Lyse

Lyse had heard the commotion in the hallway—saw Arrabelle taking off after an excited Niamh, both women heading for Daniela’s room—and knew something had happened. Logic told her that Daniela had woken up . . . there was no way she could’ve taken a turn for the worse. But that didn’t make her feel any better as she ran down the long white hall, the squeak of her sneakers echoing through the corridor. She could feel her heart rate increasing, hear the hiss of her own labored breathing in her ears.

She was not paying attention to her surroundings, her worry for Daniela ruling her senses. She didn’t see the well-built man with the silver cropped hair until he’d stepped out in front of her. Her instincts kicked in and she screeched to a stop on the linoleum-tiled floor, hands out in front of her as if to ward off an attack. The silver-haired man wore a snarl of disdain. It was obvious he hated her, and he didn’t make any bones about it.

She began to back away from him, a surge of fear-based adrenaline shooting through her. Every encounter she’d had with her long-lost uncle David had ended badly . . . and she was pretty sure this one was destined for the same outcome.

“Leave me alone, you son of a bitch.” She spat the words at him, anger taking over.

“That’s not a nice thing to say about Eleanora. Though I concur. My mother—your grandmother—was a real bitch.”

She was shaking, her impotent rage blossoming into tears. As she fought them back, praying they wouldn’t fall, she realized how weak it made her feel when her anger crested over the peak into emotion. Every time she needed to appear strong, the emotional side kicked in, undercutting her strength.

“You don’t even get to say her name. Murderer.”

He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, really looking at her.

“I did her a favor,” he said, finally, and shrugged.

“A favor?” Lyse was incredulous. What the hell was wrong with this guy? “You killed her. You took the most sacred thing in the world—someone else’s life—and you crushed it.”

He took a step toward her, and she unconsciously moved back, reaching out with a hand to brace herself against the corridor wall. She did not intend to let him push her back any more than he already had . . . because every step she took put the power dynamic more firmly in his favor.

“Are you frightened of me?” he asked, and she could sense his excitement radiating outward, gunning for her.

Everything inside of her ached to put more distance between them, but she held her ground. She would not let her fear of him bully her into submission.

“That’s not fear. It’s disgust,” she said, putting as much passion as she could into her words. “Because I find you repulsive.”

He laughed, a low and malevolent thing that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise to attention. Gooseflesh broke out along her arms and she was, once again, tempted to give over and step away . . . but she steeled herself and did not move.

“Laugh all you want,” she said. “You’re not winning this thing.”

He shook his head, eyebrow raised.

“What thing?” he asked.

“You and The Flood. You’re not getting this world. Not if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Well, that’s a given,” he said. “That it’s the last thing you’re going to do. And you’re going to fail at it. Just like you do with everything else in your life.”

His words were like bullets, each one primed to hit her in one of her weak spots. They were strategically played to worm their way inside her and ferret out her insecurities, splitting her confidence apart from the inside out. He knew he’d hit the mark, saw the emotional impact on her face, and was gleeful, pleased at his ability to wound her.

“Really?” Lyse asked after she’d caught her breath. “Did you think I’d go down so easily?”

“You’ve let everyone down. Your coven is in ruins and Daniela is dying,” he said.

Lyse wanted him to shut up, but he just kept talking.

“When she’s dead, my father—and your grandfather—will be broken. He’s old and sick, and her death will push him over the edge,” he continued, “and then I can step into his place. I can be the one to lead The Flood to its zenith. My name will be the one the world remembers.”

“You’re crazy,” Lyse murmured—she knew anyone associated with The Flood was insane.

“No, I’m smart,” he said. This was followed by a guttural growl, low in his throat. “You really don’t know anything about me, do you?”

It was true. She knew zero about her uncle, her dead mother’s twin. Hell, she didn’t know much about her own mother and father, either—other than the tangle of childhood memories she’d shoved into the recesses of her mind because thinking about them was just too painful.

“You were my mother’s twin,” Lyse said. “You grew in the same womb. How could you do all of these horrible things to me?”

He laughed again, and Lyse wanted to cover her ears—because something inside her sensed he only laughed when he was about to do something terrible. Something inhumane.

“She was nothing to me,” he said, grinning. “And she was less than nothing to me when I killed her and your father.”

