What Gifts She Carried

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  Whispers spun around my head, both sets equally frenzied. One rolled her wrist against her leg, the movement so subtle that I would’ve missed if I’d blinked. Ica must have caught it, too, because her grin seemed to waver.

  Then, in a flash, One fisted her hand. Ica made a sound like a backward hiss and fell to her knees.

  “Stop!” I sent a stream of roots up from a hole in the ground between them. I would form a fifty foot high wall that cut through the center of town if I had to just to keep them from killing each other, but it was too late. The smoking holes in Ica’s face were already growing larger. They stretched over one of her empty eyes until the moon shone on part of her skull.

  My roots coiled around One’s arms to keep her from spreading Ica’s holes wider with a flick of a wrist. Ica made a wheezing groan that sounded like she was inhaling loose rocks, but she managed to lift a finger and aim it at One.

  Segmented red legs jutted out of her fingertip, about as long as my hair. So did a forked tongue that flicked at the air. Then a blur of something red with too many legs rushed at the other Sorceress.

  “No!” I lunged at the thing and lifted my leg to smash my boot down on top of it, but a wall of black smoke funneled inside my mouth.

  The worst kind of burn fired down my throat, choking me, ripping me in half. I clawed at my chest, desperate to get it out of me. The world was turning blue, the brightest blue I’d ever seen, but it hurt. Everything hurt. Someone’s scream tore through the night and dragged the moon down the blue night sky. I watched it fall while my body did, too.

  “You bitch.” It came out of my mouth, but it wasn’t me. Another dark shapeless cloud swept down my throat as I said it. It trailed acidic claws after it, pulling darkness over my mind like a curtain. But I could still feel them both battling inside me while they tried to push and squeeze the other out.

  “I am One because I am Gretchen’s sister. It is as Gretchen commands. Do you dare go against her?”

  “Did Gretchen command you to lie to me? To pretend to choose me as Three?”

  “I will do whatever it takes to free her.”

  “And I’ll do whatever it takes for more power. When the Core opens, all those Sorceresses will have a reason to worship me.”

  “You were going to take a child as your Two, a child who’s not much older than Gretchen’s children were when they were taken by their despicable father. She’s not nearly as strong as this one.”

  “Was I? Was I really going to take that skinny brat for my Two? Or did I just guess that Leigh would free you to save her sister?”

  The voices inside me that weren’t mine fueled the inferno of fire, smoke, and pain with every shove for position inside my mouth. I tried to speak with my own voice, to tell them not to kill each other, to get the hell out, but everything was starting to fade behind that thick curtain until...

  I woke with a start, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d been asleep. My fingers twisted through the spiked dead grass that turned to crisped bits as soon as I gripped it to help me stand. A red mist flecked my skin and clothes, my head ached, and my chest felt as though I’d smoked an entire chemical plant, but I was okay. Still tattooed, but alive.

  What just happened? I remembered a red snake-like spider shooting a direct path toward One, but she wasn’t even here. Smoke wafted up from a dark heap just a few feet away. It blackened the night to thick velvet, weaving darkness across the swings and teeter-totter, leaving them the same color as the sky.

  I stood at the same time as the heap did, scorching the air with her hatred. Ica still sounded as though she had stones rattling around in her gaping mouth. It took a few seconds for the wind to kick up enough to blow the smoke away from her so I could see what I wanted to see.

  Relief sweetened the toxic smell radiating off of her when I did see it. The top of a black two tattoo, a two, not a one, curved over where her eye used to be, and the end of it disappeared into one of the many holes all over her face. Her skull took over most of the other eye. The same red mist on me also speckled her scraps of clothing, and I wondered just what had happened to that spider/snake.

  Ica let loose a hiss. A pain seared over my tattoo, so terrible it burned tears from my eyes. I folded my arm to my chest with gritted teeth while she turned and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

  “Miss? Are you all right? My wife says she heard screaming out here,” a deep voice said from outside the fence. “Dear God, was there another fire or...?”

