“What are you doing?” I yell. “I saw what was happening in the basement. I know this place is a black vortex. That you… are some kind of… spirit demon… that… that you people are trying to take over the world…” I sound crazy, sputtering and yelling and stammering.
For a moment, the world falls away and it’s Zoe and me in the ring. In my mind, I’m bouncing around with my gloves on, ready to fight this beautiful toxic being. But she doesn’t fight back. She just tilts her head up to look down at me with curiosity. My frenzy doesn’t let up.
“Zoe!” I run at her, pushing her shoulders with both hands. My voice stays on its frantic high speed, a blender of emotion bubbling and spinning. “You can’t keep us here! You can’t do this!” All the blood within every inch of my body flows to my head and face, but Zoe remains a statue. I want to set her hair on fire, just to see a reaction, just to get her to feel. “Don’t you have a soul? A memory?” I whimper. “You were like us, I know it. Before.”
Zoe blinks, her expression detached and unwavering.
Her Chicago self is gone, forgotten, replaced. I can say all the things I want. But it won’t change anything. She is a giant. I am a mouse. Maybe there is nothing I can do to change my fate. I pant, my chest rising and falling. Fear climbs up my spine.
“I’m gonna go to the sofa,” Lilly mumbles. She staggers out of the kitchen and sways as she moves down the hall. With her back to us, she waves her hand floppily in the air over her head.
Tre glances at me, frowning, bites his lip, and then follows her.
I stay, glaring at Zoe, who sits unmoving. It takes a moment before I notice Lilly’s plate on the counter, where the burnt toast had rested earlier.
Now, on that same plate is a dead rat with a chunk—or a bite—missing.
I gasp in revulsion. I look up at Zoe and watch a microscopic smile appear on her lips. I shake my head. I must be imagining this. She must have done some weird, twisted sleight of hand.
I lift the lid to the donut box and gaze inside. Instead of chocolate donuts, the box contains four dead frogs, their eyes bulging, their bodies encrusted with blood and mud and swathed in wiggling maggots. I screech and jump back in shock.
Perhaps I’m hallucinating, or perhaps this is how she makes gourmet food: using illusion, witchcraft, sorcery. She either transforms disgusting things into food or simply makes us believe we’re eating delectable cuisine.
In horror, I gaze at Zoe, whose expression hasn’t changed, and then I turn away and race after Tre down the hall.
In the living room, Lilly lies splayed on the sofa. Her face droops like she’s made of melted wax, her eyes dull and lifeless. My heart pounds in my chest.
Tre squats down in front of her, taking her two small porcelain hands in his. His voice grows quiet, gentle, like he’s speaking to a child. “You can’t give up. That’s what they want. We finally might know a way out.”
“No, Tre,” she mumbles, placing two tiny hands on his cheeks. The intimacy between them shrinks that life-size rainbow of elation I felt not long ago about us. What I thought we were.
“I need this,” she whispers. “We’re never getting out.”
“We deserve a chance to live. You deserve it. You can’t give up, Lil.”
“I don’t care what happens to me anymore.”
Perhaps she’s too far into the power of Trinity to fight, or maybe she gave up a long time ago. Their voices grow quieter, and I can no longer hear what they’re saying. Tre’s hair has fallen over his eyes, and I can only see the black of Lilly’s head shaking back and forth.
I take a deep breath and step into the room. “You okay?”
Exasperated, Tre shakes his head and sighs deeply. “She wants to go through with this rebirthing crap.” His voice catches in his throat. “I told her about the crystals and the symbols we found on the cliff wall and how we might be able to get out.”
“The crystals are gone, Tre,” I blurt. “They’re gone. Missing. I looked everywhere. And the food. Zoe is feeding us maggot-filled frogs.” My emotions are still on high speed. I’m not sure what’s real anymore.
“What?” Tre asks, shaking his head.
I explain what I saw, the words spilling out of me. Then I return to the fact that the tin of rocks—and our hope—has vanished. “We’re stuck,” I say, my eyes filling with tears.
Tre looks nauseous. He bites the corner of his lip. It’s as if I can actually see hope draining from him, too, leaking onto the floor. I want to plug that hole, keep optimism alive.
