“Had enough?” he asks. “Do you feel your strength returning?”
I nod.
“Speak up, for the record.”
“I feel a bit better.”
“Right. Then we can continue.” He waves a hand, making a “go-ahead” motion in the White Lady’s direction.
With a sinking feeling, I realize that they’ve probably only fed me so I’ll be strong enough to face further interrogation. I look at the Blue Lord, who gives a faint shrug. I don’t think I can expect much more help from him.
“Tell me about your mother,” the White Lady says. “And be careful. Skymagic’s core skill is not only that of Truth but also that of Clear Sight, and I am Lady of all the Skykeepers. I’ll know when you are lying to me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How did your mother die?”
“She died of cancer.”
“SATYA!”
“Ingrid says my mother died because she destroyed the magic inside her. She wanted to keep me away from all sources of magic, and that included herself. But I don’t believe it, even though I know it’s true.”
“Why don’t you believe it?” the Red Lady asks gently.
I glare at her, pressing my lips firmly closed, until the White Lady compels me with another harsh word, another wave of her hand.
“Because if that’s really why my mother died, I can never forgive her. The last year of her life was hell. Worse than hell. I didn’t know a person could suffer so much. I didn’t know it was allowed. I prayed for her to die every day. I prayed and prayed but it dragged on and on. I spent nights sitting next to her, a cushion clasped in my hands, praying for the strength to smother her. To make it stop. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the courage or the strength. I hated myself for being so weak. I hated myself for wanting to kill her. After her death, I think I lost my mind. For a while, I mean. So now, when I think that we lived through that hell because of a choice she made, I hate her. I don’t care what stupid reasons she might have had. What do I care about magic? What does anyone? If she didn’t die of cancer, I hate her. I hate her more than I’ve ever hated anything or anyone.”
After my outpouring there’s a short, shocked silence.
“This is impossible,” the White Lady says, frowning.
“Keep asking questions,” the Red Lord says, tapping his finger on the desk in front of him. “See if we can get to the bottom of this.”
For the next hour or so the judges ask me about my mother, and then, when they realize that I really don’t know anything about her magic, they ask about my own life. I answer in strange and unexpected ways: under the White Lady’s spell, I interpret events and aspects of my life in ways I’ve never been conscious of before, and yet as soon as the words leave my mouth, I know they are true with a certainty that goes bone deep.
At first, I’m afraid that she’s going to ask about last Sunday again, but weirdly enough nobody seems interested in my so-called “crime” anymore. There are a couple of questions about my magic, but when I tell them what happened that night with the fire, or that time in the principal’s office, they seem oddly dismissive. Instead, they seem genuinely fascinated by my everyday life: my school, my friends, what I eat, where I hang out, the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the chores I do around the house, the shows I watch, Snapchat, Instagram…
The lords and ladies listen openmouthed, as if what I’m describing is beyond their wildest imaginings. My earlier impression that they’re merely going through the motions no longer holds true: they seem riveted by every word I say, as if I’m describing the life of an exotic alien species rather than that of a normal teenager. Even the Blue Lord seems captivated—he ceases all objections to this interrogation and listens with the same rapt attention as the other judges. Every now and then, one of them exclaims in shock or horror, as if my life is not only outlandishly eccentric but also deeply wrong in some way. Perverted and immoral.
The food I ate earlier seems to have worked. Although I can feel the White Lady’s Truth spell draining me, I now merely feel exhausted; the intense agony I suffered earlier doesn’t return. On the plus side, I begin to notice that the spell seems to be draining the White Lady too; after about an hour, she begins to look brittle and tired and visibly older.
I’m almost starting to enjoy this strange interrogation (if only for the disastrous effect it seems to be having on the White Lady) when the questions take an unexpected turn.
“Tell me about your relationship with Gunnar Waymond,” the White Lady demands.
“He’s Ingrid’s grand-nephew. I only see him over weekends. He taught me self-defense.”
“SATYA!”
“I love him.”
I touch a hand to my mouth in surprise at the certainty of this simple statement.
The White Lady gives a nasty little smile. “Poor thing. Of course you do.” Then she leans back in her chair, smug. “When did you two start having sex?”
“We haven’t, and we never will. More’s the pity.”
The Red Lady makes a soft, stunned sound, her mouth falling open in a perfect “o” of astonishment.
The Red Lord stops tapping his fingers on the table and leans forward, frowning. “But then… who is her lover?” he asks, looking faintly outraged.
“Who is your lover, child?” the Red Lady asks.
I feel myself blushing. “I don’t have one.”
She frowns. “Not at the moment or not ever?”
“Not ever.”
She gapes at me. “Are you telling me you’re still a virgin? At seventeen?”
“That’s none of your damn business.”
Hah. The Truth spell must be fading.
But the White Lady holds out her hand again. “SATYA!”
“Yes. I’m still a virgin.”
The Red Lord leans back in his chair, away from me, as if I’ve admitted to having some terrible contagious disease. “Unbelievable!” he cries, and for a moment I glimpse something unexpected in his eyes: naked fear. He makes a small movement, as if he wants to get up from his chair, but then he remembers himself and sits back down.
