Banish
Page 22
When in fact my entire world had changed during my confrontation with Seth at that house in Broad River.
The door creaked open and I rolled onto my side, facing the wall.
“Why are you avoiding me, Alyssa?” Mom said, her voice filled with disapproval.
With a fake yawn, I stretched and instantly regretted it when pain shot up my spine. “Just tired.”
“You didn’t seem so tired a few minutes ago when your young man visited.”
I blushed; she only knew the half of it.
She hovered in the doorway, her uncertainty piercing my veil of indifference.
“He seems nice.”
“He is.” If I had to spend the next week here I’d better start acting normal before she became suspicious. “We’ve only been dating a week.”
Her eyebrows rose. “He must really like you considering what’s happened. Most guys would run at a sign of…well, anything unusual.”
Something in her sunken shoulders, her look-away glance, alerted me to the truth that had been nagging at the edge of my conscience since she’d told me about her clairaudience.
“Dad didn’t die when I was a baby, did he?”
Her head snapped up, her eyes haunted. “I…he…no. He couldn’t handle it so he left. I don’t know where he is.” She shook her head. “I tried to hide who I was from him but after I had you…”
“What?”
I wanted to hear her say it, wanted to hear her spell out yet again: I was to blame for her downward spiral into lunacy.
“The voices are always stronger when you’re around,” she said, so softly I almost didn’t hear it.
“Yeah, so you’ve said.”
Her mouth twisted with pain at the bitterness in my voice.
I softened my tone. “Don’t worry, I’ll be gone in a week and you can return to your peaceful existence.”
Her gaze fixed on me. “I don’t want you to go.”
“We don’t always get what we want,” I said, a small part of me yearning to go back to the way we were, before Mom’s voices, before Noah’s death, before everything.
She didn’t respond and, uncomfortable with the growing silence, I crossed my arms and grimaced, forgetting the stitches in my palm.
“Alyssa, I know.”
Dread skittered across the nape of my neck. “Know what?”
She stepped into the room and closed the door. Yeah, like that would keep out the nebulous spirits she believed in.
“I know you’ve been in touch with Noah.”
Shock ripped through my resolve to maintain silence and I fiddled with the bandage on my hand to buy time.
“Guess it made sense I felt closer to him at his house—”
“Don’t patronise me.”
I flinched, her admonishment whipping my lie into submission.
“Mom, you promised we wouldn’t discuss your beliefs any more if I went through that ritual—”
“All bets are off now you’ve manifested.”
She made it sound like I’d burst out of a pod in alien form. Probably not a bad analogy considering how bizarrely out of my depth I felt.
I feigned ignorance. “I don’t know why you think—”
“I know because I can’t hear him any longer.” She stalked across the room and towered over me, hands on hips, like some avenging superhero. “And that means he’s moved onto the next stage, is in contact with a soul retriever.”
Shit.
I had to bluff my way out of this, had to plead ignorance before my life ended up like hers: down the toilet because of some stupid belief.
“You’re wrong.”
She knelt next to the bed and rested her elbows on the edge, eyeballing me. “Am I?”
I couldn’t look her in the eye and lie so I focused on the wall behind her. Silence was my best option. I compressed my lips and pretended to find an ant crawling up the wall more interesting than our conversation.
“Fine, you don’t want to talk? I’ll talk; you listen. Noah’s in perdition right now, trapped between the hell he left here on earth and moving onto a better place where he can find peace. Summerlands. The Wicca version of heaven. Only a soul retriever can help him move on, and right now, that’s you.”
Every word she uttered cut deeper than the gash in my palm.
I didn’t want to believe.
I didn’t want to be a soul retriever or a soul’s anything.
I didn’t want to spend my life going slowly but surely crazy.
But more than all that, I didn’t want Noah to end up stuck in some halfway place because I was too stubborn or too selfish to acknowledge the possibility that maybe Mom was right.
I dragged my gaze from the wall and looked at her. “What’s perdition?”
Her sigh of relief hit me as hard as her revelations.
“Where victims wait to move on.”
She placed her hand on my forearm. “They’ve usually been through a horrific time, either pre-death or during death, and they need time to assimilate their spirit before moving on. Some, like Noah, are torn, feeling like they’ve got unfinished business on earth so they end up trapped, unable to leave perdition voluntarily and needing a helping hand.”
She squeezed my forearm. “That’s where you come in.”
Fear and doubt and a million other emotions I could barely comprehend pinged through me, but one stood out about all else.
Responsibility.
I owed Noah.
For unwittingly leading that monster Massimo to his door, for not believing in him enough, for not being there for him when he needed me most, for pushing him away rather than wanting to know why my gentle boyfriend had turned violent.
Despite all that, he’d been there for me when I needed him. If he hadn’t tried to make contact while I was with Seth…
My lower lip wobbled. “What if I can’t do this? What if I’m not good enough to help these…souls?”
“You will be.” Her gentle smile filled me with hope. “I’ll help you.”
Her arms slid around me and for the first time in forever, I hugged her back.
When she pulled away, tears clung to her lashes. “Now you rest and we’ll discuss this further tomorrow.”
We had a lot to discuss, starting with how a normal girl like me could learn to get a grip on something she could barely accept let alone comprehend.
Drained beyond belief, I said, “Mom?”
She stopped in the doorway. “Yes, honey?”
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through because of me.”
“Ssh. We’re a special team, you and me. You’ll see.” She blew me a kiss and closed the door.
I should have felt relieved I’d shared my secret with her but I felt nothing beyond bone-deep exhaustion.
A week ago I didn’t believe in magick or perdition or lost souls.
Looked like I’d have to expand my views.
I lay there, wishing I could contact Noah and help him move on. But no matter how many times I mentally called to him, nothing happened.
No voice in my head, no peculiar numbness in my limbs. Nothing.
That’s okay, Noah. I’m going to get a handle on this soul retriever thing and when I do, you’ll be free.
I envied him, that possibility of freedom.
Come tomorrow, when I embraced my new life, I’d never be free again.
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ISBN: 9781743643365
TITLE: BANISH
First Australian Publication 2013
Copyright © 2013 NICOLA MARSH
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilisation of this work in whol
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