“Hope. Open the door.” Chance was visible through the gap in the curtains.
Pressing my hands on the floor, I tried to stand but collapsed. My arms quivered like gelatin and were just as useless providing me with enough strength to push myself up. I crawled toward the door with agonizingly slow progress. My voice squeaked in a barely audible whisper when I tried to tell him to stop his incessant shouting and pounding. He mustn’t have noticed me inching across the floor, since I was well below his eye level, because he continued his assault on my door.
I arrived at the door and rested against it, gasping for breath. Reaching up behind me to fumble around for the lock. Once located, I unlatched it and tried to turn the knob without success.
Chance noticed me fiddling with the knob, and once the lock was undone, he pressed on the door, sending me scooting across the floor on my ass.
“What are you doing?” He pressed halfway in, trying to force me out of the way to open the door further.
“I don’t know. Trying to get out of the way, but I just can’t.”
He shimmied through the small opening, then reached under my armpits and pulled me across the floor like a rag doll, placing me back on the couch.
I slumped onto the cushions. Though physically depleted, my mind rapidly returned to the present. “What’s wrong?”
Chance’s reddened face had snail trails drying on his cheeks from recently shed tears. He ran his hands rapidly through his hair over and over and paced around the room. “She can’t be dead. She can’t. She wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t.” He repeated in a mantra.
“Chance, what are you talking about, who?” Strength had started to leak back into my limbs and return my ability to use them.
I propped up in a sitting position. “Who’s dead?” My breath caught, and I put my hand to my heart. As soon as I’d said it, I knew.
What I’d seen wasn’t a dream.
“Destiny?” I could barely get the word across my lips before pulling them tightly closed to stop their quivering, and to take the word back. “No.”
Once I’d said her name, Chance bent forward like I’d punched him in the gut, collapsing to his knees. His head fell forward onto my lap, and his body heaved in deep sobs. Placing my hand on his back, I bit my lower lip, trying to be strong as my brother dissolved.
Just as I started getting used to having a sister and now…now, she was gone? I shook my head, not wanting to believe it. I couldn’t. I’d just found her. She couldn’t be gone. What I saw in my mind? She wouldn’t do that.
“How?” I envisioned the scene of my dream that had sent me propelling to the floor.
Chance sprung up from his crouch, knocking me backwards with the unexpected force. His face contorted in rage. “It was him. I know it was.” His lips pulled back in a snarl.
“Who?” My thoughts went to Drake.
Chance leaned over me. “That half-breed bastard you care so much about.”
He motored back and forth across the floor, each foot falling harshly with the force of his anger. Tercet shot out of the room seeking refuge in my bedroom down the hall. “He’ll pay. Mark my words. He will pay.” His voice was low and ominous. It terrified me.
Chance stopped abruptly and stared at me with a furrowed brow, as if considering something.
Rushing forward he grabbed me by my arms. “Call her.” He yelled into my face, shaking me.
“What? What are you talking about? Call who?” I struggled to release my arms but his superior strength prevented me. “Let go of me.”
Chance yanked me from the couch by my arm, dragging me across the floor to the kitchen table then pointed at the mirror. “Call Destiny in the mirror. She’ll tell us who it was.”
His gaze was far away, his eyes empty of emotion. “I will make him die the slowest most painful death imaginable.”
“Chance.”
He leaned toward the mirror, thinking the voice had come from there, but I turned to the door where Ruthie stood, holding a glass. I’d never been so grateful to see her. I didn’t know what to do with Chance or how to help him. Once again, my gift of providing hope proved useless here. Although, I understood how he felt. That pain when I lost Tessa and the desire for vengeance—I don’t think anything could help him right now. Unfortunately, he had to work his way through his grief on his own.
Ruthie placed her hand over his where he clutched my arm so tightly the skin grew red and puckered beneath his grip, certain to leave a bruise. “Chance, please drink this.”
