Christine
I tried to let it go. I really did. My mom wanted me to pretend like there was nothing to worry about, and for a day, I tried.
I listened to her unexpected updates about the search for the hunters with a smile on my face and a brain drunk with magic. She told me about Kamon’s funeral and how her agents hadn’t spotted Remi there until it was too late. This was a good thing, she’d said. Since they’d gotten close to her once, they would do it again. I tried to focus on that and not on how nauseous I’d felt when thinking about Carter or the weird things that had happened in the house.
It rained for most of the day like I’d predicted it would, and Sophia had also worn her dragonfly dress, and still, I pretended like my instincts weren’t worth following.
I ate dinner with my parents like a good little girl, and drank another dose of the potion like a good little girl, and I went to bed … like a not so good little girl.
Nate was waiting there for me, and I fell asleep on his chest while looking at pictures of Carter Yates.
I dreamed that I was cooking dinner with Sophia. In the dream, she showed me the correct way to stuff a turkey. It went on for an eternity until she sent me to the pantry for a can of green beans. The shelves of food disappeared, and so did the floor underneath me. I was suddenly standing outside of my house in New Orleans.
I couldn’t hear a thing, but I’d somehow moved to the night of the portal spell. I watched as blood swirled in the water, streaming over unnatural waves and circling Mom and me. Mom’s mouth moved, probably pleading with me not to change the past, but no sound came out of her mouth.
Fireworks exploded over our heads, but I couldn’t hear them. The absence of sound wasn’t the strangest thing about the dream. Around the edge of the pool, near the deep end, something was casting a wide shadow on the stones, almost in the shape of a huddle of people.
At first, I thought … Remi, but there were too many shapes for her to be causing them all. I gagged, and my head started to pound—no, it started to burn like someone had set it on fire.
“Baby,” Dad said. “Wake up.”
I opened my eyes and jumped at the sight of my parents in my room. My dad pressed a towel under my nose, and Mom exchanged my bloody pillowcase for a new one. Nate was nowhere to be found.
“This isn’t my fault,” I said. “I didn’t skip the potion.”
“I know,” Mom said. “It must’ve worn off.” I glanced at the clock. Four A.M. was too early to be awake, and it was way too early to witness my parents dressed like Lydia and Christopher, instead of Mom and Dad. Her silk robe was a little too close to lingerie for my liking, and he was wearing shorts, exposing the tattoos on his legs that I’d only seen a few times.
Though they were kind of grossing me out, I felt guilty for a moment for not fully appreciating that we were finally a real family who could be in the same room together without fighting. “Good thing you knocked your phone over,” Mom said. “It made us check on you.” Nathan had clearly done that before hiding … wherever he was. “We’ll have to increase your dosages.”
They had a glass ready and waiting on my nightstand. “I dreamed of the portal,” I said. “But there were these dark shadows there.”
“You can’t keep holding that over your head,” Mom said. “Especially not when that whole thing was my fault. I made you need more out of your life.”
“And me, too,” Dad said. “No one blames you for that.”
He gave me the glass, and I didn’t bother to tell them that I wasn’t feeling guilty or that the dream had felt like it meant something. They wouldn’t have understood or cared to listen.
Again, like a good little girl, I drank the potion, and the lights flickered in my room as I gulped it down. Every time I touched that stuff, something weird happened, and it wasn’t all in my head. It couldn’t have been.
Mom shot me a glance that said, don’t you dare make something out of that, and a loud clap of thunder backed her up.
Heavy rain that sounded like gunshots beat on the glass walls of our home. By the time my parents left my room, it was storming outside, and our house suddenly felt extremely fragile.
Nate crawled from under the bed with this nervous grin on his face.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “Wanting you here is very selfish.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m here just because you want me to be.” He checked my nose for more blood and tossed my towel to the floor when he didn’t find any. “Besides,” he said, “it’s storming, and we both know how clingy you get when it rains. I wouldn’t give that up for anyone.”
My vision blurred as I reached for the string on my lamp. Sophia’s potion slowed the whole world down. Nate leaned over me and yanked the string that I’d missed, and he stayed there, pressed against my back, as a bolt of lightning danced on the other side of my curtains.
“My mom,” he said, and paused. I stopped breathing. Nate finally felt comfortable enough to talk about his mother, and I didn’t want to say anything to ruin the moment. “She had this theory about thunder and lightning.” A clap of thunder rattled the house, and I pushed closer to him. He was right. Rain made me clingy. “I was really young, and she amended this later when she became my science teacher, but she told me that thunderstorms happened because there were two brothers fighting in the sky.”
I smiled, and I could almost feel him smiling behind me. That was almost enough to help me ignore that my three guardians preferred for me to be drugged all day.
“What were their names?” I asked. “The brothers?”
