by Gwen Hayes
Gabe looked at the table in disgust. “I’d almost rather do another one of those séances than clean up this mess.”
Ame looked up. “We totally should. We haven’t been able to try for a few days.”
“I was kidding.” Gabe sat back in his chair. “I hate those. It’s creepy.”
Amelia ignored Gabe and blinked sweetly at Varnie. “What do you think, Varnie?”
Varnie, the poor sap, would have leapt from a bridge if she’d asked him to with those pretty eyes. Donny cocked her head to one side and looked at Amelia very intently, and then she slowly tilted her head and looked at Varnie, her eyes thinning into slits. “Hey, wait a minute—”
Gabe cut her off with a kiss. I was beginning to think the guy had more psychic powers than Ame and Varnie combined. He acted like he was just along for the ride most of the time, but he always seemed to know exactly what wasn’t being said. And how to handle Donny without making her ... less Donny.
“We can do a locating séance, if you like, Miss Amelia. One more time couldn’t hurt.” Varnie blinked a few times, realizing he was acting like a pansy. At least I hoped he realized it. “After we clean up this mess.”
We all groaned. After dishes, we took our places around the table in the war room. That’s what Gabe had dubbed it to make it sound less freakish that we sat around a table chanting and looking into a crystal ball.
Next came quiet time. We all were supposed to quiet our minds. Mostly, we just tried to get serious and stop saying snarky things to one another—I don’t know if my mind ever quieted. Quiet time usually lasted about two minutes.
Soon Varnie spoke. “Everyone, please close your eyes, open your mind, and breathe deeply.”
I tried to relax. I was never comfortable in the room with the crystal ball. And I hated those cards. They just seemed ominous to me. Predictors of disaster.
“Let your mind go. Think of the dark night sky and a blanket of stars. Imagine all the pinpoints of light—find one that speaks to you and focus on it.” Varnie’s voice deepened as he spoke. No longer the female impersonator or the surfer dude, he acquired a resonance that seemed to come out only when he was working like this. He led us on a trip through a galaxy in our minds. As we went further into the night inside our heads, Theia’s necklace grew warmer on my skin.
“Everyone, please join hands. Once we have formed a circle, remember not to break it until I tell you.”
That was an important step. If we broke the circle, bad things could happen. Varnie never elaborated on what bad things—but we were already freaked out enough that we didn’t dare ask. “Bad things” was enough of a warning.
“I’m opening the channels,” Varnie said next, not to us, but to the spirit world. “To ask—”
The table started bouncing. We all opened our eyes and looked at one another.
“All right,” Varnie continued, his voice remaining calm. “Someone is already here, I take it.”
The table thumped harder. The ball in the middle wobbled off its base and rolled towards me. My first instinct was to catch it, but I stopped myself. Donny and I used our joined hands to buffer the globe, keeping it from falling off the table.
The deck of tarot cards on the sideboard began shuffling itself as if an invisible entity were handing them side to side. Donny whimpered a little, and then, one by one, the cards began flying through the air towards us like missiles. We ducked, but one hit me in the shoulder hard enough to tear my dress shirt.
Ame stood, her hair blowing like she was standing against a strong wind. Without letting go of Varnie and Gabe or breaking the circle, she glared at the cards. “Stop.” Her voice was calm but fierce, and the cards stopped their flight in midair. They just hung there. The invisible wind kept at her, but I think it might have been something she created, and not something aimed at her. It was like this weird energy that buffeted her, and consequently the rest of us.
Sweet, jokey Amelia looked like a goddess in a wind tunnel.
“I’m not enjoying this,” Donny whispered.
“Yeah, me neither.” Varnie cleared his throat. “We’re going to go ahead and—”
Whatever he was going to say was cut off by letters forming on the wall in red, as if someone were spray-painting the wall with blood.
HADEN
As each letter appeared, my stomach dropped a little more.
Something began battering at the closed door and we all flinched with each bang.
“What the hell is going on?” Gabe asked.
Donny’s hand trembled in mine. “I think we should stop. This isn’t right.”
I agreed. We’d never experienced anything so strong—or dark—before.
“Don’t let go,” Varnie reminded us. “We need to close the channels.”
It was difficult to remain calm. The bloodred letters began to drip into elongated patterns, and the ramming against the door startled my heart with every bang. My muscles tensed, and I wanted to either hit something or hide under the table.
Amelia squeezed her eyes shut and the room exploded in a burst of white light. Like a flash of lightning, only warm as sunshine, the light seemed to illuminate every crevice where a shadow could hide. In that second of heat, the paint disappeared, the cards flew back to the sideboard, and the banging stopped.
Ame opened her eyes. “Whoa.”
“Yeah, Ame, whoa,” Gabe repeated.
A hush fell over the room. Our labored breathing was the only sound.
“Varnie,” she whispered, “what did I just do?”
“I’m not sure, but I wanna say you just averted an apocalypse, Miss Amelia.” His tone was dry, but his palm was not.
“Can we break the circle yet?” I was still scared, but I was also not enjoying holding wet hands with Varnie.
“You okay, babe?” Gabe asked Donny.
