When I don’t feel a surge of returning power, I’m still disappointed.
Jane and I break all the flowers, even hers, which is still clear. Maybe her connection with it was broken when she was absorbed into the tree and taken to . . . wherever she was. We break Winnie’s, and Elle’s. We can’t leave him with anything to use against future alchemists. I don’t intend to let him get that far, but you never know how a plan will go. So we break them all.
Just as I throw the last flower—Olivia’s sweet pea—to the floor, Frank appears. He comes from the hallway, either from his rooms or the basement. Who can say? Does it matter? His gun is drawn and it’s pointed at me. His face has gone red with fury and he’s breathing hard and ragged.
“Why can’t you just fall in FUCKING LINE?” he shouts and, without warning, he shoots Jane. She hits the wall hard, crumpling. She doesn’t move. A moment later, pain flares in my shoulder.
The next moments are all flashes: I realize Jane isn’t beside me. Frank is shoved aside at the instant of the gunshot. Pain flares in my left shoulder.
He shot me. He shot us. He really shot us and it hurts like nothing has ever hurt in my entire life, and I’m bleeding. I hold my right hand out in front me, as if that could stop another bullet.
Glass crunches under Frank’s boots as he steps through the remains of the flowers he’s used to control us, and so many others. “I’ve been generous, haven’t I? I’ve given you so many chances. I’ve spared you when I should have killed you. You ungrateful . . .” He shakes his head . . . and steadies his aim. “Enough.”
I stare at Jane, unmoving on the floor. Everything is going black at the edges of my vision, and I was already so tired, and I’m still bleeding, and Jane might be dead, and I am not going down. Not without taking him with us.
A scream rips out of me, wordless and raw. The pain in my shoulder screams with me.
Under our feet, the earth rumbles.
My scream lowers into a snarl and I turn on Frank, who’s already staring at me with an expression I didn’t think I’d ever see on him.
Now there’s the fear I’ve been looking for.
24
For as long as I’ve been at the lake house, I’ve had the same nightmare.
I’m in the backseat of a car. Sometimes my parents are in the front seat, unconscious. Sometimes I’m alone. The car takes a slow headfirst dive into water. I can’t move. I try to scream, but it comes out as hard, raspy breathing.
Water fills the car. We sink. They sink. I try to scream again. Something is bleeding at the edges of my vision.
Every time, I wake up unsure of where I am. I don’t know if I’m underwater or out of the water or if I’m even real until Jane finds me shivering and soothes me back to sleep.
Now, seeing the fear in Frank’s face makes me feel like yes, I did sink with the car. I sank to the bottom and I’m emerging from the water as something new and terrifying.
Frank sees that and he runs.
He runs from me, right out the front door.
I check to make sure Jane is breathing, and then the chase begins.
For once, I’m not fleeing. I’m not hiding and cowering and whimpering. I’m pursuing. I’m hunting. I don’t even feel the pain in my shoulder. All of my focus is on my quarry. Quarry.
That’s a good word.
Frank disappears into the forest. Stupid. Doesn’t he know the forest is a living thing, and living things can play favorites? Doesn’t he know that I’m the favorite?
By the time I breach the tree line, there’s no sign of him. I stop and listen, trying to sense where he’s gone.
“Derry.”
I close my eyes. No. I don’t want to hear Winnie.
“Derry, come on!”
Something is trying to draw me off the chase using her voice. It even nails her impatience. I can hear the eye roll. I want to run after her voice. I want her to laugh at me for getting so worked up. I want her to tease me and I want to walk home with her, hand in hand.
Winnie sings to me like she used to years ago, before we were sisters.
“Derry, Derry, give me your answer, do . . .”
I hear twigs snap under a man’s weight, and I run.
The forest greets me, exultant, proud of me for passing its test, and my heart swells. Every moment I’m not sure where to turn, there’s something to show me the way. Lightning bugs streaming in a line through the trees. Silhouettes in the shadows that look like my parents and Elle and Winnie, all pointing. The forest mimics a hundred animal calls, masking the sounds of my approach.
When I find him, he’s doubled over, breathing hard. Stealing our magic can make him young, but it can’t make him a runner.
“You okay?” I ask with mocking concern. “You need a hand?”
Frank stands up straight, but shaky. “I’m not the one you need to worry about,” he says, all false bravado in his voice. “You’re not going to win this fight. You’re already injured.”
He rolls his shoulders, steadies himself, and takes a step toward me. I bare my teeth at him.
He actually steps back.
It delights me. It thrills me. I’m learning so many new things I can do with just a flash of teeth, so many ways to scare the grown man that taught me real fear. Fear of the outside world, fear of being abandoned again, fear of losing the only family I have left, and fear of him.
Frank knows how to appear to take up space. He’s tall and long-limbed and values the intimidation of seeming to take over a room. He’s perfected that skill.
But I am heavier. I have at least a hundred pounds on him, probably more, and on me it is concentrated into a shorter frame. If I dug my toes and heels into the earth, I don’t think he could move me.
I am an immovable object, and Frank only plays at being an unstoppable force.
