Infinity Reaper by Adam Silvera (best new books to read txt) 📗

make sure my family’s history isn’t reduced to ashes. I go in on what it was like being the thought-to-be-younger-brother-by-seven-minutes to someone who has always been so naturally brilliant, and how lucky I was to have parents who loved me so much that I never even suspected that I was adopted. But everything started going downhill once Dad got sick. We were all so spent, Brighton was always snapping at us and others at the hospital, and things only got worse when Dad died. Now Ma is lost, and Brighton was awful to her, and we have no way of finding her.

Now that I’ve gotten started, it’s like I can’t shut up. Before I know it, I’m walking Wyatt through everything that’s happened since getting my powers—joining the Spell Walkers, saving the sun swallower from the arena the night we took Ness hostage, Ness’s faux betrayal that led to him cutting me with an infinity-ender, discovering Prudencia is a celestial, and the battle on the last night of the Crowned Dreamer where Gravesend died in my arms.

For how quick Wyatt can be with his responses, he’s an incredible listener. I can tell he’s fading, though, so I lie about how I’m ready to go to bed so he can actually get some sleep. He deserves some rest after all his research on retrocycling plus preparing the Dayrose salve for me. I take a quick shower, then head back to the room, and I’m up for another couple hours, listening to Prudencia snoring and some phoenix song, before I finally fall asleep.

I’m woken up way too early because of Brighton playing news reports on his phone without any headphones in. Different outlets are covering the story of Brighton’s battle with the specter, and I brace myself for what remains of our home. The building is burnt black and there are fire-escape ladders lying curbside, not doing anyone good down there. I find our windows on the fourth floor, the one to the living room shattered from when Ness was disguising himself as Atlas, and the ones to the bedrooms warped like every other tenant’s. Shelters have been taking people in, and even though Brighton and Prudencia helped save the day, this all happened because the Blood Casters were hoping we’d make the mistake of going home. We’ve displaced all our neighbors for no reason.

I bounce from the room, going straight to the library, where Wyatt is already up and out on the balcony. He’s wearing nothing but the same shorts as yesterday, a thick book resting on his abs as his feet are kicked up on a sleeping Nox’s back. The sunlight hits his brown hair in a way that makes it glow like a halo. I can’t tell if he’s squinting because it’s so bright out or because he’s focused on the page, but it’s a good look on an already-great-looking guy.

“Hey,” I say, stepping outside. The sun instantly warms the back of my neck.

“You’re up far earlier than I’d expected,” Wyatt says. He closes the book and sets it on his lap, baring his chest. I manage to maintain eye contact, but I can feel my gaze working hard to drift to his pecs like magnetism. “Had I known you were up I would’ve invited you on our morning flight.”

“Another time,” I say. I’d love to take him up on that. It’s something to get used to in case I ever get to become a Halo Knight.

“You’ve caught me at an interesting time, love. I’m reading up on your predecessor’s history. Your first attempt at retrocycling was astounding, though I believe it will go more swimmingly if you focus on returning to the day of his death. Maribelle sensed she was close to Sera’s, and since the two died on the same day, perhaps that will be your way in too.”

“That works for me.”

“Shall we have a little Bautista Book Club?”

There’s only a few pages about Bautista in The Halo Blacklist, but Wyatt thinks it’s all worth studying up on. There isn’t a ton that I don’t already know about Bautista from Brighton obsessing about him over the years and his profile at the museum, but refreshing my memory won’t hurt.

Bautista de León was twenty years old when he was making headlines for challenging Blood Casters in New York. The gang had been robbing banks, intimidating judges and politicians, and killing alchemists who were attempting to create potions to neutralize their powers. Their streak had gone unchecked until Bautista started tracking their patterns, a skill that I definitely don’t have. He was holding his own in fights, but as the Blood Casters began grooming other young people—later called acolytes—to do their dirty work, Bautista knew he needed a team. He formed the Spell Walkers to combat all oppositions to peace. It took a while before they won over the public, but they became a valuable force with their track record of saving lives and incapacitating Blood Casters long enough for the authorities to lock them up in the Bounds. Four years later, Bautista was killed inside a weapons factory, and while many mourned him, the writer of this text claimed that if Bautista ever surfaced again with a phoenix’s illegal powers, the Haloes would make sure his next death was as permanent as Keon Máximo’s.

“Not the happiest of endings,” I say.

“Haloes have some fiery hearts,” Wyatt says.

“Hopefully none of them find out their history books are wrong about Keon.”

Since the Dayrose salve didn’t restore me to full health, I decide to keep busy digging up more information about Bautista until I have the strength to try retrocycling again. I borrow Brighton’s laptop, and he gets me started with a dozen tabs to review while he spends time in the training room with Prudencia. I feel some kind of way about him getting more and more comfortable with powers I’m dead set on binding, but we got to make sure we’re strong enough to get close to the Blood Casters