Another baby sister. Another gaze—this one was another lioness looking back at me. A sister who would protect the littlest. Mother of the Gods, I loved this one too.
“Gods,” I breathed, loving them. Wanting them. Hating that I hadn’t known them before. “Gods our Mother is a monster.”
“Yes,” Bran said.
“Who did you find?”
She didn’t answer. Her gaze looked past me at the little ones, and I saw something in her gaze I wouldn’t have thought. Jealousy.
“They’re like us,” Bran said. “They’re tight like we are.”
The older of my two little sisters took the little one’s hand, pulling her away. But she shook her head and walked right up to our ancient station wagon and knocked on the window. My fingers were shaking as I rolled it down.
“Hello,” I said. My voice cracked, and I was proud that was all it did.
“Hello,” the little one replied.
“Saki!” The older of my two little sisters darted forward and grabbed the little one—Saki’s—hand and pulled. “What are you doing! Come on!”
But Saki yanked away and said, “Tane, she is our sister.”
I would have thought that Tane would have mocked Saki, but Tane didn’t. She stopped and turned and looked, and as she did, her head cocked. Just like mine often did. A slight tilt to the side, a widening of eyes, a recognition. And then sadness.
“Mama will be so sad,” Tane said, channeling that sorrow for her mother. “What is your name?”
“She doesn’t need to know,” I offered—not sure what I wanted as I said it. But as soon as I realized that it would mean that I could not be an open part of their lives, my entire being rejected it. That lioness inside of me screamed and I prayed they would not agree.
“No,” Saki said. “No. Mama has to know. This is our sister.”
“I’m Rue Hallow,” I said. “I…now…I…I just found out.”
“It’s ok,” Saki said, reaching out to take my hand.
That small hand—so sweet and soft and little. Gods. There was a bit of a zing. A bit of recognition. A bit of my soul and her soul touching and something that had been missing for ages settled into place. I took a shaky breath and whispered, “I can’t do this yet. I’m sorry.”
Saki’s head tilted as she examined me. I hoped she didn’t find me wanting, but Holy Hestia, mother of the gods, I didn't belong here. It didn’t matter that these were my sisters. I still did NOT belong in that house and these girls might be mine but I wasn't sure I wanted to claim anyone else.
Bran’s hand reached past my face and handed the girls a small piece of paper. “I’m Bran. This is Rue. We’re still learning about what happened. But…you got pretty lucky in getting Rue for a sister.”
There was a bit of a crack in Bran’s voice. Before I could turn to the only person who got me, Saki’s gaze met Bran’s. Saki’s expression turned from sad to terrified as she skipped back a few steps.
“You’re haunted,” Saki squeaked as she grabbed Tane’s hand and twirled, running headlong into traffic.
Chapter 7
“You’re haunted,” I told Bran as if the kid—gods, as if my little sister had told Bran she were ugly or stupid. I hadn’t been able to speak until she was across the street with Tane and running up the steps, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to mock Bran now.
They hadn’t looked back as they darted through the doors and I wasn’t sure I was able to.
“Shut it,” Bran said idly and started the old wagon. The coolness in the air had intensified to an uncomfortable extent. I probably should have rolled up the window, but I liked how it hurt a little bit. I liked how it made my fingers as numb as the whole of my insides.
“What about him,” I asked as Bran wove in and out of traffic like a possessed clown. Then I remembered she was some weird variation of possessed and it wasn’t funny anymore. Mandi—the woman who had killed generations of my family—had been possessed. If there had been anything left of the necromancer who had become so twisted, she had been unrecognizable. What was going to happen to Bran and how could I help her?
“Who?”
“Don’t play games with me,” I told her.
She glanced my way and gave me a smirk.
“I had assumed,” I said when she didn’t answer, “that we were going for a drive like we used to do on the island.”
“That was stupid,” Bran said as she passed yet another car.
