I just listened because my throat had suctioned together as my emotions started to rise again.
“Then I found mine. The names were different. They weren’t the right name. So, I was like…well…I’m going to find my Dad. I wanted to see his face. See if I looked like him. See if it was real.”
It hit me again. I mean. We were idiots.
“Gods, Bran. We don’t even look alike. And we don’t look like Daddy or Mother.” I sniffed and shuffled and tried to bury it all inside my mind. But that was a war I lost.
“I know,” Bran said. “Your dad is half-Asian. I googled him. Maybe I stalked him a little bit.”
I didn’t want to know that. I didn’t want an explanation for my thick length of black hair or my slightly-tilted dark eyes. My willowy body. We were stupid.
“Oh my Hecate,” I said as the amount of stupid I was hit me again. I wasn’t clearly Asian. But I was certainly genetically ambiguous, and I had just figured I looked like a great-aunt or something. I hadn’t ever put the pieces together even though I saw them in the mirror every damn day.
“So, I went to Portland. I saw my dad and it was obvious. I have his nose and his freckles. I look just like him. He’s even little. And I couldn’t deal with that, so I wandered. And then I found this tour of the Underground Portland, and I saw…shiz. Rue, I met some people. I was mad. I went on this adventure. I knew if Mother sensed me, she’d sense like…motorcycles and drinking and other stupid stuff. She’d get so angry. She’d be breathing fire furious. And then, she’d feel some of what I was feeling. It wasn’t supposed to end like this—”
I took a breath and sat up. Focus on this. Focus on now. Put the rest away. Tuck it away in the same place where you keep wondering just what happened to Chrysie when the dark witch had her and the sight of Professor Lechner’s remains sprayed across her office and…shut it down, Rue. Shut it down and girl up.
“So, there was this treasure. And this hunt. And witch stuff. And spells. And we have that damn arsenal. And I was good. I mean…I’m not you or Mother, but I’m not terrible despite what Mother says.”
Bran wasn’t. I sniffed, nodded, and said, “You’re a good witch.”
If my statement sounded tired, it was. I had, after all, said it a hundred times. A thousand.
“We found it.”
“The treasure?”
She nodded and shivered, “It was cursed. It was haunted. I’m haunted. They let me come along because they needed an idiot witch to trip the curse and that was me. Then they left me haunted and it took me a while to find myself again. Once I did, I decided on what to do about Daddy and Mother. But while I did it, I kept losing time. And things happened.”
“Things like what?”
“Let’s just say it’s good Mother never let us have pets.”
Well that made me want to puke.
“Yeah,” she said. “It was so stupid. The arsenal didn’t do me any good. But I didn’t care at first because I didn’t care about what happened. Only, what’s happening is terrifying. And I can’t stop it. And I need help.”
“And I’m a necromancer,” I said, suddenly understanding why she’d come. She couldn’t ask Mother. Not now. Not after this.
Bran nodded. She paused and fought her next statement, but I had, after all, truth serumed her. Or maybe that really was gone and she just knew it was past time to tell the truth. “I think it might be ghosts or something to do with ghosts. Your—what shall we call him? Bio-dad? Sperm Donor? I don’t know, but I know he’s a necromancer too.”
That made me pause and calculate. The part of me that wanted to be like Daddy was disgusted by the reasoning of my mother. I bet…gods…I bet she bred me. I bet she chose my bio-dad like a prime stud.
I knew that Bran had figured it out too. It was why she’d told me about the sperm donor. It was why the tone of her voice had changed when she’d said it. She knew how Mother thought. After all—we two were snakes, just like our mother.
“We should road-trip to see him,” Bran said.
“I don’t want too.”
“Girl up, whiny witch.”
I scowled at her, but she couldn’t see me in the darkness.
“I need to punch something,” I said.
