“Ow stiw be ugwy.”
“No, you’re not ugly. You’re very pretty.”
That was when it happened. As they drove through the intersection, the light perfectly green, the whole car was bathed in white light. Mom had enough time to scream before the car slammed into the driver’s side.
Emma was thrown against her seatbelt, but it held fast. She was thrown back against the seat, but she was all right. Her ghost sat on the seat with her; she knew young Emma would suffer no more than bruises from the crash.
Her father wasn’t so lucky. Emma’s ghost drifted forward to see him hunched over the wheel. There hadn’t been an airbag on the driver’s side, not that it would have mattered anyway, since the other car had plowed practically right into him. Her older self let out a sob to see the blood flowing down her father’s face, his body limp over the steering wheel while the horn wailed futilely.
Her younger self tried to lean forward; she knew something was wrong with Daddy. “Daddy?” she asked with a whimper.
Mom had a gash on her forehead, but she wasn’t too badly hurt from the crash. She unfastened her seat belt and then turned to Emma. “Don’t look, baby. Daddy’s sleeping.”
“But—”
Mom fixed her with a hard stare, as she usually did when she was punishing Emma. “Emma, I want you to listen very carefully. I want you to lie down on the seat, as flat as you can. Leave Daddy alone while he’s sleeping. Don’t even look at him. No matter what happens, you stay perfectly still and don’t make a sound. Do you understand?”
Young Emma nodded her understanding while her older ghost could only silently beg that her mother stay in the car. With a tight smile, Mom tousled Emma’s hair and then said, “Mommy is going to make a phone call. I’ll be back soon.”
Young Emma was a good girl. She had always been a good girl. She lay flat on the seat as Mommy had said; she didn’t look at her father. From that position she heard muffled voices and then two loud pops like fireworks. But even at eight years old she knew these weren’t fireworks.
Her older self floated out of the car to follow Mom. Her mother bolted from the car, though she must have known it was futile. The two men in ski masks were right behind her; one clutched a black bag that contained the money they had stolen. The other held up a pistol. He wasn’t about to let Mom call the police, despite that she hadn’t seen their faces.
Emma’s ghost screamed at the man to lower the gun. “Don’t kill Mommy!” she screamed. “Please!”
The man didn’t hear her. He fired twice. The first shot caught Mom in the small of the back. The second probably would have also hit her in the back if she hadn’t been falling forward. The bullet instead smashed into her skull. She pitched forward onto the pavement, where she lay motionless.
One of the men looked back towards the car. It must have occurred to him to check for witnesses. He didn’t see young Emma lying flat on the backseat, not making a sound even as her mother lay bleeding in the street. The other man, the one with the gun, shouted, “C’mon, let’s go!”
They disappeared into the night.
Emma’s ghost knelt beside her mother and turned her over onto her back. Mom’s blue eyes had gone cold and lifeless. These eyes stared at her accusingly. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.”
“Who ow you?” a tiny voice asked.
Emma’s older self turned to see her young self standing there. The little girl stared right at her. At last she could see her older self, now that it was too late. “I’m a friend,” she said.
“What’s wong with Mommy?”
Emma’s older self looked down at the pavement. How could she explain this to an eight-year-old who had never experienced death? “Mommy’s sleeping,” she said.
This didn’t fool her younger self. The little girl knelt down beside Mom and touched the pool of blood rapidly spreading across the pavement. “Bwood,” she said. “Mommy’s bweeding.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Emma said. She put an arm around her younger self and pulled the little girl close.
“Can’t you do something?” the little girl asked, her eyes full of hope. Emma was an adult; adults were supposed to make things better.
“There’s nothing anyone can do. She’s gone.”
“No! She’s not gone! You can make her better. You have to make her better.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I can’t. No one can.”
Her younger self began to sob uncontrollably. “It’s my fawt,” she whispered.
