by M. Lathan
Chapter Six
Something touched my arm and woke me up. It was cold, like frozen fingers. I figured I’d imagined it and turned over. Then the icy bones brushed my ear. I popped up in bed, seeing nothing in the dark room.
I tucked my head under the comforter. It met me under there, touching and freezing my cheek. I jumped out of bed and turned on every light in my room.
It was four in the morning, and I was clearly losing my mind.
“I can’t be depressed and psychotic,” I said.
I convinced myself that I only needed a glass of water and a few more hours of sleep to be sane again and to stop imagining things.
But I didn’t imagine the argument floating up the stairs. It grew louder as I rounded the second floor.
“I had no choice,” Emma said.
“There is always a choice!” Sophia yelled. “Show me your hands.” I kept moving to where I could see them and crouched down in the corner. Sophia inspected Emma’s palms intently. She traced the lines there, shaking her head. “Remi is just another Edith. All this partying. I told you I didn’t like her. She’s trouble, just like your sister.”
“She’s not like Edith! She’s not making me do anything. The guy was following her. I think he was a hunter. I didn’t want to lead him here.”
Then I was glad she did whatever she’d done to stop him. If he’d followed her, he could’ve found me and turned me over to the woman who’d bring me back to hell … in the event she didn’t learn the truth about me.
“That is not an excuse to use magic in public, which you have done far too many times.” Emma mumbled an apology as she cried. “I love you, you know that, but I can’t allow you to do things like this. I won’t let you turn into your sister. She refused to listen, and that got her killed. I won’t be able to handle that with you. Tell me everything about tonight.”
“We told you. Remi got into an argument, and the guy wouldn’t let it go. We … handled it in case he was pressing her buttons on purpose.” Sophia groaned and whispered something in another language, I’d guess Spanish. Emma shook in her arms, struggling to free herself. The lights shut off, and the living room filled with hundreds of votive candles, casting shadows everywhere. “Please. I’m sorry,” Emma said. “Wait, Sophie!”
Sophia pushed Emma from her arms and gasped.
“You blinded him and left him there! Suppose he reports that!”
“Remi was shifting in front of him,” Emma cried. “I had to! Don’t kick us out. Please. It was just me. Not Paul or Remi. They didn’t know what I was doing.”
“This is not the Emma I know. You are not hateful!” Sophia’s voice was angry, disappointed, nothing like when she’d told me that after stopping me from killing Sienna and Whitney.
“I won’t ever do it again. I swear,” she cried. “I’m sorry.”
“I can intercept a report if there is one, but you have to be the one to restore his sight,” Sophia said. “And it will require your blood.” Sophia snapped her fingers, and a knife appeared in her other hand.
I stifled the gasp in my throat. I wanted to run now, to hide from the magic and the blood and the eerie glow of the candles. Sophia had never looked more like a witch than she did now. Like the kind of witch I’d always thought I was. The kind of witch she’d said didn’t exist.
Sophia led Emma to the middle of the living room and positioned candles in a circle around her. Emma kneeled in the circle, drying her face, and her cry simmered to a whimper.
“First, you must cleanse,” Sophia said. “Take the darkness out of your heart. Confess what you have done and pledge to live in the light.”
Emma held her hands over the candle in front of her, hovering just above the flame. Her whispers were fast and in French. She looked like she was praying.
The candles blew out all at once. I jumped but made no noise in my chilly hiding spot.
“You have been heard,” Sophia said. The candles ignited again. Sophia gave the knife to Emma. “For the man this child has harmed tonight, she offers this, her blood, as penance for his sight.”
Emma slid the knife over her palm, gasping and wincing, sobbing now. She let her blood drip over the candle. As it hit, a purple, misty vine erupted from it. It danced around her circle, engulfing the flames.
I’d never seen it before, our blood’s reaction over fire, but I’d feared it with everything in me. It wasn’t a myth, not something else the nuns exaggerated. I brought my hand to my chest, feeling my heart trying to escape.
Sophia whispered the same healing spell she’d used on my knee into Emma’s hand. She pulled the weeping girl from her circle and wrapped her arms around her.
“Never again, Emma,” she said. “Next time, I will have no choice but to ask you and your friend to leave.” Something close to a thank you came out with Emma’s sobs. “I’ve warned all of you.” Sophia’s voice shook and she paused, rubbing Emma’s back. “If you bring attention to Christine, you will no longer have my protection. I will have no choice. There will be nothing I can do to save any of you if she is hurt.”
Hurt? And what did this have to do with me?
They disappeared into the kitchen, and the temperature rose in my corner. I had to be imagining the unnaturally cold touches. More evidence of my mental instability. I went upstairs without the water, avoiding the magic and Sophia and the obvious fact that she wasn’t being completely honest with me.
A flick of a lighter made me shake and pause on my stairs. The glow lit Remi’s face at my door. She clicked it off, then on again. She was smiling now. “Enjoy the show?” she whispered, so low I had to strain to hear her. I hunched my shoulders as if she could see me. I hadn’t been alone with her as a person, but she didn’t have any noise around her either. I wished, for a moment, that Sophia didn’t think I hated magic so I could ask how this worked. Why couldn’t I hear them? And how did I pull random information out of the air like Sienna’s phone number? And why did she need a room full of candles to get the truth out of Emma? Why not just read her mind?
At my door, I stepped around Remi and her lighter. She didn’t budge. Choosing to ignore how incredibly creepy she was being, I walked into my room and turned to shut the door.
She stopped it with her foot and jumped back like it had hurt. She grunted and shoved the lighter in my face, bringing her nose to mine.
“I’m only going to say this once,” she whispered. “Nathan is mine. And believe me, I will fight you for him. You won’t stand a chance, especially since you don’t use magic.”
She snarled, closed her lighter, and prowled away like nothing had happened. And I stood there in my doorway, freezing cold, wondering if I’d ever woken up in the first place.
After I tossed and turned in my bed for an hour, I convinced myself that I hadn’t dreamed that. Sophia had really yelled at Emma. Her blood had really fogged the living room with purple smoke, and Remi had really threatened to fight me over Nathan.
Before yesterday, I would’ve wanted to burn her alive for that stunt. And as I recalled that insane moment at my door, a part of me wanted to run down to her room and react the way I should’ve—not mute and restrained. I should’ve at least told her to get the hell out of my face.
And I wondered what Sophia meant about me getting hurt. By Lydia Shaw? Her hunters? And then there was the way that Sophia had treated Emma for doing something less evil than what I had planned for Sienna and Whitney. She hadn’t asked me to cleanse. And as I lay there, the idea of washing my soul clean of all the things that had happened at St. Catalina took over me until I couldn’t think of anything else.
I was still awake when the sun crept through my curtains and Sophia came in to clean. “Good morning, love,” she said. My eyes were open and fixed on the swirling pattern etched in the bedpost.
