Reborn Series Box Set (Books 1-3.5)

by S. L. Stacy

  Just add three leaves of ghostly asphodel, and water from the wailing well…

  Going through the poem again in my mind, I suddenly realize there’s something else I probably need from here. I had forgotten the part about the “wailing well,” but it could be referring to water from the Cocytus. The spirits of the river are certainly making more than enough racket to meet the provision of wailing. Crouching over the water, I scoop some into an empty vial, screwing the lid back on tightly.

  “Alright,” I say to Apate as I get up, tucking everything back into the fanny pack. “I think that’s all we need from here. We should go.” I take a step in the direction of the boat, but something makes me hesitate. Or rather, the absence of something.

  The wailing has stopped. The sharp chill in the air, which I’ve finally grown accustomed to, also seems to have abated, a pleasant warmth expanding in its place, wrapping around me like a sturdy embrace. It carries a sweet, familiar scent along with it, a mixture of floral dusting powder, blueberries, and flour.

  “Carly.” Her voice sounds behind me, like a second pair of loving arms encircling me, giving me a reassuring squeeze. A voice I haven’t heard for years.

  I turn slowly, heart pounding with both excitement and fear. “Nana?”

  “It’s me, honey,” my grandmother assures me as I meet her gray-eyed gaze. She looks just like I remember, her hair permed and cut short, clothes fitting loosely over her small frame, only now she is painted in shades of white and gray, and I can see glimpses of the cavern wall behind her. Nana’s ghost smiles at me, the corners of her eyes and pale lips crinkling. “I sensed that you were near. I’m glad I was able to find you.”

  “I’m glad you were, too,” I tell her with a smile of my own. “But listen, Nana—”

  “There is no need to explain,” she talks over me, reaching for me with one of her see-through hands. It cups my shoulder, but all I feel is a faint coldness, like the kiss of a cool breeze. “I know why you’re here, and that you’re in a hurry tonight. I understand, but there is something urgent I need to tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”

  I nod. “Okay. I can spare a little time for that, but Nana—why are you here?” I wonder, tears pricking my eyes. “Why are you in hell?”

  “Oh, honey,” she sighs, hand falling to her side, “this isn’t hell. It’s just a place where human souls pass through, on their way to being reborn. A place of transition. I’ve been stuck here because I have unfinished business. Because of something I kept from you and your sister. I need to tell you so that I can move on, and you need to listen because…well, it’s about Dolos.”

  I’m pretty sure that, for a full ten seconds, my heart just stops beating. “What do you mean?” I ask, a cocktail of curiosity and apprehension jumpstarting my heart again. “What do you know about him?”

  “It’s not about what I know about him, but what you know. A long time ago, I gave you something that erased one of your memories. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, but now I see how wrong it was. To deny you the knowledge of our bloodline, your birthright. It’s a miracle you found Gamma Lambda Phi on your own, despite my interference.”

  “Grandma.” I feel bad interrupting her, but I can’t follow her rambling. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s time for you to remember,” she explains, placing a hand on either side of my head. This time, I imagine I can feel the weight of her palms against my temples, the warm, gentle pressure of her fingers through my hair.

  “Close your eyes,” my grandmother instructs, and I obey. “Let me help you remember.”

  ***

  When I open my eyes to a pitch black room, it’s like I’m waking up—not in a memory or even a dream, but in a real bed with toasty sheets tucked up around me, my head sunk into a fluffy pillow.

  In an instant, I forget that I’m actually standing on the shores of a mythical river in the Underworld, communing with my grandmother’s ghost. Suddenly, I’m ten years old again, ensconced in bed at my grandparents’ house, aggravated because something has just woken me up. I’m not merely remembering this moment from my past; I’m reliving it.

  “Carly?” a small voice calls to me from the other side of the room. I look over to find my sister Diane sitting up, swinging her legs over the side of her bed. “Are you awake?”

  “I am now,” I grumble, reaching over to turn on a lamp. It floods the room with warm, yellow light, and I have to blink a few times, adjusting to the sudden brightness, before I can look at Diane again. “What’s up?”

