by A. J. Locke
Needless to say, his family was going ballistic, constantly blowing up my phone, but there was nothing positive I could offer them right now. They went to see him every day. Ethan was miserable of course, and it pained me to see him in such a predicament when he was supposed to be enjoying his new life. The media was having a field day with the story, and those who were the dissenting voice when it came to how Ethan had required a physical body again had become even more vocal in their call to have his body destroyed. The PCC had hired top-notch lawyers and were handling the media the best they could, but I had no idea how this would play out. It looked as though Ethan was going to be convicted of a crime he did not commit and there was nothing I could fucking do about it.
“Selene?”
I turned to Kyo, who was sitting next to me on the sofa with a look of concern on his face. I had just slammed my fists onto the cushions and made a sound of frustration. I blew out a breath.
“It’s overwhelming me,” I said.
“What is?”
“Everything. Ethan sitting in jail looking more miserable than he did when he was a ghost. And Micah…” I dropped my head into my hands and released a muffled scream. I felt Kyo put his hand on my shoulder. I raised my head and was unable to stop a tear from slipping down my cheek. I was more angry and frustrated than sad, but the tears still came.
“There’s been nothing from the Savages still,” I said. “Which isn’t a bad thing since all they do is kill, but I don’t know how else I’m supposed to find Micah. What is going on? I thought my soul was the grand prize?”
“I don’t know,” Kyo said. “But I get the feeling this is the calm before the storm.”
“Maybe my mother knows something,” I said. “I should go talk to her.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“No. What I want is to stay far, far away from her, but I don’t know what else to do. This all comes back to Nova. She is the reason my soul is in danger and the Savages have been running amok. So maybe there’s something helpful she can tell me. It would be the least she can do.” I glanced at the time. It was early afternoon.
“You’re gonna go now?”
“No time like the present.” I got up so I could go change.
“I’ll come with you,” Kyo said.
“I appreciate that, but I think I should do this alone.”
“You’re going to have to face Tielle to get to your mother,” Kyo said. “You could use the support.”
“I know, but I can handle it. Besides, I think it would be good for you to visit Ethan. Tell him I’ll stop by later. Take some of his nerd goodies for him. Some Pocky and the weird shrimp flavored cracker-chip thing he eats by the bucket load. And his wasabi peas.”
“Okay, I’ll go see Ethan. Just be careful with Tielle and your mother. Call me if you need me.”
“Will do. And speak Japanese to Ethan, maybe it will get him to crack a smile.” I seriously doubted it, but I was desperate for anything to lift his spirits even a smidge. I was afraid if I didn’t help Ethan soon they might find him hanging in his cell by his mattress sheet. But I couldn’t blame him for being so gloomy. He was in jail and the girl he’d been crushing on was ruthlessly killed. A third murder dumped on his shoulders. This one he wasn’t responsible for, but it was the one that had gotten him locked up.
I left Kyo and headed to my room where Snake Eyes slithered out from under my bed to keep me company while I changed into jeans and a blouse with a chunky cardigan over it. The weather was finally warming up but there was still a chill in the air. When I was leaving the room, Snake Eyes retreated to his dark hiding spot. I was conflicted on how I felt about being bound to the ghost snake. One the one hand he was helping me handle all the darkness I had sucked into myself, but I was uneasy about being ghost bound again. Especially to an old ghost snake Magda had summoned from the In Between. Talk about your unknown entities.
Kyo was in the kitchen gathering up Ethan’s snacks while Luna pranced around him hoping for a treat. But it had already been proven that she did not take to Ethan’s Japanese snacks. She never learned.
“I’m heading out. Wish me luck.” Despite my belief that I could face both Tielle and my mother, a flutter of anxiety and nervousness wound through me.
“I don’t wish you luck, I wish you strength,” Kyo said. “Tsuyoku naru. Be strong.”
“Arigatou.” I flashed him a smile and headed out.
* * *
It was awkward times infinity when I found myself standing just inside Tielle’s office door. She rose from where she was sitting behind her desk and came around it, though she did not venture too close. Her expression, as usual, was unreadable, but I could sense the tension within her. It was evident in the way she held herself even more rigidly than usual. Her sharp eyes were assessing and wary as she regarded me, as were mine as I regarded her.
It was not a surprise visit. I’d called ahead so she would know to expect me, but that didn’t make this any easier. I was unable to keep my anger dormant because facing her made me relive not only the severe beating she’d had inflicted on me, but the fact that she had run off and left me at the mercy of several Savages. My hands were tightly clenched, as was my jaw, in an effort to keep my mouth shut because the things I wanted to say in way of greeting were far from “hello, how are you?”
“Well, I suppose one of us has to speak first.” Tielle’s voice was bland, and she’d crossed her arms across her chest. I got a sense though, that it was more of a nervous gesture than an attempt to look intimidating. I took a further step inside and closed the door.
“Congrats, you won the ‘who should speak first’ contest.”
