Devandra

The burnt-out Victorian that had once played host to Devandra Montrose, and generations of Montrose women before her, was now just another dark spot on the elegant street in Echo Park. Dev loved the houses in her neighborhood because they had a sense of history about them. With their Easter-candy-colored clapboard siding and peaked roofs, the early Craftsmans and Victorians reminded her of sugary confections. Of course, these elderly beauties—as in most Los Angeles neighborhoods—were sandwiched in between derelict apartment buildings and tiny cottages with cracked glass windowpanes, unkempt yards, and owners who refused to pay for the upkeep on their rentals.

Some people in her neighborhood complained about these lesser buildings, saying they were blots on the grandeur of their showier neighbors, but Dev didn’t agree. She thought all the homes and apartment buildings were unique in their own way, had always argued that each of them added a layer to the eccentric character of the street.

But the horror of the last two days had drained her and now she didn’t have the energy to argue about anything—let alone the worthiness of the run-down houses in her neighborhood. Her world had been upended and now it took every bit of energy inside her, energy that had been stored up over her thirty-plus years of living, to get out of bed in the morning.

Her partner, Freddy, was beside himself with worry. He was grieving, too, but he’d put his own feelings aside—as much as one could compartmentalize something so awful—to help Dev battle the morass of depression that was threatening to overwhelm her. No, it was more than depression, it was an unwillingness to keep living.

Her mother and sisters were dead, her daughters gone (in all probability dead, too), and her blood sisters unreachable . . . it all felt pointless. A life not worth living. She knew she should want to live for Freddy. That her partner was still there and alive should have given her will enough to live, but her grief had been so absolute that it was like living in a fog. One that would never lift and that Freddy couldn’t penetrate—even though, bless him, he really had tried.

The truth was that Dev felt like all the color had been drained from the world—and she had no interest in living if it meant she had to do it in monochrome.

It had been two days since Dev’s bedeviled mother—and her mother’s former lover—had brought about the end of the Montrose line. Dev didn’t understand how time could continue after a tragedy like that—how life could go on after an emotional earthquake so powerful, it had changed her very brain chemistry. Her whole life, she’d been the mellow one, the laid-back sister, the passive daughter, the indulgent mother . . . but that woman was dead. It felt like she’d been poisoned and burned alive, flayed and dismembered, stabbed and strangled . . . her heart weeping as she’d died a slow and gruesome death, forced to watch everything she’d ever loved taken away from her.

“Dev?”

She was lying in a fetal position on Eleanora’s bed, the covers bunched up around her waist, one of the soft down pillows pressed against her cheek, still wet from the last round of tears she’d shed. She felt a hand on the back of her neck, and she flinched at the touch. Freddy instantly pulled his fingers back as if she’d burned him—and maybe the impotent rage she felt had turned her skin into fire.

“Sorry,” she murmured, slowly turning her head to look at him. There was a sickly yellow undertone to his dark skin, and his handsome face was pinched with worry. Stress lines spiraled out around his eyes and mouth, creating deep indentations in the flesh.

“It’s okay,” he said, smiling down at her from his perch on the edge of the bed. “I just wanted to let you know that Arrabelle got in touch. She and Lyse are on their way home now. Should be here in a few hours.”

Dev’s neck began to ache from holding the awkward position, so she rolled over until she was facing Freddy. Normally, she would’ve reached out and taken his hand, but she found it almost impossible to touch or be touched by anyone. Even the gentle press of his fingers on her neck made her feel claustrophobic.

“Do they know we’re at Eleanora’s?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“I’ll tell them,” he said, reaching for his cell phone.

She nodded, but her gaze was already drifting away from his face, her thoughts taking her far away from the pain of her shattered reality.

•   •   •

They sat at the round oak table, the yellow damask tablecloth pinned beneath their elbows. Three women, one gray and two in the prime of their lives. Three faces she knew almost as well as her own. The room was filled with a hazy smoke that made it hard to see. Dev stepped farther into the room, out of the shadows where she’d been standing, and, abruptly, the smoke cleared and the room came into sharp focus.

“Devandra?” Her mother’s voice. From cradle to grave, Melisande Montrose’s dulcet tone would be the first and last thing Dev would ever hear. How she knew this, she was unsure, but it was the truth. Her mother had cooed her name when she was born, and when she died, it would be her mother who came to greet her on the other side.

