I gulped back the memories. Ever since I’d chosen to embrace the fire at Dunwich and claim for myself what had haunted me my entire life, I’d been walking on eggshells around my old crimes. How long could I be Hazel Waite the firestarter without acknowledging what that had cost?
Trey studied me with those ice eyes of his – as calm and cool as the winter skin of a lake. Through their glassy surface I could see right through to the Trey inside – that brilliant mind that ticked over as he studied me. For the first time, my lips itched to talk about my past. Even though he feared what I could do, I had a feeling that if anyone would understand, it would be Trey Bloomberg.
Fire and ice.Trey and I were opposites, and yet, we were two sides of the same sad story. What was inside us kept us trapped, and when we unleashed the hunger we kept hidden away we learned how destructive we could be. We were monsters created by circumstance and cruelty. He was the bully who’d been raised on indifference and fed with his father’s savagery. Trey lashed out because he hungered for everything he’d never had. I was the firestarter cursed with a power I didn’t understand, a power that fed on the rage and injustice burning inside me, that never seemed to dim.
In Trey’s arms, I felt like maybe being a monster was okay. Maybe even monsters deserved love.
Trey pulled my head into his other shoulder, and my chest did this weird swelling thing where I felt as though I was filled not just with fiery heat, but also light. And that made me think of another time when I’d felt so full and light and loved. Back in my room at Derleth Academy, when Ayaz had held me in his arms and told me I was beautiful.
I bit back the foolish urge to unburden my secrets, and instead begged for his. “You know Ayaz better than anyone. Why did he betray me?”
Trey’s fingers dug into my shoulders. He didn’t say anything for a long time. I was starting to fade into sleep when he finally said, “From the very day I met him, I wanted to hate Ayaz. When my father brought him to our home, he all but said ‘this is the son who will replace you.’ He pitted the two of us against each other, and in every instance, Ayaz would come out on top. I should have loathed him. I might have killed him – I had so much hatred inside me burning for release.”
“Why didn’t you?” I whispered.
“Hatred for my father won out. I realized Ayaz and I were both the same – desperate to please the people who were supposed to love us unconditionally, to be accepted by elders whose morals we never shared. And probably because more than I was angry, I was lonely, and Ayaz made that horrible house tolerable.” Trey laughed, his eyes shining as he lost himself in memories. “He had more imagination than I ever did. I only knew about the world inside my prison – my gilded cage – but Ayaz had these wild ideas about life, the universe, everything. He thought I was worldly because I had this big house and lots of toys and my dad was rich and important, but he’d been to places like Damascus that I thought only existed in storybooks. He’d walked in a desert and swam in the Red Sea. He’d stood at the foot of a pyramid and walked in the footsteps of ancient kings. When he spoke Turkish to his parents on the phone, I would listen to the musical rise and fall of the words. He was lonely and I was lonely and when we were together we both forgot about that for a while.
“So no, I can’t believe it of him. But I believe you, Hazel. If you say Ayaz did those things, then I believe it. But it’s the why of it that’s killing me as much as it is you. Every atom of me says there’s something else going on here, especially considering the way Ayaz has been since you left. He hasn’t even talked to me. I think he knows that if he gets too close, I’ll see right through him.”
I shuddered. “It’s what you’ll see that I’m afraid of.”
Trey traced a line over my breast with his finger. “I don’t believe he had a choice. They wanted you out of the way. They wanted to break your mind, and they knew one of us had to do it. They couldn’t convince Quinn or I to betray you. So our question should be, what did they do to Ayaz to make him turn against you?”
“You mean like, they tortured him?”
“Oh, I bet they did that.” Trey winced. “But they did that to me. Ayaz wouldn’t have broken because they hurt him. So it must’ve been something else. Maybe they’ve drugged him, somehow? Maybe they used something against him to force him to obey. Or someone.”
Zehra.
It was the obvious answer, because she was probably the only person on earth Ayaz truly cared about. But if he knew she was dead, he’d never have given them anything. But if they threatened her life unless he cooperated…
Maybe… maybe she had survived the cave after all.
Trey’s words were bleak, but they made a bright flare of hope arc across my chest. I hated the thought that the Eldritch Club and the school might’ve done something to Zehra and Ayaz, but if Trey was right and Ayaz had been corrupted… then perhaps I could bring him back.
“I won’t give up on him,” I whispered.
“Wewon’t give up on him.” Trey’s voice cracked, and I felt his love for Ayaz. They might not have been brothers by blood, but they were in every way that mattered.
In the still of the night, in a stranger’s house with two dogs snoring on a giant cushion beside us, we explored each other’s bodies with silent reverence. Trey’s touch was tender, his kisses soft as silk, like he was afraid of breaking me, or of breaking himself.
My dreams that night were ringed in fire. I was back in the cavern beneath the school. I stepped toward the trapdoor. If I opened it again, maybe the god would give me some answers. But as I bent to slide the bolt, voices sounded in the tunnel behind me. Familiar voices that stood my teeth on edge.
I dived for the cover of the alcove just as Vincent Bloomberg and Ms. West walked into the room, arm in arm. They looked the same but different. Instead of her black Morticia Addams dress, Ms. West wore a grey pantsuit and blood-red stilettos, the jacket plunging between her breasts. Vincent wore the kind of clothes movies told me rich people wore on a golf course. Ms. West’s eyes caressed the cavern, her head craning to see every angle as if she’d never been there before.
“This is what you wanted to show me?” She faced off against Vincent, her back ramrod straight as she placed her hands on her hips. She looked as if she was about to scold him. “When you said you had a job offer for me, I didn’t expect something so…damp.”
“Indeed.” Vincent’s graveled voice trembled in the cavernous space. Ms. West shuddered as a wave of the god’s hatred escaped the trapdoor and rippled across the room. I leaned against the wall in the alcove, bracing myself until the onslaught was over.
“It’s… interesting. What mineral is that – some type of actinolite?” she pointed to one of the throbbing veins in the wall. “Oh, it’s… I can’t see…”
“They’re impossible to focus on,” Vincent said, his tone bored. “You get used to it. And it’s not actinolite. We’ve had it analyzed, and it is not any mineral currently known on earth. We believe this room and some of the tunnel networks are built from rocks that were sent from another galaxy, perhaps as part of the god’s ship.”
“The god’s ship?” Ms. West frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Vincent. I’m a woman of science and an atheist. I don’t understand why you’ve brought me all this way to show me a musty old cave and spout off religious nonsense.”
With a start, I realized I was been shown a glimpse of the past. I was side-of-stage while Ms. West had her first personal tour of Miskatonic Prep. She wasn’t even a fake teacher yet. She worked in the mortuary at Arkham General Hospital, experimenting on cadavers in her spare time.
“It’s not nonsense.” Vincent walked over to the trapdoor, picking up a chain between his fingers and unhooking it from the lock. “This is what I wanted to show you.”
