by Krista Walsh
He was right. Molly knew he was right. She picked up the orb anyway. She was tired of being left out of things, especially when she’d just taken down a demon all on her own. An immature way of thinking, sure, but in the face of this new puzzle, she didn’t care. She needed to prove she was worthy of standing here with these two otherworldly beings. She was more than just a human. She was someone who straddled both worlds, and she belonged on that edge.
The glass was smooth in her palm and fit perfectly between the edges of her fingers.
“Maybe it doesn’t affect humans,” she said. “I don’t feel anything.”
“Lucky you,” Daphne croaked, then she released another moan.
“Where’s the box?” Molly asked. “I can put it back in there.”
As she waited for Zach to hand it to her, a faint tingle buzzed over the surface of her skin. Her first instinct was to drop the sphere, but she made herself hold on.
I’m imagining it, she told herself. Daphne’s reaction had obviously influenced her mind, priming her to experience some sort of effect.
But the tingling grew stronger, burrowing deep into her hand, until all of her bones and tendons felt as though they were vibrating. It wasn’t painful. In fact, it felt kind of warm, like a deep muscle massage.
She had been introduced now to all sorts of fantastical beings, some good and some bad, but this was Molly’s first experience with magic, and it was incredible. She didn’t feel afraid, as she’d worried she might. She wanted to know more. She wanted to understand how it worked and why it affected her differently than it did someone who’d been born with this kind of energy in her veins. Was this how Daphne felt all the time? Minus the throwing up, hopefully.
Then something changed. At first, Molly couldn’t make sense of it, but her brain was definitely telling her that something was different. It felt like an itch in her mind, right at the back of her skull.
“Molly?” Zach asked. There was a note of concern in his voice, but she ignored it. She couldn’t think of anything except what was very gradually becoming apparent.
Literally apparent.
She saw light.
There was no shape, no substance, but she was seeing. The light pulsed outward from her hand, never growing larger than the size she felt the orb to be, taking up almost nothing of the blackness around it, but it was there. And it was beautiful. More beautiful than anything that had been described to her as beautiful before, because it was hers. It was something she could experience for herself.
“This is amazing,” she said. Was this what light looked like? This soft paleness struck through with warmth?
But her words sounded strange. More muffled than they usually did.
“Molly, what’s going on?” Zach asked, and his voice sounded different, too. Not as clear, with a little more white noise around each syllable that made her strain to distinguish each word.
She took a step forward and bumped into something on her left. Something she hadn’t realized was there.
Panic seeped into her muscles, increasing her heartbeat and speeding up her breath, washing away the awe that had taken her over only seconds ago. She reached out a hand and waved it in front of her, but she couldn’t make sense of her surroundings. A moment ago, she’d known exactly where Daphne had dropped onto the grass, and the relative position of Zach standing between them. She’d sensed the locations of the demon she’d shot through the chest, the one that had almost killed her, and the third one that Zach had dragged across the ground.
Now they could have been right at her feet or half a mile away. She felt as though she stood in a sort of bubble, like when she had a head cold and there was nothing but a dull pressure that made it impossible to focus on anything, no matter how hard she tried.
Fear gripped her heart in its cold hand, and she began to shake.
“I feel…blind,” she said.
“You are blind,” Zach returned.
“That’s real helpful, big guy.” Daphne spoke up from somewhere nearby. Like Zach, her voice was hard to pick up, as though she were far away and speaking too softly to grab every syllable. The direction of her voice moved, and Molly guessed she was standing up, but she couldn’t feel it. “Tell us what you’re experiencing.”
“I — I don’t even know. I can—” She stumbled over her thoughts. “I can see the orb. The light is there and it’s so bright. But everything else is gone. I can’t sense you. I don’t know where you are. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Drop the orb, Molly,” Daphne said. “Whatever it is, it changes you. It takes away what makes you tick. But my magic is already coming back. Just let it go and everything will be all right.”
Molly wanted to do as she said. She didn’t want to live with the world closing in on her, but she couldn’t let go.
A large, warm hand dropped over hers. It took the weight of the orb off her palm, and the tickle in the back of her mind vanished, leaving her in complete darkness. But she was still trapped in that constricting bubble.
“It’s not there,” she said. She heard the sobs in her voice, but couldn’t hold them down. “It’s not coming back. What’s going on?”
Different arms wrapped around her. She smelled a hint of sour breath, but it was faint beneath the sweetness of vanilla and aloe body wash.
“Give it a second,” Daphne said, her voice close to her ear. “Everything will be okay.”
Molly couldn’t stop shaking. The ground came up to meet her, and she curled into the woman’s arms as they settled themselves in the grass.
“Keep breathing. You’re still panicking.”
Her words began to filter through Molly’s terror, and as her breath slowed, she became aware of the woman sitting beside her. She could sense where her feet rested in the grass and that Zach was standing about three feet to her left.
Her world was becoming her own again, and her tears began to ebb.
