The sun was setting as we crossed through Virginia into Maryland, a mix of purple, red, orange and pink. It was beautiful, but Embry had used ‘the sunset’ as his i-spy the last three rounds. We were entertaining ourselves in the back seat while Gabriel was at the wheel, again.
“I’m sure there are rules against using the same thing each time,” I complained after it took me over twenty-one guesses to ask if he was spying the sunset again.
“I think it makes it easier for you,” he argued. “And that’s how you played.”
“I used a different tree every time,” I argued, remembering how annoyed Sam would get with me. My surrogate big brother would play along and was nice about it, but even as a child I could see him rolling his eyes. Sam got his payback when it was my turn to entertain his daughter, Clara. Embry was the only one I believed was having as much fun as I was, even after playing for hours. I should have known then that he was a master at hiding things.
“That should have been against the rules,” Embry shook his head as we came up to a slowdown in traffic. It was long past rush hour, but I could see smoke up ahead. I craned my neck to see what was going on and saw a car go up in flames. The sirens were blaring from somewhere behind me, and I knew they were coming closer, but the sound was getting lower and lower, until I couldn’t hear it at all…
I was Beth, as she and Embry got ready to go to the theatre, reminding me so much of Sam and Deanna. They touched each other every time they passed by; hand grazes, running her fingers along his back, wrapping his arms around her and snuggling into her neck to get something in front of her instead of just reaching for it… They were young, happy and in love. Which was saying something with Helen and Jack constantly demanding their attention. I couldn’t help but smile every time Jackson had a story to tell me in his toddler babble, and I could feel Beth’s heart melt when Helen asked if Daddy wouldn’t mind being the one to braid her hair.
Once everyone was ready, the four of us took a car into town. It appalled me that their version of a car seat was letting the kids roam around the back seat, with Beth putting her arm out if ever there was a sudden stop. Thankfully, Embry drove the smoothest drive I have ever been on, considering the unpaved roads we took. He parked on the street and we walked to the theatre. Jackson fell asleep in the car, so I carried him in my arms, something I haven’t done since Clara. Beth and Embry were in step, holding hands and looking up to smile at each other continuously, while Helen skipped along a few feet in front of us.
“Helen wants to bring you to show and tell tomorrow,” I said when we rounded the corner, letting go of Embry’s hand long enough to get the theater tickets. It was September 5th, 1926.
“For my magician act? Does she want me to sing?” Embry teased, but Beth was serious.
“They’re supposed to talk about their hero,” she explained.
Embry processed the information, then asked, “What about you, or… wasn’t she going to talk about David?”
“David was a kind man and he would have been an incredible father… but he died. You’re the one who has raised her, the one she looks up to. She wants to be like you.”
“Nothing would make me happier,” he said before leaning over to give his wife a kiss.
Once we entered the theatre, Beth insisted that we sit in the front, so they could be close to the action. Embry laughed at her, but agreed, and got two seats in the front row. Jackson chose his father’s lap, but Helen sat in her mother’s.
It was halfway through the play that it started. It was hot in the theater, but not stifling, so I had no reason to think this was anything other than a happy memory, until I smelled smoke. Beth stood up and looked towards the doors, where there was smoke coming from the lighting room. As the flames became visible, everyone rushed for the exit.
Embry was ahead of me with Jackson, while I held on to Helen, my hands on her shoulders as the crowd pushed into us. She was holding onto Embry’s coat as I tried to protect her from the people rushing for the door, but somewhere in the shuffle, someone let go.
“Beth!” Embry called when he realized I wasn’t following. I could hear him yell, again and again, getting farther and farther away as the crowd pushed against us, so many people making a wall between Beth and everything she cared about.
“Get the children out. Save them,” Beth called.
“I’m not leaving you,” Embry argued, having to yell really loud for me to barely hear him.
