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My brother is a nightmare.
The streets are crowded with enforcers casting spells into the night as their tanks blaze in gold fire. Brighton has flown higher than every building around him, and he freezes in the air, admiring his chaos. He has three heads with eyes as dark as black holes, and streams of phoenix fire are flowing from the palms of his six hands. I fly into the air to tackle him, to get him to stop, but he’s untouchable. I go through him like he’s made of air. I float in front of his face, begging him to stop, and there’s nothing but cruel laughter echoing from all three of his heads. The city is his to destroy. Finally, when I’m brave enough to stop my brother and conjure fire of my own, Brighton unleashes an inferno toward me and—
I snap awake, groaning and panting.
My brother was a nightmare. That’s all. It was all a nightmare. Brighton wouldn’t ever go dark like that. It’s all in my head.
I remember pieces of conversation, of an argument between Brighton and Prudencia, but neither of them are with me now. I’m alone in a room with bright white walls and lights that hurt my eyes, so I shift to the see-through ceiling and stare out into the night sky. I don’t know what time it is, or even what day it is, but I don’t see the Crowned Dreamer or its glow stretched across the darkness. Not even a single star in sight. This constellation is rare and won’t return to the sky until I’m an old man, assuming I get to live that long. Maybe my next life will see it, or the one after that, or however many lives I get to have before someone gets me good with an infinity-ender.
This bed I’m in is too firm, and I’m hot, so I remove the sheet and realize I’m shirtless. There’s dried blood around my stomach from where Luna stabbed me. The wound is closed, but it looks odd, like discolored, stretched-out skin; someone’s healed me. But I don’t think it was Eva. Eva’s power seals all open wounds in ways that you have to look twice to tell that work was even done in the first place. She also absorbs all the pain, and I still feel this dull pounding and sharp twinges. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that someone kept me alive. I’m just appreciating how good we have it with a powerful healer like Eva on our side.
Surrounding the gash are the scars from when Ness sliced me to trick Luna and the Blood Casters into believing he was still loyal to their gang. I don’t think these will ever fully heal. But Ness did this to save my life, and even when he finally had the chance to run away into anonymity, he returned to Nova when we were under attack to save me again. Then he got taken captive by enforcers, and I doubt he escaped. He’s probably dead somewhere, even though I’m not worth dying for.
There’s a gentle knock at the door. I look up to see a short practitioner with freckles dotting her face and curly red hair flowing over the shoulders of her midnight-blue cloak. Her electric-green eyes widen when she sees me staring back at her. “Emil Rey,” she says with a hint of motherly pride. “I’m Dr. Bowes. It’s an honor to have been part of the team that—that—that, uh, that worked on you.” Her cheeks are flushed and she’s shaking her head as if she wants to leave the room and come back in to restart this entire interaction.
“Hi, thanks . . .” These first words aren’t much, but they’re rough against my throat.
“Relax,” Dr. Bowes says as she hands me a cup of water, and I drink from the metal straw.
She asks me a series of questions, and I answer everything in as few words as possible: I rate the pain seven out of ten; I’d like the lights dimmed; I’m starving and vegan; I’m exhausted. She dims the lights and puts in a request for someone to prepare a meal for me. I bring the blanket over my chest again. The last time my scrawny body was exposed was when Ness was washing the cuts he inflicted on me, and he did all of that with his eyes closed because he knows I’m struggling with how I look, even with everything else I got going on. I can tell Dr. Bowes senses my discomfort because she helps me into some patient-wear—mustard yellow with black stars—and that’s one less thing on my mind.
“Emil, the authorities are going to need a report on what happened tonight,” Dr. Bowes says as she pulls up
a chair.
“The Blood Casters,” I say.
She nods. “Iris mentioned this while we were treating her too. I understand she’s been in touch with your mother and has advised her to keep her distance for the time being.” Makes sense, but I know that can’t be easy on Ma. “I have to thank you for your service to this country, Emil. It takes a brave soul to fight this fight. I don’t think I’d have it in me, even with your powers. I grew up watching Bautista and his Spell Walkers charge into combat. That was back when they were welcomed heroes—celebrities too, of course.” Dr. Bowes smiles wistfully before pressing her hand against her heart. “I cried for weeks after he died, and it was years before I took down his posters.”
The way she’s looking at me makes me question whether she knows that Bautista is my past life. But that’s impossible. The public doesn’t know that reincarnation is real, since even specters with phoenix blood like me aren’t resurrected as the same person. The way she’s going on about Bautista so admirably makes me think she’d be chill if I let her in on the secret, but it’s my original life as Keon Máximo, the alchemist who turned himself into the first specter, that I want to keep close to the chest. The only person I told who isn’t directly involved in this war between the Spell Walkers and the Blood Casters is my former boss at the museum, Kirk Bennett. Then he betrayed me for his own research and fame.
I play it cool about Bautista. “He was a hero.”
“As are you. My son is so proud of me for helping a Spell Walker. You probably hear this a lot, but he’s your biggest fan. We’ve been working on his costume for Halloween. He’s going as you.”
The blood that didn’t spill out of me back in the garden rushes straight to my face. There were a couple years where Brighton and I dressed up as the Spell Walkers for Halloween. He had to be Bautista, of course, because of that alpha, big-brother bone in him, and I chose to be Lestor Lucero because I thought he was cute, I can’t even lie. But look at us now. Brighton’s fantasies got the best of him tonight and he drank Reaper’s Blood so he could fit in with the Spell Walkers. I’m Bautista’s real-life scion. These lives were never costumes, but Dr. Bowes’s son is going to dress up as me, even though I might be dead before Halloween. And what then? Will her son mourn me the same way she grieved Bautista? He doesn’t know me, and she didn’t know him. This cycle of worship and grief needs to come to an end.
I offer a quick thanks—that’s the best I got.
“Where’s my brother?”
I might have to deck him if he’s out in the hallway bragging into some camera about this Reaper’s Blood business.
For a moment, Dr. Bowes looks as if someone has come around the corner and surprised her. She composes herself and says, “Don’t be alarmed.”
“Too late. What’s wrong?”
“I understand Brighton drank a potion tonight,” Dr. Bowes says. “Traffic increases in all our facilities during the appearance of every prime constellation as people pursue specter conversion. Believe me, we’re already bracing ourselves for the Cloaked Phantom next weekend. My alchemy courses while pursuing my PhD couldn’t have prepared me for this new, dangerous trend of people experimenting with multiple essences. The results have been disastrous. There have been so many reports of people combusting, others eaten alive from within, limbs falling off.”
I absolutely didn’t need her to paint this picture of Brighton’s legs and arms falling off, like rotted teeth out of a mouth, while he screams and dies in a fiery blaze, but there’s no shaking that out of my head.
“It’s very tricky,” she says. “But I assure you my team and I are doing our best to stabilize him.”
“You can’t guarantee that.” I’m shaking. It’s like all the promises the doctors and alchemists fed us about saving Dad. “The elixir was created by Luna Marnette herself. It’s next level. She’s responsible for the Blood Casters and all these other hybrid specters. She was going to use this potion to live forever.”
“Immortality is impossible,” Dr. Bowes says.
“I bet you think stealing blood from ghosts is impossible too, but here we are.”
