by Brian Knight
Her first class after lunch was with Miss Riggs, as unpleasant in reality as she was in Penny’s memories, but Flanna kept her head down, and Miss Riggs ignored her through the entire class.
Trey corned her before her last class and pulled her into the mostly empty library. Flanna could have easily shaken his hold, but his touch stirred feelings she had done her best to ignore following their kiss the previous week, and so she went along with him.
“Look, I’m sorry Zoe is upset,” he said, and he did sound sorry.
Not upset enough, Flanna thought. She shrugged, kept her eyes on a poster just behind his left shoulder.
Feed your brain, the poster advised. Read!
“I didn’t think she liked me,” he said. “She always ignored me so I just gave up on her.”
“She didn’t know she liked you until she saw us,” Flanna said, a lie, but easier than the truth.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” She read his expectation on his face, a small grin he couldn’t conceal.
No, she thought. She wanted to kiss him again.
“Yes,” she said. She was there for her father, to do a job, and would return the moment she was allowed. Her father would not appreciate her becoming distracted, especially with some boy of whom he would never approve. “I think that would be best.”
“Oh...” Trey seemed at a loss for words.
Flanna pulled her hand out of his grasp and left him there. Back in the hallway she saw one of Penny’s old school rivals, Tori, smirking at her as she walked with a group of friends to her class.
She found Zoe waiting for her at the bike rack after school, and as Flanna braced herself for the confrontation, she saw Tori and her friends hovering close-by, whispering at each other and giggling. When she reached Zoe, a large group had formed around them, hushed and expectant.
Zoe ignored them.
“You knew I liked him,” Zoe said.
Flanna nodded.
“Why?”
“You ignored him and he got over you,” Flanna said, drawing on Penny’s recollections. “He kissed me after you left last summer, and I avoided him because I didn’t want to hurt you.”
There was a loud gasp from the crowd, and Flanna turned to see Katie and Ellen. Katie glared at her, her anger undisguised. Ellen looked like someone had gut-punched her. Penny had kept the kiss a secret from all of her friends, afraid this very thing would happen.
Flanna knew she should be happy with the outcome, dividing them would make them easier to conquer, but she felt a blush of shame rise up her cheeks.
“I guess things would have been easier for you if I didn’t come back,” Zoe asked the question, her eyes begging Flanna to say no.
Flanna swallowed her unexpected guilt and looked her sister’s best friend in the eyes.
“Yes, it would have been easier without you here.”
“Penny!” There was a commotion from the crowd, and Flanna turned again to see Katie, this time struggling to break from the crowd, the promise of violence on her scowling face, and Ellen, struggling to hold her back.
Zoe let out a sniff, then pulled her bike from the rack and rode away, breaking up the ring of spectators.
For a second Flanna heard screaming inside her own head, echoing Katie’s, and the voice of her guilt sounded a lot like that of her sister’s.
“That was lame,” Tori said as she scattered with her friends.
“Penny, how could you say that to her?” Ellen still held Katie’s arm, but Katie was no longer even looking at Flanna. She was following Zoe’s progress down Main Street, then around the corner out of town.
Flanna took Penny’s bike and fled the scene unraveling behind her, but was unable to outrun the unexpected guilt, or the angry voice in her own head.
* * *
“She heard me that time,” Penny said after returning to her own head. “Not that it did any good. She thought I was an attack of conscience.”
“Did she do something...” Ronan seemed unsure how to finish the question. Penny thought he was afraid of the answer she might give.
“Something to feel guilty about? Yeah, she did.”
Penny didn’t elaborate, and Ronan didn’t press her.
“Don’t be hard on yourself, Penny,” Torin said, misreading the misery on her face. “It must have taken her weeks to get deep enough inside your head to make herself known.”
“I don’t have weeks,” Penny said. “The fair starts setting up in three days, and whatever Flanna was sent there to do, she’s already started.”
Neither Ronan nor her father had a response to offer. They knew as well as she did, they were running out of time.
* * *
Flanna didn’t go straight home. She rode around town on Penny’s bike, avoiding people when she saw them, and didn’t start for home until the Main Street shops began to close down. Whatever she was going to find when she got home, she wanted to find it before Susan did.
She found Zoe’s bike parked next to the porch, but the house itself was quiet, dark. The only light shone from the window of her attic bedroom. Flanna tuned on lights, foyer, kitchen, upstairs hallway, ascended to the second floor, and found the folding stairs to her room down, the trapdoor open. The drawers of Zoe’s dresser hung open, half emptied of their contents. Her bed was made, and in the way of a note, she’d left a postcard, received a few days before by the postmark.
Flanna read the brief message on the back from Zoe’s mother... Spending another week, wish you could be here... then flipped it over. It showed the famous haunted hotel at Lava Lake, Oregon.
She was there before, Flanna thought. During the summer.
She remembered the door marked Laundry, and the ghosts that rose from the steaming hot springs and lake to roam the night.
Zoe was gone with her parents this moment for all she knew.
Now there was only Susan to deal with.
