“I’m manifesting sins,” Thea said. “Wrath. Impatience. Lack of compassion. Sins that have never even been a problem for me before. And it’s getting worse, and way harder to control. I just got kicked out of a guy’s house because I couldn’t stand that he was telling me no.”
She paused while Langdon shined a penlight into her throat, then stared ahead as he did the same with each eye.
“Lately, the second someone argues with me, I just want to roll right over them,” Thea said. “My claws come out. I can’t even stop them.”
Langdon laughed again. “Wrath, impatience, lack of compassion? Is that what you just said?”
“Yes.”
“Those aren’t sins,” he said. “Those are the defining traits of a fury.”
Thea blinked at him. “What?”
“Thea, did you really think you’d just grow wings and sprout claws and that would be the end of it? When your blood changed, your heart changed.”
“Not enough,” she said. “Elon always tells me I’m too soft-hearted. I was supposed to become hard, like the rest of you. But I didn’t.”
“But you are,” Langdon said. “You’ve got your wings, but it’s not that simple. You don’t just wake up one day and find that you’re a fury, and all traces of your humanity are gone. You’re still changing. It’s going to take time.”
“How much time?”
And what if I don’t like what I’m changing into?
But it was far too late for that.
She had made the decision so rashly. She’d wanted to find Flannery, to become somebody else, to be strong. She’d wanted all those things so badly that she hadn’t stopped to think about what the flip side of strong would look like.
Less than a year ago, Thea had barely been able to leave her house. The bells, the counting. She’d taped her damn door closed on a regular basis. It was like having a genie grant a wish, to shed those burdens so quickly.
But had she really been foolish enough to think it wouldn’t come with a price?
“It’s a bit like a hex, really,” Langdon said. “It’ll take as long as it takes for you to find your equilibrium. You’ll get control back, don’t worry. But you’re changing your entire makeup, Thea. That’s not an easy transition. It will be uncomfortable at times. The fury you’ve become is basically waging war with the human you were.”
“And you’re sure that’s all this is?”
“I’d wager quite a bit on it,” he said. “I haven’t presided over any other human transformations, besides yours, but I studied about them, as part of my training. I know it doesn’t feel this way to you, but what you’re going through is normal.”
But as she walked out of the Wellness building, Thea thought of Boyd Lexington, and she wasn’t so confident.
Boyd was his own monster. Cindy Lexington, Miss Wanda. They had monsters, too.
Am I my own monster?
It was well into dinnertime by then, but Thea didn’t go to the dining hall, or back to her residence. Instead she flew across the campus into the woods, and went straight to Nana’s. The old fury’s visions were stronger than Thea’s. Maybe she could help Thea work through some of the mysteries crowding her mind, fill in some blanks that Thea couldn’t reach.
But Nana wasn’t alone. The smell of roasting lamb, rosemary, and fresh bread wafted out her front door as she greeted Thea. It wasn’t the kind of meal you made for one.
“Come on in, there’s plenty of food,” Nana said.
“I don’t want to intrude if you have company.”
“Not at all. This is one visitor that improves the more company you have to go with him.” Nana gestured for Thea to follow her inside.
Thea stopped when she came into the cottage and saw Graves, half-sprawled over the table, head in his arms. The once-elegant fury who’d recruited her had fallen on hard times since he’d been found guilty of treason and lost his wings. He did menial labor now, his tailored suits replaced by rough work clothes. His hair didn’t look especially clean.
Thea moved closer and got a strong whiff of rum.
“He drinks a lot, since,” Nana said simply. “Probably asleep.”
“Am not sleep!” His head snapped up and he glared at his mother with a drunk’s aggressive but unfocused stare.
Nana sighed. “I get the luck of being the one person in the colony who has to take him in,” she said. “Come on, help me set the table. He won’t give you a hard time.”
“She zerves a hard time,” Graves said, finally seeing Thea. “Thiz’z your fault.”
“Graves, you brought what happened to you on yourself, and you know it,” Thea said. But though her words were hard, she felt none of the impatience and anger that had plagued her at the Bowman house. Which made no sense, because Graves deserved her contempt more than just about anyone. He’d lied to her, manipulated her. He’d done horrible things to a lot of people. And the superhex he’d helped develop had done even more horrible things to even more people.
But looking at what he’d become, all Thea could manage to feel was pity.
She ignored Graves—easily done, since he dozed off again—and talked to Nana, helping her finish the meal, until they sat down at the table. Then Thea said, “Graves, how have you been?”
“I’m a glorified gardener with no wings,” Graves said. “How d’you think I’ve been?”
A glorified gardener. Facilities. The fence.
Thea remembered what Elon had said about the humans having someone on the inside, helping them plant that dead bat in her residence. There was certainly no love lost between her and Graves. And Graves would be one of the people responsible for maintaining the fence. Finding and fixing weak spots.
Maybe he’d found some, and deliberately not fixed them.
“I’m glad you’re here, actually,” Thea said. “You might be able to help me.”
His catnap while they made dinner seemed to have sobered Graves up ever-so-slightly, and although his words came slowly, they were perfectly clear.
