They lost that round. Jade rotated in again. She did her best, making more mistakes than usual. At least they won. She was returning with her team to the locker room when Zach ran across the gym, “Hey, Jade?”
Snapping out of her reverie, she blinked, “What?”
“Next Saturday is a home game. I thought maybe we could go out to Red’s Steakhouse for dinner?” Zach was wearing a button-up short-sleeve shirt and new jeans. Jade tilted her head. This was a first. She was actually being asked out on a date. Zach’s cheeks started to flush the longer he stood waiting for an answer.
Jade was flustered. She looked around as if he was talking to someone nearby and said, “Me?”
Zach had an extra long bit of hair for bangs that hung a bit over his eyes. It made him look cute. He blurted out, “If you want. I mean, if you’re up for it. I don’t want to get in the middle of any plans or anything.”
Jade wiped the sweat from her palms onto her shorts and then realized how stupid that probably looked. She said, “No. No plans. I mean, I’d love to go to dinner with you next Saturday.”
If anything Zach looked terrified at her agreement. He squeaked, “Really? That’s great. I’ll see you then. I’ll wait for you outside the gym in between the two doors after your game next week.”
She said, “Sounds great!” Jade’s teammates were long gone, having bustled into the locker room without waiting.
She chanced a single look back before fleeing inside. Zach was walking away, his vivid blue shirt crisp and new. He dressed up for her. Jade slid through the door. A random thought occurred to her. Maybe it was a prank. Maybe he was going to stand her up while laughing with his buddy out of sight. Just like Tom Peters did in seventh grade.
Maybe he lost a bet.
Jade had a hard time believing that Zach really wanted to date her. Maybe it wasn’t a date…maybe. Maybe it was. Jade pulled her kneepads down and leaned on the counter, looking at herself in the mirror.
The girls were all changing in the locker room, removing shorts and pulling on jeans. Jade could stare into the mirror all she wanted and the view would never change. When she looked into the mirror, Jade saw ugly—too big a nose, too strong a jaw, brown hair that didn’t match her mothers or her sisters for that matter.
She grabbed a bench and quickly untied her sneakers, yanking them off. Some of the girls were already dressed. It wouldn’t do to keep the bus waiting. Scrambling to catch up, Jade was grateful for the girls who had to take one last minute to tease their hair in the mirror. Even though she normally watched them with one part jealous and two parts impatience, today she was glad. She pulled on her t-shirt and then rushed to get her street shoes on.
Jade felt a little awe as she picked up her bag.
She had a date.
Chapter 4
~~ Jade ~~
When Jade walked through the door, the house was quiet in a weird way. Everyone was on edge. At least the house smelled warm and inviting with the scent of garlic and spaghetti sauce in the air. Jade’s stomach growled.
Aunt Bertha suggested dinner in front of the television which was so out of character that Claire said, “The television? Are you sick?”
Aunt Bertha laughed, but Jade thought she looked a little panicked when she said, “I think we could use a change of pace.”
She was hiding something. Something huge. Aunt Bertha didn’t want a family discussion because she was afraid of giving something away. Jade said, “What is it? Did you hear something about Mom?”
Mindy was playing with an hourglass, moving sand up and down, up and down. It was a game that fascinated her for hours. She looked up sharply. Jade bit her lip. She should have known better than to say anything in front of Mindy. Mostly she forgot Mom, but when she remembered and wanted her, Mindy would cry for hours.
Aunt Bertha leaned against one of the kitchen room chairs, “No, of course not. I would tell you.”
“Okay,” Jade thought about asking what Mindy would do for dinner. She imagined the carpet covered in spaghetti sauce, but one look at Bertha’s pale face and the way her hand shook as she clutched her cane and Jade decided against it.
“How’d the game go?” Claire asked.
“We won,” No thanks to me. Jade thought.
“Cool.”
Jade knew she had to tell her sisters about Zach, the sooner the better. She expected merciless teasing to follow when she said, “I have a date next week after volleyball.” She meant it to sound casual, but Jade winced at the excitement in her own voice.