I turn to Lilly. “I’m sorry I tried to rub off that mark on your head. It’s just that—” I don’t know how to explain what I saw earlier in the séance room. “Well, you shouldn’t give up. You got screwed the first time out there in the real world. But it can get better because, well, you’re you.” Even I don’t have the hope I did a half hour ago. But what I’m saying about Lilly is still true. There’s something about her I know I liked, even if she did trick us, even if she did decide to give in, even if she does have a connection with Tre. She is a victim, smothered by her past. “You’ve got to fight this.”
She shakes her head and mumbles. “No, Ember.” The sound of her voice gives rise to the vision of gray raindrops and heavy sadness.
I move to the couch and kneel next to her. “I know how you feel.” My voice tries to hug her. “I mean, about the abuse. I had my own, um, bad things happen from a guy who took, you know, advantage. I felt… humiliated, ashamed, worthless.” Emotion curls up my throat.
Until I say it, I hadn’t realized how deeply Zach hurt me. He knew I was weak and broken and instead of helping, he took one more thing from me—my body. He knew I was out of it. A corpse, practically. I simmer with a belated anger. I’m surprised at how outraged I am. My face heats up.
I suddenly realize I hadn’t shared any of this with Tre and he’s standing there, listening to me. I glance up at him and his brow furrows. I return my attention to Lilly. “But it wasn’t your fault, Lil.”
Her eyes gaze into mine, sleepy but soft. I feel a connection there, a shared loss. I want to wipe away all those memories haunting her and make her whole. I want her to know she’s not alone. “You can fight it. You have to.”
Her small smile reveals the real Lilly, one made of sweet innocence. After a moment, her eyelids flutter and her expression begins to fade, and slowly, her eyes close. A throaty roar makes its way out of my mouth. “Lilly! Lilly!”
“I’m sure she just fell asleep,” Tre says.
“You sure?” Taking her hand in mine, I search for a pulse, some sign that she isn’t gone. Blood thumps slowly but steadily in her delicate wrist. My shoulders relax. She’s alive.
Tre sinks into a chair, and immediately, an invisible wall goes up around him.
“So what was that all about, anyway?” he says finally. “That thing with Zoe?”
“What thing?”
“You completely ripped into her. I mean, did you really think that was smart? You know what she’s capable of. Sorcery. Spirits. Energy vortexes. Whatever the fuck this is. We’ve done things here before that Trinity doesn’t like and you saw, Ember, you saw. The virus that wracked Leadville? Your brother’s restaurant? The power of this place is huge. And you go off on her?”
His attack hits a nerve in me. He turned a crank, triggering Nasty Ember to pop up like a jack-in-the-box.
“What the hell do we have to lose?” I seethe. “You sit here and tell me how you want out of here. You talk like you’re this punk rocker renegade in Germany. Tearing down the goddamn Berlin Wall. But you never rise up and fight. Why is that? Why are you afraid to fight?”
Fight for us. That’s what I think. Fight for me.
“Because yelling at Zoe is really going to help our cause. You can’t get so ruled by emotion that you do something you regret. I just don’t get that. People who just don’t freaking think.” He storms out of the room, and his footsteps fall heavy on the stairs.
His absence leaves
a big gaping hole inside of me. The crystals are gone. Lilly is disappearing. Tre is mad. What’s even worse: what he said is true. I hurt people when I let emotion take control. Tre seemed to adore me before, but he doesn’t really know all of me.
Everything we’ve felt together, every connection we had, was real. I know it was. But Lilly. He felt that way for Lilly, and he might still feel that way. I want us. Does he?
I let out a frustrated grunt, digging my nails into the palms of my hands. Why did I even come here?
I look at Lilly sleeping on the sofa and tiptoe over to her. With the ease of a burglar, I wipe off the mark on her temple. She barely stirs, only licking her lips. A smile spreads across my face, as if I’ve given her more time to be Lilly in some way. But the feeling wears off almost immediately, transforming back into that very real despair about our situation. The crystals are gone. The blackbird is dead, just like Mom. Tre sees the real me. And Zoe is controlling everything, feeding us maggots.