  I knew what that was. It’d been a not-so-subtle reminder that my number still marked my arm with permanent ink. To get rid of it forever, I would have to first erase both One and Ica at the same time to keep Darby out of danger. Otherwise, she would be chosen as the replacement. Because they would never stop until they had a grave winner. Not ever.

  “Miss?”

  And I only had three days to figure out how to stop them. Three days.

  “Are you all right?”

  I turned, about to give an answer so this guy would shut up. But a chill penetrated to the core of my bones, making speech impossible. The smoke-charred merry-go-round had stopped spinning.

  Chapter 20

  Day One

  Darby adjusted her glasses with shaky fingers, so small and frail like everything in her bedroom. “Are you going to tell Dad about me? About what I did in the attic and that it really worked?”

  I studied her for a long moment while the worry behind those words threatened to blow me over. After being possessed by an eyeless, black-cloud-oozing ex-news reporter, that was what made her push her heels into the carpet. Yeah, she remembered none of it, but I remembered every single second.

  “No,” I said and glanced at her bedroom door, open so Dad wouldn’t think I’d slipped out the window or anything. “I won’t tell him.”

  I’d already slipped out part of that truth, but he hadn’t wanted to listen anyway. It was a trivial detail compared to the larger picture, though. And everything that had gone down the night before.

  The deathly still merry-go-round surged doubt into every quiver of my stomach. What if setting One free was the absolute worst thing I could’ve done? Should I have let Darby be Two and scrambled around until the last minute to see if I could capture Ica? But what if I couldn’t? Tram wasn’t here to tell me if I’d done the right thing or to yell at me if I hadn’t, and I really wished he was. If he was here, I might not be in this mess again. If he was here, Ms. Hansen might not be dead and Mrs. Rios would be okay.

  Darby nodded, seeming satisfied that I wouldn’t tell on her. “I’ll get rid of the dog. I’m just waiting for the right time.”

  Which meant never. How did she get the dog in the attic in the first place if she was so terrified of dead things?

  “So are you going to tell me how you did it?” I asked for the third time.

  “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  “I don’t. I do. I just...” I frowned, searching for words that wouldn’t freak her out. “It’s the same reason you took the book out of the trash can. Curiosity. I have this fixation with dead things, and I’d like to know more.”

  Darby ran a finger over a mermaid tail on her bedspread and pursed her lips. “I don’t think regular sisters talk about this kind of thing on Sunday mornings.”

  “Yeah, we need serious help,” I agreed with a sharp nod. “What did the book say?”

  “It’s complicated.” Darby gave me a look like I wouldn’t be able to understand it with such a small mind.

  I swallowed back the growl of frustration that this was taking so long for her to just spill it. Understanding the dead and the dark magic that brought One, Two, and Ica back could be my only way out of this. I would try just about anything at this point.

  “Try me,” I said.

  “Well, it says to start out small, like with insects and things, because...when you raise the dead, they usually come after you and want to hurt you.”

  “Really.” It wasn’t a question; it was
a hearty agreement that I tried to keep from dripping into my voice. I knew a thing or three about that.

  “I mean they want to hurt the person who raised them because the dead get mad that they’re woken up unless you can control them. But Merlin says anything with more than four legs is the spawn of Morgan le Fay, and I can’t handle creepy-crawly insects,” Darby said and shivered.

  “I won’t argue with you there,” I said and shifted around on her bed so all her broken crayons wouldn’t dig into my butt. “So you skipped ahead to advanced resurrection class with birds and dogs.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “And what did you do?”

  Darby picked at her purple pillowcase, shoulders bunched up to her ears and a frown etched onto her mouth. “It’s dark magic, so... it has to be performed in the dark. But first, there’s a whole ritual of lighting a candle to see if you can even perform dark magic.”