“There,” Daphne said. Her voice came in clearer and sharper, as it had before. “Better?”
Molly nodded and used her sleeve to wipe her tears from her cheeks. “I don’t understand what happened. I’m blind. How could that ball thing make me go…blinder?”
Daphne rubbed her back. “Maybe there’s more to you than there appears to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“That orb thing stripped my magic from me. I’ve never felt anything like it. But what if it did the same to you? What if something in your blood gives you advantages with your sight and hearing, like allowing you to sense what’s around you?”
If Molly hadn’t already been sitting down, she suspected she would have fallen over. The suggestion sounded so ludicrous, so impossible…and yet many elements of her life would make so much more sense if Daphne was right.
She’d grown up around other children with auditory and visual challenges, and her teachers had been astounded by how quickly and to what extent she’d been able to pick things up. Her ego had always told her that it was because she was smart, allowing her to discover better ways to accommodate her life than other people in her situation.
But what if that had been arrogance and ignorance? What if there was more to it than that? What if Daphne was right, and her skills had nothing to do with her own capabilities, but some natural — or unnatural — advantage?
She supposed that should make her feel even more special — the possibility that she was no longer standing outside the otherworld looking in, but actually touched by it. Instead, it made her feel small. As though her entire life had been built around a lie.
More tears threatened to fall, but she held them back.
“It can’t be,” she said. “Zach, you said earlier that if Steve had been one of you guys you would have known. That would be true of me, too, right? You would have been able to pick up if I wasn’t entirely…human?”
She stumbled over the word. It felt unfamiliar to her now in the face of all these other uncertainties. With everything else he’d neglect
ed to tell her to keep her “safe,” it wasn’t such a stretch to think he would have kept this from her, too.
And if he did… Her entire body began to tremble, anticipating the anger she’d feel if he admitted to suspecting it might be the case. She focused on keeping her breath steady to ease the painful constriction in her throat.
“You probably are human,” he said. “I never picked up on anything else. But there could be an otherworldly influence somewhere in your family background. These things can skip a few generations.”
Molly curled her fingers into the grass at her sides, trying to get the world to stop reeling as this new idea went buzzing through her head. At the very least, she believed he hadn’t lied to her about this. It relieved some of the tension in her chest.
“That’s just what I need,” she said. “Something else to make me different and cut me off from people.”
“Welcome to the club,” Zach grumbled.
“Come on,” Daphne said, nudging her shoulder. “Let’s get out of view. My ass is freezing, and the longer we’re out here, the higher our chances of being seen surrounded by corpses.”
“At least it’s almost Halloween,” Molly said. But her teeth had started chattering again, so she worked with Daphne to stand up. She still wasn’t solid on her feet, but at least she wasn’t worried about tumbling down the hill.
“What are we going to do with this orb?” Daphne asked.
“I’ll hang on to it,” Zach said.
Molly tilted her head toward him. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“It hasn’t affected me so far. That gives me a one-up on either of you.”
“Why hasn’t it?” Molly asked. “That doesn’t seem strange to you.”
“It’s possible it targets magic. I’ve got otherworldly energy in my blood, but the two aren’t the same.”
Molly worked to wrap her head around the distinction.
“Will you at least put it back in the box?” Daphne asked.
“Easier to hide without it.”
Molly frowned. “Why do you want to hide it?”
“Because I don’t trust why the Kozkor demon had it. It didn’t seem like the type of demon to keep useless trinkets safeguarded in boxes. My guess is that if the demons had it, they were probably on their way back from stealing it. And when Karl finds out they’ve lost it, they’ll be back. I don’t want it to be easy to find when they do.”
“I don’t understand what they’d want with something that takes magic away,” Daphne said. “They’re looking for strong people like you to join their ranks, right? So why aren’t they gathering items that can increase power instead of eliminate it? Then again, if it’s not affecting you, Zach, who knows what the purpose of this thing might be.”
“I don’t like thinking about that question,” Molly said. “It doesn’t seem like there can be any good answer.”
“I suspect you’re right. Let me see the box?” There was a pause as Zach presumably passed it over to Daphne. “If you’re not going to put it back in here, can I keep this? I’ll see if I can learn what this symbol is. It could help us figure out what purpose it might serve. Maybe there’s some connection to that Project Oracle you stumbled upon.”
“In the meantime, I’m going after the demons that fled,” Zach said. “I don’t like that so many of them got away.”
“Do you think they left a decent trail?”
Zach growled, a sound that rumbled deep in Molly’s chest. “If the Colcex demon had survived, I could have followed the drops of pus.” Molly swallowed hard to avoid gagging at the idea. “The other two are probably better at covering their tracks. Still, it’s worth a try.”
“Be smart about it if you do. I can’t guarantee I’ll be around to save you. And I still need your help to get rid of these corpses.”
“First, I’m going to see the girl home.”
Molly had been content to listen to them debate the issue back and forth, still in too much shock to contribute anything useful, but at Zach’s words, she held up a hand. “No way. If you two are going after demons, I want to be a part of it. Now that we’ve proved I have some kind of ability that helps me see without seeing, I’m totally up for this.”