“Get them out. Then you can come back for me, but they’re what matters,” she called, as they pushed him towards the exit and I lost sight of him. We tried to get to the doors too, but someone pushed me, and I fell. Everyone behind me kept coming, none of them looking down. I tried so many times, but I couldn’t get up. Every time I did, all I saw were flames, before someone knocked me back down to the floor. It looked like hundreds of people blocking the exits, so even if Beth kept going, she wouldn’t make it out. I clutched the ring Embry gave Beth, then closed my eyes and let the flames come. Just like Annabelle had…
“What did you see?” Embry asked with concern, bringing his hand to my arm when I screamed. I didn’t mean to push it off, but I still felt like I was burning, choking on the smoke.
“I am so sorry.” I could feel the tears pouring down my face and my skin was in agony, but it was my heart that broke for his. “Why didn’t she use her magic?” I had tried, knowing I had no control over what happened in the past, but I couldn’t understand why Beth didn’t. She was a favorite of mine, especially after staying in her house and finding out her secrets. We both had magical powers in common, and she seemed like she had so little fear and was always up for a challenge. Centuries after Annabelle died, I still wear my hair the same way as all of my ancestors, except Beth, who defied cultural norms and cut it like a boy. I saw her in my mind as a brave trailblazer, not someone who sits back and lets awful things happen to her.
It took Embry a moment to understand what I was talking about, but I saw his face drop, the pain written in every line once he did. “I don’t know,” he said, pulling me as close as he could with my seatbelt. Gabriel was quiet in the front seat, but his eyes locked on my reflection in the rearview mirror, full of concern.
It was my second time dying as one of the Bearers of the Crescent Moon, but I also saw Rosie the night she passed. I always knew it wasn’t me, that I was just having memories from women who looked exactly like me, but they felt so real to all the senses. Cassie and Beth were obviously a few years older than me, but not that many. Probably around Sam’s age.
I never thought much about it, because they always looked to be roughly the same age in all the memories, but this was the third death and none of them looked older than thirty. If I assumed Annabelle died not long after returning to Boston with Margaret, we were four for four on Bearers dying young.
I was about to ask Embry how young Beth was, when I remembered Annabelle’s tombstone from the cemetery at the plantation. I did the math of 1692 minus 1664, which told me she died around twenty-eight. I couldn’t remember the exact dates for the others, except for Beth dying in 1926, but I knew where to find them.
“What’s wrong?” Embry asked when I reached for the backpack at my feet.
“I need to check out something in the Chronicles,” I dismissed him. I could find out a lot easier if I asked them, but looking it up in the written account of my ancestors’ lives would let me prepare for answers I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know. Embry went back to his seat behind Gabriel, but kept an eye on me.
Annabelle’s entry in the Chronicles confirmed the dates I used. Rosalind’s death in 1778 also put her at twenty-eight. Which could be a rather weird coincidence… only Cassandra lived from 1822 to 1850. I wasn’t surprised, but my heart rate that had finally gone back to normal was becoming erratic again.
I shut the book but kept it in my lap, holding on to it so my hands wouldn’t shake. It felt like I was suffocating again, only this time it wasn’t from smoke. I could see both the guys staring at me from the corner of my eyes, but I wasn’t ready to confront them yet. There had to be an explanation.
I bit my bottom lip to push away the anger and tears so I could think. It was looking like each of the previous Crescent Moon Bearers died before reaching their twenty-ninth birthdays. In distinct ways. Some predictable, but others not. Henry had a hand in both Annabelle’s and Cassie’s deaths, but I don’t think he would intentionally give Rosie tuberculosis without taking her heart, especially when she was so weak. And setting an entire theater on fire was definitely overkill to get to one person, considering how many of them escaped. Still, they couldn’t all be coincidences.
“When was Beth born?” I asked Embry, trying to sound like it was simply curiosity.
“May sixteenth,” he answered without hesitation, but gave me an odd look. We both knew I wasn’t into horoscopes, and it wasn’t like I would need to wish her a happy birthday on the day.
