Deadlock - 9

Nessa didn't know what in the world to wear, so she threw on the best thing she could find, modeling herself after Adelaide's showy get-up. If she was going to the Den as some sort of magic folk, then she was going to dress like one. A black sequined tube-top that revealed a sliver of skin above the waistband of her cut-off jean shorts. The outfit was complete with her trusty army boots and fishnet tights, hair pulled back to reveal two heavy silver stars hanging from her earlobes, the small hoop on the top of her left ear shining in the cold light of her room.

She frowned at her reflection. She looked like one of the Britney Spears wannabes from school, but it was necessary. She'd only been here for roughly a week, but even she understood that the Underground here consisted of skin and strips of cloth meant to be clothing. The stories that Sky had told her about his missions clarified that much for her.

Her makeup had just been applied when her door swung open and Elena marched in. She was wearing a similar outfit to Nessa's—spiky heels, spaghetti strapped mini dress, dramatic eye makeup that made her look even gaudier than Nessa, and a gold shoulder shrug—and carried herself with an air of irritation.

Her eyes gave Nessa a once over and she sniffed, sitting on Nessa's bed, her knees pressed together. "So you got the dress code."

Nessa rolled her eyes and leaned against the desk at her back, where her makeup was scattered across the surface. "Do I look like the kind of girl that would wear her Sunday best to a fluffing Underground bar?"

Elena's eyes sparked coldly. "Ooh. And the lingo. Bravo."

Nessa reminded myself to breathe deeply. "I didn't invite you in here to start a fight, Elena."

When Elena scowled at her, she looked like a baby lion—potentially dangerous but premature in her intensity. Despite the fact Will had told Nessa that Elena was fifteen, she was small enough to pass for twelve, makeup or not. "Well, there'd better be a good reason I'm wasting my time with you then."

Nessa's boots clunked heavily against the floorboards as she crossed the room and sat on the bed next to her. "You deserve to know what happened today. I'm sure Will has already filled Sky in."

Elena sighed heavily. "I'm the last one to know, right? Big surprise there."

Nessa felt another rush of sympathy for the girl, though she was almost sure Elena was playing her feelings. No matter, she still couldn't let herself get soft around Elena, or that girl would poke holes all over Nessa with those spiky heels of hers. "Do you want me to tell you or not?"

Nessa's stare was unforgiving, and Elena's harsh expression cracked under its duress.
"Yes. Whatever. Just tell me."

With zero hesitation, Nessa launched into the story of what had happened at Ty's cabin, the letters she and the boys found, the metal balls. She told Elena that she was Deadlock and that the Regis was gathering a load of Infected together to create a new world order with the Avatars completely out of the picture. By the time she finished, she felt just as drained as Elena looked.

"So these things have the ability to capture and hold magic?" Elena asked wearily, turning around one of the metal balls Nessa had found in Ty's dresser drawer.

Nessa nodded. "That's what Adelaide told me. She called them Cells."

"Fitting, I guess," Elena said, turning the ball this way and that. Her eyes were studiously focused on it and Nessa had the distinct feeling Elena was desperately reaching out to cling to those bitter threads of hers. "If it's a prison for magic, no matter how small. She let you just keep them?"

"She gave them to my father, and since he won't be needing them anymore, I'm the next person in line that could need them." Nessa didn't mean to sound so sad, but it came out that way. Her throat was tight at the mention of her father, his body flashing through her mind, cold and lifeless on the shag carpet of his living room.

Elena's curiosity was picked at. "Did she tell you how to work it?"

Nessa simply shrugged and took the Cell back from her, setting it with its buddies on the table beside the bed. "Not really. I didn't bother to ask."

She frowned at Nessa. "Lot of good that'll do you."

"You sound like your brother," Nessa said, almost defensively.

Elena shook her head, ignoring her. "Seriously, Nessa. If you really are Deadlock, then the Cell is the only way you can use the magic. It's really the only way you can protect yourself against the Realm and the Infected."

