What the heck? I had never seen him act like this, and it was weirding me out big time. I checked the window once again. Almost completely dark now and still.
“Black sticks in pregnant gardens,” Darby said. She had picked the book up from the floor and was settling it back on the table, her glasses winking in the overhead light.
“What’s that, Big D?” Cal asked.
“‘To open the Core,’” Darby read, “‘the chosen must chant Three, three, three, the Trinity has bled. Open the gateway between the living and the dead and the earth will tremble three times. Black sticks in pregnant gardens.’” She glanced up at us with her nose scrunched. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Let me see,” I said and raced over. Sure enough, in the last line of a giant block of text, that was all it said.
“That’s it?” Cal asked from over Darby’s other shoulder. “The Core is supposed to be this big, crazy thing, and that’s all this book says about it? What a bunch of—”
I elbowed him in the ribs again to shut him up. “Keep looking, Darby, and let us know if anything else jumps out at you.”
She shook her head, and her blonde ponytail brushed against my arm which was posted on the back of her chair. A shudder rolled through her, and she leaned forward away from me and my arm as if she had felt my touch in the ends of her hair.
Between episodes of binge-reading, she had been acting weird. When she wasn’t turning pages, she’d been itching herself until she’d grimace and then stop. She had stared up into the overhead light until it flickered, sat back in her chair with her eyes closed and her mouth moving on silent words, and I swore I saw her lick one of the pages. Was it the book telling her to do these things? I wasn’t one to judge, having had a fixation with inedible objects myself—lemon sugar body scrub anyone?—so I didn’t ask questions. She needed to spend her time finding answers that would help Leigh, not satisfy my curiosity.
“It only jumped out at me because Elf went nuts,” she said and absently riffled through a stack of Bobby Fever bookmarks next to the book. “This was the page the book opened to.”
I shared a look with Cal, one that asked the question if our lives could get any stranger. The answer was probably a big resounding yes, because hello, this was Krapper, Kansas. He just crossed his arms to hide his shaky hands, something he’d started doing ever since that night at the graveyard when he’d buried Leigh’s mom again and I’d been possessed and Leigh had been buried alive. It was one of the very few things I didn’t pick on him about because we’d all experienced terrors beyond our wildest nightmares.
While Darby nosed the microscopic print in her book, Cal and I stepped back into the kitchen, him to the refrigerator, me to the window above the sink.
What was Leigh doing right then? Had the Sorceresses come to the graveyard yet? Was Leigh winning the battle? I hoped so. Goddesses, I hoped so. But not knowing was the absolute worst.
Darkness took the final slice of sunlight, and I squeezed my eyes shut to will it back again. I tapped my fingers on the edge of the sink in a stupid attempt to speed up time when both Leigh and Mr. B. would be back with us where they belonged. We should’ve at least asked for Mr. B.’s cell number to check up on him.
From this angle, I couldn’t tell if the hawthorn branches and lilac petals still circled our house, but with zero wind, they couldn’t have really gone anywhere. Still, I had to check on them, to do something. This waiting was killing me.
“Cal, I’m just going to open the screen—” I turned and leaped back with a sharp yelp.
Darby stood right behind me, her head bent to examine her wrist.
“You scared me,” I breathed.
I glanced over at Cal who studied us over his shoulder from his stance in front of the open refrigerator, then back to Darby, my heart punching holes into my ribcage. Her reflection hadn’t moved across the window to join mine before she stood behind me, and I know I would’ve seen it if it had. If I didn’t know any better, I would say she teleported from the table to there. My throat suddenly dry as burnt toast, I turned toward the window again, and there stood the reflection of a blonde little girl right behind me.
Okay, so I was stressed out. That inner struggle was real, and it was making me hallucinate. I’d been so intent on seeing movement outside, I just hadn’t seen her. That was all. She was just Darby, kid sister to Leigh who…also happened to be a Trammeler Sorceress.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, my voice wobbling. “Did you hurt yourself?”