“You have to cancel,” Raven said. Her normally straight shiny hair was stringy and unkempt. Jade wondered if her sister even showered that morning when she woke up.
“It’s with Zach.” Jade said as if that would explain why she really really couldn’t cancel.
“We have a family outing planned,” Raven crossed her arms and set her jaw in that way she got when she decided to be intractably stubborn. Jade felt betrayed. After rescuing her sister last night and sacrificing her own sleep and the game for her, Raven didn’t even have the decency to back her up.
“This is the first I heard about an outing,” Jade said, “So, I’m going with Zach after volleyball next week, and that’s that.” It was funny. If Aunt Bertha had brought up the family outing first, Jade might have canceled with Zach. She sometimes had an authority-pleasing mentality.
She recognized it within herself even as she heard Bertha say, “We’re going camping next week. I’ll send notes for you girls to get out of school Monday and Tuesday. Raven, we’ll let your sister go on her date. If we can wait a week, we can wait a few hours.”
“What if I can’t wait a week?” Raven said.
Jade frowned. Why was Raven so frantic about this family trip? And why couldn’t it wait?
Aunt Bertha waved her finger to the empty plates on the counter, “A little help please.”
Raven pushed up from the chair like a lobster just pinched her butt. She wasn’t to be dissuaded. She said, “What if I can’t wait a week?”
Aunt Bertha gripped the chair, and Jade could see that it was a struggle for her to stand upright. She put the plates she had just grabbed down and went to help Bertha to a chair. Bertha smiled at Jade gratefully. She said, “It’s a full moon next week and preparations must be made.”
What she said made no sense to Jade, but must have made sense to Raven because Raven nodded with a pained expression on her face, “Okay. I can wait a week.”
~~ Mindy ~~
It was Saturday night.
Jade was home safe from her game.
Raven was cold and wrong.
Claire was Claire.
Mindy stared at the ceiling. The shadows scared her. The feeling of being watched frightened her. She wanted to wake up Claire and ask for help. To say, “Please, help me.”
Even though Claire no longer teased her like she had before, Claire still didn’t respect Mindy, not enough to believe her when she asked for help.
Earth heard her.
Mindy asked for help.
The Void waited outside.
The Void waited for Raven, guiding her steps.
Raven turned the doorknob.
Mindy screeched and then immediately clapped her own hand against her mouth, her heart beating wildly. She was seven years old. She wasn’t a baby anymore.
She couldn’t wet the bed. She wasn’t a baby.
Earth said, I will hide you.
Mindy rolled off the bed onto the carpet and crawled underneath as Raven stepped into the room. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t there. Mindy reached her arms out to Earth and let herself sink, sink, sink, under the carpet, under the floorboards, down through the basement, down through the Earth.
She couldn’t see what Raven was doing, but Earth could.
Raven tore the garlic down, throwing it to the floor. She grabbed handfuls of silver and sage, bringing the curtain rod down with her.
Claire sat up, “What are you doing?”
But Raven never answered. She just kept tearing at the curtains, mumbling, “Have to find time. Have to find time.”
Mindy sighed with relief. Raven didn’t sense her. She was safe inside Earth. The Void couldn’t see too far into Earth’s depths. The Void and Gravity didn’t get along. The Void could skim along the surface, but couldn’t stay for long and couldn’t go too deep.
When Claire started screaming, “What are you doing?” Jade came running. She turned on the lights.
That woke Raven. Raven blinked twice and then looked down at her hands. A thing trail of blood ran down her palm. She shook her head, a confused look on her face.
~~ Raven ~~
Seeing the blood, Raven’s first thought was that she had killed someone in her sleep. “Jade? I don’t know what happened.”
She felt lost, confused. Claire sat on her bed, wide-eyed and staring at Raven like she had grown a second head. Jade stood in a long t-shirt and pajama bottoms, with bed-head hair. “I think you were sleepwalking. You’re bleeding.”
