by Meg Bonney
I felt them all around me―my friends. Even when I closed my good eye, I could feel them there.
And warmth. I felt warm.
Like I was sinking into a freshly drawn bath. Just warmth.
Then the voices went from an echo to a simple, tranquil quiet.
And then there was nothing.
Nothing. Endlessly peaceful nothing.
CHAPTER 35
I opened my eyes. Birds chirped loudly outside. I was in my own bed. In my own room.
I was back at Ruth’s house.
“This is it?” I said softly.
I felt so different. I looked down at my skin, and it was paler than I remembered. I blinked slowly.
Death was peaceful. It was warmer than I thought it would be.
I stretched, not wanting to get out of bed. I didn’t think death would be so comfortable. So calming. My heaven was Ruth’s house? I wouldn’t have called that, but I was happy to be here.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed. Everything was different. Different furniture. Even the walls were darker.
That’s strange.
I felt anxious. Not the indescribable peace that I thought I would feel in death.
And then I thought of Aunt Ruth. They killed her. I wondered if she was here. Did you share a heaven with your family?
My anxiety switched to anger as I thought about what they did to Aunt Ruth. I ran the images through my mind and grabbed my side, remembering my own injuries. There was no wound under my shirt. No mark of any kind from my father plunging the sword into my gut.
My father killed me. The day I met him―he killed me.
Even in death, the notion stung. He had ended up being everything they said he was, no matter how hard I had tried to see him the way I wanted.
I stood, walked to the window, and lifted it open. A sunny, warm Florida day. I patted my comfy brown recliner with a smile. This wasn’t different. This was right where I had left it.
With a pang of sadness, I sank into the chair. Jason. Ren. Lacy and Ara. And even Gullway. My friends. What would happen to them without me? I wasn’t scared to be dead, but I wished I knew whether they were okay. I wished I was with them.
I started to cry loudly. I grabbed a tissue from my dresser and paused as I caught myself in the mirror.
In the place of the seashell eye patch, I had a standard drugstore-bought black eye patch. Very pirate-esque, of course.
I leaned closer to look under my eye patch. There was a hole in my eye that looked more like a slash. I let go and the eye patch flapped back into place. My hair was a frizzy mess.
“Even in death, my hair still sucks,” I snickered. I saw my gloves on the dresser. The dresser—not my white dresser, but an unpainted one. Why did it all look so different?
I turned and looked around the room. Everything was different, actually.
“That’s strange.”
I saw my seashell eye patch lying on the dresser. I raised my hand to my eye and felt the smooth, satin texture of the black eye patch that had taken its place.
“How did this even get here?” I touched the pink grooves of the seashell just as the door to my bedroom swung open.
“Madison?”
And there, standing in my doorway, was Shawn Milton.
I dropped my shoulders forward. “Oh, crap. I’m in hell.” I slid the seashell eye patch into my pocket.
Shawn looked confused. “Are you okay, Madison? May I get you some water?”
“I am dead and this is my hell,” I said.
Shawn smiled. “You are not dead, Madison. Can I get you something?”
I squinted at him. He was dressed in a collared button-down shirt and a navy tie. His hair was short and tidy and he looked…refined.
“What? Why are you here? And why are you being nice to me?” I asked suspiciously.
Shawn looked even more concerned. “Madison, perhaps you should sit down. You seem a little out of it.”
“Shawn, what are you doing in my house?” I demanded.
“Maddy?” said Jason from the doorway. A showered and rested Jason. Without words, I ran to him and hugged him tightly.
“Oh thank god! This is the best heaven ever!” I said after a few moments of embrace.
Jason pulled back. “What?”
“Of course I wouldn’t have a heaven without you in it,” I stated. “But why the hell is Shawn here? He’s talking all proper, too, like a total creep. He is so gross.”
“You know, I can hear you. You aren’t even trying to whisper.” Shawn raised an eyebrow.
“Whatever, I’m dead. I’ll do what I want,” I said back to him and held up my middle finger.