She pulled up the sleeve of her shirt and blinked down at her wrist where countless bug bites rose in angry red lumps. “I forgot it.”
Cal shut the refrigerator, eyes narrowed. “Forgot what?”
“My bracelet, the one Leigh gave me this morning. She said to never take it off, and I did because I didn’t want to ruin it because Dad made me take a bath.”
“What bracelet, Big D?” Cal asked.
“She said it would protect me. She said she made it out of hawthorn, and that book talked about hawthorn and reminded me of it,” she said, her voice pitched high. She wrung her hands together, looking from me to Cal, then marched toward the front door. “I need to go get it.”
Cal side-stepped to block her, his hands raised. “Whoa. Not happening.”
“Your dad said you need to stay here,” I said and pushed myself from the sink to stand behind her.
She had powers that could take us both down if she wanted something bad enough. I’d seen those powers firsthand from a couple other Trammeler Sorceresses I never wanted to see again. But Darby was just a little girl and too innocent to ever use dark magic because otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to get past the lilac petals outside. Still, and I never thought I would think this, the littlest Baxton was really starting to creep me out.
“It’s just down the street,” she said, pointing as if we didn’t know where her house was. “I have my key.”
Cal shook his head. “That’s a no go.”
“Darby, why don’t you and I go watch a Before Merlin’s Beard movie, and Cal can take over the reading for a little bit?”
It was a pretty good idea, but she didn’t even turn around to consider it.
She raised her chin in stubborn defiance. “But I need it.”
As soon as she said it, the earth tilted and sent the three of us stumbling to one side of the kitchen. What was this? Some kind of earthquake? But then Darby glanced over her shoulder, her blue eyes filled with fright mixed with a streak of what I could only describe as wickedness that pierced down my spine.
“Are you doing this?” Disbelief muffled my voice to a whisper.
“I think it’s happening,” she said, turning back to Cal.
“What’s happening?” he asked, fingers splayed as if to catch some answers.
“I think the Core is opening. The book said the earth would tremble three times.”
I shook my head. No, the Core couldn’t be opening. It shook once. Darby was wrong. She and the book and everything were wrong, because if the Core was opening, then that meant Leigh…
The earth shivered again as if to hammer the truth into my soul.
I sagged against the counter while a refusal to believe any of it choked from my throat. This couldn’t be happening. Losing my best friend to two undead bitches should be impossible.
Tears brimmed over my eyes when I looked to Cal for some kind of support, but he blurred into nothing more than a colorless blob.
Was Leigh dead then? Had my best friend fought to save the entire world…and lost?
Another wild rumble underneath our feet shook the foundation of the house and knocked a dirty plate from the sink to the floor. It crashed with an explosion of glass, driving us away from it, me toward the dining room table and Cal and Darby closer to the front door.
Three trembles. Three of them. Defeat weighted my entire body, and I had to hold myself up to keep it from dragging me to the floor. She was gone. Leigh was Three, a
nd there was nothing anyone could do about it.
A sob tripped out of my closed throat, and an answering shuddering breath from across the kitchen broke my heart even more. Cal’s face paled as he shook his head again and again.
“I need my bracelet,” Darby said, her voice thick and wavering. “Leigh would want me to get it to protect myself, because if the Core is opening, then that means....”
“She’s gone,” I finished for her.
Cal’s watery gaze snapped to mine, a lethal expression hardening his face into stone, I guessed because I had put into words what he refused to.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, to him, to Leigh, to everyone.
And I knew that if I was sorry, Leigh would be, too. She’d probably fought kicking, screaming, and biting until the very end, and I loved her even more for that. My best friend was gone because One and Ica had been dead set on killing her, on making her one of them, when all Leigh wanted was to be different than everyone else.
Lost inside my own head with grief, I about jumped from my skin when Cal shouted, “Darby!”
The screen door slammed closed, and the loud whine of it opening again brought goosebumps to my skin. He was opening the door. Why was he opening the door when the Core had opened and thousands of escaped magical prisoners would be swarming the city streets in no time?
