I watched Owen’s eyes narrow into slits. Certainly he had thought about those questions as well. Though, if Dr. Static didn’t have an answer, I doubted Owen did either.
“That’s a question for the Masons,” Dahlia answered immediately. “As is the question of what to do with Cresta.”
“You can’t be serious!” Echo jumped up. The resigned lull in his voice had vanished, replaced with a hardened steel edge. “If you bring Cresta in front of those people, you know what will happen.”
“What?” I asked shakily. “What’ll happen?” This didn’t sound good.
“Those people are our superiors,” Dahlia reminded him, ignoring me. “And our protocol, the law by which we live, is very clear. We bring this to the Masons and let them tend to the matter.”
“Dahlia,” Echo looked at me, blinked hard, and then looked back at his wife. “There’s no reason to be drastic.” His voice was light and steady, like a father trying to convince his child everything would be okay. “There’s time to think this through. We don’t have to do anything we can’t take back.”
“What. Is. Going. To. Happen?” I asked again.
“The only way to avert a fixed point is to take the players off the board,” Owen said quietly.
“Stop talking like a fortune cookie,” I demanded. I was tired; tired of being jerked around, tired of questions that no one wanted to answer.
“Death!” He answered sharply. I turned to find tears shining in his eyes. “If the Council of Masons thinks you’re the Bloodmoon, they’ll kill you. “
I stumbled backward, not really sure of what to do next. I knew that they had been talking about me, about my future and their ridiculous prophecies, but it hadn’t occurred to me that there’d be these kinds of consequences. I certainly hadn’t imagined they would be debating my death.
I felt a hand on mine and a jolt ran through me. Who was it? What did they want to do to me? I turned to swat it away but found Casper beside me. His face was a stern but pale sheet.
“Come on, we’re leaving,” he said, and tugged at me. He looked back as we made our way toward the door. “Have fun with your little murder cult guys. Send us a postcard from Crazyville, mmkay.”
“Stop!” Echo shouted.
“Stop?” Casper laughed. “Why, so you can serve my girl’s head up on a silver platter. No thanks. Go find another sacrifice for your stupid Mason council.”
“No one is going to be a sacrifice, not on my watch,” Echo walked toward us. Casper didn’t stop. For my part, I was a limp noodle being pulled around. “I won’t stop you from leaving us, Cresta.” He glared back at Dahlia. “You’ve been through a lot, given a lot of information, and judging from our behavior, I can’t say I blame you. But know that if you walk out that door, Allister Leeman will most likely be waiting for you. I can keep you safe here.”
“Until when?” The words poured out of me as if someone else was saying them, as if I wasn’t connected to it at all. “Until your wife convinces you to have me put down?”
“Of course not.” His voice was light again, comforting. “There was a reason your mother sent you to me. I would never-” He huffed and shook his head, frustrated. Looking at Dahlia, he hissed, “Are you proud of yourself?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me that way!” She yelled. “This is what we do. It’s who we are. You know what this girl does. You’ve read it. You’ve been taught it since birth. It’s horrific!”
“She’s just a girl, Dahlia!” Echo’s voice matched hers now, loud, rough, and passionate. “Do you really want us to be responsible for killing a girl?”
“What about all the girls she’s going to grow up and kill, Morgan? What do we tell their parents? What do we tell ourselves when we’re watching it happen?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Owen’s voice was a whisper among the shouts. “I know Cresta. She doesn’t have that sort of evil in her. She’s good. She’s so-“
“You’ve proven how fundamentally wrong you can be, son,” Dahlia said. “Why don’t you quit before you prove yourself even denser than we all imagined?”
“Dahlia-“ Echo started.
“Hitler was a child once too,” She cut him off. “If you had the chance to stop him, wouldn’t you?”
Hitler? Did she really just compare me to Hitler?
“You know that’s not the same thing,” Echo began marching toward his wife.
“You’re right,” she said, herself bridging the gap between them. “It’s worse. Hitler was satisfied to focus his hatred on a few choice groups. This girl will take her boot to the entire world.”