“No,” she said, raising her hands to cover her ears. She did not want to hear this.

“So easy to run them off the road. My only mistake was that you should’ve died with them.”

She took a step toward him, all the fear and insecurity and guilt and anger filling her like a balloon until she was ready to pop. She felt disconnected from her body but still in control of it—and so, fully conscious of what she was about to do, she took another step and then another . . . reaching out with her hands, the power inside her rising to a fever pitch. How dare he try to push the blame for Eleanora’s death onto her shoulders? How dare he call her a failure as a human being and as a blood sister . . . and as a friend? How dare he murder her parents in cold blood and let her live with their absence for the rest of her life?

“This ends now,” she said, when she was close enough to touch the man she hated so much.

She grabbed his wrists in her hands and held tight. Her magic called up a neon-blue orb that coalesced around them, growing larger until they were both consumed by it.

“What are you doing?” he cried, fighting to pull out of her grip, but she would not let go.

“I want to go somewhere dark and hidden,” she screamed into the ether as the orb swirled around her, the hiss of air and energy so loud it pummeled her eardrums. “I want to throw this man away—hurl him into an abyss from which he can never return!”

She saw uncertainty dawn in his eyes. Felt his body stiffen as he started to understand that this was real magic—her magic—and that he’d pushed her past the fail-safe point. There was no coming back from the fervor of rage in her eyes. She was powerful and strong . . . and she would show him exactly where he belonged. In fact, she would leave him there to think long and hard, possibly for an eternity, about what kind of a human being he was.

He fought her in earnest now, struggling to escape the pull of her magic. He squirmed under her touch, writhing and yanking, working desperately to unbind himself from her.

But it was too late.

They were already gone.

Only this time the orb did not pop. It stayed intact and went with them on their journey.

•   •   •

It took Lyse a moment to understand where the orb had brought them, but once she did, the perfection of it made her smile.

“Where are we?!” her uncle screamed, fear ratcheting up his voice an octave. He was the one clutching at her now, his fingers pressing into her skin as he fought to keep his balance. The orb hadn’t liked the taste of her uncle David, and so it had expelled him. Now his hands—the one place where his flesh touched her own—were the only part of him still inside the orb.

“You’re where you belong!” Lyse screamed back at him.

Had she been asked to describe the singularity that would be her uncle’s eternal punishment and final resting place, Lyse would’ve said it was visually unimpressive. No more than a small black dot.

She knew her brain couldn’t understand what it was experiencing. That this small black dot she saw wasn’t really the singularity’s true shape, just a construct for her simple human mind to hold on to. But the power it exerted over everything around it was very real. It made her want to throw herself at the singularity and become one with it forever.

Luckily, she was fully inside the orb’s swirling magic and was only psychologically affected by the pull of the celestial body. Unlike her uncle, who was no longer protected by magic.

“Help me!” David screamed, and Lyse knew it would be only a matter of seconds before he succumbed to the singularity’s pull.

Her magic had brought them here, and she gladly accepted the role of judge, jury, and executioner as they stood on the precipice of time and space.

Inside the orb there was chaos, magic swirling around her like a maelstrom . . . outside there was a soundless vacuum, the infinite silence pierced only by her uncle’s cries. And then the singularity exerted its final pull and David was sucked backward. One minute he was there and the next, he had ceased to exist.

Lyse knew she couldn’t stay here any longer. That her magic could only protect her for so long before the singularity broke through and stole her away, too.

“Take me home,” she murmured.

And the orb popped.

•   •   •

“Holy shit!” Freddy yelped—as Lyse’s body magically appeared on top of the round oak table in front of him.

Lyse grinned back at him, enjoying the shocked expression on his face. He was wearing a white embroidered Mexican wedding shirt with a coffee stain down its front. He was also holding a coffee-stained mug in his hand. She felt bad. Her surprise appearance must’ve freaked him out so much he’d spilled his coffee down his shirt front.

“Nice to see you, too,” she said. “Sorry about the coffee.”

She groaned as she tried to sit up, every muscle in her body aching.

“Wait . . . Uh, what, uh . . . How?” he whispered, sitting back in his chair and pointing at her with the coffee mug.

