My rushing thoughts are dulled by the roll and crash of Jonas’s ancient chant, directed at Vee with every spare scrap of energy he can muster. She relaxes like she’s under the spell of a skilled masseuse, rolls her shoulders and moans. “Mmm. I have no idea what you’re doing, but please keep doing it.” After another minute of his low, deep chants, it seems like she’s sleeping on her feet.
I wave my hand in front of Vee’s face and shoot Jonas a wary, questioning look. You could bounce a quarter off his smile. “She’s sleeping. Kind of. She’ll sleep a ton, and when she wakes up, this will all be really fuzzy.”
I wrap my arms around him slowly, carefully. “Thank you. For everything.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Don’t thank me just yet. There’s a ton of cleanup to do, and I need to get busy.” He looks into the corner, and tenses, pushing me back slightly.
“What is it?” I ask, looking where he’s focused. Then I see it.
Two red handprints on the wall. And no Magda.
“Where did she go?” I whisper, a chill running through me.
“I have no idea.” Jonas’s words are a stark lie. I know it. I can tell. But it’s a lie I’m willing to live with right now, when I need the cushion of a few lies to soften the hard crack of my current reality.
Chapter 29
Bestemor lies in the middle of a webbed maze of blipping, beeping monitors and machines that would have pissed her off to no end, pre-coma. These were added to her room after a steady stream of priests, priestesses, mediums, shamans, healers, herbalists, doctors, and specialists shrugged their shoulders and told us they had no idea what was wrong with her.
At first I stomped my feet over all the nursing-homish medical stuff, but I finally agreed when it occurred to me that Bestemor might hate it so much that she’d miraculously wake up just to order us to get all the clutter out of her bedroom.
It didn’t work.
Of course.
So I try the old soap opera trick of sitting by her side, holding her hand, waiting for her to wake up and just be fine.
Fine. Like my life, now at a level of normal that’s the best it can be.
As in, I hang out with Vee and put up with Zivalus. I’m struggling through my schoolwork at home, since I’m still suffering from some faux illness on paper. Sakura is off terrorizing the Pacific, I guess. Mom and Dad and I live together in the little half-falling down house that I’ve been waiting for them to come back to all my life. And Jonas?
I have to skip Jonas for this second.
Gorgeous, loyal Loki sleeps curled in a ball at night and trails me like a shadow all day. I wish, I want, I desire, and it all blooms into being like the unbelievable peek of spring flowers before the last of the snow has completely melted away.
Every wish of mine is answered except one.
I’m holding her hand, willing her pale skin back to pink. Her lips look painfully chapped, so I grab a pot of cherry lipgloss from my pocket and make two shiny swipes on her lifeless mouth.
No! Not lifeless.
Just paused. Just slightly paused until we can push play, and it will be better than before. Loki naps on the floor under Bestemor’s elevated hospital bed, and I run a foot over her fur, scratching behind one soft ear with my big toe. She rolls closer to me in her sleep.
My mother’s footfalls break my vigil. I’m still getting used to having her so close so often. I once bought this fantastic jacket because it was on sale. It was also a size too small. No matter how much I wanted it to fit and look amazing, there was always this tightness in my elbows or squeeze in my shoulders that kept me from being able to really enjoy wearing it.
My mother’s presence is exactly what I always wanted, and something I just can’t get comfortable in.
“Any changes?” She sits on the edge of the bed, and, even though she’s Bestemor’s daughter, I feel a twinge of territorial aggression.
“Nothing. Do you think it’s a spell?” My fingernails bite into my palm at the thought that Hina cast something complicated and died before it could be undone.
“Your father doesn’t think so.” She wraps her arms around herself. “Um, Wren?” Her voice pulls out all the consonants of my name. “We need to talk. About the powers you unleashed with Magda and Hina.”
The bite of my fingernails doesn’t just hurt my palm. My fingertips are still sore and scabbed, yellowing with aging bruises and stitched here and there by my father while my mother watched with big, scared cornflower eyes.