  “A candle? So you were playing with fire, too,” I said with a sigh. “Go on.”

  Both our heads snapped toward the hallway as Dad walked past in a t-shirt and shorts. He looked like he was about to go mow the lawn.

  “Then, you...you say a lot of words, a spell, and then you get away fast in case the dead want to hurt you. Also because it’s a major crime since it’s dark magic. Trammelers can arrest you for it.”

  That one word shot my eyebrows up my forehead. “Trammelers?”

  “Yeah, Trammelers. The book didn’t say what that was exactly, but they’ll arrest you and send you to the Counselor for judgement.”

  And who judged the Counselor to make sure he wasn’t using dark magic? No one. I wished I could shove his craving for immortality right down his throat to choke off his smelly chemical breath.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “That’s it.”

  I leaned forward in her desk chair. “How do you make the dead not want to hurt you?’

  “Easy,” she said with a shrug. “You protect yourself with parts of a thorn tree.”

  “Of course,” I whispered. Hide from the dead with Death’s tree. Tram had done the same thing to the gifts I gave Mom to make them undetectable to One and Two. “Darby, who can raise the dead. Is it a special type of person?”

  “Mm-hm, but that part confused me because I didn’t know what it meant. It said that only someone with certain gifts can raise the dead.”

  A Trammeler Sorceress. Those were the gifts needed to raise the dead. Tram had said the very same thing in the parking lot outside a burning Whaty-Whats.

  “There was something else I didn’t understand, though. The part where it said, ‘You set free my strongest gift.’”

  My mouth dropped open. “What?”

  “That’s how the book began, on the dedication page. I recognized the words from Dad’s coin he always flips over his hand while he’s reading.”

  I smacked myself in the forehead while a mix of a snarl and a high-pitched giggle burst out of my mouth. “His coin. Of course. Darby, you’re a genius.” I rose to give her a kiss on the lips and laughed when she screwed up her face in disgust.

  “You sound like my teacher just before she gives me more math homework.”

  “No homework, I promise. But if you want twenty Bobby Fever bookmarks, I’ll get them for you,” I said in a rush. “Dad!”

  “What?” he called from somewhere down the hall.

  I ran to find him. He sat by the back door putting on a pair of grungy shoes.

  “The coin,” I said, breathless. “The one you dance over your fingers. Where did you get it?”

  “Them, you mean. I have two of them, and your mom gave them to me for my birthday soon after Darby was born.” He turned back to his shoes and tugged at the laces. “Why?”

  “What did she say about them? Anything?”

  Dad narrowed his eyes, studying me, and shrugged. “She said they were bookmarks and that I should always keep them close and out in the open.”

  So we could see them, and if I hadn’t been so blind, I would have a long time ago. God, I was such an idiot.

  “I thought it was a little strange that they were to be used as bookmarks, but since they were a birthday present, and they were from your mom, well...it was impossible to ever say no to that woman.” Dad stood and posted his hands on his hips, a faraway look in his eyes.

  Mom knew us so well. Dad almost always had books in his hands, one for each of them, so she knew we would see the coins all the time. The same words she’d etched on them she’d put into song lyrics, which she’d drilled me on so I would know they meant something special. Genius must run in our family. It must’ve skipped the first child, but hey. I was doing the best I could. Hope boosted me to the balls of my feet to plant a kiss on Dad’s cheek.

  I flew back down the hallway to find the coin. If I had my Sorceress power, I would have a better chance to capture One and Ica. I could do it. I would have to figure out how, but I could do it.

  “Darby,” I yelled, bursting inside Dad’s bedroom to search the pile of books on his nightstand. “Show me what I have to do.”

  I COULDN’T DO THIS.

  I’d followed Darby’s directions word for word, and I thought I would feel different somehow, more powerful maybe with all that Sorceress power bubbling through my insides. But I didn’t. The only way I would know for sure if that coin held my Sorceress magic was to try it out, and the only bit of magic I knew was how to raise the dead.