“No! You stay h—!” I leaped toward him, but the broken plate scattered all over the kitchen floor stabbed into my bare feet. Pain sliced deep. I cried out and slumped against the sink. “Callum!”
His face, paler than I’d ever seen him, appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Darby. She was here and then just…vanished and ran out the door.” He blinked at the broken glass, at the blood puddling underneath my feet. “She’s gone.”
Jo
Cal shot toward the front door again. “I’m going after Darby.”
“Wait!” With shaky hands, I plucked the glass shards from the bottom of my feet. I held back the pained hisses behind tightened lips because this kind of pain was nothing compared to what I felt inside. “I’m going with you.”
“You’re bleeding everywhere,” he shouted. “You’ll just slow me down.”
I pulled the last shard loose and glared at him. “Throw me my sandals.”
“I’m leaving,” he said and banged his fist against the wall on his way out.
“Don’t you dare leave me! You’re all I have left!” I sounded hysterical, and my voice broke into a thousand pieces with great, heaving sobs, but I didn’t care.
All of this threatened to overwhelm me, and the one thing that might just keep me glued together was my older brother. But if he left, I would be all alone to think about Leigh, and I knew that would shatter me from the inside out.
A pair of yellow flip-flops landed at my feet. I brushed the tears from my face to see Cal raking his hands through his hair while he stared up at the ceiling with shiny eyes.
We were both hurting, but there wasn’t time to mourn. I rushed to get the flip-flops on, ignoring the stinging stabs and the blood stickying my feet, and shot toward him.
“Thank you,” I told him.
He took my hand and pulled me to the screen door. “Stay by me no matter what.”
I had no idea what to expect if the Core opened, but I didn’t really expect it to be like this. The night somehow felt oily and dirty, as if something wicked was slipping underneath my skin. It smelled different, too, like a compost heap wafting from an ancient tomb, and goddesses, that was because a tomb had actually opened.
A chill gripped the dark with a frozen stillness that caught our breath and shivered through my bones, and it was the middle of May. But it was the absolute silence that unnerved me, that pulled me forward just as much as Cal’s hand. No crickets chirruping, no wind, no neighborhood dogs barking around the clock if you looked at them wrong, no sign of life. Nothing. This kind of quiet sounded unnatural.
“We need to hurry,” he said because he must’ve felt it, too.
“Cal,” I said, gazing along the length of our house. I gasped and looked the other way toward our garage. All the hawthorn branches, all the lilac petals, everything that was supposed to keep us safe including Leigh, was gone. “Where did it all go?”
“I don’t know.” He swallowed as he searched the front of the house, too. “We’ll worry about it when we get Darby back. Let’s go.”
But there wasn’t any wind to move it, not even a slight breeze to snake the cold farther into our bones. Had someone moved it? Had someone on the wrong side of Leigh been close enough to our house to obliterate any kind of protection? Because that was exactly what we were—unprotected—for however long it had been like that, and we hadn’t even known.
We stuck to the middle of the street since no traffic zipped by. The wounds on my feet stung with every step, as if I had squirted lemon juice onto my flip-flops before we’d left, but I kept up with Cal’s brisk pace anyway.
Halfway to Leigh’s house, dark shadows shifted beyond the streetlight on the corner. Somehow the night grew darker, as if the moon and stars had blinked out. Or as if something was sweeping over us. I lifted my gaze hesitantly, not at all sure I wanted to know what was happening around me, and gasped when a streak of red lightning split the sky in half. Red lightning, like the night had been ripped and bloodied.
A police siren wailed in the distance, and above it, coming from every direction at once, someone shrieked. Not nearby but too close for comfort.
A slow, icy shudder poured down my back. I bit my tongue on half a shaky groan.
Cal sped his pace, his forehead beading with sweat, and locked his hand even tighter around mine. “Just keep going. Don’t stop for any reason.”