The thunder growls outside, and rain angrily beats its fists on the roof, a sound that emerges in my mind as faint forest-green starbursts surrounded by what looks like a swirling black hole.
Slowly, as if in a daze, I sit down on a chair and put my head in my hands. I listen to my jagged breath. I’m alive, but inside I’m starting to die. I am stuck here. Sorcerers. Egyptian gods. Black vortexes. Psychics. Dead spirits. Missing people. Time warps. It’s all too much.
A few minutes later, footsteps patter across the stone floor. Zoe’s tall outline moves just a few feet away, and anxiety pricks my skin.
“Look at you,” she says. Her voice massages my brain, and huge red, black, and gold triangles float large and shimmery in my synesthesia brain. They’re beautiful and so enormous that it’s difficult to really see much else.
“You need to stop this,” I whisper. More angry rebellious words itch my throat, but after what Tre said, my lips clench tight to avoid letting them spill out again.
“You and Tre spend so much time together,” she says, sitting down near me, relaxed. “Do you love him?”
My tense shoulders sneak toward my ears. I’m not sure where she’s going with this.
I think I love him. I could love him. I love all sides of him. I feel something deep, something powerful, something I’ve never felt before. A yearning and connection and desire to never let him go, to lie down and die for him if need be. Is that love? Yes.
“Does he know how you killed your parents?” It’s such a simple, shallow move. But it works to screw with my head. I imagine Tre’s horror if he discovered my secrets. No one knows my secrets.
Except Zoe.
I remember the wake after my parents’ funeral. A few of their hippie friends gathered inside Pep’s coffee shop. Standing amid the spicy scent of incense, they whispered and hugged me and handed out hot tea and coffee.
“It was an accident.”
“Icy roads.”
No one knew the truth. Only me.
Zoe reads my face. “What, you haven’t told him?”
I’m silent. I avert my gaze to the glass etchings along the fireplace that look like claw marks in the dim light.
“Wow, by this point you should have told him. How do you get so close and then leave out something so big? It’s almost worse now.”
I could keep that secret to myself forever. Couldn’t I?
“Does he at least know about your overdose?” Her words are strategic, and they cut me. She shouldn’t know these things. She shouldn’t have access to my heart. “And then there’s the Zach thing.” She draws out the words with such feigned pity. She pauses and then cringes and leans in to whisper softly, “Don’t they call people like that sluts?” She inhales slowly, pausing, watching me take each verbal punch. Boom. One more hit that makes the room spin.
“Would he even want you if he knew the real you? Would he love you? Could he even love you?”
“You don’t know,” I mutter. Emotion clogs my throat.
“I honestly can’t imagine how you live with yourself.” Zoe’s words eat up the oxygen in the room. My heart pounds in my head. She knows me. The real me.
“Face it, Ember, you’re alone,” she says. “Always dumped. Always left alone.”
The memory of the fan pulsing over me flashes in my mind. The rhythmic sound of my own death. Zach and JT dumped me alone. To sink into the carpet. To disappear.
The elephant is officially back.
Zoe sighs. “There is no escape.” Out of her mouth comes a long exhale that says everything that is in my heart. Defeat.
She stands and creeps closer to me. One step: a waft of serene lavender scent. Another step: a pulsing rush of blood through my head. Another step: soothing, magnetic, rhythmic, entrancing energy. A foot away from me: her skin looks almost iridescent in the murky light. I hate myself for wanting to wrap all of me in the numbness. But that’s what I want, more than anything right now.
She leans down over me and with two long fingers, gently pushes a few curls off my cheek, an intoxicating and frightening gesture that soothes and threatens me all at once. “We can help you. Flush all that stuff away. You will be made new here. Trying to leave is no use. So why don’t you let me help you?”
“Help… me?”
“It’s still early, but you are so curious, so eager. Would you like to know what this is all about?”
I stare at her, dumfounded, the colors of her voice pulsing in front of me, the sounds melting any coherent thoughts.
I nod slowly. I want to know. I need to know.