“I said I wanted to come home, and this is where my magic brought me.”

He nodded, as if this made all the sense in the world.

“Sure, yeah . . . yeah . . .” he said, and took a sip from his mostly empty coffee mug.

Lyse ignored the pain in her limbs and climbed off the tabletop, only feeling human when she had both feet on the floor again. She pushed away the bad feelings—though she knew she’d have to deal with the knowledge of her parents’ murder eventually—and tried to clear her mind. For now she just needed a break from all the emotional shit.

“Where’s Dev?” she asked.

“Uh, she’s in the bedroom . . . would you like some coffee?” Freddy asked.

Lyse thought about it for a second, then nodded.

“Why the hell not?” she said, feeling giddy and full of crazy energy after what she’d just done.

She knew she should feel racked with guilt—she’d just hurled a human being into a singularity—but since it existed within the landscape of the dreamlands, a place where anything was possible, it didn’t one hundred percent mean that she’d killed him. She had a strange feeling her uncle was more alive than dead, though she doubted he’d be coming back to their world any time soon. And, if she was lucky, maybe he’d never come back again.

Wishful thinking, Lyse thought.

Dev came into the kitchen and found Lyse sitting there having a cup of coffee with Freddy. Somehow she’d missed all the commotion, and her shocked Oh! of surprise made Lyse laugh.

“You’re here,” Dev said, switching gears in a heartbeat. “Do you have the girls? Where are the others? We’ve been so worried. The house is gone, everything inside it, too. We’ve missed you!”

Too many questions and feelings all at once. The only thing Lyse could think to do in response was to pull Dev in for a hug.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered in her friend’s ear. “I can’t even imagine . . .”

Dev pulled away from the embrace and looked Lyse right in the eye.

“Yes, you can,” she said. “You of all people can understand.”

Dev was right. Lyse had lost so much. So many of the people she’d loved were gone. She felt like she was a bad omen. Being friends with her was like having a deathwatch beetle quietly ticking away inside the walls of your house. She wondered if her love should come with a warning label.

“Lyse . . . ?”

She realized Dev had been talking to her and she’d missed every word.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “What were you saying?”

“The girls, we spoke to them. They’re with Lizbeth and Eleanora in the dreamlands. A place called the Red Chapel . . . ?”

“I can take you there,” Lyse said, excited that she could do something to erase the sadness etched into Dev’s features. “To the dreamlands . . . it’s something we discovered . . . now that magic is loose in the world again, real magic, all of our powers, everything we can do . . . it’s heightened.”

Dev nodded. She had come to the same conclusion herself.

“That was why I could use the cards to reach out to the girls,” she said to Freddy. Then she turned to Lyse: “It was the strangest thing. I just knew it was possible and then I made it happen. And Freddy saw it all.”

Freddy shook his head in agreement—and Lyse wouldn’t have blamed him at all if he’d told the ladies he needed to go take a lie-down. He seemed genuinely overwhelmed by everything he’d seen and heard. Poor Freddy. Lyse was a blood sister who could wield magic and travel to other dimensions . . . and she felt like she was in way over her head. Freddy was a layman and he’d been exposed to some truly awful stuff. She didn’t know how he was coping so well.

“Well, I left the others with Daniela at the hospital. I got sidetracked by a run-in with my uncle.”

“Oh, God,” Dev said, the color draining from her face.

“You don’t have to worry about him,” Lyse said. “He’s not going to bother us anymore.”

She finished the last dregs of her coffee and set the mug in the sink. Even though she’d just downed a ton of caffeine, she yawned, her lack of sleep finally catching up with her. Too bad for that. There was no time to think about taking a nap. They needed to reconnect with the others and then go get Marji and Ginny.

“What do you mean?” Dev asked.

“I dropped him off in a place that he’s going to have a hard time finding his way back from.”

“Okay,” Dev said, but she refrained from asking for further details. “So how do we do this? Do you work a spell or . . . ?”

“No, it’s even simpler than that—” Lyse started to say, but she was interrupted by a pounding on the back kitchen door.

The three of them turned to see the wood of the door frame splinter as someone shot three bullets into the lock.

“We have to go!” Lyse cried—as a furious kick from outside sent the kitchen door flying.