  “I can’t sleep,” she says, hugging her teddy bear, Boo, to her chest. Diane’s face is pale, her light blue eyes wide and fearful. “They’re keeping me up.”

  Tossing my eyelet quilt and Hello Kitty sheets to the side, I get out of bed and sit down next to my sister. “What’s keeping you up?”

  She squeezes Boo tighter. “The voices.”

  “Voices,” I echo, a chill brushing the back of my neck. “What voices?”

  “You don’t hear them?”

  I bite my lower lip, shaking my head. “There aren’t any voices, Di,” I assure her, stroking the back of her hair, which falls around her shoulders in silky, straw blonde sheets. Unlike me, Diane inherited our father’s pin-straight hair, not our mother’s unruly curls. “You must have fallen asleep and didn’t realize it. You were dreaming.”

  “I wasn’t,” she insists, her knuckles white against the stuffed animal’s chocolate brown fur. “I heard them. They were calling out for help. They sounded…scared.”

  The chill works its way down the rest of my spine. I smile, trying to keep my expression calm even as panic flutters in the pit of my stomach. “I know what would make you feel better. Some chamomile tea.” Diane nods, a relieved smile spreading on her face. “I’ll go downstairs and make us some,” I tell her.

  Flashlight angled downward, I creep down the stairs, freezing up every time they betray me with a creaky groan that goes off like a gunshot in the quiet, old house. I don’t want to wake our grandparents—I don’t want to have to tell them Diane couldn’t sleep because she thought she heard voices crying out for help. Even though she was probably dreaming, they can be very superstitious. Especially Nana.

  In the kitchen, I flip on the overhead light by the sink, fill up a saucepan with tap water and set it on the stove. While it’s heating up, I crack open the back door and poke my head out into the cool night air. The sky looks like someone tossed a handful of silver glitter onto a sheet of black paper, the moon a slender crescent casting thin, yellowish light over the garden. In the daytime, my grandparents’ garden bursts with every color of the rainbow: orange and yellow lilies, blue hydrangeas, purple heliotrope, blood red roses, dark evergreen bushes. Now, I can only see their dark outlines blanketing either side of the cobblestone walkway, the occasional flutter of branch and leaf as a breeze wafts through. I shut my eyes and inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the scents of lemon balm, mint and the other herbs Nana grows for teas.

  As the wind tugs on the hem of my nightgown, bringing with it the garden’s inviting perfume, I imagine it carries something else along with it—the sound of voices distant, young and frightened.

  Help us.

  I feel myself stiffen and listen hard, blocking out the hiss of the water as it begins to boil.

  If you can hear us, come. Please. Help us.

  Eyes flying open, I skirt back inside to turn the stove off. Then, I flee out into the night, the cobblestone path cold and rough under my bare feet.

  The farther I go, the louder the voices become, although they always sound slightly distorted, and just out of reach. I pause every now and then, listening carefully, but I can’t seem to pinpoint exactly where they’re coming from. A few times, they fade out on the wind, an unsettling silence rolling in to take their place, and I start to wonder whether I had actually heard them at all. But, just as I turn to go back to the house,
they reach out to me again, drawing me to the edge of the property where the backyard ends and the forest begins.

  The darkness, they cry out. The silence. It hurts us. There is nothing. Nothing but pain. We are fading. We are dying.

  “Where are you?” I jump at the loudness of my own voice in the eerie silence of the night and glance fearfully back at the house, expecting to see a light going on upstairs or the back door swinging open. When nothing happens, I return to the wooded area in front of me and wait, but the only reply I receive is the scraping together of branches in the wind.

  “I can’t help you if you can’t tell me where you are,” I add quietly, more to myself than anyone who might be listening. Goosebumps break out on my arms, and I hug myself to ward off the chill, wondering for the first time what in the world I’m doing all of the way out here, in the middle of the night, chasing voices I couldn’t possibly be hearing. Diane’s bad dream must be getting to me.

