“Come, daughter. Talk to your mother.”
No…
More fire fills my system. I double over and scream through the pain.
If this was real, it would be killing me. At least that’s how it feels. Like I should be dying. Maybe I am dying. Maybe I died as soon as I walked through that door.
Nothing is real.
Renali’s voice echoes through my mind. What? Wait…Nothing is real? Isn’t that what she said? The very last thing she said? Don’t trust anything. Nothing is real.
My bones and muscles burn, but I force my back to straighten and force myself to look my “mother” in the eyes.
“Nothing is real,” I say.
She dips her head to the side. “You are stubborn, aren’t you?”
“To a fault.” I rip the branch in my hands away from the trunk and throw it at her. It cuts through her body like she’s made of smoke.
She glances down at her rippling body. “How very interesting.” The aura around her glows again. My muscles contract in pain, but I hold myself upright and keep my eyes locked on hers.
He was prepared for me to get through. He set up this nice illusion to deter me. But it’s not good enough.
Her skin and eyes glow brighter.
“You should have just let us be taken,” I shout as more pain peels through my veins. “I wish you had!” Warm tears trickle down my cheeks. I know she’s not really my mother, that she is long gone, but I go on yelling at her anyway. “You were a terrible mother! And a terrible person! I was never upset one single day that you died. I cried because you took everyone else with you.”
She floats toward me, her hair fanning out around her face. “Join me.”
I move towards her and grab her arms, though touching her burns my skin. “Never.” I pull her in half, and she explodes in a giant cloud of black, glittery dust.
And as the dust settles, the trees melt and warp around me, until I find myself standing waist deep in a vast pool of water.
Moonlight and stars reflect off the surface. The air is cool and silent, and a soft breeze tickles my burning skin.
I look down at my arms. They’re red and irritated. How long have I been standing in this water?
A soft ripple slides past me from behind. Then another one. Slowly, I twist around, and the lotus from the painting sits mere yards before me, the too-pink petals glowing, almost pulsating with energy.
“They can’t get out of the water,” I whisper. I wade towards it, pushing the burning in my body as far back in my mind as I can.
Under the water, the stem glows bright blue and reaches down deep. I stare at it for a moment, this painting come to life. It’s far more beautiful than its counterpart.
I reach halfway towards it and stop, my fingers inches from the petals. Are they…inside the lotus? What happens if I touch it?
An ear-splitting crash from the waiting room pulls my attention away. Behind me, the door stands on top of the surface of the water, still wide open.
Panic sizzles through me. I turn back to the lotus and grip the stem with both hands. It hums against my skin and is ice cold to the touch. I pull at it. It gives a little, feeling more like a shark on a hook than a flower. I grit my teeth and pull again.
My breath grows rapid and shallow. Come on. I brace feet along the pebble-strewn bottom of the pond and scream into the empty air. I pull back once more, as hard as I can.
The lotus pulls free, and I fall back into the cool, yet burning water. As I fight to get back on my feet, the water starts moving around me in a circular motion, as if the lotus was the plug and now all the water is going down a drain.
The flower grows dull in my hand and dissolves into the mini whirlpool around me. I fight my way through the current to the door. By the time I reach it, the water has lowered to around my knees. I drag myself over the threshold, rest heavily on the hallway floor, and try to catch my breath.
A dark mass builds up underneath the swirling surface of the water.
The part of the waiting room that I can see from the hallway is a mess. Furniture and lamps and pictures are overturned and scattered and broken on the floor. Gage yells in frustration as shadow Emmerick continues to narrowly miss the orb of light.
“Gretchen!”
“Tatum!”
The pond is nearly drained, and a massive cloud of shadows is stretching out over the sky, rippling and churning. They spray up from the drain like a geyser, never-ending.
Shadow Emmerick spots me and goes still. The violet light consumes him. Before the strangled cry can leave me, the cluster of shadows darts towards me at a dizzying speed.
Fear closes my throat. I turn my face away and shut my eyes, my whole body tensing, preparing for the worst.
But there is no ripping. No tearing. No scraping. There’s only a soft, glossy, feathery feeling against my skin as they blow past me in a nearly endless stream of cool darkness.
“No, no, no!”
At Gage’s panicked cries, I dare to open my eyes. He intensifies the light around him and makes a run for the shattered door.
“Nooo!” He trips over the broken glass on his way outside and tumbles face first to the cement. He maintains control of the strange, vibrant portal as he scrambles to his feet, blood trickling from his charred and busted nose, but it doesn’t matter.
The shadows descend on him, shatter through his protective circle of light, and rip him to shreds.
Chapter Thirty
There’s nothing left of Gage but a puddle of gray liquid on the sidewalk.
I pull my sore body off the soaked carpet, my muscles aching in protest, my skin still burning from being in that toxic pond.
Filthy water stands a few inches high throughout the room, and bits of broken glass and other broken things drift listlessly in the pool.
“Tatum?” Gretchen peeks around the back of the couch. Her hair is windblown and disheveled, and tears slide freely down her face. “Oh my god!” She shoots around the couch and pulls me into a tight hug. The contact feels abrasive against my irritated skin, but I hug her back, suppressing a wince the best I can.