Flanna had no idea how she would explain this to Susan.
* * *
Sometimes during her meditations, Penny’s mind drifted to her friends on the other side. When this happened, she usually forced it back to her sister, but this time she latched on to Zoe. She knew it couldn’t possibly work, but tried anyway.
It didn’t work, and she awoke to her surroundings with a pounding headache.
Torin paced, his default stress position, and Ronan sat across from her still deep in his own meditation.
“He knows it won’t work,” Torin said, seeing her awake to her surroundings again. “He’s going to break his brain if he keeps trying.”
“What’s he trying to do?” Penny stretched her legs and rose unsteadily. She tried to remember if she’d eaten that day and couldn’t.
“He’s trying to go back and warn your friends.” He bent and picked up the familiar grubby food sack and tossed it to her. Stale bread and a few spotty vegetables that looked a little like carrots, except they were red.
“But I thought he couldn’t do that,” Penny nibbled on a crust of bread, then took a larger bite despite the taste. “I thought there was a ward or something.”
“Against shamanic magic, yes.” He looked at the back of Ronan’s head as if he were considering kicking it. “Like your Phoenix Fire... can you really do that?”
“Yeah,” she said, then bit the end off one of the nasty red carrots. “What are these things? If they wanna kill us why don’t they just come down and do it themselves?”
Torin laughed.
“You two are making it very hard to concentrate,” Ronan said, one eye open and glaring in their direction. “If you can’t concentrate on the task at hand then tell her another story.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Penny said, still smiling. “Tell me a story.”
Torin’s smile wilted, his humor retreated. He shook his head.
“There’s only one more story to share, Penny, and now is not the time.”
* * *
Susan was not at all surprised to hear Zoe had gone. She’d gotten a
call from Reggie as she was closing up shop, and had gotten an earful.
He’d avoided a lot of difficult questions by telling Susan he’d been passing through town when she’d insisted on leaving with him, but he wanted to know why Zoe had decided to leave, and she wasn’t talking.
Susan was determined to get those answers from Flanna.
“I know you two haven’t been getting along, but why would she just leave without even telling me?” Susan paced the length of the kitchen while Flanna sat at the table, nursing another cup of coffee she didn’t want.
“She’s mad at me,” Flanna said, feeling the unwelcomed shame rise in her cheeks again.
“I get that,” Susan said, “but what could possibly be bad enough for her to leave without a word?”
Flanna whispered something and looked at her hands on the table.
“What?”
“A boy,” Flanna said. “It was because of a boy.”
Susan stopped her pacing and stared at Flanna, her disappointment plain on her face.
“Tell me,” Susan said, and Flanna did.
When she was finished Susan sat across from her and took her hands.
“Penny, there are going to be a lot of boys,” Susan said. “Boys come and go, but a friend like Zoe comes once in a lifetime.”
Flanna felt a voice in the back of her mind roar its approval at the words, then drop silent.
Susan released Flanna’s hands and pushed back from the table.
“You don’t throw away a friend like Zoe for a boy,” Susan said, and left Flanna alone in the kitchen.
Flanna sat for a long time, sipping her disgusting coffee, and trying to ignore the voice nagging in the back of her mind, a voice she was coming to believe was not her own.
“I did what I had to do,” she said to drown out the voice. “I did what I had to do.”
* * *
“She heard me that time,” Penny said, then lay down and closed her eyes to get some real sleep. “She heard me. “
* * *
Flanna went through the next few days with her head down, avoiding Penny’s friends and ignoring calls from Erasmus. When she wasn’t in school, she was in her, Penny’s, room. She was waiting for Friday afternoon, when Ernest Price did his part, and she was clear to finish hers. Then she could get out of this place, go home with her father knowing the people who killed her mother would never threaten her family again.
She was home Friday evening, clearing the table after an awkwardly silent meal, when the call came. She listened to Susan’s end of the conversation while she scraped plates and filled the sink.
“Price? What could Ernest Price have to say that I’d want to hear?”
There was a long silence, and Flanna peeked through the foyer into the living room to see Susan glaring into the middle distance with the phone clutched to her ear. She looked skeptical.
“Yes, Michael, I just...,” and she fell silent, her mouth dropping open. “Tracy?”
Flanna slipped back into the kitchen unnoticed, satisfied that Susan had taken the bait. Her father had been right. It was bait she couldn’t resist.
“Okay, I’ll meet you all at Bowen’s.”
Flanna waited until Susan was out the door, and ran upstairs. She pulled her wand from under her bed and used the wardrobe for a quick jaunt into Bowen’s back room at Golden Arts. The break room she remembered from Penny’s experiences was empty, but she could hear ringing of the bell above the shop door.
She pulled her small oval mirror from her pocket and searched for an unobtrusive place to put it. She settled for a shaded corner right of the door, then escaped back to her room on Clover Hill to watch.
* * *
Penny watched through Flanna’s eyes as she pulled the Conjuring Glass from under her bed and looked down into it, and suddenly the thread of control Penny had sought through all of her excursions into her sister’s mind was there.
