by Alicia Rades
Chloe clawed at the rope around her neck. “Help!” she gasped, though I could barely understand the word.
Screw the dark side of me that enjoyed watching her hang. The real Nadine found it sickening.
I raced over to her and got beneath her, my heart racing in panic. I lifted her onto my shoulders, though it took every ounce of my strength to keep my aching knees from collapsing beneath me.
“I’ve got you, Chloe!” I called up to her.
Her center of gravity shifted from side to side. I assumed it was because she was struggling to get the noose off her neck.
“Are you okay?” I asked, since I couldn’t see anything. “Can you—?”
Chloe’s weight gave way, and we both went tumbling to the ground, screaming. She pressed her hand to her bruised neck and gasped for breath.
“W-why did you save me, Nadine?” she managed to choke out.
Our eyes connected, and for the first time since I met her, I saw a look of pure gratitude in her eyes.
“I had to,” I told her.
“No, you didn’t,” she argued, like she couldn’t understand me at all. “I’ve been awful to you. You should’ve enjoyed watching me hang.”
I shook my head. “Not like that. We’re part of the same coven. We help each other, even if you’re my enemy.”
Chloe opened her mouth to say something, but she never got the chance. The sound of a woman’s maniacal laughter reached us. I gave a start, and both of us looked in the direction of the voice. It was coming from somewhere inside the school.
“What’s going—?” I started to ask, but I cut off when I looked back to Chloe.
Except she wasn’t there. I glanced around frantically, wondering where she’d disappeared to. She couldn’t have run off that fast.
My heart started pounding fiercely as the laughter continued. Something about it sounded chillingly familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. Curiously, I rose to my feet and stepped toward the school. I followed the sound of laughter through the dark hallways of Miriam Mansion. Light flickered from the sconces on the wall, and the hair on the back of my neck stood.
“Hello?” I called down the hall.
No answer came.
Cautiously, I stepped forward until I came to the double door entrance to the school’s ballroom. I peeked inside to see a woman sitting cross-legged on the ground, her back to me. She wore all leather and had long brown hair flowing down her back. The room was almost entirely black, except for the light coming from five candles set around the girl. Each candle was connected by a line of salt that created a pentagram. Another salt line surrounded that, enclosing everything into a circle. The woman looked like she was doing something with her hands, but I couldn’t see what it was.
“Are you going to stand there all day, Nadine?” she asked bluntly.
I hesitated. How’d she know I was here?
“I know you’re out there,” she called without turning her head. “Come see what I’ve made for you… for us.”
Her voice sounded so familiar. Something told me I knew this woman, but I couldn’t place her.
Carefully, I took a step forward. “Do I know you?”
She chuckled, like the question amused her. “Oh, Nadine. Don’t you recognize yourself?”
Finally, she turned toward me, and my heart lurched into my throat. My own face stared back at me.
But at the same time, it wasn’t me. She was more like my evil twin—with dark makeup around the eyes and a smirk of unadulterated pride I’d never be caught dead wearing. I had more self-respect and humility than that.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. This had to be another one of Chloe’s illusions.
She gave me a sinister smile. “Come look.”
I hesitated, but I was too curious to see what she was holding. I stepped around her and saw that she had a small stuffed doll in her hand.
A voodoo doll.
My knees shook as I stared down at the doll. The coven didn’t practice voodoo. Hell, I didn’t even know if voodoo was real.
Two other dolls lay on the ground in front of my doppelganger. Each was faceless and dressed only in black fabric, except they each had a different color of yarn sewn onto their heads. The one on the left depicted a girl with short brown hair. The one on the right had long white-blonde hair. And the one she held had black hair.
“Are those the Lucky Three?” I asked, but my voice came out scratchy and dry.
She smirked proudly. “What do you think of them? I made them for you.”
“Well, I don’t want them,” I snapped. No good could come of this.
She tilted her head. “I thought this was what we both wanted, Nadine. Revenge.”