“Where’s Renali?” My eyes dart around the wrecked room.
Gretchen stares at the spot by the door where Renali had died, and a shiver rolls over her shoulders. “Gage…” She shakes her head. “I didn’t see it. I just heard it. Her body just…” She shakes her head again.
I nod my understanding—I can just imagine—and change the subject. “How’s Tessandra?”
“Alive.”
I follow her across the room and help her carry Tessandra’s limp body to the cushions. Gretchen sits down beside her and cradles her mother’s head in her lap.
“Tatum?” Emmerick’s voice travels across the room, soft and a little forlorn.
The shadows are gathered outside behind him, covering the sky in quivering darkness.
Emmerick stands in front the broken doorway, twisting his hands together. He opens his mouth to speak but doesn’t say anything. Dropping his eyes, he clears his throat and tries again. “How are you?” He brings his eyes back to my face.
I want to ask him the same thing. He’s intact as far as I can tell, but exhaustion hangs heavy around his face.
“I’m fine,” I say. And for once I actually mean it.
“Thank you for risking your life for us,” he says. “You could have died in there.” He gestures to my irritated and inflamed skin.
“Really, I’m totally fine. Actually fine.” I’m in pain. But I’m here. With Gretchen and Tessandra. And Gage is not.
He smiles. “I have to go with them.”
My heart skips a beat. “Where are you going?”
He shrugs. “We’ll clear the general area first. Then…all over the world. Wherever the rest of them are.”
I nod and attempt to swallow past the lump forming in the back of my throat. “So, I’ll never see you again. Probably.”
He lowers his eyes for a moment. “I don’t know.”
A wave of sadness builds up in my chest. I try to push it away, but my eyes burn a little from the effort. “Um…thank you. For everything you and your brothers have done for me.” I squash the urge to add, I don’t deserve it. “Will you thank them for me?”
“We don’t deserve your thanks, but I’ll pass it along.”
I nod again, ignoring the wave of emotion tightening my gut as I search for something else to say. Anything else to say. Before he leaves.
“Emmerick,” Gretchen says. She absentmindedly combs her fingers through her mother’s hair and stares across the room, her tear-stained features a mixture of panic and relief. “Please come back some day. If you can.”
He bows his head towards her. “I absolutely will.”
Before I change my mind, I cross over to the door and wrap my arms around his waist. He immediately envelops me in a snug and warm embrace.
“I’ll miss you,” he whispers.
“I’ll miss you, too.” And I know I truly will. My heart contracts a little in pain. I didn’t know it was possible for me to feel like this, like I’m losing something that I didn’t even know I wanted. I blink the fresh surge of tears away from my eyes.
“Take care of yourself.” He pulls back with a sad smile, his fingers lingering for just a moment on my shoulders. Then he waves to Gretchen and steps away and out into the chilly night.
I let one tear fall to my cheek.
He stops in the middle of the street and gives me one last look before melting away into the cloud of shadows.
Gretchen carefully lays Tessandra’s head on the stiff cushion and joins me by the door. She takes my hand and squeezes it.
“It’s okay to cry.” She smiles. “It’s cathartic.”
I squeeze her hand back and let the tears fall. “Fine, but I’m never crying again.”
She laughs. “I’m sure you won’t.”
We watch the shadows storm off into the night, blowing loose leaves from every tree in their path.
Gretchen rests her head on top of mine. “Does Mom need a doctor?”
I check Tessandra’s brain for swelling and other ill signs. “It’s some kind of sleeping tonic. I’m afraid it might be something Renali got from me. But it’ll wear off in a few hours or so. She’s at peace. I can tell.”
“Good.” She sighs and rubs her hand across her belly. “This is probably a strange thing to say right now, but I’m starving.”
My own stomach rumbles in response. “Me, too.”
She raises her head, and a small grin lights up her face. “Fast food before Mom wakes up?”
I match her smile with one of my own. “It’s the only thing open.”
Bright headlights race down the street, and moments later, Kalin’s car screeches to a stop in front of the building. She stumbles out and surveys the state of Renali’s car and office with an open mouth and wide eyes. “What the hell happened here?”
“You don’t want to know,” Gretchen says.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“It’s middle of the night,” Kalin says. “And absolutely no one was home.” She peers into the waiting room and takes in the mess of dirty water, the cracked walls, the broken glass and other fractured bits of debris. “Oh my god…” She looks back and forth between me and Gretchen, taking in our expressions. “All right…something bad happened.” She spots Tessandra and grows visibly paler. “Is she okay?”
“She will be.” I step out of the water-logged room and give Kalin a hug.
She blows out a breath of surprise as she hugs me back. “What got into you? I like it!”
I laugh. “Don’t get used to it. I’m weak right now.”
She laughs with me. “I’m so glad everyone’s okay. You have no idea what was going through my head back home.” She looks into the room again, and I can see the dozens of questions in her eyes. She suppresses them for now and glances back at Renali’s car. “Where is she?”