“Yeah. It got pretty out of hand. I won’t be doing that again.” I have no idea if that’s true, but I really don’t want to discuss it with my mother. Usually she backs off when I placate her, but this time she keeps nosing in.
“The thing is, you’ve opened something. It’s not just going to be put back in. You accessed a rage-based set of shields, a set that no one since our oldest ancestors has ever attempted to use. I had a feeling you might be able to unlock them, which is why I pushed you to learn the classical shields, the ones based off of calm and love.” She presses her thumb and index finger to the bridge of her nose. “Of course, as usual, it was too little too late. That seems to be the theme of my mothering, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not something anyone knew much about,” I offer clumsily. “And, look, about your motherhood theme or whatever. When I was younger, I was really mad at you for running out. But now, I’m almost the same age you were when you had me. So I want you to know, I get it. I get how overwhelming having a kid must have been. And how you and Dad were really kids yourself and all that. So, forget it, okay? Not worth beating yourself up over.” I feel like I should give her an ‘atta boy’ pat on the back. We officially have the most awkward mother-daughter relationship in the history of time.
The light behind her tiny smile is a nightlight’s worth glowing over all our gloom, but it flickers in the brightness of some realization. “Thank you for that. Honestly, it means so much to me to hear that. But I can’t accept your forgiveness, because my being young didn’t have anything to do with why I left you.” She gets up and looks out into Bestemor’s pathetically overgrown garden. I tried to help it, I really did. But I have a black thumb. “You painted a picture of this garden in third grade.”
“Yep.” I slap my hands on my knees. “It went to some state art show and disappeared. How did you even know about it?”
“Because I went to the art show and took it.” She leans one hip on the window sill and draws a finger over the condensation her breath makes on the glass. “I keep it by my bed. It’s the very first thing I look at when I wake up.”
An ember is lodged under my breastplate. “You got that painting?” My mouth wobbles, but I refuse, I refuse to get all teary over this sappy story. “Funny. You didn’t come see me in third grade. Or fourth. Wait a minute.” I shake a finger at her. “You did come that year. You borrowed a ton of money off Bestemor and we couldn’t go on our camping trip. I went to Disney with Vee’s family because they paid for the whole thing.”
“There’s a reason. It wouldn’t have made any sense to explain it before.” She’s drawn a tiny heart on the fogged up window, and I have the childish urge to get up and swipe it away.
She goes quiet for so long, I wonder if she’ll tell me. I can just head hop. I can look inside and see exactly what she’s not telling me. But in the middle of this bottom-of-the-barrel action nosedive I’ve been on, I want to at least not cross this line. What I saw in Vee’s head distorted things just enough that what we had is definitely gone. I’m okay with it, because Vee and I will grow into something new together. Still.
“You need to know.” Her voice is chirpy. She wipes under her eyes with her finger and takes one of those long zen breaths. “Ryuu and I were so in love. Everyone warned us that our powers might not work together, but, you have no idea, sweetie. Your dad was the first person who ever challenged me. He was the first guy who didn’t fall for a single one of my tricks, refused to play any of my games, and he respecte
d me. When we found out we were pregnant, we were so happy. Totally happy.” She says it with the kind of forced conviction that lets me know she’s either lying or isn’t telling me the whole truth. “Your dad and I felt like we were proving everyone wrong. Everyone who said you couldn’t cross those ancient lines of magic, they were going to be jealous of our little family.” She dams up her sob pretty quickly, but it’s pressing on her. “Even though your father and I didn’t mess each other up, something happened when I was pregnant with you.”
“Me?” I take Bestemor’s hand in mine and squeeze hard. I’d been picturing this rosy little family portrait, with me the perfect adorable baby in the center. Was I more like the heinous seedling of disaster? “What was up with me?”
She twists her hands and paces a little. “Babies are creatures of pure need. That’s what they are. You have to teach a baby to love. At first, it just needs. It can’t help itself.”
“I get it.” She’s rambling like a madwoman. My foot is tapping, my stomach is churning, I am dying to know and simultaneously wish it never came up. “What happened?”