“Go to hell,” he said.
“You will not use that kind of language in my house,” Nana warned.
“Give me a break, will you?” Graves snapped. “You use that kind of language all the time.”
“I have given you more breaks than you deserve, and you will be polite to my guests,” Nana said. “Now sit up straight and answer her questions.”
Graves glared at his mother, but he did sit up straighter.
“You heard about what happened at Hemlock Heights, I assume?” Thea asked.
Graves scowled at her. “So? I can’t even leave the campus. I haven’t got anything to do with the superhex anymore.”
“No, but nobody here knows more about Megaira and her research than you do, right?”
If she’d hoped to flatter him, she’d taken a misstep. Graves’s lip curled at the sound of his niece’s name.
“I want to know if it’s possible that Hemlock Heights was being used as a kind of, I don’t know, living lab or something,” Thea said. “If there were other experiments going on there, besides that last superhex demonstration.”
“How should I know what they were doing?” Graves asked. “They cut me loose, remember? Left me here to rot.”
Well, that explained the snarl. Thea had nearly forgotten. Before he was dewinged, Graves had genuinely expected Megaira to rescue him. But she never showed.
“But what do you think?” Thea asked. “Does that sound like something she would do?”
Graves shrugged. “Sure, it’s possible. Why do you ask?”
“Because some of the residents there were acting like they were under the influence of a hex well before that day.”
Graves’s eyes focused, suddenly sharp. “What do you mean? How?”
Thea debated whether to trust him, then decided that even if he was somehow getting messages back to Fury Unlimited—and she doubted it, given how bitter he was—she most likely wouldn’t be telling him anything they didn’t alread
y know. She recounted her conversation with the Bowmans.
By the time she finished, Graves was laughing. Rather hysterically.
“Want to let me in on the joke?” Thea asked.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t.” Graves’s smile was gone in an instant, the bitter slur back in his voice. “Hexing House’s treated me every bit as badly as Fury Unlimited has. If not worse. Megaira left me for dead, but it was Alecto who did the killing.”
“Give us some peace from your drama,” Nana said. “Nobody killed you.”
Graves showed no sign of hearing his mother. “I can’t think of a single reason I’d help either one of you.”
Nana stood and crossed her arms. “Graves. This is important. People are dying, and Hexing House is getting the blame for it.”
Graves scowled at her. “What does that have to do with me?”
“Graves. I won’t warn you again.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped and turned to Thea with a wide smile. “You want me to tell you something? Fine. I’ll tell you this.” He pointed a clawed finger at her, coming dangerously close to her nose. Thea forced herself not to flinch.
“You’re off course,” Graves said. “You need to be thinking bigger than a few experiments. You need to be thinking about what might have gone wrong.”
After that, he refused to say another word to Thea. Not even goodbye when she left.
Nana walked her out. “Don’t give too much weight to what he says, for all I did make him say it. He’s not much but an old drunk now.” She sighed and shrugged at Thea. “What can I say? I have to take pity on him, I’m his mother.”
“Thank you for seeing me, Nana, and for your help,” Thea said.
Nana nodded. “I’ll think things over. You know. In our way. I’ll let you know if anything comes to me.”
Thea thought of that old blue sweater hanging over the window latch back at her residence, and nodded in return. “I’ll do the same.”
She pulled the sweater down as soon as she’d changed into her pajamas, and fed it with several drops of blood from her face.
And as always, it showed her something.
There was a clanking of chains. Boyd Lexington wore them, like Jacob Marley in the Scrooge movie Uncle Gary used to make them all watch together every Thanksgiving. And like Marley, Boyd wore a cloth tied around his head, holding his mouth closed.
“Are you trying to hold in the monster?” Thea tried to ask, but her voice was unintelligible, a series of squeaks and squeals.
Boyd pointed at something off to her side. Thea moved to look and realized for the first time that she was lying down. Whatever she was on was wet and sticky. She turned back to Boyd to tell him she couldn’t see what he was pointing at, only great folds of some dark cloth all around her.
He’d turned into Uncle Gary. He was shaking the chains now, his face darkening under the strain of trying to speak, or maybe shout.
Thea wanted to sit up and help him, to untie the cloth, but when she tried to use her arms to boost herself up, found she had none.
Uncle Gary was pointing frantically now, jabbing his whole arm toward whatever it was he wanted her to see. Thea squealed and shook her head.
He lunged at her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and tugged her up. She floated into the air—not like a fury on wings, but like a soul leaving its body. Uncle Gary’s nails dug into her back like claws, and he spun her around, so quickly Thea got dizzy and nearly fell.
And why was she still Thea? She always took the place of someone else in her visions.
Her eyes focused again, although her head was still spinning, and she looked down.
She tried to scream, and managed only a feeble squeak.
It was her own pillow—a giant version of it—that she’d been on. Her body was still there. Her wings had been cut off and were arranged on either side of her, gushing a pool of purple blood that was rising above her dead torso.
Her head was gone.
Thea was thrashing and screaming when her eyes finally snapped open. For the first time in months, she walked a circuit of her residence—three times, in the same direction—checking that every window was securely closed, as well as the door.