“You drive like a mad woman,” I told her, watching the road signs go by. St. Angelus was too little to be on any of them yet. We had state lines to cross and things to do. “Tell me about this haunting.”
She glanced over at me and back to the road, starting to pass another car. This one was a yellow sedan with kids in the back. Everyone but the parents were looking down at their laps. Probably they were watching tablets while their stay-at-home mom and well-employed father discussed politics or a summer garden. Probably they were a normal family who loved each other and didn’t see the need to use spells and potions in an endless game of power and one-upmanship.
I didn’t deny the rush of envy that flowed over me. I knew Bran would have been feeling the same if she had noticed them. It used to be that I would get past those moments of envy by thinking of my perfect daddy. Except he wasn’t mine anymore.
He had been stolen. Manipulated. Taken from what he wanted and forced to love us.
“I hate her,” Bran said, weaving between a minivan and a sports car, “but I don’t. I don’t want to think what it would have been like without Daddy.”
“That makes us like her,” I said. “It makes us just like her.”
“We are like her,” Bran said. “We’re powerful witches, with an arsenal of spells, and we do whatever we want. Just like you and the truth serum. And me and…” Her voice trailed off and then cut to a quick stop.
Though she didn’t fill in the statement, she meant whatever had happened when she got haunted. My phone had been buzzing for a while. I hadn’t bothered to pick it up from the floor of the car, but this time…this time it was Daddy.
I looked at his face as it flashed on the screen of my phone. It was a pic I’d taken of the two of us at the farmer’s market on the island. We’d gotten up early even though I’d gone running with Bran the night before. Just the two of us, those precious moments that rarely happened. We had sat on a bench near the fresh donuts stand, eating them fresh and hot from the stand before we went home. Mother would never have let Daddy have something so unhealthy, so the two of us had snuck out.
My head had been on his chest, and his arm was around me because I hadn’t bothered with a coat and the wind off the sound was freezing. He’d kept me warm. He was always warm—I had just thought he ran hot, but that was a side effect of celandine based potions. His eyes were warm in the picture, his smile was wide. He’d already choked down his potion, and the rush of love potion was in his gaze once you knew what to look for.
I couldn’t answer that call. If I didn’t, I could pretend things hadn’t changed.
“It’s easier after the first time,” Bran said quietly, jerking the car again to weave pass some minivan. I didn’t need her to explain. She meant talking to Daddy. Now that there was all of this…madness between us. I couldn’t just answer and ask him to send me some more beeswax or some of the dried jasmine in the potion larder.
I couldn’t. Not yet.
“He must have talked to her after you called,” Bran said as Daddy’s face was replaced by a black screen. “I had hoped he would leave.”
The words were more than I could process. I opened the cheesecake and shoved a bite in, trying to focus on the creamy goodness of it, but—like the burger—it tasted like ashes.
I wanted to spit it out, but the car smelled enough already, and I didn’t want to hurt Bran’s feelings. So instead, I choked it down with my feelings.
It took Bran until we were out of Boston to say, “Your Dad is a necromancer. From what I
could find out, he’s a long time cheater on his wife. Who probably loves him or at least his money.”
“She loves him,” I said, thinking of what my little sisters had said. Their mother would be so sad. “Gods.”
“Yeah,” Bran said. “They have four kids. The three girls and the heir apparent. The son is talented like you are. He’s honorable and good. He’s like…every person’s dream son ever. He’s even named Hiro.”
My sister drew that name out like it was a title of power instead of a name. And maybe he was a hero. Maybe he made up for the mess his parents were. I certainly didn’t make up for the mess that mine were.
Bran kept going, “He’s powerful. Like you. Expected to be the next keeper. Like you. Your Dad isn’t the keeper, but his brother is. In their family, the role of keeper tends to go to the nephew.”
I choked at that, adding to my conviction that mother had bred me. Like a prize bulldog.
“Now we know why she focused on me more,” I said, and I sounded as tired as I felt.
