by Cara Wylde
“Not me,” I whispered now, my self-preservation stronger than the disgust for what I was about to do.
The tentacle retreated swiftly. With a sigh, I pushed the girl over the edge and said the words again. There was no reverence in my tone. Yig didn’t notice or didn’t care. The cultists were chanting louder now, their voices filling the cavern and echoing down the winding tunnels. It was a good thing Grim Reaper Academy was empty.
My strength was returning, which meant that the blood sacrifice had worked. I needed to get out of there. If I accepted to do it with all these people watching, it didn’t mean that I wanted to stick around and actually meet them. I was surrounded, though, and now the black hoods were falling, eyes seeking mine. They’d all stopped chanting.
“Mila Morningstar,” Leopold Saint-Germain said in a voice that betrayed… pride? “This is Mila Morningstar, and she is family now.” He wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to them… Parading me. “Soon, she will be the most fearsome Grim Reaper our world has ever seen.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re confusing me with someone else, old man.”
Leopold merely grinned. “If you take your father’s place, – and you will, – what do you think you’ll become?”
This was a waste of time. An old man who’d been alive for too many centuries, who was bored out of his mind, wanted to make a show of me because I was the most interesting thing that had happened to his family in forever. I didn’t have time, nor disposition for this. I made to walk past him. He caught me by the arm. When our eyes met, mine were burning with hatred, and his with unabashed curiosity.
“What will you do with all that power, Mila Morningstar?”
“You know what. I’ll take all of you lot down.”
He shook his head. “You won’t be concerned with us or with Yig anymore. Now, you feel like your life is defined by the Great Old One and the sacrifices you have to bring…”
“My life is not defined by anything,” I spat through gritted teeth.
“But once you become a Grim Reaper, you will be working directly for Death, and she will grant you immunity. For two hundred years, you won’t have to sacrifice a soul to keep what our Great Old One has given you.”
My eyebrows might have just disappeared into my blue, disheveled fringe at that point. He was right. Once I became a Grim Reaper, I’d be free of Yig. Two hundred years of freedom. Enough to find a way to get rid of him. I smiled at the old Saint-Germain – who didn’t look old at all, – and he released my arm. Everyone was looking at me, now. I met the gazes of those who were closer, nodded politely, then finally made my exit. GC, Paz, and Sariel followed me. Francis stayed with his family. Fine. I didn’t want him anywhere near me, anyway. For the time being.
“Are you okay?” GC asked me.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, love,” Paz tried.
I stopped in the middle of the beach. I was feeling better, my body having healed from the inside. I wasn’t cold anymore.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I looked the demon in the eyes.
“Francis said it was for the best. He couldn’t get rid of his family, so better now than later, when things get complicated.”
“Complicated how?” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at my three boyfriends. Of course, Pazuzu had known because he was a telepath. GC and Sariel looked just as guilty.
When Paz only sighed and left my question hanging, GC stepped forward in the moonlight. His curly blond hair turned a shade of silver and blue.
“Mila, we know something’s going on. Skipping classes with Lorna, Corri becoming all flustered when we ask her where you are… And now Paz…”
I turned to the demon again. “You’ve been reading my thoughts!” Which was outrageous, because I’d been trying extra hard to keep them shielded from him.
He faced me, his eyes turning red. This might have just been the first time he was angry at me.
“I haven’t, because you wouldn’t let me! You’re hiding something from us! What is it? Why can’t you tell us?”
I shook my head. Because you’ll think I’m insane. Because you won’t love me anymore.
“It’s none of your business,” I said, instead. “And why should I tell you when you’ve been hiding things from me, too? You knew I didn’t want to meet the revenants. And yet, you ambushed me. All of you!” I looked at GC, and then Sariel. “You made me sacrifice that girl in front of all those people, and they were chanting… as if… as if…” I was losing my breath. Maybe my lungs were slow to recover. I swallowed heavily and centered myself. I didn’t have time for this. In a fair world, the blood sacrifice would have taken me five minutes tops, and I would’ve been home by now. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I continued in a calmer voice. “I think we should take a break. I’m going to spend my winter vacation with Stepan and Ilena, and I need you to… give me space.”
