by K. C. RILEY
“Your car is in the shop and you’re here eating cold Chinese food with me.”
As much as it pained me, what else could I say? I shrugged and smiled.
“And you’re not really hungry are you?”
I hadn’t touched a thing. I shook my head. “I just need to get Jake back. He saved my life. And I think he’s in trouble.”
“I get it.” Kai placed his plate on the table and stood up. He then gave me his hand and pulled me up to my feet.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To see Ezra and get your powers back so you can get Jake back.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
Kai gazed deep into my eyes. “You’re not asking, and I won’t break.”
Shivers waved up my spine. Kai was much stronger than I had given him credit for. There was something attractive about that. As a friend, of course.
I put all thoughts of kissing Kai to death out of my mind and the tension in my shoulders finally eased. Stupid dreams.
We had spent the entire drive to Lake Shadowick rehashing everything that had happened, both of us encouraging the other that none of it was our fault. Talking to Kai became easy. He was the only one that got what it was like having been haunted by Norah.
I showed Kai where to pull over. He turned off the headlights and the ignition. There wasn’t a light in sight, not even from the moon. Just pure darkness.
Kai grabbed a couple of flashlights from an emergency kit he kept in the trunk of the car.
I grabbed Ezra’s box and it wasn’t long before we were trampling through the dark forest. Truthfully, I was glad he was here. Kai helping me help Jake, despite his feelings, hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Moments later, we were standing at the shore of the lake. Ironically, the way seemed faster than before. An eerie mist rolled across the dark water as we pointed our flashlights out to the lake.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Kai asked.
I nodded. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“Yeah.”
I sat Ezra’s box on the ground and opened it to reveal the monkey’s shriveled paw. Why couldn’t he have thought of another way to get in contact? One not so gross.
I barely held the bony paw between my fingers. If Aunt Vye had given instructions on how to use it, I had completely forgotten them. Oh, well. I called out Ezra’s name. It was the only thing I could think of. There was no response. I yelled it again and still nothing.
“Ezra. I know you’re there. Answer me. Please.”
The only sound heard was the small waves that rolled to shore.
One dead end after the other. I was running out of time and patience.
“Maybe I can tap into him. Stir his—”
Kai’s voice was cut off by someone screeching like a banshee from across the lake. The sound, almost paralyzing, cut through my body. There was only one person I knew who sounded like that. Aunt Norah.
“That’s probably not a good idea. Let’s just go.” How could I give up so easily? How could I let her win? The answer was easy. Pure fear. And facing it was way overrated. There was no way in hell I was taking any chances with Aunt Norah ever again. Kai wasted no time agreeing.
Coming here was a bad idea.
Without hesitation, we both turned to leave when the sound of something bubbling and emerging from the water stopped us in our tracks.
A pale light glowed from behind us. Goosebumps rolled up and down my legs, back, and neck. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t move or turn my head. The fear wouldn’t let me.
“Norah?” Kai asked, petrified.
“Nooo,” an eerie voice croaked. One I knew all too well. “Who wakes me from my slumber?” Ezra asked.
“Your granddaughter,” I said, relieved it wasn’t Aunt Norah. But we weren’t out of the woods yet.
The silence that followed seemed like an eternity.
The light that glowed from behind us finally dimmed. And whatever power that had frozen us with fear lifted.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” Ezra’s voice was like gravel, his words ominous and haunting.
Released from the grip of fear I slowly turned to face him.
His ghost looked the same as he had in his earthly form. Although, up close, there was something different about him. It was almost as if he was trapped between ghost and human, if such a thing existed.
His pale flesh wasn’t exactly transparent, but it wasn’t exactly solid either. It was also clear where Uncle Jonas got his looks from. He and Ezra were nearly identical. Thick hair, eyebrows, and beard. The only difference were the hard ghostly lines that ran across Ezra’s pale, glowing forehead. That and the weariness in his eyes that were once blue and alive. Now they were just dull and lifeless like everything else about his body.
“I need your help,” I said. “A binding spell was placed on me. That’s why I couldn’t ascend. I need to know who placed it and how to lift it.”
“You need to know no such thing,” Ezra bluntly answered. “They were right. I never should have pushed your mother.”
“Who was right? And what do you mean no?”
“Jedidiah. Your mother. My village. Too many have already suffered. Too many have already died to save you.”
Something inside of me cracked. Ezra’s words practically ripped the ground from beneath my feet. I never asked to be born into any of it. And I definitely never asked anyone to die for me. But none of that mattered. As far as he was concerned I was the cause of it all.
“No more,” Ezra continued. His body lifted from the ground and floated backwards into the water.
“No. Wait. I have the paw.” I lifted it up to show him. To stop him. “Aunt Vye said you would help me.”
Norah screeched in the background.
“You shouldn’t have come here. I am sorry, child. But no more. No more death.” Ezra’s voice grew faint in the distance until it was gone.
Fed up with the guilt for surviving Mom’s death, Jedidiah’s death, and all the people at the bottom of the lake, I screamed. “You will answer me. You hear me. You know what? I don’t need you. I’ll figure it out myself.” Granted, it probably wasn’t the best way to deal with a ghost, relative or not, but it was all I had left.