“We can fix this,” he says.
“Fix it?” I smile. I show my teeth. “Fix it how?”
“I’ll give you back your magic.”
I hum like I’m considering it. “Sounds like a lie. I don’t think you could give it back even if you wanted to, and you don’t.”
“Derry, listen, this has been a huge misunderstanding—” He holds out his hands like he’s trying to calm a wild animal. Am I imagining his voice shaking? Is he nervous? No, what’s a better word? Spooked. Skittish. Skittish is good.
“Which part did I misunderstand? Was it shooting me and Jane, or killing my sisters?” I tilt my head at him. “You said you’d fix it. Which of those are you going to fix?”
Frank shakes his head. “These were mistakes, yes, but—”
“You taught me mistakes should be punished. Do you need a time-out, Frank, to think about what you’ve done?”
“I raised you better than this. I know you. You’re not a violent girl. I’ve kept you safe for years—”
I laugh: high, shrill, hysterical. I know the history of that word, I know it’s a good word twisted into something bad, something for trapping women away and telling them it’s for their own well-being. “You raised me because you killed my parents! You killed my parents, you killed my sisters, you killed the alchemists who came before me, and you dress me in their clothes and put me in their bed and you wonder why I’m violent? You should have shot me in the head when you had the chance.”
Frank took some of my magic, but he didn’t take all of it.
He should have. Even some magic is better than none, especially in this forest.
Some magic is enough to draw vines out of the ground.
It’s enough to lash them out, wrap them around Frank’s body, and slam him against a tree so hard I hear the breath burst out of his lungs.
It’s enough to stop him.
Frank struggles against the vines. When he looks at me, he smiles. Tries to be that backyard barbecue, tuck us in and read us a story sort of father he always pretended to be.
“Derry.” He laughs softly. “This is going a little too far, but we can walk it back.” Come on, k
iddo, let’s go back to the house. Get some ice cream. Talk it over. “You don’t have to do this.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
I press my hand to his chest.
I wish a simple touch could draw my magic back out of him and into me. It doesn’t. My magic will come back to full strength in time—but for now, with the forest singing in my ears, I have just enough.
That smile lingers on his face for a moment. He doesn’t believe I’ll really do anything. He doesn’t believe I have it in me. I wait until his eyes meet mine. I wait until they widen when he realizes, too late, what he’s done in underestimating me. I wait until he says please
and then I dig in.
I will the flowers to grow
out of his veins,
out of his marrow,
out of ventricles and arteries and kidneys and his spleen.
Flowers bloom in his throat,
out of his mouth,
choking.
He bleeds into himself,
and then out of himself,
as thorns pierce his skin from the inside.
His blood flows over my hands, paints my nails red.
I feel it when Frank’s heart stops beating. I shudder with satisfaction. A coat of flowers ripples across my skin.
I should feel bad, shouldn’t I? The books and movies all tell the same story. I’m supposed to feel bad about taking another life. I’m supposed to be Frank’s Good Girl, obedient, toeing the line, and making sure everyone else toes the line with me.
I’d get the longest time-out ever for this I think, and it makes me laugh. I clap a hand over my mouth, smearing my face with Frank’s blood, mixed with Winnie’s.
Frank didn’t understand that my whole life wasn’t about pleasing him and fearing him. He didn’t understand that when he gave me siblings, he gave me something to protect. Everything was to protect them, and this is where it was always leading.
They were never going to be safe if he was alive.
I don’t feel bad at all. I look his body up and down, trying to feel something other than pride in a job well done, and nothing comes.
I walk away. I don’t look back.
With each step, the adrenaline wears off, and my head spins a little more. My shoulder throbs anew. I’m nearly out of the forest when I’m forced to stop and lean against a tree.
I take a deep breath and grit my teeth before I work up the nerve to look at my shoulder.
I’ve lost a hell of a lot more blood than I realized.
I faint.
I think it’s only moments later when I crawl back to consciousness. I can barely see. My vision is all blurs, both because I’m clinging to the waking world, but also because my glasses were knocked askew when I fell.
I can’t tell who’s next to me, but someone is.
“You’ll be okay.”
Elle? I squint through the fog. Blond hair. A pale face. A familiar smile. Hands, hovering over my shoulder.
“This might not feel good, though,” she says.
It’s an understatement. Before this, being stabbed was the worst pain I’d ever felt. That was bad enough, but knitting a hole in my shoulder back together? What does that even involve? Bringing the flesh back together, skin back together? Are there muscles in there, nerves?
I don’t know. What I know is that it hurts, and I’m already so hurt, and it’s impossible not to writhe under her. Someone else’s hands hold down my other shoulder to keep me steady. My eyes roll wildly to that side, trying to bring the second face into focus. More blond hair. Winnie? No, it shifts dark, just for a moment. Claire. Or—
The pain fades. I’m sweaty and panting from it, but now all that’s left is an itchy sore spot where the bullet wound once was.
“See?” Elle says. “Better than Band-Aids.”
The other person slips my glasses back on, but before I can see either of them clearly, I pass out again.