She was pale, really pale, and her lower lip trembled, but she didn’t speak. We all broke the circle and instantly crowded around her chair. She shivered uncontrollably.
“Donny, what is it?” Ame asked.
Donny tried to talk but seemed to hiccup each breath.
“Babe?” Gabe shook her gently. “Please tell me you’re okay.”
Her eyes were glassy and a little vacant. I shared a concerned look with Varnie.
She gasped on a huge breath. “I saw her,” she finally managed.
“Who?” Varnie asked.
“Theia! She was looking at me through the other side of a mirror. She looked so sad and then . . . and then all her skin shriveled up and she was this skeleton thing.” She shivered again, and Gabe drew her into his lap.
Theia.
“It was probably a trick,” Varnie said calmly. “Just like the noises and the message on the wall—tricks to scare us.”
Or maybe it wasn’t, I wanted to shout. I shot out of my chair and left the room in an effort to keep from exploding with pent-up rage. I was so tired of feeling helpless. Everyone was in danger, and it was all my fault. The writing was on the wall—literally.
And worst of all, I was jealous. I was pissed that Gabe could hold Donny when she was scared, and that Varnie could spend time with Amelia, even if she didn’t have a clue that he was into her. And that the girl of my dreams was out of my reach.
That night I woke up, still in my room, barely able to breathe. It felt like I was under the tire of a car. I couldn’t move, but I was acutely aware that I was awake and I was not alone. It was frightening, more frightening than my name in blood on the wall or even the ghastly faces in the tree bark. At least in the woods I could run.
I managed to blink until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was then that I realized Theia was kneeling on my chest. I’d seen that before, in the demonology book Varnie showed me. That was how the mare demon took her prey. In the pictures, she was sometimes a beautiful maiden and sometimes a hag. No drawings ever depicted her looking as forlorn as Theia.
She was crying silent tears and her lower lip trembled. She looked awa
y from me, like she couldn’t bear for me to see her shame.
“I’m so very sorry,” she whispered.
I couldn’t speak or move. She was glowing a little—like she was edged in soft light.
“I don’t want to do this, Haden. God, please make me stop.”
And then she was gone, as if she had never been there.
And I wondered if she was already too far gone to save.
Theia sat in the corner of Haden’s room, as small as she could make herself. The shame of what she’d become made her sick.
She’d just needed a taste. She’d needed it so badly. She lost all reason, all sense of herself.
She squeezed her eyes to cut off the memory, but it stayed just as sharp in her head. It was easy to make excuses, to put her needs ahead of everyone else’s. Why shouldn’t she have what she wanted? Hadn’t she sacrificed everything? She didn’t kill him, after all. And if she wanted to, she could make him enjoy the experience—exquisite pleasure, torturous delight.
Theia covered her ears. No, that was Mara talking. Mara whispering those things in her head. What she’d done was wrong. She’d let the demon in her win that battle. Haden was lucky she’d been able to stop. They both were.
Mara had played this one well. Promising Theia she could go out, she could see Haden, but there was a penance for the privilege.
Never again.
Mara’s treacherous bargains meant that Theia lost, every time. She was waiting for Theia to make the mistake that would bring Haden back to Under forever. Theia would be stronger next time.
She had to be stronger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I was already sitting at the table when Varnie got up the next morning.
“You’re up early,” he said, getting his favorite mug out of the cupboard. He liked to hit the beach near sunrise on weekends.
I’d been staring into my coffee, long grown cold, trying to make sense of the séance, my dream that hadn’t felt like a dream, and the fact that my girlfriend had tried to eat my soul last night.
“What’s wrong?” Varnie asked, noticing my mood.
“Theia was here.”
“Here? As in, she came here and you didn’t go there?” He sat across from me. “Are you sure?”
I met his eyes across the table. “I think she was going to feed on me.” Saying the words turned my blood cold. I wanted to panic, to explode in rage, to do something. Anything.
Varnie looked into his cup to avoid my eyes any longer. “Sorry, dude. That’s not cool.”
“Cool?” I echoed. “Varnie, we need to get her out of there. I need my memories back now. She stopped herself last night, but what if she can’t the next time? She’ll hate herself.” And next time, I thought but didn’t say, what if it isn’t me she goes after?
“What do you suggest?”
I tunneled my fingers through my hair, the frustration a nagging ache. “I don’t know. Can you hypnotize me or something?”
“I don’t know how to hypnotize people.” He left the table and came back with a cold slice from a pizza at least four days old.
“What about past-life regression or something?”
“Look, the best I can do is lead you into a very deep meditative state. But I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” He paused. “Of course, nobody ever listens to me when I say it’s not a good idea, so I don’t suppose you’ll be any different.”
“I can’t do anything for her like this, Varn. If I could remember what I knew when I was a demon, maybe I could save her.”
“Haden . . .”
“Please.”
He nodded. “Fine. But when the world blows up in our faces again, I’d like it if at least one time somebody says, ‘We should have listened to Varnie.’”
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding too long. “How do we do this?”
“Sit back in your chair and relax.”
Right. I did what he asked, but I didn’t think I’d be relaxing anytime soon. I was too keyed up—my nerves were bouncing around like a sphere in a pinball machine.
