Chapter 9 — Flying Blind

  A furious knocking on the bedroom door accompanied a painful burst of sunlight into the room. Hailey's eyes snapped open.

  Jessica immediately began coughing the moment she woke up. Hailey groaned, both from the abrupt awakening and the realization that Jessica's rest had been cut short, after it had taken her so long to finally fall asleep.

  "What do you want?" she called out, definitely not in the mood for an argument. Her head felt like it was trying to split itself open, still sore from the events of the night before. Even with all their power, Hailey felt winded and raw from such a rapid series of spells—not to mention the whole burning building bit.

  Jessica rolled out of bed and padded over to the door in a daze, coughing as she went. She tripped slightly on her too-large pajamas before reaching the door and pulling it open, suddenly face-to-face with her mother.

  Beth was livid, almost to the point of shouting. "Your shoes and your jackets are covered in ash! What on earth were you doing?"

  "Working," Hailey repeated stubbornly, pulling a pillow over her face and pressing it against her ears.

  "Since when does working mean you're suddenly a firefighter? I thought you were just meeting people in parks and stores. Public places."

  "Something came up."

  "Don't brush me off, Hailey! You're responsible for way more than just yourself. You can't take stupid risks like this."

  Hailey felt a brief pang of homesickness. Sure, she wasn't exactly close with her own parents, but she still hadn't spoken to or seen either of them in over a year now. She'd had a similar confrontation with her mother after a few incidents back in her freshman year, and they hadn't had a real conversation in years. She'd made sure to call every month though, at the very least. They'd patched things up and she'd been planning to go home for Thanksgiving this year, maybe even introduce her to Jessica… somehow.

  It was barely a month away, but Hailey doubted she'd be getting the opportunity. You know, since I'm dead and all…

  She set the pillow aside, looking Beth in the eyes. "This was more important."

  "Your lives are more important," Beth snapped. She held up Jessica's coat and shook it, causing a shower of ash to fall to the carpet. "You take my daughter into a dangerous situation and you better believe I'm not going to let this go."

  She took a step into the room, but Jessica blocked her path.

  "Jess?" Beth asked, faltering.

  Jessica shook her head. She pointed at the jacket, then pointed at herself and nodded firmly. She pointed back at Hailey and shook her head. She repeated the sequence when Beth didn't quite seem to catch it.

  "She's dangerous, can't you see that?" she asked weakly.

  Jessica didn't understand, so she repeated the sequence a third time.

  "I don't care if you chose it, I don't want you getting hurt." Beth put her arms around her daughter, hugging her tight. Jessica returned it, but she immediately broke into another painful cough. Beth's eyes shot back up to Hailey. "Can't you do anything for that?"

  Hailey shook her head. "I don't think so. All I could do is maybe help oxygen get to her lungs, but that's not really the problem she's having. She just needs time for the irritation to heal."

  "And a hospital?"

  "A hyperbaric chamber, maybe?" Hailey tried to dredge up what she'd looked up online the night before, after they'd returned home. "I don't think it'd do much either. They'd probably just scan her a couple times and say the same thing, just rest and wait. If they didn't freak out from the other things about her."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, we aren't normal anymore, remember?" Hailey pointed at her eyes. "Both of us change our eyes all the time, for one, right down to the structure. Jessica's hair isn't colored by a dye, it just is that color now. I have a bunch of air moving in weird patterns behind me all the time now, whether I'm thinking about it or not. And who knows if magic itself shows up on a test somehow?" Hailey shook her head. "We can't risk going to a hospital til we know what they might find."

  "And you can't just heal her with magic somehow?"

  "No. That's impossible."

  Beth shook her head, prompting Jessica to back away a step and look up. Beth ran a hand through her daughter's hair, then kissed her on the forehead. She mimed eating something with a knife and fork, then flashed five fingers twice. "Breakfast in ten minutes," she repeated for Hailey's benefit.

  "Yeah, I got that."