“Obviously, Thunder and Lightning. What did you expect? Bert and Ross? You can’t live in the sky with those names.” I playfully kicked his leg. It had taken a lot of energy to even nudge him. “Anyway, my mom said that, sometimes, the brothers fight so much, about who is faster and who is louder, that they make the clouds sad enough to cry.”
I wished I’d known Theresa Reece. She’d had her issues, but she’d made Nate … Nate.
“The clouds are very sad tonight,” I said. I felt him nod behind me. “I am very sad tonight.” I didn’t have to tell him that. Nate could smell my emotions. Sometimes, he knew them better than I did. I felt sad that nothing had changed with my mom even after saving her life, afraid of what could happen if I listened to her, and unnecessarily vulnerable.
All of the dangerous what ifs that could’ve been more than what ifs were making it hard to pretend like everything was okay. What if I was sensing death? Mom hadn’t denied that. And what if something was wrong that she couldn’t handle? With the agents? With Carter? Was I supposed to stay in this tiny box that she wanted me to live in and let terrible things happen around me? Or wait for someone to fix everything for me?
A life like that, like the one I’d had before storming into Kamon’s prison, didn’t interest me at all.
“I hope you’re not drinking that stuff for me, Chris. Seizures don’t scare me nearly as much as the thought of you being sad. Don’t be miserable for me or anyone. Ever. Just be smart.”
That was exactly what I needed to be, and I needed a smart way to use my powers without hurting myself. I had to find a way to stop being vulnerable and to figure out why the hell I’d thrown up every bit of food in my stomach out of the blue.
I assumed Pop would know a way to do that, but even though no one had said it, it felt like he’d been banned from me for helping us break into Kamon’s prison. I knew that he wouldn’t answer my call for a fact.
So I called my favorite witch who wasn’t banned, and she answered on the second ring.
“You should be asleep,” Emma said.
“I need to use my powers.”
“Rumor has it that you’re not supposed to be doing that right now. Aren’t you sick?” I paused and waited for her to decode that I didn’t care and that I needed her help anyway. “It’s going to cost you your brown suede boots.”
“You already have them.”
“Then don’t expect to get them back. I’ll be there in a minute.”
****
By the time Emma appeared in my room, Nate had shifted to spend some quiet time in his fur, and I was sitting on the floor, waiting to do magic. Emma sat in front of me with her knees touching mine.
She opened her hot pink duffle bag and removed white candles in glass holders. I sat there silently as she placed them in a circle around us. She lit them with a long match that made her look enchanting and made the moment deathly serious. The thunderstorm outside helped set the ominous tone.
“I heard Sophie talking to Gregory about your symptoms earlier,” she said. “I’m afraid of you hurting yourself, but Sophie taught me everything I know about magic, and I’m surprised that she thinks turning your powers off will help you. That’s like trying to fix the flickering lights in your house by shutting off the power indefinitely.”
Her metaphor reminded me of the lights flickering earlier. I couldn’t wait to ask my psychic brain if that had really meant something. “You know ways to fix my wires?”
“It’s not a onetime thing. I wish I could fix you for good, but I can make you something to unscramble your head. That’s what Gregory said. You’re all scrambled up there.”
Emma had also heard about the email I’d seen and the vomiting, so I told her the part that she hadn’t heard. The creepy part.
“So they moved?” she said. “The glasses?” I nodded. “And the shower curtain, too? All on its own?”
“Yes. That’s creepy, right?”
She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she was wearing lipstick to do magic with me. “That’s more than creepy, Chris. It kind of sounds like you’re being haunted to me.”
I couldn’t gauge her sincerity from her tone, but joke or not, she’d said something I hadn’t wanted to admit. No matter how many ghosts I’d seen or spoken to, the idea of something dead and invisible lurking around me, standing near me, and watching me, made goose bumps spread all over my arms.
“You think there’s a spirit here?” I said.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe. In our world, lights don’t just flicker and windows don’t just open. But let’s focus on your broken brain first.”
She placed my hands on the cold floor and emptied a bottle of water over them. I raised a curious eyebrow at her.
“My sister used to call this Peasant Magic,” she said. “Poor witches don’t have much to channel their magic through, so they learn to use everyday things. That’s why Sophie can kill the flu with flower petals. She grew up on a farm, and I grew up in her house, so … if we don’t count the Blood Magic my sister taught me, I am only trained in this. It may seem silly to you, but it will work.”
She squeezed honey all over my hands, and I tried not to laugh. She rubbed them together until honey coated every inch of my hands from my nails to my wrists. Then, as if we hadn’t made enough of a mess, she sprinkled sugar on my fingers. It sparkled like diamonds, and Nate whined his disbelief. As I looked over my shoulder, he inched closer to the edge of the bed to get a better look.