“It’s one-thirty in the morning,” Daphne said. “What you’re up for is going home, getting your ass into bed, and getting some sleep. Oh, for the love of — five weeks with a teenager in my house, and I’m already mothering all the others that come into my life. Gods help me.”
“They do have a way of getting under your skin,” Zach said.
Molly guessed they were sharing some kind of empathetic grimace, and that only irritated her further. After everything she’d done, they were sending her to her room.
“I’ll give you a ride home,” Daphne said. “Zach, you stay low. I’ll call my contact at the hospital, then come back and help you clean up.” She snorted. “Listen to me. Two years ago, I would have been on the side of these creeps. Now I not only helped you kill them, I want to make sure you don’t get caught trying to get rid of them on your own. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
“Or,” Molly said, Zach’s situation floating to the top of her mind, “it’s just proof that you can always choose which side of the good and evil tracks you want to fall on. Nothing is black and white.”
“Get out of here, kid,” Zach said.
Reluctantly, Molly stood by as Zach reclaimed the rest of her arrows and went inside to get her backpack and cane. When he came back, she followed Daphne down the grassy hill toward the sorceress’s car. She kept her thoughts to herself as she climbed into what smelled and felt like an old beater, but after a few minutes of traveling, she asked, “Do you really think there’s something otherworldly about me?”
A pause. “Would it change things for you if there were?”
Molly shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess if it were the case, I would just hate not knowing.”
“Then maybe it’s time to do a little digging and find out the truth. It’s the only way to stop those nagging questions from driving you crazy. Why do you think I became a journalist?”
“Do you think it’ll be that easy?”
“I don’t know,” Daphne said. “Probably not. But the most important truths are worth the search.”
Molly lapsed into silence, but Daphne’s words spun through her mind. The sorceress was right. By stripping Molly of her spatial awareness, the orb had given her half the truth. Now she wouldn’t be able to settle until she pieced together the rest of it.
12
As soon as Daphne and Molly were gone, Zach dragged the three demon corpses into the shadows behind the building. Although he’d told Daphne he would wait until they’d disposed of the bodies to follow the Ghurgzic demon’s trail, he couldn’t waste the opportunity to get a head start while she was gone. If the demons were going to the new factory, and the man Zach had overheard at the New Haven plant was correct that this new factory was four hours away, there was no way he’d get anywhere close before Daphne returned. But he could still get a sense of their direction. If the demons were headed out of town, they’d no doubt head for the highway, which would be south of here.
He stepped into the alley and as the stink of blood and sweat wafted toward him, he covered his nose with his hand. Ghurgzic demons didn’t smell great at the best of times, but their blood reeked of rotting meat and sulphur. It made an easy trail to follow, but his taste buds would be affected for weeks.
For three blocks he kept a good pace, having no doubt this was the way they’d come. And then the trail vanished.
Zach was still in the middle of the alleyway, with no access to the street, and yet the demons had apparently disappeared. He cursed and pressed onward, hoping the trail would pick up again, but the stink was gone.
What the hell is going on here?
He stormed back the way he’d come, his stomach heaving as he stepped into the invisible cloud of Ghurgzic sweat with its lingering hint of raw goat.
&
nbsp; How had the trail ended so sharply? Unless someone had come in and teleported them away. Neither the Lingor nor the Ghurgzic demon had the ability to do so on their own, which suggested someone else was involved. Someone other than Karl.
How far did this ring extend?
Zach returned to the college and kept watch over the street, brooding over his questions. At this time of night, the roads were empty except for an occasional taxi or night-shift worker, and they stuck to the main road past the front of the college, avoiding the service entrance where Zach stood waiting.
Karl had sent five demons after him. At the time Zach hadn’t been surprised by what he’d found when he’d stepped outside, but now that he’d had time to think it over, he appreciated how extreme such a response had been.
Not to mention reckless. The more demons that were together in a public place, especially without any kind of glamor, the more likely it was for someone of the mundane world to spot them. That sort of reveal would go against every treaty still in place, regardless of whether or not the guardians were around to enforce them.
An icy burn stung the depths of Zach’s moral center. He hated when people intentionally flipped off the foundations of what was just and right for their own personal gain — it showed a lack of respect for the order of the universe.
And what had been the goal? Karl might have known Molly was with him, but what harm could he expect from a teenage girl who was deafblind? Although now it looked like she might be more than that. Something else Zach would need to figure out. One step at a time.
Add to that, Karl couldn’t have known Daphne would appear out of nowhere to help drive them away.
If he’d wanted to kill Zach, the Ghurgzic and Lingor demons would have been enough. They’d come close to taking him down before Daphne had arrived.
That Karl had sent so many suggested he wanted to do something more challenging than kill Zach. Had the time come for them to try to take him in by force? Maybe if he understood more about Project Oracle, he’d know the end game.