  A touch of annoyance crossed Beth's eyes, but she didn't comment further. She turned and left, and Jessica closed the door behind her.

  Hailey fell back against the bed again, wishing she could just sleep through the day. She could, if she really wanted to. She didn't actually have any obligations anymore. No job, no school, nothing.

  Sleeping through the day really wasn't her style though. Within a few minutes, she'd be restless and itching to get out and do something. Hailey Winscombe was not an idle person. Maybe she'd go find that drummer. Jess could use a pick-me-up. Hailey had been thinking about bringing it up with Beth, maybe coming up with a plan together—but that was obviously off the table now.

  "Jess," she prompted. Jessica hadn't moved from the door, though thankfully she'd stopped coughing. Jessica turned around, and Hailey saw instantly she was upset. "What's wrong?"

  Jessica shook her head.

  Hailey mirrored her. She tilted her head to the side, then pointed at Jessica and gave her a thumbs-down.

  Jessica frowned. She held up the jacket she'd taken from her mother, and shook it again. More ash and soot fell to the carpet.

  Hailey winced. She sent a gust of wind out to pick it up, carrying it out through the window they'd forgotten to close the night before. "Sorry."

  Jessica shook her head again. She pointed at the jacket, then at herself. A picture appeared in midair, an illusion of the building they'd gone into the night before. Hailey watched as it shifted into a burning wreck, like a very slow slideshow as Jessica composed each picture in her head and tried to project it into the air. The illusions were never totally convincing, unlike the invisibility trick she'd painstakingly learned studying Cinza, but they were distinct enough to understand what she was trying to get across, and nobody else had ever managed anything like it in detail or animation.

  Hailey watched a tiny speck fly into view and burst through the top floor window. Jessica pointed at the speck, then at herself again and shook her head more emphatically. Her eyes were sparkling. She looked like she were on the verge of tears.

  Oh god. "Jess, I—"

  She shook her head again, her hair flying wildly. Hailey stood up and went to hug her, but Jessica shrunk away. Hailey faltered in mid-step, no longer sure what to do. She pressed her hands to her heart, trying to show Jessica what she meant.

  "I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

  Jessica nodded slowly. The illusion disappeared. She turned and went downstairs. Hailey waited a few minutes, giving them some space before she followed.

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  Malcolm had made pancakes for breakfast, and Jessica was already digging into them. The television was on and tuned to the national news, as it always seemed to be. Between possible news about Brian and the golem attacks, or any word about Dan and Boris up in Canada and the massive manhunt out for them, they couldn't afford to miss a story, no matter how much it might irritate Hailey to listen to.

  At least they muted it for breakfast. I wish they'd just read the news online like normal people.

  "Morning. Plain or blueberry?" Malcolm called out as Hailey walked in. He was trying to fake some morning cheer, but he couldn't hide that he'd heard them shouting. The entire room was still tense, with Jessica and Beth both eating in stony silence.

  "Blueberry, please." Hailey took her spot next to Jessica, but it seemed so much colder than usual. She wasn't sure where they stood for the moment.

  Breakfast continued in the same fashion, with Hailey feeling on edge around all three of the Silverdales. Every time she thought of a conversation topic, she clamped down her lips and kept chewing through the very sad-tasting pancakes. It wasn't that they were poorly made, but the emotions hanging over the group overwhelmed her senses. They might as well have been cardboard for all Hailey could taste.

  As Hailey got up to clean her plate, she had fully expected the entire meal to pass without a word, but a glance from Beth over her shoulder at the wrong time set off the ticking bomb.

  "They're doing another profile of you?" she snapped.

  "Beth!" Malcolm snapped, but his wife ignored him.

  "Look at this!" Beth pointed at the TV.

  A professional school photograph of Hailey from her freshman year was plastered on screen. It was the same story they'd already run at least a half-dozen times since May, a time-filler when they had nothing better to report. With the more recent developments in the story and the air of mystery still surrounding the town, any content on Rallsburg ran like wildfire. Everyone loves a good conspiracy.

