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“This isn’t about Chris.”
Hunter snorted. His brain felt like it was misfiring about everything.
Becca looked at him sternly. “Don’t. Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. You build everyone up to be your enemy, and they’re not. Chris and his brothers are trying to help you.”
He took a breath and stared across the hallway at the lockers there. “I know.”
“So am I.” The bell rang and she turned away. “Remember that.”
He watched her walk down the hall, wondering, not for the first time, what would have happened if he’d been honest with her from the start.
r wasn’t too sure about that.
“Chris, either.”
“Really? So Chris turning the water ice cold while I was in the shower was friendly?”
“Gabriel paid him twenty bucks to do that.”
Hunter smiled.
Nick added, “And then he felt like a moron when I told him he could have just turned off the hot water in the basement . . .”
Hunter laughed softly.
And all of a sudden it nailed home how lonely he’d been. The Merricks had each other. He had no one.
He lost the smile. The air in the room suddenly felt heavy. Hunter looked back at the ceiling.
Nick sighed, then rolled up on one arm. “Do you want some space? I can go crash with Gabriel.”
Hunter had no idea what the right answer to that was.
“Seriously, man,” said Nick. “I can feel your tension in the air.”
That made Hunter look over. “Really?”
“It woke me up.”
Hunter looked back at the ceiling. “Sorry.” He paused. “My dad always used to say that Air Elementals were the ones you really had to watch out for.”
Nothing but silence for a moment. Then, “I think it’s a breathing thing. People breathe differently when they’re stressed.” Another pause. “It’s new. I’ve only recently been able to sense emotion that way.”
Hunter remembered a day when Nick had gotten into a fight with Gabriel and made him stop breathing, and Hunter thought maybe his father had been right. “My dad told me about this one guy who always knew if someone was lying, using that same thing, I think. He said he was the strongest Air Elemental he’d ever seen. The guy could jump across buildings, like in Spider-Man, you know?”
“Now that would be useful.” Nick sounded intrigued, but then he hesitated. “What happened to him?”
His father had never said specifically—but if he had known the guy, he hadn’t known him long. Hunter looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do.”
Hunter gave him a sharp look. “Then so do you. You know what my father was.”
Nick didn’t back down, but he didn’t say anything, either. That weighted silence again.
Then he said, “Why aren’t you like that? Aren’t you supposed to be in some training program or something? Isn’t that what happens with you Fifths?”
Nick’s tone almost mirrored the way Hunter’s father used to talk about pure Elementals. “I would have. This fall. I wanted to go when I was younger—when I first knew, you know? But my dad wanted to wait, to make sure I was strong enough.”