“You’re a very powerful witch.” There’s pride in her voice, and also a little shaky awe. “Even in utero. You had a draw that was sapping. All babies do that. Sap their mother’s energy, sap nutrition. That’s how they grow and survive. But you were sapping my powers.”
It clicks into place. “Ah. And the great shieldmaiden didn’t want to give up her bobles for a baby? I get it.”
“You don’t get a thing!” The sharp snap of her words shuts me up. She twists the hem of her shirt like kid would, and she’s back there in her head, reliving it all in front of me. “We went to everyone we could think, every ancient healer and shaman and priestess we could find. You were gathering toxic amounts of magic from me, and it was going to kill you. No life form that tiny could hold it all. People said—” A sob hiccups out of her throat, and her next words are a low, furious whisper. “People said it would work out on its own. My powers would eventually kill you. You’d die, and my body would reabsorb what I’d lost. Some people were even happy for me. I’d get your latent witch powers.” Her mouth twists. “I was not letting that happen. Absolutely not. Then your grandmother had an idea.”
“What?” I say it too low for her to hear, but she’s bulldozing full speed ahead anyway.
“Your grandmother had a handle on the ancient art of draw blocking. Most people don’t understand that it’s about severing this web of connection between two people. Really, it’s like locking each person in her own bubble, untouchable to the other person. It’s very dangerous, and the risk of side effects is enormous and very real. And that’s when we’re talking about two adults. You were my own child, Wren. My own baby.” Tears are pouring out of her eyes, but she’s talking around them, around all the ugly pain of this whole thing.
“You loved me?” It’s a stupid question, the question of a little kid who wants her mommy to reassure her that she’s got a place in the world.
“I loved you so much, I was willing to lose everything for you.” My mother’s voice is a mix of fury and complete devotion. “My mother severed me from myself. She cut me off from my own heart, sealed every emotion I’d been feeling inside of me so I couldn’t connect with you. Once the connection was broken, you stopped drawing my powers, and you were healthy and perfect.” She puts her hand on the flat, toned stomach that was once round with a baby. With me. “Healthy and perfect, and I was absolutely useless to you.” She looks down at her hands and the tears splash on the skin. “My mother froze me solid, Wren. I looked at you the day you were born, and I felt nothing. Looking at the face of my own baby, I felt nothing at all. I felt empty.”
The words are arrows shot straight into my aching heart, and I press my hand to my ribs, shocked to feel the steady drum. For a second I was sure I’d feel some kind of sputter or death rattle. A pierced heart, hemorrhaging blood, shouldn’t beat with such happy, healthy regularity. “Nothing?”
She has a doll’s face; wide-eyed and sweet mouthed, and now I get it. Now I understand that she’s been without emotions for so long, she just stayed young and innocent. “I couldn’t. If I connected with you when you were still forming, we’d be right back where we started. The draw would begin again, your system would overload, and you’d meltdown. We tried, every few years, to see if I could be around you. But I was so distant anyway, and you were so impressionable. Your love sucked at the block, weakened it every time. I had to leave again, had to protect you.” She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. “It was an empty, soulless life, Wren. I poured myself into other people, trying to fill this void I couldn’t understand. Because even though my heart had memories of you, the block meant that I kept forgetting.”
I get up so fast, I knock the chair over and it crashes into some of the delicate equipment hooked up to Bestemor.
I take a few deep, long breaths so I can regain some kind of balance. I get it. It’s fact, it’s truth, it’s what I needed to hear for years.
But it feels like I’ve just been jumped-in by the most brutal gang in the world, and this initiation beating is going to leave scars that will never fade.
“Wren.” My mother’s voice tries to hug me close. She holds her hands out, then clasps them back. “I know it’s a lot to take in. But now that you’ve accepted your powers, now that you have control over what you do, we can be together. Your grandmother started to remove the blocks before she got too ill. I know I haven’t been perfect, but I’ve been trying so damn hard, honey. It kills me that I lost that time with you, but I had no choice.”