Jason furrowed his eyebrows. He reached out and poked my forehead with his index finger, pushing me back a little.
“Oww,” I complained.
“No, you are not in heaven―you are very much alive, my dearest.”
“Jason, do y—” Lacy came in from the hall. “Madison!” she exclaimed and ran to me, hugging me. I hugged her back tightly.
“Lacy!” I couldn’t control my laughter mixed with happy tears. “I am so glad you’re okay, Lacy.”
I took a step back and looked at her. Her blonde hair was swept up into a bun, just like her mom used to wear, and she was wearing a pantsuit. She looked so different, too.
“Lacy…you look…” I started.
Lacy smoothed her hair on top of her head. “Oh, yeah, I had to meet with the CEO of a new company on the other side of the island. They may want to contract the gym for their employees.”
I shook my head. “Huh?
“It’s great to see you, Madison,” Lacy said warmly as tears ran down her rosy cheeks.
“It is,” Shawn agreed.
I scoffed. “Shut your frickin’ face, Shawn.”
“Maddy,” Jason said. “Calm down.”
“What happened? How am I alive?” I asked. Lacy looked a little baffled at my question.
“Lacy, Shawn…can you give us a minute?” Jason asked them and gave an awkward laugh.
“Of course. We’ll be right downstairs if you need us,” Lacy answered and smiled politely.
“I love you, Lacy!” I called out rather awkwardly.
“Love you too, Mad Dash,” Lacy said with tears in her eyes.
Shawn and Lacy walked out of the room holding hands. Jason crossed the room and closed the door.
“How? How am I alive?” I asked, looking at Jason. “I died in the courtyard. I died, didn’t I?”
“Your Witch power. It was in the sword,” Jason said.
“My Witch power was in the sword? So, when he stabbed me…” I began.
“Your power was released back into you. It saved you.”
My sword was leaning against the closet door in its scabbard. “See?” Jason said, handing it to me.
I wrapped my hand around the handle. Nothing. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Ara said that’s why your eye turned blue, too.”
“Ara. Where are the others? Did they all get out?” I asked eagerly.
“Yes, they did. Ara, Ren, and Gullway are all in Everly, just through the portal. Ren keeps obsessively checking on us. It’s pretty cute, actually.”
“Everything is different.” I chewed my lip. “Why is everything different?”
“Yes, that.” Jason moved toward me. “Maddy, sit down.”
Jason took my hands and we sat on the bed. Even the blanket was different.
“What is going on? Why is everything so different? What is wrong with Lacy? She looks so grown-up. She’s seventeen and talking about meetings with a CEO? And Shawn―Shawn could almost pass for human.”
“Maddy, they are different,” Jason said, and cleared his throat. “They’re two years older. Lacy took over her mom’s gym. She’s doing a great job, actually.”
“Um, what?”
“Time passes differently in Everly. While we were in
Everly, about two years passed here,” Jason explained.
My mouth fell open.
“Shawn and Lacy live here now,” he added. “After we…disappeared, she went to live with the Miltons. When she was eighteen, she moved back here. She said she didn’t want your home to be gone when you came back. She doesn’t know about Everly or any of it. They thought we―well, they didn’t know what to think.”
“No…no.” I shook my head. “That is crazy.” I darted to the door and swung it open. I stepped into the hallway, which used to be lined with pictures of Lacy and me as kids. Now it was painted a pale yellow with a thin chair rail about halfway up the wall. No pictures.
I walked down the hall to Aunt Ruth’s room and pushed open the door. Her bed, which used to be covered in a ruffled white bedspread, was gone. There was no bed at all, actually. Just a large maple desk and a tall-backed office chair.
“What the hell is this?!” I yelled. Jason was in the hall now, too.
“Aunt Ruth hates when you touch her stuff! Why…” I started walking back to where Jason stood but stopped when I saw the office door. The door to Aunt Ruth’s office, which she always kept locked, was ajar. I walked in.
