Rising Silver Mist

by Olivia Wildenstein

  “Dad, I’m home!”

  There was no answer.

  As I made my way to the kitchen for a glass of water, my bare feet left damp imprints on the wooden floor.

  “Da—” The last letter evaporated from my throat.

  My socks slid from my fingers and landed with a wet slosh at my feet.

  I thought my heart had beat frantically while I was running, but it was nothing compared to the way it slammed against the walls of my chest at that moment.

  11

  The Knife

  My father was gagged and cuffed to a chair, his light eyes wild with fear. I thought I heard my name on his lips, but his words were garbled by the scarf Stella had twisted into a rope and tied around his face.

  An abrasive smile screwed up Stella’s expression. Even though she’d grown up with Mom and Aylen, she no longer cared about my family. She no longer cared for her own family. The only person she cared about was herself. Maybe she cared for Gregor too.

  I curled my fingers into fists. My nails dug into my palm.

  “I waited to see if my dust would finish you off like it was supposed to, but here you stand.” Her copper hair fell in rusty waves over her blood-red blazer. “Sadly, my patience didn’t pay off.”

  Dad’s head snapped toward Stella, then pivoted toward me. If he’d looked apprehensive and confused when I arrived, he was positively livid now. He writhed on the chair and the legs scraped against the tiles. Stella placed both her palms on his shoulders and pinned him in place.

  “Get your hands off of him!” I screeched.

  She leered at me. “Give it back, and I’ll release him.”

  “Release him first.”

  She snorted. “Now, Cat, don’t be unreasonable. I asked first.”

  “You’re a sociopath. You don’t give a fuck about people.”

  “I give a fuck about people. Those who matter, that is. And you are not one of them.”

  Dad’s eyes glistened like his sweat-slickened forehead. I could take a lot, but tears from my father? That was my breaking point. “You should not have involved my father.” My hand burned, yet Ace didn’t show. I gritted my teeth. My voice hissed out of me, “Get…the hell…out of my house.”

  “Or what?” She glanced at my glowing hand. “Ace Wood isn’t coming, Catori. Don’t you think I thought this all out before returning to Rowan?”

  She was toying with me.

  Someone would show up.

  Someone always showed up.

  “Lily needed him. And you know how he is about his sister—she always comes first. Their relationship is a little incestuous if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  She smiled, her teeth a blast of white against her tanned skin. “Now, I’ve got things to do, so can we get a move on?” She lifted her hands off my father’s shoulders and walked over to the knife block.

  I dashed toward my father, but she was faster. She had one arm around his neck and the other bent toward his throat, the knife point pressing against the freshly-shaven skin of his throat. “Take one more step, and I thrust this knife into his throat instead of into yours.”

  I froze inches from him. If I extended my arm, I could touch his knee, but if I touched him, Stella would kill him. So I kept my arms locked at my sides.

  Dad was still making sounds, but they no longer sounded like words. They sounded like sobs. Fury lapped against my body, spilled into my veins, expanded inside my bones, cold and hot and hard. My heart banged against my ribcage and yet my ribs didn’t shatter…my breath didn’t shudder. I was still and calm.

  I had never.

  Ever.

  Been calmer.

  The world swam out of focus. Only Stella’s face remained sharp.

  Her eyes flashed to mine.

  Blackness stained the edge of my vision, darkened the room.

  Thunder cracked outside the window. Lightning streaked the sky. Raindrops parted the purple sky and pelted the glass like mallets striking bass drums.

  Water gushed nearby. Had the storm cracked the window? I didn’t turn to look. I didn’t want to let Stella out of my sight.

  Something blasted against her cheek, smacked her head sideways. She shrieked. Her slender arms released my father and came up to shield her face from what had assaulted her.

  Water.

  But it wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from inside the kitchen.

  Our steel faucet had rocketed off its base, and water spewed like a geyser. Instead of shooting upward, it arched toward Stella. Steam hissed where it hit her fire-warm skin and flowed off her in misty puffs.