  "...agically lost at only twenty one years old, Hailey Winscombe was a brilliant student with a heart ten times the size of the town she called home. Despite many scholarships offered to her from far more prestigious options, Hailey chose to attend a small school deep in the forests of Washington, Rallsburg University…"

  Mostly because I liked the campus, and Weston was going there, Hailey mused.

  "They always talk about her! Not us, not Rowan or Christina or Dan or Neffie, nobody! She didn't even live there!"

  "Yes I did," Hailey pointed out crossly.

  "Hailey, please," Malcolm started, but Beth was already riled up.

  "What about my daughter? Why doesn't anyone care about her?"

  "I care," Hailey shot back. Jessica looked up at the rising volume around her, trying to figure out the conversation. Realizing her mother was the aggressor, she got up and grabbed her by the hand.

  "Jess?"

  Jessica shook her head, eyes fierce. She pulled her mother out of the room, leaving Hailey alone with Malcolm.

  "...I wish you two would stop," he sighed.

  She's the one that won't give up. "I'm sorry."

  "I know. And I know it's not just on you." Malcolm shook his head in dismay. "I think we have too much time to ourselves here. We're not handling it well."

  "You seem okay."

  "I'm really not." He cleaned up the abandoned dishes on the table, keeping himself occupied. "At least Beth still has something to get passionate about. I feel like I'm fading away here."

  Hailey nodded. "I know what you mean."

  "You do?"

  "...I felt the same way, back before I found out about everyone else. Back when it was just me and Jess." She cleared her throat, feeling embarrassed. "I felt like I was just wasting my life, stuck in place with nowhere to go and nothing I could do. I felt awful about it, since Jessica was way worse off than me, but it was still there."

  "It's okay." He gave a weak smile. "You don't have to be perfect. I'm forever grateful for what you did for our daughter." He glanced at the TV, which was rolling through stills and clips from Hailey's old social media feeds. "I think they did a pretty good job on your story."

  "They picked a terrible photo. I've got so many better ones than that." Hailey tried to smile back, but she still felt guilty that she'd ever felt such a thing. Coupled with the looming guilt over having forced Jessica into the fire the night before, Hailey was busy re-examining everything they'd ever done together. Was I dragging her along against her will this whole time?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the television, which no one had muted again after Beth first turned it up. "...again, this is the same unconfirmed footage submitted by a viewer that we showed earlier this morning."

  Hailey's heart started pounding. There it was, the video she'd been dreading from the night before. It was blurry and weak, but Hailey had looked right at the camera, illuminated by firelight from the side. Despite the darkness and the poor lighting, when they laid out the still next to her photo, Hailey could agree with the resemblance. She winced as the Hailey in the video took off into the sky.

  "We have been unable to verify the video as genuine so far. Some experts are claiming it to be a hoax, a so-called 'deep fake' video produced through computer simulated imaging, but detailed analysis does not support this conclusion."

  "To produce a convincing fake, there needs to be a lot more high quality footage available of the subject. Miss Winscombe had plenty of social media presence, but nothing like the high quality recordings of actresses usually used for such techniques."

  "Any comment on the dramatic shift in her appearance? She looks a lot different in the video compared to the photos we've shown."

  "Your guess is as good as mine, Ted. Maybe she's always looked like that, and the rest is just makeup."

  "And what about the end of the video? Where she apparently starts to fly? Ridiculous, right?"

  "Oh, absolutely. There has to be some trick to it."

  "But the fire was genuine, wasn't it? We have the police report here of the apartment complex that was burned down last night, as well as a detailed report of the other incidents that kept first responders away from the scene for so long."

  "Just terrible, yeah. Really awful luck."

  "Hailey…" Malcolm started, his eyes fixed on the screen.

  "I know." Hailey cursed herself. Why didn't I grab the guy's phone? What was I thinking?