Her thin fingers wrap around my arm, sending warm bathwater flowing through my veins. I stand and we walk out of the living room together.
Deep inside, I go back to questioning whether I even want to live anymore. With this suffocating weight.
She guides me down the dark staircase that leads to the basement, passing walls of stone and dimly lit sconces, descending into that ancient world, that mystical castle—a sharp contrast to the sleek, contemporary style of the rest of the house. The air shifts, becoming thick, bleaker and cooler with each echoing step. The smell of dust wafts up to my nose.
My brain oscillates between giving in and fighting. I do not want to go here alone with her, but I cannot seem to pull myself away. We take another three steps, moving slowly down the curving staircase. The light flickers, distorting her face into a long, slender, garish mask. Something inside me screams. I can hear it in the back of my head, quiet, muffled, telling me to go home, that the basement is the last place I need to go.
“I want to go home,” I finally say, mumbling the words. Yet my body stays glued to her side.
Zoe doesn’t respond immediately. She moves her head unhurriedly, slinking like a cat, and her golden eyes once again sink into mine, latching little hooks, reeling me in. “Resist that temptation. It’s time for the dead to rule, for the second-sighted to heed the call. You, too, have a gift. You already see the unseen.”
My Color Crayon Brain. My visions.
“Surrender,” she whispers.
Finally, she comes to a heavy wooden door. She gently clasps her hands together and turns to face me. “This is it,” she says.
50
A rhythmic humming echoes around us. This is not a room. It’s a large dark, cold, damp space with tall ceilings and curved walls. It almost looks like an old mining tunnel.
As we move farther into the murky space, I feel as if I’m floating over the dirt ground, past flickering wall sconces. I should be frightened, but Zoe’s grip on my mind somehow allows me to take in the scene as if I’m not entirely here.
Then I see them, to my right. Dozens of people wearing black cloaks, standing as still as statues.
I turn and make out the face of a young girl beneath a heavy hood. The rose petal lips. The girl I saw in the other room. The girl who disappeared at the volcano in Hawaii. Laurie Parker, whose photo I pasted to my own spiral notebook. My humanity breaks through and I gasp, staring at her in awe. Laurie doesn’t bli
nk. She stands completely still—alive, but as if she’s a mannequin.
“Laurie?” I whisper. She doesn’t respond.
I catch a glimpse of another familiar face. A teenaged girl with red hair. Large forehead, a square face, and chiseled cheekbones. Valerie Monsette.
I see them all. Ben Alackness. Phil Sei. I know every single one of them. They are not just pictures. They’re real people. They’re here. How can they all be here? I’m thrilled I found them, but the excitement evaporates almost immediately. I found them. But I have no idea how to save them.
My whole body constricts and it feels as though oxygen is being pulled from my very fingertips.
A few steps closer, and through the dim light, I can make out another face—long, with weathered skin and a mole on his left cheek. My mind clears for a moment. Chris.
My body lights up with relief and I move swiftly to him. He’s an adult. Maybe he can save us.
“Chris, oh my God,” I whisper, grasping the front of his cloak with two fists. I place my forehead on his chest. “I couldn’t find you.”
His body jiggles with my hold, but he doesn’t flinch or even react. It’s as if he doesn’t see me, as if he’s frozen. His open eyes are blank. “Chris!” My voice sounds raspy.
“Don’t worry; they’re not dead.” It’s the British accent of the redheaded witch. Her voice echoes off the walls of this endless dark place. Cloaked in silky red, she strides confidently toward me. As I watch her walk, the elephant pounces crazy hard on my chest.
A few moments later, her face becomes visible. It’s the young woman who dropped the coin. The same woman who talked to me at my truck, and I’m sure the same one I saw through the crack in the door earlier. That awful little shrike bird sits on her shoulder, glaring at me with dark, beady eyes.
“This is a surprise, to see you so soon,” she says.
“She was eager for answers, Xintra. So I thought it best to speed things up,” Zoe responds from behind me.
Xintra. The Egyptian sorceress that could convert nonliving things and images to become living and make them act the way they wanted. Xintra, who Mom said wanted to take over the world. Xintra, who was once her friend.
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