by Angie Fox
I spun in a circle. “Damn it!” We blew it. “You could have told me before I dragged that thing out of the Scour. Before I risked my life and my mom’s.”
Hillary lay next to the pool, still as a ghost.
The sight of her helpless and forgotten made me want to scream.
I went to her and got down on the floor next to her to see how she was doing. Her breath came shallow, and her eyes fluttered open. “Baby?” Her voice was barely audible. “Did it work?”
No. No, it didn’t work, because my friends didn’t trust me. Because they were too scared to pull the trigger. Heck, even the bunny looked unfazed, still calmly nibbling on herbs at the far side of the altar.
My mom’s utter trust, my friends’ utter failure fractured something inside me.
After all this time, all the work I’d done to prove myself worthy of being a demon slayer—the last demon slayer, the one everybody depended on—and all the efforts I’d made to show the Red Skulls that I was worthy, they’d gone behind my back. They hadn’t had enough faith in me to work with me, despite my connection to the spirit. They hadn’t believed I was capable of taking care of myself and defeating the scavenger that had my mom.
Now my mother was paying for it.
I locked eyes with Grandma. “Get the spirit back.”
“Oh no,” Grandma said firmly. “We banished that creep outside the wards, and that’s where he’s staying until we get to the bottom of this.”
“There isn’t time for that!” I stood between Mom and the coven. “She doesn’t have time for that! Look at her. She isn’t getting any better. Shouldn’t she be getting better if I’m being strung along?”
“We haven’t worked out all the connections yet.” Ant Eater said, frustrated. “That doesn’t mean we’re wrong.”
Maybe not, but it did mean my mom could die while they were piecing their stupid puzzle together. I had felt the darkness of the scavenger, though. It had been true evil, raw and intense. That was more real than any of their hunches. I wasn’t going to sacrifice Hillary on the altar of the coven’s suspicions. Not when I could still save her.
I needed to get the spirit back.
I reached for a switch star. Grandma saw me and her eyes went wide. “Lizzie, don’t—”
Too late. I fired it straight at one of the dangling wards over the nearest window, sage and white yarrow and who knew what else entwined around a protective crystal. My switch star cut through the satchel like butter, shattering the crystal before swinging back to me.
“Lizzie! What the hell?” Ant Eater demanded.
It wasn’t enough damage to affect the entire ward, just providing—a blip. A brief moment of openness. That was all the spirit needed to surge back inside the pool house and into my head.
Elizabeth! Oh boy, he sounded pissed. I’m stunned at your betrayal.
“Join the club,” I told him. “I had nothing to do with that spell.”
I felt his anger, his white-hot rage.
I turned my back on Dimitri and the witches. I needed to get to work. “Tell me what’s happening to my mother.”
Fools, all of you, he fumed. That spell interrupted the removal of the scavenger at a crucial point! It knows you’re after it now and will be ten times harder to hunt and destroy.
“Why am I not surprised?” I said under my breath.
It is consuming your mother’s life force at an accelerated rate in its haste to flee.
I fought back a curse and turned back to the group. “It says the scavenger is still attached to my mom,” I announced. “I’m going back in after it. You can help me, but if you betray me again, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Damn it, Lizzie.” Grandma flung her arms out. “You weren’t watching, but the rest of us saw the wards tremble harder the deeper you got. The evil was getting stronger. It was getting stronger because it was transferring its hold to you.”
Little did she know, I didn’t feel very strong at that moment. The queasy feeling from earlier had surged back full force, bringing with it a light-headedness made worse by the fact that I was sharing my head right now.
We had to get this done. Now. My mom was running out of time. In fact—
“Mom?” A second ago her eyes had been open. Now they were closed. Her skin had taken on the waxy appearance of someone who had been lying in bed for too long, sallow and tight to the bone. Her mouth drooped open, but no sound came out. I couldn’t even tell if she was still breathing. “Mom?” I got on my knees and knelt down close to her, pressing my ear to her chest. Oh no, oh no, oh please…
“Let me in, honey.” Frieda pushed through, her usually cheery face unnaturally grim. She pressed two fingers to Hillary’s neck while sprinkling a glittering white powder over her face and chest. After a moment, the powder went from white to yellow then started fading into brown.