  Her own phone started buzzing on the countertop. She answered it, her hand shaking slightly.

  "Are you watching?" Cinza asked.

  "I saw it. I should have grabbed the phone. I'm so stupid."

  "It wouldn't have mattered. The video was mirrored the moment he recorded it. Even if you took his phone, he could have posted it from any computer. What—"

  Cinza cut off as the news switched away from the two anchors. She looked back at the screen, and her jaw dropped. It was the last person Hailey expected to see.

  Her mother was on the television screen.

  "Mom?" Hailey whispered. She sank onto the couch, still holding the phone to her ear.

  The banner underneath her said Stephanie Winscombe. She'd be so annoyed they didn't include her full name… Hailey mused, before her mother opened her mouth. It was so bizarre to hear her voice coming from the screen, in front of a news banner and with cameras and microphones everywhere.

  "Hailey," she started, and Hailey's heart doubled over in pressure. She hadn't heard her mom's voice in so long. She hadn't even risked looking at old videos she had stored, since they required logging into her accounts online.

  "Hi, Mom," she whispered back, as if her mother could hear her.

  "If you're… alive. Come home." She didn't start crying, or even look sad at all. If anything, she looked furious. Hailey smiled. That's Mom for you, just annoyed that I'd faked my death or something and interrupted her latest business deal. "You aren't in trouble, but you have to come home."

  "I wish I could."

  Malcolm came and sat down next to her, holding her hand. The story had already cut back to the two anchors, rehashing the basic facts once again. Hailey was trembling in her seat, eyes locked with her mother's on the screen.

  "You can't," Cinza replied, startling her. She'd totally forgotten about the phone pressed against her ear.

  "I know," Hailey snapped.

  "They'll be watching her closely. If you went, you'd have to answer for everything. Or you'd have to fight."

  "I'm not going to fight them!"

  "I'm not saying you should. But there's not many outcomes that don't lead to some sort of confrontation." Cinza paused. "The best course is for them to believe you're still dead, and that the video was a fake."

  "How are we supposed to do that?"

  "We're figuring that out now."

  "That Tezofarl person?"

  "I'm talking to them now. They're looking into any way they can try to leak that the video was a fake, and back it up with convincing proof."

  "What if the people who were there start talking more?"

  Cinza sighed. "I can't cover everything. They were just normal people in a dilapidated apartment, right?"

  "I guess, yeah."

  "...As long as you stay off the radar and change your appearance again, I believe the story will be buried. It'll be dead by the next news cycle. Just rumor and speculation."

  "Right," Hailey said, already feeling reassured. Cinza always sounded so confident, it was infectious. "Changing my hair again's gonna be a pain."

  She could practically hear Cinza smirk through the phone. "Perhaps don't dive headfirst into a burning building full of people with camera phones next time?"

  "I couldn't just leave them. Nobody else could have helped."

  Cinza sighed again. "I believe you. Truth be told, I might have done the same if I had your abilities. Is Jessica all right? She looked a bit shaken up in that video."

  "She will be," Hailey replied, as much to herself as to Cinza.

  "Good. I have to get back to work here. Take care." The phone clicked off.

  Hailey didn't move for a long time, watching the news in a daze as they continued to debate the shakey cell phone video of herself. An hour went by, and the story started to repeat for new viewers. It must have been a pretty slow day elsewhere in the world if they kept at it on this single story, no matter how strange.

  Jessica rejoined her by the time they played the video again. She recognized the footage, trembling at the sight of the building once again. As it flipped over to the video of Stephanie Winscombe, Hailey expected more of a reaction, until she remembered that Jessica had no idea who her mother was. In fact, Hailey couldn't remember ever telling her anything about her life before Rallsburg.

  She considered explaining it, but after seeing Jessica's pained reaction to the building footage, Hailey didn't want to cause her any more stress. She stayed silent, and eventually Jessica retreated back into the yard again, leaving Hailey alone.