Oh, okay. I’m worse than Hitler.
“What you want; there’s no going back from that,” Echo shouted. They were in each other’s faces now. His eyes were wide and free of the surrender that had painted them just minutes ago. “If we send her to the Hourglass, she dies. That’s how that ends. Is that who you want to be, a murderer?”
“You’re a murderer!” As loud as Echo could shout, he couldn’t come close to the decibels Dahlia could reach. “If you leave her here, if you allow her to be who she’s going to become, then there’s blood on your hands as well as hers. That’s not who you are, Morgan. It’s not who I ever thought you’d be.”
“Who I am is a man who refuses to let an innocent girl be killed for something she might not ever do.” He turned from her.
“I won’t do it,” I said. “Whatever it is you think I’m going to do, I wouldn’t hurt anybody, and I damn sure wouldn’t kill anybody.” I pulled away from Casper’s hand, walking toward the others. Still, I felt Casper hovering protectively at my back.
Dahlia’s eyes softened a bit as she took me in. “I’m sure you think that.” Her voice cracked. “But you have no way of knowing where fate will take you in ten years, in five years, even in five minutes. I couldn’t count on both hands the number of people I’ve known in my life who’ve promised and sworn they would never be what prophecies have painted them as. And all of them, every single one, were changed. They all bent to fate’s will and, in the end, they became what they were always going to be.”
She pointed to Dr. Static, whose face was still planted in his book. I wondered what he was even looking for at this point. “Because when it’s all said and done, what we want doesn’t matter,” Dahlia went on. “Fate has her hands on us even before our birth. The fact that you’re here at all is proof of that. I know that you probably think I hate you Cresta, but I don’t. The truth is, you have no more control over what you are than any of us. You just happened to draw the short straw.”
She put her hand on my shoulder, but I shuddered away.
“You say you’re a good person, and I believe you. But that doesn’t mean you’ll always be. Who you’ll become has already been written. It’s already in those books, and I know you don’t want that. It’s because you’re a good person that you don’t want that. I’m telling you that there is a way that you don’t have to become that. There’s a way you can save all of the people who are destined to be hurt by you. You can save the whole world.”
Casper read her eyes an instant before I did. He pulled me back and planted himself between us. “Get away from her, you witch,” he spit out.
“It won’t hurt Cresta,” she talked through him. “There are humane ways to end this. You’ll be comfortable. It’s the only way.”
“Those are big words,” Echo walked in front of Casper, further blocking me from Dahlia. “For someone who keeps her own daughter locked in a tower.”
I couldn’t see her face at this point, but judging from the gasp she let out, it sounded like Dahlia was pretty pissed. I figured it would have been me that spilled the beans about the secret Seer, but I hadn’t even told Casper. The fact that Echo was willing to betray what was probably the biggest secret either of them had ever kept, said a lot about how far he’d go to keep me safe.
My mo-Ash’s words came back to me then; the words she told me when she sent me away.
Morgan Montgomery. He’s a good man.
The others seemed more confused than shocked about what Echo had said. Dr. Static, actually looking up from his book, said, “She doesn’t have a daughter.”
When he saw the way they were silently staring at each other though, he added,” Does she?”
“We do,” she answered and, though I still couldn’t see her, I heard the tears in her voice. “The miscarriage I had fourteen years ago-I had the baby. She’s a Seer. The tower is here, in Weathersby. It’s hidden from you, of course, as is protocol. Then again, I suppose things like protocol don’t matter to Echo anymore; even if it means protecting our daughter.”
“You had a Seer,” Dr. Static mumbled dumbfounded. ”A Seer has lived here all these years. I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say,” Dahlia answered. “Echo should know better than anyone why I’m acting this way. How many nights did our daughter wake up in cold sweats envisioning the horrors the Bloodmoon would do to this world? How many times did I wipe away her tears and tell her that we’d stop it? You promised her, Echo. You promised our daughter that you wouldn’t let this happen. And here it is, right in your hands. Stop this. Stop Cresta; for the world, for our daughter.”