She sighed, taking in my mood. “What is it?” she asked. “Bad night?” I nodded.
She sat on the bed next to my legs, patting my knee; it felt like a gentle o
rder to talk.
“I heard you with Emma this morning. I saw the cleansing. I heard you threaten her,” I said, barely whispering.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, love. Some things require more intense rituals. I know what you think about magic, and I’m sure that didn’t help.”
“It wasn’t that, Sophia. It was the other thing. The thing you said about me. About putting Emma out if she called attention to me.” She brought her hand to my cheek and sighed. “You made it seem like I could get hurt from that.”
“Honey, I’m sorry you heard that.” She stared at me for a long minute, rubbing my face.
“What aren’t you telling me? Is it because of what I almost did? Would I be in danger of … like … getting my head cut off by a hunter or something?”
“Oh, no, sweetie,” she crooned. “By hurt I meant … upset in any way. I promised you that you would have peace here. I don’t want you worrying about their problems. Emma has issues to deal with. Paul is spoiled and doesn’t think. And I don’t even know what to say about Remi. I want you to be happy, and I worry they will ruin it.”
Oh. I closed my eyes. I’d missed the obvious reason.
She didn’t want me to be upset. She knew what I was like when I was angry. Murderous.
She wanted to protect them from me.
“Sophia,” I said, sitting up in a hurry, ready to spill what I’d ruminated about for hours. “Can you do the cleansing with me? The candles and all of it? Just like you told Emma, I need to live in the light.”
She grabbed my hand and rubbed the back of it with her thumb. I took a deep breath, ready to do magic on purpose. The creepy, intense magic I’d witnessed earlier. She surprised me by chuckling.
“You do not need to cleanse. You haven’t done anything wrong in your entire life,” she said.
“What are you talking about? You saw. That’s why you came.”
She chuckled again. “You almost did something. You don’t have an ounce of darkness in your heart, angel. Your challenge is cheering up. My challenge is making sure that happens. Nothing more.” She pulled at my arms until my head was on the pillow. I felt like a toddler. I wasn’t tired until then. “Just sleep, sweetheart. No more talk about cleansing or magic.”
My eyes fluttered before I could protest.
I slept past noon, but I wasn’t any more rested than I had been before. I wanted to believe Sophia knew me better than I knew myself, but apparently, she couldn’t hear my mind like I couldn’t hear hers. She didn’t know how close I’d come before that moment after the fire alarm. The many times I’d wanted to kill, actually planned it.
She’d missed those sins.
She wouldn’t help me cleanse, but I hadn’t needed her help to do any of the magic I’d done before. I could try it on my own.
She called at one, asking if I’d gotten out of bed and if I’d eaten. I lied about both. I felt bad about it after, and I went downstairs to make a sandwich.
Remi was sitting on the counter, her back to the door, with her phone to her ear. “I know,” she said. “It’s Sophia. She always knows where they are because she tells Emma to stay away. Before we moved here, she’d call a few times a week to tell her where not to party. It’s going to be harder to get Emma to disobey her now, but friends come and go.” She chuckled and turned around. She smiled and winked her ice-blue eye at me. “I have a new friend. He’s much better looking and doesn’t have an annoying accent. I’ll call you back.”
I walked into the kitchen like I hadn’t been eavesdropping. I made my sandwich in silence. I could feel her eyes on me. She didn’t mention last night, and I really wanted to forget about it, so I definitely wasn’t bringing it up.
“Hi, Nathan,” Remi said. I hadn’t heard him come in. He waved to her.
“Hey, sleepy head,” he said to me. “Did I keep you up too late?” I shook my head, smiling already. “I had to do yard work today. It was fun. You missed it.”
He pointed at the bread, and I slid it to him. He held out his hand. Assuming he wanted the peanut butter I’d left open, I pushed the jar to him, and he smiled; I’d guessed right.
“You really did miss out on a treat. He was shirtless and flaunting his sexy abs,” Remi said. I hummed awkwardly, like my tongue had deleted what was sure to be something embarrassing and had only left the sound. Nathan laughed and hummed too, copying me and making the moment less awkward.
“Did that bother you, Leah? Me talking about Nathan’s body?”
I smeared jelly on my bread, still void of words. Then I realized my silence could be interpreted as a yes or a no.
“It bothered me,” he said, before I could choose which one I wanted it to be.
Remi chuckled, and Nathan hunched his shoulders like he didn’t get why she was laughing.
“Okay, kids. I’ll leave you alone,” Remi said. “Don’t forget our lesson at three, hottie. Come without a shirt.” Remi laughed, jumped from the counter, and left the kitchen.
“She likes you,” I whispered, completely downplaying how Remi must feel about him—strong enough to threaten me.
“I doubt that. This morning, she told me she hoped I died before three so we didn’t have to have a lesson.” He twirled his fingers around his temples and crossed his eyes, calling her crazy. I didn’t laugh or smile. I was the last person who could criticize someone’s sanity.
“She said … okay, if I tell you something, will you not mention it?” I asked. He nodded on his way to the fridge. He held out a can of soda to me, asking me if I wanted it with his eyes. “Thanks. And … Remi.” I cleared my throat. “She told me that you’re hers.”
“What? Gross!” I chewed on my lip to stop myself from smiling and showing how pleased I was that he didn’t agree with her. “She called me a mutt about fifty times yesterday, told me I was a jackass to like being a shifter, and suggested that I should play in traffic. I’m not her anything.”
He nodded towards the door with the sodas in his hand. I grabbed our plates, loving that my friend wasn’t Remi’s anything, in his mind anyway.
We took our lunch by the pool. I tried not to watch him as we ate, but that was impossible. He was unnecessarily beautiful. He could get a girl with his muscles or how nice he was, but no … he had to have a flawless face as well. Complete overkill.
“Why isn’t your fur black like your hair?” I asked, when he caught me staring. I’d really been looking at the sharp lines of his jaw, not thinking about his fur at all.
He mumbled something with his mouth full that I couldn’t understand, then swallowed.
“At first, I thought it was because of my skin, but I don’t really know. It’s the first thing that changes when I shift. I can do it for you … like just change my hair.” My eyes widened, excited. He smiled and bowed his head. His shoulders shook slightly and his hair turned as white as Sophia’s. He tousled his white locks with his hands, looking enchanting and slightly goofy. I squealed as the white drained from his hair, leaving it black again, amazed at his magic but still afraid of mine.
“That’s really cool. And that, too,” I said, pointing at his toes. It decided to actually be winter in New Orleans today, but he was barefoot and not shivering like me. “You’re not cold?” I asked.
“It has to be snowing for me to be cold. Blizzard style. That came in handy as a homeless guy.” I huffed and pouted. I’d thought my life was hard. At least I’d always had a roof over my head. “Christine, I am going to push you in the pool if you don’t stop pitying me.”