“But you’re on the other side already, Devandra,” Melisande continued, cocking her head. She had a bowl of soup in front of her—soup Dev had made for them all—but the bowl was different than any Dev had in her kitchen.

You have no kitchen, a little voice said in Dev’s head. You have nothing anymore.

She ignored the voice, concentrating on the soup bowl. After a few seconds of intense concentration, she remembered where she’d seen it before. It was an orange ceramic thing that had lived on a shelf in Eleanora’s kitchen. She’d never seen the former master of her coven use it for food, but once, a long time ago, she’d heard Eleanora refer to it as “Hessika’s scrying bowl.”

“Why are you eating out of that bowl?” Dev asked.

She noticed that the pot of soup on the stove was starting to burn. Without thinking, she reached over and turned down the burner of her old O’Keefe and Merritt stove. Inside the pot, the soup—which was not the soup she’d made, but a concoction that resembled bright red borscht—still roiled and bubbled. It seemed not to care that Dev had cut the gas in half, lowering the flame to the point where it was barely a pale blue ring of fire.

“We’re not eating,” her sister Darrah said. “We’re watching the future.”

Darrah and Dev had only been eighteen months apart, so close in age they’d experienced their adolescence as a shared one. What happened to Dev also happened to Darrah and vice versa.

Until now, the tight little voice said. Now she’s going where you can’t.

Anyone who saw the Montrose girls knew they were siblings: golden strawberry blond hair that verged on red, peaches-and-cream complexion with rosy cheeks, piercing eyes. The older three were round and soft; only the youngest, Delilah—probably because she never stopped moving—had managed to keep the curves at bay.

“The future is here,” Delilah said, her eyes sad. Dev wanted nothing more than to rush across the room and run her hands over the bristly stubble of Delilah’s shaved head. Once again, Delilah was the nonconformist, unwilling to act or look like the rest of her sisters.

“The future sucks,” Dev said.

Her mother and sisters did not respond to her bitter words.

“Come look, Dev,” Melisande said, her bobbed gray hair neatly combed so it curled around her ears. She gestured to the orange bowl as a head of steam began to rise from inside it.

“I don’t think I want to,” Dev said, shaking her head, her feet planted on the thick-slatted wood floor.

“But don’t you want to know what happens?” Darrah asked, pursing her lips into a frown.

The kitchen felt smaller here than it had in reality. The wooden cabinets were so tall that they seemed to reach up into the sky—and when Dev looked up, she saw there was no ceiling to the room, merely a layer of smoke. Dev felt something hot singe her hip, and she realized she was leaning against the heated stove.

“What’re you cooking in the oven?” Dev asked. “It’s so hot I’ve burned myself.”

“No one gets away without a scar,” Melisande said, fingers plucking at the metal spectacles she kept on a chain around her neck. Dev watched as she slipped them onto her nose and then peered into the orange bowl.

“We just want you to know something important,” Delilah said. “It’s only a little of the future. Come look. Please?”

Dev felt herself being drawn toward the table, a place she did not want to go. So she did the only thing she could think to do in order to stop herself: She plunged her hand into the pot of soup. The liquid heat was intense, a burning sensation shooting up her arm as she cried out in pain and bit her lip.

“Don’t do that, Devandra,” Melisande said, scolding her naughty child. She waved her hand at the pot, and the pain in Dev’s arm instantly disappeared.

Surprised, Dev looked down into the pot. She found the cast-iron pot empty, its innards scrubbed clean.

“Come on,” Melisande added. “Don’t dillydally.”

“But you killed everyone and you let him take my girls,” Dev wailed, wanting nothing more than to pick up the heavy soup pot and slam it into her Judas-of-a-mother’s temple.

Melisande shook her head, shooting Dev a dismissive frown.

“Are you kidding me? You really believe I would do something like that?” Melisande asked, her annoyance at Dev’s stupidity plain in her words.

“I saw you—” Dev began, but Melisande interrupted her.

“You saw nothing,” Melisande replied, ignoring Dev’s frustration. “And you really think that soup was what did this to us? You ate some, too, Devandra Montrose. So how come you’re still alive?”

Dev had just assumed that she hadn’t eaten enough of it to kill her.

“But Thomas made you bind the ghosts to the house, bind us to the house—”

“To protect us, Dev,” Darrah said with a sigh. “But it was already too late. The seed had already been planted.”

“What do you mean?” Dev asked, her voice rising in pitch as a wave of hysteria shot through her. “A seed? Who planted a seed here?”

Melisande pointed at the orange bowl.

