by Sarra Cannon
I remembered the small closet in his room, filled with different exotic ingredients. I'd gone there to make a potion of my own once upon a time.
"The tattoo is made from a special kind of ink," he said. "A sort of magical tracking device. The power inside the black roses will suck the ink from your skin. I'm not going to lie. This is going to hurt."
"Great," I mumbled, laying my head down against my forearms. "Let's just get it over with."
"When I rub the paste over the ink, you'll feel it move around and squirm," he said. "You'll want to touch it, but you have to be careful not to itch or scratch or touch it at all or the ink will soak into the skin on your hands."
I nodded, getting nervous.
"As soon as the ink is completely gone, let me know," he said. "I need to scrape the paste off with this stone and put it inside a living thing. That way, to the Order, it will seem like you're still here in the dome."
"How will I know when the ink is gone?"
"You'll know," he said with a laugh. "Ready?"
I took two deep breaths in and out. "Go," I said.
I heard stone scraping against stone, then jumped as the cold paste hit my skin. He slathered it across the length of my lower back. Immediately, the ink began to wiggle and writhe, swirling around like a cat chasing its tail.
Then it started to burn. I tensed and bit down hard.
The heat seared my skin, and I felt the overpowering urge to move. To reach back and scrape the paste from my skin. But I knew I had to stay still. I had to wait.
Just when I didn't think I could take it another second, the burning stopped.
I sighed in relief and gave Jackson a thumb's up. Quickly, he used the stone to scrape the rose paste from my back and transfer it to the soil of a potted plant next to him. I sat up, grabbing a cold cloth from the floor beside me and placing it on the burned spot on my back.
The plant trembled and shook, its leaves falling to the ground in a heap. Blue ink traveled up the length of its stalk. It swirled around, then finally settled, still and calm.
I shuddered, thinking how that stuff had been inside me for months.
"Thanks," I said. I looked in the mirror and saw a large red burn across my skin.
"Don't worry," he said, placing his hand on the spot. "That'll probably go away in a few days."
Icy power ran from his hand to my skin, relieving the burn.
I took a deep breath in, praying I'd still be alive to find out.
Back To Peachville
Hours later, after the suns had gone down, the four of us gathered in my chambers. Essex handed each of us a backpack full of supplies. He reached into his own and pulled out a handful of blue wristbands. He placed one on his own wrist, then passed them around.
"These will be your keys to Mary Anne's village in the trees," he said. Then, he handed me an extra one. "For your sister. I am very much looking forward to meeting her."
I smiled, grateful for his confidence and faith. I secured both bands around my wrist, right next to the white scrap of fabric that I'd worn for months, then took a final glance around the bedroom.
Truly a room fit for a princess. I hoped Jackson was right and that someday we would come back to the shadow world. Back to this castle.
"Ready?" I asked, energy buzzing through my veins.
Together, we stepped out onto the balcony.
"Thank you for coming with me," I said to them. "I have no idea what we're going to face, but I am so grateful to have you by my side."
"Don't sound so nervous," Mary Anne said. "We totally got this."
I laughed and she grabbed tight to Essex's hand. We stepped off the edge of the balcony and flew down to the garden below. We made our way through the gate and waded through the roses, careful not to crush them. As we walked, I felt a strange pull. Almost magnetic. I followed the feeling until we came upon a small circle of roses tucked away in the farthest corner.
It looked exactly like the entrance to the Underground, except these roses were white. This had to be it. Was I really ready for what awaited me on the other side?
I took a deep breath and tried to steady the galloping beat of my heart.
Then, I stepped into the circle and was sucked through the portal back to Peachville.
The Woman In The Wheelchair
In a breath, we stood at the edge of Brighton Lake.
Toads and crickets and other tiny little beings went about their evening as if nothing had changed. Nearby, something jumped from the water, then disappeared again beneath the surface.
None of us said a word or dared to move.
It felt strange to be back in the human world after all these months. I felt like a memory of myself. My hand drifted to my throat, where my mother's necklace should have been. Without it, there would be no Aerden to protect me.
For the first time, maybe I was strong enough to protect myself.
I hugged Mary Anne and stared into her bright blue eyes, silently letting her know that this was where we parted ways. She nodded, then shifted into a black crow. She flew away and Essex took off at a run, following her deep into the woods.
Jackson grabbed my hand and squeezed.
We walked along the worn path toward Shadowford. We passed the area above the ritual room and I paused. I kind of wanted to go down the steps to look at the portal stone and see what it looked like now that the gate was inactive, but Jackson pulled me onward.
The smaller house where Ella Mae lived was dark and quiet. It was the middle of the night here, so our hope in coming at this time was that everyone would be asleep and wouldn't notice our presence.
So far, so good.
Getting into Shadowford itself wouldn't be a problem. Manipulating locks was so easy at this point, it was second nature. We avoided the automatic light attached to the shed and came around the back of the large white house. I quickly turned the lock with a flick of my hand and we walked into the kitchen of Shadowford Home.