  Arms still folded across my chest, I turn to go, hesitating when I catch a glimmer out of the corner of my eye. Looking toward it, I realize there’s something odd about the air over by one of the tall, sturdy oak trees guarding the entrance to the forest. I tiptoe closer to it, watching it ripple like a translucent, shimmering curtain fluttering in the breeze. On the other side of it, the trunk of the oak tree also seems to waver, as though it were reflected on the choppy surface of a lake.

  Help us! The chorus of voices rings out again, much clearer and closer this time. Somehow—I don’t quite understand how—it sounds like they’re coming from inside the ripple. Someone. Please. Help us.

  “I’m coming!” I shout and, without another moment’s hesitation, I step into the shimmering veil. “I’m here! Help is coming—”

  The rest of the words are knocked out of me as I’m seized by a deadly blast of arctic air. Little vines of frost slither through my veins and wrap around my lungs, squeezing the air out of them. The sensation is brief, only lasting the few seconds it takes me to pass through the curtain, but it’s one of the worst feelings I’ve ever experienced. By the time I stumble onto the other side, I’m shivering and panting as I try to catch my breath. Straightening up, I open my eyes—I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them—and gasp.

  I walk in a slow circle, studying my new surroundings. The woods, the garden, and my grandparents’ house are all gone. I’m in some sort of dark, stony walled chamber, dimly lit by the fiery candelabras lining the walls on either side of me. For some reason, it reminds me vaguely of the castle in Beauty and the Beast, when Belle is exploring the forbidden wing.

  The unnerving silence makes me think I’m alone until I see them, huddled over by the wall on the other side of the room, holding desperately onto each other, their faces frighteningly pale in the candlelight.

  “Who are you?” one of them—a girl with short, white-blonde hair that looks about Diane’s age—calls out to me. “Are you here to rescue us?”

  “How did you get here?” another girl, a little older than the first, demands. She extracts herself from the others, getting painstakingly to her feet, and takes a few shuffling steps toward me. A small gasp escapes my lips, and I resist the urge to look away. With green eyes as brilliant as emeralds and long, jet black hair, the girl looks like she might have once been beautiful—the kind of perfection that stares up at you from the covers of fashion magazines—but something, likely starvation, has drained that beauty away. What’s left is a shell, chalk white skin stretched over slender bone, her cheeks so gaunt it looks like those huge, green eyes are peering out of the sockets of a skull. “Tell us who you are and what you’re doing here.” Although she’s trying to sound threatening, the words come out raspy and filled with exhaustion.

  “Relax, sister,” a third voice—a boy’s—scolds her. “I don’t think she’s here to hurt us.” There’s a rustle of movement, followed by soft, plodding footsteps as he comes to stand beside her. He has his sister’s bright green eyes, set in a face just as pale and skeletal. Everything else about him is as black as midnight, from his short, unkempt hair to his tattered-looking clothes. He only looks a few years older than me, but there’s something strange about him, as though he’s considerably older than his appearance suggests. Something about those eyes, guarded and weary as they meet mine.

  “I can understand you,” I realize suddenly, feeling even more confused. “You can speak English.” The boy shakes his head. “What do you mean, ‘no’? You were speaking it just a second ago.”

  “You can understand us because we want to be understood. Where did you come from?” he asks me before I can press further, his tone gentle and curious. “How did you even get here?” They wait quietly for my answer, his gaze studying me with interest, his sister still glowering at me.

  “I’m…not really sure,” I admit, wishing I had a better answer for them. “I walked through this…shiny spot in the air.” Glancing behind me, I search for the shimmery curtain so I can show it to them, but all I see is the monotonous, black stone of the floor and walls, the flickering light from the candelabras. I turn back to them, feeling uneasy. “It was so cold, and I couldn’t breathe—but when I came out of it, I was here. Where is ‘here,’ anyway? Who are you?”

