The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (76 page)

“He’s looking for someone,” Riley said weakly. “I just wanted to go on an adventure.” He coughed. “Like in the movies. Prove I could do something important.”

“Who’s he looking for?” Felix shouted.

“I don’t want to die.” Riley sounded scared. Tears welled up in his frightened eyes and slid down his face, leaving trails in the sooty film of smoke residue on his cheeks. “It hurts. It hurts so much. I don’t wanna die. Not like this.”

“Who’s he looking for?” Felix shouted again.

“I don’t wanna…” Riley began, and then his eyes dimmed and went still, half-open and looking up at the sky in an empty death stare.

“Hey!” Straddling the blood on the ground, Felix grabbed his coat and gave him a rough shake.
“Hey!
Who’s he looking for?
Hey!”

“He’s gone!” Allison got up and tugged on Felix’s arm. “C’mon! Someone’s gonna see all this smoke. The fire department will be here soon.”

Felix gazed down at Riley, slowly shaking his head in wonder. He couldn’t believe that just a moment ago, Riley had been Harper—or at least, Riley had
looked
just like Harper. It was still mystifying. “What do we do with him?”

“Leave him,” Allison replied as she headed for the Range Rover. “Let’s get the hell outta here!” She retrieved her phone from under the car before climbing into the passenger seat.

Felix followed after her and slipped in behind the steering wheel, slamming the door shut. “What do we do about this?” He stabbed a finger at himself, then at Allison. He was bloodied from his face to his feet. She didn’t look much better; her lips were split open, one eye had swollen nearly shut and dried blood crusted the lower half of her face.

“We’ll have to find a rest stop on the way.”

Felix started the car and floored it, pulling out of the parking lot and leaving the Cliff Walk behind.

“I didn’t just kill Harper, right?” Felix asked with fear in his voice as the Range Rover rolled over what was left of the roadblocks. Any clarity or relief he’d felt just a moment ago was already gone, replaced with endless avenues of confusion.

“I don’t think so.” Allison was tapping on her phone, using her thumbs.

“Should we call her?”

“Already ahead of you. But I’m not sure she’d want to talk to either of us right now.” She placed the phone on her lap. “I just texted Caitlin. She should be home by now.”

“Why wouldn’t she want to talk to me?” Felix asked after a moment’s reflection, confused. “What’d I do?”

“Did you tell her something about your parents’ attorney? That you had to meet with him?”

“Yeah. The night I… went to Bill’s.”

“Well”—she shivered and cranked up the cabin temperature—“I might’ve told her you didn’t have any reason to see him.”

“What?
Why’d you do that?”

“I wasn’t worried about Harper catching you in a lie. I’d just found out that no one knew where you were and I was scared shitless. It just… slipped out.”

“Great,” he muttered sarcastically.

Just as they turned onto a country two-lane—and before Felix had time to dwell on the revelation that Harper was mad at him—Allison’s phone beeped.

“It’s Caitlin,” she said, looking down at the screen.

“And…?”
He was nervous. He knew he shouldn’t be, but he needed confirmation—he needed proof of life.

“She says, ‘Flight was fine. At home. Harper’s staying for dinner. Already bored to death. Miss school so much—even that idiot Lucas. Call me later.’”

“Harper’s staying for dinner?”

“That’s what it says.”

“So she’s there?” he said hopefully. “At Caitlin’s?”

Allison nodded.

Felix breathed a double sigh of relief. The first for Harper. She was alive. He hadn’t killed her. Good thing—
very good thing
. He reserved the second for himself: Now he could stop worrying about the possibility that Riley had catfished him on a supernatural level.

“Crazy though, huh?” Allison was leaning forward in her chair to check out her eye in the visor mirror. It wasn’t getting any better. She needed ice. “What’d that kid say? He
adopts
the way people look? Just what the world needs—Sourcerors who can take the appearance of anyone they want. That’s scary on so many different levels.”

“No shit,” he agreed. It was actually terrifying. Too terrifying to contemplate at the moment. Felix swerved the car around the remains of a dead animal in the middle of their lane—maybe a deer?—that looked like every scavenger in the state had snacked on it. “That list Riley was talking about—you think the Faceman had one too? He knew about me and Lucas. Must be the same list, right? But why are we all on it? You think it’s random?”