Only the sound of the air conditioner disrupted the silence. Jackson's eyes met mine. We'd made it safely into the house without a single issue. When we'd talked about this day, we'd considered every possibility from an army waiting for us as we passed through the portal to a set of traps placed on the entryway to the house. The fact that it had been so easy to get this far made me uncomfortable.
Where was the Order? It had only been a few days since they'd taken my sister, but that was plenty of time to create a plan and to set up traps for me.
My nerves hung on edge.
Danger lay in front of us. I just didn't know when or where. It was the not knowing that made me queasy.
Jackson and I tiptoed through the kitchen, down the hall past Mrs. Shadowford's room, and finally up the large wooden staircase to the second floor. About halfway up, one of the stairs creaked and I winced, frozen in place as I waited. Nothing in the house moved. After a moment, I kept going, keeping my steps as light as possible.
Once upstairs, I headed straight to my old room. I stared openly, surprised to find it looked exactly the same. I don't know why I'd expected it to look any different. Maybe because I had changed so much since I'd last been here.
Jackson kept an eye on the hallway as I went to the dressing table and reached for the drawer where I kept the butterfly pin. For a split second, panic filled my heart. What if it wasn't here? What if someone had taken it?
But when I opened the drawer, there it was. The white box.
My hand trembled as I reached for it, knowing there was a possibility this was the trap we'd been waiting for. Could Zara be trusted?
Just in case, I closed my eyes and created a connection to the human side of my power, feeling the hum of the earth beneath me. To make sure I had control of my magic, I opened my eyes and held out my palm. A perfect orb of dim light formed instantly, illuminating the area in a circle around me.
I carefully picked up the box, not willing to believe Zara could be evil like her mother. I set it on the mirrored dressi
ng table and pulled the top off. Nestled in a bed of white fluff, the blue butterfly sparkled. No monsters came out of the woodwork and no witches came flying through the doorway. I let out a sigh of relief.
I picked up the pin and moved it from side to side, watching as the blue crystals glittered in the dim light of my orb.
What was so important about this piece of jewelry? Why did Zara want me to wear it now? I had no idea what kind of power or magic these stones held, but she'd taken an awful risk to remind me of it. If her mother or her sisters had seen her give the secret note to Coach King, she would have been in serious trouble.
This butterfly had to be something special.
I gathered a small section of hair near my temple and slid the butterfly pendant over it. In the mirror, I recognized the image from Jackson's drawing. Proof that one way or another, I was exactly where I was meant to be.
"Let's get out of here," Jackson whispered. "Anything else you needed to grab while we're here? If so let's get it and go."
I glanced around. There was nothing here I felt all that connected to. Hand-me-down clothes. Scraps of ribbon. My cheerleading uniform. It was all a part of my old life. As if it were a different girl who lived here once upon a time.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "I don't need any of this stuff."
"We should try to get upstairs then before it gets too early and everyone starts waking up," he said.
With quiet steps, we walked into the dark hallway.
Immediately, something felt off. As soon as I stepped out of the room, an ice-cold chill ran down my spine. Jackson must have felt it too, because his eyes grew wide as saucers and his lips parted.
I spun and looked down the length of the stairs at the woman in the wheelchair. Her eyes glowed a deep blue, dark as midnight on the ocean.
"Welcome home, Harper," Mrs. Shadowford said.
Very slowly, with deliberate movement, she placed both hands on the armrests of her chair.
Then, she stood up.
You Left Me Here To Rot
I took a step back.
Jackson gripped my arm. "Did you know she could walk?"
I shook my head. "I had no idea," I said. "But I don't like this one bit."
Without taking her eyes from my face, she began to make her way up the stairs. Her steps were slow, but focused.
"I don't either," Jackson said. "I think we should go."
"Where?" I asked. "I'm not leaving this house until I've gone through the Hall of Doorways. If we go up there, she'll just follow us." I planted my feet firmly on the floor, steadying my nerves and readying for battle. "If she's coming after us, we'll just have to stand and fight. I mean, she's a witch, but she's also an old lady. There's two of us. We'll just stun her or lock her in somewhere and head upstairs. It'll be fine."
I was impressed with how confident I managed to sound despite the fact that my knees were jelly. The old lady had creeped me out from the moment I first saw her. I definitely did not want to stand here and wait for her to attack me, but if I was going to do this thing, I was going to do it one hundred percent. No backing down, no matter how scared I got.
Mrs. Shadowford placed her foot on the top step, then lifted herself level with the two of us. "I've been waiting for you," she said. "To be honest, I'm surprised to see you here, so eager to fight. So naïve and completely out of your league. I thought you would be too scared to come back, but it looks like Priestess Winter was right about you."
"I'm not afraid of you," I said. Not exactly a true statement, but I desperately wanted it to be true.
She laughed at me then. A full-toothed belly laugh that echoed through the hallway. Inside her mouth, her teeth were black and filled with a stench that hovered in the air like sewage. It was almost as if something inside her had begun to decay.
My stomach turned, and I had to struggle to keep from retching.