Frieda shook her head. “I hate to say it, but you might be right. I’m so sorry.” The brown powder crumbled to ash. “She’s still alive, but her spirit is almost gone. It’s being eaten up.” She looked at me mournfully.
She reached into her cleavage and pulled out a plastic baggie with a single oily-looking leaf inside. “I grabbed this off one of the plants in Philippa’s garden,” she confessed to me as she opened the bag. “Devil’s Parade, really rare stuff. One little scratch with it can jump-start the heart. It’s dangerous, but if we don’t revive Hillary enough for more diagnostics, we won’t know the best way to help her.”
I am the best way, the spirit whispered in my ear. I am the only way you have left.
I knew it was a bargain with a baddie. No pure and noble spirit hung out in the Scour and took notes on scavengers. No white presence would invade my mind like he did.
I watched Frieda pry my mom’s jaw a little farther apart, then very gently brush the leaf across her tongue. Hillary swallowed reflexively; then her body jackknifed as she lurched into a sitting position and started coughing.
“Uh-oh, too much?” Frieda looked somewhere between proud and concerned. “I’ve never actually used this stuff before, but it’s got a real powerful rep.”
I wrapped my arms around my mom from behind and helped lower her back down to the wooden surface of the altar. “Mom?” The witches stood a short distance away, conferring with each other, tossing spell suggestions around and arguing over methods. It didn’t look good.
“How do you feel?” I asked my mom.
Hillary cracked a weak smile. “Like I just got dug up out of my own grave, to be honest.”
Nope, no graves. None of that. “We’re going to fix it,” I promised her. “We’ve still got time, Mom. The first try didn’t work—” because someone was playing me, and it’s hard to know who “—but I’m not giving up. I’m going to save you.”
“Oh, honey.” She reached up and clumsily patted my cheek. Her fingers were as cold as ice. “I think…I think it might be time to just let me go.”
“Not in a million years,” I promised.
“Lizzie.” My mom’s eyes filled with tears, which dripped down her cheeks and vanished into her lank hair. “I heard…some of what they were saying. Not all, but…enough. This is too dangerous for you.”
I was already shaking my head, but Hillary wouldn’t be silenced. “It is, and I don’t want that. That’s the last thing I ever wanted. You just…have to let me go, honey. I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be fine!” Part of me wanted to scream, another part wanted to curl up on the floor and cry. I saw the evil creature that had a hold on her, and I worried for her very soul if she were to pass away right now. “You need to stay with us,” I told her.
This was about more than life and death. Worse, it was my fault. That stupid condo—I should have bit the bullet and faced my past long before now. I should have made sure it was clean and safe instead of ignoring it and my mother.
“Oh, baby.” She smiled at me again, but it was little more than a tremulous quirk of her lips. “My baby…I know I didn’t give bi
rth to you, but I waited so long, and I wanted you so badly.” Her eyes closed, and I had a feeling that if I didn’t do something fast, they would never open again.
This wasn’t right. She deserved better than this.
It’s now or never, Elizabeth. The spirit’s voice wound around me like a silk scarf, clinging and tightening uncomfortably. We still have the framework of the trap. Fill it again. But not just a sliver of power this time. I’m sorry, but we need more now to tempt a wary scavenger. You have to give it everything you’ve got.
I nodded, wondering if it was even possible. Everything I had? I was exhausted. I felt so sick my arms trembled. My flesh felt feverish, and a metallic taste brewed in the back of my mouth. None of that mattered, though. I was a demon slayer and I had a job to do.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and reached for my power. It burned hot and ready for me.
I could do this.
Instead of isolating a section of it and teasing it away from myself this time, I went for the sledgehammer option. Messy and fast, I broke down the barriers between my magic and my mind.
