by K. C. RILEY
I blacked out. When I awoke, I was safely wrapped in my mom’s arms. She looked heartbroken and shattered but still held me as though I was the most important thing in the world.
In another flash of light, I was back in the present time on the lake with the ghost of my twin brother. Jedidiah.
Norah continued wailing like a banshee as rolling black clouds and thunder gathered behind her. The dark forces of nature propelled her forward on the tips of her toes like a jet ski ripping through the surface of a lake.
Jake and Cassie sat locked to their seats as they yelled for me to get out of the way.
Norah was getting closer.
The light that surrounded my brother enveloped me. He smiled at me and I understood the connection we had. We lifted our arms together. A wave of energy burst out of our hands and slammed against Kai’s speeding body. The force threw him closer to shore while leaving Norah’s spirit stunned and frozen on the surface of the water. Kai was free.
Being in my brother’s energy field continued to shift my perception of time. I could see and sense everything happening all at once.
The aftershock of the energy hitting against Kai’s speeding body caused the boat with Jake and Cassie to turn over.
While Norah’s dark spirit struggled to release itself, a mass of pale arms and hands emerged around her. They tugged and grabbed at her wailing spirit as she tried to climb up and out of them. Whoever they were—whatever they were—they consumed her back into the depths of the hell she had come from.
At the same time, I could feel Jedidiah. He’d been alone, trapped, for over twelve years.
“Stay,” Jedidiah said.
The words wrenched through my heart. What Norah had done to him, to us, was unforgivable. She was The Destroyer, the final clue in Mom’s note. Jedidiah wanted me to stay with him in his light, wherever or whatever that was.
I sensed Kai struggling to breathe as the waves washed over his body.
Cassie’s head popped up out of the water. But there was no sign of Jake.
“Stay,” Jedidiah said again.
Jake was still weak from the vervain cocktail Zander had dosed him up with. He needed me. But so did Jedidiah. If everything would just slow down. It killed me inside to have to choose one over the other. Now I knew how Jake felt.
I took Jedidiah’s tiny hands into my own and knelt down.
“I love you, but I can’t stay.” Time was running out. “I have to help my friends.”
“Play,” Jedidiah said.
In that moment, I wished I could have brought both him and Riley back to life. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Somehow my will broke the connection with my brother, and I dropped into the water. Being afraid of it was no longer an option.
“Cassie, go help Kai,” I yelled. Our bodies bounced up and down with the waves like buoys. “I’ll get Jake.”
“Okay.” Cassie swam toward shore.
I swam closer to the flipped boat and dived underneath, but couldn’t see a thing. It was too dark. I surfaced for air, took another breath, and went back under. Panic and frustration crept into my chest because I couldn’t see him.
Jedidiah, I need your help.
The dark, murky water was soon illuminated by my brother’s light. He smiled at me like he understood why I couldn’t stay with him. He then pointed to Jake’s suspended body only a few feet away. Refueled with adrenaline, I swam over, grabbed Jake, and pulled him up to the surface.
I held onto him as tight as I could while paddling us back to shore. As we got closer to land, I yelled out for help. I was barely hanging on and kept swallowing water. Mason and Boyd yelled back and ran in to grab us.
“I’m okay, take him, he’s not breathing,” I said.
They dragged Jake onto shore as I found my footing and stood up to catch my breath. I checked around to make sure Norah’s spirit was truly gone. It was. My feet and legs swished through the waves that rolled over them. Up ahead, Boyd was doing CPR on Jake. He still wasn’t breathing. I held my breath until I heard him coughing up water.
Jake was going to be okay.
Relieved, I placed my hand at my chest to make sure I still had the amulet. It was gone, at least until I patted closer to my neck and realized the chain was still there. I reached over and around my back, where the amulet was resting. Thank God.
Cassie ran from Kai’s side toward me and yelled out, “He’s unconscious, but he’s breathing. He’ll be fine.”
As I repositioned the amulet back around my neck, something wrapped around my ankles and yanked me back into the water. Norah.
Cassie screamed out to me. “Lizzy.”
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. Not after all of that. I grabbed the amulet from around my neck and yelled for Cassie to catch it before Norah dragged me into the depths of the lake. She would never get it.
Underwater, Norah was back in her decomposed body. She released my ankles and grappled up my legs and torso until her hands reached around my neck. Long thick locks of seaweed suspended from her head as hair. I tried to squeeze the life out of her neck too, but my grip weakened as her water-rotten lips inhaled the life from my body. My limbs went numb. She was growing stronger, her grip tighter. I was no match for her.
I thought of how much I hated magic. How magic had destroyed my mother. How it had ruined my family and my life. But there was another side to it, one that was fantastical and filled with wonder and imagination. Jake showed me that in a sky full of stars on a full moon night. He also showed it to me with a single kiss. There’s a certain spark to magic. I searched my mind for every moment I had felt it. The first time was when I opened the Blood Book, the electricity that coursed through me when the words over the eye appeared.
With my final breath, I muttered, “Praeteritis Futura.”
