“Good,” said Michael. The rage he’d felt earlier was nothing compared to this. His power was already reaching for the earth below the truck, ready to lay waste to the entire county if that was what it took. “I’m going to find him and kill him.”

“Not if I get to him first,” said Hunter. Metal clicked in his hands. Light glinted off his gun.

“Jesus,” said Tyler. He reached over and unlocked his glove box.

When he pulled out a gun of his own, Michael turned wide eyes his way. “You had a gun when we faced that guy in the woods?”

“I didn’t have it on me. I didn’t think I’d need to be armed to board up your front windows.”

Michael’s cell phone chimed, and he pulled it out of his pocket, expecting a text from Hannah. His heart leapt, hoping for good news.

But this text wasn’t from Hannah. It was from a new unknown number.

Did you honestly think I was working alone?

Michael didn’t hesitate. He typed back.

I’m going to find you and kill you.

The response appeared almost immediately.

Go ahead and try. Save me some time.

Michael started to reply, but another message appeared below that one.

I already took care of your brothers.

Michael stared at that sentence until it burned itself into his eyeballs.

I already took care of your brothers.

The letters blazed and blurred until he couldn’t make sense of them anymore. To think, earlier he’d thought he’d lost everything.

He hadn’t felt this kind of despair since his parents had been trapped in that fire.

“I need to get out of the truck,” he said. His voice was a wisp of what it had been.

Tyler hit the button to unlock the doors. The air was cold and still when Michael stepped out of the vehicle. He stood and inhaled, realizing that he was waiting for . . . something. A blast of wind, either too cold or too warm for the weather. Some sign of Nick’s presence or power.

Nothing.

It had been raining before, but the clouds had dissipated overhead, revealing a heavy white moon staring down at him.

Had the earlier rain been a sign of Chris trying to draw power? Or just nature playing out? Michael wished he’d checked a forecast. He had no idea.

But there was no rain now.

And the fire continued to blaze from the home. Gabriel would have tried to stifle it, to contain it somehow and help with the rescue efforts.

He kept seeing them in that hospital room, remembering how they hadn’t wanted to be taken away—but they’d gone. For him, because he’d asked. They’d gone with the social worker, and willingly, too.

Hunter stood beside him, immobile. Michael couldn’t look at him. If he looked at Hunter, all he’d see was the brothers he’d lost.

His phone chimed, and Michael almost chucked it at the ground. But he had to look. Just in case.

Just in case what? Just in case your brothers aren’t in pieces and they magically found a cell phone?

It was Hannah.

Where are you?

He didn’t answer.

“Kill the lights on the truck,” he said to Tyler. “I want to walk the property line.”

They all walked, clinging to the shadowed darkness beneath trees and along the fence line. Tyler might have been cautious, looking for hazards, but Michael paid no attention. He simply walked, and they followed. If the Guide confronted him, Michael was ready to fight.

If the Guide simply shot him . . . well, right now that might be okay too.

Another chime from his phone. Hannah again.

My dad wants to talk to you.

He didn’t respond. After a moment, she texted again.

Please, Michael. Tell me where you are. Please call me.

He kept walking. Tyler and Hunter were silent behind him. Michael found that if he kept putting one foot in front of the other, feeling the power of his element, he could go on living.

If he stopped, he worried that he’d fall down and let the earth swallow him up.

When they reached the edge of the property, he could see rescue workers swarming around the house. The heat from the fire warmed his cheeks, even from here. He finally turned to look at Hunter and Tyler. “Do you feel anything? Any power at all?”

“No,” said Tyler.

Hunter’s face was white in the moonlight, leaving his eyes hopeless and desperate. He looked at the house and then back at Michael. And then away. His voice was a cracked whisper. “Nothing.” He had to wet his lips. “I thought we’d find them. I thought maybe they’d be hiding, and they’d sense us walking. I tried to use power, to see—to see if—”

And then his voice broke and he was crying.

Michael grabbed him. Held him. He didn’t cry. Every motion still felt like someone else doing it.

“I shouldn’t have come here.” Hunter pulled away and swiped his eyes on his jacket. “I shouldn’t have started this—”

“You didn’t start this,” Michael said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the burning home. He kept seeking information from the ground, but he felt nothing. “You’re a kid, Hunter. Your dad and your uncle started this. Or maybe Calla and her followers did, when they started that rockslide. Or maybe my parents did, by forming the deal.”

“None of them started this,” said Tyler. “This is the way it’s always been.”

Michael looked at him. “It shouldn’t be this way.”

“No,” said Tyler. “It shouldn’t.”

But it was. And Michael couldn’t fix it. He felt like he’d been fighting forever.

And now he’d failed. The past five years seemed so pointless. Just borrowed time.

“Someone is coming this way,” said Tyler.

Michael straightened, suddenly alert, ready to fight. He was surprised to find himself eager for it, to have a target for all this rage. For the first time, he didn’t care about setting an example for someone else. He didn’t care about what his father would have expected him to do.