They couldn’t believe their ears. GC’s eyes widened, and Paz’s red orbs turned to normal.
“You’re… breaking up with us?” Sariel asked in bewilderment.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“Because of what Francis did?”
“What did I do?” Francis came running out of the caves.
Great. As if this wasn’t hard enough already.
“Yes. And also because Paz has been poking around in my head when I specifically asked him not to do it. My thoughts are my own.”
“I’m sorry,” the demon whispered.
“Goddess, you can’t do this to us.” There was GC with that pleading, seductive voice.
I couldn’t look at them. It was true – I needed time and space. To think. To act. And then, when all of this was over, we could get back together. Start anew. But now… Now I just didn’t feel like I was good girlfriend material. Too much pressure to be the woman they thought I was, the woman they loved and cared for. I wasn’t, and that was that. For now, I had to accept it. One day, maybe I’d become her.
“I’m gonna go now,” I said firmly. “Don’t call me, okay? Don’t text me.” I teleported to my room.
“Mila, what the hell?!” GC teleported right after me.
With a sigh, I pushed him aside and grabbed my scythe. Corri had been snoozing in my sock drawer. She never attended the bloody rituals. When she saw us, she shot in the air, raising a small cloud of pixie dust.
“Pack my clothes for me and bring them to the Lazarovs,” I told her, then turned to GC. “It’s temporary.”
“Don’t go.”
“I have to. And you have to give me space, okay?” I leaned in and kissed his lips.
“I’ve always been on your side. I was the first.”
He was talking about him being my first boyfriend, before Pazuzu had broken his engagement to Pandora, and way before Sariel had lost his wings and fallen into my arms. Before Francis, too.
“I love you,” I said.
“It doesn’t mean anything if you’re leaving.”
“It means everything, GC. Because I’m protecting you.”
He huffed in frustration. “From whom?!”
“From me.”
I teleported to my adoptive parents’ house, knowing two things: one, my boyfriends wouldn’t follow me because they knew that would only make things worse, and two, there was a good chance I might give Stepan Lazarov a heart attack if I appeared in the middle of his living room.
“Well, welcome home, since you’re here already,” he said boredly.
Shoot. The bastard’s tougher than I thought.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You want us to do what?”
“Adopt her, like you adopted me.”
We were all sitting in the kitchen the next morning, around a table filled with Mom’s pancakes, fried eggs, bacon, and a pitcher of orange juice. She’d brought the juice and the pancake mix from the diner, as usual.
“No,” Stepan said simply.
“Why n
ot?” Lena tried in a meek voice. She was poking two pieces of bacon around her plate, looking at him fearfully, from behind her lashes.
“Woman, you wanted to give Mila a home, and look how that turned out. I’m done with this family.”
“Yolanda is not directly related to me,” I tried to reason with him. I knew what he was afraid of, and to my chagrin, his instincts were right. “Second cousin. And her parents aren’t supernatural. I checked.”
My adoptive dad pushed his plate aside and stuck a toothpick between his lips. Leaning back in his chair, he gave me an intense look, as if he was trying to read into my soul. I averted my eyes and cut myself a piece of pancake. I hadn’t told them the truth about why I hadn’t been home in such a long time.
“You seem different,” he said. “What happened?”
“What do you mean? Nothing happened.” I shrugged.
“You didn’t tell us about last year, about how you spent your summer…”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and I sighed. I had to give him something. “Last year was a mess because of Valentine. No vacations, no breaks, no nothing. I needed some time for myself after that.”
“Nah. You cut us off completely.”
“Aww… you’ve always wanted to get rid of me, and now you’re telling me you missed me?”