Nessa stared at her. "You don't actually want me to die?"

"I still don't like you," Elena scowled, "but there's not a point in having you killed." Nessa wondered how much of that was her talking and how much of it was true logic. If Nessa's blood was as rare and precious as everyone seemed to think it was, then she was a hot commodity for any number of magical beings. She didn't know much about the Avatars and her bloodline, but something told her that the past wasn't as pretty and packaged as Elena.

"You're a brat, you know," Nessa pointed out, meaning every word.

"Like I haven't heard that before." Elena leaned back on her hands and stared at Nessa. "You're an overconfident know-it-all, you know."

In all honesty, Nessa was shocked to hear those words come out of Elena's mouth. She had lived her entire life with Will and she was calling Nessa the overconfident know-it-all? If that's what she was, then she didn't even know if she wanted to know what Elena thought of Will.

There was suddenly the sound of a throat clearing in the doorway, and both Elena and Nessa snapped their heads to see Sky standing there in an outfit so wildly different from his usual style that the girls actually grinned. Instead of the sweaters and button-downs, he was sporting a worn leather jacket that had to have come straight out of Will's closet, and a pair of jeans with holes in the knees.

His eyes looked everywhere in the room but at them, as if he was embarrassed about the way he looked. As he studiously avoided eye contact, Nessa noted with some amusement that his neck was flushed red. "We should get moving; don't want to be caught outside when the Whispers start." He pulled at the worn corner of the jacket.

"What are Whispers?" Nessa asked, standing up and walking toward the door. She'd heard the term before from Adelaide, but when she'd asked Will about his name as One and the Whispers, he acted as though he couldn't hear her. The entire way back to the Sanctuary, he'd been silent and reserved.

Elena unfolded her slender legs and followed Nessa, both of them chasing after Sky as he retreated quickly down the hall.

He bulkily cleared his throat. "Ghosts usually, but any form of darkness that calls out to the magic and lures you in. They live in the woods, where they can draw energy from the plant life long enough to call the magic of others in and consume their energy. Avatars and Infected alike have died. It happens." He was gone so quickly from sight that Nessa couldn't help but stare after him in the hallway.

She looked to Elena. "I didn't know he could move so fast."

Elena actually cracked a smile and gestured between them. "I don't think he's ever seen this much skin before."

"That explains a whole lot about him."

"Tell me about it. I think skin makes him nervous. I have a theory about that."

They began walking down the hall, Elena's heels clacking, Nessa's boots clomping. "Yeah?" Nessa said, amused and intrigued. "And it is?"

"He's either a) a true gentleman, b) scared to come out of the closet, or c) he despises peachy colors." Elena smirked and brushed at her hair, pursing her glossy lips. "And since true gentleman don't exist, I'm left to speculate that he's one of the remaining two."

It wasn't lost on Nessa, the revering look in Elena's eyes as she spoke about Sky, making teasing remarks that honestly weren't that funny. Nessa tried to remember Elena's other encounters with him, to compare them to this look on her face now, but she recalled nothing. All she could think about when Nessa looked into the past couple of days was the troubled, sporadic behavior of Will's temperament, Sky's unswerving friendship, and the deep, gnawing sense that her family was in danger.

"Guess we'll just have to keep whittling it down, huh?" Nessa said, elbowing Elena in the ribs. Elena shot a look at her, and for a moment Nessa was sure that she was going to tell her how much she hated her again, but Elena's face relaxed and she smiled at Nessa. An actual smile, with no trace of bitterness or anger in it.

Maybe the girl had a heart after all.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Will was back to his nervous pacing when the girls descended the solid wooden steps of the staircase. Sky still let his eyes wander over everything else in the room, but Will stopped at the sound of our approach and looked at them. His gaze slid over his sister quickly and landed heavily on Nessa. She felt heat rise to her cheeks though she didn't look away.

"Don't tell me you two were actually bonding," he said. His eyes never wavered, either, though they looked darker than she'd ever seen them.