Echo was quiet. I could only see the back of his head, the way his ears pricked when she mentioned their daughter. What was he thinking? What was his expression like? Had Dahlia just convinced him to turn me over to the Council and, if she had, would anybody here be able to stop him?
“Here!” Dr. Static’s voice tore through the silence like a bull destroying everything in its path. “I knew it was here somewhere!”
Neither Echo nor Dahlia answered him and, though I still couldn’t see anything but the Echo and Casper barrier before me, I imagined they were still staring at each other, still thinking about how their lives had gotten to this point. They mustn’t have even looked at Dr. Static, because he shouted again. “Did you hear me? I said I found it!”
“What in fate’s hand are you screaming about?” Dahlia hissed at him.
“The answer. The piece of the prophecy that can fix all this.”
My heart jumped at those words. I broke through Casper, then Echo, and made my way toward him. His thin face bobbed up and down slightly as his read, the brittle lines of his jaw flexing as he silently mouthed the words.
“There is no way to stop this,” Dahlia persisted. “It’s a fixed point. Only death changes a fixed point.”
“Right!” He looked up, though not necessarily at her. His eyes, as well as his index finger, moved around the room like one of those blinking red eyed cameras that were everywhere in Chicago but absolutely nowhere in Crestview. “There’s no way to stop the Bloodmoon outside of killing her, but there is a way to prove Cresta isn’t her.”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Dahlia seemed more agitated than ever. “The proof is here in piles. It’s undeniable.”
“Let him talk!” Owen said in a tone that at once startled me and sent jolts of excited electricity through my chest.
“Thank you, my boy,” he grinned and then let his wandering finder fall onto one of the open pages. “Prophecies about the Bloodmoon are countless. We learn about them at birth. They’re our bedtime stories. She’ll rip apart the world. She’ll effectively end the human race. Cities, countries, entire civilizations will fall because she’s just that much of a bitch.”
“You’re not helping,” I coughed.
“Right. My point is, those are the big ones, the prophecies every Breaker knows. But there are more, many more that only the learned, like me, know of.” He brushed his shoulder in a cocky move that, if my life wasn’t on the line, would have struck me as adorable.
“What gibberish are you spouting, Silas?” If Dahlia was impressed, it didn’t come through in her voice.
That didn’t matter to Dr. Static though. He smiled and read on. “Before the sun meets her sixteenth year, she will have tasted of death’s juices. Her hands will have ceased a heart.”
“I’ve never heard that prophecy before,” Echo answered. I tried to read something into the tone of his voice, but it was a blank sheet.
“That’s why I’m the head of your Prophecy department and you’re-Well, you’re my boss.”
“Make it sound less like Shakespeare,” Casper said. His voice, the way it titled up at the end and cracked, was easy to read. He had always been there for me. The fact that he was here now, willing to stand up to, not only teachers, but super powered teachers, told me everything I needed to know.
“Have you murdered anyone Cresta?” Dr. Static turned to me.
“What?” Of all the crazy things people had asked me in the last few minutes, in the last few weeks, that may have been the craziest.
“Have you murdered anyone? Killed someone? Been responsible for the end of another’s life?”
“Of course not,” I said. “That’s ridiculous. That’s insane. That’s-“
“How we’re going to prove you’re not the Bloodmoon?” Echo smiled now too. I realized they were both in on something I didn’t understand yet. Reading my face, Echo explained it to me. “That prophecy that Dr. Static just read is in the Book of the Fates, which means it has been approved by the Council of Masons and must be abided. It also says that the Bloodmoon, whoever she may be-“He gave Dahlia a withering look. “Will have killed someone before sunrise on her sixteenth birthday. Since you say you haven’t, and you were telling the truth-“ He pointed to his temple and I remembered he was a human lie detector. “That means that, as long as you don’t kill anybody before your next birthday, you can’t be the Bloodmoon. Who your parents are won’t matter. What Allister Leeman thinks won’t matter. The birthmarks on your-er, your leg won’t matter. None of it will matter. You either are the Bloodmoon or you aren’t. There is no almost.”