Now the room was a master bedroom in navy and coral, straight out of a magazine.
“Lacy!” I yelled. “What did you do?”
“Maddy, calm down.” Jason put his hands on my shoulders. “Just calm down.”
“No! She hates when her stuff is moved. She hates it.”
“Maddy, two years have passed. It’s all moved. It’s all different.”
I tried to catch my breath as I folded my hands together and rested them on the top of my head. “Two years.” I looked around the room. “This is unbelievable. So…graduation, our scholarships, college. Everything. We missed it,” I concluded. “Two years?”
Jason nodded.
“Maddy?” Lacy hollered as she came running down the hallway toward me. She looked like Aunt Ruth when she had such a serious expression on her face. I turned away immediately. How could I look her in the eye, knowing that I couldn’t save her mother? And if she asked me about Aunt Ruth, I couldn’t lie to her. I turned away from her to focus on Jason.
“Maddy?” Jason asked before exchanging glances with Lacy. I had seen that look before. It was the look they exchanged when they thought I was about to flip out. In this case, it was justifiable.
“What did your parents say, Jason?” I asked him.
Jason looked down at his feet. “They moved away. Lacy is trying to track them down for me. After we disappeared, they searched and waited, but eventually they needed to get out of here. They live on the mainland somewhere. Too hard to be here.”
“And I will keep trying,” Lacy assured us from behind me. Even if she was older now, she still had the same voice with a certain amount of innocence still in it. She was still my sweet Lacy, untouched by the evils of Everly. I still couldn’t bring myself to look at her.
“And Caleb?” I put my hands on Jason’s.
“Moved on.” He smiled. “Happy too.”
“Lacy, can you get me something to drink and maybe something to eat? I’m starving,” I asked without turning to look at her.
“Of course you are. You’re always hungry,” Lacy replied. I listened to her footsteps growing fainter as she walked back down the hall away from us.
“You okay?” Jason asked once she was gone.
“No, how could I be? It all happened without us.”
Jason nodded.
I plopped down on Lacy’s perfectly made bed. Jason sat down next to me.
“Two years―two years have passed. It’s like we don’t even exist here,” I muttered.
“Yep. Depressing, isn’t it?” Jason said. “You should have seen Lacy when I knocked on the door. She freaked out. Lacy and the town mourned us like we were dead and there I was at her door with her unconscious cousin who hadn’t aged a day.”
“Why did you come back here at all?” I asked, turning my head to look at him.
“There’s a bit of a manhunt going on right now,” Jason answered.
“Because I did the ritual in the courtyard,” I said, picking at my thumbnail. There was a thin line of black under each of my fingernails. A little Everly memento.
Jason put his hand on mine. “Actually, they all think you’re dead, Mads. They’re looking for me.”
I sat up abruptly. “Why?”
“Well, after your father tried to kill you, I sort of lost it. Well, not sort of. I lost it big time. I knocked him out. They have the Cloaked out looking for me, for crimes against the Crown. I am a wanted man.”
“What? Jason, what’s the matter with you? Why would you attack him?” I stood abruptly.
“Madison, he tried to kill you!” Jason shot back.
“So―so, why would you attack him? He’s still my father. You could have hurt him!” I spun around as tears rushed to my eyes. I knew how irrational that sounded, but it was exactly what I was feeling. I just didn’t understand why the thought of Jason hurting my psycho father made me so angry.
I blinked a few times and scanned the floor. I shoved the white woven rug out of the way. “The floorboard. When Sinder was Lacy, she ripped up a floorboard and found my sword. And there was a piece of paper,” I told him as I felt around for the loose board.
“Maddy, don’t rip up her floor!” Jason leaned back and peeked down the hall.
My finger slipped through a crack in the floor, allowing me to pull back the plank. “Yes! I can’t believe I almost forgot!” I exclaimed as I set the piece of wood down next to me. Inside was a narrow little nook, and right in the middle was a book and a small box.
