Page 101 of My Wild Horse King

Even in the low light, I see his silhouette shrug.

“I hate just waiting here, helpless, hoping he won’t find us,” Gustav says. “I want todosomething.”

“Then do it,” I say. “Just try.”

“Try what, though?” He sighs. “I haven’t even seen what any of you can do, not really.”

“Aleks can find and feel the earth or rocks or minerals that are close, no matter where he is. He can summon diamonds from deep in the earth. He can create a swirling tornado of dirt. It sounds kind of weird, but it’s actually pretty cool.”

Gustav grunts, and then. . .something in the corner crashes.

A dog starts barking. Lights turn on. Bootsteps and the dog-barking come closer, and then Steve’s staring down at a zebra plant that Gustav killed. Its dirt is spilled all over the floor.

“What happened?” Steve asks. His dog’s spinning round and round in circles, whining.

I’m not sure Gustav knows what to say. We’re both sitting, stock still, on our respective sofas, wide-eyed.

A door at the end of the hall whips open and Aleks shoots around the corner of the hallway. “You did it.” He blinks quickly. “I felt it.”

“I guess that answers the question of whether Leonid would know,” I say.

“How did you do it?” Aleks asks.

“What are you people saying?” Steve asks in English. “Is everything alright?”

“It’s better than alright,” Aleks says in English. “We just found our weapon.”

“Weapon?” Steve looks around the room intently. “What is it?Whereis it?”

Gustav stands. “I guess it’s me.” But for all his talk earlier about not wanting to sit around helpless, he doesn’t look very pleased. And when Aleks takes him outside and forces him to spend the next two hours trying to shove dirt piles around, he looks downright disheartened. Kristiana spends the whole time in with me, wringing her hands and watching out the window. I haven’t given her much credit for being a very good sister, but she clearly does love him.

After Gustav comes back inside, dirt-coated and weary, trudging his way to the shower, I take the chance to ask Aleks what he thinks. Unlike Gustav, he’s spotless.

“He’s. . .” Aleks shrugs. “He’s not very good at it, but that’s hardly a shock. He’s never done anything like this at all, and we’re asking him to jog on day one. All of us learned by shifting a handful of dirt at a time.” He sighs. “He’s so dirty because, at the end, in addition to deflecting my little dirt tornadoes, he made one of his own.”

I didn’t expect Aleks to take it easy on him, but that sounds rough. “You know, Leonid crashed after he got a new power.”

“He seems fine,” Aleks says.

“What does that mean?” Kris asks. “He looked pretty tired to me.”

“He was using a new power,” Aleks says. “He should be tired.”

A moment later, there’s a loud wham in the bathroom. I very nearly rush in.

“Naked man,” Aleks says, blocking me with his arm. “I’ll go.”

I can’t help at least peeking around the corner of the open doorway, and what I see isn’t encouraging. Poor Gustav, hair still sudsy, has passed out in the shower.

“Maybe he would have done better in his training,” Kris says, “but he was worn out from accessing a new ability.”

When he sleeps for the next twenty hours straight, we all agree that might have been the issue. It does help us make up our minds about something.

We decide to stay in Birch Creek, at least for now. The nice thing about a tiny town is, if Leonid does turn up here, we’ll know it right away. Amanda, Abigail, and Steve make up a lie about how we’re on the run from the Russian mob, and their new leader’s after us.

The entire town appears resolved to help keep us safe.

Which is really cute.

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