“The year?” I asked, trying to look on the bright side. The odds were that I would survive another nine years, but all I could focus on was the fact that I would die. If I was right, even if we defeated Henry and somehow made it through, it would only be temporary. Sam’s sacrifice would be for nothing.
“1898,” Embry finally admitted, furrowing his brow while attempting to figure out what I was getting at, but I felt like someone grabbed my heart and was crushing it. Beth was twenty-eight.
“Is there anything you would like to tell me about all the Crescent Moon Bearers?” I asked, focusing on Gabriel.
“What?” he sounded confused.
“Is there something about Annabelle, Rosalind, Cassandra and Elizabeth that one of you should have told me by now?” I rephrased my question, turning to Embry. He used to be the one to tell me things, once upon a time. My eyes were glistening, but I refused to blink and let the tears fall.
“We have centuries of knowledge on your family, Lucy, we obviously can’t have told you everything,” Embry said, getting worried, but neither of them seemed to know what I was getting at.
“How old was Annabelle when she died?” I asked Gabriel.
“Twenty-eight,” he shared. It sounded like it stung.
“And how old was Beth?” A shiver went through me from the memory, still so fresh in my mind, and my skin. I skipped the others and stuck to the two that affected them the most.
“Twenty-eight,” I could see Embry’s brain working, doing the same math for Cassie and Rosie. “But that’s…” he tried to reason it away.
“It’s not a coincidence that Beth was trampled, suffocated and burnt alive at the same age as Annabelle,” I argued. “Cassie and Rosie were also twenty-eight,” I handed him the Chronicles.
“We knew they died young, but… no one gave Rosie tuberculosis, Annabelle chose to sacrifice herself for Margaret and no one could have predicted the lighting room would catch fire. It’s just a coincidence,” Embry tried to convince himself.
“I thought the Universe sent you guys to protect me, not that I would die either way,” I shook my head and stared out the window.
“No, there is no curse on you, no other prophecy, nothing that implies the same will happen to you,” Gabriel argued like he wouldn’t accept the alternative.
“Except for precedence and the lack of a single exception,” I argued. I wanted to throw up. “Stop the car.” I said evenly, clenching my jaw to stop the tears.
“Luce,” Embry tried to talk me down.
“I need some air,” I pleaded. “Whether or not you accept it, there’s a distinct possibility, that even if Henry never gets to me, some force out there will make sure I never make it to thirty, and right now I can’t breathe.” I aggressively rolled down the window. “You guys make sure I survive and make it through all the attempts to kill me, but maybe you’re just here so he can’t complete the ritual. Because that’s the endgame. You help me survive as long as I can, then make sure Henry doesn’t get my body when it happens?” I felt sick.
“That’s not how it is,” Embry argued.
“Neither of us is resigned to you dying. And if his plan wasn’t to kill you, I would rather you be with Henry than be dead,” Gabriel said, the vein in his forehead pulsing as he tried to control his emotions and the car.
I would call him on his lie by telling him I knew they would kill me themselves rather than let Henry do what he had to with me, but when his eyes met mine… I believed him.
“Whether you like it or not, I will die when I’m twenty-eight, won’t I?” I stopped being angry and turned vulnerable, which felt worse.
“It’s a possibility,” Embry said after considering it.
“But we will do absolutely everything in our power to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Gabriel assured me.
“Please stop the car,” the numbness in my voice scared me, which is probably why Gabriel pulled onto the shoulder. The child lock was still on the doors, so I looked over to him. His eyes were pleading with me not to go, but he still pushed the button to let me out. I shut the door and walked towards the wooded area beside the highway.
I looked back to see them looking after me before I kept going, past the tree line, into the dense parts where the remaining bits of sun struggled to get in. It was only once I could no longer hear the cars that I truly let the implications hit me. No matter what anyone did, within ten years, I would be dead. I brought my hand up to run my fingers through my hair, an attempt at self-soothing, but ended up pressing my hand to my forehead as a searing pain shot through my skull.
Find out what happens next in Legacy (The Owens Chronicles Book Three)