Additionally, I owe special thanks to Officer James Kalinosky, of the Baltimore County Police Department, and Officer Todd Schwenke, of the Anne Arundel County Police Department, for their information on police investigations, arson, arrest procedures, and anything else I could think to ask. I took all this research and delightfully twisted it to fit my needs. Any inaccuracies are on my part, not theirs.
Special thanks to Thomas Berry for providing every math question included in this book, as well as advice on how to handle teaching situations. If you’re his student, say thanks from me.
Special thanks to Layne Berry for letting me use her first name. I hope I did you proud.
Finally, extra special thanks to the Kemmerer boys, Jonathan, Nick, and Sam, for your love and support, especially understanding when I need to just plug in my headphones and write.
CHAPTER 1
Gabriel Merrick stared at the dead leaf in his palm and willed it to burn.
It refused.
He had a lighter in his pocket, but that always felt like cheating. He should be able to call flame to something this dry. The damn thing had been stuck in the corner of his window screen since last winter. But the leaf only seemed interested in flaking onto his trigonometry textbook.
He was seriously ready to take the lighter to that.
A knock sounded on his bedroom wall.
“Black,” he called. Nicky always slept late, always knocked on his wall to ask what color he was wearing. If he didn’t, they ended up dressing alike.
Gabriel looked back at the leaf—and it was just that, a dead leaf. No hint of power. Behind the drywall, electricity sang to him. In the lamp on his desk, he could sense the burning filament. Even the weak threads of sunlight that managed to burn through the clouds left some trace of his element. If the power was there, Gabriel could speak to it, ask it to bend to his will.
If the power wasn’t, he had nothing.
His door swung open. Nick stood there in a green hoodie and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. A girl on the cheer squad had once asked Gabriel if having a twin was like looking in a mirror all the time. He’d asked her if being a cheerleader was like being an idiot all the time—but really, it was a good question. He and Nick shared the same dark hair, the same blue eyes, the same few freckles across their cheekbones.
Right now, Nick leaned on a crutch, a knee brace strapped around his left leg, evidence of the only thing they didn’t share: a formerly broken leg.
Gabriel glanced away from that. “Hey.”
“What are you doing?”
Gabriel flicked the leaf into the wastebasket beneath his desk. “Nothing. You ready for school?”
“Is that your trig book?”
“Yeah. Just making sure I told you the right assignment.”
Gabriel always attempted his math homework—and then handed it over for Nick to do it right. Math had turned into a foreign language somewhere around fifth grade. Then, Gabriel had struggled through, managing Cs when his twin brought home As. But in seventh grade, when their parents died, he’d come close to failing. Nick started covering for him, and he’d been doing it ever since.