  Her shrieks faded to choking gasps. The rope of water speared her mouth. She clamped her lips and stared at me in horror.

  Unlike the first time I’d moved water with my mind, I wasn’t surprised. I welcomed the liquid release of my anger and steered it to fight the battle my limbs were too inept to wage.

  I let my huntress move through me, inhabit all of me, no longer caring if she annihilated my useless faerie side.

  My father’s alarmed gaze reddened and widened, and his face paled. He sputtered as droplets showered his sweater and his jeans.

  I closed the distance between us. Stella was still fighting against the hard jet, which trailed her when she ducked. The knife dangled from her fingers, the sharp tip blinking white and gray.

  My throat pulsed as hard as my heart. Stella’s dust pounded against my skin as though desirous to reunite with her. Well, I wouldn’t release it; I would lock it away from this mad woman.

  Instead of untying my father, I yanked his gag down, then shoved his chair against the furthest wall with strength I didn’t even know I possessed. He had his back to me now, which was better. Safer. I didn’t want him to see what I was about to do to Stella.

  I yielded to the huntress, to the fluid thrumming inside my bones. Pulled it out of me. Pushed it toward Stella. She scrambled backward, skating over the slick floor. Her high heels skidded, and she fell backward, catching herself on the island. The knife flew out of her hands. I dove for it, but she rammed her body into mine, striking my cheek with the palm of her hand so hard, my neck cracked.

  I saw stars.

  But then I saw her.

  She grabbed the knife.

  The faucet still leaked, but the water no longer stretched to Stella. It simply dribbled over the sink’s edge.

  She thrust her stringy red hair back and stalked toward me. The knife gleamed in her unsteady, fisted hands. “You’ve become a huntress.” She circled me.

  I didn’t move.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed my father struggling against the plastic zip ties Stella had used to hook his wrists to the rungs of the chair. If he didn’t stop fidgeting, the hard plastic would bite into his skin, tear it.

  He would bleed.

  I ground my molars. I had fists. I had knees. I had feet. Granted they were bare, but I could still do damage. I threw myself at Stella, but she whooshed away. Her feet no longer touched the floor. I leaped for her, and again she escaped.

  Her face contorted with a brusque smile that stained her brown eyes a foul shade of black.

  I was done amusing her.

  Her gaze flicked to my father.

  I lunged for him, but she reached him first. She spun his chair into my shins. I tripped and landed hard on my backside. The back of my head hit a corner of the island, and red-hot pain exploded in my skull. I bit back a whimper and struggled back to my feet.

  “You want to play hard to get? Fine. Let’s play.” With a flick of her wrist, she drew the knife across my father’s throat.

  “No!” I screamed.

  His sliced skin puckered and reddened, and then blood oozed.

  Poured out of him.

  “NO!” She could take everything from me, but not my father. The scream felt as though it were shredding my throat.

  A strange gurgling sound erupted from my father’s mouth. Or was it coming from the cut? His spook
ed eyes flashed to mine, then rolled back into his head. I grabbed a kitchen towel and shoved it against the deep slice, but the blood saturated the towel in seconds, dripped over my knuckles, and streamed down my wet forearms in crimson rivulets.

  Stella didn’t stop me.

  She didn’t move.

  Her mouth rounded in a soundless gasp.

  “What have you done?” My nostrils flared with manic breaths. “What have you done?”

  Her dust scorched me like burning embers. Keeping the pressure on my father’s throat, I rubbed my neck, but then Dad gurgled, and both my hands returned to his wound.

  Something smelled acrid, like fire and metal. I swallowed and realized the stench also coated my palate. Had Stella slashed my neck?

  I jerked a hand back to my throat. The skin was smooth, deadened. Her captive dust no longer writhed underneath the slick pads of my fingertips.

  She’d taken it back.

