Christine
God, I really wanted there to be a ghost pack. For three days, as I worked with my mom and Nate played his drum, I prayed for the story to be true and for them to spontaneously show up. But they didn’t, and he still didn’t have a family outside of us.
The last thing he’d said to me before bed last night was, “You are all I need. No one has to come here.” That broke my heart, because he’d given up hope and had started to think too logically. And a logical person would see the truth: that his pack was dead.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t resurrect either of his families, but I still had a chance to protect the one he’d started to build with me. But I couldn’t mention that as we watched the sunrise. We’d made a rule about bringing sad things to bed with us. Worries belonged outside of this room, and that was why I didn’t want to get up.
As long as Nate and I stayed under the covers, I didn’t have to think about all of the things that were wrong, or how my dad would flip out if he found me in Nate’s new room, or that Nate was still too weak to even kiss me properly. As long as we stayed in bed, in the safety of each other’s arms, nothing but us existed. We were both awake. His fingers were knotted into my t-shirt and mine were pressed into his skin, and in the silence of the smallest room in our home, we were allowed to be our old selves again. We were Chris and Nate: pre-Kamon.
Before him, we were two lonely souls who’d found life in each other’s company. Our days were about made-for-TV movies, popcorn, and this distant danger of hunters. That was back when my biggest problem was being human and telling my shifter boyfriend about it. I could laugh at that now.
Back then, a sound had changed everything. A doorbell announcing Remi and Liam had led to chaos, then to a breakup, then to me being taken to Paris. Then … my mother. Her past. Her secrets. Her pain. After that, I’d gained her enemies, met my father, and then I gave those enemies to him, too. Her problems were like a contagion that we were all breathing in. Even my sweet shifter had caught our plague.
Without that doorbell, Nate and I probably would’ve still been in my bed in New Orleans, holding each other like we were now, but I wouldn’t wish for a life where none of our problems had happened. There were so many good moments twined with the bad, an impossibly tangled rope that couldn’t be straightened.
My family’s plague had caused the good parts as well. Nate and I would never go back to being who we were before that doorbell, and despite the pain we’d felt and the tears we’d cried, we were both better off because of that moment. Otherwise, we would’ve been just two broken people playing at happiness, clinging for the sake of clinging, never growing, never changing, just … being.
Pain had made us who we were supposed to be.
“Can we stay in here all day?” Nate said.
The alarm I’d set on his phone answered him. It was time for work and time to stop pretending that I hadn’t heard the names of my loved ones when thinking about death.
When I’d listened again, without chickening out, I’d heard more names: Paul’s parents, Emma’s parents, Tyler Moss, and sadly, Christine. I’d written all of our names in my sketchbook, hoping to sense something other than death about them, but that hadn’t happened.
All I knew was that a war was coming, and my family wasn’t going to be around to stop it.
“You smell worried,” he said. “And that’s not allowed in here.”
“I know. I just …”
“Don’t give up, babe. None of us have to die. We can fix it.”
“That’s easy to say when your name isn’t on the list,” I joked. At least, he wasn’t on my list yet. The pain of hearing the other names had been impossible to bear, so I didn’t have a word for how I would feel if I were to predict Nate’s death.
I couldn’t think about losing him again.
I kissed him and rolled out of bed. “I’ll see you later. It’s time for work. Have fun drumming today.”
“I’m feeling well enough to come with you,” he said.
“You don’t look like it. I’ll text you later.”
I brought myself to my room. Because I was afraid to see what the last few days had done to my complexion, I avoided the mirror as I brushed my teeth and washed my face. After, I ran down the stairs in search of the only other person who would’ve been up at the crack of dawn.
I followed the smell of coffee to the dining room and found my mother. Stacks of spell books cluttered the table and spilled over to the chairs. Color-coded sticky notes marking important pages peeked out of the tops of them. The yellow ones were for spells that paralyze, the red ones were for spells that harm hunters, and the blue ones inside of Spells of the Night Star were there just because Nate loved me.
None of those spells were related to anything important, but I was still sure about that coven. Psychically sure. He still had three sections to read through. The indisputable evidence would be in them. It had to be.
Mom was watching something on her laptop in the dimly lit room. She peeked over the screen and smiled at me.
“Morning,” she said, and placed her coffee on the table.
“Morning. Are we going to the office today?”
