Insanity

by Susan Vaught

Who are you?

  The question echoed in my skull until I clamped my eyes shut, but I was sure Mahan wasn’t talking to me. Each word carried a power all its own, and I felt myself wanting to answer, wanting to give up my full name and tell Mahan everything about myself.

  It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut and force my eyes open again. Forest didn’t react to his compulsion; she just kept humming, only it had become more of a chant now, wordless and rhythmic. I managed to hold up my willow charm again, keeping it between me and Mahan.

  Addie was chanting, too. I caught a few words, along with the distinct sound of metal rattling against wood and other metal, like somebody was digging through my father’s kill bag. The colors on the walls and floor brightened and stirred, sweeping upward like sentient mist.

  Somebody pounded on the basement door behind us.

  “Let me in!” Imogene demanded, her creaky voice and deep Southern accent unmistakable. It had a resonance that made the walls shake.

  I had the only badge to open the door.

  In one quick motion, I pulled it off my collar with my free hand and tossed it behind me, hoping I got it near Addie or Ms. Hyatt. They’d let Imogene in, and we’d—

  Who are you? Mahan demanded again, and when Forest didn’t answer, he lunged toward her.

  Silver flashed in the red light as a dagger zinged past me, pulling the misty colors with it as it flew.

  Addie’s pitch struck Mahan right in his chest, and he grabbed at the hilt and fell backward, growling and snapping his teeth together. Brilliant colors skittered in and out of the wound, but he managed to yank out the dagger and hurl it away from him so hard the blade snapped as it struck stone.

  Forest kept right on chanting.

  All my anger left me at the same second, leaving nothing but terror in its place. “We should go,” I said to Forest. “Back to the door, at least. Imogene’s here.”

  Forest wasn’t listening. She raised her arm, and the rowan bracelet seemed to writhe against her skin. I thought about grabbing her, then got even more scared. What if some Madoc superpower of hers burned me alive?

  As if to agree with me, new colors bled out of the walls and floors. They pulled toward Forest, joining and joining until they mixed into a black rush of nothingness.

  Mahan got his feet. Red flames jetted out from his shoulders, scorching against the old hospital’s ceiling tiles. He stormed toward Forest. I heard the door behind us rattle, and I heard Imogene shout, “Get away from them, boy!”

  Mahan kept charging forward, staggering and swinging his shanks.

  “WHO ... ARE ... YOU?” he demanded in my head and out loud at the same time, directing his question at Forest but hitting me, too.

  “I’m Trina!” I shrieked, because I couldn’t help it. My hand shook, but I kept my charm pointed at him, and some of the colors in the hallway swept into the twisted fibers.

  Forest’s eyes snapped open and spit golden heat, like molten fire shooting off the surface of the sun. She threw out her arms and yelled, “I am my mother’s daughter!”

  And then she screamed.

  I screamed with her, because the sound seemed to tear my skin right off my bones. I screamed and kept screaming as agony claimed me, as every color I had ever seen blasted into me, filled me, ran through me and back out again, erupting into black emptiness as it touched Forest.

  Two more daggers whizzed past my head.

  And then, suddenly, the world stuttered, then just stopped. No sound. No smells. Hardly any motion.

  Addie’s spelled throwing knives hung in midair, dripping colors like water.

  Mahan ran away in slow motion.

  Darkness trickled out of Forest like rain from a cloud, swallowing the hallway.

  I turned to find Addie, but I felt like I could barely move, like I was twisting inside drying tar. It took so long. It took forever, but then finally I was looking at her.

  To her right, the basement door was open. Imogene was pulling Ms. Hyatt out into the night, away from Mahan, almost frozen in the action, her wild silver hair floating free around her head. Addie’s hands were still raised from throwing the daggers.

  Second by second by second, her brown eyes ticked toward me. Found me. Widened.

  She looked horrified, then agonizingly sad.

  Her lips moved, forming my name.

  Power flooded out of her in millimeters, then inches. It looked blue. Protective. So strong. So total.

