by Karen Mead
“It was more than two days,” Sam began, then realized he sounded petulant and gave up. “Why is everyone treating me like a child lately?”
“Welcome to my world,” said Cassie from the back.
He scoffed. “The difference is, you are a child.”
“You’re both like little children,” Miri said cheerfully.
Sam scowled. “Aren’t you supposed to be respectful to me?”
“I can’t lie to you, Master.”
“I already told you, don’t call me that.”
“See? Child,” she said, smiling radiantly. Sam found it hard to look away from her; she looked so incredibly happy and alive, and he had no idea why. She was always unusually vivacious for a vampire, but in the last few days he had really been noticing it.
“Mir, are you feeling okay?” asked Cassie. “It’s just, the sun is really strong right now, so….”
Sam looked at the pair of them over his shoulder. “What are you talking about? Miri doesn’t have sun sickness.”
“That’s’ right,” said Miri in a dreamy, sing-song voice. “Miri doesn’t have sun sickness.” She closed her eyes, turned her face up toward the sun and sighed happily, as though she were drinking in the light.
CHAPTER FORTY
Helen’s residence turned out to be a modest, slightly dilapidated white split-level house with black shutters. The only special thing about the neighborhood was that the houses had unusually large yards, which Cassie supposed was useful if you were secretly a witch who used nature magic. The woman had a solid acre of land to herself, bordered by woods behind the house. Maybe the property would have looked nice in the spring, when the trees were in bloom, but now, it was just a lot of barren, spindly trees and mostly dead grass. The whole area looked like it had seen better days.
Cassie got out of the car and stretched; she was expecting to feel uncomfortably stiff, but found she was okay. Maybe she was getting used to stupidly long car trips. Sam leaned against the car next to her, just looking at the house with his hands in his pockets and an unreadable expression on his face.
“Is this the house you grew up in?” She asked.
He met her eyes for a few seconds but didn’t answer. Still silent, he went around her to the trunk to help Serenus unload the car.
I take it that’s a yes, then? Explains a lot.
Seeing Miri get out of the car, Cassie beelined over to her and grabbed the vampire’s arm, whispering in her ear. “Hey you, talk to me! You were in the sun for hours and you ate four pancakes! Did you throw up in the bathroom?”
Miri looked at her triumphantly. “No, I did not.”
“What’s going on?”
Miri looked at Sam and Serenus and lowered her voice to make sure only Cassie could hear. “I don’t really know. But ever since I was…” she seemed to struggle for the right word “…revived, it’s like everything’s been different. The sun doesn’t hurt at all, and I can taste food so much more.”
Cassie took a moment to process that.
“Then that’s great, right? Why are you keeping it a secret?”
Miri’s expression turned grave. “Because I don’t know if it’s going to last. I can’t let the others find out yet, I can’t get their hopes up for nothing.”
“Well, yeah but—”
Aeka tugged firmly on Cassie’s other arm, pointing to the men. Sam and Serenus had the car all unpacked and ready to go up to the house, waiting for them.
“Talk more later!” Cassie whispered, then scampered up to Serenus’ side, with Aeka a few steps behind.
When they reached the door, Sam hung a few steps back. Serenus gave him a disgusted look. “She’s not going to eat you, you know.”
“You can never be too sure with an old witch,” Sam said softly. At that moment, the door opened, even though no one had knocked.
Cassie didn’t know what she was expecting Helen to look like, but it certainly wasn’t a slender brunette who barely looked thirty. Wearing a form-fitting brown suit and her dark hair in a prim bun, she looked more like a sophisticated librarian than anything else, and certainly nowhere near old enough to be Sam’s mother.
“Ah, my long-lost son and his harem,” she said in an arch tone. She fixed her brown eyes on Cassie for a moment and Cassie felt a little flip-flop in her stomach: they were Sam’s eyes, dark and penetrating. Seeing them in a woman’s face was unsettling.
Apparently, Serenus hadn’t been expecting her to look that way either. “Helen?” he sputtered. “What happened?”
Helen pointed to her face with one hand, putting her other hand on her hip. “This was the last straw,” she said. “He won’t let me age; he’s made me even younger than when I gave birth to him,” she said, indicating Sam with a dismissive wave. “If he wants me to summon him again, he knows my terms, so whatever you were going to say, you can save your breath.”
Cassie looked at the strange woman with curiosity: Sammael had bestowed eternal youth upon her, and she considered this an affront?
“That’s not the only reason why we’re here,” said Serenus. Cassie couldn’t help but notice that he seemed to address Helen differently from practically everyone else, with none of his usual flippant manner. “Helen, we need your knowledge.”
“You think this is news to me?” she replied, raising an eyebrow, then turned her back to them and walked into the house. “You can come in. I think I have some cookies somewhere, I’ll try to find them.”
Cassie and Miri exchanged incredulous glances and stepped into the house, with the others behind them. Cassie barely suppressed a gasp once she got a good look at Helen’s living room: apparently, her taste in interior decoration was books. The walls were lined with bookshelves, there were crates of books on the floor, and books covered the couch and all other pieces of furniture. In some places, the side tables were made out of books. Only a large glass table in the center of the room was relatively clean, with only a few books on it and an opened notebook filled with tiny script.