She twirled her finger in the air. I waited for an explanation for the gesture since she’d lost me. “Later. The air is too loud to focus right now. We’ll have to wait until it clears.”
“Loud?” I asked.
“See for yourself.”
I sat next to her and closed my eyes. Even without Emma’s elixir, I felt healthy enough to use my powers. The injury from my seizure had almost faded. To test the volume of the air, I thought about the coven, and instead of getting nauseous or hearing the names of my family members, I heard a baby crying. Screaming, really. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere in the house. The longer I listened, the louder the baby became, until it seemed like it was screaming right into my eardrums.
“You see what I mean?” Mom said. I nodded and ignored the crying until it faded into the background. Eventually, like everything else that could be sensed, I wouldn’t hear it at all.
“Should we find out who that baby is?” I asked. “Someone might need help.”
“No. I think that’s a normal cry. When things are loud like that, it means what you’re sensing is going to happen soon. There’s probably a baby on the way. A baby we should know about, apparently.”
She continued to stare at her screen as if that wasn’t huge news. After a few tense seconds, that were apparently only tense to me, I said, “Come on. Aren’t you going to assume that it’s me like you and Sophia always do?”
“No. I think you have a firm understanding of why we shouldn’t create another one of us right now.” We laughed, but I knew how serious that was. There was no part of me that wanted to make another heir to Lydia Shaw’s powers and problems. “Do you peek into your future to know when your kids are coming?”
I shook my head. “Besides adding my name to my morbid list, I never predict things about myself. I try to do that with you and with the war, but never for myself.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t. You’re always thinking about others. That’s good. I have a bad habit of wanting to know too much. My dad said that no one should know their own future. It can drive you crazy.”
That was the reason why I didn’t want to look. I was afraid there would be something there, or not there, that would drive me over the edge.
“We should try speaking to your grandfather again,” Mom said. “More of my agents are starting to hear the sirens. The war is getting closer. I’ve dispatched hunters to guard the streets in a few major cities just in case. We don’t want to have any human casualties.”
I slouched in my chair and helped myself to some of her coffee. I had to force it down. There was nothing in it to cut the bitterness. That was exactly the way she served life to me now, with no sugar or cream to make it easier to take. I guessed that was what happened when you asked to grow up. She wasn’t lying to protect me anymore or pretending that things were okay when they weren’t.
I took another gulp of coffee to get used to the taste of being an adult. I’d asked for this, and it was too late to turn back now.
“Today is an important day,” Mom said. “I can feel it, but I don’t know why. When I woke up, I felt stronger than I have in a while. Probably because I slept last night. Anyway, I felt drawn to this room and to my computer. Now I’m sitting here looking at photos that aren’t speaking to me.” She turned the laptop, and I jumped—an automatic reaction to Kamon’s face. “Maybe you can help. Tyler followed Kamon around for the last few weeks of his life. These are the pictures he took. I don’t know why I opened them … or why I can’t stop looking at them.”
I clicked the arrow to move to the next picture, and I gagged. It wasn’t because of Kamon. It was because of the copy playing golf with him. Carter Yates also made me nauseous.
“His routine was so predictable,” she said. “He started the morning with rounds at the hospital. Then he usually played golf before going to his lab at the castle.” Each click of the mouse matched the descriptions of his routine. “After that, he usually went back to the hospital, then home.”
I clicked through the pictures of day after day of Kamon in his normal life. Nothing appeared to be changing … except…
“That has to be Carter,” I said, and pointed to the screen.
“Yes. He was his favorite son. Carter spent way more time with him than the other two did.”
“He’s changing … in a way.” In the picture, Carter had his back turned to Kamon while his father swung his club. “His clothes,” I said. “He’s wearing all black in this one, but in these…”
I clicked through the pictures we’d gone through again. When Tyler had first started following them, Carter had dressed in bright and preppy clothes like Kamon. I clicked back to the one with him dressed in all black, and Mom hummed like that was interesting.
“And,” I said, as I kept clicking. “He’s not even in these last few pictures. He stopped playing golf with Kamon. Can we assume that he stopped liking Kamon, too? Maybe something happened between them.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or … maybe not. God, I’ve been staring at Kamon in these all morning, but you’re right. It’s Carter.” She stopped on the picture of Carter and Kamon facing away from each other. “You feel sick when you think about him and when you think about those shadows, and … he’s different.”
