Rae is late.
It's the first time she's not early since we started training, and when she does get here, she looks frazzled. "You okay?" I ask. "You seem out of it."
"I'm fine," she says, but she seems distracted. "What were we doing today?"
"Continuing weather, right?"
"Right." Rae sets her stuff down. "How're your winds coming?"
I conjure up a mini tornado. I've had a hard time keeping it in check—smashed a vase and scattered a pile of worksheets—but I've got it mostly down now, if I keep the wind small. "Airbending, check."
She laughs. "Okay. Then we move on to fire." She brings up the firestorm again. "The thing is, because I'm a weather elemental, I can only make the elements in their weather forms. You, however, can do anything with them. But the basics are the same."
"Fire is harder because it's more abstract. You can feel water. It's two hydrogen molecules, one oxygen molecule. Air is everywhere. So is earth. But fire... you can't really touch fire. In a sense. But really, it's a chemical reaction, too. Exothermic oxidation releases heat and light. It's hot because of negative enthalpy changes. Et cetera et cetera. Chem olympiad," she explains, flushing.
"Well, I've never gone for chem olympiad, so that's not going to work for me. But I can picture fire, right? That's how I've been learning most things."
"Yeah, but hold on a sec." She looks around critically. "Okay. Not too many flammable substances. Just try not to scorch anything."
"But you'll be here for damage control, right?"
"Right."
I start picturing fire. It's hot out, and that helps—I imagine the heat coalescing to form flames. I know what fire looks like. I know what it feels like. I know what it smells like. All I've got to do is combine them all into a reality. Honour! I shout at myself, in amusement. To my great surprise, my palm lights up.
I yell. It's hot. Hot. Rae quickly makes a jerking motion with her wrist and sends the flames into the air. I turn my palm over in horror. It's stinging with sharp pain. "Here!" Rae produces a bowl of water from nowhere and dunks my hand in. It's ice cold, and meets my blazing skin with cool relief.
"Holy shit." I breathe. My entire palm is red and blistering. "What was that?"
"My mistake." Rae is wide-eyed and apologetic. "I'm so sorry. I should have warned you—I should have guided you better. Fire is the most energetic—it tends to come right from you. If you don't control it properly, it'll form on your skin—and you're not fire resistant. I'm so, so sorry."
"It's fine," I tell her, even though my hand smarts like hell. If she hadn't stopped it when she had, I'd probably be well on the way to a third degree burn. "Do I need to see a doctor?"
She nods hesitantly. Rae is never hesitant, but she seems more horrified at the accident than me. "Yeah. For cream. Antibiotics. Or something. I know one, I can recommend..." she trails off, still highly unsettled. "Sorry. I'm not focused today. Let's just end it there."
Tense, I try to lighten the mood. "What, did someone threaten to kill you, or something?"
She frowns. "No. It's nothing. Just a bad day."
I hesitate. "Someone threatened to kill me."
She jolts. "What? When?"
I go and get the card, stowed away in my drawer. She turns it over thoughtfully. "That's definitely Essie's work, but they're easily bought. You don't know who sent it?"
"Someone just left it on the doorstep."
"Aerterum vale." Rae reads. "That's Latin."
"It means farewell forever."
"How nice." Rae bites her lip. "It's not a coincidence. Thirteen is important."
"Puberty?"
"Ha, ha." There's no humour in her voice. "Thirteen means a lot of things, all over the world. It's a prime number, the smallest emirp. It's the Last Supper. Zeus was the thirteenth and most powerful. It's related to the idea of completion in Egyptian mythology. There are thirteen moons in a calendar year. Numerology talks about it leading to greatness. It's represented by Death in tarot. It's the age when most magical creatures have a new level of strength. Werewolves gain the ability to transition without full moon. The legendary Addonexus comes to power at thirteen. And you... you get even stronger. That's why it's so important you learn about your abilities before you turn thirteen. If you come of age, and you can't control the surge of energy, something very bad could happen." She takes a deep breath and fiddles with the card. "And someone wants to make sure something very bad happens either way."
*
"You've been acting really weird," Vera says, while wearing her oversized Star Wars T-shirt, sporting a woollen beanie, and with a mouth smeared with chocolate. Mom sent her a June congrats-you-made-it-through-half-the-year package. "You're late for almost every call now, you hardly text me, every time we talk you're doing something—Vinni!"
I look up from Rae's notes guiltily. "Sorry. What did you say?"
"I said you're always distracted." She folds her arms. "I know you're not doing work, so what's up? Did you get a boyfriend or something?"
"Ew, no." I sigh and shove Rae's notes away. "I fought with Mom the other day."
Vera sticks out her bottom lip. "About what?"
"My grades."
"So you are distracted."
I hesitate. I usually tell Ver everything; despite what I said to Mom the other night, I'm glad she's around. But I still haven't said anything about the magic, and let's face it, it's hard to talk about my life without talking about the one thing that's now the sole focus of it. No wonder she says I don't talk to her. "I had a fight with Jess and the others too."
She frowns. "What happened?"
"I, uh. Well." How to say this? "Okay, so, I kind of joined this... club. It's really fun, but kind of time consuming. And I've been ditching Jess and the others for it. They got kind of upset. And the new friend I made in the club, she doesn't really want me to tell them about her."
"Some friend."
"Rae's not a bad person," I say defensively. "She just... likes her privacy. And Jess and the others can be kind of... overbearing, you know?"
"And you like Rae."
"She's really good at what she does, Ver. And she's teaching me... a lot. She's one of my closest friends right now, but the others... don't seem to get that. They're not like me and Rae. They try, but they don't understand. The other day I was with them... they were trying to help me do the... thing I was doing. But they couldn't. I—Rae just gets me more, you know? She gets what I can do, and she helps me figure it out. The others can't do that even if they tried."
Ver holds up both her hands. "Hold up. You're confusing me. Do what?"
"The... club."
"You suck at lying," Ver tells me self-righteously. "But fine. Your club. That's great, that you're doing something you like. Right? But you should still spend time with the others. Maybe they don't understand your... club. But they understand everything else. They're still your friends. That's not so hard. You shouldn't be ditching them. That's not having fun. That's being addicted."
Wise words from a nine-year-old. She looks at me seriously, wiping chocolate off her mouth with her thumb. "You have to tell me what this club is."
"It's more of a... hobby," I admit.
"Stamp collecting?"
"Come on, Ver."
"Juggling."
"Really?"
She snaps her fingers. "Origami."
I groan. "Ver..."
She folds her arms on the desk and leans forward. "I'm coming back in a couple of months. You'd better tell me. Or I'll make you."
A couple of months. That's right. She's coming back in time to celebrate my birthday, at the end of August. Same day someone's threatened to kill me by, because they think I'm a threat. At least, I think that's why. I can only guess. "I'm not scared of you, Vera," I sigh.
She stares at me. Suddenly, her gaze turns intense. "You should be."