Catalyst

Chapter One

Phoebe was gifted.

She had a knack, a talent for knowing when things would work out, when life would swing her way. Or when she should cut her losses and escape. It was a sensation that overtook her body; a rush of blood around her ears and down her throat, circling her collarbones like tiny, hot snakes. At times they could fill her with a strange confidence, like she was bursting with power and wrapped in impenetrable steel. Or the snakes would burn her with warning and her heart would twitch and spasm, beating out of its normal, steady rhythm. It would overwhelm her, blazing her to ashes from the inside out. That was when she knew to run. Don't fight. Don't hide. Don't duck and cover. Run.

The first time she felt it, she was hiding in her mother's bathroom.

Most twelve year-olds she knew would feel immature playing hide and seek, but it was the hunt, the chase of it that kept them searching and tracking. Phoebe and her friends James and Dan loved the game; something primeval in their brains became satisfied in the pursuit.

The bathroom was a horrible place to hide; it was just a half-bath, with no shower or tub to lie in, but Phoebe had panicked. She had already used the entryway closet, the nook behind the couch where she hid her stained shirts, and the space under the ornate dining room table. She pressed herself against the blue-tiled wall which was still damp with the smell of toothpaste, and watched the shadows of trees dance through the curtains of the single window. She felt a comfortable heat rising in her throat and her ears warmed. A sureness, a certainty, surged upwards from her toes and she just knew.

She would win.

It wasn't a miraculous power. It wasn't something that would brand her as a superhero, or even get her a spot on a daytime television show, but she pushed her palms into the wall behind her and knew she would be undetectable. It was written in the stars, in Destiny's scrolls, in tea leaves and tarot cards. It would be. She had no doubts.

She changed in some way, then. She was in control. She was a goddess, a witch, an almighty fantastic being that could never be captured by the likes of Dan, who was counting loudly from the next room, his stubby fingers pressed into his eyes. And when Dan gave up, and he would-she felt that too-James would come looking for her. Then and only then would she come out of hiding.

Dan peeked into the bathroom, but he looked too quickly. He was already thinking of the next place to look, the next line to cross off his mental list. He missed her slight frame pressed into the corner, his eyes caught on the mirror, then the window. She could have been caulking between the robin's egg tiles.

She wasn't wearing blue or even crouching under the sink. She was as plain as a girl-sized blemish on the wall. But he had missed her. Dan turned around and closed the door behind him.

She let out a breath she had been struggling to keep entrapped in her lungs and felt buoyant, full of sunlight. When she heard James calling her name minutes later she strutted from the room, champion of hide-and-seek, but when they played another round the sense failed her. She didn't get the sensation, the excitement, of winning and being sure. She was caught two minutes in. Dan had redeemed himself.

She spent weeks trying to feel the wonderful heated awareness again, but as hard as she tried she couldn't repeat the experience. There was no exhilaration, no rush and flow of blood under her skin or roaring in her ears. She wondered if she had imagined it.

The feeling, this gift, wouldn't happen again until a couple of years later. On her first day of high school a girl named Sandra bumped into Phoebe as they waited in the lunch line. The heat was immediate and painful, and at first she didn't recognize it, but it tasted like acid on her tongue. Sandra started cursing, throwing her tray on the floor in a fit. The heat blared through Phoebe, making her heart trip over itself, panic flooding her system. She ran and hid in a stairwell.