  Stella’s irises whitened, and then her face veined and grayed. Her body rigidified like concrete.

  “Catori.” Someone called my name.

  I looked at Dad, but his lips were limp.

  My name was called again. The voice was deep and familiar.

  Cruz.

  Someone had finally come, but they’d come too late.

  I stared at my father. I felt empty, devastated, weak, helpless. Broken. I was broken.

  “Dad, come on. Don’t leave me,” I sobbed. “Don’t you dare leave me.”

  His skin was sallow. I pressed my blood-stained hand against his chest, feeling for a pulse.

  I couldn’t find any.

  I craned my neck back to look at Stella. She still hadn’t moved. The amber color of her hair had morphed into a storm-gray. The lustrous curls drooped, and then they fell away from her scalp like sand.

  Skin flaked off her jaw. Her fingers turned to stumps and then her wrists sloughed off.

  Like concrete blasted by dynamite, Stella burst into a cloud of dust.

  She was dead.

  She was dead, but so was my father.

  12

  The Bargain

  I pressed the kitchen towel harder against my father’s throat, as though stopping the flow of blood could make his heart beat again. I wasn’t a doctor yet, but I wasn’t an idiot either. Keeping blood inside a body with no heartbeat wouldn’t magically jumpstart a heart.

  Magically…

  “Cruz! Bring him back to me. Bring him back.”

  “I can’t promise his spirit is close enough—”

  “Stop talking and bring him back!” Tears ran into my mouth.

  He crouched beside me. “If I manage, you’ll owe me.”

  “If you manage, I’ll be glad to owe you.” My neck and chest throbbed. “Just, please…please bring him back.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

  He moved my hands off my father’s wound, placed his own on the ebbing red flow, and murmured Faeli words. I didn’t understand any of them. I didn’t even try. As long as they worked, as long as they brought my father back.

  I grabbed the knife that had fallen out of Stella’s desiccated fingers and sliced the plastic zip ties off my father’s wrists. Like dead weights, his hands thumped against the seat of his chair. I twined my fingers through his. Pulled his hand to my chest. To my frantic heart.

  I willed his limp fingers to curl around mine.

  They didn’t.

  Cruz’s prayer became more insistent. The litany of his words more rushed. They vibrated inside the kitchen, overlapping with the slosh of water and the rolls of receding thunder.

  The faerie’s fingers sparkled with gold flames that quenched the blood. Slowly, the edges of the wound glowed and smoothed, rising to meet each other like a zipper. Cruz ran the pads of his fingers along the wound, and it mended, the skin weaving back together.

  He’d repaired Gwenelda’s wound in the same way. And after he’d restored her, she’d sputtered back to life. Could I start hoping the same thing would happen to my father or did I need to wait longer?

  Eyes sealed shut, fingers roving over the hemmed throat, Cruz kept whispering words. I prayed my father’s spirit heard.

  I clutched my dad’s hand as hard as he used to clutch mine when I was a little girl and we’d wander through the mall on Black Friday. When I complained he was hurting me, he would confess how afraid he was to lose me in the crowd.

  Today, I was the one who feared losing him. “Daddy,” I whimpered softly. “I won’t let go. But don’t let go either.”

  Cruz had grown quiet.

  So quiet.

  Crushingly quiet.

  His green eyes settled over me.

  I wanted to pummel him with my fists.

  And I did. With my free hand, I hit him.

  “Don’t you dare give up. Don’t you—”

  He caught my wrist.

  Held it.

  Then I heard a gasp. A cough.

  I spun my head back toward my father, barely daring to believe the noise was coming from him.

  But it was.

  His lips trembled.

  His fingers writhed.

  Cruz released my wrist.

  I sprang to my feet and wrapped my arms so tightly around my father’s neck, I thought I might choke him.

  He was alive.

  He’d come back to me.

  13

  Favors

  “Cat?” My father’s voice was so faint it barely ruffled my stringy hair. “What—” He coughed. And then he gagged.