“Come and see.”

“No,” Dev said as she closed her eyes, not wanting to see.

She found herself physically repulsed by the scrying bowl and whatever was inside it. Just the thought of peering into its depths made Dev’s stomach lurch. She felt the blood rushing in her head, her temples throbbing with each heartbeat.

“Come.”

Her mother beckoned her forward and, against her will, Dev opened her eyes and went to the woman who had borne her. Melisande took Dev’s hand and guided her to the fourth chair at the table. Dev sat down and Melisande pushed the bowl in front of her.

“Take my hand,” her mother said, and Dev did what she was told, taking Melisande’s right hand and Delilah’s left one, so that the Montrose women were linked together in an unbroken circle.

“Now loooooooooooooook.”

The word seemed to drag on into eternity; a whole universe was born and died in the space of time it took for the final consonant to sound. Dev stared down into the bowl of crystal-clear water . . . and she saw.

•   •   •

It was one of those old, rambling bungalows whose wooden shingles had turned a silvery gray with age and exposure to the elements, its windows caked with grit from the salty sea air. It sat perched on the edge of a cliff, a snaking staircase made of driftwood leading to the sandy beach. There were four bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a living room whose back wall was made from three large plate-glass windows—so at sunrise and sunset you could stare out at an unadulterated view of the sea.

They went on a Friday night and stayed until Sunday, a weekend trip, a benevolent gift from Freddy’s boss, whose family owned the house in Laguna Beach. On their way out of town, they stopped at the store and loaded up on groceries. They filled the cart with yummy delicacies—ones they eschewed at home because of the expense—and suntan lotion that smelled like a Hawaiian coconut. Freddy even bought two bottles of expensive cabernet for the two of them to drink on the porch when the girls had gone to sleep.

It was a weekend slice of heaven and they’d sorely needed it. The girls spent sunup to sundown outside, building sand castles and chasing waves, their giddy shrieks of joy echoing on the empty beach. They’d only fought once during the whole trip—though Dev had quickly intervened, ending the dispute before there were any tears.

What was it they’d been fighting over? She tried to remember. It was something small and unimportant . . . ah, yes . . . a piece of sea glass.

Dev had been making lunch, homemade egg salad sandwiches with bread-and-butter pickles and store-bought Tater Tots—a rarity at their house, but the girls loved them and so they’d splurged at the store. Though she could see the beach from the kitchen window, she wasn’t worried about keeping an eye on the girls. Freddy was with them, set up in an old beach chair in the sand, rereading The Stand. He was wearing a ratty old sombrero he’d found in one of the bedrooms, the wide straw brim so long it covered his black caterpillar eyebrows, making his dark eyes look permanently surprised.

She’d giggled like a little kid when he’d first put it on—Mama, you snorted! Ginny had said—and that only seemed to egg him on more. He’d taken to wearing the hat like a new head of hair and Dev knew he was doing it just to amuse her.

“Lunch!” she’d called as she’d stepped out onto the porch with the plates of food. The porch held a weathered teak table and four mismatched chairs, and they’d taken to having most of their meals out there.

The girls had come up the stairs arguing, Freddy behind them, sombrero in one hand and The Stand in the other. He was shaking his head, obviously frustrated by the bickering.

“Let your mama see,” he said as he put his stuff down in one of the patio chairs and placed a hand on each of Ginny’s nut-brown shoulders.

“It’s miiiiiiine,” Ginny whined, dragging out the i in mine. Freddy rolled his eyes at Dev as if to say: I’ve been dealing with it all day and now it’s your turn.

“What’s yours, peach pie?” Dev asked Ginny, but Marji answered for her.

“He gave it to me. It’s mine.”

A definitive mine from Marji meant that this was probably not going to end well.

“What is it?” Dev asked again.

With Freddy’s prodding, Ginny lifted her right hand and opened her fist. Sitting on the fleshy mound of her palm was a small, perfectly round pebble made of what Dev assumed was red sea glass.

“It’s mine,” Marji reiterated. “The man gave it to me.”

Marji reached for the stone and Ginny’s hand snapped shut like a clam.

“No!” she howled, and ran into the house, still clutching her prize. Marji started to go after her, but Freddy lightly grasped his older daughter’s arm.

“Marj . . . be the older sister.”

Marji stared up at her dad, wearing a look of utter betrayal on her face.

“But, Dad, it’s not fair!” she cried, eyebrows scrunching together the way they always did right before the tears started.