“I just want them to stop tormenting me,” I stated. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
She smirked. “But it’d be so fun.”
She set the Chloe doll between the other two and picked up a dagger that lay at her side. I hadn’t seen it before. She brought the blade to the pad of her thumb and pressed until thick red liquid began to drip down the blade.
“For Gwen, I was thinking poison.” She pressed her bloody finger to the Gwen doll’s mouth and wiped the blood across it. “Killed by her own Cast.”
She set the blade aside and picked up a pin. “For Camille, a heart attack.”
She stabbed the pin into the brunette doll’s heart. Her eyes widened in pleasure. “It should go undetected. Finally, for Chloe, I’ve saved something special.”
An evil smile spread across her face as she picked up a red string of yarn and began to tie it around the Chloe doll’s neck. She held the doll up by the string and smiled down at it with crazy eyes.
“Hanging,” she chuckled.
My guts twisted, and I took a step back. “This isn’t what I want.”
“No?” My doppelganger tilted her head. “But it’s the only way to save ourselves, Nadine.”
“I’m no killer,” I spat.
“But you are,” she reminded me. “You let Rocky outside without his leash.”
Rocky had been our neighbor’s dog. They’d hired me as a kid to dog sit when they went on vacation. One day, I accidentally left the door open, and he slipped outside and was hit by a car. It’d been so long ago that I barely remembered Rocky.
“How do you know about that?” I demanded.
Her lips curled into a sneer. “Because I’m the one who left the door open! That dog was a fucking nightmare! We did it on purpose.”
“No!” I cried. “It was an accident.”
She got to her feet, and I backed up another step. She stared at me under dark lashes as she stepped out of the pentagram. “Tell yourself that all you want, Nadine. It doesn’t change what you did.”
“I’m not like you!” I cried. “Killing people isn’t how I handle things. It’ll only get me banished from the coven.”
“But you want to,” she accused, taking another step toward me. “You want to get rid of Chloe. We both do.”
“Not like this,” I insisted. “There has to be another way.”
“There is no other way!” she exploded. “Let me out to play, and I’ll do my worst.”
I took another step back. “No.”
I hadn’t realized how far we’d moved across the ballroom until my heel touched the wall. I ended up pressed flat against it.
Dark Nadine got so close to me that I could feel her breath on my face. “Admit it, Nadine. You’re weak.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“It is,” she growled. “You’re so weak even your body’s rejected you. It hates you so much it’s trying to kill itself just to get rid of you.”
“You’re wrong,” I stated. My hands shook and curled into fists. Who the hell did this bitch think she was?
She narrowed her eyes. “How do you expect Lucas to love you if he has to take care of you all the time? You’re weak, Nadine. Let me take over, and I’ll make you strong.”
Strong.
I’d do anything to be strong again—to live a life where the constant joint pain and debilitating fatigue didn’t drag me down.
She reached out and lifted a strand of my hair. She spoke in a smooth, alluring voice. “You’re a burden, Nadine. I can change that.”
The more she spoke, the more I became entranced by her.
“And our parents?” she continued. “I can make you forget all about them.”
I swallowed. “I don’t want to forget about them.”
“Yes, you do,” she snapped, her eyes suddenly darkening again. “You want to forget the pain! You want to get rid of the memories and forget they ever existed! You don’t want them anymore! Why do you think they died? They couldn’t stand being your parents. They left because of you, and you want to leave, too. Don’t you, Nadine!?”
“No!” I screamed. “I want them back! But I can’t! So I’ll live with the pain, because it reminds me that they were there to begin with. I loved my parents, and they loved me. I. Am. Not. Their. Burden!”
I shoved Dark Nadine as hard as I could, and she went stumbling backward. I made a run for it, but I barely made it a few steps before something hard slammed into my back.
The air left my lungs, and I went tumbling down. I threw my hands outward to catch myself, but I saw stars. I quickly rolled over to see her coming at me. Dark black magic crackled in her hands.