He turned. His eyes were vacant, unseeing as the pain poured out of him. Ruthie pressed the glass against him, nudging him gently.
“It will help, for now.” Ruthie struggled to hold in her own grief as she looked at Chance with compassion. “I know you need this.”
His grip loosened on my arm, and his shoulders slumped. He deflated like a balloon into the chair, putting his head in his hands. “They left her there like trash along the side of the road. It took me an hour to get the animals away.”
He looked up. “The animals were guarding her body. I wanted to see if I could help.” His voice mumbled and slurred as he spoke into his hands. “It was too late. Her wrists were cut, and she’d lost too much blood…she was…she…”
Ruthie patted him. “Shhh…don’t talk now, just drink.”
He reached for the glass Ruthie offered and took a sip, then started to cough and gag. “This tastes terrible. What the hell is it?”
“I know the drink tastes bad, but it will help. You need to rest now.” Ruthie stroked his hair and down his back.
I met Ruthie’s eyes. “I saw her,” I said.
Chance grabbed my shoulder. “What do you mean you saw her, when? Who was there? Who did this? Tell me.” He demanded with a little less force than before as his eyes began to droop. He released me as his hand fell to the table when the potion took effect.
I struggled to find the words to explain. “I mean, well, I saw her in my head, but it was her I saw, no one else. It was like a dream, but so real. It happened right before you got here.”
“How can that be?” Chance asked Ruthie but she shook her head.
“I’m not sure, but what it looks like is…” Ruthie paused then continued with certainty. “What I know is, Hope received Destiny’s gift when she...” Her voice trailed off as her face contorted with pain.
“What? Her gift?” I stood and held my hands in front of me. “I don’t want it.”
“I don’t think you have a choice, my child.” Ruthie looked sympathetically at me.
Chance’s anger had returned, and he turned to scowl at the mirror. “Destiny. Come out here.”
Tessa’s image appeared. “She can’t, honey, she’s gone. She’s moved on.”
“She can’t move on. How could she leave me like this?”
“It wasn’t her choice to go, but she was ready to move on. She’s with your parents now, at peace.”
All emotion drained from Chance’s face when Tessa confirmed what we already knew.
Destiny was dead.
He lowered his face onto his arm, outstretched across the table, and stared blankly forward. I put my hand on his back to comfort him and looked to Ruthie for help, but she was struggling herself. Her lower lip quivered, and her eyes were even wider than usual as she tried to hold in her pain.
I held my other hand out. A tear spilled over and raced down Ruthie’s cheek. She took my hand in hers.
Though the ache built in my chest until the pain was suffocating, I ignored it. Today I needed to be the strong one. I didn’t have a choice. My family needed me.
****
I rocked back and forth on the chair, keeping a wary eye on Stinker as she strutted in front of Ruthie’s yard. “How long will Chance sleep?” We’d left him at my apartment on the couch.
“I reckon not too long. He needed something to give him time to gather his wits so he didn’t go and do something rash.” Ruthie’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“When Tessa
said it wasn’t her choice to go, do you think she meant someone killed Destiny?” I kept my face as neutral as I could, tempering down the tears for later when I could be alone. Taking a long gulp of tea, I opened my eyes wide to try to maintain control of my emotions. I had to be strong for Chance, and besides, that’s how I handled all the stressors in my life, later. It’s the only way I knew how.
“What do you think?” Ruthie hands worked nonstop, and pieces of thread and needles clacked together.
As a person who never did any type of craft, I had no idea if she was knitting or crocheting. But it seemed to calm her and enabled her to sit, though her foot was tapping restlessly as if ready to sprint from the chair.
“It had to be an Oppressor.” I shook my head. “But I don’t think it was Griffith.” I remained unwilling to believe he had anything to do with Destiny’s death.
Ruthie didn’t answer. Either her knowing wasn’t working now, or she wasn’t sharing her thoughts. That alone confirmed how depressed she was.
“But why? What was she doing out? I didn’t think she ever left the house.”