A shudder rolls through Gretchen’s body. “She’s gone.”
Kalin looks at Renali’s car again. Then at me. “Why don’t you guys just tell me later?”
“Good idea.” I let a wave of relief wash over me.
Kalin steps over the broken glass and heads for Tessandra. “Let’s get her out of here, yes?”
Together, the three of us carry Tessandra out to Kalin’s car. Gretchen piles in the back next to her, and I sit up front.
“We want fast food,” Gretchen says.
Kalin drums her fingers against the wheel for a moment, her eyes fixated on something in the distance. “Someplace that sells ice cream?” she asks.
“Please,” Gretchen says. “And french fries. Lots of french fries.”
Kalin pulls away from the shop. “You know,” she says after a minute, “I saw the craziest clouds on the way here. I thought a bad storm was rolling in, but the sky’s all clear now. Isn’t that weird?”
I smile. “It’s totally weird. I think you had too much sugar today.”
“Yeah, you’re overworked,” Gretchen adds. “You need junk food, too.”
“Yeah, I do!” She blinks out the dashboard window. “You really didn’t see them?” She shakes her head. “It’s been a really long day.”
“Damn straight it has.” Something heavy and solid is pressed between my body and the door. I reach into my pocket and pull out a cold black stone. I must have just dropped it in there as we were running away from the warehouse.
For a moment, I think about tossing it out the window and forgetting about it. Yet…with my abilities, who’s to say I won’t need something like this one day? I hold it in my hand and stare down at it. Devourers aren’t the only nasty creatures in the world. The shadows are full of creeps.
“What’s that?” Kalin asks.
“Oh…just a rock someone gave me.”
“Pretty,” she says.
“Yeah. It is.” I slide it back into my pocket and turn my eyes to the empty, passing shadows.
Chapter Thirty-One
THREE YEARS LATER
A light breeze brushes against my face, cooling the humid, early-evening air. Gretchen and I travel down the hill, back to the shop from the cemetery. Kalin drags behind us, eyes glued to her phone, probably sending nauseating texts to the self-proclaimed love of her life.
“I wouldn’t mind selling a tiny curse,” Gretchen says. “Nothing as bad as anything that crazy lady wants though.”
“Mona,” I say.
“Whatever. I’ll call her Mona when she stops calling me ‘kid.’”
I can’t help but smile.
“I was thinking things like, someone sits on a chair or something and it pricks them.” Gretchen ticks her ideas off on her fingers. “And something that would give someone boils. The really disgusting kind that just pop pus on their own.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Fantastic.”
“That would be really embarrassing. Ooh! I love the thought of a nightmare blend. You get a lot of requests for that.” She bores her eyes into the side of my head. “I know you’ve been selling it under the table.”
My eyes widen in mock innocence. “Have I?”
She laughs. “Might as well make it legal.”
“Ha!” Kalin snorts. “Nothing we do down there is legal.”
Gretchen waves her comment away. “You know what I mean.”
The shadows stretch long around the building, and I search through them out of habit. They’re empty, of course. They’re always empty.
I shove aside the nagging flare of disappointment. It settles like a lump in my stomach.
The crystal shop is now twice the size it used to be. The three of us split our time between our booth in the underground, selling an assortment of handmade trinkets and mostly benign remedies and curses, and reading people’s futures in the loft above the renovated hypnotherapy office.
The old stone tents now serve as storage and Tessandra’s meditation room, respectively. And the yoga studio moved downtown.
“I know,” she continues. “What if we expanded our line of embedded cloths? Think of the possibilities. You can meld a simple sleeping tonic into a cloth, right? They can put it on their pillow. It would be perfect.”
“The fabrics are still unstable,” Kalin says, finally lifting her eyes from her phone.
“Yeah, but they work,” I say.
Kalin lifts her brows.
“They do work.”
“One set poor Dorothy’s yard on fire!”
“Yeah…but you saw how happy Old Francessa was.”
Kalin smiles at the memory despite herself. “Yes, but she asked for the flowers in the yard to wither. Not burn to ash.”
“This was better,” I say.
“Way better,” Gretchen adds.
We curve around the building to the parking lot and pile into Kalin’s gently used hatchback.
“Have I told you how much I love your new car,” Gretchen says from the back seat.
“You can’t drive it.” Kalin peels out of the lot and towards the row house.
“I could if you would teach me. Like you promised.”
“That’s your mom’s job.”
“I’m a grown woman!”
Kalin lets out of bark of laughter, and I join her, earning me a hard nail jab in the arm from Gretchen.
“Cow,” I say, rubbing at the sore spot.
“Cute,” Kalin says. “Call me when you’re twenty-one.”
“You started driving at sixteen.”
“And that was too early. Trust me.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“That’s still too early.” Kalin pulls her compact car along the curb in front of the house and cuts the quiet engine.
I thought about moving out once all the paperwork was signed. But I love this house, and Tessandra told me my freedom didn’t mean I had to move out. So I didn’t.
There’s a shiny black truck parked in the driveway behind Tessandra’s car.
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