  “We are…” The boy trails off, looking back at who I assume are his other brothers and sisters. The candlelight catches the sharp angles of his cheekbones, accentuating their gauntness. “No one, really. You came through a shiny spot?”

  I nod, opening my mouth to say more, but his sister cuts me off. “She’s lying. If there were a way out of here, we would have found it a long time ago.”

  “She’s not lying,” her brother insists, glaring at her. His green eyes swivel back to me. “Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t trust anyone. No one would ever come here on purpose.”

  “Where are we?” I ask again. “Are we in a castle?”

  I hate the smile he gives me in reply, the right corner of his mouth twitching upward in an amused, condescending way. Beside him, his sister brings a frail hand to her face, snickering into it. “No, this isn’t a castle,” he tells me, his lips reforming into a thin, serious line. “We’re in a…place between places. It doesn’t really look like this. I just made it look like this because the reality is far too terrifying.”

  “A place between places?” I repeat, eyes narrowed at him. “What do you mean you made it look like this? How?”

  “I have special powers. I can make you see whatever I want.” He doesn’t say it arrogantly, but like he’s simply stating a fact.

  “No, you can’t. No one can do that.”

  “We can,” he insists, cocking his head toward his sister.

  I cross my arms, refusing to believe it. “You’re talking about superpowers. Those don’t exist.”

  “They do where we’re from.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Shut up,” the black-haired girl snaps, giving him a pointed look. “Both of you. We don’t have time for this. Either show us the way out of here, or get lost, little girl.”

  “I’m not little,” I shoot back, her words igniting a small flare of anger inside of me. My eyes flicker to the boy, and I wonder if that’s how he sees me, too. Even though he looks like he hasn’t eaten or slept in…well, ages, I can tell that he was once handsome, and I don’t want him to see me as just some annoying little girl. For some reason. “I’m ten. And I can’t show you the way out because I’m not even sure how I got here. The shimmer I walked through doesn’t seem to be here anymore.”

  “Well, that’s convenient. Come on,” she says to her brother, turning to walk back toward the others. “We should rest for a while. She can’t do anything to help us.” He hesitates for a moment, seeming uncertain of what to do, but then gives a helpless shrug before following his sister.

  “Wait!” I call after them, and I watch both of their backs freeze. “Let me see what I can do. Maybe it’s still there, and we just can’t see it.” I go over to the general area I think I came thro
ugh, feeling around carefully with my hands.

  “What is she doing?” I hear the girl say to her brother in a loud whisper she makes sure I can hear.

  “Trying to help us,” he answers her softly. “Be patient.” I think he says her name, then, but his voice is low, and it’s an unusual name—something like “Uhpatee.” She mutters something else in response, but I try to ignore them, feeling a little silly as I walk forward, continuing to futilely swipe my hands back and forth through the air.

  Then, suddenly, a telltale stab of ice-cold prickles my fingertips, and I push my hand forward into it, grimacing as hundreds of frosty vines latch onto me again. Gasps ring out behind me as first my fingers disappear, seemingly into thin air, followed by my knuckles, and then the rest of my hand and wrist.

  “It’s here!” I announce triumphantly, yanking my hand back and shaking it out. “This is how I got in. If I could get in this way, we should be able to get out.”

  The boy and his sister just stare at me at first, as if they can hardly believe what they’re hearing. “You mean we can leave?” he asks me tentatively, the thought seeming both wonderful and frightening to him.

  “Where does it go?” his sister wonders, sounding worried.

  I think about her question for a moment, unsure of how to answer it at first. “To my grandparents’ house. In New York.” They give me a blank look. “In the United States.” Still the same, confused stare. “On…Earth?”

  At this, the girl’s dark eyebrows shoot up. “That’s a long way from home,” she whispers to her brother.

  “I know, but at least we’d be out,” he tells her. “We can find our way back from there.” To me, he adds, “We’re coming with you.”

  I stand off to the side, watching quietly as he and his sister round up the rest of their siblings, who all appear to be much younger and even more worse off, guiding them across the room and through the invisible opening one by one.