Insanity

by Susan Vaught

  My muscles tensed, but I worked to keep still. No expression on my face. No hint of anything. The air in the room seemed too hot and too still. Even with the nose plugs firmly in place, the scent of Addie’s pot roast seeped into my awareness. She was cooking that on purpose, because we needed the smell of the meat.

  “What are you buying?” my father asked her.

  Addie placed a glass of iced tea on the table next to my father. “Salt and bay leaves,” she said. The elbow he couldn’t see, the one behind the chair, bent as she reached into the pocket of her blue apron and pulled out a dead man’s hand.

  It was all withered and pickled. Each finger had been dipped in tallow rendered from the dead man’s fat. He was a truck driver, shot to death by police in another state, then shipped home for burial. At Johnson and Sons Mortuary, where Addie worked, she had been able to take the hand—the one that held the knife that the truck driver had used to hack a prostitute to pieces—with nobody the wiser. She stole enough fat from the murderer’s gut to finish the job, and we had what we needed to get us a little breathing room when we needed it.

  Addie moved quietly behind my father, lit the thumb of the Hand of Glory on fire, and slid it under his chair.

  I imagined I could see the sick-sweet scent of the burning tallow as it eased into the room and wrapped itself around the smell of pot roast.

  My father shifted. Addie flinched, and I jerked on the couch in spite of trying harder than hard to stay motionless. My heart beat faster, and faster again when he yawned.

  “All right, then,” he said. “You have half an hour.”

  Addie headed back into the kitchen without daring to look at me.

  My father reached for his tea, yawned again, then put the glass back on the table. His head turned in my direction, and my pulse hammered until my eyes watered.

  His lids fluttered, then lowered.

  He leaned his tall frame back in his chair and rested his hand on top of the confiscated book of spells he had been studying. A few seconds later, my father started to snore.

  The kitchen door swung open again, and Addie motioned for me. I moved in a hurry, heading straight for the door to the basement.

  Spelled like he was, my father just grunted instead of spouting rules or reducing the time he had allowed us. He wouldn’t sleep much longer than an hour, I was sure of it. No spell worked against my father for very long, but at least this one would keep him from casting his own spells to track us or listen in on what we were saying. If we were really, really lucky, he wouldn’t catch on to what we had done.

  If we weren’t lucky ... no. I didn’t want to think about bad things and tempt them to happen.

  Addie and I slipped out through the basement door, hurried down the steps, and out to the driveway. Then we ran all the way to the car.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I pulled the plugs out of my nose and pocketed them as Addie drove away from the house.

  Somebody honked at us and I jumped. Was that Dad’s truck, already fired up and ready to chase after us? Had my father woken from his sleep despite the Hand of Glory sputtering and smoking under his chair?

  My fists clenched, but I made myself relax my fingers. What was I thinking? It’s not like I would try to hit my own father, no matter how much he freaked me out.

  “Trina.” My stepmother eyed me in that funny way, part friend and part parent like she had been since the day my father brought home his new young wife. I had been five, she, eighteen; I’m not sure my father had understood that he was giving me an ally, not a babysitter. As for my real mother, she was long gone, probably as far away from my father as she could get. I had never gotten so much as a letter from her.

  “I’m not going back to Lexington,” I told Addie, fixing my gaze straight ahead at the road. “I applied for an externship this semester, and I start Monday. After that, I may finish at South College, if my transfer gets approved.”

  In the reflection on the car’s front window, I watched as Addie grimaced. “He’ll have a fit. He doesn’t want you to stay in Never.”

  I tried to shrug and act like I didn’t care. Addie said, “I’ll do what I can, but I know you didn’t have me knock your father out to keep him from hearing about your school decisions.”

  That made me twitch. Addie didn’t use spells to pry into my thoughts or the future. She didn’t have to. It was as though she could read everything in my heart just by glancing at my face.

  “I won’t be living at home,” I told her.

  This made her sigh and nod. “You’re moving in with Darius.” The he’ll have a fit went without saying. A little while ago, Darius had gotten himself accused of murder and arrested. It was all cleared up now, but still. That kind of thing didn’t impress fathers, especially fathers as overprotective as mine.

  As for the rest of the story, I couldn’t bring myself to say it yet, so I went for, “I’ll have my own room,” like that would make a difference.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Addie asked, slowing as we pulled into the grocery-store parking lot.

  The energy in the car seemed to crackle, and my insides clutched. I wondered if my father had some spell at work, creeping around the edges of our conversation, looking for a crack to seep through and soak up all my secrets.

  “A few weeks ago, I got into some things over at Lincoln Psychiatric,” I said. My pulse jumped, and I glanced in the rear-view mirror.

  There was no truck behind us. I was just expecting it to be there.

  “Lincoln? Are you out of your mind?” Addie sounded more exasperated than mad, but I understood.

  My father had always made it clear that Lincoln Psychiatric was off-limits to me. It was the one place in Never, Kentucky—other than cemeteries—I was never allowed to go, no matter what. Lincoln was a dangerous place. It was bad because a lot of them ended up there—the strange folks with Madoc blood. The evil things my father eradicated.

