Burned Ones

Chapter 28

Annabeth.
16 years old.

There were plenty of books I'd read in the past where the character was so angry after a phone call, they smashed their phone to bits. Of course, those were typically in the werewolf or vampire books I read that Cameron never understood the appeal of.

I held my own cell phone in my shaking hand, wishing I had the strength those beings had. A part of my brain told me I could snap it in half if I tried hard enough or smash it with my foot or even throw it against a tree. But I didn't want that clattering sound of snapped electrical bits. I wanted to crush my phone into dust with my hands so I wasn't tempted to strangle Cam. If I didn't get this energy that was pooling in my fingertips out, I would kill him when I saw him.

I dropped my phone in the dirt and stalked out further into the open field, away from where Finn was joking around with Quinn. Quinn, or Q as he repeatedly insisted on being called, was Finn's old roommate in the foster center. Or, maybe he still was. Finn still went there from time to time to visit but he spent most of the nights at the Casey house with me. I didn't think he could leave the place but Finn said it was fine and he had it handled. The cops hadn't shown up at the Casey house or any of the places we hung out regularly to collect him and bring him back to the center so I dropped it.

Typically, I didn't go to the boy's home with him but tonight Finn had insisted we needed to go check on Q. On the drive, Finn said today was the anniversary of Q witnessing his family dying. On this day last year, he'd been arrested for vandalizing and the year before that, he had to go to the hospital but Finn didn't say why. "Frankie watches him during the day," Finn said, speaking of their other roommate, "I have night duty."

When we had arrived, Q was in his room nursing a bottle of liquor and being loud. Finn practically pulled him out of the boy's window to get him out of the room, promising to "take you somewhere neato where you can be loud and don't have to worry about waking up the kids."

With Finn's insistence, I drove them to the field Finn and I had originally set off fireworks in. Guilt ate at me initially because I was out here away from the Casey house taking care of another person when I felt like if I had time for this, I should've had time to pack Alex a bag and run away with him. I felt like I was wasting time. Everything I did was filled with that guilt.

It was rare to get Alex alone these days and when I did manage it, Cameron was usually missing. Our dads were bringing him out to things almost every day from the time he woke up until well past midnight. Whenever Cameron was out and Alex was surrounded by others, I would drag Finn away and we would drive or I would wind up in Dacosta territory, stalking a few stragglers I knew from school and experimenting with the concoctions I was making with Max. I had started working with him again and we were up to the point where if I could get close enough to a Dacosta, I could throw the mixture on them and burn them or if I used another vial, I could slip it in their mouth and they'd pass out for a few hours. It wasn't really hard to get close enough to one. It had been months since I shot the man in the Dacosta house to save Alex but he had turned out to be important and the Dacostas took that hit personally. I became one of their favorite targets. My dad took that personally and decided to make it his mission to take the entire Dacosta gang out with the help of a few others and Cameron. It was a mess.

Cam came back bloody almost every night.

What was worse was I knew he had killed people and that guilt ate at me even more. Could this all have been avoided if I had left Lucky's car alone that one night? I burned Lucky's car, my dad and Uncle assumed it was the Dacostas. If we weren't in the Dacosta's house that night, no one would've grabbed Alex and I wouldn't have killed the man. The security around Alex wouldn't be as tight and maybe we would've even had an opportunity to slip out of Melkin by now.