  I pressed away from him, fearing my hug was too fierce.

  Dad rubbed his throat. “What the hell happened? Where’s Stella? Cruz?” He peered at the faerie. “Why are you here?”

  “Stella’s gone, Dad.”

  “Gone where?” Dad asked.

  I could feel Cruz’s gaze on me as though he too was eager to know where she had gone. But he’d seen her explode into ash, so he knew where she’d gone. I realized he was looking at my neck.

  I touched it.

  I expected the dust to have vanished—like its owner—but it was still there, still ardently throbbing.

  “What do you have on your neck?” Dad asked. “You got a tattoo?”

  Why wasn’t Ace’s dust cloaking it? Had he finally retrieved it? Out of all the times I’d asked him to do it, he’d chosen now? “Where’s Ace?” I asked Cruz, disregarding my father’s appalled stare.

  “Lily got into some trouble.”

  “And you couldn’t take care of it?” I hissed.

  “What possessed you to do that to your neck? If your mom were here—”

  “Good thing she’s not.” I winced, instantly regretting saying that.

  Dad blinked.

  I was horrified I’d just lashed out at him.

  Dad got to his feet. He marched to the overflowing sink. “Our kitchen is flooded. Where did the faucet go?”

  I swallowed hard, tears clinging to my lashes, weighing them down. I sobbed. After everything, I thought I deserved to sob.

  Dad came back toward me and gathered me into his arms. “Honey, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just thought that maybe…that maybe you could’ve gotten a tattoo some place more discreet is all.”

  That just made me cry harder.

  He stroked my back. “Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry I yelled.”

  He held me tighter, and I melted into him.

  “What was up with Stella? She was acting crazy. She clocked me, then tied me to a chair. Said you had something of hers. What did you take from her?”

  The lump in my throat was too jagged to let words through. Not that I wanted to explain to my father what had happened. How could I explain it to him?

  Dad pressed me away. “We need to call Jimmy. He needs to bring her in. She needs to answer for what she did. Where’s my phone?” He patted his jeans. When his fingers came away from the dark denim, he held them out before him. “Where did this blood come from?” His eyes surfed to me again and traveled over my face, down my a
rms that were streaked with his blood. “Cat, did you cut yourself?” Dad searched the rest of the kitchen, found the balled, soiled kitchen towel and the fallen knife. “What the hell happened in here?”

  I closed my eyes and wept, because weeping beat explaining what happened. I didn’t even know where to start.

  “Why is there mud on our floor?” he asked.

  Because dust turned to mud when it was wet.

  “Stella’s gone, Dad.”

  “I can see that, but where the hell did she go?”

  I looked at Cruz then, willing him to explain. I wasn’t sure I had the strength to do it myself. Dad would think I was crazy. He’d have me committed.

  “Mr. Price, it’s a rather long and tedious story.”

  “You better start telling it soon then, son,” Dad volleyed back.

  He sloshed through the water covering the kitchen floor and yanked open the cabinet door. He dropped to his knees and rifled underneath for the valves. The water finally stopped.

  The kitchen sponge bobbed like a rubber duck around his ankles. Dad seized it and flung it onto the kitchen island, then knotted his arms in front of him.

  “Like I said, one of you better start talking.”

  I looked for Stella’s ashes, but they’d been swept away in the current of my anger. The glimmering flecks were everywhere and had turned the clear water murky.

  “Cruz, can you burn this all away?” I gestured to the gray sludge. “I don’t want a plant growing out of the grout.”

  “Seriously, Cat, a plant? You’re worried a plant’s going to sprout between the tiles?” Dad looked at me incredulously.

  “And call Kajika,” I told Cruz.

  Was I striking bargain after bargain? How much was I going to owe him after today? I pushed that thought away. Now wasn’t the time to think about gajoïs.

  My dad was alive and well.

  Cruz reached for his phone. He took the call into the living room, speaking quietly into the receiver.