I was the only one who could save you. You knew of me the way every other Shifter knows of me.”
“Yes,” Bright Star chirped with a firm nod.
“No,” Rush provided at the same time.
Jackson looked from one to the other and back again, “Bright Star, you called to me because you wanted to be saved.”
“Yes,” she answered with a more fervent nod.
“But not by you, Jackson,” Rush interjected. He pierced Bright Star with his gaze, but she still refused to look directly at him.
“Then who…” Jackson queried slowly, just milliseconds before the answer dawned on him. He wasn’t the person in the end who had saved her. Precocial or not, Jackson didn’t have the Talent. But Rush did. “How could she have known?”
Rush replied solemnly, “I told you. We’ve met before.”
“I did know Rush and I knew that he had a brother, Jackson,” Bright Star added.
Jackson thought on this for a moment, then questions started to flood from him. “If that was the case, then why would she call me and not you, Rush?”
“She was afraid I wouldn’t come.” Rush stated pointedly. “Isn’t that right, Bright Star?”
The creamy-skinned, red-haired girl remained mute. She cast her eyes downward this time, not looking at either of them.
“But how could she know that even if you were my brother, you would come? I didn’t even know about your Talent, Rush, before yesterday. How could she know you would come?”
“She’s a very, very clever girl, our Bright Star,” was Rush’s only answer.
“Is this true?” Jackson turned to her. She didn’t answer. Her hands rested folded in her lap and she studied her plate. “You just used me to get to my brother?”
“I was dying,” Bright Star reminded the younger brother as she tested the thickness of her mashed potatoes with her spoon.
Jackson swallowed. That was true. Did it matter when you were dying who saved you or how you got them to do it? He didn’t voice the question aloud.
“Don’t stop your questions now,” Rush encouraged. “You’re getting to the heart of the matter. Don’t stop.”
Jackson listened to his brother but his eyes were captured by the large blue ones that were—now he was certain—glowing. “What are you?”
“The same as you!” she declared. Her eyes went brighter. “You can Shift, and so can I.”
“But you were dying and you managed to bring me all the way to you. You managed to do it in time for me to call my brother.”
“I am blessed.”
Rush scoffed audibly and bit into a piece of chicken. Jackson didn’t believe it either. “How did you get up there? Who attacked you?”
“I told you, Jackson.” She didn’t raise her voice, but he could tell her patience was wearing thin. “It doesn’t matter.”
Jackson thumped his fists against the table in frustration. He didn’t like puzzles. He didn’t like that this beautiful woman was keeping a secret from him or his brother’s cryptic smirk. He pushed back from the table and covered his eyes with his hands again. Gradually, he was able to slow his breathing and his heart rate. Gradually, he was able to make out that scene on the top of that building. He saw her lying there. He saw himself at her side. He began tapping his forehead with his fingertips unconsciously as he tried to force the images to go in reverse. It didn’t happen as readily as he wanted, and already he tasted bile. He hadn’t done that good of a job preparing himself.
He felt an intrusion and a jolt that he knew to be Rush. Rush was easing his path as he struggled. The images behind his eyelids jumpstarted and he saw Bright Star with her arms out, leaning over the rail of the roof into the frigid, wet wind. She smiled as if she had just found home. Jackson was struck with how perfect she looked.
Then she leaned back and turned around. She picked something up out of a bag on the ground. She leaned down again and came up with a glinting, black-handled chef’s knife and a thermos. Jackson recognized the knife as the one he’d pulled from her near lifeless body. Bright Star twisted the cap on the thermos until it came free. She tossed it into the bag. Then she poured some of the contents into the hand holding the knife. At first, Jackson could only see that it was water. Then she turned and went to the edge of the roof again. She held one hand over the mouth of the thermos as she poured with the other. Water dribbled out from the cracks in her fingers. She made a small, tight fist. When she opened her hand once again, it was littered with tiny red blossoms. Blood.
Before Jackson could begin to guess, Bright Star turned up the glass to her lips and drank the whole mixture of water, acid, glass, and chamomile. When she was done, she staggered, but still managed to put the thermos away in her bag. Then she gripped the knife in both hands, holding it high, the blade pointed inward. She smiled wide, rapture on her lips, then plunged the blade into her gut, just below her sternum. It sank in to the hilt. This time she fell. She lay there for more moments than Jackson cared to count, then the bag disappeared and he saw himself standing in front of her.
Jackson shook his head to come back from the memory and stood up. Unfortunately, he took part of the tablecloth with him and all the items on top of the table spilled off. Bright Star dropped to her knees and began cleaning up the mess.
Jackson backed away and kept backing away until his back came against the wall. He couldn’t take his eyes off the girl whose russet head was bent over the busy task of cleaning up his mess.
“You tried to commit suicide,” he accused.
With that, her glowing eyes actually beamed hot blue light at him. She stood, drawing herself up impressively even though she was a good deal shorter than he was. “I didn’t.”
“But, I saw you,” Jackson yelled pointing at her.
“I know what you saw,” she agreed. “And it is true that what happened on that roof I did to myself. But I didn’t commit suicide, nor was I trying.” Finally, she looked over at Rush and her eyes found his, directly. “Rush didn’t let me die.”
“Jackson didn’t want you to die,” Rush replied as if that answered all questions.
“You saved me,” Bright Star spoke to him in a forceful tone. “Jackson, I would not kill myself. I did it for Rush. I did it because… I just wanted your brother to understand.”
“To understand what?” Jackson asked horrified. “What could hurting yourself possibly make him understand?”
Bright Star opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. No words. She tried again to the same outcome. For a moment, her eyes looked mutinous. Then she was docile again. The bright blue dimmed. She dropped to her knees and went back to cleaning up the mess on the floor.
“Why won’t you let her tell me why she did it?” Jackson came to stand eye to eye with his brother.
“You don’t want to know.”
“That’s not your fucking decision, Rush!” Jackson growled. “I don’t care what she said. That girl tried to kill herself last night and I demand to know why.”
Bright Star raised her head and, this time, Rush did not stop her words. “Jackson, I’m not suicidal. I never appreciated life until I met your brother, and now I think I appreciate it more than anyone else does in the universe. No, I didn’t try to kill myself, I only gave Rush an opportunity to save me.”
“You what?” Jackson gasped, brushing his palm over his head.
“Because that’s his destiny.”
Had the answer been less dramatic, Jackson would have been inclined to believe it. But this he couldn’t handle. Here was a girl who had chewed poisoned