  Just thinking about it made my flesh slink around my bones. I’d fought so hard to keep dead things away from me, to keep Mom resting and peaceful inside her grave, and now I would have to undo everything I thought I wanted. Well, almost everything because there was no way I would step foot near Mom’s grave while I performed this spell.

  Instead of making me feel relieved, every dip of the sun curled my fingers deeper into the edge of Darby’s mattress. When she slammed her mammoth Before Merlin’s Beard book shut, I yelped.

  “What do you think’s going to happen next?” she asked, grinning.

  “I don’t know.” I hadn’t heard a word she’d just read.

  Dad stood from Darby’s armchair and stretched. “Merlin will have to swallow the apple-flavored candy Morgan le Fay gave him. It might make him go to the dark side, but that’s the only way he’ll defeat her. Great story.”

  “What if he doesn’t, though?” she asked as she settled herself deeper into the blankets with a slight wince. A stray crayon had probably just stabbed her in the back.

  I played my fingers through her hair one more time before I stood, too, faking a yawn. “You already know what he’s going to do.”

  “He could rewrite the end while we’re sleeping,” she said. “He could not swallow the candy just to see if he’s brave enough to beat Morgan without dark magic.”

  “What if you have it all wrong?” Dad asked, bending down to pluck her glasses off her face and to sweep kisses over her cheeks. He handed the wire frames across the bed to me, and I folded them carefully before placing them on the nightstand. “He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him once he swallows that candy. That takes some guts.”

  Sweat beaded across my face. This conversation was hitting much too close to home. The heavy rock in my stomach sure didn’t make me feel brave about using dark magic, and it had been coated in ice-cold terror, not apple flavoring.

  “It does take guts,” she agreed. “Will you leave the light on?”

  I sawed my teeth over my lip at that awful request. She’d asked the same thing the night before. Monsters had finally wormed their way into her head to make her fear the dark. I hated Ica even more then. Biting back the storm of words I wanted to spew out about her, I turned away so no one would see the rage probably written all over my face.

  “Sure.” I grabbed the doorknob with both hands to help still the anger gnawing its way through me.

  “I love you, Dad,” she said.

  “Love you, too, sweetie pie.”

  “I love you, Leig
h.”

  That simple declaration relaxed my shoulders a little. I leaned against the doorway and peered back at her through the curtain of my hair. “Love you more.”

  Dad followed me out, shutting the door, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Are you all right, Leigh?”

  “Fine.” It was such an automatic response now, I felt as though I’d just speed-dialed it to come out of my mouth. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, you seem like you have a lot on your mind. Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  “I’m not pregnant and I’m not on drugs if that’s what you’re thinking,” I blurted. He had thought it, though. Probably still did.

  He chuckled, the real kind that started in his belly.

  I rubbed a hand down my tattooed arm covered up by a long black sleeve, wishing I could tell him the truth and that he would actually listen. But I would much rather hear his laugh, especially now when I thought about what I was going to do.

  “You can talk to me. You know that, right?” he said.

  “I know.”

  He crushed me to him then to plant a kiss on the top of my head. “I think it’s great that you’re taking over your mom’s role by reading with Darby and watching over her like you do. Your mom would be so proud of you.”

  The heavy weight in my chest swelled so much, it pulled at my throat. I squeezed my eyes closed at the sting welling in their corners and at the image of the merry-go-round completely still, even in the crazy wind. Maybe she had been proud of me. I shook my head against Dad’s chest because I doubted she would be anymore.

  “You’re still grounded, though,” Dad said and pulled away. “Just because you don’t have a school anymore to finish out the year doesn’t change that, okay? I’ll still call every hour tomorrow while I’m at work.”

  I wiped at my face, nodding. “I’ll be good.” Not here for chunks out of the day, but still good in my definition of the word. I couldn’t stand to see disappointment in Dad’s eyes again, no matter what happened.