Page 65 of Flickerstate

We open our eyes onto infinite rooms, burning and limned in gold, each one a world.

In many rooms, birds fly from their hiding places into theclearing. They alight on tufty grass, on flat rocks, on our shoulders like we really are Cinderella. Some are small, some plump. Black, brown, iridescent green. But we’ve agreed on a cardinal—so we bend our will toward the distant world where a winged scrap of red lands in the grass, pecks the ground, and flutters into the woods. Our nav rushes into that world and lights it up, incandescent.

Power flows from us. We fall out of flickerstate.

I’m one person again, Norah, gripping the hand of another person, Vik, while predawn gray creeps up the sky. The shift fromwetoI with youspins my head so badly that I forget what I’m waiting for.

A winged scrap of red lands in the grass. It pecks the ground and flutters into the woods.

Choked noises from Vik—laughter, almost soundless. “We did it.”

I’m sweating through my shirt, my legs tremble like they might fold, and I feel so good, good like I haven’t felt since beasts swarmed my front yard. For a second, I bask in that feeling.

Then, because I am who I am, I ask, “Any idea why it worked this time?”

“I—” He looks embarrassed. “I wanted you to get your bird.”

He hasn’t let go of my hand. His damp hair clings to his forehead; his damp T-shirt (emblazoned with a faded Vermont flag, cow and all) sticks to his chest. We accomplished the impossible for the second time, not because lives were in danger but because I looked wretched and I asked to see a cardinal and he wanted to make it happen for me.

I stumble forward and kiss him.

After a shocked second, his arm slides around my waist. He pulls me into him till he’s bearing my whole weight.

His hand knotted in my hair, his mouth hot on my mouth—

I melt. Liquid and burning. Molten gold.

***

My bite throbs beneath my sleeve. Dad’s not healed. I care about those things, I do. I’ll feel their drag soon, like rocks in my pockets while I struggle not to drown.

But today I float. I float through breakfast, classes, lunch, and more classes, smiling at my coffee, the AP Physics whiteboard, the imperfect-vs.-preterit review sheet in AP Spanish. Elena, handing out the sheets, contemptuously asks whether I’m that horny for grammar. I smile and say yes, I am, I am that horny for grammar; thank you for asking.

When I walk into clinic, Candace stands alone at the inner circle of tables. She’s wearing a black velvet skirt suit, poised as Madame X.

I float to her. “Dressed for murder. Nice.”

She looks at me sidelong. “You’re jazzed. I thought you’d walk in here like you were headed to the hangman.”

“If I trust anyone to get shit done, it’s you.”

“Key word: if. Your nickname should have been Control Freak,” she says—but she sounds fond.

“Yours should’ve been Mastermind. I see you, maneuveringus all.”

Her face splits into a wolfish smile. “I like that. You can call me that from now on.”

“Yes, ma’am. Also, I love your outfits and you’re the very prettiest.”

“Too far—you sound like the drunkest girl in the ladies’ room.”

Griffin and Mirabel choose this moment to walk past us. Griffin’s lips twitch, and Mirabel darts a baffled glance our way.

So much for striking fear into my enemies’ hearts.

***

Vik arrives on time. Since everyone else came early, Dr. Langmore and Dr. Ortega have already divided us up, Dr. Langmore with Vik’s team and Antoine’s at the room’s north end, Dr. Ortega with my team and Zipporah’s at the south. Vik hurries north. I beam at his back. I must look goofy as hell, and that bothers me, but not as much as I would’ve expected.