“I’m sorry, but you’re my friend. I can’t help that I care about you.” I wanted to push myself in after I realized what I’d said. “I’m sorry. That was so creepy. I just met you. I have zero social skills.”
He chuckled and snatched the last piece of PB&J from my plate. He tossed it in his mouth and winked at me. “Who needs social skills?” I laughed. He really had a way of making me feel comfortable and normal. “And I care about you, too. That’s why I don’t
want you to be sad because of me. No more pity?”
“No more pity,” I agreed.
We sat in silence for a while. It wasn’t weird. His eyes were on the pool, but his mind seemed to have floated somewhere else. I was wrapped up in how different lunch was from a few days ago. I wasn’t alone, wasn’t hiding from Sienna or crosses. Or suffocating in the silence of the courtyard.
My teeth chattered, and he stood on his bare feet and reached for my hand. As he pulled me up, I closed my eyes, allowing myself to enjoy the feel of his warm, soft skin for the quickest moment. I was tempted to follow him around all day so I didn’t have to think about the cleansing, but I had work to do and he had a nap to take.
“Later, Chris.”
“Chris?” I said, halfway up my stairs.
“Just something I’m trying out,” he said, chuckling.
I smiled big, glad he couldn’t see me. “Okay … Nate.”
“I like that,” he said, just before I heard his door close.
His face and my new nickname distracted me as I did my mandatory schoolwork. Most of what I read during the four hours would have to be redone tomorrow.
“Tomorrow,” I whispered with hope. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, feeling the dull ache in my muscles that had always been there, a pain I’d thought I deserved to have, a trait I’d thought I couldn’t change. “Things will be easier. I’ll live in the light with my friend.”
I didn’t know why I was shivering. It was only words over candles, a pledge to be better. Like the millions of prayers I’d sent up to heaven. But I wanted to do something more, in case magic was out of His jurisdiction.
The only kink in my plan would be if Sophia popped in and tried to convince me that I didn’t need to cleanse. So I called her so I’d know when to expect her home.
The phone rang three times then noise cut in from the other end—laughing and music.
“Hey. It’s Paul,” he said.
“Oh. Is Sophia here?”
The music flared in my ear, so loud I should’ve heard it from my room. “Uh … no. We’re at my parents’ house. My brother is having a thing. Hold on, I’ll get Nana for you.” Paul must have walked through a crowd. He stopped and greeted several people who thought he should cut his hair. Then I heard Sophia’s laugh, a graceful sound despite the phlegm, and what sounded like something sizzling on a stove. “Phone. It’s the only number you told me to answer.”
The only number she wanted to answer was mine? Strange.
“Hello, dear-heart,” she sang, the phone ruffling against something, maybe her head.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt. I thought you were at work,” I said.
“No, love. My grandson made partner and he asked me to make his celebratory dinner.”
I waited until the laughter died down in the background to speak. “Partner?”
“At his firm. He’s a lawyer.” A wizard lawyer? God did I have the wrong idea about life. Someone snatched Sophia’s attention from me. She instructed them on how to measure the perfect rice to water ratio with the lines on their finger. “Sweetheart, you there?”
“Yeah. I just wanted to know when you were coming home. No rush.”
Please, don’t rush.
“I’ll be there soon. I’m only starting the meal and his mother can finish. I would have invited you, but ... you understand, don’t you?” I um-hummed, completely understanding. A family gathering wasn’t the best place for her kidnapping victim. “I’ll be there to make you dinner. I was thinking meatloaf.”
“You’re missing the party?”
One of her daughters yelled, “Mom, Dad wants a cupcake.”
“Tell him the cupcakes just—sweetie, one moment—Amelia, tell him the cupcakes just came out of the oven, and he’ll have to wait. Sweetie, still there?”
Before I could answer, Amelia asked her another string of questions. It seemed liked her husband was back from being “away” like she’d told me. Maybe I’d be meeting him soon.
“That must be Emma,” her daughter, or another woman demanding her attention, said. “You have on your Emma voice.”
“Emma is here, Amelia. This is another of my friends. Paul! Paul! Go find where Emma’s hiding. See if she’s in a better mood.” And that was my cue. The house was empty of at least the three of them and could be for a while. And the hair on my arms rested flat against my skin.
“Sophia, I can get my own dinner. I’ll eat and go right to bed anyway. Please stay there. Will you? I don’t want to pull you away from your family.”
It wasn’t a total lie. It took another minute and some really convincing yawns to persuade her to stay at the party. Which shouldn’t have been a hard decision, considering it was for her grandson and she’d only met me a few days ago.
Did giving her ten thousand dollars make me the queen of the universe? Or was Sophia just nice? Maybe she just liked me. But I didn’t like me very much, and I was about to fix that.
I checked the locks on my door and filled my arms with the ten candles by my bed.
I placed them in a circle on the wood floor in the sitting room. I sat in the center like Emma had. I didn’t bother looking for matches or trying a spell. I imagined fire moving around me, igniting the wicks, and it did. It swirled around the circle, catching on each candle, before fizzling out.
“Um … I want to take the darkness from my heart and pledge to live in the light,” I whispered, feeling odd.
I held my hands over the two closest candles, close enough to feel the warmth of the flame. I imagined Emma had thought about what she’d done to the hunter at this point, so I dredged up my sins to confess them, starting with the worst of them.
“I want to be cleansed for every time I’ve wanted to kill Sienna Martin. Burn her hair, break her bones. Whitney, too.” I paused, thinking of a particularly shameful one. “The time I wanted to possess Whitney and have her stab Sienna for me.” My lips trembled, thinking of a darker moment. “When I wanted to barricade the gym with all the students inside and hear them being tortured.”
I ran through as many evil desires as I could remember. Minor ones. Dramatic ones. Ones directed at one person. Ones intended for mass destruction. Ones intended for myself.
When I found myself apologizing for things so minor I wouldn’t be too embarrassed to say out loud, I waited for the candles to shut off. To tell me I’d been heard. To tell me the darkness was gone.
Nothing happened. Minutes passed, and I was still sitting in the middle of a lit circle after confessing every stain I had on the soul I’d just learned about.
Maybe it was too much to be forgiven for. Maybe I was doing it wrong. Or maybe it required my blood like I’d seen this morning.
I didn’t want to move and disturb the circle, so I opened my hand in front of me and said, “Knife.” A small one, identical to the one I’d used to chop vegetables for the soup, appeared as easily as fire did.
I pressed it against my thumb. It burned, not just across my skin, everywhere. In my chest the most.
The blood dripped from the wound, warm with magic. My heart stammered in the dead silence of the room, and the stream hit the fire.
Nothing happened. Orange light just flickered on the cream candle as drops of red pooled around the wick.
