5.0 - Light Of The Stygian Orb

by Krista Walsh

  She nodded. “Of course. There’s a lot I’d do for a good story, but our secret comes first. If they’re hunting down members of the otherworld and trying to recruit them, I want answers as much as you do. It puts all of us at risk.”

  “I think they were trying to abduct me,” he said. Until now, he’d thought about keeping that detail to himself, but he’d heard the sincerity of her words and recognized that she needed the information to keep herself safe.

  The lines around her mouth tightened. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Their conversation fell into silence. They remained in the car, waiting, listening to the fans of the incinerator.

  As Zach watched his enemies burn, he crossed his fingers that they would find something soon to bring this to an end. He didn’t think the incinerator was powerful enough to take down all the demons coming after him.

  But he was prepared to put it to the test.

  13

  That night, Molly dreamed of the tree outside her window.

  She imagined it growing out to block her exit, preventing her from escaping. She shouted at it, fought to push it off the side of the house, but it never moved. Despite its stubbornness, Molly understood somehow that it wasn’t being cruel. Instead it seemed to be exhibiting some sort of concern, as though it didn’t think Molly should be sneaking in and out the way she was.

  Molly was doing her best to convince the tree that she was fine, that she was one of the otherworldly, just as the tree was, but the branches were reluctant to unwind from the window. She woke up with a lingering awareness that the tree had told her to be careful.

  Shaking off her dream, she lay in bed in a state of mild disorientation. Last night drifted through her thoughts in lags and jumps, leaving her stomach unsettled as her mind spun.

  Was she an otherworldly being? The question had gone to bed with her, and apparently was ready to greet her as her first thought of the day.

  Beyond her confusion on that point, she had a sense of being out of time. She didn’t remember her alarm going off, and although the sun was shining through her window, her mother hadn’t come into her room to ask why she wasn’t out of bed yet.

  It took her longer than it should have to realize it was Saturday. Halloween.

  Then she kicked herself for not thinking about that last night. She could have stayed longer with Daphne and Zach and helped them destroy the demon corpses.

  After taking stock, though, she conceded that maybe it was for the best she hadn’t stuck around with them. The dampness had seeped into her muscles and bones, and the Lingor demon’s claw marks still pulsed with a subtle ache deep in her shoulder. She ran her fingers across the skin where the holes had been and was relieved to find they had already scabbed over. A quick shower to remove any signs of her fight, a high-collared turtleneck to cover any visible traces, and she would be fine.

  She rolled into a sitting position, wincing and groaning with every little movement. Today would not be a good day.

  Fortunately, she didn’t have anywhere to go, which meant she could recover in the comfort of her room. And use the time to find the answers that now niggled at her mind.

  She put on her cochlears and eased herself out of bed. Slowly, making sure her footsteps didn’t cause the floorboards under her feet to shift, she pulled open her bedroom door. The aroma of bacon and cinnamon — pancakes? — wafted up the stairs toward her, so she assumed her parents were at work preparing breakfast, leaving her safe to make her way to the bathroom. She had no idea what evidence last night’s fight had left on her person, and she didn’t want her mother to freak out if she came across her daughter covered in blood.

  Molly set her cochlears on the bathroom counter away from the shower stall, then peeled out of her pajamas. Her shoulder screamed as she raised her arms over her head, and her right knee ached, although she couldn’t remember twisting it. She gently ran her fingers over the joints of both legs, appreciating the swelling that surrounded the sore knee.

  Yep, she’d done a good job all right.

  She turned on the tap and held her hand under the water until the heat offered a gentle bite, then she stepped into the stall and tilted her face into the spray.

  Her original plan had been to rush through her wash so she could get to her computer as soon as possible, but as the water worked its magic on her muscles — an uncomfortable mix of pleasure and pain as the droplets burrowed into the gouges on her shoulder — she relaxed into the warmth. By the quickness with which the stiffness in her shoulder eased, she guessed that Daphne had done an impressive job patching her up. She’d have to be sure to thank the sorceress again the next time they met.

  After the pungent reek of demon, the smell of coconut was soothing and refreshing. She scrubbed the shampoo deep into the roots of her curls and stood under the spray longer than usual to let it all rinse out.

  She couldn’t shake off the coincidence of Daphne being the one to come across them last night. Sure, the population of New Haven wasn’t huge, but what were the odds that the person who came to save them from those demons was not only another otherworldly being, but one of the other four people who had been in Jermaine’s locked room?

  It struck her as astronomical.

  She wondered what Zach thought about it and made a note to ask him.

  Eventually, reluctantly, she got out of the shower and eased back into her pajamas, having been too caught up in her thoughts to remember to bring her clothes with her.

  “Molly, honey? Are you all done?” her mother called up the stairs.

  “Yep,” she yelled back. “Just getting dressed.”

  “Breakfast is ready.”

  Molly’s stomach squeezed, turning her off all thought of food. She didn’t think the food itself was the problem, as her insides had been grumbling since she woke up. Rather, she suspected it was her dread at going downstairs and sitting with her parents as though everything were normal.