Almost there, but darkness filled Leigh’s house. Wouldn’t Darby need a light to see? Then again, if she could vanish into thin air, maybe not. What if she wasn’t even here? Maybe she’d already collected her bracelet and reappeared back at our house. Still, we had to be sure.
Black scorch marks burnt a narrow path across the grass on both sides of the sidewalk leading up to the front door. Like someone had killed it. But the only people I knew who killed living things were dead. Oh, goddesses, had someone dead gone inside with Darby? Someone from the Core?
My heart beat into my throat. Cal and I were just humans; we didn’t have any magic. Without Leigh, I wasn’t so sure we stood a chance at her house, let alone anywhere else.
Wait. No, we did have the lilac petals we’d swallowed earlier, but what if they didn’t work for us? The lilacs on either side of the front porch had electrocuted Leigh with a powerful current, but we weren’t like her, and that could definitely be a problem.
Cal and I raced up to the front door anyway because what else could we do? This was Darby, and Leigh would haunt my dreams with clanking, unrecycled aluminum cans if I let anything happen to her little sister.
The closer we drew to the front porch, the heavier the worry grew inside my gut. So heavy that a sharp pain, followed by a crinkling wrapping paper sound came from deep within my organs. Cal bit back a moan and held to his stomach, but we plowed onward.
This couldn’t be good. Had that been the lilacs we’d eaten? Because call me crazy, but it sure felt like they’d just died inside our stomachs.
Nothing crunched under our feet on the porch, no dead lilac petals or hawthorn branches. I couldn’t see to be absolutely sure, but it appeared like someone had ridded the Baxtons of protection just like us.
As Cal opened the broken screen door, I sank to my knees to run my fingers over the concrete to feel something, anything. My palms grazed dried husks of what used to be lilacs on one side of the porch. Leigh’s mom’s lilacs were dead once again. So someone who had practiced dark magic could enter? Had nearing the dead lilacs caused a sort of reversal of spells and killed the lilacs inside me and Cal?
Totally not fair.
Cal pulled me inside the unlocked house, and the thick darkness choked my lungs. I fumbled for a light switch
on the wall, fighting for a breath, while an awful thought hit me. What if it had been Darby who had ridded both our yards of lilac petals and hawthorn branches and killed the lilacs by the front door because she had done dark magic? There wasn’t any doubt she was powerful enough to do those things, and Leigh herself said she did dark magic, though she didn’t say what exactly, only to learn how to take down One and Ica.
Had Darby learned it from Leigh, or was there really someone else in the house with Darby? A wintry feeling slid up my neck at both scenarios because they both meant we were in way over our heads.
Finally, my fingers found what they were looking for and an overhead light snapped on.
“Darby!” Cal shouted as he closed and locked the door behind us.
I squeezed his hand, a warning that we shouldn’t go into this blindly because I doubted he had puzzled out all the details as quickly as I had.
“Darby!” he called again and dragged me along with him farther into the living room.
“Wait. Cal, listen to—”
He held up a hand for me to shut up while he stopped next to the piano and peered around a wall to the hallway.
“I think she’s down there,” he whispered. “Do you hear that?”
I couldn’t hear a thing over my booming heart, but I leaned in real close so he could hear me. “I think there might be someone else here.”
Even though it could just be Darby, it was still a definite possibility.
His body tensed, and he slowly turned his head. His wide eyes searched mine, his face somehow growing paler than it already was, and he swallowed. And during those brief seconds of silence, I did hear something. The floor creaking farther down the hallway.
I shrank back from the edge of the wall—as far as Cal’s vise-like grip would let me—and glanced back at the front door. Mr. Franklin, my sophomore biology teacher, had talked non-stop about the flight or fight response, and I had never felt that instinct more than I did then. But of course I couldn’t run. Despite my doubts about Darby’s good or bad witch status, there wasn’t a safe place to go anymore.
The Trinity Bleeds (The Grave Winner Book 3) Page 6