Good, Lizzie. Good…
“Just be ready with the trap.” We had one shot.
I knelt before the pool, next to my mother. I watched as the waters darkened and began to swirl.
Yes.
There, as the waters churned, I saw the red outline of the trap.
That’s it. Slowly now. Bait it.
I opened the connection all the way. I poured my powers, my life force, my being into it, lighting it up strong and bright. The witches behind me gasped.
This is it, the perfect bait.
The scavenger wouldn’t be able to resist it. I had it now.
A dark presence shot through the water, like a shark after prey, straight for my energy. Just a few seconds more!
Yes! The spirit lurched inside my mind.
The trap snapped shut. The open bars closed into a solid wall of red.
Damn it. “Too soon,” I shouted as the scavenger made a hard dive.
The power of the spirit surged. I felt it surrounding me, suffusing me. Invading me.
I fell forward, and this time it was Hillary who caught me. Her hands felt icy cold, and when I managed to raise my head and look at her, I saw bone-deep fatigue. But she was up, and she was alive.
The dust that Frieda had sprinkled on her was sparkling white.
I looked back to the churning water, now fading to dark green, to lighter.
“Not again,” I protested, gripping her, swallowing against the tightness in my chest and head.
“Oh god,” Hillary moaned, panic breaking out in her voice. “I’m so sorry, Lizzie!”
I was too, for her, for me. I didn’t want to live without my mom.
Then I felt it, the trap was inside me! It pulsed smugly, taunting me, clutching my powers tight and not letting a hint of them through.
Grandma stood over us. “Damn it. What’s happening?”
“The spirit,” I whispered, barely able to force the words past my lips. “It’s—locked them away. My powers.” My slayer heritage, my life force, my everything. Everything that made me who I was, that gave me vitality and purpose—gone. The flame had died. I felt so cold.
“I told you!” Ant Eater shouted. Frieda slapped her upside the head. Ant Eater continued regardless. “I said that thing couldn’t be trusted! Scavenger, my ass.”
“You’re right,” Hillary said. She was holding me but not looking at me, her gaze fixed on the fathomless black water of the pool. “There is no scavenger. There never was.” She shook her head slightly. “I see it now. It didn’t bother hiding anything from me when it went for you.”
Her eyes finally met mine, and the pain I saw there was so brutal I almost forgot about my own. “The spirit has been waiting for the right moment to take what he wants, Lizzie. I was the perfect way in for him, the weak link.” She sounded disgusted with herself. “He calls himself a helper, but the only person he’s helping is himself. He’s ready to take what he wants.”
“What is that?” I whispered. “My powers?”
“No.” She shook her head. “He wants my grandbabies.”
13
“I’m pregnant?!” I fell back and landed on my butt. Pregnant. Of course it had always been a possibility. Dimitri and I hadn’t exactly used birth control. But…
Dimitri’s back had gone rigid, his eyes wide as he stared from Hillary to me.
“I’m going to have a baby,” I told him. I had a psycho spirit inside me…and a baby.
“Babies?” Dimitri asked on an exhale, rushing for me. “She said ‘grandbabies.’ Does that mean two?” He reached me and bent down. “Here, let’s get you off the floor.”
I wasn’t a weakling. I could stand. Still, I allowed him to help me.
Mom stood as well and gave me a shaky smile. “I’m sorry to shock you, sweetheart, but there’s no mistaking what I saw. You’re pregnant with twins, Lizzie.”
Ha, no. No, there had to be a mistake. Mom’s vision wasn’t exactly a Clearblue Easy test. “I think I’d know if I was pregnant.” I looked to Grandma, who had one hand pressed to her cheek like a startled Southern belle. “Tell me I’m right.”
She cleared her throat. “It’s not always obvious your first time around. It surprised the hell out of me too, back in the day, but the symptoms are there.”
“General demon-slayer kick-assery?” I asked. It wasn’t like I led a normal life.