One by one, lights flicked on around me, lights that came from the darkened windowpanes of a village underwater. Norah’s hands grappled to hold onto me as she was pulled off me by pale beings, people I recognized from the Blood Book. The People Under the Lake.
The last thing I remembered was the silence that filled the void of Norah’s trailing screams.
The last thing I remembered was the cold, wet abyss as the lights of the village around me went dark.
And the last thing I remembered...was dying.
But there was soon another light that filled me, filled in the bits of my soul that Norah had taken away. I knew that light and, its warmth. I had felt it before in my dreams, in a kiss. Jake.
21
I awakened to the light touch of someone’s hand gliding against my cheek. My eyes squinted against the bright light as I tried to open them. I wasn’t sure if I was dead or not. The outline of the person standing over me was fuzzy but familiar.
“Jake?” I moaned. The fresh smell of a mountain spring mixed with spice and musk lingered in the air, the intoxication wrapped me in its warmth. I knew that smell. It was him. I was sure of it.
With another blink, the blurry image standing over me was gone. My eyes came into focus to a bright white room with big windows. A hospital. My heart thumped.
I sprung up in the bed and grabbed my wrists. There were no straps. I wasn’t back in the institution. As I gathered my bearings, I noticed a woman’s head folded in her arms on a food tray as she slept next to my bedside.
“Vye?” My voice scratched through my throat like sandpaper.
She raised her head. Her hair was disarranged from where she slept. She, too, struggled to open her eyes against the light that shined in from the windows. “Lizzy? Thank God. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
Vye took my hand and pressed her head against it while warm tears dropped onto my skin. It was a little uncomfortable, the way she held me like I was family. But then again, according to Norah, she was. And in a flash, everything came rushing back. My hand flew out of hers and to my chest to check for the amulet. Then I remembered I had thrown it to Cassie.
“What
’s wrong?” Vye asked.
“Nothing. Uh, where’s Jake?”
“Jake and Cassie have been waiting for you outside.”
“That’s weird,” I said. “I could have sworn he was just here.”
“I don’t think so. They were only allowing family in. At least until you woke up.”
“So then it’s true. You, Jonas, Serene, and Norah are all brothers and sisters?”
Vye wiped her cheeks and nodded.
I wasn’t ready to go there. “How long have I been out?”
“Two days, sweetheart.”
“Two days?”
“I know you have a lot of questions.” Vye took my hand again, but this time she turned it inward. She stared at the branded symbol on my wrist. “I was so stupid,” she said. “I should have done something. All I wanted was a normal life for you. I swear I thought you were disenchanted, like me.”
“Disenchanted?”
“Meaning the supernatural stuff skipped over you. This mark appears two weeks before our kind turns seventeen. It’s a sign that you’ve been chosen to ascend. It’s when you come into your full powers, the ability to bend water to your will. I checked to see if you had it when you first got here. You didn’t. And when you told me you were already seventeen, well, I thought it passed over you. I thought you were safe. I should have said something when I first saw you. The day you came into the café was like seeing your mother all over again. You look just like her. You knew her as Jenna, but I knew her as Serene, my baby sister. I swear, I thought the both of you were dead.”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
Vye continued. “Serene was the only one out of the four of us to get the mark. I could have cared less. I was older, and my time for ascending was gone. However, Jonas and Norah were a different story. They both spent day and night studying the old ways in preparation to ascend, especially Norah. In some ways I think they both felt cheated given ascending wasn’t something your mother ever wanted either.”
Memories flooded back from my childhood, pieces of it that weren’t there before. “I was four or five. You used to take me and Jedidiah apple picking. You would lift me up—”
“And say that one day you could wish yourself six feet tall and pick them on your own.”
Vye was my aunt. Then again, so was Norah and look where that got me.
The questions dribbled out of my mouth. “After Mom ascended, something dark took over. I saw it in the Blood Book. Is that going to happen to me? And how did Norah become a conjurer?”
“You didn’t see everything. And that Blood Book, you should stay away from it. I thought they were all destroyed. Blood Books have a way of only showing you half the truth. And that’s only when it wants to show you anything at all. They’re dangerous.”
I couldn’t argue there.
“As far as your mom and the darkness she carried, all I can say is it might have had something to do with her being pregnant with you and Jedidiah when she ascended. There are rules to all of this. An ascension requires that you’re still a virgin at seventeen. That goes for both the men and the women. None of us knew your momma was pregnant.”
“Who was my father?” I had been waiting for an answer to that question my entire life. “Mom said he died in a fire when I was born. She said there were no pictures or any belongings of him left to pass on, nothing left to imagine what he looked or acted like. She refused to talk about him.”
“I’m sorry, hon, I have no idea. Nobody but your grandfather knew. For whatever reason, he and your mom refused to say anything more on the topic. Ezra took that secret to his grave.” Vye paused for a moment. “You have to understand, you and Jedidiah were anomalies. Your births seemed to defy every rule of magic we were taught to believe. Those rules are what helped our ancestors survive a world dominated by humans out to destroy what they couldn’t control or understand.”
I thought about the witch’s graveyard, about how Remy burned and killed Sir Isaac and the others.
