The Reckoning Read online

  Tristan went inside, blinking until she had adjusted to the regular lighting of the house, which was harsh on her eyes that had grown accustomed to the dark.

  “Well, that was a success, huh?” Sol smiled, and everyone nodded in agreement.

  “Except for Trinity’s attack, yes,” Ivan nodded, and the smiles immediately disappeared from everyone’s faces.

  “What attack?” Evander asked, and Tristan shook her head.

  “I’m fine. It was nothing.”

  “A pirate got handsy,” Ivan said, as though Tristan had said nothing at all. “Picked her right up out of that chair like it was nothing and gave her a shake. Loki came to her rescue.”

  “Loki?” Olivia frowned, and then her face lit with recognition. “Oh, Beckett?”

  “How convenient that he just happened to be there,” Evander said darkly, and Tristan cocked her head.

  “What are you implying?”

  “Just seems suspect that the night was fine before and after Beckett, but during was when someone decided to be an ass to you. Who did it? Who put their hands on you?”

  “He’s a junior, I think his name is Theo? He was gigantic.”

  "Theo Fitelson?” Evander’s eyes widened, and Tristan shrugged.

  “Isn’t he on the football team?” Olivia asked, and Evander nodded, his jaw working.

  “What’s his deal?” Tristan asked. “He reeked of alcohol, for what that’s worth.”

  “That’s his deal. Alcohol and we think steroids, though Coach hasn’t been able to pin anything down about it.” Evander flexed his hands. “He might finally on Monday, though.”

  “Ember,” Umbris said warningly. “You know the rules.”

  “Still think Beckett put him up to it?” Tristan asked, and Evander shook his head.

  “Nah. I believe he did that all on his own. I thought you were going to say it was Jason Dalton or Tyler Daniels or something.”

  “Tyler wouldn’t have!” Olivia blurted, then looked embarrassed.

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Sol said, pointing to Olivia. “For now, Trinity, are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. I was fine. It caught me off-guard is all, and since I’m pretty weak, I couldn’t fight him off.”

  Sol squeezed her shoulder.

  “Why don’t you go shower and get yourself to bed? We won’t disturb you until it’s time to leave for the gathering on Saturday; since you never crash and aren't used to it, we'll call you out of school tomorrow.”

  Tristan nodded gratefully.

  “Use coconut oil to get your makeup off,” Olivia told her, and Tristan nodded again.

  She went upstairs, doing as Olivia said, and then showered before putting on her coziest pajamas and dragging herself into bed. Tristan closed her eyes, wanting to sleep, but instead her brain decided to relive the incident with Theo and Beckett on the porch. Particularly, the part of the incident where Beckett had taken her out of Theo’s arms and set her down as though she really was a doll that could have broken. His grip had been firm and, though Tristan was almost as tall as him, he’d lifted her with ease. His eyes had been blazing with anger, but he’d looked at Tristan kindly in the seconds before he’d gone after Theo, and then he'd looked at her with a warmth that made her tingle when they'd been alone on the porch afterwards. The whole incident really had not been a huge deal -- Tristan knew Theo would have put her back down within moments -- but she appreciated having been rescued by a superhero all the same.

  Grinning to herself while she pulled the blanket up under her chin, Tristan rolled onto her side and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 6

  School on Friday was buzzing with Halloween chatter; nearly everyone had gone by The Wallace's house, and it was all anyone could talk about. Theo Fitelson was absent, which Beckett knew because he'd looked for him. The additional absence of Tristan was particularly conspicuous, considering everyone talked about her and their family all day.

  “I hated it,” Emmeline said, predictably, at lunch. She shot a look at the next table, where Olivia sat chatting with a group of her junior friends, and lowered her voice. “I had the worst feeling as soon as we got there, and I didn't feel better until I got back into town. And did you see those people dolls in the living room? I'm still trying to decide if I should call the police. They looked way too real.”

  “It was disturbing.” Eloise nodded. “Not even good scary, just disturbing.”