She rummaged inside of her bag and pulled out my drawings of the pool in New Orleans and of Kamon’s chapel. She looked at them with her right ear tilted to her shoulder.
“Interesting,” she whispered. “You’re nauseous when you think about Carter, and you were both at the pool that night and in the chapel. I think … I think I know what you don’t know … that you know.”
“What?”
“The more you know about something, the more your brain has to work with, and your brain has been working better than the rest of ours. I think it’s all connected, and not because Carter is working with them. I’m not sure about Remi, but I think you sensed something at the pool or chapel or both … about Carter. And magic and death …”
A heavy breath heaved out of her chest, and her eyes widened. I would’ve thought Kamon and Carter were jumping out of her screen by how terrified she looked. She grabbed my face and scared the hell out of me.
With her nose on my nose, she said, “You are brilliant, angel, and I’m lucky to have you.”
“What did I do?”
“That brilliant brain of yours has been trying to remind you of something that you felt but didn’t pay attention to.” Because I still looked like a deer in headlights, she continued to explain. “I think Carter might be dead, and that’s something you would’ve felt around him.” And as if life could’ve gotten any stranger, she added, “And the coven, the shadows that you drew, might be using his body. I think he’s … possessed.”
****
The nuns had taught me about possession like they’d taught me about everything else—through their own biases and hatred for magical kind. I couldn’t believe much of what I’d learned about life before six months ago. They’d made me believe for a solid year that I could’ve been a demon possessing the body of an innocent child. But then, in another lesson about the monsters, they’d said that I wouldn’t have been able to go inside of a church if I were possessed. That was the only thing that had saved me from going insane over that.
But I still didn’t know what to believe. “Possession really exists?” I asked.
“You can move things with your mind, and your fiancé turns into a dog. Everything exists.” Apparently it did. Even possession. “This could explain why you couldn’t move that day, honey.”
“He was trying to possess me?” I screamed.
“Maybe so. If they took Carter, their plan could be to take over copies. Even though you’re not one, they would think so. Or it could’ve just been a way to get you down to stab you. I’m not sure.”
I grabbed the Coven of the Night Star’s spell book and frantically searched for possession spells.
“I doubt that book will help,” Mom said. “Possession is despicable magic, sweetie. Even worse than something you’d find in that one.” She pointed to The History of Black Magic. “It’s not something you’d find in any of these books. It’s not something the Magical Council would be bold enough to document and keep in their vault. They don’t promote immortality through murder, and that’s exactly what possession is about—living in someone else’s skin, spending their years for them, then moving on to another.”
“Can anyone do it?” I asked. She nodded, and I added a bit of obvious information that I didn’t want her to miss. “So someone in the Coven of the Night Star could be using other spells … like possession.”
She hesitated for a moment, her eyes on Carter again. “I guess they could. Honey, will you wake up Sophia and Gregory. We need them. That baby is going to distract us from finding out more.”
“I’ll be right back.”
She smiled subtly and focused on the pictures of Carter and Kamon. On my way out of the room, she said, “Hurry, sweetie. I don’t know if it’s because we just discovered something or not … but I have a really bad feeling. I want you to stay close to me today. I’m not trying to be overprotective. I’m just …”
There were millions of ways to finish that sentence. She was just … worried, psychic, scared. With the Coven of the Night Star potentially stealing bodies now, all of those words were fitting.
Fighting the urge to shudder, I took myself to the hallway in front of Pop and Sophia’s door. Before I knocked, I heard something in my room across the hall, maybe the groan of a mattress, but no one was supposed to be in there. I started to panic, and I wondered what precautions Sophia and Pop had taken to protect our home. Could Remi and her new friends get in here? Could Carter and the spirit inside of him come, too?
“Chris.”
I’d never been so happy to hear a French accent in my life. Emma.
As I walked into my bedroom, she sniffed through her pink nose and waved at me. She’s your friend, I told myself. Someone is not in her body. Don’t freak out.
Tears gathered on the brims of her eyes, just waiting to spill over. “I called you a few times last night,” she said.
I pointed to my phone that had been on my bed all night. “You should’ve come over. You know you don’t have to wait for me to answer my phone.” Or did she? Emma would’ve known that. An intruder wouldn’t have.