  Addie was still talking, muttering instead of yelling like I knew she wanted to. “You know he’ll go on and on about Lincoln Psychiatric. It’s a hotbed. It’s a—”

  “Cess-a-pool,” I finished in a bad imitation of his deep voice, with the way-South but slightly French accent he got from his Creole mother. “I know there are bad things at Lincoln, Addie. I helped kill one of them.”

  Addie’s frown turned her soft face hard, and the light in her eyes seemed to flicker, then go dull. She had never wanted me to be part of the killing. She parked the car, shut off the engine, and bowed her head, showing me her perfectly cropped hair, the tiny curls so tight I couldn’t have stuck a pin in them. She had protected me, even using spells that might bring my father’s wrath straight down on her head—and I had gone and gotten myself involved in the war my father never stopped fighting anyway.

  “They know about us—some of the people who can ... you know. Do special things.” My frown matched hers. “They know for sure somebody’s killing them off.”

  “Then we have to get ready, and I have to warn Xavier.” Addie moved to start the car again, but I grabbed her arm.

  “You don’t have to tell him anything.” An image of Darius shoved its way into my mind, with his dopey grin and stubbly cheeks—and that white, burned-out eye that saw things it shouldn’t. “They aren’t coming to fight us.”

  “They will,” Addie said, shaking off my grip, but not starting the car. “They always do. Look at your history.”

  My history. She meant my father’s ledgers. How many Madocs he had killed, and how many so-called normal people in Never had died mysterious deaths. Murders and disappearances and mysterious goings-on, he recorded it all, and always assumed the Madocs did it.

  It was Satan who set evil like the Madocs free on earth, my father liked to say, and God who tasked men like me with destroying it.

  I opened the car door and got out, hoping Addie would do the same. After a few seconds, she did, and we stood facing each other over the white hood of her Oldsmobile.

 
“He’s wrong, Addie. Not everybody with power is evil. We aren’t bad people, right?”

  She folded her arms, frowning deeply. “We don’t have power. We just know how to tap the power in other things. It’s different when you have it inside you, in your blood. Then it tears up your mind and soul and makes you just like those demons Xavier hunts.”

  An image of the burning body flickered behind my eyes, and I had to squeeze them shut and count to three. I’d always known what my father did, or said he did, to keep us safe, but I’d never seen him at it, and I’d never seen what was left over when he finished.

  The body in the woods had just looked like a dead man. Nothing huge or wicked or scary. It had been pathetic.

  Was my father the one who tried to kill Levi?

  I pushed that right out of my mind.

  “I met some people who can do special things,” I told Addie. “And I don’t think they’re bad.”

  Addie’s shoulders twitched, and her frown melted into an expression of horror. “Honey, creatures like that lie to you. They can fool you into thinking whatever they want you to. That’s what the devil’s minions do.”

  “They aren’t the devil’s minions.” I shook my head, feeling a hot splash of desperation in my guts. “They’re just people, like me and you.”

  Addie stared at me with both her eyebrows raised so high she looked like a cartoon. “Who are these folks?”

  I shrugged. No way was I giving her names, and she knew it. After a few seconds, she gave up and gestured to the store. “Come on. Salt and bay leaves. He might not notice we’ve been gone longer than we should have been, but he’ll notice if we don’t bring what we went out for.”

  The rest of our shopping trip and the ride home had been quiet, because I had no guts.

  When Addie and I got out of the car at the house, both of us studied the basement door, then the living room window. We were eighteen minutes past the limit my father had given us. The Hand of Glory had probably gone out, but it wouldn’t leave behind any wax or ashes. He’d never know we used it, unless he found it burning. We had about an even chance of getting away with our extra time and privacy. If he was awake, he’d be pissed, and he’d keep us both at home for weeks—unless I abandoned Darius and went back to school.

  Addie started for the house, but I caught up with her. “Wait. Just one more minute.” If I couldn’t make Addie understand this, I had no hope of ever making my father hear me. “Some of the folks who have power could help us, and we could help them. They really aren’t evil, not all of them.”

  Addie’s mouth opened, then closed. She gripped the plastic shopping bag and shook her head as if she were trying to line up jagged thoughts that wouldn’t smooth together.

  “One of them, this girl Forest,” I kept going in a rush, “you can feel the specialness dripping off of her. Darius can see how good she is with his bad eye, but we don’t know who she is, not really. The bunch of us took out a serial killer under the asylum, and a tree that was, I don’t know, too alive or something. It had a mouth and teeth.”

  Addie said nothing at all. She just stared at me. I thought she was listening. I thought she was hearing me.

  “My father has been right all along about some things,” I admitted. “There is a war going on, only not the one he thinks. That’s why I have to work at Lincoln for a while, to keep another pair of eyes on what’s happening, and to help.”

  Addie caught hold of my elbow and slowly walked me toward the basement. I didn’t fight her as she pulled me inside, closing and locking the door behind us. Once we were there in the quiet within the walls, she gazed deep into my eyes, and the tightness that had been building in my chest eased a little. I got everything said. And Addie was listening. She was always with me and for me. She would understand, and she would help me convince my father that we had to help good people—whether they had power or not—fight the real evils when they showed up.