She stared into Flanna’s eyes, through Flanna’s eyes, and felt her consciousness surge forward. Flanna’s face became Penny’s, panicked eyes staring from the enchanted leather mask.
She felt Flanna’s horror, experienced it as her own, and fought against it.
“Flanna,” Penny shouted. “Tracy says you need to take her crystal from the memory tree and smash it.”
“Who are you?” Flanna shouted back.
“I’m your sister.”
“You’re a liar!”
Penny felt the shove of invisible hands, fought against it, lost. She fell back into her accustomed place at the back of her sister’s mind, condemned to watch what happened next without being able to stop it.
* * *
Flanna shook her head and grimaced against a sharp, almost blinding pain. It was gone a moment later, and when she opened her eyes again the face in the mirror was her own. The nightmare face was gone.
She turned her head from side to side, maintaining eye contact with her reflection, uncomfortably aware that the trap she’d used to catch Penny could be turned back on her, convincing herself that this was not the case. She’d had a momentary lapse, a short waking nightmare, but it was over now.
Her purpose in Dogwood was about to be fulfilled, and though her father had not asked her to witness this part of it, she had to be sure before she moved on to the final task.
She passed a hand over the surface of the Conjuring Glass and watched Bowen’s empty break room come into focus.
* * *
Penny watched with mounting tension as the door opened and Ernest Price stepped inside. Bowen followed close behind, then Michael, Erasmus, and finally Susan.
No! Penny struggled to push her way to the front again, to talk to her sister, to push her out of the way and take over if she could.
To stop whatever was about to happen.
She could not. Her sister was too fiercely focused for distraction.
Penny did the only thing left to her and watched.
* * *
“What do you know about Tracy?” Susan asked as soon as she’d closed the door behind herself. “She was my friend, and I haven’t seen her in fourteen years, so why would she contact you instead of me?”
“Or her family,” Michael said.
“She didn’t contact me,” Ernest said. “She tried to send you something last year, just before Diana Sinclair’s plane crash. Morgan Duke intercepted it.”
“Duke,” Michael’s face reddened at mention of the man. “And what does your crazy ex-partner have to do with my missing aunt?”
Ernest puffed up in indignation.
“My limited partnership with Morgan Duke did not include knowledge of his other activities. Do you think I wanted him to burn my life down?”
Bowen looked angry enough to spit, as well he might. The fire that had consumed most of Ernest Price’s Main Street property had nearly killed him. He took a step toward Ernest, but Erasmus reached out and took him by the shoulder without even peering in his direction. His blind act was immaculate, as always. Only a few close friends knew the truth. Flanna saw something stirring beneath the over large knitted tam he wore to conceal his nest of living dreadlocks, but he betrayed no other signs of agitation.
“Easy, old friend,” Erasmus said. Then to the room at large, “Let’s get this over with. I have a very bad feeling. I want to be out of here.”
“Fine,” Ernest said, and produced the small wooden box Flanna had given him during their meeting.
He held it out to Susan.
Susan hesitated, then took it.
“It was meant for you, Susan, but everyone here needs to see it.”
Flanna watched Ernest’s face twitch into a momentary grin, but the others were watching the box in Susan’s hand as she first touched, then lifted the clasp that held it closed. She lifted the lid, and Ernest closed his eyes, a precaution Flanna knew to be worthless. Her father was as angry with the Price man as he was with the traitors and the former Phoenix Girl.
Flanna watched in the magic mirror as lig
ht poured from the box, flooding the room.
Screaming, first surprise and shock, then horror.
The light grew, pulsed, erased the darker shapes of the screaming people.
Flanna was at last forced to look away as the torrent of light swelled to blinding brightness. The light shone up from the mirror, painted ghastly shapes on her ceiling.
Then the light retreated, and she dared to look again. It flowed like smoke, back into the box from every corner of the room, filling it until it glowed like a small sun in the new, empty darkness. Then it died, and the box tumbled from empty air to the floor, spilling its contents.
A small golden locket, open, and with a small black gemstone set in the hollow center. As she watched, the gemstone cracked through the center, crumbled around the edges, fell away to a fine black sand, then dust, then nothing.
They were gone, all of them, to a place where they could not hope to hinder her father’s plans, and she was free.
Free to do the thing she’d come to do.
It was time.
* * *
Penny retreated from Flanna’s mind, sick with rage and sadness. She rose and fled to the furthest corner of her cell, away from Ronan, the unnatural man-thing who had introduced her to magic, then terror, and finally ruin and defeat. From her father, whose cursed blood she shared with the monstrous sister tearing her life in Dogwood to ribbons. She fell against the stone, pressed her head into the corner, and screamed.
She would have run away if she could, walls or no walls, but she could never run from herself, the stupid girl who had fallen into a stupid trap, then watched powerless as her new family was reduced to ashes.
Torin and Ronan were behind her, putting hands on her shoulder, trying to lift her from her corner, trying to comfort her.
“Don’t touch me,” she screamed and slapped blindly at the hands groping for her. “You leave me alone!”