Thick tears cascaded down her cheeks, and I forced my suspicious thoughts to the back of my mind. In the event that she wasn’t an imposter, my best friend needed me.
I sat on the bed next to her, and an eternity passed with both of us looking at the floor and nothing else. I finally said, “Are you going to make me read your mind, or are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
She sniffed again and wiped her cheeks. “I would actually prefer that.” I chuckled, and a strained smile formed on her lips. It faded quickly. “Or I could just show you.” She dug into her purse and pulled out a pregnancy test, explaining the screaming baby.
I tried not to gasp, but it happened anyway. She tossed the test on my bed, and I told myself to ignore that it was something that needed to be peed on, and I peeked at the results. Positive.
“Emma.”
“No one knows but you. What the hell am I supposed to say to Paul and my parents? And Sophie is going to kill me.”
That was if the Coven of the Night Star didn’t kill us first.
I pulled her into my arms. I tried my best to ignore her thoughts, but whispers of them still made it to my mind. She was thinking that she was a bad daughter for turning her parents into grandparents, and that she would inevitably be a bad mother, too.
“Emma,” I said. “It’s going to be okay.”
It felt anything but okay. It felt like a tragedy in the making.
Her voice managed to crack twice as she said, “How?” She caught her breath and wiped her face with her sleeve. “How is it going to be okay, Chris? Your enemies are my enemies. We’re in as much danger as you are. And don’t even get me started on how not ready Paul and I are for this. He’s still recovering from years of an addiction, and my family is still waiting for me to pick up a dark spell book and hurt someone. And the only money I have is money you’ve given me. I have nothing. Paul has nothing. This baby will have nothing. If we manage to kill Remi, Carter, and the coven before they kill us or end the world, my little family will probably still die of starvation after that.”
Because I’d heard Emma’s name with the others, I was heartbreakingly certain that she wasn’t going to live long enough to worry about these things, so to keep myself from screaming that and freaking her out even more, I tried to distract her. “Stop being dramatic, Em. You know it’s going to work out.”
“Dramatic? I’m not being dramatic.”
“You are. Let’s ignore the fact that you’re a witch and can create food with a snap of your fingers, making it impossible for your family to starve to death, but you have your parents. And Sophia. And me. Do you honestly think I would let my niece starve?”
After that word—niece—everything went silent but Emma’s frantic thoughts. I hadn’t intended to say it, but once it was out, it felt right. More than right. Emma’s baby was a girl.
Her thoughts went from dark and depressed to the beginnings of joy, like the sun slowly peeking through storm clouds.
“Niece?” she asked. “You think I’m having a girl?” I nodded. More of her storm clouds blew away, revealing more of the sun, and she smiled. “I’m having a girl,” she whispered. “I’ve always wanted to have a little girl. With Paul. Not this soon, of course, but I’ve been dreaming about that forever.” She smiled a little wider, still unsure if she was going to be fully happy or not. She continued to whisper. “Paul is going to have a heart attack.”
“He won’t,” I said. Without even thinking about it, I added, “He’s going to remind you of the time when you said that you would name your daughter Sophie.”
That named killed me. I felt hollow inside. Sophie. I’d thought I’d sensed Sophia’s name twice, but I should’ve known better. I never called Sophia by that name. Only Emma called her Sophie, and now, another Sophie was on the way. On the way … and on my list.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I told him that when I was ten-years-old. She’s a girl! You’re right. You’re probably right about everything!” She didn’t know how wrong I wanted to be.
I closed my eyes to try to see another future for her and her family. The air had cleared of her baby’s screams, but something else had taken its place. Something dark, overwhelmingly cold, and impossible to ignore.
I felt death in the air again.
“Em,” I said. “You should go and talk to your parents.”
“I’m not ready for that yet.”
“It feels important for you to leave right now,” I said. My hands were trembling. “Please go.”
“Is something wrong?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer. My mom screamed and stopped my heart. “Sophia!”
Emma’s hands flew to her stomach, unconsciously protecting the little thing inside of her.
“Sophia! Come now!”
Mom had intended to beckon Sophia, but everyone in the house rushed to the kitchen. Even Emma. Nate shifted, and the rest of us stared at the black rain streaming down the glass walls of our home.
“What the hell is that?” Dad asked.
I said the first thing that came to my mind, and it felt startlingly true. “The coven. They found us.”