  That orb thing had flooded her mind with possibilities, and she was still trying to work through them. She wanted to make sure she had some solid ground to stand on before she stood in front of her parents and pretended as though she were the same girl she’d been yesterday.

  I have definitely jumped down a rabbit hole, she thought. Never had she appreciated Alice’s story as much as she did now, having wound up in a magical wonderland of her own, where magic was real and the blind could see.

  “Molly?” her mother called again.

  “I’m not feeling that great this morning,” she replied. “I think I had too much of peach cobbler. I’m going to go lie down for another little while. I’m sure I’ll feel better then.”

  “Do you want me to come up and take your temperature?”

  “No, no,” Molly said, wishing her mother didn’t always have to be so mothering. “I’ll be all right. Thanks, though.”

  “All right… Let me know if you need anything.”

  Molly returned to her room and closed the door behind her, relieved that she had managed to win herself some time.

  She changed into her jeans and a soft turtleneck sweater and booted up her computer. The speakers chimed, and she cringed, braced for her mother to charge into the room to uncover the real reason that Molly “bottomless stomach” Harris didn’t want breakfast.

  When thirty seconds passed without interruption, Molly released her breath.

  She slid into her computer chair, made sure her braille display was ready, and opened her internet browser.

  She had no idea what she was looking for.

  Otherworldly beings who couldn’t see but could actually see through some sort of enhanced spatial awareness?

  Yeah, she was sure that would bring up exactly what she needed.

  She swayed her chair back and forth as she thought it out, playing with the memory of that light in her hands. Tears stung her eyes at the beauty of it, but she crushed the emotion down. This was not the time to be sentimental. She needed facts.

  But the
memory did give her one idea on how to move forward. Obviously she had been born with some kind of ability that allowed her to sense the presence of objects around her at an unusual distance and in clearer detail. If she couldn’t look that up, since it was unlikely that someone with the same gifts would be open to talking about them, she could focus on the abilities she would have been expected to show if she weren’t touched by any kind of unnatural energy. She performed a search for deafblindness and spent the next hour reading about other people’s experiences. She hoped that in finding out how most people in her peer group adjusted to the world, she could pinpoint the ways she was different. She’d spent her life learning about her circumstances, but never had she paid such close attention.

  After she’d gone through every video she could find and read every article and case study she could get through, she was no further ahead. On the contrary, she felt even worse about herself. There were so many people who had reached above and beyond her without any additional ability, whereas she had used hers as a crutch. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t realized she’d possessed it. She felt as though she’d spent her whole life being proud of herself for walking on the edge of a cliff only to realize there had been a safety net beside her the whole time.

  She rested her forehead in her palms and tried not to believe that she’d hit a dead end. Maybe she could ask Daphne to do some research for her. Now that they’d spent a bit more time together, she might be more likely to reply to Molly’s emails. Or maybe Zach would have had some time to think it over and be able to offer her more insight than he had last night.

  But both of those options meant waiting, and she wasn’t sure if she could make it through the day without finding out at least part of the truth.

  Who else would know?

  Mom and Dad?

  The seemingly useless thought came out of nowhere, and she slumped into her chair. How was that an option? She imagined herself going downstairs and saying, “Morning, Mom. I wasn’t actually feeling sick, I was just trying to figure out how to ask you a really awkward question. Do supernatural genes run in our family?”

  Yeah, that would go over really well.

  Molly groaned.

  On the other hand, if anyone knew all the details about her situation, it would be her parents. She knew how hard her father had pressed to find the answer to her deafblindness, how the tests had always shown no physiological reasons why she shouldn’t be able to see and hear.

  The revelation that those tests might now make sense if her suspicions were correct left Molly legless.

  And yet…one detail of her history came to her now with much more significance than it ever had. Her father had always been the one to push for more tests, demanding answers. For all those years, her mother had sat by and tried to convince him to let it go, telling them it was important for Molly to move on and adjust, even if they didn’t know all the reasons.

  What if she knew something?

  Molly dropped her hands to her desk and drove the edge into the pads of her fingers. The pain sent jolts up her arms, shaking her free of her shock, and she rose onto wobbling legs.

  She had to find out. If her parents ended up thinking she was crazy, she could say it was for some homework assignment. But if she was right…

  Her heart climbed into her throat.

  It’s time to be brave, Molly told herself. You fought demons last night. You can face this.

  Drawing in a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Molly stepped out of her bedroom. Her legs felt wooden, distant, as though they no longer belonged to her and were carrying her toward the kitchen without her say-so.

  “Are you feeling better?” her mom asked as she came into the room. “We saved some waffles for you.”

  “Maybe in a bit,” Molly said. She dropped down at the kitchen table. “I have something to ask you. And it’s going to sound really crazy, so I don’t want you to read anything into it. If you don’t know the answer, we can just laugh it off and pretend I’m joking, all right?”