“One moment,” said Helen. Moving quickly, she removed stacks of books from the couch and several chairs; some of them, she placed gently on the floor, while others she threw behind the couch with no hesitation. Different books seemed to have a most favorite/least favorite status. “Sit,” she commanded, and the five of them obeyed; it seemed like it would be best to do as she said. Cassie sat down on the couch with Aeka clinging to one arm, and Sam and Serenus on the other side; Miri mounted a nearby stack of books like it was a pony. If Helen minded that, she didn’t say.
Helen disappeared into a book-lined alcove that Cassie assumed led to the kitchen, and came back with a box of fig cookies. “They may or may not be stale…then again, every cookie may or may not be stale,” she said, closing her notebook and tossing the box onto the glass table. Only Miri took a few cookies.
Helen sat down on a battered upholstered chair opposite the couch, staring at her guests. Cassie suppressed a shiver; Helen’s stare made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. There was something demanding about that stare, like she held people to a certain standard and you weren’t meeting it yet.
After a moment’s pause, she addressed her son. “They’re a little young for you, aren’t they? Then again, you’re too emotionally immature to handle a woman your own age.”
Before Cassie could protest, Sam replied in a tone dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve no idea how growing up in this environment could possibly stunt anyone’s emotional development.”
“You’ve been back in my house for less than five minutes, and you’ve already blamed me for your entire personality. Feel better?”
“If you two get started, we won’t get anything done,” Serenus snapped. “I don’t know how much you already know, but a lot has changed in the last six months.”
“I’ve heard things,” said Helen, crossing her legs. “Granted, most of them don’t make sense.”
Serenus proceeded to recap for Helen the chain of events that had begun with the fall
earthquake, and the freak accident that resulted in Cassie’s transformation into Sam’s familiar. Other than raising an eyebrow at a few points, Helen didn’t show much of a response. As he spoke, Cassie realized there were two things he wasn’t going to recount: her additional bond with Sammael, because it was too dangerous for Sam to know about, and her dream of the Lost Ones, because she had never told anyone about it.
Cassie looked down at her hands: was she ready to talk about that? There had never been a specific reason why she hadn’t told anyone about the dream that was more than a dream. It just felt like a secret that belonged to her alone. She still was inclined to keep it to herself, but if telling Helen everything meant finding out the truth about who, and possibly what, she was….
Serenus concluded his story by explaining all that had happened in the past week, including the rescue of Ethan, Cassie’s latest kidnapping and the discovery of Aeka.
“So that’s where we are,” he said. “A plethora of mysteries large and small and no answers.”
“You missed one,” said Helen, indicating Miri with her chin. “You have a vampire with a sweet tooth.”
Miri froze in the middle of bringing a cookie to her lips. Helen looked at her appraisingly.
“It’s nice, isn’t it? I thought his bloodline might confer special benefits on your kind, but I had no way of knowing for sure. I’m pleased to see I was right.”
Miri’s hazel eyes went wide and she leaned forward on her perch. “You mean, this is permanent?”
Sam looked from Miri to Helen, puzzled. “What is this now? What benefits?”
Helen ignored him and fixed her blistering stare on Cassie. “And then there’s you, the one my son is pining over for some strange reason.”
Cassie’s cheeks burned.
“No one’s pining over anyone,” Sam snapped.
Helen leaned forward and glared at Cassie again, making her wince. “Your face was the picture of guilt while Serenus was telling your story. What happened that you aren’t telling?”
“I…” Cassie started, but the denial died on her lips. It was obvious that lying to Helen was a waste of time. “There is something.”
Serenus and Sam exchanged surprised looks and looked at her. She took a deep breath.
“I had a dream that I know wasn’t really a dream. There were these…monsters, these strange creatures, and they talked like I was one of them, like their descendent or something. They said they had waited 70 generations to see me, and that the daughters of men are clever…something about hiding underwater….”
“Why did you never tell me this?” Sam said next to her, sounding pained.
“Shut up, darling. What else did they say?” Helen probed.
Cassie squinted and looked down, trying to remember. The memory was almost as vivid now as the day she’d had the dream, but remembering their exact words was another matter. “Something about how I must remember, because I’m missing something…and…there is no black or white magic.”
“What?” said Sam and Serenus in unison. Miri just looked at her, transfixed.
“There is no black or white magic, there is only Magic,” Cassie finished, lifting her head up to look at Helen. Now that she’d said it, she felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her chest.
“That’s nonsense though,” said Sam. “Of course there’s black and white magic, I’m living proof.”
“There is now,” said Helen with a satisfied smile. “Of course, if you were shut up in Tartarus for a few millennia, you wouldn’t know that.”
“Tartarus?” said Cassie, then she turned to Aeka, who was tugging on her arm again. “Aeka? Did you see them in your dreams too?”
Aeka nodded. “They said I was broken, and they had to use the spare.”
There was a pause as they all processed that for a moment: both the fact that Aeka had spoken so many words at once, and what they might mean.
