was behind the accident may be behind the stuff in my lockers?”

“I don’t know what to think.” He looked away for a moment. “But I don’t believe in coincidences.”

I ran my hands over my face. If I’d learned anything in the last two years, I’d learned I couldn’t change the past. I only had the future, no matter how craptastic it might seem.

“Are you dealing… with this?” His voice was so soft that I almost thought I’d imagined it.

I peeked through my hands. “I really don’t know. I didn’t think it possible to feel all of this at once. I’m torn up about my mom, but relieved that she doesn’t hate me. I’m mad at Olivia, and it isn’t even her fault. I’m pissed off, and I’m scared that whoever was behind the accident—the crash, they may—oh, God, they could still want Olivia.”

Hayden shifted onto his side and pulled my hands back to his chest. “I’m not going to let anything happen. You don’t have to worry about that.”

I looked at him. Every cell in his body seemed perfectly controlled, and yet, there appeared a shadow of uncertainty in his eyes. “No more secrets. Promise me.”

“No more secrets.”

Silence surrounded us, and in the darkness, a determination sparked alive. “I want to find out who killed my dad.” Fire burned in my stomach.

“I know.”

“And Kurt is the likeliest bet. You know that.”

“I don’t know what to believe. I’ve known him for years, Ember. And if it was him, then why? Why would he want Olivia?” Hayden asked. “He’s been my father’s partner a long time. He knows how hard it is for the gifted. It just wouldn’t make sense.”

“I don’t know, but what about the stuff in my locker? It has to be… one of them.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he eased himself down on his back, keeping a safe distance between us. Even after everything I’d learned tonight, my heart still pumped way too fast.

“We should head back soon,” I said.

“We should.”

But we didn’t.

We talked—well, argued—about Kurt and his father. “We’re never going to agree on this.”

Hayden snorted. “And I still think we need to go to my father. This could—what’s this?” He sat up, grabbing something small off the bed.