“Sonia, ask her about her relationship with the Waegmunding heir in more detail,” the Red Lady adds, her voice high with excitement. “We need to get to the bottom of this right now. It changes everything!”
The White Lady asks me a few more questions about my relationship with Gunn, and I cannot help but answer. I tell them how, after that incident with Ty, Gunn offered to teach me to defend myself properly against bullies, and how those classes slowly turned into something more: how he taught me to control my temper, and deal with my grief, and handle my emotions in a positive way. I tell them how much his attention has meant to me—how grateful I am to him, and how I love, love, love him, even though I know he doesn’t love me back.
They seem unsatisfied with my answers, disbelieving and impatient.
After a few minutes of this, the White Lady stops. I can see that she’s trying to formulate just the right question to put to me, and I hope against hope that she won’t know what to ask, that some of my secrets will remain my own.
No such luck.
“You have a secret,” she tells me eventually, looking pleased with herself. “A secret that concerns Gunnar Waymond. Tell me that secret now. Don’t leave anything out. SATYA!”
My mouth starts speaking, loudly and clearly, telling them my most embarrassing secret. But even as my face burns with mortification, I’m surprised by the way I express myself—how clearly I explain aspects of my behavior that I never consciously understood before now.
“I tried to seduce him once. I was fifteen and I decided it was time to lose my virginity. My mom had been dead for almost four months and I felt as if I were dead too. Everything in my life was gray and hopeless. But Gunn was different. When I was with him, I could still feel something. His presence became like a drug to me. I wanted to be around him all the time. I wanted my feelings for him to consume me. I wa
nted it to block out everything else. So I decided to have sex with him. I thought taking it to the next level would help. I thought it would make my feelings more intense and take away the pain.
“One Saturday night, I went to his room. I knew he was out of my league, but I thought I could seduce him if I caught him unawares. He always seemed so careful not to touch me. Even when he taught me self-defense, he always wore this thick suit, so we almost never made skin-to-skin contact. I thought it might mean that he’s aware of me in that way, even if he wouldn’t admit it. So I watched some porn to see how women seduce men. It did not look too difficult, just a little undignified and animal-like, maybe. So one night I waited in his bed, naked, and when he came into his room, I started to—”
“That’s enough!” It’s the Green Lord who interrupts me. Up until this point he has not said a word, merely listening to me in a kind of appalled silence. But now he blusters, red-faced and clearly uncomfortable. “I understand why the Bloodkeepers may be interested in this line of questioning, but there is absolutely no need for this court to dwell on any salacious details.”
“Shut up, Phillip,” the Red Lady hisses. “This is not the time for your prudishness. Don’t you understand how important this is? The child’s mother was a bloodmaster, for God’s sake!” She turns to me, her face glowing with interest. “What happened next, Jess?”
I stare back at her, my lips tightly closed, my ears red and burning.
“SATYA!” the White Lady demands, her face a nasty, ashy gray and her hands trembling. But in spite of her haggard appearance, her Truth spell works perfectly.
“Nothing happened. He was so calm. He told me to stop it, and then he took his robe from behind the door and he put it around me. He didn’t want anything to do with me. He didn’t even look at me. But he was very kind. He talked to me for a long time. He told me that it was okay to miss my mom. Usually I don’t like people giving me that kind of advice, but it was okay coming from him because he had lost his parents too. He said the pain would get better eventually, but that I had to feel it first. He said that drowning myself in romantic fantasies wouldn’t help me in the long run. He said he loved me very much, but not in that kind of way. He said he was too old for me. He said I should try to hang out with boys my own age. Then he walked me back to my room. He kissed me on the top of my head. He said everything was going to be okay.”
The Blue Lord gives a shocked but delighted laugh.
“This isn’t funny, Seakeeper!” the White Lady hisses.
“It seems pretty funny from where I’m sitting,” he says mockingly before turning to the Red Lord. “Hey, Amit, why don’t you kiss her hand again? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.” Then he laughs again, a deep, scornful sound.
The Red Lord doesn’t say anything, apparently struck dumb by my story. He’s tapping his hand against the table, unsettled and restless.
The Red Lady, on the other hand, looks at me with something close to hope. “How did that make you feel?” she asks, her smile soft and her eyes kind. “It must have hurt, being rejected like that.”
I keep my mouth stubbornly closed, refusing to answer her invasive questions if I’m not compelled. But I’m blushing again, remembering all too well how his rejection had made me feel: mortified, angry, humiliated, patronized.
The White Lady raises her hand again, and under the influence of her Truth spell, my own words surprise me.
“It made me feel safe. I was relieved, really. I knew I could totally trust him, and back then I didn’t have anyone else in my life I could trust. I saw that he cared about me in a real way. The way your family cares about you. Always and forever, not just while they’re into you. I was sad that he didn’t want me and embarrassed about what I did. How I made myself so pathetic. But mostly I just felt safe. I could trust him with my life. He’s a good person and I’ll love him for as long as I live.”
The Blue Lord gives another harsh laugh. The Green Lord sighs and shakes his head. The Red Lady narrows her eyes, thinking. The Red Lord looks murderous, almost iridescent with anger.