“The nausea.” Dimitri slid an arm around my waist, hand coiling lightly across my midsection. He sounded…awed. “Getting sick really fast and then feeling better the same way. Trouble with foods. Bob said you passed on his barbeque.”
“It was squirrel,” I informed him.
“Tenderness across your chest,” he added, as if I hadn’t said anything at all.
Okay, my breasts had felt a little sore lately, but that was residual pain from our big battle down in New Orleans. And my appetite had been off, sure, but we’d been on the road. And…and…
I put my hand over his. “I’m pregnant,” I murmured. And as soon as I spoke it out loud, I knew it, believed it. “Oh my god.”
“You’re going to be a great mom,” he whispered in my ear.
“To twins!” I said, still trying to absorb it all.
His breath huffed against my ear as he grinned. “Yeah.”
At the worst possible time. I closed my eyes and wished I’d never gone to New Orleans. That I’d never met that spirit in the upstairs room. That I’d never been a slayer.
Then another terrible thought hit me.
I turned to Grandma. “I’m not supposed to have twins. The count is off. Demon slayer twins are born every three generations.” My birth mom was a twin. She shirked her duty and passed the powers down to me. It ended up killing her sister, my aunt. I was the accidental demon slayer. My daughters should get a pass. Then again, the line was messed up now. I just didn’t know what to expect.
Only the spirit clearly had expectations. He’d seen the children and sensed their power.
Grandma’s expression told me she’d been thinking the same thing. “We’ll see what happens.”
“Great.” Twins, possible slayers, and a spirit who had my power locked in a vault.
And how was I even supposed to manage being a demon slayer and a mom at the same time? Was I going to be able to take on the next big baddie and still take a break to nurse? Babies want to eat when babies want to eat. And did purgatory even have wide enough paths for a double stroller? I supposed I could let the biker witches babysit. The babies would have two dozen crazy aunts with questionable caregiver skills. I could just see my list of instructions: do not let the baby play with live spells; do not give the baby hot sauce; the baby shall not nap in the sidecar of any motorcycle, even if the vehicle is parked.
And what if my babies did grow up to have demon-slayer powers? I’d nurture them, of course. I’d teach them and support them in a way I never was. Bu
t oh my god, I’d be really scared for them, too. If they were brash and bold… They’d have to be in order to survive. But it only took one wrong move to be demon fodder. I’d worry every second.
That must be how my mom felt all the time.
I’d never truly considered that before.
Grandma made a motion, and two witches sprang forward to repair the ward I’d slashed. But she was just being cautious. The spirit had already invaded me.
I was the one possessed now, and he wanted—
I reached out and took my mother’s hand. “This vision you had. You said he wanted my babies.” It was hard to even say the words, more difficult to imagine how I’d protect them. “What exactly did you see? How do you know for sure it’s after the twins?”
Tears welled in her tired eyes. “It was all the spirit could think about after the trap closed. He didn’t even try to hide it. Everything, right from the beginning, has been because it saw you were pregnant. There was no scavenger. That was a trick to get you to open up. It was all the spirit.”
I dropped her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “This is my fault.”
“It’s not,” I told her. “It was mine. I never should have accepted his help in the first place.” I’d created the opening. I’d made it possible.
I had saved my mom, and I didn’t regret that, but I’d put my life—and worse, my babies’ lives—at risk in the process.
I closed my eyes and felt the trap inside me, like a weight in my chest, a splinter that had worked its way in instead of out, pressing against my heart and lungs and bone with every tiny movement.
He was inside me, yet he remained silent.
He had what he wanted, and he was biding his time.
I looked to Grandma, to the witches I’d crudely dismissed not an hour ago. The biker witches always had my back. They’d never failed me. In fact, they’d taught me everything I knew. “You guys have always been there to protect me, and I didn’t trust you,” I said. “I’m sorry. There’s no excuse.”
Grandma nodded her acceptance.
Frieda shook her head sadly. “You were worried about your mamma.”