So bad. So hard. I needed to punch something. Everything. I needed to set something on fire. And scream. Scream for so long and deep that I forgot how to talk. I needed…I needed this to be a lie. But it wasn’t—I had made that certain with the truth serum. I had dosed my sister. I knew truth when I heard it, and it was as if she’d told me something I’d always known but forgotten.
There was this opening chasm in my head—where the bio-dad and gods…gods…did I have other siblings? Did I have brothers or sisters? People who had been raised by real humans instead of monsters in human form? What were they like? What were their names? Would I like them? Would they like me? Would they hate me for what my mother had done?
I didn’t see how they couldn’t. I hated myself and everything that my birth and family represented.
“Let’s run,” I said.
Bran rose wordlessly and ran beside me. I had learned to run far and fast because of her—for once, she was running with me rather than the other way around. For once, I was the one who was escaping my life and she was the one who was letting me know that I’d never get away from her.
I ran until it hurt my sides. I ran until my feet felt numb. Until there was nothing but the pound, pound, pound of my feet against the pavement and the burning rush of breath in my lungs and mouth. I ran until I couldn’t hear anything but the sound of my blood and the wind in my ears. And when I finally stopped, I didn’t know where I was, but it wasn’t far enough away.
I hadn’t brought my phone, I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew that the sun was rising and school would start soon and I had exams in my World Lit and Guitar for Beginners classes.
* * * * *
I hated World Lit. We’d read some stupid story about a guy who took a boat into the heart of Africa and went weird on the way. Natives starved in that book and no one seemed to care. I didn't want that in my head. We read a story about a dude who was turned into a cockroach. I wasn’t sure what the point was, but we’d read an abridged version and it was still far too long.
Guitar, however, I loved, and my fingers were caressing the strings, I was focusing on the sounds they made and ignoring everything else that had been dumped on me when a familiar voice snapped me out of my reverie.
On my kindest days, I rarely wanted to see Finn. He was the golden boy of my family’s council and genuinely good while also—somehow—being a jerk at the same time.
He followed his greeting with my name and I did my best to prevent a scowl from forming as he sat in an empty chair next to me. He wasn’t in this class, so he’d tracked me down. Like the good little errand boy he was. He was movie-star handsome, dedicated to helping others, and the captain of the team of do-gooders who were trying to fill the supernatural role of the Keeper of the St. Angelus Thinning. I hated him. Kind of passionately. And, I kind of respected him more than I could say. His team was trying—and failing—to keep ghosts from feeding off the living and necromancers from abusing ghosts. But they were trying, and it was a thankless job that ended in early death as far as I could tell.
“Hey Finn,” I said, surprising myself and—I thought—him when my voice sounded nice.
“So…have you heard from your mom?”
My eye twitched and the boiling rage came back.
“Do you mean has my mother released her hold on the Talisman of the St. Angelus Thinning so another keeper can be called to duty? I’m not talking to her, but given my sister bound Mother’s magic for several months, I doubt it.”
His face showed his frustration, and I didn’t think he was wrong to be frustrated. My mother had been evil when she’d decided to take the role of Keeper of the Thinning and then run. It was one thing to try to break her hold on the Talisman—and I think she probably tried
. Maybe. But she hadn’t been successful, and I don’t think she was unaware that she failed. Yet she’d let decades pass without doing a thing. It was a nasty move and a lot of people had been hurt because of it. She didn’t seem to care.
She was a snake. It had been thoroughly established time and again.
“Why would your sister do that when we need your mom to release the talisman.”
“She had good reason,” I said flatly. Obviously, I wasn’t telling Finn why.
“I don’t know how you can say that. People are dying.”
“I know,” I said. I couldn’t care right then. I should care, but we’d established I was a snake. I was doing what I could.
Not every part of the world had a thinning between the world of the dead and the living. But the Presidium—who were sort of like the police of supernaturals—had set up keepers of the active thinnings a long time ago. Before the states were settled, keepers had existed. It was this supernatural calling that protected the living and the dead.