  “Darius,” Addie said. “When did you find out?”

  I blinked, not understanding her question.

  She let out a long, slow breath, the way she did when she was sad. “When did you find out Darius Hyatt had Madoc blood?”

  “What?” Frost hardened across my thoughts, then dropped lower to dust my heart. I hadn’t said anything about Darius having power. That was the one secret I wouldn’t share, because my father—oh. His eye. I had mentioned Darius’s eye.

  “It must not be strong in him, or your father would have sensed it long ago.” Addie dropped the bag with the bay leaves and salt and put her arms around me. When she pulled me close to her, she held me tight. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Darius, he’s just—” I started to say as I put my face on her shoulder, but then I caught sight of my father standing in the doorway at the top of the basement steps.

  His mouth made a straight line, and his expression was flat and merciless. All of my blood turned to ice, and I pushed against Addie, trying to get free.

  “Don’t, Trina,” she whispered in my ear. “He knows you love the boy. He’ll make it quick. Darius won’t feel any pain.”

  I shoved her away from me. She stumbled backward, kicking the grocery bag as she went. My father’s face had become a mask of judgment and purpose. He looked like death walking, and I knew what would happen next.

  My father turned and stalked away from the basement doorway.

  I charged after him, screaming as I stormed up the steps.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I was still screaming as my father went to the hall closet to get the bag he always took when he went hunting. I pushed around him, and my screams cut off as if something had hit my throat. Not breathing, not thinking, I wheeled on him, blocking the way out of the hall. He could go to the bedrooms or the basement, but he couldn’t get to the front door or the kitchen door without going through me.

  Scared wasn’t part of the equation now. I was mad. My chest heaved from running and yelling. My arms stuck out to the sides. Not much of a fighting stance. I had no ninja training or years of experience killing things like my father did, but I’d do something. I’d find a way.

  He turned toward me, gripping the brown leather satchel that held knives and axes and iron spikes and herbs and potions and whatever else he needed to take down his prey. He looked like a professor in his black slacks and pressed white shirt, with his perfect skin and clipped hair, but I knew what he really was: a death machine, with a bunch of wrong ideas.

  “No,” I growled through clenched teeth, startled by the loudness of my voice. This is your father. Are you crazy? He’ll swat you like a fly. You’re threatening your father.

  The air stank of tallow and burned human flesh. The Hand of Glory had done all it could but failed, and now its stench was trying to choke me. I coughed and my eyes watered, but I didn’t move at all. I couldn’t. It was this, or Darius would be dead within minutes.

  Addie made it up the basement stairs and stood behind my father, gaping. When he glared at me and went to move, she grabbed his elbow. “Xavier, don’t you dare touch that child.”

  Her voice had such a high pitch. She was scared. I could see the fear torturing her, streaks of wild yellow lightning crackling across her smooth brown skin. The color on my father was darker, like blue-black ink. He didn’t suffer from his darkness—he welcomed it. It was his armor of hatred.

  The colors I saw weren’t in my head. They were real. When I got really upset or scared or stressed, all the power I had ever been exposed to seemed to pull into me and come through me, and I saw colors and could do things—but not on purpose. It was all random. I had no say in it, no control over it; but right now I didn’t care. This wasn’t something I had ever shared with Addie or my father. Let them find out the hard way.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, my voice still too loud. I sounded mean and serious. I sounded like Xavier Martinez.

  His left eyebrow lifted, but otherwise his face stayed sti
ll as black alabaster. His gaze flicked from one of my twiggy arms to the other. “You planning to slap me to death?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “I asked you a question, little girl.”

  I didn’t feel like a little girl, and for the first time, his tone wasn’t working on me. Fresh rage kindled on his face. Colors darker than black seeped out of him, and he took a step toward me.

  Addie yanked on his arm, but he pulled away from her. She let out a sob and turned to run back down into the basement.

  My heart squeezed, then sank.

  I was on my own.

  “Don’t you raise your hand against me, Trina,” my father said. “The eye that mocketh at his father—”

  “The ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it,” I finished for him. The verse was from Proverbs.

  His eyes widened just enough to let me know I had surprised him. I’d never done well with his Bible lessons, so he probably figured I hadn’t been listening. He took another step, coming within arm’s length from me now. I was going to have to hit him or push him or kick him or something. The thought made me sick.

  “And he that smiteth his father, or his mother,” he said, “shall be surely put to death.”

  “So you’re going to kill me now?” I shot back. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “You will not disrespect me,” my father said, so matter-of-fact it gave me cold shivers. “Get out of my way, Trina. I’m only going to tell you once.”

  He shifted his killing bag to his left hand, freeing his right to deal with me. My heart crashed against my ribs. I hated that I was shaking, and I wished I could punch him or shove him and feel nothing at all, because I didn’t think he’d feel anything when he hurt me.

  And he was going to hurt me.

  I saw it all over him, the barely bottled rage. It wasn’t my fault, but that wouldn’t matter when he hit me. His darkness would strike me down. It would destroy anything that got in his way, and then it would destroy Darius.