Where was the purple mist? Where was the magic?
I forgot about the cleansing then. Fire was the ultimate test of magical blood. I’d seen it with my own eyes. Emma’s blood had flooded her circle with purple smoke that sung of what she was. What we were.
But my blood … did nothing.
The knife shook in my hand as I cut into my middle finger, deeper this time. The blood rushed out fast and thick as I prayed for it to change the fire. Praying to be what I knew I was. What I’d thought I was.
Still nothing. No magic. I tried every candle in the circle, filling in the spaces with my blood, like a twisted game of connect the dots.
“What the—”
Knocks on
my door startled me and cut me off.
“Chris,” Nathan said. “It’s me.” I just sat there with my bleeding hand leaking on the floor. “Uh … I can come back if you’re busy. I probably should’ve called first.”
His tone struck me. He sounded wounded, like little Nathan would’ve in the house with his parents. His first friend should never make him feel that way. Unwanted, like a pest.
“Wait,” I said. “It’s um…” I looked at the gory scene around me, unable to find the words to describe it.
“Are you okay? Let me in.” I blew out the candles, like that was the only weird thing happening in the room.
I opened the door. I didn’t feel the knife in my hand until his eyes moved from mine to it. And my blood, my wrong, confusing blood, dripped from the knob and splattered all over the floor.
“Jesus! Are you okay?”
I just stood there, staring at my friend, feeling him slip away as he saw how insane I was. How would I say goodbye to him? With words? A bloody hug?
He stepped into my room and closed the door behind him. He looked over my shoulder and groaned.
“Chris, can I have the knife, please?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. He slipped the knife out of my hand without taking his eyes from mine. “Thank you. Is your bathroom through there?” he asked, pointing to the arched doorway.
I nodded, and he took my healthy hand and walked me there. He sniffed the soap on the counter and shook his head. He did the same to the bars by the tub and in the shower as I bled into the sink.
“This one will sting the least,” he said, holding up the white bar from the tub. I winced when the water hit the cuts. He did, too, holding my hands like they were fragile. Looking at me like I was too. He lathered both of my hands, blood still gushing from the second cut. “I’m going to have to squeeze this one.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
He held it between two fingers, testing it. The third time, no blood gurgled from the wound.
“Do you know any healing spells?” he asked.
“I don’t use magic,” I said. I meant, I don’t think I have magic to use. His big green eyes said what his mouth didn’t. It sure looks like you were using magic in there. “I was trying to recreate something I saw Sophia and Emma do this morning. It involved blood and fire.”
He opened his hand and held his pinky close to my eyes. A pink scar stretched from the tip to the middle. “I was tested with a group. Colors swirled everywhere. Like a rainbow. Just a few drops of my blood filled the room with royal blue smoke.”
Why didn’t my blood do that? “Everyone had a color?” I asked.
“Yep. I was blue. The wolves were green. The witch was purple. They even tested the obvious ones. A bite-sized pixie fogged the whole room with yellow.”
I knew what the colors meant. The nuns had taught us, for what that was worth, about each of them. I was supposed to be purple. I didn’t change forms, I looked human, and I made weird things happen. Witch. The perfect example of a witch. Other than that I’d never used a spell or potion or snapped like Sophia and Emma did.
Which seemed like a monumental problem in the wake of the blood test.
“Was it so shocking that you wanted to see it twice … with a different cut?”
“Definitely shocking,” I whispered, my head cloudy with what all this meant, my sanity dissolving even more. I wanted to try another finger, just not with him here.
“I can close this up for you. Warning … it’s weird. I’ll have to lick your hand,” he said, smiling now.
It was the wrong time to let him in. I should’ve told him I needed a minute so I could sort through this on my own. Then he raised my hand to his mouth, and I didn’t think that anymore.
He started with the little cut on my thumb with the lightest touch of his tongue against the broken skin. It burned, everywhere except the cut, in the best of ways.
“It works for me,” he mumbled over my finger. “Hopefully for you, too.”
He pulled my finger from his mouth, and the skin was closed, but not as precisely as Sophia would’ve done it. It was still red and swollen and would probably scar.
The second finger took longer. I didn’t mind it. His mouth was warm, and I could feel the ridges of his perfect teeth against my skin. I had to think of how tragic this moment was to keep my finger still and my eyes off of his lips.
I could not be human. It would make me even more insane. A complete psychopath.
But I hadn’t imagined having powers. Even tonight I’d willed the knife to appear. The fire to light the candles. What was I, if not a witch?
“I heard them, too,” he said, dropping my hand. He pulled my toothbrush from the cup and laid it on the counter. He filled the cup with water, and I followed behind him as he splashed it on my blood trail. “Paul told me that Remi was shifting in front of a human, and they think the guy was a hunter since he’d been staring at them all night. They all have a habit of staring. He said Emma was freaking out and he wanted to get her home after she blinded him, so he did the spell without thinking and left the guy right there in the alley.”
He ran back into the bathroom and came back with a towel. As he dabbed up my blood, I thought about the times I’d moved without walking. It was immediate. I’d wanted to be somewhere else, and I’d landed there. No spells. No talking. Just an accidental thought.
“Emma was trying to help … but her idea of help sort of sucked. I don’t think he saw it coming.” He snickered at the pun.
I finally took the towel from him when it dawned on me that he’d mostly cleaned my mess. He’d gotten most of the blood out of the carpet, but I took another pass at it.
I gathered the candles, washed them off, then tried to get as much blood out of the towel as I could. Luckily, he’d chosen a navy one for the cleanup. I rinsed the blood from the knife and buried it deep in my drawer, under my combs and brushes.
Nathan was sitting on the edge of my bed when I finished.
“From my room, it sounded like she made her do a cleansing,” he said. “Why would you want to recreate that?” I glared at the damage I’d done to myself in an attempt to cleanse magic I probably didn’t have. What were the chances of there being some magical blood that could pass the test? I felt very sure that the answer was zero percent. “Does it have anything to do with why Sophia took you? Did you do something?”
“Yeah, I wanted to hurt these girls at my school, but I didn’t,” I said. “I wanted to do the cleansing because I thought it would help me not want to do that again. Like … fix my magic.” I shook my head. Magic. God, if I had magic, I would’ve just seen it. “I don’t even know anymore, Nate.” The pressure in my chest tilted me forward, and I buried my head between my knees.
He rubbed my back, warming me. If I was going to have a proper sulking session, he’d have to leave or at least stop touching me.
“It’s amazing how much we have in common, besides the fact that I turn into a dog at some point during most days.” He laughed, and I surprised myself by chuckling. Nothing should be funny right now. “I also had to figure myself out and get over stuff. Like what living in the house with John and Theresa was like.”