“You broke you mother’s heart, that’s all.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere. My best bet was to convince Ilena they had to take Yoli in, and there was a chance she could convince Stepan. So, I told her about the orphanage, about how Lorna and I visited the children every month and brought them things, and about how hard their life was. My mom was a kind soul. She didn’t need much convincing.
“Maybe if you told your dad the whole truth,” Corri told me one night, “That you need Yolanda to catch Morningstar… He’d be more inclined to help. He hates the guy.”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell them that. You know how bad it sounds… The girl is eleven, and I want to use her to find my real mom and my asshole of a father. If she can dream jump, that is.”
Corri blew out her little cheeks and dropped it. These days, not even she could make me change my mind when I’d already decided something.
I badgered them for a week. I went to help my mom at the diner, and not once did I let her forget there was a girl in an orphanage in Bulgaria who needed her help. The Lazarovs weren’t rich, but what they had was still more than what Yolanda had now. I caught my dad alone in the garage, and badgered him some more.
“You did a poor job with me,” I told him. “You almost got me killed, you hit me, terrorized me…” He tried to turn around. “No, listen to me. This is your chance to do better. This is your chance to make up for all of it.”
He faced me, thick brows furrowed. “Why is this so important to you? I know you, and you’re not the kind of person who cares about other people.”
“That’s so unfair.”
“You do what you want, never listen to advice, you get yourself in trouble, you hurt the ones who love you, and now… what? You want me to believe that you just want to give this kid a future? That there’s nothing in it for you?”
I cleared my throat. God, he could read me like an open book! He was a bastard, but maybe I wasn’t far from being one, either. I was the result of my upbringing.
“Don’t you, for once, want to do something good and noble in your life?” I insisted. “The way things look now, you’re going to Hell. I can assure you. I can even tell you what Circle they’ll put you in.”
He sighed, but there was something in his eyes that told me I was finally getting to him. Fear. Thanks to me, he knew Heaven and Hell were real. I’d told them all about the school trips.
“We don’t have the finances to adopt a new kid, buy her clothes, feed her, and send her to school,” he said.
“I’ll take care of that.”
He snorted. “Didn’t your father disown you?”
Shit. I’d complained about it to my mom, and my mom told my dad everything. No matter how cruel he was to her, she still worshipped him or something.
“I’ll find a way. I’m surrounded by supernatural people.”
My guys would have helped me in a second, but I had to remember I’d broken up with them. In a moment of weakness or madness… I wasn’t sure myself. Who else could help me? Klaus came from a rich family, not to mention Lorna. But Yoli wasn’t their responsibility. She was mine.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said more to myself than to my dad.
The winter vacation was over in three days, and Stepan was still unmovable. My mom and I were doing our best, and even Corri tried to intervene on our behalf, but my dad didn’t like pixies. He tolerated her as a pet, but not as an actual being with feelings and emotions who could think for herself. I was getting ready to leave for the Academy, determined to come up with a new plan, when my mom came into my room. Her whole face was illuminated by a bright smile, and I instantly relaxed, feeling like she was about to take a burden off my shoulders.
“He said yes. I want a child so much, and he knows this is his chance to do better. Between me and you, he doesn’t want to go to Hell.” She laughed.
“So? When are we giving Yolanda the good news?”
“You go to school, my dear. Your father and I will book plane tickets to Bulgaria.”
She’d said the last part in an uncertain voice. They didn’t have money to fly back and forth between the US and Bulgaria for the adoption proceedings.”
“Corri, you can teleport other people, right?”
“You know I can. One at a time, though.”
I turned to my mom. “We’re going to learn how to teleport and take other people with us in PE this semester. So far, Professor Charon has been busy teaching the other kids what Morningstar didn’t allow her to teach last year. But Corri can take you.”
“Take us… where? How?”
I rolled my eyes, amused. “Where you need to go. In the blink of an eye.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.”