I’m flattened against the wall like a lizard. “I understand.” I smooth my voice out. “I do. And I’m not mad, okay? I’m not. I can kind of grasp this. But I can’t deal with it. I’m going out for a while. Don’t come running after me. Okay?”
“Wren. Baby.” She presses her knuckles to her lips before I slide out the door, leaving Loki whining at Bestemor’s side, and run away from her, away from the story of my birth and how I destroyed everything everywhere, even the purest form of love. What kind of fucked up creature can’t accept a mother’s love?
I try to make peace with the fact that I am a fundamentally and irrevocably flawed.
Chapter 30
Burning the corpse of a murdered witch is the kind of activity that should unite two people on some kind of higher level. But it wound up being the last act of mayhem that broke the camel’s back for me and Jonas. It’s been two weeks sans socialization.
I run past my truck. It’s operational, but so are my legs, and I need to burn through this wild, scratching disconnect that’s pelting at me. I run the two miles it takes to get to the toolshed on the Brewster’s property, which Jonas is currently renting so he can put some distance between himself and his increasingly crazy family, who’ve been in a tailspin since Magda went certifiably missing.
His truck is out front with pieces all over the driveway, and he’s underneath it in a pair of dirty jeans and a tight, grease-stained, torn t-shirt. And, as I’m grappling with the forlorn terror of knowing that I have been unlovable since pre-birth, I take a moment to drink in his pure masculine beauty.
“Wren?” He stops wrenching or whatever he’s doing and slides out from under the truck. He has this gentle concerned look around me now, like I’m a china doll in perpetual free-fall off a high shelf. It’s like the boy didn’t witness me explode toxic power from my bleeding fingers and save our little world.
“Jonas.” I planned to pin a smile on, but I’m a little fumbly with faux facial accessories today. The raw pain of my mother’s confession finally trips me at the ankles, and I grab onto Jonas before my inevitable long, hard tumble to the ground.
I smell the familiar bite of motor oil and feel the sweet pressure of his arms, but the next ten minutes are a hazy flood of tears and may or may not have contained the following words: Rosemary’s Baby, demon spawn, half-Asian child of the corn.
Though I’m baring my s
oul, Jonas is full of chuckles. His hand smoothes over my hair. “Shh. C’mon, that’s crazy, Wren. You’re completely lovable.”
“Vee hasn’t been returning my calls!” I wail like a four-year-old getting dragged from the candy aisle.
“Vee is on that band trip in Europe. I’m sure connections are spotty.” His hands fall to my shoulders and he kneads them like I’m his star athlete and he’s warming me up.
“I have no other friends,” I fish, hoping it doesn’t sound like I’m fishing.
“I’m your friend.” The words are immediate with a soft, clear ring of truth.
“I’m dangerous for you to be around.” That warning sounds a little less serious since my nose is clogged from crying, but it’s still true.
His hands go still on my shoulders, and his face is all flat lines. “You’re not any more dangerous than any other supernatural person would be. Anyway, I like living on the edge.”
“You haven’t returned my calls.” There were only two and one text message, because I’m not a desperate lunatic. But all unreturned.
Jonas runs his hands through his hair and blows a long breath from between his lips. “You want to go inside? I need a break anyway, and I can make you lunch.”
“Are you sure?” Two phone calls and one message over the course of two weeks are nothing to be embarrassed about. A two mile sprint and subsequent emotional breakdown just might be dipping my baby toe in the pool of utter hopeless desperation.
“Positive. I’m offering to make you lunch. Trust me. It means I want you around.” He leads me into his space, which is really just a swept-out shed with a mattress on the floor, some clothes folded and piled in the corner, a “kitchen” that consists of a hotplate, a tiny sink, and a mini fridge, and a bathroom that looks clean and scrubbed, but bare and industrial.
I sit on the mattress and watch Jonas pull bread out of one of three minute cabinets and butter and cheese out of the mini fridge. He turns and says, “I’d like to offer you a drink, but all I have here is water.”
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