I sat up, and like I’d done it every day of my life so far, I leaned against his shoulder. For him and for me. I needed to lie on something, and I wanted to erase the sadness in his voice. He lifted his arm and drew me closer into his nook. I felt so tiny next to him. I leaned into him, so confused I could scream.
“I was sort of bored downstairs. Is it cool if I stay for a while?” he asked. I nodded and forced my body away from his. He pulled me up from the bed, and I trapped the meltdown over the complete and utter collapse of everything I knew about myself inside of me, saving it for later. “We have the house to ourselves. Paul and Emma went to his parents’ house, and Remi is probably somewhere drowning kittens.” I laughed, the exact opposite of what I should be doing. “I came here to laugh about your little robot they’re showing
on the news.” He chuckled, and I groaned. That was even more embarrassing than the yearbook picture. I was mortified until he put his arm around my shoulder. “We don’t have to watch the news, but since you own this huge TV, we should watch something.”
I corrected him on our way to the sofa, telling him that it was more of a rental, and that sparked his interest in how much I’d paid Sophia. When I told him, he gawked and mouthed, “Wow.” Ten minutes into a crime show, he said, “That’s right. You’re a high caliber, rich orphan.”
I nodded, conveniently leaving out how rich. For some reason, I was ashamed of the money. Like since he’d lived on the streets and I’d inherited millions, it would make us incompatible.
My heart sank. That might not be the only reason we were incompatible now. I couldn’t be his friend if I wasn’t a witch. But I had to be a witch. I had powers.
That thought spun in my head, looping and twirling, until everything stopped, like I’d run out of thread and the empty spool had the answer.
Human agents and hunters have powers. He’d told me that last night, but I couldn’t be one of them without knowing it, right?
“Nate…”
“Yes?” He dragged out the word, still looking at the screen. The handsome detective was close to solving the murder, at least the music hinted at that.
“What kinds of powers do those agents and hunters have?” I asked.
He hummed like he was thinking about his answer. “They can do all sorts of things. The first time I was captured, I was in Los Angeles. I’m from there. It was raining that night, and I snuck into a fast food place on four legs and got on two in the empty kitchen. For some reason, I thought it was a great idea to take a to-go bag.” He laughed and smacked his forehead. “So I’m trotting along with this bag of human food like an ass, and this woman in all black touches me. In a second, we were out of the rain and somewhere else. She didn’t say a word.”
I slammed my eyes shut. It sounded a lot like what I could do.
“And not just another place, a different climate. Different region. It was so hot. And she was so skinny but lifted me up with no problem.”
“Wow,” I said. He was huge as a dog. On his hind legs, I wasn’t much taller than him. I’d say he was a wolf, but his face was less wild, and his fur looked well-groomed and clean like he belonged inside.
“Then she slapped a leash on me. I didn’t see or smell the leather in her hands before. And she opened the cage but wasn’t close enough to do it with her hands. She flung me inside, but I didn’t feel her touching me. It was … the scariest thing I’d ever seen. Freaks! Human freaks!”
Was I one of them?
Nathan’s stomach growled and reminded me I was hungry too. We went into the kitchen, and he volunteered to make dinner. That consisted of him boiling water for spaghetti noodles and heating up sauce out of a jar.
“Her name was Kelly,” he said. “The woman.” We’d been talking about what to eat for dinner since we’d left the room, but I was hoping he would bring her up again. “Her brother’s name was Oliver.”
I brought two plates to the stove. His pot splattered hot spaghetti sauce all over it. I reached around his back to turn down the burner, resisting the urge to touch him. Or maybe I should’ve just been bold and felt his muscles. If I were human, I’d lose him soon anyway. And Sophia, this house, everything I’d gotten since the fire alarm.
“They told me their names, so I would tell them mine once they’d forced me to shift.”
“How’d they do that?”
“Cold water. It doesn’t bother me anymore. I know how to control myself now.” He piled clumps of noodles on the plates. He hadn’t stirred them enough, I guessed. He didn’t bother with a spoon for the sauce. He tilted the pot over the plate until the noodle clumps were covered. “Anyway, they seemed pissed that they couldn’t figure out my name. They knew everyone’s but mine. That’s how I found out the worst thing about them. They’re … psychic.”
I stuttered for a second while he looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Psychics don’t exist,” I said. “It’s just something witches made up when they were coming out of hiding to get humans to trust them and seem useful.”
“That’s the oddest thing I’ve ever heard, Chris. Their powers are from their brains. I don’t really know how it works, but they read minds and manipulate things with their thoughts. You’d need a spell or something for that. You know that. Witches aren’t psychic.” The plates slipped out of my hand, but he managed to put the pot down and catch them before they fell. It was quiet for a moment. “Let me guess, nuns told you witches could read your mind, right?” I nodded, still in shock. He laughed. “And you believed them even though you couldn’t do it?”
I couldn’t answer, and he chuckled again. He took our nearly shattered plates to the patio. As we ate the surprisingly tasty spaghetti, Nathan volunteered to school me in Agent and Hunter 101.
“Agents work for the government. Really, they work for Lydia Shaw and she works for the … I don’t know … maybe the U.N. or something big. Hunters are more freelance, but they both have powers,” he said. “It’s like they can just do things with their minds. Lift you. Move things. And they just know things about you. Kelly had to call Oliver in for me. She said he was stronger. She said he could hear every thought that goes through my head, but he couldn’t. Just me, though. He could totally hear everyone else.”
I wanted to face plant into my dinner. I could hear thoughts and no one else here could. And I couldn’t hear Nathan’s, just like Oliver and Kelly. I was psychic like hunters and agents, and from the disgust in his voice, my first friend hated hunters and feared agents. With good reason.
“So do these people sign up with the government and show them their powers to become one of them?” I asked.
“No. Humans don’t know the truth about Lydia Shaw and people like her. The government thinks they use special weapons. Silver bullets and coated arrows and stuff. They go through this secret training to expand their minds or whatever. They’re normal people before that. Oliver sat in front of my cage for an hour trying to figure me out, saying he hadn’t felt that powerless in years. I went ahead and told him everything he wanted to know so he’d leave … since I was completely naked.”
He held his hands over his chest like he had boobs to cover. We both laughed. How did he do that? Manage to calm me down and make me forget to be upset? My entire life had been a lie—a lie I’d told myself—but I was laughing over dinner with Nate.
“Anyway. Oliver told me he trained for ten years for his powers and he’d never had more trouble cracking someone.”
Ten years? Finally something that didn’t fit.
“So none of them were born that way? Like didn’t go through the training?” I asked, my voice soft, timid.
He looked up, considering my question. “Well, yeah. Some.” I concentrated on my breaths, keeping them even and slow, so I wouldn’t pass out. “After two days, Kelly and Oliver brought me back to L.A. because I wouldn’t make them any money. They said I was a harmless boy that was sometimes a harmless dog and the agents would never detain me. I was living behind a store, and this shifter, a wolf who thought he was better than me, mentioned he’d come across this really awful hunter once.”