“Well, thanks for the warning, Uncle Gary,” she muttered when she finally curled up on her couch, shaking. “I guess.”
Half an hour later, Thea was recounting the vision in a journal, and sketching some of the images as best she could, when her phone rang. She glanced at it, then took the call.
“Holgersen,” she said. “Miss me so soon?”
“Don’t quip,” Holgersen said. “You’re not the type. Doesn’t really work for you.”
“How would you know my type?”
“That’s another quip.”
“No, that was just a question.”
“Listen, in the interest of keeping you in my loop, I wanted to let you know I tracked down one of your witnesses today.”
“One of my witnesses?” Thea asked. “I wasn’t aware I had witnesses.”
Did that count as a quip?
Why do I care?
“One of the names you gave me. From the lab,” Holgersen said. “Dr. Denise Forrester.”
“Ah, the good doctor. How is she?”
“She didn’t make such polite inquiries about you, I can tell you that much.”
Thea laughed. “No, I’m sure she didn’t. The last time I saw her was the one time she didn’t win.”
“She says you tried to kill her.”
“If I’d wanted her dead, she would be. I have claws, remember? And her throat looked pretty soft.”
For a second Thea remembered lying there, watching the pulse in that throat. The momentary urge she’d had to just kill Dr. Forrester and be done with it.
Back then, that urge had passed in an instant. Thea doubted it would be the same now. Oh, she was pretty sure she’d still be able to resist it. Pretty sure. But she was also pretty sure it would be a much bigger struggle.
“Did you just say her throat looked soft?” Holgersen asked.
“Never mind. What did she say? Anything useful?”
“Yes,” Holgersen said. “She says you’re responsible for what happened at Hemlock Heights.”
“I told you, Hexing House—”
“Not you plural. You. Thea.”
“She thinks I attacked Hemlock Heights? Personally? What for?”
“She says you were the first person she thought of, when she found out what happened to the Lexingtons. She asked for protection, in fact. Said you were probably going after everyone from the lab.”
“But that’s ridiculous.”
“Well, you are a creature of vengeance, are you not?”
“I’m a creature of justice.” Thea waved an impatient hand, although of course Holgersen couldn’t see it. “That’s beside the point. I didn’t even know Boyd Lexington. We were never at the lab at the same time. She would know that.”
“Hey, I’m just telling you what the lady said. Something I obviously would not be doing if I was giving any credence to her accusations, by the way.”
“And I’m telling you, she’s not thinking straight. Either someone put her up to pointing a finger at me, or she’s completely paranoid. Did she seem unstable?”
Did she seem like she was her own monster?
“Not especially,” Holgersen said. “But I don’t have a basis for comparison, either.”
“I want to see her.”
“Out of the question.”
“You just said you don’t believe her,” Thea said.
“That’s beside the point,” said Holgersen. “She asked me to protect her from you.”
“I’m not going to hurt her!”
“Also beside the point. She doesn’t trust you. I don’t get to make that judgment for her.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re the one who doesn’t trust me? You’re happy to ask for my help, but I’m only as good as I’m useful, is that it?”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down?” Thea felt the familiar tingling in her fingertips, and struggled for patience.
“Thea—”
“Okay, how about this,” she interrupted. “Arrange a meeting with you present. We can all sit down and talk together. Then you can be her big strong protector while we actually, you know, do our jobs? Try to figure this whole thing out?”
“I’ll ask, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
Without saying goodbye, Thea ended the call with a stab of her claw.
Big breaths. Deep breaths. Calm breaths.
If Langdon was right, and Thea’s problem was nothing more than growing pains, she hoped they would pass soon.
But a part of her—a small one, she was sure—kind of hoped she got the chance to claw Detective Holgersen’s face before they did.
Thea had no further word from Holgersen for a week, but the next morning she got word of a different sort: Flannery, calling to tell Thea that she was engaged again.
“Congratulations. I’m happy for you,” Thea said, although in truth she was feeling a little numb.
“Thea, I know this last year… This last fifteen years, maybe… I mean… but I…”
When Flannery showed no sign of making sense, Thea filled the gap.
“I’m happy for you Flan,” she said again. “I really am.”
Was that true? Thea thought it was. She really did love her cousin. Not to mention that a settled, happy Flannery was a good thing, considering how much trouble an unsettled, unhappy Flannery could be. But what would happen to Aunt Bridget, out there on the farm all by herself?
“I wanted to ask if you’d be my maid of honor,” Flannery said, then rushed ahead, as if afraid of the answer. “I wouldn’t make you wear anything gross. You can wear whatever you want. It won’t be a big production. We’re doing it in like three weeks, actually, same weekend as my birthday. At the auditorium there. So obviously I’m not about to invite a bunch of our extended family that we don’t even talk to out to Hexing House. And try to explain to them why I’m marrying the purple guy.”
Thea laughed.
“Just a couple of my nearest and dearest, and your whole colony,” Flannery went on.
Lasting Fury (Hexing House Book 2) Page 7