My sister, Bran, was 17. She didn’t know what she had done by blocking my mother. She couldn’t have known how bad things could be in St. Angelus. And even if she had been, she had done what was just and right in her situation. That was important. But—there it was justice for our Daddy. Everyone else here who Bran didn’t know and didn’t care about suffered. Such was life.
Finn shoved his fingers through his hair and clearly bit back his anger before he carefully said, “The Hallow Family Council wants to meet your sister.”
The guitar professor came into the room and I didn’t succeed in hiding my relief as I said, “Well they know where Hallow House is.”
“They thought you could bring her to the council meeting this evening at eight.”
“I have plans,” I lied and turned to face the front of the room, dismissing Finn with my move.
“You make it hard to like you very much, Rue Hallow,” he said.
“It’s Hallow-Jones,” I replied, claiming my daddy. “And I’m well aware of it.”
Chapter 6
My guitar class let me ignore what had been said except for in powerful jabs that rose up in my mind. I passed my test—barely. I’d have aced it if I had taken it before I found out what happened. And maybe if I had slept last night.
When I left the music building, my sister was out front idling in the station wagon. It was a 1952 Mercury Station Wagon. Given that it was a deep pine green with wood paneling, there was no question that it was mine and not some look alike.
I walked down the stairs. My legs hurt from my long, long run and the lack of sleep. My heart hurt with a hurt so deep, it was hard for me to breathe if I let myself think.
“What are you up to?”
“Get in,” she said. I met her gaze and she stared back at me before she added, “I have burgers and chocolate cheesecake.”
I was bribed. Plus I didn’t want to go home and see Felix and Chrysie’s loving eyes. Loving and sorrowful and sad for me. I couldn’t keep it all buried away if I saw other people caring about it for me. Carefully not asking questions. Silently mourning for me.
I flopped into the passenger seat and said, “The Hallow Family Council wants to meet you.”
“I am sure you know which four-lettered words I have in reply to that.”
She pulled away from the curb as I ignored the food to toss my phone between my hands.
“Just do it,” she said.
I looked at her and back at my phone and at her again.
“Girl up,” she added caustically.
I glanced at her and then out the window before I pushed my mother’s name from my list of contacts.
“Hello, Veruca.”
I didn’t speak. I found there weren’t words for what I had to say, for the feelings roiling inside of me.
“I see that your sister has told you her discovery.”
Bran sent the car towards the freeway. I glanced over at her and then back to the dash. I slipped off my shoes and put my toes up on the ancient wood paneling.
“Do you have nothing to say?” Mother asked. “I am not going to apologize.”
“I would like,” I said carefully, trying to keep back the flood of my emotions, “for it to be untrue.”
“Life is not a fairytale,” she said in that cool, snake voice. “I did what was necessary.”
The flood of rage hit me so hard and fast that I dropped the phone. It was in the 50s outside, but I rolled down the window, put my feet on the corner of the glass, and let the wind blow on me. As I closed my eyes, I said, “I don’t know how this is our life.”
“Other people,” Bran said in a cheery tone that didn’t hide her rage, “have soccer moms. This car smells like death and flowers.”
“Too true,” I said as I unwrapped my burger. She’d gone to my favorite place and bought me one with double cheese, avocado, and bacon. The cheesecake was from a different shop. “Food isn’t going to make me feel better.”
“You won’t eat,” she said as she changed lanes and passed a pack of motorcycles, “if people don’t hand you your favorite things. Not on days like today.”
I would normally have said, ‘Thanks mom’ sarcastically, but I wasn’t that cruel. And that was no longer funny. Before this, I’d been able to convince myself that she loved us and was just broken. In fact…I thought that might still be true. It didn’t matter what her reasoning was—what she had done was so disgustingly wrong that even I didn’t have to think twice about it. And she’d kept doing it. She’d kept him that way. For years and years and years. I was eighteen. Eighteen years of this. Eighteen years stolen. But I couldn’t say any of that. Not right then, so instead, I took a large bite of the food my thoughtless sister had thoughtfully bought for me. And failed at pretending it tasted like anything but ashes.