Raven held her hand up. A drop of blood dripped onto the carpet. She shook her head, “I don’t remember coming in here. I don’t understand.”
Claire piped up, “You were ripping down Aunt Bertha’s protections and then you started at the curtains. I was afraid you were going to go through the wall.”
“Where’s Mindy?” Jade stepped toward her youngest sister’s bed.
Claire said, “It’s okay. I saw her crawl under the bed before Raven came in. I thought she was going to start screaming the way she does when she hides, but she stayed quiet as a mouse. She’s probably listening to us now.”
Jade sighed. Well, if Mindy was settled, she could take care of Raven. Sometimes she felt more like a mother than a sister. Maybe that was just what happened to older sisters when they turned into teenagers and had younger siblings. She said, “Let’s get you bandaged up.”
Raven never seemed as needy as she did at the moment when she followed Jade meekly to the bathroom. When they were out of earshot, she whispered, “Jade, it wanted me to grab Mindy. I saw the blood and I thought…”
Raven choked up on the words. While she was sleepwalking, she had seen both sisters and the Void implanted a violent urge within her to take Mindy. The memory came back as a realistic dream. She was to pull down the garlic, the silver, and the sage protection and then take Mindy to the Void. Raven told Jade what she had intended.
“You are being controlled?” Jade remembered the frosty fingers on her temples, the cold presence in her mind forcing itself through her memories. She shivered at the thought of the creature being permanently lodged in her head.
Raven turned on the water and held her hand under the faucet, watching the red wash down the drain. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Yes.”
Jade grabbed the Band-Aids out of the cabinet. “Why would the Void be after Mindy?”
“They haven’t touched her yet. It knows the rest of us don’t have the gift of Time. Mindy is the only one untested.” Raven leaned against the counter, staring at herself in the mirror. She leaned forward, checking her eyes to see if she could find that cold presence.
There was nothing there.
Jade glanced over Raven’s shoulder to the empty hall, “Is Mindy safe?”
Raven took a deep breath, holding it for a moment before she expelled in a huff, “I think so, but she’s…yes, she’s safe for now. She’s hiding.”
Raven’s eyes had dark circles under them, made all the more prominent by the color of her hair. Looking in the mirror, she saw a haunted girl. Haunted. Hunted. A hunted girl. Raven squeezed her eyes shut and focused on breathing. Aunt Bertha said that when she started to feel her soul go cold to breathe in, breathe out. The spirit that warms the universe would warm her breath.
Jade took her hand.
Raven was so out of it, she didn’t even feel. She was just breathing.
The goop from the tube felt cool and smelled like eucalyptus. Jade smoothed it over Raven’s hand like she was a child. Raven remembered Jade doing the same thing for Mindy. She said, “You’ll make a great mother someday.”
“Thanks,” Jade murmured. She kind of thought she made a great mother now.
“I’m lost,” Raven admitted. She didn’t mean to say the words aloud. She was just trying to hold it together.
Jade squeezed Raven’s shoulder, “One day at a time,”
Raven nodded, the ragged edges of her thoughts barely focused enough for the moment. “I’m going to bed. Can you check on Mindy? And make sure those protections are back up. They are important. I’m not sure why, but the Void can’t come into the house without them.”
Jade walked her sister back to their room. “I will. Get some sleep. You look terrible.”
Sisterly love. Raven gave a sarcastic, “Thanks.”
That was when Claire screamed.
~~ Claire ~~
Claire closed the door behind Jade and Raven. The night light cast a cheerful little glow around the room, dispelling some of the gloom. Mindy hid beneath her bed. Claire thought about coaxing her out. At least Mindy wasn’t making any noise.
The huge swath of black outside the window made it look like a gaping mouth. Claire inched forward on the bed. She didn’t want to look outside, but it seemed important. Vital. Claire settled her foot on the floor.
The carpet welcomed her foot, the window not so much. Claire’s fear grew as she thought of all of that emptiness outside, all of that darkness, and the certainty that something was waiting for her.