Bran looked at me and then back to the road. There was so much unsaid history between us about that statement. So many moments of our childhood where Mother had disregarded Bran—just a little bit. Where Mother had pushed Bran less. Where Mother hadn’t expected anything but trouble from Bran.
“What is your Dad?”
Bran didn’t answer. Instead, she carried on her little family report as if it were a school project and she was being graded. “The one that’s around your age is six months younger than you. Her name is Ruby.”
“Ruby?” My sarcasm must have shown given that this one didn’t have an Asian name.
“Your Dad and his wife are half-Japanese. Ruby was named after your paternal grandmother. Who was a keeper of a different thinning as well as a spy and generally a badass.”
There it was again—that rush of fear and envy. I liked the sound of this woman, this unexpected grandmother. I liked so much about her from those few sentences. And would she like me in return? Would she disregard me? Would she accept me? What would it have been like to have a grandmother growing up? One who was badass?
“Is she even alive?” There was fear in my statement, and Bran heard it. Her expression was gentle—a side of her that others rarely saw—when she nodded.
“She’s still badass as far as I can tell. Ruby is too. I like her. She’s giving your dad an epic run for his money.”
I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. There was this chasm inside of me that had opened with all these places and holes for people that should be part of my life and weren’t. For those that I should love and didn’t.
“The little ones are Tane and Sakiko. Since they’re little kids, people got suspicious when I asked questions. I can’t tell you anything about them.”
I could though. I could tell Bran that Saki was insightful, that she was sad about something, that she was talented magically. I could tell Bran that Tane was the caregiver, that she felt the weight of protecting Saki, that there must be a reason for that protectiveness. That both of them already understood the consequences of having another sister, and my presence was not an exciting one for them.
But I could also tell Bran the same thing had happened to them had happened to me. My presence, my face—it had carved a hole in their hearts with a place for me, and that spot ached. Ached with all that had been lost, that could never be recovered. There was no getting any of it back.
Sweet Hecate, I was melodramatic. I wasn’t the only person with half-siblings. Or people they didn’t know but ‘should’ love. Whatever, Rue, I thought. Whatever. Shake it off. Accept things.
My phone buzzed again with my daddy’s face, and I flipped it over with my toe and said, “Let’s stop somewhere.”
“Where?” Bran asked as she passed yet another vehicle, a semi-truck this time.
“I don’t care where,” I said, feeling a crawling in my flesh that demanded that I run. Bran pulled off the highway and drove until we found a school with a track.
Running in circles around a dead green field was not fun. But I wasn’t running for fun, I was running for the burn in my legs, my lungs, and my head. It was late after the drive from St. Angelus to Boston to wherever we were. The sky was mostly dark and the moon was high. The town was small enough that I could see the light of the stars. There was something about running in the dark with nothing but the sound of my feet and the thud-thud of my heart combined with the rush of wind in my ears.
Across the school field, there were people still moving around, so it wasn’t so late. I could see a minivan a few cars down from my ancient station wagon. There was a guy throwing a ball for his dog and a few people, not that much younger than Bran and I who were skateboarding around the parking lot.
I wasn’t paying much attention to anything other than the sounds I was seeking, so it took me too long to notice that Bran had stopped. She was staring down some poor cat, and the cat was hissing—back arched, hair on end, classic horror movie pose.
“Welllll….” I said as I came to a stop, staring at my sister who was fixated on the cat. “By Hecate’s fiery eyes.”
The cat hissed at Bran and my sister darted at the cat. As she did, I darted after my sister. I should have been too slow, but I pushed magic into my steps and flew at her in great bounding leaps. She tackled the cat, snarling, I tackled her cursing. She growled at me. I growled back. She snarled, and I let go to punch her as hard and fast as I could. As I hit her, the cat squirmed free, leaving us both scratched on its way out.
“Bran!” My call echoed in the park and I tried to hold her down, to call her back to herself. She flung herself backward, knocking the back of her head into my face and leaving me reeling.