After a few minutes, my sister said, “Now imagine if I’d brought you a tuna salad sandwich.”
I snorted a humorless sound and closed my eyes, letting the light play across my lids while I refused to think.
“Wakey, wakey,” Bran said cheerily. “Consider this my revenge.”
I opened my eyes, stretching as I moved. I had fallen asleep far harder than I would have thought.
“Sorrrrryyy,” Bran sang as cheerily, “I drugged your drink. And the burger.”
I looked at her and then shrugged. She did owe me one. Then I turned to take a good look out the window. It was a massive brownstone—the kind you saw on TV, with ivy creeping up the side of the building. Little details in the stone work, glass, and wrought iron pronounced its extreme age and the wealth of its inhabitants. You would think, after living in Martha, that the luxuriousness of this mansion wouldn’t intimidate me—but it did. Martha was friendly. She might be big, clearly crafted from skill, and wealth. But she was mine, and her windows glinted when I came home, and her gate opened for me, and anything that was mine would never be as opulent as this monstrosity.
As I watched, a guy a few years my senior jogged up the steps. His hair was long and pulled back into a low ponytail. It was also the exact shade of mine. He was bigger than me in every way, but he had that same, lean, yoga frame.
“His eyes are like yours too,” Bran said quietly. “I got a pic of him from Facebook.”
“I would like to leave now,” I told her.
Bran shook her head, without an ounce of give in her. “Girl up, besides, you have more to see.”
She refused to drive away and I refused to talk to her, so I silently watched out the window while another person—part-asian and slim walked up the steps.
“She looks like you,” Bran said, a little gently. I didn’t look at my sister for the sister across the way. The one who I wouldn’t recognize if we bumped into each other. The one whose name I did not know. The one whose very existence was a stab into my soul.
“Except she has curves,” I replied. She had my lips and my hair—though hers was in a long a-line that was edgy and cooler than I would ever be. “And she’s my age
.”
“Yup,” Bran said. So, my birth father had cheated on the mother of these kids—while his wife was pregnant. Unless they all had different dads. Lovely. It seemed like I came from yet another ‘wonderful’ person.
“I would like to leave now,” I said softly. My fingers touched the window and I stared out at the house, the life, the people that should have been mine. But instead, I’d been taken away from here and raised by someone who had been stolen from his life. And I didn’t regret that difference. I knew, without having to experience the difference, that I had been lucky because I had been given my daddy. It didn't matter that I didn't truly know my birth father. I knew my daddy and recognized all too well that I was lucky to have him.
“There are two more to see,” Bran said without give. “They’ll be along quickly.”
I waited without speaking. What I had done to her with the truth serum was nearly unforgivable. She’d gotten me back good and hard and the only way we’d be leaving is if I wrestled her out of the driver’s seat. But there was that unfortunate fact that she was far more likely to win such an interaction.
“There they are,” Bran said.
I was wooden inside. Feelingless and hollow. The hollow Hallow. That was me. Broken from the truth of my life— a truth that I should have known. Should have long since suspected.
I turned my head, because Bran wouldn’t let me leave if I didn’t. But this time one was looking towards me. She was small—petite with short twin braids of black hair. They ended just above her shoulder on either side of her face. Her dark eyes—mirrors of my own—were a little more tilted than my own. And she was so very sad. Sad inside and when her gaze met mine, I knew it. And I knew she recognized just who and what I was.
Without conscious thought, my fingers were at the window—almost waving, almost touching though she was feet away. She might have been seven. She might have been many things, but she was my baby sister and a lioness woke inside of me. A lioness that loved her instantly. That wanted to protect her and share stories with her and watch as her abilities awoke. And right behind her was another one.
Sisters and Graves: A Rue Hallow Mystery (The Rue Hallow Mysteries Book 4) Page 4