Aaron lifts his hand and does it back to her.
He doesn’t say a word. The same marks bloom off his fingers and lock together in the air, the same door his mother just built, except his goes up faster and cleaner than hers did, like he isn’t even trying.
Angie frowns at her son.
“That’s child’s play.” Tiana flicks two fingers and both sets of marks scatter like ash on a wind. “Give us something better.”
Aaron turns to his smallest sister, and his whole face softens.
“Samara. You’ve got a gift none of the rest of them have. You give life wherever you go.”
Samara’s mouth drops open. “I didn’t think you ever paid attention to me, brother.”
“Of course I pay attention to you, Samara. You’re my favorite sister.”
Samara ducks her head with a shy smile, her cheeks warming, and behind her Tiana and Kiara roll their eyes in unison.
He nods at the grass in front of her. “Show them.”
She presses her palms together and opens them toward the ground, and the earth at her feet shudders and splits and pushes up green.
Then the flowers come. A whole ring of them blooming open around her, reds and golds and a purple so deep it’s nearly black, climbing her ankles, lifting their faces to her like she’s the sun. The smell of them rolls warm across the cul-de-sac, sweet and growing, and for one breath my lion leans into it, soothed, the only magic out here so far that hasn’t put her on edge.
Aaron lifts his hand.
The flowers come up everywhere at once. Not a ring around one girl but a wave, tearing out of the whole clearing, climbing the porch steps, winding up the railings, rolling out from his feet until the entire cul-de-sac of House of Zorah is drowning in bloom. He does in a single breath what his sister built petal by petal.
Samara looks around at all of it with both hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes shining, and she looks like she might cry. The happy kind.
“Little magic tricks,” Tiana mutters.
Samara whips a glare at her. Tiana just shrugs.
Aaron turns to Kiara next. “You too. Go on.”
Kiara lifts both hands, cupped, and draws them slowly apart. The air between her palms goes wet and shining, and water pulls itself out of nothing, gathering into a long ribbon that coils andfollows her hands like it’s alive. She winds it into a serpent of clear water, head and all, and sends it gliding a lazy circle around her shoulders.
Aaron flicks his wrist.
Water roars up out of the ground in a column taller than the cabins, a twisting tower of it catching the last of the daylight and throwing it back in pieces. It hangs over all of us, and my lion claws at me to run because there’s a wall of water about to come down on our heads. Then it does come down, soft, falling as warm rain across the flowers and the porches and every upturned face before it’s gone.
That’s when I catch it.
Under all that wolf and worry coming off the pack, one scent runs the wrong way. I track it to Seth, standing just behind his father with his hands shoved in his pockets, and it isn’t fear on him at all. It’s realization. Something has clicked into place behind his eyes, and whatever it is, it’s making him happy. Glad. Deeply, quietly glad, while the grown wolves around him stiffen with dread.
I narrow my eyes at him. Why in the world would Seth be happy his brother can do this?
Seth feels my stare land. His head comes up, catches me watching, and drops fast, his chin tucking down and away until his face is half hidden behind Gabriel’s shoulder. Gabriel glances down at him, and across the ring Kade does the same, and the look that passes between them says exactly what my gut is already saying.
What is wrong with him?
“Okay.” Tiana steps into the middle of the ring and rolls her neck. “So you’re good. I’ll give you that.” She lifts her chin. “But I’m not impressed. Still.”
Aaron almost smiles. “Fine. Let’s do you, then.” He tips his head. “Though I don’t know what you think you’ve got left to show me. Haven’t I already shown you what I can do?”
The temperature drops.
It reaches my whiskers first, a wet, wrong cold. I look up. The sky over House of Zorah is turning. Clouds boil up out of a clear evening, black and low, swallowing the light. Tiana throws her arms wide beneath them and tips her face up into the storm. When she lowers her head, her eyes have gone white. All the brown burned out of them, lit from somewhere inside.