“Marjoram, please, no tears,” Dev said, letting out a long sigh. “Why don’t you and your dad sit down and eat? I’ll go get Ginny and we’ll talk about this reasonably, all right?”

Marji didn’t look satisfied with this solution, her frown deepening.

“I’m not going to give the pebble to anyone else without us all talking about it, okay?” Dev added, and this seemed to appease Marji. She nodded, a lone tear snaking down her cheek.

Dev went back inside and called Ginny’s name.

“In the baby’s room, Mama!” her younger daughter replied from down the hallway.

The rest of the house was decorated in a seafaring motif: wooden fish sculptures and seashells on every available surface, nautical-themed minutiae and woven fishing nets hanging on the walls . . . only the back bedroom was unique. It was the smallest of the four bedrooms, and, as soon as they’d arrived, Ginny had immediately claimed it for her own. It had none of the nautical trappings of the other rooms, but instead was kitted out like a baby’s nursery. There was a carved wooden cradle, a rainbow-hued parade of dancing bears stenciled on the walls, and soft, baby-blue pile carpeting. At some point, someone had shoved a tiny twin bed in the corner under the window, and this was where Dev found Ginny, the little girl sprawled out on the bed, staring at the red pebble cupped in her hand.

“See the light, Mama?” Ginny said, holding the pebble up to the window, so that, like a prism, rectangles of red light reflected around the room. “It’s so pretty.”

Dev sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling her long skirt up around her knees.

“It is really pretty,” she said, reaching out and stroking Ginny’s long brown hair. Both of the girls took after their father, who was Filipino, inheriting none of the ginger coloring that plagued Dev’s side of the family. “And if it belongs to your sister, then I think you need to give it back to her.”

Ginny continued to stare at the pebble, not looking up at her mother.

“But I like it. It sings.”

“I’m sure she’ll let you look at it sometimes . . .”

“No, she won’t,” Ginny said, matter-of-factly.

Dev sighed, wishing that both girls were a little older, so they’d be easier to reason with.

“Let’s go eat lunch and we can have a family powwow about it, okay?”

Eyes still on the stone, Ginny frowned.

“Mama, I don’t wanna.”

“Well, I’m your mama and I say you gotta eat those Tater Tots before they get cold!”

She grabbed Ginny around the waist, hoisting her up into the air and swinging her around until she pealed with laughter.

“Tater Tot monster!” Dev cried as she set Ginny down on her feet and gave her a big bear hug.

“You’re so silly, Mama,” Ginny said, hugging Dev back.

“I know I am,” Dev said, and took her younger daughter’s hand, guiding them back down the hall toward the porch, where Freddy and Marji were waiting.

Freddy was eating his sandwich, but Marji was glaring down at her lunch, her finger rolling a Tater Tot back and forth on the paper plate. She looked up when Dev and Ginny came outside, but she didn’t say anything, only scowled at her baby sister.

“Let me see the stone, Ginny,” Dev said.

“But I wanna hold it—”

“Ginny,” Freddy said, voice firm as he set down his sandwich.

Ginny sat in one of the teak chairs and looked from her father to her mother. Then with a pout, she unwillingly relinquished the stone to Dev.

“Thank you,” Freddy said, picking up his sandwich and taking another bite. “Good stuff, babe.”

He gave Dev a wink.

“It’s mine,” Marji said, jaw clenched in anger. “Not that anyone cares.”

“Marjoram,” Dev said, hefting the stone’s weight in her palm. “Now as pretty as this pebble is, I don’t think it belongs to either of you. I think it lives here at the beach and we can play with it while we’re here, but it’s not going home with us.”

“Mama, no!” Marji said, smushing the Tater Tot under her thumb. “Not fair!”

“It’s gonna stay here on the patio and when we leave, I’m gonna let you girls give it back to the sea.”

Ginny frowned.

“But it’s not from the sea. It’s from the man.”

Dev looked at Freddy, who shrugged.

“They said an old man came up and gave it to Marji, but I didn’t see a soul down there.”

“There was an old man,” Ginny shouted. “There was an old man. With a funny cane!”

“Ginny!” Marji said. “You’re not supposed to tell.”

“Tell what?” Dev asked, not liking what she was hearing. She exchanged a nervous look with Freddy.

“It’s a secret,” Marji said, lowering her voice until Dev could barely understand her.

“He had a lion, Mama,” Ginny said, not shouting this time. “On his cane and he said it was a secret and the pebble was a secret, too. But then he gave it to Marji and I yelled at him, so I don’t care.”