“Selene…”
“You left me with a bunch of Savages.” My voice was low, and edged in the anger I was trying to suppress. I had to keep reminding myself that launching myself on Tielle and trying to throttle her would get me nowhere. I had bigger problems to tackle. I had come here for a different reason. But I knew that we both needed to get some things off our chests.
“You can’t die,” she stated, as though that was all the explanation I needed.
“So you think it would have been better for me to be brutally torn apart but still alive to endure the pain? Or maybe they would have disemboweled me and I’d have to lay there watching my guts spill onto the floor? There are things worse than death, Tielle, and you left me at the mercy of them.”
Her eyes tightened, and I wondered if she really had not realized what she was doing when she left me behind with those Savages. Not that it mattered. She had still left.
“And you knew that the only way for me to stop them was to pull the darkness out of them with my dead magic. Which killed them.”
“You threatened my son,” she said through clenched teeth. I could see a fine tremor going through her body, and her expression swiftly changed from unreadable to upset. She was trying to hold herself together and my eyes widened as I saw how vulnerable she now looked. “I’m sorry.”
I had not expected her say that, and she spat the words at me as though they were a poison she had to get out of her body. I doubted there were many times in her life when Tielle had to apologize. She threw her hands up and made a sound of frustration.
“I took things too far, I’ll admit that. And in the end it got me nowhere. My first reaction when I found out that you knew about our history with the dead warlocks was a knee-jerk one. I panicked. We have sat on this for so long, grown so used to the terrible deeds our foundation was built on, that almost without thinking I lashed out at you to try and keep you quiet, to try and get things back to how they were before. Because it has been all I have known, all the dead witch community has known for so long. It did not seem fathomable that someone else could have stumbled onto our secrets. Worse yet that they would bring it to light. I did what I thought I had to do.”
“To protect long dead, magic-stealing, infant-murdering dead witches,” I stated.
“Yes,” Tielle said
, her shoulders drooping slightly. “That is the legacy I thought I needed to protect. And that was wrong.” She sighed. “All we’ve done is hide the truth and threaten and suppress those dead witches who wanted to come clean and try to make amends. We knew that it would not be something we could recover from. We would fall.”
“But you would deserve it,” I said. “You spent centuries building yourselves up on the destruction of the dead warlocks and the use of their magic. You deserve all the backlash this brings.”
“I know.”
I folded my arms across my chest as I regarded her. “So you apologized, though I do not believe I am at a point where I can accept it. But I acknowledge it. What will you do now?”
“I had a long conversation with Jian,” she said. “Many long conversations actually. He is angry and confused and a little scared…and then angry and confused some more. But it has been through talking to him that made me realize just how far I’ve gone. I never should have hurt you, Selene, or left you at the mercy of those Savages. I told my son everything, and I saw in his eyes that I was not someone he was proud of. I don’t know if I will ever get back to a place where my son trusts me, but it would be what I deserve. He wants to know who he really is. He wants his magic. He wants the dead witches to come clean to the world. So we will.”
My eyebrows rose. “Just like that, you will come clean?” I could not hide the untrusting tone to my voice.
“Selene, think of me what you will, but rest assured that my son is the most important thing to me. I see now that I have not done right by him his entire life…”
“A well-educated, powerful woman with a top-notch, super important job only now realizes that keeping secrets from her son—and everyone else—was wrong. Bravo.”
Tielle’s brows furrowed. “It is possible to be intelligent in some ways and profoundly stupid in others. Unfortunately, my stupidity involved my own child. But I digress. I want to do whatever I can to make this right for Jian. And that starts with telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may. I am in the process of putting together a large and very public press conference. I have started to solicit dead witches who I know will be on the side of speaking out.”
“And what about those who think you should keep your secrets buried? Will you have them oppressed now, instead of the ones who wanted to speak out?”
“They won’t have a choice,” Tielle said. “Everything must come to light. We will detach from the warlock’s magic and give the remains of those who have decomposed to their families for burial.”
“What about the ones whose ghosts are still in the In Between?”
“We will figure something out. I don’t know what, but we will try to reunite those ghosts with their bodies.”
“I see. Well, all I can say to that is I’ll believe it when I see it.” I paused. “But within all of that, don’t forget about Ethan.”
“Ethan is still a priority. Our lawyers will figure out a way to prove that he did not kill that girl. It is just a shame that Jacob McNabb is dead or else, with some coercion, he could have helped prove Ethan’s innocence.”
I flinched inwardly. I knew I had consciously made the choice to kill Jacob, and now I was stung with guilt over the fact that he could have been used to free Ethan. I had let the darkest part of me take over when I had sucked Jacob’s soul out and sent it to Garrus. I was slipping further and further in the wrong direction and I was scared I would lose myself completely.
“Right,” I said to Tielle, pulling myself out of my thoughts. I told myself there was no guarantee that Jacob would have been helpful if he was still around, and that no matter what Ethan would come out of this okay. Now I just had to believe it.
“Okay, that’s that. Now for what I really came here for. I need to speak to my mother.”