  Pressure clamped against my skull, like my whole head was exploding. Something seized me. Not hands. More like a force whipping down across my body. The willow charm flew out of my hand, lifting slowly into the air and tumbling at half speed, a quarter speed, to the stones on the basement floor at Lincoln Psychiatric. It landed on one pointy tip, and began to spin no faster than a warped dream, turning around and around and around—

  Colors—

  So many colors—

  Like stardust falling through a rainbow.

  Sound blasted past me—voices, hundreds of them. Thousands.

  “She’s crossing over,” Addie yelled.

  Her blue magic energy coated me as the walls melted. The floor turned black. Cold mist slapped across my cheeks, and the world moved again, and people were singing. They were calling to me.

  I fell upward into the nothing place Forest had made, only it wasn’t nothing, it was everything, and it was everywhere. Strong scents of pine and honey and fresh water filled my awareness. I heard the smells, as though they were laughing. I smelled the moon, too, fresh and pure, and I heard it call my name in Addie’s voice.

  My skin ripped completely away and came back again, holding a rainbow underneath it. I was outside. We were out in a bright, bright morning, Forest and me, standing in a field. Forest still had her arms out, and her eyes mirrored the sunlight. Soft grass, greener than green, grew up around her shoes, then her jeans, and mine too. Trees sprouted below her fingertips and bloomed and stretched taller. Flowers unfurled and tipped their red and yellow petals toward her.

  From somewhere far away, bells rang, and the sound was so soft and beautiful in the midst of the sweet singing that I wanted to cry. The tune was like a lullaby Addie used to sing to me, and I wished she could hear it.

  Forest shifted her attention to me. I should have been terrified, she looked so powerful, but I felt giddy instead. She pointed to my pocket.

  I reached down and pulled out Addie’s pouch, and the laces came open. A tiny bit of dust puffed into the air and formed gnashing fangs, but the yellow powder didn’t bite or burn me. It didn’t even stink.

  Forest pointed again, behind me, and I turned to see Mahan not five feet away from us. He was struggling to rise from his hands and knees as vines twined around him and pulled him back toward the grass. He still had red eyes and his iron shanks—but he also had two rainbow-colored daggers sticking out of his neck. Blood blacker than death spurted down his chest.

  When he lifted his baby face to me and roared, I threw the whole bag of dust straight into his hateful mouth.

  The yellow powder mushroomed around him, becoming a thousand sets of fangs, chewing and snarling and tearing, and the singing got louder to muffle his bellows of pain. He tried to fight, but the vines and grass pulled him down and trapped him, and the earth itself opened up. He disappeared into a hole and dirt covered him completely, then grass, then flowers, and then he was gone.

  My outstretched hand let off reds and blues and yellows and pinks, and dozens of sparkles played about my fingernails, as if cleaning every trace of the dust off my skin. Even though some part of my brain knew I should be horrified, I couldn’t do anything but laugh.

  I started singing, trying to pick up the words of the lullaby floating all around me. I ran toward the sound, dancing at the same time, reaching for it, and I lost all track of everything except the sweetness of the air and how the colors played and swam through my eyelashes.

  Forest’s fingers closed over mine. “Trina,” she whispered in a
n achingly musical voice. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  A single tear sparkled on her cheek. When I stared into it, I thought I could see crystals and worlds and universes.

  Before I could sing another word, Forest yanked me back into total darkness, tearing my skin off my bones all over again.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I didn’t think I would ever stop throwing up.

  Forest stayed on her knees beside me, holding my shoulders as I hurled and hurled and hurled. It was probably only a few minutes, but it felt like hours. When I finally finished, I sat back and tried to get a fix on where we were.

  I didn’t see much but sunlight and spinning trees, so of course I puked a little more. It was hot outside, like midsummer sweating hot, and that wasn’t helping.

  “We’re near the hospital,” Forest told me as she tugged a piece of gum out of her pocket and gave it to me to get the nasty taste out of my mouth. “We came through in the woods, in that clearing close to the bell tower where Mahan first chased you.”