Inching toward the window, Claire’s heart beat faster. The pile of curtains made a small dark shadow next to the window. It looked menacing.
Help me.
Claire thought the words as she reached the window, gazing into the darkness. She wasn’t sure what she expected to see. Her face reflected back from the pane like a ghost haunting the window. Claire thought about putting the curtain rod with the blinds and the curtains back up. They lived out in the boonies. There was probably nothing out there.
Claire leaned against the window, so close her breath fogged up the glass. The window was cold on her fingers and nose. She peered into the darkness, waiting. The night felt pregnant, alive. Claire could see glimpses of trees as giant shadows waving in the breeze, the stars twinkling in the night sky above.
Water spoke. Get back, Claire.
There was just a hint of movement and then a shadowy figure blocked out the stars. Claire jumped back with a scream.
The shadow stepped through the wall. Claire threw herself on the carpet, her hands scrabbling to find the charms her aunt had hung on the wall. Her hand closed on a clove of garlic and one of those little cloth bags. She held it up, her hand extended out pushing it in the creature’s face.
The Servant of the Void recoiled, moving back against the wall. It tried to step sideways. Claire moved to meet it. She said, “You’re not getting past me, Eraser-face,”
Jade ran into the room. Raven was right behind.
Claire yelled, “Grab the little bags Aunt Bertha made. It hates those.”
Raven grabbed her head and sank to her knees. Through clenched teeth she gasped, “It wants me to find Mindy, to deliver her to it.”
“Where is Mindy?” Jade asked. She flipped on the light.
Claire had that kind of magical thinking that expected the Servant of the Void to disappear the minute the light turned on. And it did….sort of. The Void monster faded, but it was still substantial. The Void faced Raven, ignoring Claire and Jade. Feeling braver, Claire thrust the hand holding the bag of Aunt Bertha’s charms in front of its face.
The shadowy figure smiled.
A featureless face should not be able to smile. As if the creature was a Mr. Potatohead, a wicked smile with teeth too sharp to be human, too numerous to be polite spread across the blank face of the Void’s servant.
Claire felt her hand go numb as it brushed against the Void. The bag dropped. The creature threw her back. She tumbled, h
itting the corner of her bed before smacking her elbow against the floor. The cold spread down her hand and along her side.
Jade picked her up, “Are you okay?”
Claire said, “Fine. How do we get it out of here?”
Raven crawled past them, reaching under Mindy’s bed. Jade grabbed Raven’s arm, “What are you doing?”
Claire wanted to throw up when she noticed that the eyes were missing from Raven’s face, as if she were slowly being eaten by the void. That feeling of sickness hung in her stomach, the feeling like she might barf. She wanted to cry. Raven didn’t even look like herself without eyes. Her nose was still there. Her mouth was pursed in a terrible frown. But she had no eyes.
Jade grabbed Raven by the shoulders and physically hauled her away from the bed, “Raven. Stop! You’re turning into one of them.
Claire pulled apart a garlic clove while Jade and Raven struggled. She thought maybe garlic would bring her back. Raven tore herself out of Jade’s grip with a shriek. She ignored Jade and dove for the underside of the bed, sliding under before Jade could stop her.
“Mindy? Are you okay?” Claire shouted. She couldn’t see under the bed. She couldn’t hear a fight or Mindy crying. She couldn’t hear anything.
Raven crawled back out. Now her nose was missing to. Facing Jade, she demanded, “Where is your sister?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Claire asked. She had managed to get the delicate sheath off of the garlic clove.
Turning to her younger sister, Void-Raven said, “Yes, I would,”
Claire rarely got into fights with Raven. First of all, Raven fought dirty. Second of all, Raven fought to win. Raven was tough. Claire knew when Void-Raven turned on her that the Void had carefully selected this particular sister to do their bidding. Jade would have fought them with her goodness. Claire was too weak. But Raven…she was the perfect choice. Not so good as to have the moral fiber to resist, not so weak to be useless once they took her.
A Time to Die (Elemental Rage Book 2) Page 4