“Deep breaths. Think about the air traveling into your nose and follow it down the length of your body. Visualize it being pulled all the way to your feet, to your toes, and then, exhale from your toes up again.” And then he repeated it.
I did what he said, only I realized I was visualizing my body as completely empty except for the air because that was how I felt. I was a shell, devoid of life. Except that now I was a balloon.
Varnie kept telling me to look at things—stars in the sky again, blades of grass in a meadow, grains of sand on a beach. I was about to tell him it wasn’t working, I wasn’t relaxing, when I noticed I was in a graveyard of very old headstones.
The cemetery wasn’t frightening or especially morbid. It also didn’t feel like Under, but I was definitely lucid. I stopped at one stone surrounded by bushes of black roses and felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck stir to attention.
JENNIFER ANNE ALDERSON
Theia’s mother. Just under my Adam’s apple, the talisman vibrated slightly. What did Mrs. Alderson have to do with getting back my memories? The only connection I could think of was that Theia had chosen her mother’s necklace as the talisman that I now wore.
A talisman that had done little to protect her from me.
“Hello, Haden.”
I whirled around towards the voice. A woman in a white gown appeared in the mist. Her long, dark hair contrasted with the paleness of her skin, and her lips seemed redder than they should be.
“Hello?” I answered. I didn’t recognize her, but then, I didn’t recognize a lot of people.
She moved with an unnatural grace, and the mist billowed around her as she walked towards me. There was an ethereal quality about her, and I couldn’t look away from her.
“I’m very worried about my daughter.” She spoke slowly with a slight lilt. “She’s in grave danger.”
“Your daughter?” I looked back at the headstone. “You’re Theia’s mom?”
“Call me Jenny,” she told me in a soothing voice.
Talking to a ghost was something I should have been used to after all the séances at Varnie’s, but talking to the ghost of Theia’s mother was a new level of strangeness. The spirits we’d reached had never seemed so real. They were transparent if you could see them at all. Theia’s mother sort of shimmered, but she was corporeal.
“Why are you here?” I asked with no manners. This was supposed to be my subconscious, and yet there she was.
“My daughter is in a lot of trouble. She doesn’t belong where she is.”
My guilt overwhelmed me. “Mrs. Alderson, you have to know I never wanted this to happen to her. If I could switch places with her I would.”
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear that. What a fine young man you are.” She smiled. “And, please, I meant it. Call me Jenny.”
Jenny didn’t resemble Theia in any way. Her cheekbones were too sculpted, her hair too dark, and her mouth was all wrong. It was her lips, maybe, that weren’t right. Theia’s lips were plump and shaped like a bow, but Jenny’s were thin and her mouth was wide.
Still, despite the differences, there was something very calming about her. I relaxed for the first time in what seemed like a very long time. Perhaps she was more than a ghost—maybe a guardian angel of some kind, because her presence was so peaceful to me. My muscles, my whole body, began to feel languid. Everything was going to be okay now. Jenny would fix it.
Jenny walked around me and sighed as she ran her hand over the headstone that marked her final resting place. “Poor Theia, trapped in that nightmare realm.” She shook her head, her face a mask of worry.
“Can we get her out?”
“No, we can’t.” She looked at me like she was looking through me. “But you can.”
The way she inflected her words filled me with a sense of calm purpose. I could save Theia. Suddenly, I felt like I was in a spotlight of warmth. Jenny looked at me like I coul
d do anything. And I began to believe her.
Since waking up in the cabin, I’d felt unsure of myself. To be filled with such overwhelming confidence and peace was amazing.
“You can be her champion, Haden. You’re the only one who can save Theia now.”
Waves of courage coursed through me. She was right. I was the only one. “What must I do?” Whatever it was, whatever she asked of me, I would do it.
Jenny smiled, and it occurred to me again how different she and Theia were. Jenny’s hair was almost black and Theia’s curls were . . . and then the heated spotlight suddenly felt like a splash of ice-cold water.
Theia’s curls were inherited from her mother.
Jenny’s hair was straight as a pin.
Donny had told me all about how Theia used to hate her hair because it was so wild. She’d said she never wore it down until I came along. That I had somehow helped Theia make peace with her mom and the things about herself that were different from her father.
It was unlikely that a ghost spent an hour with a hair straightener before meeting me in a cemetery. This woman wasn’t Jenny.
She was Mara.
I don’t know how I knew it, but the clarity I felt seemed to shrug off the sense of purpose I’d had only seconds before. The calming, encouraging vibes were most likely manufactured by Mara to manipulate me. As soon as I recognized that, they were gone and I was left with only a knot of cold dread.
I swallowed hard and tried not show my fear. It was best if she thought I still believed her.
Mara blinked prettily at me, playing up her role as some kind of benevolent guardian sent to aid against evil. Only she was the evil. I didn’t know how I’d missed it earlier. She was caked in impurity, visible only when you saw past her facade.
“I can help you remember, but first I need you to give me the necklace.”
My hand went to it automatically. “Why?” Despite all reason, I felt safer with the protection of it against my skin, even though the talisman had not proven to be very useful.