  Spearmint flooded my mouth, driving back the nausea, and I chewed the gum for a few seconds before I spit it out. Forest gave me another piece, and I chewed that one, too, until my mouth was all gum taste and no yucky nastiness, then I spit it out and let myself take a nice, slow breath.

  It was so hot.

  Forest was talking about disorientation from crossing over. I could barely put the words together, because I couldn’t quit thinking about the field and the flowers and the singing. It had been so real—but now ...

  What did it sound like again?

  I couldn’t believe it was already draining out of my thoughts, like a dream just after waking.

  Forest had to be wrong about where we were. We were somewhere south of Never, because it was too hot for September. My money was on a place near the equator, like Mexico, or maybe the Yucatán. My brain was so muddled I didn’t really care. We were alive. Mahan was gone. I held on to bits and pieces of what had just happened—the dust attacking Mahan, Addie’s knives in his throat, the grass and vines and earth closing over his little boy’s face. There was pain and that unbelievable singing, and a lot of sweet smells, but most of the images faded as I tried to remember more about them.

  “Just keep breathing slowly,” Forest told me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I had no idea it was even possible for you to cross over like that while still alive.”

  I thought about Addie’s blue energy and the rainbows under my skin, all the power she and I had been pulling into that hallway, and I let out a breath. “Probably had a little help from Addie.”

  “Yeah,” Forest said, and she sounded even more worried and sad.

  I glanced up at her, relieved to see that her face—and the trees—had stopped spinning. We really were in a forest clearing, with hardwoods and evergreens all around us. No sand. No tropical-looking anything. I lifted my face, shielding my eyes against the sunlight, and far across the treetops I could see the unmistakable shape of Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital’s bell tower.

  A dread I couldn’t name and didn’t understand bloomed in my sore belly. “We really shouldn’t have done what we did,” I said. “Even if we did take care of Mahan.”

  Forest’s pretty eyes bored into mine, as if she wanted to tell me something but couldn’t quite bring herself to say it outright. I had never seen her look so guilty and down.

  “We never should have gone to the hospital,” she whispered. “I know you did it for me.”

  I shrugged. “Addie and Ms. Hyatt went with us. We all thought it needed to be done.”

  Forest grabbed my hand, and power hummed through her fingers. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You crossed over. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah. Okay. So I crossed over—but you got me back here where I belong.” I pulled my hand away and got to my feet because her mood was making me nervous. Besides, I needed to stretch my arms and legs. Nothing seemed to be broken or infected, but my muscles ached with fatigue. “We made a big mistake.”

  Forest sighed as she stood. “That’s the truth. Now here come the consequences.”

  A sound caught my attention, and I turned toward the edge of the clearing. It sounded like a herd of buffalo was charging through the underbrush. My pulse jumped, and I sucked in a breath to yell at Forest to run, but she took my hand in hers, giving me a jolt of calming, healing energy.

  Branches and leaves rustled, and Darius burst into the open. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and he looked even more handsome than I remembered. His dark glasses turned toward me and he ran forward, his sweet face breaking into a smile. Before I knew it, he had me wrapped in his arms and he was weeping into my hair, and I saw Levi standing still and quiet at the edge of the trees, his gaze fixed on Forest.

  She moved away from us, going to him as quietly and softly as a morning breeze.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” Darius said against my ear. “But I waited. I believed.”

  He kissed my lips, and I wanted to ask him what he meant, but for the next minute or two, there was just him and his strong arms and the way his lips felt soft and firm against mine. When he pulled back, he kissed my cheeks, then my eyes and forehead. “I waited,” he said again. “I waited for you, baby.”

  I leaned away from him and ran my fingertips across the rough stubble on his face. When I moved my hands upward and brushed across some of the scars below his bad eye, my skin tingled. That had never happened before. I glanced at my fingers, then touched his scars again, and the same thing happened.