  “It was awesome, if you ignore what family it was,” Jason said. “Though it gets a lot creepier if you don't ignore it, so does that actually make it more awesome?”

  “Olivia was the hottest haunted doll I've ever seen,” Tyler commented, a wistful look on his face as he turned to stare at the still-oblivious object of his affection, and Emmeline pulled a face of her own.

  “I'm gonna pray for you, Tyler,” Emmeline said, and Tyler laughed.

  “Don't you ever get tired of being so uptight, Emmy?”

  “Don't call me that, first of all, and no, second of all.”

  “I heard you got into it with Theo Fitelson, Beckett,” Tara said slyly, and all eyes were suddenly on him.

  “I don't know that I'd call it that.”

  “Rumor has it Theo was drunk and gripped up Tristan, and Beckett here swooped in to save the day,” Hattie told the table at large.

  “We were walking back around the house when I saw him pick her up, yeah. It was ridiculous, what kind of psycho does that?” Beckett looked at Tyler and Henry, who nodded in agreement.

  “I also heard you threatened to break his hands,” Georgiana said, resting her chin in her hand, and Beckett wondered if he was under a coordinated attack.

  “Did I?” Beckett asked mildly, eating his lunch. He could feel Emmeline watching him, but for once, she said nothing.

  ***

  Tristan slept like the dead all through Thursday night and well into Friday afternoon, when Sol gently shook her awake so she could use the bathroom. Tristan did, promptly going right back to sleep afterwards.

  Around midnight on Friday night, Sol administered a mini-infusion to Trinity while she slept, brushing her hair out of her face. She studied her daughter's features, relaxed in a way they usually weren't when she was awake. For not the first time, Sol wondered if discouraging Trinity from making meaningful connections at school had turned her into something she wouldn't be otherwise. She was a good girl, there was no question about that, and she had a voracious appetite for learning that her big brain took in and processed in a way Sol had only ever dreamed of being able to do when she herself had been in school. That was important, but it was also important for Trinity to feel secure in her social environment, and that was the area that made Sol worry. She knew Trinity struggled with her peers, that between the general oddness all of the Wallaces gave off and Trinity’s self-imposed solitude, Trinity was often a target for the insecure popular kids who had to tear others down in order to feel any kind of positive emotion.

  This dynamic also put Oceana and Ember in an awkward position, Sol knew, as they tried to navigate high school while finding a balance between being in with the in-crowd and protecting their sister from those very same people. While she knew better than anyone that high school was merely a blip on the radar of life, Sol couldn't help but feel she and Umbris, despite their intentions, had made a pretty major misstep with Trinity, especially now that it looked like she would not be joining the community when she graduated. That was a conversation Sol needed to have with her soon -- she didn't know if Trinity realized the kind of sacrifice that came with turning her back on the community, couldn't let her make her decision without being fully informed. Sol also needed to talk to Umbris, but preferred Trinity approach him first, as she knew Umbris would respect that much more than Sol speaking to him on her behalf.

  Trinity sighed in her sleep, one corner of her mouth lifting in a half-smile, and Sol was overcome with curiosity about what she was dreaming. For as much as she hung around the house, Sol kne
w very little about the inner workings of Trinity’s mind, knowing she preferred to seal her thoughts, which was a privacy Sol and Umbris respected. Sol told herself to walk away, to continue respecting that privacy, but Trinity was out cold and would never know if Sol took a peek into her subconscious.

  Slightly ashamed of herself, Sol placed a gentle hand on Trinity’s forehead, closing her eyes. She was suddenly at Jamestown Academy, standing in front of a bench, upon which sat Trinity and Beckett Benson, dressed in plainclothes. They were turned in towards each other, and when the breeze blew a strand of hair across Trinity’s face, Beckett reached over and tucked it behind her ear. Trinity smiled at him, and Beckett smiled back at her, his thumb stroking her cheek.

  Sol opened her eyes and removed her hand, wanting to leave whatever came next to Trinity only.