Leave it to sibling jealousy to foil a would-be pedophile’s plan.

“Marjoram, you know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”

“He talked to me,” Marji said, getting churlish.

“Same difference,” Freddy said.

“You were asleep, Daddy,” Ginny said. “He came over to talk to us when you were snoring.”

Freddy looked sheepish.

“I might have fallen asleep for a minute, but . . .” He trailed off and sighed. “But that’s more than enough time.”

Dev wasn’t mad at him. The girls could wear you out—had worn her out on many occasions—so she knew it was an honest mistake. Now she found herself wishing she’d kept more of an eye on them through the kitchen window when she was making lunch.

“He wasn’t doing anything bad,” Marji said, defending the old man. “He said he found the pebble and thought we would like it.”

“But he gave it to Marji,” Ginny said, shifting in her seat so she was closer to the table . . . and the Tater Tots. Two of which she stuffed into her mouth.

“He said it was magic and it was a secret only for us—then he said he had to go.”

Dev wanted to ask if he’d done or said anything inappropriate, but she was afraid to scare the girls.

“Well, there are no secrets at our house and you both know this,” Dev said, instead. “And you both know that people you don’t know can steal you away from your daddy and me. As nice as they seem. As friendly as they are. As many gifts as they try to give you—they are still strangers.”

Marji rolled her eyes.

“I wouldn’t have gone anywhere with him.”

“That’s not the point,” Dev said, reaching for her own sandwich. “You’re supposed to set a good example for Ginny—”

“You seth a bath one,” Ginny said, her mouth full of Tater Tots.

“Ginny.” Freddy’s tone was a warning. Then he turned to his elder daughter: “Marji, you know why your mom and I are upset . . .”

He waited for her answer. Finally, she nodded, still sullen.

“Yeah, I know. Stranger danger.”

“If anything happened to either of you, it would be the end of our world,” Dev said. “We just want you safe.”

She put a hand on Marji’s shoulder and felt the tension there.

“Just think about how sad we would be if anything happened to you. Can you do that for me?”

Marji nodded.

“Now let’s eat our lunch before the bread turns into a soggy mess,” Dev continued, and squeezed Marji’s shoulder.

“Okay, Mama.”

•   •   •

Later, Dev had put the red pebble on the stone mantelpiece and promptly forgotten about it. Neither of the girls had ever mentioned it again and she was pretty sure that had been the end of it. But now as she stared into the orange scrying bowl, she saw Marji pick up the stone and put it in her pocket as they closed up the house and left for home.

She watched as they returned to their home in Echo Park and Marji placed the pebble, and some other shells they’d collected at the beach, onto the windowsill above the kitchen sink. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Dev realized the stone had been there all the time. It had been right in front of her nose and she’d never noticed it.

She looked up from the image in the bowl.

“Wait,” she started to say, but then stopped, at a loss for words.

“It was magic and once it was in this house, there was no stopping it,” her mother said. “Thomas and I worked the binding spell and the stone stole the spell’s power, using that power, which was supposed to protect us, against us.”

“No,” Dev said, her voice so high that she didn’t recognize it as her own.

“Yes,” Darrah said. “Marjoram had no idea what she was doing. The Flood used her like they use everyone. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”

Dev realized her sister was right, but she still felt awful. Like she’d failed her mother and sisters, her daughters, Freddy . . .

“I wish I were dead, too,” she moaned, and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Don’t ever wish that,” Delilah said. “We need you.”

“I’m such a failure.”

Melisande took her eldest daughter in her arms.

“Stay alive, Devandra. You and the girls. Get them from the dreamlands and stop The Flood. Don’t let our deaths be in vain.”

Dev nodded, relief flooding her heart as she recognized the truth in her mother’s words . . . and also understood that her daughters were still among the living.

“I won’t, Mama,” she said, closing her eyes as tears overflowed them.

•   •   •

She was back in Eleanora’s room. Back in the bungalow on Curran Street where she’d spent so many happy hours with her beloved blood sisters. Freddy was staring down at her and she saw fear in his eyes. He was terrified he was going to lose her like he’d lost the girls. She reached out and took his hand, the first real touch between them since the tragedy . . . since their house had burned to the ground with her mother and sisters inside it—and the girls had disappeared with Thomas, an almost-stranger.

“I’m still here,” she whispered as she brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “And I’m not going anywhere.”