Starbright (The Starbright Series) (32 page)

             
“Is that even possible?” I gasped. How could I do my job correctly if I couldn’t rely on my senses, they were supposed to be my guide on
E
arth,
they were what I counted on
to lead me to evil.

             
“I don’t know,” Nate answered thoughtfully. He was thinking over
Serena’s
thought, I could see his mind working, his brain trying to come up with a conclusion to this mystery. I wondered if one of his solutions included me being crazy.

             
As if he could sense what I was thinking, Seth slipped his strong, albeit grimy hand around mine and squeezed it gently. The feeling that we were being watched, or joined by evil…. or whatever that feeling was had completely evaporated by now and I felt foolish making a big deal out of nothing. If what I was feeling were more Shadows they would have attacked us, they are almost incapable of
not
attacking us when they meet us. And if it were Fallen sent to spy on us, the others would have felt them too. That was one advantage to being a Star, we had all these exterior senses that gave us insight into the supernatural world that existed alongside the physical world on
E
arth.

             
I shook my head, and tried to smile confidently, “Maybe these feelings are just my reaction to battle the first couple of times. I haven’t exactly been raised around this kind of stuff.”

             
“Maybe….”
Serena
agreed thoughtfully. “But I think it would be a good idea to talk to Jupiter about it when you get home. He might
have more insight into what you are feeling, or if the rest of us are broken he should know about it
, maybe even know what to do
.”

             
“You guys don’t look broken to me,” I changed the subject, not willing to dwell on my potential insanity. “You were incredible tonight, really.”

“Thank you,” Nate beamed at me. He probably wasn’t used to compliments in the solitude of battle formations in space. “You’re looking pretty fantastic out there too, Stella, you’ve really come a long way in a short amount of time.”

“Thank you,” I blushed.

“Hey what about me? W
asn’t I amazing?” Seth demanded;
his mouth turning up at the corners even though he was desperately trying not to smile.

“Oh yes, quite amazing,”
Serena
quipped sarcastically. “But we always knew you would be.” She patted his shoulder consolingly and I understood her words and gesture as a reference to his parents. Silence followed for a few more minutes before
Serena’s
head perked up, her eyes burning with concentration as if she really were a stereotype alien, white light poured from her face, blurring the color of her irises and concealing her pretty face. “Do you feel that Nate?”

“Yes, is that…
London?” he asked and I watched in quiet awe as every one of his muscles reawakened, tensing into readiness.

“Busy night, I guess,”
Serena
mumbled, tilting her head as if she were actually listening. She was using her set of external senses, feeling a greater than normal disturbance of Shadows. I would get the sense too, after I turned eighteen. When I could feel the Shadows congregating in the rest of the world it would be one of the signs that I was ready to inherit the
P
rotectorship.

“Do you need us to follow?” Seth asked, shifting on his feet and reaching a hand behind his head to rub at the base of his hairline.

“No, this is lighter fare,”
Serena
almost smiled in response. She was all
A
ngelic
W
arrior, her skin heating into a gorgeous glow and the bloodlust back in her backlit eyes. “If we get into a jam we will call, otherwise we will send Jupiter an update in the morning.”

“If you’re sure,” Seth nodded, extending his hand to Nate who shook it firmly.

“Go home, get some rest,” Nate said in way of goodbye. “Don’t you have school in the morning?” he laughed and
Serena
joined him, reminding me that my human schooling would always be a bit of a joke to
H
eaven’s army.

I said goodbye to
Serena
in much the same way as Seth and Nate had, hoping to showcase the mature-soldier side to my nature. I wondered if I would ever command the battlefield like
Serena
had or treat the inheritance I’d been given with her level of reverence and bloodthirsty excitement.

Not that I wasn’t completely devoted to my future, Nate was right, I had school in the morning. And it was hard to picture a future that didn’t include friends, or even family save for Seth who would b
y
then be my husband….

It was hard to see past the Valentine’s Dance in two weeks when I didn’t e
ven have a dress picked out
or any
prospect of a date.

----

             
“I think we treat these…. feelings with caution for now,” Jupiter lectured over the breakfast table the next morning. “I’m not willing to rule them out completely, but there is a certain safety in numbers so to speak and right now the numbers are standing on the opposite side of the argument, Stella.”

             
It was very early, not even light yet, but my parents, Jupiter, Seth and I had all congregated around boxes of cereal and fresh milk
bought
from a farm down t
he road, to discuss last night’s
African battle and my lingering bad feelings. Seth and I had returned very late last night, after the long journey from East Africa and now we were up, just hours later, trying to have coherent conversations and relay the now muddled details of the battle.

             
“And this is only the second time you’ve had these…. feelings?” My mother asked, wrapping a protective arm around me. She looked deeply concerned, as if we were discussing the possibility of me having cancer and not
a case of
mistaken instincts.