“No,” Emma told the little girl. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Was too! If I hadn’t wanted to go to the pwanetarium, they wouldn’t be here.”
Emma stroked the little girl’s short hair while they both stared down at her mother’s dead eyes. “No one can see the future, sweetie. There was no way for you to know.”
“But—”
“No one can change the past.” Emma thought of what Mrs. Chiostro had told her at the funeral home. “You should remember how much they loved you. Remember the way Daddy used to search your room for monsters. Remember Mommy tucking you in and kissing you goodnight. That’s what they would want. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Emma tousled the little girl’s hair and smiled. “Someday you’re going to be a geologist at the Plaine Museum and you’re going to make them very proud.”
“How do you know that?”
“Just a hunch.” She stood up and took her younger self by the hand. She led the little girl away from her mother’s body; they walked into a fog that had sprung from nowhere. The street, the car, Mom’s body and the pool of blood all disappeared.
Then Emma awoke.
Chapter 24
Emma hovered in the netherworld between waking and sleeping, too tired to open her eyes but too awake to fall back to sleep. So she did nothing but listen to voices that sounded as if they came from a cave miles away. Strangest of all, these voices seemed to belong to Mrs. Chiostro and her sister Sylvia.
“You really think those chains are going to hold her?” Sylvia asked.
“I doubt they will, but what else can we do?” Mrs. Chiostro said.
“You know what.”
“No. We have to give the potion more time.”
“It’s almost sunrise. You know what happens if we wait too long.”
“Could you really do that? She’s just a girl. Such a sweet girl too.” There was a pause and then Mrs. Chiostro added in an even lower voice, “She’s so much like Brigitte. If that carriage hadn’t gone off the road—”
“That was a hundred years ago, Agnes. She’s not Brigitte. She’s not any of your granddaughters. And she’s not my niece either. Right now she’s another monster.”
“Sylvia, no—”
“I have to do it.”
Becky’s voice joined the conversation. “What are you doing with that?”
“What I have to do. I’m sorry.”
“No! I won’t let you! We have to give her more time.”
“I’m sorry, dear, but Sylvia’s right. If we don’t do this by sunrise we may never be able to stop her.”
“But I gave her your potion. You said it would work.”
“I know I did, dear, but we don’t know if it’s working or not. This is too important to risk being wrong.”
“Doesn’t her life matter at all to you?”
“Of course it does—”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Because there’s a lot more at stake here,” Sylvia said. “Just think if she gets loose again with all that power. Think of all the damage she could do, all the people she could kill.”
“Emma would never kill anyone,” Becky said.
“I know she wouldn’t, but between the Dragoon and the armor, we don’t know what’s going on in her head anymore.”
“I’m not going to let you do it. She’s my friend and—”
Emma heard Mrs. Chiostro speak a few words in a language sh
e had never heard before. They sounded similar to the “magic words” Marlin had taught her to call the armor to her. After the words, Emma heard the thump of something heavy hitting the floor. She wanted to open her eyes, but she couldn’t muster the strength yet.
She felt a warm hand touch her cheek and then heard Sylvia whisper, “I’m sorry about this. I promise it won’t hurt.”
The conversation she had heard made sense now. They were trying to kill her! That gave Emma the strength to open her eyes. She saw Sylvia standing over the bed with a machete in hand. The edge gleamed in the dim light of the room. Emma tried to raise her hands, but something held them down—the chains Sylvia had mentioned. Her feet were tied down as well. There was nothing she could do but watch the machete blade begin to swing down. In a few seconds it would all be over. Maybe then she could finally see her parents again—
At the last moment Sylvia turned her wrists. She threw the machete into the wall, inches over Emma’s head. The old woman bent down and stared into Emma’s eyes. “Holy shit,” she whispered.
Mrs. Chiostro joined her a moment later. She too bent down to look into Emma’s eyes. The seamstress grinned at Emma. “Welcome back, dear.”