"You stupid girl," she said, licking her lips with her black tongue. "You should be very afraid of me. I may have been created to be a servant to your kind, but I can kill you just as easily as I could have protected you."
"Protected me?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at her. "When did you ever protect me?"
Mrs. Shadowford gripped the top of the banister with one hand as if to steady herself. "I never got a chance to protect you." A greenish liquid dribbled from the side of her wrinkled mouth as she spoke. "Your mother took you from me before I even knew you existed. She made me what I am, this old bag of bones. Then you. You left me here to rot."
She leaned over and spit, the dark green fluid dropping to the ground with a slick wet sound that brought the bitter taste of bile to the back of my throat. What the hell had happened to her?
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "My leaving didn't have anything to do with you."
"You stupid girl." She snarled at me, her teeth covered in grime. "You defy the Order when you don't even know the first thing about how the Order works."
"I know enough," I said.
She laughed then. A grotesque growl of a laugh that made the floorboards shake beneath my feet. "Trust me." She ran the back of her hand across her lips, smearing green ick across her cheek. "You've barely scratched the surface. There are secrets and truths that go deeper than you could ever imagine."
Something in the craziness of her eyes sent fear racing through my body. I'd always assumed Mrs. Shadowford was just a cranky old lady who'd inherited this house because she married my mother's uncle. I thought her only authority came from the fact that she ran this home for troubled girls. Now, I was beginning to question if I'd completely underestimated her this whole time.
"I would have been faithful to you," she said, hunching over slightly. "A faithful servant. I would have given you everything you ever wanted, if only you had been a good girl and done what you were told. Instead, you left me with nothing but this body, falling apart like a rotting corpse."
She laughed again, bending so far over that her body contorted into a strange crouch. She'd gone completely mad, her eyes focused on me with wild clarity. She didn't even blink or look away for one second.
My instinct was to step away from her. To run. But I couldn't leave. There was no way I was leaving here tonight until I'd found my sister.
She opened her mouth in a silent scream. Her head rolled back as her jaw opened wider and wider, coming unhinged as her wrinkled face split in two. She shed her skin like a snake, letting it fall to the ground in a withered heap.
I stepped back until my back hit the wall with a thud. Jackson gripped my hand and our eyes met in terror.
I had no words for the monster that stood before me. Its skin was scaly and green, glistening with wet goo. At first, it appeared as a pillar, stick straight. Then, where Mrs. Shadowford's legs used to be, eight clawed legs skittered across the floor, hinged like a spider. Its head held glossy blue eyes, and from her back, a long tail with a sharp stinger curled up toward the ceiling.
Beneath the monster, the pile of skin melted away into the floorboards, the stench of decay overwhelming as Mrs. Shadowford's body dissolved.
This new thing that had taken her place was like something out of a horror movie. Definitely not human. Definitely not demon. I'd never imagined anything like it, not even in my worst nightmares. It seemed like a cross between a scorpion and a spider. Only huge.
Jackson stepped in front, putting himself between me and the monster. "If you want to get to Harper, you'll have to go through me," he said. He lifted his left hand and it began to glow a bright, icy blue. Frost formed on his fingertips.
The monster opened its mouth and hissed. Its teeth were jagged points that looked like they could tear through the toughest metal without a second thought. It reared its head back, then thrust forward, heading straight for Jackson's chest.
Jackson pushed his energy toward the monster's head, encasing it in ice. She staggered backward.
"We have to get out of here," Jackson said, gripping my arm.
I
stared at the grotesque monster as it flung its head from side to side. The ice around it had already begun to melt and drip onto the floor.
"We can't go anywhere," I said. I placed my hand over his for a second. "We have to get upstairs tonight or she'll tell them we were here and it will spoil everything. We have to fight this thing."
I had only looked away for a second, but that was long enough for her to regroup and lash out at me. One sharp claw embedded into my right thigh. Pain ripped through me and I fell to my knees. I pressed my hand against the wound. Blood oozed through my fingers.
The monster retracted her claw, then struck again.
My brain was seconds behind the action. I couldn't react fast enough. Jackson lunged toward me, shifting just as his hand touched my skin, bringing me with him as he flew down the stairs and into the foyer. He slammed the door behind us and quickly pushed the couch against it.
"That should give us a few seconds," he said. "Let me see that wound."
I lifted my fingers and winced as he ripped a wider hole in my jeans. He pressed firmly against the gaping hole the monster had left in my thigh, then closed his eyes.
"I couldn't shift fast enough," I said. "Dammit, why didn't I fight back?"
"Shhh." Jackson's face was tight.
I opened and closed my hands. He needed to hurry. A couch wasn't going to hold that thing for long.
A bitter cold flared up in my thigh and the pain slowed. When Jackson took his hand away, the bleeding had stopped, but the skin was still raw.
"Better?"
"Yes," I said. "But now what?"
"This thing is bad, Harper." He threw a nervous glance at the barricaded door. "I've never faced one myself, but I know Lea and the other shadow demons have fought something like her before. They called it a green scorpion, and now I understand why."
Thick claws clacked against the stairs.
My chest tightened. "What did they say about it?"