  “You’re worrying me, honey. What’s going on?”

  The table vibrated as her mother sat down in the chair beside her.

  Molly sucked in another breath and forced out a laugh. “Yeah, okay, this is going to sound really weird, but I need to know the truth. Is there anything…unusual about me?”

  “Unusual how, sweetheart?”

  “In my deafblindness.”

  “Where is this coming from?” her mom rested her hand over Molly’s, and in her warm touch, some of Molly’s tension eased. Although the conversation was beyond strange, this was still her mother. She wouldn’t lock Molly up for being insane, she’d just do what she could to make sure her daughter never spread her wild ideas to anyone outside of the family. It’d be fine. “You haven’t had thoughts like this in a long time. At least not that you’ve shared with me. It doesn’t mean you’re unusual, baby. Different, sure, but not in a bad way. Challenging, of course, but that’s only because you’re a teenager.”

  Molly found herself smiling at her mother’s teasing.

  “Tell me, what’s going on?”

  Molly’s smile vanished, and she rushed through the question before she could convince herself to stop. “I mean the cause of my deafblindness. Is it something weird and unusual that you’ve never talked about because you didn’t think anyone would believe you?”

  As soon as the words hung between them, a big part of Molly’s brain wished she could take them back. But the smaller part was so glad she’d got them out that her breath released in a gust. Her hands were shaking and clammy, and she pulled herself free of her mother’s grip to wipe her palms on her jeans.

  The silence that followed her question spoke volumes. In another situation, Molly might have believed that the pause came only from surprise that she would ask anything so bizarre, but she knew her mother well. This silence was amazement that her secret had been found out.

  After a moment, her mom broke it with a laugh. “What an imagination you have. Of course there’s nothing strange about it. It’s just something that happens from time to time.”

  Molly didn’t say anything, waiting. She’d heard the lie in her mother’s voice, and she wanted to figure out how to tackle the issue before she pushed forward.

  “I’m sorry your father never found the answers he hoped to discover with all those tests,” her mom continued. “I know an explanation would make it easier to understand what’s going on in your body. Hopefully one day they’ll be able to find out.”

  “You mean like discover a way to detect supernatural energy?” Molly asked, testing. She refused to walk out of this kitchen until she’d learned something useful, especially when the answer seemed to be in such close reach.

  “What?” her mother asked, giving a disbelieving half-laugh that rang all too hollow in Molly’s mind.

  “You know what I mean, Mom. I know.”

  “How could you possibly—”

  “What is she talking about?” Her dad’s voice came from the doorway behind her.

  To Molly’s left, there was a distinct change in the air as her mother stiffened. Her dad came around on her right, pulled out the chair across from her mom and dropped into it.

  Molly suddenly felt trapped between them. Her father clearly didn’t know anything about what had affected his daughter’s ability to interact with the world, and she wasn’t sure this was the best time for him to find out. She realized she would have been content for it to be a mother-daughter secret. Something they laughed about in the kitchen over Thanksgiving while the rest of the family watched football in the living room.

  The heightened tension around her did nothing to bolster her courage.

  “I — I don’t…” her mother started, but the lie faltered on her lips. Now that it had been dragged out in the open, she had to know there was no going back.

  “My god, I can see it in your face,” he said. “You know something about why our daughter has been forced to go through life
the way she has, and you never told me? Told us? What if it’s something we could reverse? What if our daughter could see again with the right kind of treatment?”

  Molly wanted to tell him to be quiet. She knew he was speaking out of his love for her, but sometimes his frustration gave her the impression that he would love her more if she could see and hear like he did. It made her feel like there was a distance between them, something that had never existed with her mother.

  Her dad had always been the overprotective one. If it had been up to him, Molly would never have done anything on her own or without some kind of accommodation. It had been her mother who had encouraged her to fall so she could learn to get back up. Molly loved them both, but her mother had always understood her better.

  Now she was starting to appreciate why.

  “Dana, tell me what’s going on.”

  “You’re not going to believe me,” she said. “I promise you that right now. Anything I say going forward is going to make you question my sanity. I don’t even know that I believe it myself. It’s just a story that my grandmother told me, and she might have been making it up. If Molly says she found out — and I have no idea how you would have done that, sweetheart — then maybe it’s time I share it.”

  She fell silent, and Molly clasped her hands in her lap, her thumbs running over each other — first one, then the other, then repeat. Sweat beaded on her palms, and she wiped them on her jeans again.

  The heavy silence filled the room with an unspoken strain, and it made Molly appreciate the turn of phrase of an elephant lurking about, something large and life-changing. Something the family might never come back from if it was openly discussed. She pictured her mother sitting with her head bent as she put her thoughts together while her father stared at her, wondering what lies she had spouted at him all these years.

  Molly didn’t blame her mother for keeping her secret, but her father wouldn’t be happy to hear the story, no matter what it was. Especially since, Molly believed, there would be no “cure for what ailed her.” She would just have to deal with his disappointment, like she always had.