* * *
The look on Yoli’s face when Stepan and Ilena went to tell her they were intending to adopt her. I was with them, a few steps back. Corri was hiding in my bag. Tears gathered in the kid’s eyes, and I might have teared up a little, too.
“Let’s hope that you can dream,” I whispered under my breath.
“Is that really all you care about?” Corri asked, her tiny head peeking out of the bag.
I pushed her back down with my finger. “No. It’s what I choose to focus on, so I don’t get attached.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Yoli was with my adoptive parents, and I was at Grim Reaper Academy. We weren’t cousins anymore, we were sisters. A bit of Lorna magic had helped speed up the adoption process. No one had time for bureaucracy. Between classes and avoiding the guys, what was left of my free time was spent back in Kentucky, with Yolanda. I’d usually teleport there every evening to have dinner with them. It wasn’t long before Yoli figured out something was off. My parents had told her I was studying in Salem, so it didn’t make sense that I could visit them three-four times a week. One night, after dinner, Stepan pulled me aside.
“If you only did this for her, then prove it. Keep her out of your world, let her live a normal life. She doesn’t need to know about Grim Reaper Academy, or that you’re actually teleporting here, not flying. Stay away for a while, why won’t you?”
“Fine.”
So, I stayed away for a while. We were talking and texting all the time, so it was all the same to me. She’d started telling me about her dreams. Childishly, just to make conversation…
“You won’t believe what I dreamed last night!”
And I’d listen to her. I soon recognized the signs. Most of her dreams were lucid, and she often saw younger or older versions of herself, some with similar lives, others on completely different paths.
“
I saw you in this small chapel… I think the chapel was part of a bigger building. And you were talking to this guy with blond hair and blue eyes. He was so tall and handsome! I went to you, but you didn’t recognize me.”
My heart skipped a beat. In a parallel universe, Sariel and I met in the Holy Chapel.
“He had wings!”
And he hadn’t lost his wings yet…
“I wonder what it means.”
“So, you dream a lot.”
“Every night. If I don’t dream, it’s like I don’t sleep at all. I wake up tired and confused.”
She was a natural dream jumper. I could bet she could switch places with her other versions if someone taught her how to do it. I myself had never known or gotten the chance to learn. But my mother, Katia… I had to tell her the truth. Time was flying by. Classes, field trips, tests, projects. We were heading for the end of the year, and I was hesitating. I didn’t know what would happen after graduation, but if I didn’t do something, I was afraid I might end up being left out. There were twenty-two Grim Reapers in the world, and I had to be one of them. I just had to. The privilege came with two hundred years of immunity from Death. No sacrifices to Yig. It came with the gifts of freedom and time, and I could use both to figure my life out, see what I could do to fix what I’d broken.
Meanwhile, as I was building a half-true, half-omissive discourse in my head for Yoli, I was doing my best to avoid GC, Pazuzu, Sariel, and Francis. Sariel was easy. Most of his classes were with the Merciful Death Cabal, and in the one class we had together, he sat with Lorna, who was more than happy to console him after I’d dumped him so unceremoniously. My VDC ex-boyfriends were another story.
Do I really think of them as ex-boyfriends? I missed them like crazy. I’d said I wanted a break, but the winter vacation was over, we were back at the Academy, and I still wasn’t ready to get back with them. I felt like my life was getting more complicated by the day. I hadn’t yet told them that my parents had adopted my cousin, because then I’d also have to tell them why, and I couldn’t lie anymore, nor omit the truth. It was getting exhausting. I was reaching the point where I couldn’t remember what I’d told and hadn’t told to whom, and the moment I was going to have that super important conversation with Yoli, I would probably also lose track of my own lies, half-truths, and omissions. Klaus didn’t know, either. Patricia didn’t know. Only Corri, Lorna, and I. I was honestly surprised Lorna still stuck with me after I’d broken Sariel’s heart.