I grabbed both. I opened the box first as Jason sat down on the floor next to me.
Inside the box was a piece of paper—the same little paper that I had seen Sinder reading the night we went to Everly.
“Read it,” Jason urged me.
I unfolded the stiff paper. Scribbled in curving black print were the words “Molad an Banron Vilda.”
I read them aloud and dropped the paper.
Jason picked it up and read it. “Do you know what this means?”
“Gullway―Gullway said that to me. It’s troll. It means ‘Praise Queen Vilda,’” I said softly, and grabbed the paper back. “Vilda is my mother’s name.”
I tucked the paper and the book under my arm. With urgency, I replaced the loose floorboard. I ran back to my bedroom.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked, following me.
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I put the scabbard on my back, slid my sword into it, and climbed out the window onto my tree. I maneuvered quickly down the tree and hit the ground.
“What are you doing?” Jason pressed as he followed me down the tree. “Maddy, stop. You’re safe now. We’re home. It’s over. Just take a minute.”
I shook my head. “No, it isn’t.” I walked to the backyard. “It will never be over. Ever. Jason, I can’t stay here and pretend that Everly doesn’t exist—not now. Not with everything we know. And what if they do come looking for you? I don’t want Lacy to get hurt. We have to go back.”
“Maddy,” Jason protested.
“Greenrock went on without us, Jason. It’s like we…” I stopped talking as I walked through the backyard. There at the edge of the property were three large stones surrounded by bright, colorful blooming flowers.
On each stone was a name: Madison. Ruth. Jason.
Jason was at my side. “We are dead here, Jason,” I said softly.
Aunt Ruth. I started to cry as I crouched down and rested my hand on the stone with Ruth’s name etched on it. The stone was warm under my shaky hand.
“Does she know? Does Lacy know?” I kept my eyes on Ruth’s stone in the middle.
“She had already mourned her,” Jason replied. “I didn’t think it was fair to tell her what really happened. I said we weren’t with her.”
&n
bsp; I took a slow, deep breath.
“Jay,” I started, then stood, wiping the tears from my face and turned back. He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned his forehead against mine.
“Jason, you need to stay here.”
“Hell no. No chance,” he said, and backed up.
I stopped and examined him for a moment. He was different now. My Jason would never punch someone, and now he was wanted for punching my father, the king. I took a step back and looked up at his usually serene face. His bushy eyebrows made a hard angle as he pressed his lips together.
“I’m coming with you. I don’t care what you say,” Jason insisted.
“Are you sure?” I shook my head, more confused than anything else. “Why would you want to? You know what it’s like there.”
“I do,” Jason said. “But I am not letting you go without me.”
“I have to go back.” I lowered my chin and narrowed my eyes at him.
“I watched you die, Maddy,” Jason said with an ache in his voice. “I watched you die. I watched Ren carry you, flopping around like a lifeless fish, for two days. I can’t do that again. I am going to be there to keep you safe.”
I ran my tongue over my front teeth as I reached for the comforting grip of my trusty sword. “I won’t be the one with a sword through my gut this time. Don’t worry.”
“What are you going to do?” Jason asked. I turned to look at the woods, at the tall swaying oaks that I spent my childhood sheltered by.
“I am going to fix the mess that my parents were too selfish to clean up on their own. Sinder was batshit crazy, but she was right. Lifting the spell on the courtyard is a small piece of the puzzle. We need to think bigger. Like, coven bigger,” I explained.
“Reuniting the Rosewood Coven? That may be a little awkward now that you beheaded one of the lead members and all.”
I held up the little piece of paper.
“This says ‘Praise Queen Vilda’ in troll. I need to find Gullway and talk to him. We need to find my mother before Sinder does.” I folded the paper back up.
“Why? Do you think Sinder is looking for her, too?” Jason crossed his arms.
“Sinder is a jerk, but she’s a smart jerk, and she saw this paper that night. If she figured out it’s in troll, she has the jump on us. We need to go.”