He leaned back in his chair and sighed. I slipped my shaking hands under my thighs to hide them.
“You remember when we were talking about them before and stopped?” he asked. I nodded fast, near cardiac arrest. “It’s because some hunters are terrible. I didn’t want to scare you. This hunter that the wolf described seemed like the worst it can get. He said he was into breeding these things called copies. Women hunters can pass their psychic powers to their babies if they use their powers when they’re pregnant.”
I grabbed two handfuls of thigh, pinching my skin so that I wouldn’t fly up from the chair.
“How?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t really know how to explain it. It�
�s not like our powers. Not passed through blood, generations of magic. It’s like the powers they have, the psychic stuff, affects the kid. Like drinking and smoking and drugs. The baby comes out weird.”
“What do you mean, it comes out weird?” I whispered.
“Like craving hunter things. They don’t act like normal kids. They want what they were made to want. They want to kill. The wolf said they act exactly like the hunter moms in every way. How they talk, walk. Like an imprint. Not its own person.”
He pretended to gag up his food while I thought of my mother—who so obviously passed me her powers—hunting creatures with a big, round belly.
My mind floated back to the say-no-to-drugs assembly we were mandated to attend a few years ago. The nuns showed us horrible pictures of babies affected by drugs and alcohol in an attempt to scare us away from ever forming the habit.
I looked down at my arms, then my legs, suddenly feeling like I belonged in an incubator.
“But they’re human?” I asked.
“Technically, yes, but they’re not what we think of as human. Ones with families. Innocent and powerless. They are born evil because they can only act like the mother. Do the math, a vicious hunter makes an imprint of herself. What does she get? Another vicious hunter, without waiting years to train it. After humans won the war, they would send copies out to patrol the streets to find us. They were useful, I guess, until the treaty forced hunters to stop slaughtering us. Now it’s just a few of them left, I hear. They live alone in little cells when they’re not out doing something awful. They don’t talk much. They don’t enjoy things. Well, maybe killing our kind, since that’s what they’re made for. Besides that, they have no personalities because the mothers didn’t give them one. I heard the powers … like … wipe their brains clean and they can only pick up what they experience in—what’s it called—utero?”
I nodded. “Utero, yeah,” I mumbled.
“Utero is a weird word,” he said, chuckling as I strained myself against the chair. I was close to falling out of it.
I wasn’t depressed. I was a copy, bred to hunt and kill magical kind. Not to smile and laugh and be normal. I was never meant to do those things. My heart fluttered, and he rubbed my shoulder, like he could hear every nervous beat. “So hunters do this. Not agents?” I asked, just to fill the silence.
“Agents follow the rules. Most hunters, too. It’s just the awful ones who don’t care that it’s a major offense to make a copy. Very illegal. Violates the treaty on their part.”
My skin crawled, so vivid and real I expected to see it moving. I started to feel wrong in my chair, like I shouldn’t be here, like my birth was a terrible mistake. An illegal one.
“So what would Lydia Shaw think of a copy?” I asked.
“Probably what everyone thinks. They’re too dangerous to exist. The wolf said they kill without thinking, in the most vicious and savage ways. I’m talking … breaking your neck with a look or burning your house down with a thought. And they’re faster than hunters, meaner, too. But don’t worry, we’re targets for hunters who need to make money, and they don’t ever have copies. They’re afraid of them, too. Odds are, you’ll never meet one of those dangerous, psychic monsters.”
I was a dangerous, psychic monster. An awful thing that shouldn’t exist, like I’d always thought I was. Just without having magic. I didn’t suspect that I was a copy. It felt like complete and utter truth, a suffocating reality that hovered around me for the hour I sat with Nathan on the patio.
I hooked my arm around him on the second floor to say goodnight, ready to fall apart alone in my room.
“Oh,” he said, like he wasn’t expecting the hug. “Okay … goodnight.”
I heard the disappointment in his voice. For some reason, his mind was closed off to my creepy, inborn psychic abilities, but I knew him well now. He wasn’t ready to go to bed.
“You want to come hang out for a while?” I asked, regretting it immediately. I didn’t think I could hold it together much longer.
Then he smiled, and I knew I’d endure however many hours of gripping tension in my chest to see his face this way. Eager to be with me, even if only as friends.
I let him control the remote, and he thankfully bypassed the news and settled on cartoons.
I nestled in my corner of the sofa and braced a pillow against my chest. For endless minutes, it was the only thing holding me together. Pressing the meltdown further inside of me would only make things worse for later, but I had to do this for him. And every time he laughed at the talking dog, the hurt from the night subsided a little.
I fixed my eyes on the red dot next to the power button on the TV. I’d always had a habit of staring like the hunters. Just like my hunter parents who bred me. Whitney was so gracious to bring it to my attention when we were thirteen.
She was screaming at me in our room after a disastrous dinner in the cafeteria. Sienna had managed to find a new low—she’d stolen the orange from my tray. This time, she wasn’t trying to cause a scene, just a little chuckle before leaving the cafeteria, but the moment her hand touched the only thing in the world that could make me feel something, I screamed to the top of my lungs.
Sienna threw the orange at my feet, laughing so hard she cried, and I scrambled after it like a puppy. So, I’d been listening to how much I’d embarrassed Whitney and had ruined her life yet again for forty-five minutes while discretely sniffing the ends of my fingers, letting that scent pull me away and touch something in the middle of my dead heart, something calm and, in a way, too painful to explore.
“Stop that!” she’d said.
“Stop what?”
“That. What are you staring at? Your fingers? The floor? You always do that. I risk so much being around you. The least you could do is look at me when I’m talking. Take your eyes off of nothing for one damn minute!”
Then she started up again, going on and on about how I’d ruined any chance of her being in Sienna’s group as the citrus scent dulled from my finger tips.
I never congratulated Whitney for getting what she wanted, and I never figured out why oranges made me feel like I’d found something I’d lost a long time ago.
“Did you hear me, Chris?” Nate asked. It didn’t sound like it was the first thing he’d said. And the volume was muted. When did that happen?
“Huh?”
“I asked if you wanted me to leave. I should’ve let you deal with whatever was upsetting you instead of trying to distract you all night. I’m sorry. I’m just new at this.”
I uncurled myself out of the ball I was in and grabbed his hand. “No. Thanks for cleaning and cooking for me. You’re amazing. Best friend ever.”
That’s when the fact that a human and a shifter couldn’t be friends by law crushed me. He looked down at our hands and lifted one corner of his mouth. That’s when I realized I couldn’t let go.
“I’m trying,” he said. “Probably a little too hard.” I shook my head, smiling at him. It faded suddenly as the heartache flared again. “If that pillow isn’t working, I have two arms over here.”