If the Guide showed his face, Michael was going to find a way to kill him.

The man who walked through the haze and smoke with a flashlight wasn’t the Guide, though. It was Hannah’s father, the fire marshal.

Jack flicked the flashlight over each of their faces. Michael couldn’t see his face clearly, but his voice was tired. “Hannah told me you were here. Come sit in the car. I don’t have any information yet, but—”

“Were they here?” said Michael. “Is this the place?”

The fire marshal didn’t even ask for clarification. He just nodded. “Yes.”

Michael felt his face start to crumple. He hadn’t realized there’d been a shred of hope left curling in his thoughts.

Gone now.

Marshal Faulkner put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on.” He didn’t offer false hope. He didn’t say anything else. He just left his hand there and waited until Michael started walking.

Every step brought them closer to the house. The bomb had done its job, and thoroughly. Most of the structure was gone, and what was left was burning. Michael kept hoping for some kind of miracle, that maybe after this step, his brothers would appear from the darkness. Or after this step, the rescue teams would declare that they hadn’t really found body parts from the explosion, that it was all a joke. Or his brothers had escaped, and they were looking for a pay phone—

His cell phone rang.

Michael choked on his breath and grabbed for it. He didn’t recognize the number.

Please. Please please please—

A girl’s voice spoke across a poor connection. “Michael?”

He didn’t recognize the voice, but she sounded young. His thoughts were too jumbled to make sense of this. “Yeah?”

“It’s Calla Dean.”

He stopped walking. He pressed the phone more tightly against his ear. “Calla?”

“Yeah.” She coughed. “I need you to get here.”

Her plea was surreal enough that it chiseled through his panic and despair. “You what?”

“I need you to get here. They had me trapped, but I got free.” She coughed again. A burst of static came across the line. “I don’t know how long—”

“Wait—you what? Who had you trapped? What are you—”

“I’m by the water. At the abandoned park at the end of Fort Smallwood. There’s an old storage shed—” More coughing, then silence.

“Calla? Calla?”

Hunter and Tyler and the fire marshal were staring at him, but he didn’t care. Michael pressed a hand over his other ear. “Calla? Are you there? You’re at the abandoned park? What are you talking about?”

“I’m here. I need you to come. I knocked one of them unconscious, but it won’t be long—”

“You knocked who unconscious? Calla, I don’t understand.”

“One of the Guides, Michael. They’re in town. There’s one here, but he’s unconscious. I need you to come here.”

“Okay,” he said, breathless. “Okay, I’ll get there.”

“Hurry,” she said. “Before the other one gets back.”

CHAPTER 28

Michael had been sure the fire marshal would stop him from leaving. Too many recent interactions had ended with him in handcuffs.

But he’d turned on his heel and walked away, and no one had stopped him. Tyler and Hunter had hurried after.

Michael knew the old park well. A few acres of land made a narrow peninsula, with a beach on one side and a rundown pier on the other. He’d played there as a child, when the playground had been in good repair and the swing chains had still had all their seats. Now, there were nicer parks in more accessible parts of the county, and this one seemed to have been forgotten. None of the streetlights in the parking lot worked, leaving the entire place bathed in moonlight.

When he got out of Tyler’s truck and put his feet on the pavement, power swelled up to greet him.

A lot of power. Enough to make him hesitate. The Guide had hidden before, and pretty effectively. This was a deliberate display.

“Do you feel that?” he said to Hunter.

“Yes.” Hunter’s gun was already in his hands. He looked focused now that they had a task, as if he’d compartmentalized all the horror of the past few hours.

“Do you think it’s a trap?” said Tyler.

Michael hadn’t considered that. “Maybe you two should stay here.”

Tyler snorted. “Fuck that. I don’t work that way, Merrick.”

“We’re safer together,” said Hunter. “Not . . ” He hesitated, as if unsure he wanted to finish that sentence. He swallowed. “Not apart.”

They’d be safest with all five elements represented. That’s what Hunter wasn’t saying.

They didn’t have all the elements anymore.

He couldn’t start thinking about any of it or he’d never be able to move again. He needed to do something, to act.

“Come on,” Michael said. “The storage shed is by the old playing fields.”

As they crept across the park, Michael kept his focus on the earth, feeling for signs of anyone nearby, whether friend or enemy. Trees here were few and far between, and the moon cast a silver glow on the baseball diamond and the two soccer fields. A storage shed sat between them. At one point, it had been a bright, sunny yellow, but now it looked gray in the moonlight, and some of the wood from the sides had broken and fallen off.

Silence hung over everything, broken only by the water hitting the rocky breakers on the east side of the peninsula.

They stopped as a unit.

Hunter kept his voice low. “Are you sure this is where she said she was hiding?”

“Yeah.” Michael hesitated. Maybe his sense of self-preservation had kicked in since the numbness at the bombed house had worn off, but he didn’t want to walk into a bullet if he could help it.