"Actually, no," Elena sniffed. In Nessa's frazzled state, she could see how Elena migrated slightly toward Sky, though maintaining a distance. "She was just filling me in on the events of the afternoon like any decent person would."

"They're bonding," Will said, turning to Sky, tearing his eyes from Nessa. She felt herself relax, as if his gaze had been the only thing keeping her standing straight. "Elena just said Nessa was a decent person."

"Nothing wrong with that," Sky shrugged and then winked at Nessa. "Especially since it's true."

She felt Will's eyes cut at Sky and then back to her, and she lifted her arms to push the windblown locks back from her face; she'd done almost nothing with her naturally waving hair since showering earlier that morning. She thought nothing of the movement but then Will was standing in front of her, a hand suddenly gripping her forearm. His eyes were glued to her elbow and she realized her mistake.

Will wasn't the only one staring. Sky's eyes grew to the size of large marbles and Elena peeked over both of their shoulders, gaping at the swirling black mark. Nessa felt a blush rise to her cheeks and she ripped away from Will's grip, taking a few steps back to distance herself from them.

"What the hell, Nessa?" Will said, his voice harsher than she thought it had a right to be.

Her eyes snapped to his face and narrowed. "What? It's a birthmark."

Sky swallowed and looked at her, his brown eyes round and surprised. He tugged at the collar of the T-shirt. "That's an Avatar mark."

Will shook his head and stepped closer to Nessa and it upset her that he looked so frustrated and disappointed when she hadn't really done anything to warrant either one of those looks. "You should have told me." His voice was low, as if the other two weren't standing just behind him.

She scowled at him and pulled her top up, suddenly subconscious of it being too low. "There was never anything to tell."

"It's why you wanted to see my mark, wasn't it?" he asked intensely. "So you could compare it to mine. I should have guessed."

"It's not that big a deal," she huffed with exhaustion.

"It's a huge deal," Elena said, shoving Will out of the way and standing in front of Nessa. "We don't know much about Deadlock, but we know that they aren't marked. That's not a normal birthmark, Nessa."

Sky sighed and rubbed his face. "Dear God, this just gets more and more complicated."

Tell me about it. In the span of a week Nessa had gone from being a mundane teenage girl to some sort of magic-resistant creature. She didn't even want to think about it anymore, what it must mean about Amanda and Ty. At least one of them had to be Deadlock, and the other. . .

"You wouldn't have any powers, of course," Sky murmured in a calculated voice, his eyes furrowed in confusion. "Any Deadlock blood would dominate and dispose of the magic, but still. . ."

"Our kind hates Deadlock," Elena said in a very matter-of-fact tone. "They always have."

Nessa laughed and shoved past the three of them for the door. This was impossible; all of it. What they were saying made her fel numb like she hadn't felt in days. "If you're trying to tell me I have Avatar blood, you're wrong. I would know if my parents had powers like you."

Nessa wasn't sure if that was the truth or not, but whatever was real, she was coming to realize that she knew next to nothing of her parents.

Her hands pulled the doors of the Sanctuary open, revealing the slanting light of the sun as it made it's way toward the horizon. She didn't dare look back at the three of them; the looks of curiosity and confusion and frustration were all too much for her to handle. This changed nothing and she just wanted to get this over with.

Her ears were ready to endure demands for a better explanation, but instead, Sky and Elena stepped up on either side of her, their faces clean of their previous emotions.

"We'd best get going then," Sky said, reaching down to take Nessa's hand. She let herself relax into the warmth of his skin.

"Yeah," Elena agreed with an eye roll. "Let's do it."

Sky tugged Nessa along making conversation with Elena as they walked. She tried to tune herself into what they were saying; forcing herself to watch their lips, trying to pipe up and add her own words, but it was no use. Nothing could distract her from the pair of eyes close behind her that seemed to be burning holes straight through her tender skin and into the pit of her stomach.