It must have worked because in the blink of an eye, Ezra was inches from my face, the pale glow around his body enraged in a ghostly white fire. “I thought you were the beginning. But you’re not. You are only the end.”
I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat. So much for getting his attention and any answers.
Ezra’s spirit moved back into the waters with an ominous warning. “Your only path is death. Don’t come here again.”
What kind of grandfather says that? I held the hot tears of fury back in my eyes. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of making me cry. I hated Ezra. I hated my dysfunctional family. And I hated my mom for leaving me behind. And while that wasn’t true, it was how I felt. One way or another, they had all taken something away from me.
The light of Ezra’s ghost grew fainter in the distance and something snapped.
“What about my father?” I yelled out. “Who is he? I’m not afraid of you,” I continued shouting. “You coward. You come back here. You hear me? You come back and face me. You tell me the truth.”
Screaming like a maniac out into the pit of night didn’t matter because Ezra was gone. I took that stupid monkey paw and threw it as far out into the lake as I could. I did the same with the silver box.
Norah shrieked again and I screeched back as loud and as wicked as I could. The only thing heard when I was done was silence. My body trembled and quaked with rage.
Kai placed his hand on my shoulder. I wished he hadn’t. Because at his touch, everything I had been holding together for weeks crumbled.
I caved into Kai’s arms one sobbing, snotty, angry mess. His poor shirt. And still, it didn’t matter, because Kai embraced me tighter into arms that were warm and safe.
<
br /> How could Ezra think that the only thing that I was good for was bringing death? It was like he was blaming me for what happened to Mom, Jedidiah, and his village.
I couldn’t understand it. Wasn’t it Ezra who had called me to the amulet in order to ascend in the first place? And wasn’t it Ezra who had led me to Mrs. Ellington’s cellar only to reveal how she had raised Aunt Norah’s twisted spirit from the dead? Why the cold shoulder now? Was I that cursed and un-savable? Too damaged beyond repair?
Question after question continued to stab me in the gut. Kai continued to hold me as I bawled into his chest. The tighter he held me, the more I cried. It was a complete meltdown. And I was too far gone to be embarrassed. Besides, it was Kai. I trusted him.
Exhausted, I eventually calmed down.
“We better get back,” Kai said, gently wiping the last tears from my eyes with his thumb.
I didn’t argue. “I’m glad you came back,” I said, looking up into his eyes.
“Me too,” he whispered and smiled. “You know, you’re even prettier when you’re a blubbering mess.”
“Shut up,” I said, blushing and nudging him in the arm.
We were soon shuffling in the dark back to the car. Kai stayed quiet. So did I. What else was there to say? Everything I had tried to do, failed. It was like the world was deliberately trying to keep me from freeing Jake. Never mind, freeing myself.
Crying into Kai’s arms had been cathartic and was exactly what I needed. I was grateful for it. There was only one other person I trusted enough to do so. Jake. And I wasn’t giving up on him or myself. There had to be a way.
We were almost to the car when I stopped him.
“Do you hear that?” Something was moving in the bushes. And I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
“Yeah.” Kai picked up a stick from the ground before whatever it was had taken off.
We had just stepped out of the woods when I saw the dark figure of someone running toward a car that was parked next to Kai’s.
We both stopped in our tracks.
Keys jangled as someone repeatedly tried to open their car door. “Shit.”
It was Sheriff Johnson. What if she had been following us all along? And what if she had seen Ezra’s ghost at the lake?
“Come on. Come on,” she said.
By the way she struggled with the keys, my guess was that she had.
Sheriff Johnson finally managed to open the door and hopped in her police car. She then peeled off like she was running for her life.
“This is not good,” I whispered.
“No,” Kai said. “Not at all.”
With the monkey paw gone, there was no way to get in touch with Ezra ever again. Good riddance. I didn’t need him anyway was what I told myself.
Kai dropped me off at school at the main gate. It was better that way. It was already after midnight.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “And thanks. I mean it.”
“Anytime.”
Our eyes locked for a moment. Again.
“You’re going to figure this out. I know you will,” Kai said. “You’ll get him back.”
I nodded and, believe it or not, smiled. Kai had a way of doing that, bringing out the best in the people around him.
After he left, I walked the rest of the way to my dorm. It wasn’t far and it gave me time to breathe and clear my head. Well, as much as I could. I was too worn out to talk, text, or whatever, and decided that telling Cassie about her aunt spying on me and Kai at Shadowick Lake would have to wait until the morning. God only knows what she saw.
Luckily, it wasn’t long before I was in my room, dropping my duffle bag to the floor. I kicked off my boots and dove into bed. It had been quite a day. I reached over to the nightstand and pulled out the venom.
Cassie’s warning to start with only one drop echoed in my head. I had already taken my dose for the day but I was on edge. I just needed something to ground me. One more drop wouldn’t hurt I hoped. Hesitant, I placed the black liquid under my tongue and breathed as the venom released the tension and anguish of Ezra’s words.
Your only path is death, he’d said.
Who says that to another person? Let alone, their granddaughter?
