“What’cha doing?”
I almost levitate when I hear Jedrek in my ear with how he startled me. I was so focused on what lies ahead of me, I wasn’t watching around me and he took that as the perfect time to announce himself.
“Would you believe me if I answered wondering if I have a spare set of pants in the car?”
“With the noise you just made, yes, yes I would.” His face is set in taunting. He’s smiling his false mirth which once looked so genuine to me. “Any idea what we are up against?”
“One crazy housewife and the spare members of her family,” I offer, still not completely sure what awaits us.
“You remember what we talked about?” he asks me, feeling very familiar to a conversation only a few moments ago. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”
Just like Bella, I don’t answer him, letting that same uncertainty hang between us as it had her and I.
“You’re going to do the mortal thing, aren’t you? You’re going to do the whole ‘what’s my life compare to theirs’ speech?” He doesn’t bother to hide his disgust.
“No,” I tell him with a smile equal to his own. “I wasn’t going to give a speech at all.”
“Mature!” he shouts to my back as I walk away. “Very mature.”
I know he would try to talk me out of the road I have started on if I let him. It’s his job to plant the seeds of doubts in our minds, to sway and steer us away from the paths we picked in our life. This path, this road, only has one ending for me, and for the family, as far as I’m concerned.
I can hear the quarreling voices coming from the stone building ahead of me. The male voice is softer, almost pleading in its pitches with the shouting female. Her words are a fast frenzy of syllables I can’t make out. Their whole conversation is threaded together by the sound of sobbing, a high-pitched cry of fear, and sounds only a child could make. I’ve run out of time.
My feet carry me faster than my nerves wish they would. I maneuver my way around the standing monuments to enter the large, erected building of one built a long time ago. Kerosene lamps cast a glow in the stone space. Shadows are almost real things, mocking the two adults below them with their broken shapes and dramatic movements. Dust floats through the air, sparkling with a hint of forgotten times, before landing back at rest in darkened corners of the room. The whole space feels crushing and tiny with the emotions and the magic pulsing through it.
“Well, here is the happy little family,” Jedrek tells those in front of us, so lost in their moment they hadn’t noticed my arrival. “Husband. Wife. Son. Dead daughter. Seems we are almost all here.”
“Did you bring Bella?” Miranda asks him, ignoring her husband’s confused face.
Jedrek shrugs with his face, making it a guessing game of what, or who, he may have brought. If there’s anyone at all.
I ignore them as the two settle into a verbal game. My attention is for the little girl peering around the concrete stand where a coffin is supposed to sit. That same face stared at me as I climbed the wooden steps in her home. I watched her grow and age frame by frame until she couldn’t anymore. Those same eyes, once so filled with youthful innocence and joy, are now blank and almost hateful as they watch me.
“Hello, Becky,” I call out to the little girl stuck amid the drama around her. “Come here.”
She doesn’t want to answer me. She doesn’t want to come away from the safety of her mother, but she’s dead. She’s mine to command. One shaky step at a time, she makes her way to where I kneel waiting for her. Each step pulls more of her new self to the surface and discards any resemblance of who she was once. She throws away the cute outer wrapper for the evil animated inside of her answering the last few remaining doubts in my mind.
“You’re not Becky, are you?” I ask it, tasting the wild magic from which it comes. “You’ve never been Becky. You were never any of them, not really. You’ve always been you, waiting until you could return to your box and then angry when forced out again.”
The living magic behind Becky’s eyes stares at me with caution. It hisses, wondering where I am going with my ramblings and what those ramblings mean for it.
“What are you talking about?” Miranda asks, panic making her voice a little higher than her normal tone.
“I know how to kill her,” I offer as an explanation to the hysteric voice and the hissing trick in front of me.
“What is she talking about?” Miranda screams to anyone who many have a better answer than I gave her.
Jedrek holds up a hand to hush the woman screaming at him. “What are you talking about?”
He isn’t asking from a place of pure curiosity. There’s a touch of self-serving fear amid his words. Afterall, he too has come to reclaim this lost magic.
“You can’t kill my daughter. Please,” Chad pleads, “there must be another way? We have her back. I can’t let her go, now. We can’t lose her again.”
“This isn’t Becky, but you’ve known that all this time, haven’t you, Ben?” Turning to the little boy who is as far away from his sister as the room allows, I repeat my question. “Haven’t you?”
So similar to his twin, but so different, he nods before returning to his crouching fear. He won’t look to the man he’s depended on to keep him safe his whole life. He doesn’t trust the woman who rocked him back to sleep when the nightmares woke him. She’s brought the nightmare home and his father has begged for it to stay.
“Are you sure?” Jedrek asks.
“Very.” And I am, because beyond them all stands a little girl confused why her body isn’t at rest; why she isn’t at rest and why her family is so sad. “This is as you said, old magic, original magic. It’s a spark of divinity confiscated and corrupted a long time ago. Now it’s angry and enjoys the game. It becomes whoever it is asked to become for kicks and giggles while it devours the one who thinks they are in control of it. This is how you’ve been collecting your souls.”