“She hadn’t, until now.” Ruthie clutched the needles as she moved them rapidly back and forth. A few tears slipped out and were quickly absorbed into the yarn. “It’s my fault because I gave her the same hairstyle as you. She felt confident, unafraid.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she spoke in short bursts. “She’s been safe all these years. Why did I have to go and meddle? Try to force her out into the world? She was innocent. I should’ve known she couldn’t handle it.”
She looked up to meet my eyes and lowered her voice to a strained whisper. “Why didn’t I know that?”
I went to Ruthie and put my arms around her. Hugging her didn’t feel awkward. I was getting used to touching people. Ruthie’s hands stilled. She dropped the yarn into her lap and rested her head against my shoulder. She was uncharacteristically silent, and her shoulders shook.
“It’s not your fault.” Seeing Ruthie, always strong, and full of life, crumble like this, was painful. “You gave her a good thing. The confidence to leave her house and go out into the world. No one should spend their life essentially in a cage that way. You gave her freedom.”
Ruthie being at a loss for words felt wrong. Unnatural. I squeezed her tighter against me, hoping to instill something into her to assure her this wasn’t her fault. I knew it wasn’t, because the killer must’ve thought Destiny was me.
If Destiny’s death was anyone’s fault...it was mine.
****
I’d never been to a funeral before and hadn’t known what to expect, although Destiny’s service wasn’t a normal one, either. Not when the majority of the attendees were of the four-legged variety.
We’d buried Destiny in the woods she loved so much with all of her animal friends. Ruthie knew she would want to be buried at her home.
When Tessa died, she was cremated. I spread her ashes in the flower garden in a park nearby. I didn’t think that would be permitted, since it was a public place. So I didn’t ask. I just did it. It was the least I could do.
One night when the moon was full, I took her urn to the park and had my own private ceremony. If I’d known about her family here, I would’ve brought her ashes for Ruthie.
Ruthie’s yard had flowers pushing through the thawing ground, fighting impossible odds to get to the sun. Tessa loved flowers, but we never had a home long enough for her to grow her own. Tessa would’ve loved to have a garden like this.
Maybe she would have, if she hadn’t had to worry about me.
I looked up at the closed curtains where Chance slept. He wasn’t much help. Ruthie had kept him sedated in order to deal with the pain I couldn’t heal no matter how hard I tried.
Also, since he kept ranting about revenge anytime he was partially coherent, it kept him from doing something foolish.
Maybe they were right and I was the strongest of us all. But I wondered if it only meant I was the most heartless.
I sat on the large moss-covered stone overlooking the fresh mound of dirt where my sister lay buried and found revenge foremost on my mind as well. But despite Chance’s certainty, I couldn’t believe Griffith killed Destiny. What did that say about my so-called abilities if I wasn’t able to differentiate between an innocent and a murderer?
Ruthie rocked as she kept a watchful eye on me. I don’t know what she thought I planned to do. Perhaps I should ask her, since I didn’t know either.
I plucked at a piece of grass trying to ignore the squirrel and chipmunk that crept onto the rock beside me. They shrank back at any move I made. They seemed confused that their mistress was gone and probably wondered how I resembled her so much.
Perhaps they mistook me for her, as the Oppressor who killed my sister probably had, or else this was something else I had unwillingly inherited from Destiny.
I hadn’t had any more visions. That might be because I’d been staying with Chance to keep an eye on him, but also because I was a little afraid of this new ability. The visions had caused Destiny to isolate herself most of her life, and I wasn’t even able to harness my own abilities yet.
“You’re strong enough.” A branch snapping at her arrival indicated it was Ruthie who spoke and not Tessa or Aunt Essie invading my head again. It disturbed me how I’d come to accept their invasion as the norm since they’d refused to leave me alone in the past few days since Destiny’s death.
I sighed. “You can’t know that.”