  So Trinity had a crush on Beckett Benson. Sol was surprised, though perhaps she shouldn't have been -- from everything she'd heard around town about the Benson family, it seemed that Beckett, at least, matched Trinity in kindness, intelligence, and maturity. It came as a surprise to the townspeople, considering how tumultuous the relationship between Ray and Gabriella Benson was rumored to be, but Sol knew more than anyone how a person could flourish and even thrive in spite of their bloodline.

  ***

  Tristan awoke sometime on Saturday, sitting up in bed with relative ease. She felt much better than she had on Thursday, though still not one hundred percent. Stretching, her stomach growled, and she reached for her phone. Eleven A.M. She got out of bed and wandered downstairs, finding it empty. The stillness of the house meant the rest of her family was still sleeping, in preparation for tonight's gathering.

  Tristan entered the kitchen, opening the fridge and staring inside, trying to clear the lingering fog in her brain to no avail. While sleep had done her a world of good, she'd had vivid, sometimes bizarre, sometimes incredible dreams that left her feeling mentally exhausted. As Tristan reached for a yogurt, she noticed a small bruise encircling a pinprick in the crook of her elbow. Sol must have done a mini-infusion while Tristan had been sleeping, which explained why she was feeling better-ish.

  Tristan perched on a stool at the kitchen's island, eating her yogurt and a handful of almonds, thinking about the dreams she had. She couldn't quite remember anything in detail, but she'd definitely dreamt about Beckett in his Loki costume, which had her face going red for reasons she refused to explore. Standing, Tristan threw away her trash, washed her spoon, and went back upstairs, getting back into bed. She'd sleep for a few more hours, and then it would be time to pack up and head out to who knows where for this month's gathering. A nervous chill ran through Tristan -- she was growing increasingly uncomfortable at these things, knowing she planned on deflecting from the community sooner rather than later -- but she closed her eyes, choosing not to stress about it until she had to.

  Chapter 7

  For as long as Tristan could remember, the monthly gathering had been held up North, in different secluded areas within a ten mile radius of New Orleans. The reason for this, as she’d always understood it, was that New Orleans is an energy hotbed, and that energy flows outward in all directions, gets picked up by the gulf winds, and carried into the fringe bayous where the community would safely gather. That the location had abruptly changed this month was a shock, and more concerning still was that no one seemed to have any information about why it had changed.

  Nevertheless, once dusk had fallen, The Wallaces piled into Umbris and Sol’s sleek black SUV, heading South on Route 23. Tristan had only traveled South a few times, and not very far -- Lavelle itself was far enough down so that it already bordered the towns that were unincorporated, and beyond those towns it was just marshland and more marshland. They drove for so long that Tristan started to get nervous that they would drive right off the Earth; the only comfort was Olivia tracking their route on her phone's map in real time.

  At long last, they came to the end of Route 23, and Umbris went right down a dirt road. After a while, they passed a large white sign for a marina, and Olivia promptly zoomed in on the map of the area.

  “Whoa,” Olivia said. “Look at this.”

  She showed Tristan the map, which indicated that the road they were on would dead end at an enormous, nearly perfect circle of geography, a series of marshland and canals and, right in the middle, Tristan suspected, an undisturbed island that would serve as their gathering place.

  Tristan had just started to ask how they were going to get to the meeting spot, when Umbris took a sharp left, driving through a small lot that ended abruptly at the water line. He killed the engine and the five of them emerged from the car, Tristan and her siblings unable to see anything in the black of the night that had fallen. Sol and Umbris, who had spent their lives fully immersed in the community and therefore had abilities that even their children didn’t know the extent of, could see just fine.

  “Here come Dune and Thera,” Umbris said. “Celes and Sanguin are not with them.”

  Tristan let out a silent breath of relief. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Celes, he was fine, she just needed to prepare to see him. He, like both sets of parents, was under the impression that Tristan had been marked for him, and as a result was just slightly more intense than Tristan preferred. Sanguin was his older sister. Tristan was pretty sure she’d heard Sanguin speak maybe twice, maybe, in all of the years they’d known the Crenshaws.