Chad, ever the smart one, jumps to the end of my explanation. “What do you mean devours? What soul?”
“I know this one!” Jedrek shouts. “You see,” he pauses extending his hand to Chad, “Jedrek by the way.” When Chad doesn’t offer an extended hand in return Jedrek begins to speak again, “Rude, but okay. You see, your wife made a deal with a witch who stole a bunch of items which weren’t hers to use. Well, your wife here, just happened to pick the biggest whammy of all of them. Where most of the little deals just end in a little quick round of suicide by insanity, your wife picked familicide by madness. The rest of the prizes I could have unlinked, but this one, this one binds itself to the source of energy from the one who made the deal. Once that energy grows weak, that little grinning thing there is in control,” he explains pointing to grinning Becky. “No doubt Becky here told Mommy she wanted her whole family to come be with her on the other side because she’s lonely and scared, which is why we are all gathered here today.”
Miranda stares at her little girl with a look somewhere between insanity and horror. A part of her knew this whole time this wasn’t her little girl, but she lied to herself, told herself she was wrong and lived in the happiness that the denial granted her.
“You’re wrong,” Chad tells us. “Miranda didn’t bring us here. Bella did.”
I had planned for almost everything. I had rehearsed every avenue, every dead end, and still, I never saw this ahead of me. All this time I was so sure it was Miranda, lost in the grief of a mother, I had never thought to entertain the idea it could have been anyone else.
“She went crazy, shouting about needing the perfect dress for Becky. We told her Becky was gone. She didn’t need a dress, but she insisted she wasn’t. She told us to come here and we would see for ourselves. We came just to calm her down. I just wanted to get Ben to safety.” Miranda’s voice is trembling. “Becky was sitting here, hiding where Bella said she would be. When she texted, we told her we were here. She said she was on her way and she could exp
lain everything.”
“So, explain,” Jedrek says to someone standing behind me.
I don’t want to turn around. I don’t want to admit, yet again, I was so focused on what was ahead of me I completely forgot to look around me. Reluctantly turning, I see the teenager who I met nights ago after a failed blind date. She, convincing me her family needed help, brought me into their lives knowing everything was true. Her sister did walk again, but it wasn’t because of her mom, as she led me to believe. It was because she had signed the deal which trapped them both in this drama.
“Why?” I ask the mute teen.
“I couldn’t make her stop,” Bella stares at her baby sister. “I just wanted her to stop.”
“Yeah, that’s great, but I’m going to need some back story here,” Jedrek has started his dangerous slow walk of strings towards Bella. “How does a teen working at a knock-off chain restaurant find not only one witch, but two?”
I hold up a hand to stop Jedrek, not willing to force her confession. “Wanted who to stop?”
“Mom,” Bella says. “Mom just kept crying all the time. She said she doesn’t blame me, but I know she does. I just wanted to try to make it right.”
“And Johanna told you she could bring Becky back?” I ask, still holding Jedrek at bay.
“No,” Bella tells us. “She did.”
“She who?” Jedrek asks, but I’ve already put it together.
Bella didn’t pick this spot for Becky to be discovered. Deon did.
“Deon,” I mutter, tired of hearing the name.
“Excuse me, what?” Jedrek asks me, although we both know he heard me perfectly well.
“Where is she?” I ask Bella, because there isn’t any more places for me to turn around to be surprised. We are already facing the entrance of the crypt.
“She said she could make it all stop, if you promise to return the magic to her,” Bella answers.
“Yeah, that’s not what I asked.”
“Or she would kill us all if you didn’t,” Bella continues with a quivering lip.
“What did she promise to make stop?” I ask, stalling. If she won’t answer where Deon is, it most likely means she is closer than I would prefer a pissed off she-wolf to be lurking.
Bella is staring at the nightmare watching her. “The whispering in my head,” she says weakly, almost with a whisper. “It would all stop. Her voice would stop.”
“Where’s the box?” Jedrek asks from behind me, still held back by my hand.
Bella pulls the music box from her jacket pocket. It’s small, so small one would most likely never look at it twice as something of interest. The silver-colored metal is tarnished, speaking of the many hands which have touched it with hopes all turned to despair. I can see the white runes glowing around its edges. Like a bold warning, hinting of the dangers of what could happen if the box should be played, these runes were placed long ago. Warnings which were ignored, or exploited for a dark goal, also glow with a hidden promise of how to contain what has escaped.
“Tell me you know how to make it all stop?” Bella asks with her broken soul before me.
I do. I can see many ways to make it all stop. My eyes follow the invisible silver cord tied to Bella and the box. It sparkles like a spider web in morning dew, heavy with what it has caught under the light of the moon. Just as fragile, it would be easy to sever, breaking the cord draining her of life and sanity. She would be free. It would all stop. The magic would slither back into its cage, leaving the husk of the child it animates. There would be no more whispers, no more regrets or remorse. It would all stop because Bella would die, ending the transaction of this curse.
“What did you offer for your sister to return?” I ask with hesitation, wondering how much she really knows about what she has done.
A single tear begins to roll down the youth filled face of Bella and I know she knows. She knew exactly what the cost would be. She, like all the rest of them, just never thought it would come due.