***
They took the chains off her, but Emma didn’t have the strength to sit up. She barely had the strength to keep her eyes open. It was as if she had been stuck in a coma for months. But it hadn’t been that long, had it? Her throat was so dry she could only wheeze, “How long?”
“You’ve only been asleep for a few hours,” Mrs. Chiostro said. She turned to her sister. “Could you fetch the poor girl some water.”
“Sure.”
“And check on Rebecca too.”
Sylvia grumbled something as she stomped away. Emma managed to tilt her head up enough to see the machete blade still embedded in the wall. She looked back then at Mrs. Chiostro, who nodded to her. “I’m sorry about that, dear. We thought you had gone mad. If you had, we would have had no choice but to kill you.”
Emma tried to ask why, but could only get out an unintelligible gasp. Mrs. Chiostro touched her cheek. “It’s very difficult to explain. Sylvia and I don’t fully understand it ourselves. It would be best to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, you need to get some rest.”
Emma shook her head. She didn’t want to rest. Not now. If she did, she might never wake up again. “There’s no need to be afraid, dear. We’re not going to hurt you, not since you’re getting better.”
Sylvia returned with a glass of water in hand as well as a mirror. “The fat one is sleeping like a baby. You explain it to her yet?”
“Not yet. I think she needs to rest a bit more first. She’s had quite a night.”
Sylvia nodded and then held out the glass of cloudy water. Given the last item Sylvia had held in her hand, Emma whimpered. She wanted to back away or roll off the bed, but she was still too weak to move. Sylvia smiled at her. “It’s water. As pure as tap water in this city ever gets.”
It tasted like ordinary tap water as Sylvia dribbled a little of it in Emma’s mouth. Despite the rusty tang to it, the water felt good to her parched throat. She nodded at Sylvia, who poured the rest of the glass down Emma’s throat. “Thanks,” Emma whispered. She turned her head towards the door. “What about Becky?”
“She’s fine, dear. She’s taking a nap.”
“You said something to her. I heard.”
Mrs. Chiostro looked over to Sylvia, who nodded. The old seamstress took Emma’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I know this might be hard for you to accept, but Sylvia and I are witches. Not like in the storybooks, of course. We don’t eat children or live in gingerbread houses or any of that nonsense. But we can cast spells and make potions.”
“A potion.” Emma remembered Becky had handed a red vial to her. She had drunk it and then…and then she had become a ghost in her own past. “You drugged me.”
“Yes, I suppose we did,” Mrs. Chiostro said. “It was for your own good, so you could come back to us.”
She didn’t have the strength to move, but Emma did have the strength to cry as she thought of what she had seen. “I saw it. All of it. But there were two of me. When I was little and now.”
“What did you see?”
“My parents. They died.”
“I’m sorry, dear. That must have been terrible for you.”
Emma thought back to those final moments, when she had comforted her younger self. Others—police, counselors, Aunt Gladys, Becky, and even Mrs. Chiostro—had all told her the same things, but she had never believed them. Not until the words came out of her own mouth. Then she understood they had been right all along. “Not all of it.”
“I think we should let you get some rest now—”
“No. Tell me the rest of it.” Emma closed her eyes for a moment; she tried to remember what had happened. She remembered fighting the Dragoon on the opera house roof. She had gotten him on the ground, the Sword of Justice ready to strike. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill him. Then his eyes had begun to glow red. From there everything became a blood-red haze until she remembered Becky talking to her and giving her the potion. For some reason they were in Emma’s old house, in Parkdale. “What did he do to me?”
“We’re not exactly sure, dear. From what Marlin says, he used some kind of hypnotic suggestion on you to drive you mad.”
“And it worked,” Sylvia said.
Emma nodded. If not for Becky her mind might have stayed lost in that red fog forever. “How did I get home?” The witches glanced at each other. “What did I do?”
“Rebecca found a police officer in the house with you. She was unconscious—”
“I killed her?”