  “Umbris, Sol.” Dune Crenshaw greeted them warmly, holding out his hand as he and his wife, Thera, seemed to materialize out of the dark just a few feet away.

  “Trinity, Oceana, Ember, it’s good to see you again.” Dune nodded at them, and they returned his greeting politely.

  “If you want to follow us, the boat is down the bank a little ways. We will take it out to the island.”

  As she followed behind Umbris and Sol, Tristan’s ears pricked when she heard Sol ask Thera about the location change.

  “Any idea at all?”

  Thera shook her head slightly.

  “We have only heard rumors, nothing has been confirmed.”

  “We haven’t heard anything at all,” Sol replied.

  “Well, we have the benefit of living in New Orleans, of course,” Thera said, and Sol nodded, waiting for her to continue. “Again, this is rumor, but what we heard more than once was that someone saw the last gathering. Someone who should not have seen us.”

  “A commoner?” Sol asked, surprised, and Thera nodded.

  “More than one. Three campers looking for a desolate spot to set up camp. No word on what happened to them, once they were discovered in turn, but you know what usually happens.”

  Tristan suppressed a shiver. She knew there was a fringe group of guards in the community who felt it was their duty to take care of commoners who accidentally discovered them -- felt that if word was ever taken back to common society about what they’d seen, that it had the potential to spread too quickly, to result in a misunderstanding and subsequent witch hunt and the endangerment of the community that had thrived for over one thousand years. This was a group Umbris and Sol kept their family far away from, but the knowledge of their existence was chilling enough on its own.

  The group reached the boat, a little thing that Tristan doubted would carry all of them safely across the bayou and back, and Olivia grasped her hand as they started to move. It was standing room only in the dinghy, and the only handhold was a wooden beam in the center with a lantern on top. Tristan looked at her sister through the eerie yellowish glow, whose expression she was sure matched hers -- nervous.

  “You look great,” Olivia whispered. “Out to impress Celes tonight?”

  “No,” Tristan said immediately, looking down at her outfit. She’d gone with the required all black, of course -- black knee-high boots, black skinny jeans, black v-necked sweater, and last minute had decided on a black velvet choker as a finishing touch. Hanging from the choker was a tiny silver triquetra with paralleled double lines -- a trinity knot
. It had been a sixteenth birthday present from her parents, and they’d given her a matching ring, which she’d left at home that night. She’d decided not to straighten her hair, as it had sounded like too much effort, so it waved softly past her shoulders.

  “You look great, too, as usual,” Tristan told Olivia, smiling. “Very Audrey Hepburn.”

  Olivia had opted for a pair of skinny black ankle pants, shiny patent loafers, and a black turtleneck. Her copper hair hung long and straight nearly to her waist, and she’d given herself a killer smoky eye and bright red lip.

  “You do too, Ember,” Evander said in a high-pitched voice, and Tristan laughed.

  “You do, you’re right.”

  Ember rolled his eyes, plucking at his black t-shirt which he’d paired with black jeans and black boots. He always looked effortlessly cool and his attitude matched, but Tristan knew that in reality Evander was fairly meticulous about his appearance.

  “So Trinity, how is school going?” Thera asked, turning to look at her as the boat neared the opposite shoreline.

  “It’s going well,” Tristan replied. “Busy, and the course load is heavy, but I like the challenge.”

  “Is it even challenging for you, though?” Olivia commented. “You’re so smart, sometimes I think you should be teaching the teachers.”

  Tristan blushed.

  “It is challenging. I’m not that smart.”

  Olivia and Evander groaned in unison, and Thera laughed. The boat bumped softly onto the bank, and the group fell silent once again. Dune led the way, through the thick trees and bramble, walking for what felt like at least an hour.

  “No service,” Olivia muttered, behind Tristan, and Tristan turned her head only to speak out the side of her mouth as Olivia switched her phone off.

  “Of course there’s no service, have you looked around? Who are you trying to get ahold of, anyway? Everyone is here, and you know you can’t contact anyone back in Lavelle.”