“Wait,” Dahlia started. “If-“
“No, it makes sense,” Owen butted in. “And since you’ve already said that the Bloodmoon has to have been born on the winter solstice, we only have to wait until then.”
“That’s in five days,” Dr. Static’s smile was huge now. “What do you think Cresta? Can you refrain from murdering someone for the better part of a week?”
Chapter 13
Five Days
Five days; that’s how long they said I had to go without murdering someone. Seemed easy enough, seeing as how I had spent nearly the last sixteen years effectively not murdering people. And hey, I wasn’t even trying then.
Echo seemed thrilled with the idea when Dr. Static brought it up. He said that I should be sent back to my classes, monitored, and allowed to live as usual (or at least, what passed as usual these days) until after the winter solstice; my apparent birthday and the last day I’d have to spend with the spectre of the Bloodmoon hanging over me. That wasn’t good enough for Dahlia though, doll that she was. Folding her arms, she informed Echo that she wasn’t going to be responsible for teaching and training “the girl who’s going to make us all bleed one day.”
To say she wasn’t a fan would be like saying Scooby Doo liked to snack. She couldn’t get around the facts though. As much as she wanted me gone, wanted to ship me off to the Hourglass and let the Council of Masons deal with me, even if that did mean me ending up with my head on a spike, they were all slaves to their prophecies. And the prophecies said if I didn’t kill someone in the next five days, I wasn’t the Bloodmoon, plain and simple.
To satisfy her though, and to convince her not to bring her information to the Council directly, I was locked in my room.
“It’s just five days,” Echo said before he closed the door to my room. “Besides, it’s for the best. The fewer people you interact with, the less possibility of you killing one of them.”
He meant it as a joke; ‘Look how silly this is’. But it didn’t feel like a joke, especially when he slid the lock behind him. Did they think I was really capable of this, of murdering someone?
The days inched along in my roo
m. The sun came up, went down, and came up again. The only visitors I got at all were the people that came three times a day to bring me food (not that I had much of an appetite), and the lady who came by every night to walk me to the shower. Even though my showers were always at seven in the evening, the hallway between my room and the common area was always empty. Had they told everyone at Weathersby about what they thought I was? Did no one want to look at me? No. They were trying to keep this secret from the Council. I knew enough about high school to know that spreading a secret among a group of teenagers, evolved or not, would be counterproductive.
I tried to sleep a lot, but that wasn’t easy. My mind was constantly racing, and staring at the same four walls with nothing to distract me wasn’t helping.
My mom wasn’t my mom. She was my mom’s best friend. My dad, at least the guy I thought was my dad-Well, he could have been anybody. In reality, I was the product of an illicit affair, a union condemned, and I was surrounded by people who, whether it was a glimmer in the backs of their minds or just an outright belief, thought I was capable of destroying the world.
Not to mention the fact that I had weird superpowers that I was only now beginning to access, and a bad case of the hots for a guy who not only pretended to be someone he wasn’t for the entire length of our relationship, but was also basically engaged to a girl who belonged on the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalog.
Bet no one’s accusing her of destroying the world.
To top it all off, the thing that stung the most, and what really truly kept me awake at night, was how much I missed my mom. She wasn’t my blood. We weren’t even related, and it turned out she had lied to me since the day I was born (which was a full three months earlier than I had originally thought). But in all the ways that counted, in my bones if not my blood, Julie Karr was my mother. God, that hadn’t even been her real name. Ash was her name. Or maybe Ash was her Breaker name and her given name was something else altogether. Things like names didn’t matter though, not anymore. The lies didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The only thing I cared about was that I was a girl trapped in a strange place, surrounded by strange people, and I wanted my mother. I wanted to feel her hands in my hair and hear her tell me everything would be okay. I wanted to wrap my arms around her while she told me that this was all just a bad dream. I wanted her to tell me that I was good, and that there was no way in hell Julie Karr’s daughter could be anything other than whatever she wanted to be; prophecies be damned.
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