Lyse grabbed Dev’s wrist and began the mental work of forming the blue orb that would take them to the dreamlands.

“Freddy!” Dev screamed, reaching out to her partner with her free hand. But he was already running toward the door, trying to block the intruders from entering.

“Go, Dev! They won’t hurt me!” he called back to her, as the first black-clad man burst into the kitchen, holding an assault weapon in his hands. “I love you!”

The blue orb encircled Lyse and Dev just in time to stop a hail of bullets that came from the men in the doorway. Lyse felt sick. She knew if her magic hadn’t been protecting them, they’d have been dead.

One of the men—it was hard to tell them apart because of the camouflage blacking on their faces—slammed the butt of his Kalashnikov into the back of Freddy’s head. Freddy fell to his knees, then pitched forward onto the floor, either dazed or unconscious, Lyse wasn’t sure which.

“Freddy!” Dev screamed as more men in black camo poured into the room and encircled his body. “No!”

She tried to break free from Lyse’s grip so she could run to Freddy, but Lyse wouldn’t release her.

“The girls need you, Dev!” Lyse cried, wanting Dev to understand what she’d be sacrificing by leaving the safety of the magical orb. She wasn’t going to be able to help Freddy. There were just too many men with guns out there and more were still arriving.

She felt Dev stop trying to pull away, saw her deflate as they watched two of the men pick Freddy up by the armpits and drag him outside.

“Desist working magic and stand down,” one of the men screamed at Lyse. He seemed like the one who was calling the shots for this mission.

“No way!” Lyse yelled back at him. “You have no authority here!”

He raised his hand and another volley of bullets slammed into the neon-blue orb, but none of them penetrated Lyse’s magic.

“We have to go,” Dev murmured, tears of impotent rage rolling down her cheeks. “If we stay any longer, I’m not gonna be able to take it.”

Lyse picked up what Dev was putting down. Her friend could only stand there so long, letting those bastards manhandle Freddy, before she broke free of Lyse’s grasp and did something stupid . . . like try to stop them herself.

“Okay, we’re out of here,” Lyse said, before Dev could change her mind.

Lyse didn’t think about where they were going, just wished them out of the kitchen. She was just sorry she couldn’t see the look of confusion on the soldiers’ faces as the orb winked out of existence . . . she and Dev with it.

•   •   •

The magical orb took them to the clinic in Rome, to the long white corridor that led to Daniela’s hospital room. Lyse shook her head, trying to figure out what had happened: Why weren’t they in the dreamlands?

“Get back,” Dev whispered, pushing Lyse into an empty room just as Arrabelle came striding down the corridor, moving at a brisk pace. Behind her, less than ten feet away from where Dev and Lyse were hiding . . . was Lyse.

“Holy shit, that’s me . . .” Lyse started to say, but Dev put a finger to her lips to shush her.

They watched as a man—Lyse’s uncle David—stepped out of the elevator just in time to block the Lyse doppelgänger’s path.

The doppelgänger came to a stop in front of him—and Lyse could see the doppelgänger shake with fear. It was insane, but now she knew exactly what she looked like when she was scared.

“Leave me alone, you son of a bitch,” the doppelgänger yelled at David.

“That’s not a nice thing to say about Eleanora,” he replied, looking amused.

Lyse watched as the scene played out in front of her.

“I can’t . . .” she whispered to Dev, and slipped back into the empty room.

She found one of the windows open a crack, and so she stood in front of it, gulping down the fresh air, trying not to think about what David was telling her doppelgänger out there in the hallway. After a moment, Dev came to stand beside her.

“That can’t be true,” she said, putting her hand on Lyse’s arm. “About your parents . . .”

But there was no conviction in Dev’s words.

“It’s true,” Lyse said, her voice flat. “As true as those idiots taking Freddy. We don’t want to believe what’s happening, but our world has gone to hell . . . and I’m not sure we can stop it.”

Dev didn’t try to argue. Instead, she went back to the doorway to watch. A moment later she called back to Lyse: “They’re . . . you’re gone now.”

“Good,” she said. “Let’s go find Arrabelle and the others.”

As much as she didn’t want to, she might have to tell them that traveling to the dreamlands wasn’t her only magical ability . . . She could travel through time, too.