He held them open, and I just stared at him, in complete shock. He wanted to hold me, and I’d never been held. Not like that, not more than a hug. “You wouldn’t mind?” I asked. He pulled me with no effort at all and cradled me in his lap. I wrapped my arms around him, sinking deeper into his chest, getting lost in the airy smell of his skin.
“Is it about the cleansing I walked in on?” he asked. I nodded in the groove of his neck. “I’m sorry it upset you so much.” He tightened his arms around me, rocking us slightly.
I wished the cleansing had a chance of working for me. I’d always thought magical kind were the worst things out there, and I’d hated myself for being one, but in the same hour I’d found no magic in my blood, I learned that I was something worse, something bred.
Every flash out I’d ever had made sense now. And I had the audacity to lie in the arms of someone my parents would’ve w
anted me to cage and probably kill for maybe no other reason than being what he was. But I still couldn’t let go.
I squeezed him tighter every time I thought of a time I’d wanted to kill, how I knew I could do it even though I’d never gone through with it, and how hurting people felt as natural as blinking. My parents gave me more than fifty-two million dollars. They were awful and had made me that way, too.
That was why they’d hidden me at a human school. They were human. I was human, the worst kind of human.
“You probably don’t need to cleanse. I wouldn’t be able to be this close to you if you were evil,” Nathan said. “I’d smell it on you.”
I leaned back to see his face. “What?”
“When I need to be cautious of people, they smell weird to me. It’s a dog thing. Or maybe a shifter thing,” he said. “It makes me an excellent judge of character.” I felt my eyebrows draw together and my face scrunch. “Seriously! Okay, Sophia, you think she’s sweet, right?” I nodded. “You’d be right. She smells sweet. Like pure sugar. Paul too, just under a layer of smoke.” He laughed and I giggled, like a real, girly giggle. How human teenager of me. “Emma smells like them, just faintly, powdery. And Remi smells like she acts. Sour. Like milk before it’s rancid.”
“Gross.”
“You’re telling me. I have to smell that for three hours a day! She needs to change her attitude or something, or I’m going to start walking around with air freshener.”
I laughed and leaned back into him. He’d done it again, managed to make me forget about my awful life.
“And me?” I asked.
He pulled my left arm from his side. He held my wrist to his nose and inhaled. “Sweet, but not like the rest of them.” I rolled my eyes. Of course I didn’t smell like them. “Not just like sugar. You smell more specific than that. Like cake batter. And …” He paused, taking another whiff. I tried and failed to suppress a shudder. “Spice. Like something spicy was dumped in the batter.”
“That sounds disgusting,” I said.
“The opposite, actually. Best thing I’ve ever smelled.” I knew I’d imagined the coarseness in his voice. It didn’t matter if it was real or fake. It stunned me either way. “That’s why I wanted to be your friend. You smell better than everyone here. And the belly rub … obviously.” He laughed, but I couldn’t. I was somewhere between wanting to scream about being a copy and wanting my first friend to give me my first kiss.
Nathan grabbed my shoulders and pulled me away from his chest.
“Do you feel better?” he asked. I nodded, not entirely truth or lie. He smiled, a heart shattering smile, and pressed his lips lightly, friendly, against my cheek.
Three different cartoons came and went as I lay in the arms of my friend who’d kissed me. I didn’t want him to fear me, so I didn’t mention the blood test. I didn’t even know how to start that conversation.
I will hate the time 10:45 for the rest of my life—when he saw me dozing off on his chest and said goodnight.
I stood at the door after locking it, wishing it were depression that was about to crush me. I’d been naïve to think it would be that simple. Like the problem I’d had my entire life could be explained by a survey.
I closed my eyes and saw myself in the playroom in my dorm. I must have been around four. Sister Constantine, a tall and stocky woman, had just brushed my hair into pigtails and switched my shoes to the correct foot.
“Leah, are you going to be friendly today like I asked?” I nodded, lying at an early age. She pointed to Sienna, Esther at the time. She was jumping around a circle of girls, about to choose her goose. “Just do that. Just do something other than sit in the corner today.”
I didn’t. As soon as she’d walked way, I bypassed the game and colored in a quiet corner until playtime was over. And I did that every day, drawing in silence, only moving when Whitney would annoy me enough that I’d get up and push her on the swing or be the body on the other side of a checker board. I’d thought I was just quiet until the savage side of me emerged.
It wasn’t magic. It was something that seemed far worse.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, crawling in bed. I let the pain crush me, grind me into nothing against the sheets. I felt powerless against it. Like it didn’t matter how hard I tried, how many positive things I’d say to myself. Nothing would work. Nothing would change me.
When my phone beeped in the sitting room, I wanted to ignore it, but since there was a chance it could be my friend, I slunk out of bed to get it.
It was. I opened his message, tears still pouring from my eyes. His face popped up on the screen, eyes crossed with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. I laughed at his silly face, wishing he were here in person.
Another message popped up as I stared at the screen.
Success!
He could hear me laughing, crying too. I replied, Am I a loud crier or are your ears just great?
It’s the ears. I can’t usually hear in your room, though. It’s because we’re still alone in the house, no other noise. And I’m right under you. I kneeled down, wiping my face, and knocked on the floor. My phone beeped a moment later. Who’s there?
I laughed again. I didn’t have any knock-knock jokes cued up, so I lowered my face to the floor and said, “Thanks, Nate. You’re a really good friend.”
So are you, he replied.
He was right. I was his friend. I cared about him. I enjoyed him. I fit the description of a copy before I came here. Now … after trying, I was changing. Out of the bed and from under the murky cloud hanging over it, I could see how I’d made myself do things I’d never done before. Things Leah would have never done at St. Catalina.
This couldn’t be all there was to my life—an evil psychic who mistook herself for a witch. The end, without a choice of writing my own future.
I was a copy, no doubt in my mind, but apparently copies could do one thing. They could try. After learning that my parents intended for me to be a murderer, I wanted to curl up and disappear, but I’d fought those urges for years, and I’d fight them forever, especially now.
I took the phone to my bed and stared at Nate until I couldn’t hold my eyes open. He met me in my dream. He lifted me up in his arms, and his lips were a lot less friendly. A lot more illegal.
The first thing I did in the morning was rub my lips. They were tingling like I’d actually kissed him.
I stretched in bed as I smiled at the beautiful dream.
I sat up and screamed.
Sophia was sitting at the foot of my bed with a knife in her hand. The knife from last night. I guessed since they were technically her drawers, she had the right to go through them.
“Sweetie, I understand that you may feel that life is hopeless sometimes,” she whispered. “But I won’t let this happen. I will watch you around the clock if necessary.”