“How did this happen?” he asks of no one in particular. “Who allowed this relationship to develop in the first place? The whole situation is outrageous!”
“I told you never to underestimate the Waymonds!” the White Lady cries, her face now a greenish-gray color. And then the strain of maintaining her Truth spell must finally become too much for her because her eyes roll back in head and her body starts twitching and jerking as if she’s having a seizure.
In the chaos that follows the White Lady’s collapse, the Red Lord quietly orders two guards to take me back to my cell. None of the other judges even seem to notice my leaving. Their attention is fixed on the White Lady, who is now lying on the floor, shaking and foaming at the mouth.
I’m led back down the long, dark corridor and pushed back into my tiny cell.
And then it’s Groundhog Day all over again: the locked door, the descending ceiling, the narrowing walls, the claustrophobia and the panic and the desperate attempt to hold on to my sanity.
I don’t close my eyes. My body is aching with tiredness; I’m shaky and lightheaded and faintly nauseous with the need for sleep, but I’m petrified of what might happen if I drift off. I know I can’t afford to let myself relax for a second.
Time passes. I have no idea how much because my senses are warped by fear and exhaustion. I sit on the floor, hugging my knees, lightly swaying from side to side. I don’t think about what just happened; I don’t think about what might happen next. I think of other things. Things that make me happy. Mostly, I think about my mom; the way she was before she got so sick. And Gunn; the way he cared for me when nobody else did. And Daniel, whose friendship saved me.
The seconds and the minutes and the hours drag by. I do not lose my mind. I sit on the floor and I sway from side to side. I tell myself that everything’s going to be fine.
And then, unbelievably, it does. Turn out fine, I mean.
It all happens so quickly, it’s over before I can even process it. Footsteps down the hall. A key in the lock. The door swinging open. A very tall woman in the doorway telling me that I can return home. That I have been found innocent of all wrongdoing.
Another blindfolded walk. The backseat of a car. A long, silent drive.
When the car stops, the woman helps me out and removes the blindfold. She wishes me goodnight and drives away.
It’s evening.
I am standing in front of Ingrid’s house.
I walk up the front steps, happy to find the front door unlocked. Inside, everything looks exactly the way it usually does. There’s no trace of Ingrid and Gunn.
I stumble into the living room, sink down on a sofa. I need to find out what happened to them, make sure they’re okay.
I close my eyes for just a second.
Chapter 24
“It’s always the darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black.”
Paul Newman, actor, director and producer (1925—2008)
When I wake up, I’m so disorientated that I literally don’t know where I am. It must be very early in the morning though, because the sun’s not up yet. I groggily wipe the sleep from my eyes, my body stiff from—
The memories crash over me like a tsunami.
Oh God.
For a minute or two I’m frozen, overwhelmed by everything that has happened.
Then I force myself to get up.
The house is empty; there’s no sign of Ingrid or Gunn. I walk up the steps to my room, take off my grimy clothes and get into the shower. I turn up the heat until the water is almost scalding and scrub my whole body, over and over. More soap. Scrub. Again. I stand under the stream until it runs completely cold.
After I get out the shower, I run a comb through my wet hair and pull on a sweater, a pair of jeans, sneakers. All bright blue. Then I stare at myself in the mirror for a long time, faintly surprised to see that I still look the same, green hair and all.
I’
m not sure what to do next.
I mean, obviously I know I have to find Ingrid and Gunn, but where do I even start? In the end I decide to go downstairs to make myself a sandwich. I’m desperately hungry; maybe I’ll be able to think more clearly once I’ve eaten.
In the kitchen, I find my phone on the table. I have no idea how it got here; someone must’ve taken it from my bag when those six guys kidnapped me.
My thumbprint is still not working so I type in my code, then stare at the screen in confusion. It’s Saturday, 7:44 pm. I look at the kitchen clock. The hands show that it’s a quarter to eight. I look out the window. It’s dark outside. Could it be evening instead of morning? Did I sleep an entire day away?
I look out the window again, stare at my phone, scratch my head. Then I tell myself I’ll figure it out once I’ve had a banana.
I’m taking the last delicious bite when there’s a loud, urgent knock on the back door, and I jump up, praying that Ingrid and Gunn have arrived safely.
But it’s Daniel, looking stressed out and desperate and close to tears.
Five minutes later, Daniel and I are in his truck on our way to school. I’m not sure if this is a good idea because my head is still buzzing with everything that’s happened and I’m finding it hard to think straight. I’m also very aware that Ingrid and Gunn are still missing and that there’s a whole bunch of insane people with magical powers out to get me.
But I’m also disturbed enough about what Daniel has just told me to push all those worries aside for now.
Apparently, Maggie called Daniel fifteen minutes ago, begging for help. She’s holed up in the school library with Chloe and Jeffrey Black, who are both freaking out completely. Maggie says Jeffrey is keeping them in there and threatening them with all kinds of terrible things: he’s got more photos, some videos, really bad stuff. She’s worried he might turn violent.
“Do you think Jeffrey could actually be dangerous?” I ask as Daniel jumps a red light, tires screeching.
Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1) Page 25
