Episode 58: Onshore and Out of Ideas
- Crystal Crawford
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
“They’re what?” I stared at Emery. “What do you mean, you’re the gateway?!”
“Oh, no no no,” Emery said, pacing just on the other side of the rift from me. “This is bad. This is really bad.” She looked up at me. “The orb is going to self-destruct—I’m going to self-destruct!”
“We don’t know that,” I said firmly. “She said the orb was supposed to send the power somewhere, then self-destruct. Even if you are the gateway, they’d need you to open the barrier or whatever, right? Why would they destroy you? No, there’s got to be something else going—”
“Aubrey.” Emery gave me a somber stare. “Listen to me, okay? The magic for dreams and visions only works because it has a bit of all the elements. Understand? You and I each have a little of all the elements. That’s why I can see glimpses of whatever is going on related to others with powers. It’s why you can walk the barriers between consciousnesses of those with gifts. We’re connected to the source of all the gifts, Aubs. We’re infused with it, and it flows right through us.”
My chest tightened. “What does that mean?”
“It means we can receive elemental magic, in a way other gifteds can’t. We can’t absorb their gifts or anything, but…” She paused, searching for words. “Think of us like a Wi-Fi router for magical energy. We don’t make the signal—we’re just capable of receiving it and transferring it.”
That was eerily similar to the analogy Collin had used.
“When others are close enough, the energy from their magic passes through us,” Emery continued. “It doesn’t alter our bodies or anything, but it does leave some information behind. That’s how gifteds like us work. Our subconscious minds are interpreting the signals of all the other supernaturals around us, so we get glimpses of their thoughts, of their intentions…” She looked at me. “Sometimes even the ability to piggyback onto their dreamstates.”
“That’s…” I didn’t know what to say to that. “That’s wild.”
She nodded. “It’s crazy, but not any crazier than the fact that any of this exists in the first place."
She had a point.
“We’re conduits for elemental magic, both of us,” she continued, “but in the right conditions—like if wards were placed around us to keep elemental magic from flowing back out of us once it entered—we could technically be used as reservoirs. If the Vorcos guy could fill a conduit like me with enough elemental power, then set it off like a bomb at just the right location…” She stared off, her mind going elsewhere. “He could rupture the barrier between worlds, if there really is such a thing. I think it would be possible.”
“Wait. What?” Was she seriously saying Vorcos meant to open the gateway to another world by filling her with elemental power and blowing her up?
She looked back at me. “Aubrey, I went to the beach that night poking around the site of whatever that Vorcos man was building because I knew he was going to take one of us—either you or me. I could see his intention. I didn’t know what he wanted with us, but the odds that you would survive if he took you didn’t look—” She drew a breath and looked into my eyes. “I didn’t want it to be you, Aubs. I did everything I could to make sure it wasn’t you, and I tried to leave you clues so you could come for me, once it was safe… if I made it. I knew you didn’t have your gift yet, but you would. It was close to coming through. And they might’ve come for you, if I hadn’t—”
I gaped at her. “You did this for me?”
She pressed her hands to the surface of the rift. “It was the only way to protect you.”
I stepped back through the rift and pulled her into a hug. “It was stupid, Emery!”
She laughed against my shoulder, half laugh and half sob. “I know.”
I pulled back. “Why didn’t you tell us what you’d seen? Why didn’t you tell Mom and Dad?”
She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I thought I could stop him. I thought I could find out what he was up to and exactly who he was targeting, then warn the elementals—that I could stay one step ahead…and I didn’t think Mom and Dad would listen. Dad’s never cared for the supernatural world. He tried to avoid it. He didn’t know much about how our family’s powers work, or how to wield them…” She looked at me. “I did try to get a message to some other supernaturals, a team that handles this kind of stuff, but as for Mom and Dad… You know they’d have tried to stop me, tried to protect me. By then, it may have been too late for you.”
It was crazy how similar her thought processes were to mine… to what mine had been. I’d tried to solve her clues by myself at first, too. I nearly tried to chase down a kidnapper by myself.
But having help—having people I trusted in my corner, working with me… it made all the difference.
“You didn’t give them enough credit, Em,” I said. “When I found your clues, I tried to keep what I was working on from Mom and Dad, too, but they found out, anyway. I thought they’d stop me—but then I found out they’d been looking for you the whole time. Dad was working with that Trenchcoat Man and his cheerleader hawks, trying to protect me and find you.”
“Dad is working with the hawk shifters I talked to?” She stared at me.
I nodded and grabbed her hands. “We’re all better off when we just work together, Emery. No more secrets.”
She met my eyes, then sighed. “You’re probably right, but what good is it now?” She dropped my hands. “Now I’m trapped in here while Vorcos uses my body like some ticking time-bomb”—her voice climbed toward panic again—“and the rest of you are about to be blown up with me!” Her eyes filled with tears.
“Not to mention the barrier to some other world is about to be blown open and unleash who-knows-what chaos on the world,” I said.
She wiped her eyes. “That, too.”
I glanced back at the rift. “If you’re right about what he was doing, about why he had you trapped in that orb, then your body is full of elemental power right now, right?”
“...Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“And if you are the thing he means to blow up to open the gateway—” I could barely even get that sentence out, it was so horrible. I drew a breath. “If you’re a gateway because you’re a conduit, then that means I can be a gateway, too.”
She gave me a horrified look. “You are not blowing yourself up, Aubrey! I didn’t do all this just for that!”
“I’m not planning to blow up,” I said stubbornly. “But I didn’t do all this just for you to blow up, either.”
She locked eyes with me. “Then what are you suggesting?”
“The gateway will blow open when the orb finishes transferring its power into you, right?” I said. “The power it collected from all those elementals? That’s how they made it sound.”
She shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know for sure.”
“If so, then we just need to stop the flow of power before it’s complete.” I paused. “But we’ve already disconnected the elementals… so we’ve already done that.” I flung my hands, frustrated. “Why are you still beeping faster, like you’re about to blow up?”
I hadn’t come this far, done so much, only for it to end this way… but I was out of ideas.
I looked up at her, terrified and heartbroken. “Em, I’m so sorry—I don’t know what else to do.”
***
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