Emma emptied another bottle of water over my hands. The stream sped towards the edge of the circle but stopped at the line of candles. Water filled the entire circle without touching our legs or feet or flowing outside of the barrier she’d created. There was almost an inch between our bodies and the growing pool around us.
She dumped her last three bottles of water onto the floor and hummed as she waded her sticky fingers through the pool.
“Sophie tried to get my mom to join her family’s business of helping hunters. My mom didn’t have the patience, but she does have a spell book for that line of work. Some spells knock out your powers, and some make your lives easier. Sophie isn’t interested in making your life easier. Because she loves you, I know there’s a reason for that. So … promise me. Promise me you’ll be careful and safe.”
For the thousandth time, I said, “You will never have to lose another sister, Em.”
“I know,” she whispered. “That’s why I’m helping you. That … and the boots.” I smiled, and she whispered a spell in French. “The first part is done. Now, take this.” She gave me a shot glass full of red liquid that was too thick to be a real shot. “Bottoms up. That’ll bring your powers back.”
I took the shot, it tasted like peppermint, and I waited. I knew how this would go. My powers tended to act like thousands of wild horses being set free at once. Today was no different. The special parts of my brain went from zero to sixty after being asleep all day. The screeching fax machines blocked out every sound in the room until I forced myself to ignore them. The racket became more manageable, but it never disappeared.
“We have to give that a minute to sink in,” Emma said.
I forced my voice to be even so they wouldn’t know how much pain I was in. “Since we’re on hold,” I said, “let’s see if there’s a ghost here.” Nate growled, and I looked over my shoulder. “Don’t tell me that you’re afraid of ghosts.” He growled again, but I couldn’t think of a better way to debunk Emma’s theory of my house being haunted than asking my psychic brain, “Is there a ghost here?”
All there was to the world for a moment was pain—hot, agonizing pain. The ghost did not reward my sacrifice. After a long minute of silence, Emma said, “Does anyone want to knock anything over? Flicker any lights? Do it now.” More silence. Nothing moved, and I briefly wondered if I’d imagined all of the weird things that had happened. “I’m glad no one answered. Ghosts creep me out,” Emma said. “Okay, it’s time.”
She gathered water in her hands and lifted them to my lips. I laughed at her.
“Drink,” she said.
“Uh, no. That came off of the floor, and I’m not drinking out of your hands. It’s weird.”
“You got me out of my bed to help you. You will drink.” She pushed her honey-coated hands closer to my mouth. “The ritual purified the circle, Christine. It’s not weird.” I shook my head. “I bet you the newest Gucci dress in your closet that this will help you, and you’ll be begging me to bottle up the rest of this water. Or you can just listen to your mother. She knows best, anyway.”
She flashed me a wicked smile, and I groaned and closed my eyes. I pretended that I wasn’t drinking floor-water, and I sipped out of her hands. The pain drained out of my head in an instant without leaving me groggy like Sophia’s potion always did. After a minute without pain, as the screeching began to fade, I realized I’d just lost one of my favorite dresses to Emma. She was going to have to bottle up this floor-water.
Without the sounds of the world shouting at me at once, I actually heard things inside of the cloud of noise. My knee brushed Emma’s, and I heard her thoughts and how proud she was of herself for fixing me. I also heard my dad’s voice downstairs, possibly composing a song in his head. The more I listened, the more distinct the sounds became. Distinct and frightening.
I shuddered as I heard the other sounds that had been hiding in the cloud of noise and adding to the screeching in my ears. Now that Emma had fixed me, I heard the faint wail of a siren. When I was very young at St. Catalina, before the world believed that all traces of magic had been burned, those sirens would blare throughout New Haven whenever someone suspected a creature to be near. According to the nuns, every city and town in the world had similar emergency procedures. And I was hearing that emergency alert after years of no one needing to use it. After years of no one knowing about magic.
And over the sirens, I heard screams of terror. I heard chaos. I heard … the sounds of the war I’d thought I’d stopped.
It started as low as a whisper, and then it quickly grew into an uncontrollable roar that I couldn’t even think through. Or breathe through. I smacked my hands over my ears as the chaos beat at my eardrums. It was much worse than it had been before our unsuccessful mission at Kamon’s prison. And I still felt like there was something about that night that I needed to figure out. I couldn’t keep my thoughts coherent enough to do that.
The unbearable racket sent me into a daze. I barely felt Emma lifting me up from the floor, and I didn’t see Nate shift before he carried me to the bathroom. It all happened in one second, one terribly loud and agonizing second.
And death pushed and pushed at my stomach, just like it had pushed it outside of the prison when I’d sensed hundreds of people dying at once. I felt … people dying now. Souls were ripping away from bodies, and that left me shivering and sick. I’d never felt anything so strongly, and I’d never been more certain about anything in my life.
The second war was still coming, and this one was going to be worse than the last.