I sank further into the bed, but quickly sprang up at the sound of something rumbling in the closet. A rat? A squirrel? Crap. I just needed a break. Unsure of what to do, I got up. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to kill it.
I was too tired to run across the hall to go get Cassie. And still too angry to be entirely afraid. The only weapon I had, other than the wrench in the drawer, was a pillow. I could maybe trap the animal underneath, scoop it up, and then set it free outside. Yeah. I was out of my mind. But there was no way I was going to leave it in the closet scratching at the door all night.
With my pillow in hand, I counted before opening my closet.
“One. Two. Three.”
There was no animal. No rat or squirrel.
Instead, it was the Blood Book, the one that had sucked me into the pages and characters of my ancestors. It was shaking out of control like it wanted to open but couldn’t.
I reached out but hesitated. All of the darkness it had shown me...
Blood Books are dangerous, were Aunt Vye’s words. They only show you a part of the truth.
The book was merciless. I knew that. However, if all I could get was a small crumb of the truth, I’d take it. Maybe it had the answer to unbinding myself.
I picked up the book and it shook violently in my hands, almost as if it was trying to tell me something. A tear, thick like tar, sludged down my cheek. Something was wrong because I couldn’t let the book go. It wouldn’t let me.
The lion’s head and symbols on the book illuminated with a bright white light that was both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
Normally the Blood Book would have sucked me into the point of view of some character like my mom or Sir Isaac. But this was different. Instead, I was thrown into a blur of images that cascaded through pages of lifetimes. My lifetimes.
From America to England, to France, to South America, Russia, Italy, China... The pages went on and on. Regardless of the place, century, race, or color of my skin, the story was the same. Me meeting and remembering Jake as a fallen angel. Me falling in love with him over and over only to lose him to the darkness within myself. Lilith.
It was tragic. Depressing. Each lifetime of madness ended, one way or another, by my own hand.
I moved deeper and deeper through the pages with the hope that something would change. But nothing did. The outcome was always the same. My death.
I watched, or felt. I don’t know. It was hard to explain how I could see everything at once—the million and one ways Jake tried to save me from myself but couldn’t. It was like one bad shroom trip. Not that I had ever taken shrooms.
I couldn’t take it anymore and wanted out. But the book wasn’t through with me yet, not until I had reached the beginning of it all.
My eyes were black and my hair wild as I stood in a beautiful garden. Jake stood at my right. While Kai stood at my left picking up a bitten apple. The shiny red fruit shriveled and rotted with worms and larvae in his hand as though it had been poisoned.
I turned to Kai and kissed him on the lips. But I wasn’t myself. The kiss was deep and passionate until I had devoured every essence of his light. The only thing that remained of Kai, of Adam, was dust. But my hunger didn’t stop there. More images and pages flashed through my mind. It was too fast to completely understand. Fragments. Bits, pieces, and shadows of time.
I was a Queen of Egypt. Pyramids and statues had been built in my honor. Thousands upon thousands of slaves and subjects worshipped me like a goddess. That is, until I eventually devoured them. Lilith was a succubus. And her hunger was unstoppable.
It was Jake that stopped her, a spell from the words and sigils that were marked on his flesh. One that trapped Lilith to the darkest corner of my mind. But, it didn’t matter
. Lilith was too strong and always found a way to surface. The only way to destroy her was to destroy myself. Thus the never ending tragedy.
I was thrown forward in the book. Death. Blood. And chaos ensued.
The first stars—the Elohim—fell dead from the sky. And Jake and Kai laid bare, dead on the burning ground. The dark shadows that emerged from the earth blocked the sun thus casting the world into an eternal darkness. They called out Lilith’s name, bowing and hailing her as the Queen of Hell and Shadows. Everything that was once beautiful, bright, and alive was gone. And it was all because of me.
“Wake up,” I heard. I wanted to but couldn’t. “Wake up.” Someone was shaking me, pulling me out of the emptiness. Cassie.
“Wake up,” she said again.
My eyes squinted open, my head ringing from the sound of an alarm. My smoke alarm. I was dazed. It felt like I had been drugged. I moaned—caught between the hell I had been shown and the chaos that was unraveling in my room.
Josie was fanning the smoke alarm with a notebook. “Is she okay?”
In my lap, the only thing left of the Blood Book was a pile of gray ash. I thought Blood Books were supposed to be indestructible.
“I think she’s fine,” Cassie said handing me a tissue. “For your eyes. I’m guessing you took one too many drops of venom.”
I patted the tissue at my cheeks and looked at it. The tissue was stained black. “I guess I did,” I slurred.
“What happened?” Cassie asked.
The end of life as I knew it, I thought. I was too terrified to say a word about it.
“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “I was in the Blood Book. I think. Well, what’s left of it.” I brushed the ash from my lap onto the floor.
“Woah.” Cassie picked up some of the ash and rubbed it between her fingers. “You destroyed a Blood Book. That should be impossible. Exactly how many drops of venom did you take?”
“Only two.”
“You might want to dial it back to one,” Cassie said. “You’ve got to be careful. I told you a natural witch taking the venom could be disastrous.”