She threw her head back and laughed as she approached. “Try to run, Nadine. I will always be with you. You and I are one in the same.”
“We’re not!” I screamed.
She came close enough to touch. I kicked my heel into her gut. She stumbled back, and the magic in her hand fizzled out. She gasped for breath as I scrambled to my feet and ran across the ballroom.
But Dark Nadine moved faster than me. She sprinted in front of me and cut me off on my way to the door. With a single wave of her hand, the doors swung shut, slamming so hard against the frame it shook the room.
“There’s nowhere to go,” she mocked. “You can’t outrun me.”
My gaze darted to my left, toward the pentagram circle. The dagger still lay in the middle of it next to the dolls.
“I can try,” I spat.
I jumped away from her and sprinted toward the dagger. I heard her footsteps behind me and dove for the knife. She caught me by the legs and landed on top of me. I was barely six inches from the dagger and couldn’t reach it.
“Get off me!” I cried, struggling out of her hold.
I managed to yank one of my feet away, then slammed it into her face. Her head snapped backward, but she grabbed tighter to my leg, until I thought it was going to bruise. Her eyebrows slammed together, and her nostrils flared.
“Bitch!” she snarled.
She pulled me backward with all her strength, dragging me through the salt circle and away from the dagger. I clawed at the carpet, but it was no use. There was nothing to hang on to.
Then my hands found something—one of the candles. I curled my fingers around it and swung my arm toward her. I shoved the flame up into her face. Her shrill cry echoed off the walls of the empty ballroom.
As her hands came up to cradle her burnt skin, I took my chance and dove for the dagger again. My fingers touched the cool handle. I was just about to use it against her when a black heel stomped on my wrist.
“Gah!” I screamed as my bones crushed into the ground. I heard a horrifying snap, and pain shot up through my arm and down to my fingertips. And still, she didn’t let up.
Dark Nadine bent down, her chest heaving with shallow breaths. A burn red with blisters marred the side of her face. “I told you that you can’t outrun me.”
She reached over and picked up the Chloe doll, then ripped the hair from its head. I tried to struggle away from her, but each time I moved, an ungodly pain rippled up and down my arm. She placed all her weight on my wrist and laughed maniacally.
“See this doll, Nadine?” She held it in front of my face and smiled proudly. “That’s you.”
She held the doll over one of the candle flames.
“No!” I cried, horror twisting deep within my gut. My toes started to heat, like there was a fire burning beneath me. “Don’t!”
She chuckled, as if she enjoyed the sound of me begging. “Too late.”
She lowered the doll, and the fabric caught fire. A shriek so loud it could wake the dead erupted out of my lungs. Though there was no fire at my feet, I felt the flames licking up my legs. It was like my skin was searing straight off my bones.
Dark Nadine rose to her feet and took a step back. I wished I could say it was a relief when she released my wrist, but I barely felt the pain of broken bones anymore. All I could feel was the fire consuming my body. I writhed on the ground, as if I could outrun the red-hot pain consuming me. It was as if a million heated pins had pricked my body all at once. My vision started to blur as the invisible flames licked up my body and began to sear the skin from my face.
“I was right about you, Nadine!” Dark Nadine mocked. “You’re weak! Always have been. You can push me down. You can try to control me. But I will always win.”
I gritted my teeth. Pushing past the fiery inferno, I lifted my arm. “Not this time.”
I took the dagger in my good hand and forced all of the strength I had through my arm. I lifted the dagger and plunged it downward… straight into Dark Nadine’s foot. It sliced through her boot, into her skin, and out the bottom of her sole. It embedded so far that the blade didn’t even show—it had stuck straight into the floor and rooted her in place.
She screamed a chilling cry and dropped the doll. It fell within my reach, and I grabbed it, stomping out the fire with my hand. Relief washed over me as the pain stopped spreading. I could’ve sworn if I looked at myself, skin would be hanging off my bones, but I pushed past it and scrambled to my feet. I backed up several paces.