“No, Sophia. It’s not there for that. I’m not suicidal or hurting myself.” She sighed. “I promise.” Doubt clouded her eyes. I glanced at my fingers. The swelling was gone, and there was barely any evidence that I’d tested my blood last night. Other than the knife in her hand. I just needed to explain it in a way that didn’t require me telling her something that would make her kick me out, maybe even run for her life. “It’s for protection. I’m afraid of Lydia Shaw. She’s still out there looking for me.”
Great lie. And she believed it. Slowly, her face softened into a smile. “Oh, honey, don’t worry. She won’t find you. I guarantee it.” She stood and slipped the knife in her dress pocket. “I’m late for work. Call me if you need to ta—”
“I’m fine. I promise.”
She blew me a kiss and vanished.
My roommates came down together as I dug into the ham and cheese omelet Sophia had left on the island. Everyone spoke but Remi. She passed by like I wasn’t there. Nathan fixed a bowl of cereal and plopped down in the seat next to me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of his lips, remembering how they felt pressed against mine in the drea
m.
“How’s your omelet,” he asked.
“Good. Want some?”
He nodded and grabbed my fork from my hand. He sliced off a corner of the omelet and ate from the fork that had just been in my mouth. He handed it back. I wouldn’t dream of wiping it. It was almost like kissing him. The closest I’d get.
“That was good. Thanks, Chris,” he said, holding out his fist for a bump, the friendliest, most unsexy gesture in the world.
“Emma, I have to be honest. You are starting to piss me off,” Remi said, out of nowhere, it seemed. She’d been silent until then. Emma sighed and turned back to the stove, filling two plates with steaming food.
“Knock it off,” Paul said. “She had a rough day yesterday. Because of you.”
Emma gave one of the plates to Paul, and Remi eyed it like she wanted one. “Aw. You remembered I hate my eggs to touch my bacon. Thanks, Em.”
Remi grunted and slammed the refrigerator door harder than necessary. We all ignored it.
Emma snapped her fingers, like Sophia and unlike me, and a chair moved next to mine. “Christine, I should’ve said this yesterday, but I was afraid to come talk to you. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking about you and your situation the other night. I should have been. You’re hiding, and since I’m staying here with you, I need to be more careful.”
“Don’t cry. I’m not mad,” I said.
I passed her a napkin for her eyes that I hadn’t used. I wanted to make her feel better, be nice, maybe try to prove myself wrong about being a copy. But I’d never been more certain about anything in my life.
“I know what I did was wrong. I used dark magic, but, thankfully, he wasn’t a hunter. Sophie took care of everything, but, Christine, I’m so sorry. If someone found you because of me, I would never forgive myself. I can’t imagine living by myself with humans. I don’t want you to have to go back.”
The kitchen was quiet as she cried; no one spoke. Her breakdown made me feel too important, too powerful. Like something she needed to fear. I shivered at the truth in that. If agents and hunters were stronger than them, and I was one naturally—or unnaturally—it would make me the strongest thing in this house. And their enemy. God, I didn’t want to be.
“I’m not that kind of person usually,” Emma said, catching her breath then losing it again. “I was scared. Sophie has been so different lately, and I knew if we got in trouble, she wouldn’t let us come back.”
“I think I found a job,” Remi said, loud, a purposeful subject change. “Pay sucks, but it’ll be enough to leave this fairytale land that drips honey covered goodness.”
“You’re leaving?” Emma asked.
Remi speared her knife through a sausage link on her plate. “When did we stop being a we?” she spat. She pointed her knife at Paul. “When you met back up with your childhood buddy that you’re hopelessly, sickeningly in love with? And stupidly since you’re obviously not his type?”
Emma’s face turned three shades of red. God, Remi was awful—a Sienna in magical skin and sharpened, unpolished claws.
“I’m not in love with you,” she said, looking at Paul. “I swear.”
“Don’t worry about it, Em. We would’ve been married and divorced by now if that were true,” Paul said. Nate laughed and I melted. There couldn’t be a better sound than that laugh. I closed my eyes, savoring the moment, memorizing how it felt to enjoy something. I thought it would help me try to change my default setting: numb, humorless, and easily angered.
“And we are still a we, Remi. I just prefer to stay with Sophie and do things her way. Find a proper job. Live a proper life.”
“And Sophia’s house is so nice,” Nathan said. “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t stay here as long as she lets you.”
Remi grabbed her plate off the island and prowled to the door. “Shut it, Sparky. It isn’t even her house.”
She slammed the patio door and kicked her feet up on the table out there. Nathan looked at me, eyebrows high and confused. I hunched my shoulders, just as confused as he was. “Is that true?” I asked for us both.
Paul and Emma nodded. “You didn’t know? I mean … Nana’s a maid. She’s been working for the same family for years and makes pretty good money, but she couldn’t afford a house like this. She and my grandfather live in Texas,” he said, sounding like a cowboy. “She doesn’t even sleep here. You’d think so, you know, to make sure we’re following the rules, but she doesn’t. She wouldn’t dare live away from my grandfather. My mom almost didn’t let me move here because of that, said I’d be living wild and free.”
Nate dropped his spoon and stood from his chair. “No, I’ve seen her go in there in a nightgown,” he said.
He walked out of the kitchen, and we followed him to a room on the first floor that Sophia had shown me during my tour. Now that I thought about it, she didn’t say it was hers. She didn’t say any of them were. He opened the door to the room that was half the size of mine. Nate opened the closet. Empty. Emma pulled out the drawers. They were empty, too.
“Told you,” she said. “She lives with Gregory.”
“Whose house is this then?” Nathan asked. Emma and Paul looked puzzled, like they hadn’t thought about that. “Maybe a friend of hers? I’d like to know who I’m living off of.”
And I’d like to know why I had the grandest room in this person’s house. And why Sophia rifled through their drawers.
Paul clicked his tongue and pointed at Emma. “Revelations. Salt or sugar?”
“Sugar. No … it’s salt,” she said.
“You try. You’re way better at summoning things than I am,” Paul said. Emma snapped and a saltshaker appeared in Paul’s hands a few seconds later. She smiled and clapped like she’d surprised herself. I’d thought about a knife appearing in my hand last night before it did, and when it appeared, I wasn’t shocked. I’d always felt strong and capable of all sorts of things. I was definitely stronger than them. Faster, too.
Paul sprinkled salt on the black dresser in a straight line. He stretched his neck to both sides. “This better work. I’ve never practiced this much in my life.” He leaned over the salt, and the ends of his hair swept through the line. “Come on, Paul. You can do this,” he said to himself. “I’d like to see both of these girls in nothing but foam, but first show me the owner of this home.”
We groaned at his spell, but it worked despite how ridiculous it was. The salt began to shift and separate. Slowly, the letters formed, revealing the owner of the house. I gasped, and read the name out loud.
“Cecilia Neal.”