  My instincts were bothering me in ways I couldn’t explain. My senses, too. The world around me seemed a little too crisp and well-defined. It was like I could sense the breath of the trees and the quiet whisper of the grass, even feel the heat rising from the loam of leaves and dirt and twigs in the clearing. There was a willow close by. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. I could hear the long tendrils of its bent branches singing as it swayed in the soft summer wind. It seemed to be connected to me, even though I had lost my willow charm.

  “I bet my father is pissed,” I muttered, trying to shut out the oddness.

  Darius’s face froze. He kept hold of me, but his fingers dug into my waist a bit too deep. “Trina,” he said.

  He let me go, and I watched the same sadness and worry I had seen in Forest take over his expression. Why was he acting like this? It made no sense. We got in some trouble, and I took a trip to the other side, but we kicked Mahan’s butt, didn’t we?

  Tears formed in the corners of Darius’s eyes, and the fuzzyheadedness I’d had since I got back blinked away, leaving me totally focused and aware.

  The way Forest kept apologizing, and now Darius, too ...

  I waited for you ...

  Panic flickered against my ribs, and I grabbed Darius’s arm. Truth and consequences. I had been to the other side and come back again. When I had left, it was fall. Now it was summer.

  I had gone through time with Forest.

  No.

  “Where’s Jessie?” I glanced around to see if the lanky redhead might come striding out of the forest. “Darius, where is he?”

  More panic clawed at me, this time sharper.

  “Indiana,” Darius said. “With his wife and kids.”

  My mouth fell open.

  No!

  Darius didn’t look any older. Time couldn’t have—

  “I’m not aging as fast as most people,” he said, as if he could read my thoughts. He pointed to his white eye. “Levi figures it was the damage, that I’ll be like him now, getting old so slowly it’s hard to notice. You hadn’t aged, so you’ll probably be the same way.”

  Wife. Kids. I hugged myself and tried to tune Darius out. Jessie’s old enough to be married. To have children.

  How long? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  Darius tried to get his arms around me, but I stepped away from him and shook my head. Time had passed, time had slipped. I needed to ask.

 
When I lifted my face and met his gaze, my chin was trembling. “Your mother?”

  Slowly, he shook his head. “She’s gone, baby. Last year. Diabetes finally got her.”

  My knees went watery, and Darius had to catch me. He held on, pressing me to him, saying nothing, not even trying to make it okay or make it go away, because he couldn’t.

  He had waited for me. Time had passed, and Darius had waited. He was still here. He was still mine.

  But ...

  I was vaguely aware of Forest coming closer, and Levi. I had so many questions, but I didn’t want to know the answers to any of them.

  I let Darius go and faced the three of them. Forest looked so miserable, I knew she already knew everything.

  Dread was turning me to ice. I felt suddenly tired, like I hadn’t slept in years, and I hurt inside and out.

  “Take me to my father,” I said.

  Levi was the only one who seemed to be able to meet my eyes. He put out his hand, and I took it. His fingers seemed thin and too warm, and power crackled between us. Colors shifted across my knuckles, and Levi lifted one black eyebrow but he didn’t let me go.

  Without saying a word, Levi led me slowly through the trees, with Darius and Forest following quietly behind us. We went past the bell tower. Imogene stood on the steps in a dress that looked like something from Little House on the Prairie, her expression a mix of relief and sorrow.

  We got into a sleek-looking black truck with vanity plates—Darius 2—and left the grounds of Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital.

  The drive didn’t take long, but then, I had known it wouldn’t.

  When I first saw the wheelchair by the stone bench, I thought it was Ms. Hyatt. Then my brain and emotions caught up with reality and I ran forward, knelt on the grass beside Addie, ran my fingers across her knobby, arthritic knees, and wrapped my arms around her neck.

  She hugged me back so tightly I could hardly breathe, and we didn’t move for a long, long time. When she finally pulled away from me and studied my face, I was shocked at the lines around her eyes, the wrinkles on her forehead, and the way her sweetsmelling hair had gone silver. It was still short and curly and perfectly tended, and her smile was still wide and white, even when it was sad like this.