“Just make it stop,” she almost begs, and for a moment I almost do what she is asking of me.
In a breath of hesitation, touching the silver string binding the three, I almost kill a child. I almost make it all stop. Almost.
“Make it stop,” Bella pleads, ready for whatever may be coming as long as it means the voices in her head stop. The nightmares stop. The lies stop.
“What are you going to do?” Jedrek softly asks.
He too can see the thread holding it all together. He too knows how easy it would be to pluck it like a demonic harp string, ending this round of the chorus of a song played again and again. Pluck it and send Bella’s soul to the contract. Pluck it and send the magic back to the box, waiting for the next person to wind its silver key to play that damning chorus once again. Pluck it and awaken a witch who lives in the deepest fears of her kind.
“Ms. Buckland,” Miranda is softly weeping my name. She doesn’t completely understand what is happening, but she’s figured out enough to know tonight she may lose more than one daughter. “Harper,” she calls again. “Please, save my babies.”
“Harper,” Jedrek whispers, fearing the road I am willing to walk.
“It’s just a spark of divinity,” I whisper, mostly to myself.
“Harper!” Jedrek shouts, but he’s too late.
I can make it all stop.
The world pauses, frozen in the seconds before I tempt fate. In this span of time, a thousand fears are spread before me and in these same seconds, I grow numb, letting whatever will be, will be.
This ancient magic isn’t mine, but it’s so similar, so like mine, I can feel its tickle testing me. I can taste its power like molten gold running down my throat, metallic and scorching. I don’t pull on the cord dancing before me in the waves of magic I am weaving. I pull on the source. I reach my power deep into the blonde little girl growling at me, finding that pulsing gold buried deep inside of her. With a hope and a prayer to whichever deity is watching, I wrap my own source around it. I entwine it, making it a part of me. This dead magic, this power to animate those long since gone, I blend it, melding my own to every inch of it.
The room is filled with the colors of green and gold, fighting and twirling to escape and yet claim the other. My skin is crawling in its power, ripping and burning with an unseen flame. This invisible fire is burning inside of me, consuming every inch with overwhelming pain. Screaming, I pull my power back, commanding it to keep its golden prey ensnarled in the green wisps. My screams ravage my throat till there is nothing left but raw tissue and hoarse sounds of anguish, but it’s mine. That golden fire, the golden lava churning inside of me, eating and melting my deepest parts, is mine.
With blurred vision I watch as Becky slips to the ground. Her body almost floats, feather-like upon the deep breath she exhales before she grows still. Without the magic, her body withers, returning to what it should look like if she were still deep in the earth’s womb and not the fake replica of the little girl they lost.
Bella falls to her knees, cradling the sin she created. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers to her baby sister with tears falling on her grey skin. “I’m so sorry.”
There’s a soft song playing in my mind. Like a dark piano, it sings the song of every person who cried those same words into its metal walls. The song is mine now and I will carry their guilt and sorrow for the rest of my life. Bella’s is just the latest verse to the long sheet of music.
“What have you done?” Jedrek hisses somewhere near me. “It will destroy you, Harper.”
It will. I feel it agree with him with a sinister excitement. It whispers to me of all the ways it plans to kill me while stroking its melancholy keys.
“Let it go, Harper.” Jedrek is standing in front of me, holding the empty cage of a box. “You saved the family. Good for you. Now put it back.”
But I can’t, I want to tell him. I knew the moment it entered me, it would never return to those metal bars
and if it does, the cord would be restrung. As long as I hold it inside of me, Bella is safe. It can’t harm her. Instead, Bella is now tied to me. The evil witch will never know what happened here because the energy is still the same.
“My littlest witch,” Jedrek says, tenderly pushing my red curls behind my ears. He cups my face and kissing my forehead he whispers into my hair, “you’re going to be the death of me.”
“Maybe,” I tell him, letting his warmth calm the broken part of me. “Or it may be the wolves stalking us.”
“Tough choice,” he tells my curls. “Are you up to playing red riding hood?”
“No,” I answer honestly feeling the exhaustion encasing me and the magic rebelling inside of me. “Besides, my grandmother would never let a wolf eat her.”
He laughs a deep laugh. I can feel the vibration of it, and it pulls a smile to my lips despite my best efforts to deny it.
“She wants the magic,” I whisper to his chest, absorbing these moments of comfort.
“Then let’s give her the magic,” he says, and I can hear the mischief in his voice. “Just don’t forget where you are.”
Placing one more kiss on top of my head, he turns to go play with our latest round of danger. He almost skips with his departure, never looking to where the family huddles around each other at our feet. Their sobs don’t reach him nor does any of their rolling emotions as they try to grasp what has happened so far tonight.
“Stay in here,” I awkwardly say, not really sure how I keep landing in the role of savior when I trip over my own feet coming down the stairs. “Bella, you remember what I gave you?”
Bella pats the same pocket that she pulled the box from. “I’d still rather have a gun.”
“Trust me,” I tell her. “You don’t want her bringing a gun.”
The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1) Page 21