Tielle’s eyes widened. “Why?”
I was irritated. “Is it your business why I would need to speak to her? Maybe Jian isn’t the only one with mommy issues?”
Tielle flinched as though I’d slapped her, but I didn’t feel bad about what I’d said.
“She is the reason Revath is here reaping souls, turning people into Savages, then coming for my soul. Or have you forgotten since the Savages haven’t been seen for a few days?”
“I have not forgotten,” Tielle said. “If anything, their disappearance is even more worrisome.”
“Yes, especially since Micah is among them.” I had to stop and take a deep breath and let the feeling that a fist had tightened around my heart pass. It was a struggle every moment of the day not to completely lose my shit over the fact that Micah was a Savage and nowhere to be found. All I kept thinking was that if I could get the rune from around Revath’s neck and get the darkness out of Micah, he would be saved. That was so much easier said than done though.
“Micah will be found and restored,” Tielle said.
I would have loved to believe in the resolute tone to her voice, but I couldn’t. This wasn’t a truth you could just speak into existence. In order to fix this, something had to be done. And I had no idea what. But Nova was a start.
“Just take me to Nova, let me talk to her. She’s been hollering for me, hasn’t she?”
“She has,” Tielle replied. “All she does is beg for someone to bring you to her.”
“She doesn’t deserve to have her wishes granted, but let’s go.”
Tielle nodded and started to move forward, but I held my ground instead of turning to the door and she stopped and gave me a hesitant look. Under difference circumstances I might have been flattered that Tielle was regarding me with caution.
“I just need to say something before we go,” I said. “I don’t consider us friends, frankly I don’t think I ever did, but I don’t consider us enemies either. I don’t have the time to spare or energy to waste trying to go to war with you. I’ve seen the consequences of that. I will say that I never truly would have hurt your son, because despite the shadows in my own heart, I don’t endeavor to hurt someone who does not deserve it. It is hard enough dealing with hurting people who do.” I retrieved something from my purse, walked forward, and placed it in her palm. It was the rune that contained Jian’s magic. I gave her a direct stare. “I trust that rune will end up in the right hands.”
Tielle closed her hand around the rune and nodded.
“Good.” I stepped back. “As I was saying. I suspect there will always be a time when one of us can be beneficial to the other, such as my needing your assistance now with Ethan and Nova, and I am willing to maintain a working relationship with you. Because now I know exactly who you are, and you will not take me by surprise or get the upper hand on me again. You are a murderer, a liar, and a powerful dead witch with a ‘whatever it takes’ mentality. You’ll do the bad thing, the really bad thing, if you believe the outcome is what’s necessary. Maybe you’ll have a sad thought about it after, maybe you won’t. You tried to strip my reanimation power, you had me beaten, and you left me with soul-less, darkness-filled monsters. And they were never for the right reasons. Stripping reanimators is wrong, keeping your ancestors secrets is wrong. For all your knowledge, you are severely misguided. Though maybe you are starting to see the light now. Which is great for you, but too late for me or anyone else. So from here on out I just want you to know that I have no agenda against you, Tielle Mai Chen, because you are nothing to me.” I turned and walked out of the door without taking the time to gauge her reaction to my words.
“Now, take me to see Nova.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tielle left me on the floor where Harvey Whittle and the other people who’d been inflicted with ghost energy from the crossovers ghosts had been kept. The room that was destroyed when one of the victims exploded had been rebuilt. You’d never known a woman’s blown apart body had once graced it. I was at the very end of the hall where the last room was built like a jail cell. Instead of a solid or acrylic wall, there were shiny metal bars. I wasn’t sure if the room had always been li
ke this or if it had been converted in order to contain my mother. I was betting on the latter.
Once Tielle’s form retreated around the corner, I turned to Nova. There was no one else here, and I couldn’t help the uncomfortable feeling I had at being alone with the woman who had given birth to me, but who was more unknown to me than I could fathom. Not to mention the soul-bargaining and attempted murder.
Nova sat huddled against the wall in the far corner of the cell. It was brightly lit, perfectly illuminating the floor that was cluttered with trays of uneaten food, some of which were turning moldy, and upturned bottles of water. There was a toilet in a shallow recess that really offered no privacy, and a bare twin mattress on the wall opposite the toilet. Nova was still draped in her dark cloak, though the hood was back, and her heavy lidded eyes stared listlessly forward as her lips moved rapidly, whispering something I couldn’t hear.
I balled my hands into fists, then uncurled them, then balled them again. I was angry, incredibly angry, because not only had she fucked with my soul and gotten Micah’s taken in the process, she had also fucked with my grandmother’s soul. All these years I thought Grams was at peace, now I had no idea what horrible torture she had been under all this time. If her soul even still existed. And here Nova sat, the person responsible for it all. It suddenly struck me that I had come from a woman whose heart was swimming in darkness. I swallowed hard. My own brush with going down the darkened path made me feel even more uncomfortable. And angry, especially with myself. I did not want to be anything like her.