The only reply to my yelled plea was grunting and snarls. I had gotten my wish—I could hear nothing but my sister, the blood in my ears, and the thud-thud of my racing, terrified heart. I hated myself a little for craving this feeling since I wanted nothing more than for it to stop now.
In normal circumstances, my sister could clean the floor with me. Whatever was haunting her made her more animalistic than calculating. Which let me wrap my arm around her neck and choke her with the crook of my elbow.
“Mommy! Mommy!” I looked up to meet the gaze of some poor grade schooler.
With the distraction, my sister twisted and I lost my grip long enough for her to dig her teeth into my forearm.
“Ahhhh, fuu….” I met those grade schooler eyes and cut my curse off to snarl, “Run!”
The little girl with blonde pigtails ran for her mom. The mother met my gaze, took a good look at my sister, and whatever she saw terrified her. She grabbed her kid by the arm and ran.
My sister twisted off of me and leaped to her feet. She sort of bounced on her knees, like a rabid ninja.
I met her gaze, but she wasn’t there. Her eyes were an animalistic, a combination of red, yellow, and black and they were focused on my neck.
“Rueeeee,” Bran called. “I’m hungry.”
“Yeah no,” I told her, knowing without explanation that it was blood she wanted. Perhaps that was because my sister’s gaze had shifted to where the blood from the bite she’d given me dripped onto the ground.
“Hunggrrrryyyy,” Bran moaned, licking her lips, eyes on my blood. “So hunggrryyy.”
She flew at me, claws out, and I took my magic, pushed it through my fingers, and grabbed her by the neck with one hand and her hair with the other. I yanked her head back and shoved her away again. I hadn’t been able to get a good hold on her, but at least she wasn’t gnawing on my flesh.
She stumbled back and came at me, low and mean. She wrestled me down by the legs and I hit the ground before I could even move away. Bran crawled up my body like a panther, and I panted, freaked out and squirming as I wondered if my sister would rip out my throat.
“Hungrryyy, so hungrrrry.” It was her mouth moving, but it was not her voice. The panic of seeing her—Bran—my sister like this—it was wrong. She was th
e person I knew best in the world, it moved beyond horrifying into near paralyzing.
“Listen fiend,” I snarled, taking my sister by her mop of red curls and yanking her hair. She almost didn’t notice, but my grip on her hair, fueled by magic and adrenaline kept her from being able to dig those, too-white teeth into my neck. “You can’t have my sister.”
A high-pitched laugh escaped my sister’s mouth, but it wasn’t her normal sarcastic, husky chuckle.
“You. Can. Not. Have. My. Sister,” I growled again. The fury in me was changing me to the animal rather than her. My voice was all snarls, my vision was all fury, my body was far stronger than it should have been, but I opened myself to the universe and let whatever magic I could hold flow into me.
“She’s mine already,” my sister’s mouth laughed. “There’s nothing you can do, little witch.”
‘There is nothing I won’t do,” I swore and I flipped my sister using a move she’d taught me. But, of course, it wasn't my sister I was fighting. Not really. And the eyes of that fiend, the eyes of my sister were wide as I straddled her, knees on her arms, and choked her. I let go of her, for a second to dip my forefinger in the blood she’d drawn.
And then, I used my own blood to write a rune on her forehead for sleep. A swift, stringent command in proto-Romanian powered the rune and she dropped. It was only after I took long, shaky breaths did I realize that I’d used the ether magic rather than traditional magic. Or maybe I had used both. I wasn’t sure. But the necromancy in me had come out as I dealt with whatever was haunting my sister, and it had been effective. Today, for once, I was glad to be what I was, to have the tool necessary to help my sister.
My sister lay on the ground, as if dead. But the barely discernible shallow breaths told me what I already knew. That she slept. I looked around and saw that the minivan and the guy with the dog was long gone, but the kids with skateboards were watching me.
Sisters and Graves: A Rue Hallow Mystery (The Rue Hallow Mysteries Book 4) Page 5