“Oh,” she said. “Look, about before, what Cassie said . . .”
“She didn’t mean it. She was delirious.”
Raven paused and looked at me, as if trying to decide whether to say something or not.
“You know I would never hurt you, right?” she said finally. Her voice was defiant, but I knew she was masking hurt. I reached out and hugged her tight. “Ah—ow—hey—what are you—”
“I know you wouldn’t,” I whispered fiercely in her ear. “I trust you with my life.”
Raven broke away and straightened the T-shirt and pajama pants I’d lent her. She looked at me sideways.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said. “I don’t do hugs.”
I shook my head and smiled, locking the bathroom door behind me, and flung the window open. The rain had stopped, and the night was damp, angry, vengeful. The Rebellion hadn’t gotten what they were after, this time. But it didn’t mean they were going to stop.
Cassie and Dan’s conversation had filled me with an ache I’d been suppressing for so long. A deep, gaping chasm stretched open inside of me. And suddenly, I started crying.
I gazed out the window, staring at the wild mountains beyond. Moonlight struggled to push through the dense thicket of clouds that still churned restlessly above.
“Asher,” I whispered. “Where are you? Tell me you’re not a part of this. Please, just tell me you’re working on a way to end this whole thing.”
But there was no answer. Not from the moonlight. Not from the stars. Not from the shadows of the mountains, luminous against the night.
And not from Asher.
19 
“You know,” I said. “Finals really suck, but they suck even more when you’re also preparing to stop a war.”
“I think I have an ironic T-shirt with that very saying,” Dan mumbled.
“They suck no matter how you slice it,” Cassie said. “They’re depressing. They’re gloom and doom. They’re the end of something.”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “Those happy carefree days before finals period began.”
“Did I miss the part where those days were happy and carefree?” I asked.
Cassie paused, considering. “If they wanted finals to be inspiring, they would have called them ‘beginnings.’” She thought for another second. “Or, ‘doorways to your future.’”
“Doesn’t quite have the same fear-inducing ring to it,” said Dan.
“But points for poeticism,” Ian called from behind the counter.
“Thanks,” she said brightly.
As if we weren’t already tense enough, it was finals week. Love the Bean was crowded with students chugging coffee like it was the elixir of life and studying; they were curled up in the overstuffed armchairs and huddled in groups around the various low coffee tables.
Meanwhile, I was having an identity crisis.
As I looked at the kids around me terrified of balancing chem equations, flipping out over the answer to X, and losing sleep over that quarter of a point between a 97 and a 98, I realized just how far my life had come in only half a year. My classmates were worried about integers and the key dates in World War I. I was worried about whether or not my visions of the future had adequately prepared me to stand my ground against the rival forces of fate and free will who threatened to destroy the world with their ancient battle by turning me into the greatest human weapon who ever lived.
Suddenly, precalc wasn’t looking so bad.
Yet even as I sat there, I knew that part of me was still clinging with all I had to my old life. Otherwise, why would I be sitting here with the rest of my friends, worried about keeping my GPA high enough so that I could get into the college of my dreams?
Because part of you doesn’t want to face the reality of what’s coming.
The stress was beginning to get to me.
Pete, the manager, had to hire another barista so that Ian could have some help. Ian divided his time into making double-shot, no-foam lattes; studying; and helping me figure out the answers to the final two pieces of the puzzle.
Where was James Harrison? Who was the shadowy fourth Rogue in my mother’s vision? I had tried to ask the box the night of the flood, but I was so exhausted, my power so spent, that the etching of the key didn’t even glow when I held it. It took me a few days to recover. But now I was ready.
Everything else seemed to be coming together. We had reunited Aunt Jo and Aaron Ward; Earth’s special and quirky ability to touch the sky with her mind was proving to be super useful; Cassie and Raven were finally beginning to make peace, however tentatively; we knew that the Order was planning to kick-start this battle to end all battles on prom night; and I was the most powerful I had ever been.
That night, I took my little wooden box back up to the roof, where the sky was a velvety black and the moon was my guide. Only two of the four intertwined loops remained. Did that mean I only had two questions left? There were so many things I wanted to ask her, but I knew I didn’t have enough time. I had to make them count.
So while the whole house slept below, I asked the question I hoped my mom could answer. The third loop lit up with a flash.
Again, I was pulled full-throttle down the waterslide, twisting and turning, until I found myself standing in the woods around the cabin that I’d grown so familiar with. There was my mother, standing with the third Rogue from my vision. The one I’d thought was James. He had short hair the color of hay and a smattering of freckles across his face that looked out of place on a grown man.
Rogues, always a little out of place.
“How do you do it?” he asked quietly.
The wind rustled through the pines, whipping my mother’s honey blond hair around her face.
“It’s different for me,” she said solemnly. “This is my family. My home. My baby is powerful, and I have to do what I can to protect her.”
“So is mine,” said James. “Ian is going to do great things. Important things. You saw it with your own eyes.”
“James—” my mother said.
“I want him to know who he is. I want to tell him, to raise him knowing he’s got a power in him that few have. I want to be proud of him.”
“You know you can’t,” she said softly. “I want anything but that for Skye. It’s too dangerous, for both of them. Don’t you see that? The Order is always watching, yes. But they’re too young for the things that fate is asking of them. We have to wait.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“You have to wait.” My mother’s jaw was a tense line. “What about Catherine? What will she say if you tell her who you really are? Who her son is?”
He looked grim.
“I want what you have. Sam, Skye—the three of you are a unit. I want to make Catherine and Ian a part of this life.”
“It’s not safe for them.”
“Then I want to go back.”
“We need you here.” They were at a standstill. “You’re doing Ian a favor by keeping him in the dark about this. Catherine, too. These are dangerous times, James. The Order is getting restless. You’ve seen the flashes of white through the trees. I think they know.”
She moved closer to him.
“James, I’m begging you. Don’t tell them. Keep this secret. Just a little while longer. My daughter’s life is more important to me than establishing this new faction, and I know you want the same for your son.”
“But it’s tearing me up inside.”
“We all make sacrifices for our kids. This is yours. It’s the sacrifice you’d be making for his safety. He’ll grow up a normal boy. He and Skye will find each other. I’ve seen it.”