“No idea.” Allison snapped the plastic cover over the mirror and flipped the visor back in place. “We’re going to have to tell them, you know.”

Felix had been thinking the same thing. “Tell them what though?”

“Everything,” she answered simply.

“Bill’s not gonna like that.”

“Screw Bill! What do you think would happen if one of Lofton’s minions kidnaps Caitlin and tells her to move a brick with her mind?”

“Nothing good.” He imagined Caitlin cowering in the shadow of the Faceman, a brick on the floor between them. It made him shiver almost as much as Allison—even though he was starting to feel a little warm. “I can’t let that happen. I’m just not sure how I can…” Felix left the rest unsaid, the sentence without a conclusion, not wanting to verbalize something so obvious: Lucas was in Minnesota; Harper and Caitlin were in California; Allison would be spending the break in Coos Bridge. How was he supposed to protect everybody—even assuming he could—when they were spread out across half the damn country?

Allison seemed to sense what he was worrying about. “We’ll figure something out,” she assured him. “We just need a plan. And we need to be smart.”

“Yeah,” Felix snorted. His planning skills needed some sharpening. The only thing he was planning for now was how to get cleaned up before they got back to school. The gritty surface of the parking lot had scraped away most of the skin on his hands and everything from the knees down. It didn’t hurt, but the intense itching sensation was annoying. He thought if he could scrape the blood off it might help. “I’ll pull over if I see a rest area. We need to change out of these clothes.”

She nodded, looking out the window. She opened her mouth in a huge yawn and said, “More sweaty gym shorts?”

He grunted. He didn’t think Allison was going to like the available options in the duffel bag.

*   *   *

Thirty miles down the road, Allison looked over at him and cleared her throat. “What are you thinking about?”

He shook his head and shrugged tiredly. He could still hear the roar of the wind in his ears. The inside of the car smelled like the ocean. And blood. He’d been driving in the slow lane along Highway 30, trying not to draw the attention of any state troopers. He felt her eyes on him but kept his on the road, staring straight ahead at nothing.

“Felix…?”

“I’m just wiped out. You wanna listen to a different station?” He hit the preset button a few times until he found a satellite channel playing an
Imagine Dragons
song he knew Allison liked.

“C’mon,” she said, her eyebrows drawn in. “What’s on your mind?”

He turned off the windshield wipers. The drizzle had thickened into a soft pattering rain, then went back to being a drizzle. But now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen a drop in a while. “I don’t know. I guess, it’s just that, back there, at the Cliff Walk… it’s… nothing.”

“Felix!”

“I just killed five people, Allie. Five!” He held up five fingers in case the word
five
didn’t do justice to the enormity of the number when the subject was
how many people have you killed today?
“And that one big guy…” He hesitated. He couldn’t tell Allison that he’d tortured Parni to death. If he hadn’t died on him before he was done (whatever
done
might mean), he could still be out on the Cliff Walk listening to his blood-curdling screams. And liking it. “I…
burned
him alive.”

“He nearly landed on me on the way down,” Allison said. “When’d you start doing…
that?”

“Doing what?”

“Controlling fire.” Her voice sounded cautious.

“I don’t know. A month ago, I guess. But I never used it to, you know…”

A frown hovered on the edges of Allison’s lips, then her face went blank. “So you can just burn things? With your… just your mind?”

He nodded, but didn’t elaborate. Neither of them spoke for a long time. He glanced at her, but couldn’t make sense of her expression.

“But you thought he killed me, right?” Allison finally said. “You must’ve been pissed. I’d be pissed if I thought someone had killed you. I don’t know what I would do.”

For a moment, Felix relived the terrible pain that had ripped through him when he thought Allison had died and a deep ache spread from his chest, tightening his throat. “But there’s… there’s more.”

“More?”

“The Faceman. I killed him too—remember. And Riley. And I killed… my… my parents.” He took his eyes off the road and looked at her, blinking back the tears, fighting them off. “I’ve killed
eight
people since last summer. That can’t be a good thing.”

She nodded, and stared out her window in silence.