Mrs. Chiostro squeezed Emma’s hand. “No, dear, nothing so awful. She got a nasty bump on the head. Sylvia took her to the hospital. She’ll be fine in a few days.”
Emma sighed with relief. If she had killed an innocent person she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. “Did I hurt anyone else?”
“Not that we know of.”
“What about the armor? Is it safe?”
“It’s right there in the closet.”
“Most of it,” Sylvia said.
Emma turned to her. “What does that mean? Did I lose some of it?”
“Not quite.” Sylvia held up a mirror to Emma’s eyes. Emma gasped at what she saw. Her eyes were entirely gold except for the black pupils in the center of each. The same gold as the Sword of Justice and the armor’s boots, gloves, and plume.
She worked up enough strength in her left arm to touch her eye. It didn’t feel any different than a normal human eye. “What happened to me?”
“We’re not sure,” Mrs. Chiostro said. “Our theory is the armor bonded with you to try and stabilize your mind. Unfortunately, the armor gave you its strength as well.”
It was only then Emma noticed a hole in the wall behind Mrs. Chiostro. “I did that?”
“I’m afraid so. You pushed Rebecca and she hit the wall.”
“Oh no!”
“But she wasn’t hurt.”
Emma sighed with relief and then looked in the mirror again. “What’s going to happen to me now?”
“We’re not sure—”
Before Mrs. Chiostro could finish, Emma’s entire body seized with pain. She screamed and thrashed her head from side to side, but the rest of her body still didn’t move. Her vision became a wall of golden light that blotted out everything else. The wave of pain lasted for about a minute and then it vanished. Her vision cleared, so she could see the witches staring at her, their faces pale. Emma panted for a few moments before she asked, “What happened?”
Sylvia didn’t say anything, but she held up the mirror again. Emma’s eyes were still mostly golden, but around the edges she saw a sliver of white. “Looks like you’re getting better, dear,” Mrs. Chiostro said.
Emma nodded. She was getting better. It might take a while—and a lot of pain—but eventually she would recover. Then she c
ould find a way to stop the Dragoon once and for all.
Chapter 25
There wasn’t any pattern to when the changes came. The second happened two hours after the first. The third took five hours to come. The only consistency was each time Emma screamed from the pain.
On the bright side, her eyes looked closer to normal. The whites and pupils looked as they had before the fight on the opera house. The irises were still gold, but Emma told herself it was only a matter of time before they too reverted to their natural blue color. Then she would be herself again and she could get back to normal.
The witches had held her down during the second attack. Not long after it Becky woke up. She and the witches had a brief argument in the living room. Emma doubted she was supposed to hear it, but she could; that was probably another side effect of the armor bonding with her. When the argument ended, the witches left; they had to discuss what had happened with their coven.
Despite the changes to Emma’s eyes, the rest of her body still didn’t feel much better. She had to concentrate in order to move her arms or legs. Her first attempt to stand up had ended after she slid herself to the edge of the bed and then passed out.
Becky took it upon herself to care for Emma as if she were an invalid. She brought Emma a bowl of soup and a can of Sprite for breakfast. Emma would have preferred her usual protein shake, but she didn’t say anything to Becky. Becky had risked her life to save her, even after Emma had thrown her through a wall. “I’m sorry about that,” Emma said.
“You don’t have to be sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have killed him instead of giving him the chance to brainwash me.”
Becky sat down on the edge of the bed and patted Emma’s knee. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, kid. You’re not a killer. That’s why you’re the superhero.”
Emma remembered the alley where she had stopped a gang from mugging and possibly doing worse to Becky. She had refused to kill those criminals as she hadn’t been able to kill the Dragoon. “Maybe you were right in the alley. Maybe I shouldn’t let them live.”
Becky shook her head. “No, I was wrong. If you killed those creeps then you wouldn’t be any better than them. You’d be another thug, only with a magic sword.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call Page 20