“You and Jedidiah were both born with abilities. Ezra marveled at the things the two of you could do together. So did your mom. They were determined to keep you safe. And keeping you safe, for some reason, meant keeping your mom’s secret about your father.”
“How did she get rid of the darkness?”
Vye sighed. “That’s where Norah comes in. And that’s the part the Blood Book didn’t show you. There’s a secret library at All Saints. Back in Sir Isaac’s day, it was a thriving school of magic until the church took it over. Ezra taught there under the guise of a physics teacher for a few years.”
“Mom went to All Saints?”
“Your mom, Jonas, and Norah were there for a short period of time, yes. Ezra was looking for something in the Master Hall, the library, but never said what. He and your mom knew the secret compartments and hidden rooms of that place like the backs of their hands. So did Jonas and Norah. Norah, however, was more fascinated with the darker side of things.” Vye glanced at the pitcher of water on the table. “You must be parched.”
My lips were dried, cracked, and screamed for moisture. But who cared? I was finally getting the truth.
Vye poured me a glass of water and handed it to me. “Norah took it harder than anyone expected when the mark skipped over her and Jonas. She just knew she was going to get it. In many ways, so did Jonas. After Serene’s ascension, your mother changed and withdrew into herself, into her darkness. Who could blame her? She had lost her best friend. I don’t think your mom ever got over using the amulet to save herself.”
“Yeah. I saw what happened in the book.”
“Your mother’s power and guilt grew darker by the day. So much so, she was terrified she might hurt you and Jedidiah. And that was the last thing in the world she would ever want to do. Norah took advantage of it. Somewhere in those books at All Saints, Norah found a way to transfer your mother’s ascension to her own body. Your mother agreed to the ritual, and so did Ezra. He was the one that performed it. Parents always say they don’t have a favorite, but Serene was his. He would have done anything to bring her back from the darkness that consumed her, and Norah knew it.”
Vye welled up again, grabbed another tissue, and blew her nose.
“What happened next?”
“Ezra performed the spell, and for years everything seemed fine. Your mom was cured and raised two happy babies until you were five. She showed no signs or episodes of darkness, whatsoever. It wasn’t until after the incident with Jedidiah that we figured out what Norah was up to. And by then, it was too late. Part of the power of your mother’s ascension transferred to you and Jedidiah, so did the darkness. Your mother was free of it, but not her babies. And that meant Norah’s power wasn’t complete without taking it from the both of you.
My eyes watered. I still couldn’t wrap having a brother around my head and wished that I could bring him back. “That’s why she killed Jedidiah.” I thought about the dark version of myself I had been seeing the past few weeks in mirrors, the thing inside of me that had been begging for me to let it out. “And that’s what she was trying to do to me at the lake.”
Vye nodded her head up and down. Her eyes were almost swollen shut from crying. “Ezra lost his mind when he discovered what Norah had done. Only a few of us made it out alive. He used the amulet to cast himself and Norah to the bottom of the lake, but in so doing, he took the entire village with him.”
“I saw them. The People Under the Lake.”
“Yes. You and your mother must have survived and she must have taken off with you. Who could blame her for staying away with everything she lost?”
Before Vye could finish someone knocked at the door, a bearded man with thick wild hair stood at the doorway with a bouquet of flowers. Jonas, my uncle, cleared his throat.
“What are you doing here?” Vye snapped.
Jonas ignored her and stepped in. “These are for you.”
The tension in the room fell heavy on my chest. “Uh, thanks. They’re...pretty.”<
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“I can put them in water if you’d like. Lilacs. They were your mother’s favorite.” Jonas took an empty vase off the nightstand.
Vye never took her eyes off of him. No spilled blood there.
Jonas continued talking as he took the vase into the bathroom and filled it up with water. “I’m sorry I couldn’t return your phone call earlier.” His voice resounded from around the corner. “I had to go out of the country. I also have to apologize for my assistant. He was given strict orders to talk to no one of my whereabouts. It was entirely for your own safety. And mine.” He came out of the bathroom with his sleeves rolled up and placed the flowers in the vase.
“Again, what are you doing here?” Vye spat. “I told you she wasn’t ready.”
Jonas turned his piercing blues eyes toward Vye. “And look where that’s gotten us. Besides, she’s as much my niece as she is yours.” There was something about the way he commanded the room, like he was bending it to his will. He turned his attention back to me. “Now, how are you?”
“I’ve been better, considering, but fine. I’m actually ready to get out of here.”
“Vye, could you give us a moment alone?” Jonas said.
Vye looked over at me almost determined to never leave my side.
Jonas softened his tone. “Please.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
Vye patted my hand. “All right. I’ll go get the nurse and let the others know you’re awake. Cassie and Jake have been camping in the waiting room for two days. Oh, and Jake told me everything.”
A surge of heat raced up my spine and into my face. “Everything?”
Vye cocked her head to the side. “Everything. But we can talk more about the two of you later.”
I wondered if everything included telling Vye how he was in cahoots with Norah in order to save his sister. But then again, he never went through with it. And now Riley was dead. Yeah, Jake and I needed to talk.
Vye was on the way out the door.