“I thought so,” said Helen. “I thought I had an idea of what was going on, but now I’m sure.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, but did not continue.
“Well?” asked Sam.
“Do you know what I am? What we both are?” Cassie asked, feeling breathless with anticipation.
Helen pursed her lips, then turned away. “I feel like getting some fresh air. Let’s all take a walk.”
“Helen…”Serenus began in an irritated voice. Ignoring him, the preternaturally youthful woman bounded to her feet and walked to the closet to get her coat.
“Let’s go to the woods.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
It was only a few minutes of walking before the slumbering trees of the forest gave way to sandier, muddier terrain. On the shores of the Atlantic, the Outer Banks of North Carolina had miles of marshland, some of which was federally protected. Naturally, Helen had no interest in sticking to any kind of trail, and it wasn’t long before Sam was making his way through waist-high reeds.
It was a strange sensation, being here again; he could remember when the vegetation was taller than he was. Serenus was quiet, likely lost in in his own memories, while the girls were just annoyed. It was twilight, and it was hard to find footing. The sky was an unsympathetic gray, thick clouds letting through no sign of the waning sunlight; the area was known for rainstorms of all kinds, but tonight, there would be no rain: only one of those suffocating, starless nights he remembered from his youth.
“Ew, ew, ew, ew,” said Cassie, trying to pick her way through the mud without getting her boots filthy. “She said we were going to the woods, not the swamp!”
“Marsh,” Sam corrected. “This whole area is marshland. There are even some species here you can’t find anywhere else in the world.”
“Thank you for sharing,” she quipped, then turned serious. “Did you really grow up around here?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why don’t you have an accent like you’re from here?”
“Because I forbid it,” Helen called from the front, somehow overhearing their conversation.
“You can’t forbid someone from having an accent, that’s not how it works!” Cassie called over the sound of a gust of wind through the reeds.
Suddenly Helen slowed down, her black high heels mysteriously immaculate despite all the muddy ground she had traversed. With her tan trench coat whipping around her legs, she came to a stop at the side of a large pool, bordered on the far side by a field full of tall salt marsh cordgrass. Sam couldn’t see past them, but from a combination of the briny smell and his memories, he guessed the ocean couldn’t be far beyond.
Looking out at the pool of brown water, Helen suddenly began to speak. “As a witch, I’m not very impressive. That’s why it’s so important for me to be near the sea, so I have some source of power to draw from.”
“I don’t think that’s a fair statement,” Serenus began, but Helen cut him off before he could continue.
“Like all witches, my natural magic is white—what we call white magic today—but when I do something like this, for example,” she said, sweeping her arm in a wide arc: where the surface of the water had been perfectly still, a gentle ripple appeared. “—it’s colorless. I’m using the power of the water to act on the water; there’s no intent, malicious or benevolent, thus the magic cannot be white or black.”
“That’s you,” Sam interjected. “I can’t lift a cup off the table without it being considered black, whatever my intention is.”
“We’re not talking about you right now,” Helen said smoothly. “Now, even if I were a much more powerful witch and used this water to create a tidal wave, a wave that could kill and destroy, it still wouldn’t necessarily be black. So as you can see, it is entirely possible to use colorless magic to great effect, even today.”
“Is there a point to this?” Sam asked, crossing his arms.
Helen put her hands in her coat pockets, looking out over the marsh and not at him. The wind was picking up, making the reeds sway to and fro. “Do you have any idea why y
our father left the Upper World, Samuel?”
“What?” said Sam. As always, he was completely mystified by the sudden turns his mother’s mind took. “Wasn’t it because he wanted more power?”
Helen scoffed at that. “Hardly. Exodus, Ten Plagues, Slaying of the First Born. The Old Testament says that the Almighty gave the Angel of Death the night off while he killed all of the Egyptian baby sons. A PR cover-up if ever there was one; the Angel of Death didn’t take the night off, he had quit altogether,” she said. “If killing babies was the privilege of the righteous, what did that make Hell?”
For a few moments, there was only the sound of the wind whistling through the tall grass. Sam felt like he’d been hit in the solar plexus. “If that’s true, why did you never tell me until now?” he asked in a small voice, wondering if she would even hear him over the wind. Of course, she did.
“Because it was never relevant. The reason why it matters today is because I want you to understand the true nature of angels, and the whole world above: that absolute, yet totally unpredictable morality. One minute you are told not to kill, the next minute, mass infanticide, but it all supposedly makes sense due to some divine, benevolent will—a will that is beyond your comprehension by definition,” she said, still not looking at him. “Once your father could no longer understand that, no longer tolerate it, he had to leave. He had no choice.”
It was Miri, quiet since they had left the house, who broke the ensuing silence. Her high-pitched voice shouted over the wind. “I don’t understand, what are you saying? That angels aren’t good and demons aren’t evil?”
“I’m saying that the world is a far more complicated place than you had any reason to suspect. But now, with angels among us, you can no longer remain ignorant.” Finally, she turned to Sam, her expression that same impenetrable mask that had so tormented him as a child.
“Angels?” said Cassie in a small voice. “You mean, we’re….”