Dark Nadine tried to come for me, but the dagger kept her in place. She screamed in frustration and pain as her foot tugged on the dagger, ripping into more flesh as she tried to come after me.
“I’m not weak!” I yelled at her.
I whirled around and ran for the doors.
“You’re nothing without me!” she shouted from behind me.
I flung the doors open and stumbled out into the hall. As quickly as I could, I closed them again. My heart slammed against my rib cage as I glanced around. My eyes landed on a branched candlestick sitting on a table in a nearby alcove. I ran for it and snatched it up, then returned to the doors, where I shoved the candlestick through the handles to trap my darkness inside.
She screamed again, louder this time. Her shriek echoed down the hall, and I guessed she must’ve ripped the dagger from her foot.
“I’ll come for you, Nadine!” she raged through the closed doors. “I’ll come for you!”
My heart raced as I whirled around and sprinted away from the ballroom and the evil woman locked inside. I glanced back to make sure she wasn’t coming for me, but the hall was empty. As I turned forward again, my toes caught on the hallway rug, and I stumbled forward. I threw my hands out to catch myself…
But instead of landing on carpet, my hands sank into the earth. One second I was running away from my darkness in the halls of Miriam Mansion, and the next, I was lying in the grass, the daylit sky overcast above me.
Dark Nadine completely fell from my mind, as if the moment with her had never happened. The pain of a broken wrist vanished. My attention became completely wrapped in the scene before me.
The first thing I saw was a stone—a smooth, polished stone. I lifted my head to see that it was a gravestone, one of many throughout the graveyard. My eyes drifted over the two names etched into the grave marker.
Nathan Evers. Faith Evers. Loving father and mother.
Somehow, I’d ended up at my parents’ graves.
Chapter 21
Lucas
The setting sun lit the sky in a bright orange hue as I approached the gates to the cemetery. The Re
aper Moon would rise soon, and then I could begin the ritual. I was excited by the idea—to get rid of the voices, to ditch the curse. It would be a dream come true.
And yet another part of me feared I might not have what it takes. This was my one and only shot, and if I couldn’t summon the reapers by night’s end, Nadine and I would always be kept at arm’s length.
I steeled my shaking nerves and stepped into the cemetery. I trudged through the snow until I came upon a tall statue at the center of the cemetery. It depicted a reaper at least ten feet tall, clothed in a dark, flowing robe. Where his face should be was nothing but a dark hole. His fingers were only bone. One of his hands reached outward, as if inviting me closer. The other held on to a tall scythe.
At the base of the statue was a name carved into the stone. Edgar Nowak. Reaper’s Apprentice.
He’d been the one before me.
Beneath his name were his birth and death dates. The rumors were true. The poor bastard had lived to be over a hundred. I didn’t want to do the math to figure out how many thoughts he’d carried with him to the afterlife.
I took a deep breath as the sun dipped below the horizon. “Almost time…”
I knelt at the head of Edgar’s grave and waited. As I waited, I tried to calm myself, to push all doubt out of my mind.
I can do this, I told myself. I will summon a reaper.
I didn’t know if I meant it, or if it was just wishful thinking.
Darkness continued to fall over the night, until finally the last few rays of sunshine disappeared. Above me, the full moon shone. I liked to think the clear skies were a beacon of hope, as if opening me to Alora above. But somehow, the stars seemed dimmer than they should, like there was a darkness cutting me off.
My gaze darted around the cemetery. The shadows of the gravestones were ominous. A shiver ran down my spine, but I knew my unease was all in my head. Tonight, there were no zombies that were going to jump out of the bushes. Tonight, the only enemy was myself. Though I was on my knees, my legs shook beneath me.
I summoned the scroll I’d stolen from the mausoleum and read over it again for the hundredth time. It shook in my hands. I had to get this right. It had to be perfect.