Three miles later, and still no response, he turned his head toward her. Her expression hadn’t changed. Still unreadable. “I thought you’d try to cheer me up,” he told her.

“Sorry,” she said a little absentmindedly. She tried to smile but it turned into a wince. “I was just thinking that… this is only the beginning.” She looked down at her hands, brow creasing, while Felix fidgeted with the steering wheel, waiting for her to continue. When she did, she sounded calm, almost sleepy.

“What happened to your parents wasn’t your fault,” Allison went on. “You know that. But you killed the Faceman, the Protectors and that Riley kid—
who was a Drestianite, by the way
—because you didn’t have a choice. They were trying to kill you. If you hadn’t killed them, you’d be dead. And so would I. You understand that, right?”

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Felix said quietly.

Allison smiled, but the effort just made her wince again. She dragged a finger over a bottom lip that would probably need a few stitches. “I’m glad it bothers you. I’d be a little worried if killing people didn’t prick your conscience. Especially with what… what you can do. I mean, you can do some pretty incredible shit. But I think it’s just going to get worse. There’s going to be
more
: more Protectors, more Facemen, more Drestianites, more whatever the hell’s out there. And if you don’t kill them…”

“They’ll kill me. I know. I get it. But it still sucks.”

Her shoulders lifted and fell in a stiff shrug. Then she made a fist, running her fingers over her bruised knuckles.

“When’d you become such a badass, anyway?” Felix asked, forcing a grin. “You were kicking the shit out of Riley and that huge Parni guy.”

Allison’s voice was still calm, but her eyes were dark and focused. “When I was fighting with Parni—and Riley—it was like I was watching myself from above. I was punching, kicking and dodging punches, and doing all these things, and I don’t even know how I was doing it.” She unclenched her hand.

“You ever take boxing, or an MMA class, or anything like that before?”

Allison shook her head, then took a fistful of hair with one hand, and with the other rolled the tips between her fingers as though she was checking for split ends. “Maybe it’s a Croix thing.”

That gave Felix a jolt. “A what thing?”

“Croix. My real name. The name I was born with, anyway. C-R-O—”

“I-X,” he finished quickly. A strip of skin that ran right down the center of his back began to crawl. “C-R-O-I-X. Croix?”

“Yeah,” she said, watching him.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. So? Why?”

“I never knew that,” Felix said.

“Why would you? I don’t think I ever told you. So what?”

“You ever hear of Agatha Pierre-Croix?”

“Agatha Pierre-Croix?” Allison repeated softly, her eyes narrowing in thought. “You mean PC’s founder?”

“Uh-huh.” Something told him it wasn’t a coincidence.

“What?” Allison gave him a sharp look. “You think she’s a distant relative or something? I don’t think the name’s
that
uncommon.”

What do I think? I think she’s a ghost who lives in the tunnels beneath St. Rose
, he’d started to say, but caught himself. For now, he just shrugged and said nothing. The silence lengthened. Allison watched him, her eyes keen and questioning. They rode through a valley of blanketing ground fog that made the road disappear like a magic trick. Felix stared out at the swirling dragon’s breath, too tired to talk and too tired to think. He would tell Allison about the ghost of Agatha, the tunnels and the cemetery beneath campus, room 444 at Astoria, and that he was
The Kid With The Hood
—she would probably think that last part was hysterical—but not right now. That was a long story, and he was too exhausted to get into it. Later.

“Do you—” She broke off, paused for a second, then gave her head an adamant shake. “Where’s your phone?” She thrust out her hand. “I want to talk to Bill.”

Felix reached into the pocket of his baggy gym shorts (once a shade of pale blue, now dark red), brought out his cell, unlocked it, and handed it to her. She tapped, scrolled, tapped twice more, then placed it in a cup holder between the seats when she was done.

Bill answered on the second ring. “Hello?” The phone was on speaker. “Felix? Hello?” He sounded anxious.

“Yeah,” Felix said. “Hey Bill.” An oncoming car with lights on top sped toward them, closing the distance a little too quickly. Sweat was trickling down his sides—but that was because Allison had set the temperature to seventy-eight degrees. He eased down on the brake, even though he was already going a needle tick under the speed limit, but it was only a service truck from the Department of Fish and Wildlife.