“I know—”
I jumped up from the rock, causing a multitude of animals, stealthily surrounding me while I was musing, to scatter. “I don’t want to hear how you know. What good does it do me? What good does it do any of us? How can we be so powerful if people were too afraid to reveal what they are to pay their respects to Destiny?”
Although Ruthie assured me other witches would’ve liked to be at Destiny’s funeral, they were afraid to reveal their true nature when Oppressors could be observing to see who attended. “What good does knowing do?”
Ruthie pulled back as if I’d slapped her. I immediately felt guilty for attacking her. She looked like she’d aged years in the past week.
“I’m sorry, Ruthie.” I tucked my hands behind me as the fog seeped from them. That happened all the time now.
“I kn—” Ruthie stopped, realizing what she was about to say, instead she patted my arm. “It’s okay, sweetie. I…” Her eyes brightened behind her lenses. “I understand.”
I hung my head. The first of the tears I’d been holding back trickled from the corner of my eye. “I miss her.”
Ruthie lowered herself onto the rock, which I could tell was an effort for her. “We all do.”
This week made me acutely aware of how old Ruthie must be. She pulled me down to sit beside her and slung her arm around me. Ignoring the fog that seeped from them, I rubbed both my hands over my face in a fruitless effort to stem the flow of tears.
“But how can I? I didn’t even get to know her. I just found out I had a sister, and then she’s taken away. I wanted…”
I studied the tiny flowers decorating Ruthie’s skirt. The skirt looked like something Destiny would wear. I’d never gotten to see if she ever wore jeans or was set on wearing dresses all the time or to ask her why that was.
“I wanted to have a sister like you had Tessa. All I wanted was a family.” I sounded whiny and childish, but I didn’t care.
“Now, child, you do have a family. It may not be what you envisioned, and we may be more unusual than most families, but that’s what we are.
“I couldn’t save her, either.” Wasn’t that supposed to be my purpose?
Ruthie studied me behind her glasses that were fogged from the moisture. “No. That’s not your job. Your only job is to save yourself. You can’t have the responsibility of the world on your shoulders, even if it feels like it is. You know how they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first so you can help others? Breathe, Hope. That’s all I’m as
king.”
I looked away. “It should’ve been me who died. Destiny was good. I’m…not.”
“Ain’t nobody one hundred percent good all the time. Just the other day, George asked me if the bread was homemade, and I said yes, yes it was.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t. I didn’t have the energy to make bread, but I couldn’t admit that to him.”
“It’s not the same,” I said.
“Isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid what they say about me is true.”
I held up my hands in front of her. Tiny black tendrils seeped from them to dissipate before they could fully form. “I’m not what you think I am.”
“It’s not what’s in you, it’s what you do with it.” Ruthie pulled me into another hug, and I let her, closing the world out for a moment.
She nodded against me. “Evil wins every time. This is our chance to balance it all. We were close once. All those witch trials years ago? If you push enough fear into people, they’ll do whatever you want them to do. There may not be many of us left, but they’re the people who understand you. The ones who have your back, that’s family. Blood or not.”
But, I thought, I don’t want balance. I want it all.
I sniffed and opened my eyes to find a multitude of beady eyes peering at me with what appeared to be concern beneath their furry brows. This furry adoration might take some getting used to.
A sandpapery tongue licked my leg, and I reached down to pet Tercet. One nice thing had came out of this. Tercet had finally started to show me some affection. She’d also quickly warmed up to Troi and Tuplet, accepting them as siblings much quicker than I had my own.
“Plus, you get something none of us ever got to have, a brother. Now that’s something special.” Ruthie pulled me closer in a little squeeze.
“You’re right, I do have a brother.” A younger brother, if you counted the six minutes. It’s about time I started looking out for him. He’d been doing it for me much longer than I ever realized. Because…that’s what families do.
Plus, I had a sister to avenge.
Chapter Nineteen
“This was a stupid thing for you to do,” Griffith said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Destiny Calling Page 22