             
“Yes,” I nodded quickly, my unruly bedhead hair shaking out around my shoulders. I paused for a moment, wrapping it into a loose bun at the nape of my neck. “Ok, no
it wasn’t the second
time. Sometimes I get the same feeling when I’m not fighting…. When I’m just, I don’t know, just going about my daily life. But when I have the feeling then, it’s not nearly as strong and there is always something there to justify them, like a lone Shadow, or a few Shadows interfering with kids at school or something. After the last two fights, the feeling has been very intense, like whoever is behind it is
organizing the latest attacks,
orchestrating them in some way to find out what I’m capable of, or what we’re capable of.” I gestured between Seth and me with my pointer finger.

             
“It’s not that I don’t think they’re capable of something like that,” Jupiter jumped back in, his dull red eyes focused on the ceiling as if waiting for the right answer to just fall from the sky. “But, what unnerves me is that nobody else
has noticed the same feelings,
n
ot even Seth and he has been present twice now. Nate and
Serena
are vetted fighters, used to feeling the Darkness from light years away….”

             
He trailed off, finally letting his eyes fall on my father’s and shrugging his shoulder as if there was nothing else he could do.
My father stared at him for a moment as if deciding whether or not to trust Jupiter and then he turned to me apologetically.

             
“There really isn’t anything to do now anyway. If someone is out there watching you, then you’ll come face to face with them soon enough and if these feelings are just residual emotions from battle, they will disappear after a little more experience. We are not in a position to hunt down any Fallen right now, so our hands are virtu
ally tied. We will treat these
feelings with caution, like Jupiter said, but for now that’s all we can do. How does that sound Stella-bean?”

             
“That sounds great,” I agreed, although I didn’t put much effort into any enthusiasm. I knew there was nothing they could really do; I had known that from the beginning. I just wanted to be told I wasn’t crazy, which wasn’t exactly the answer I received. It was a more of a “gee, we sure hope you’re not crazy because all of our eggs
are kind of in one basket here
” situation.

             
“And we trust
Serena
and Nate?” Seth asked, clearing his throat afterward.

             
The kitchen was silent for a while after his
pointed
question. Jupiter looked thoughtfully at him, while my parents seemed to avoid looking at him altogether. Another Star’s loyalty should never be called into question because by that point usually we had been betrayed and then some. But at the same time we were operating
in
completely uncharted circumstances and even the High Council could not be trusted these days. So Seth did have a very legitimate reason for asking his questions.

             
Jupiter replied first and I had to wonder if he had less attachment to
Serena
and Nate simply because he wasn’t actually sent from
H
eaven, but more of a lone refugee that had survived the Darkness and was now h
ired by heaven to be a sort of
consultant of all things Darkness-related.

             
“I have absolutely no reason to believe that they would be spies,” Jupiter declared with a certain finality. “That being said, they would make the best kind of spies….”

             
Seth smiled a little at Jupiter’s roundabout explanation and turned to me. “How about you, what do you feel about them?’

             
“I haven’t really known them that long,” I replied, not willing to say anything that could potentially be misguiding or misunderstood and by consequence condemn Nate and
Serena
. True, I had
only known them for a short time
, but they were amazing, skilled fighters that had not hesitated once
last night
no matter the skill lev
el
. And there lights were bright, blinding even.

             
But I
had never been betrayed before, o
r even met a member of the Fallen. I wasn’t really much of an expert….

             
“Stella, what do you feel?” Seth pressed, putting his strong, masculine hand over my heart.

             
“I feel like we can trust them, like they’re fighting the same battle we are,” I answered honestly, although if they were evil it might explain away the feelings I always got and their mysterious absence during my first battle.

             
“And they’re doing their job,” Jupiter grunted.

             
“So we trust them,” Seth announced and then so quietly I knew I was the only one who heard him, “at least for now.”

             
“Stella, keep us updated on any new developments with your…. feelings,” my dad instructed and I tried not to feel irritated with the way everyone kept pausing before they mentioned my weird feelings as if they should all be using air-quotes and snickering at the end of their sentences. “And for now we will proceed cautiously. Jupiter, you still haven’t heard from the High Council?”

             
Jupiter shook his head negatively, but before he could fully answer my father’s question the “Bat Phone” rang and he headed into the other room to garner his report from
Serena
and Nate, assuming because the phone rang that they had made it back home and to our or a closely- related time-zone.

             
I stood up and stretched, taking my empty cereal bowl over to the sink to rinse it out and Seth followed me. My parents fell into
a
serious, hushed conversation and I had to wonder if they were as worried about my mental health as I was.

             
Had the High Council traitor known somehow that I would be a loose cannon and that’s why there was a push to choose my parents for
E
arth, and me for the future Protector job?

             
I shuddered at the thought of being used because I was weak, or picked because I would never be able to fulfill my duties. My entire body bristled at the idea of someone not thinking I was up for the task and a
W
arrior instinct flared inside of me to prove them wrong. There were so many human stories about overcoming great odds: marathon runners who had lost both legs,
blind piano players, paralyzed artists…. That’s what I would become, the crazy-
A
ngel who should have been locked up in a home for the helpless but overcame adversity to fight evil instead.