When I wake up, I’m alone. No Elle, no Winnie, no Claire. I scramble to my feet. I’m still dizzy, but my shoulder is healed, and after a few steps, my head clears.
The forest doesn’t want to let me go. Lightning bugs flit around me. They’re warm and welcoming. One lands on my healed shoulder and its magic sparks into me. The pale remnants of my remaining magic answer. I close my eyes tight to keep from crying.
“They won’t understand,” Claire says, appearing from behind a tree. The creature I made stands beside her, antlers as magnificent as ever. More so. The roses have grown to be the size of dinner plates. My child is flourishing. “You did so good, Derry. You’re so strong. But they won’t understand.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, even as my heart shivers with the fear that she’s right.
Frank won’t be able to hurt my siblings any longer. He and I could just . . . disappear. Maybe we’d sink into a tree, like Jane and Winnie. Or maybe I’d protect them from afar. They’d never know what kind of monster I am. I imagine myself running wild, my creature beside me, my magic returning, blood-red poppies growing freely all over my body. Maybe I’d live forever out here and become a whispered legend.
I step out of the forest.
Before I return to the house, I stop at the lake. I dip my hands into the water and scrub away as much of the blood as I can. I wash my face and my glasses. In my shaky water-reflection, I think I’ve gotten most of it. I can’t save my ruined shirt, but they won’t be able to tell what blood’s from Frank and what blood’s from my shoulder.
On trembling legs, I return to the house. Dread builds with each step. What will I find? Will Jane have bled out? I don’t know where everyone else went after the tunnel. Maybe they’re still there. Maybe they came out the other side and got lured into the forest.
Maybe I’m alone.
God, please, don’t let me be alone.
The front door is still wide open. Through it, I hear voices.
Irene. Then Violet, then London, Irene again. I linger in the doorway, holding my breath.
“I’m going to be fine,” Jane says from the living room. She sounds exhausted. But she’s alive.
I press my hand to my mouth and close my eyes tight, swallowing tears.
Jane is laid out on the couch. London sits on the arm by Jane’s feet, eyes red and swollen, cheeks wet. Irene kneels next to her with what looks like every first aid kit we have in the house. She’s scowling and wrapping Jane’s shoulder. Heh. We match.
“Are you sure the bullet isn’t in there?” Violet asks, pacing nearby. “On TV they always have to dig out the bullet—”
“There’s two holes,” Irene says. “One in the front, and one in the back, which indicates that the bullet went in and went out.”
“But—”
“After we have some control over the bleeding, I will look for the bullet myself, but please . . .”
London is the first to see me when I step into the living room. She cries out, jumps off the couch, and leaps into my arms. “We thought you were dead!” she whimpers. “We thought he got you!”
“Well—”
It apparently wasn’t every first aid kit in the house, because Brooke and Olivia enter with yet more. I laugh, then remember that we have so many because of Elle and her paranoia, and the laugh becomes strangled.
Olivia gasps when she sees me, then gasps again at the blood on my shirt. The kits drop to the floor and she rushes over to us. “Are you okay?” she squeals. Her shield power flares around me with her worry. “Derry!”
“I’m fine, I’m fine! It only grazed me.”
“Lucky duck,” Jane says from the couch. I see now that her own shirt is soaked with blood, but she looks okay. Not too pale from blood loss or anything.
Elle would be absolutely losing her shit, though, certain that sepsis would set in at any moment. I smile at Jane, and she smiles back, but it’s hesitant. Her gaze roves over my bloody shirt, and searches my face.
“Derry.” She speaks slowly. “Where’s Frank?�
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I look from one sibling to the next, all of them gathered here with me. I’m so worried the forest will be right. I’m so worried that if I tell the truth, I’ll never have them around me like this again.
‘He’s dead,’ I sign. Before they can register that: ‘I killed him.’
A beat of silence. They try to register what I’ve said. Brooke tilts her head at me, concern furrowing her brow. Irene’s emotions briefly flare into the room—confusion, relief, anger, grief, joy. Violet stares into the middle distance, their eyes unfocused. The little twins look at each other, at me, at everyone else, seeking someone who can show them how to respond.
Jane just nods. I try to read her face. Does she understand why I did it? Does she agree? Or is that resignation, accepting that the hiker wasn’t a one-time thing?
Does she think I killed Frank only to take his place as the monster in our home?
‘In self-defense,’ Brooke signs. She’s giving me an out.
I consider correcting her. I consider opening myself up, cracking the ribs, letting them all see the rot inside.
But I killed Frank to protect them, and I can spare them the hardest of truths if it means protecting them.
I nod. ‘In self-defense,’ I agree. There’s a rush of relieved sighs, as if they’d suspected the worst. As if they’d suspected what I’m capable of. Maybe I could tell them the truth—but no. They’re smiling, and I don’t want them to regret his death for a moment.
I’ll carry that for them.
‘So . . . it’s just us now,’ Violet signs. ‘What do we do?’
‘For now?’ Jane signs. ‘I think we should let Irene finish up on my arm, get some sleep, and figure the rest out in the morning.’
I’m not going to argue with that.
25
I wake up the next morning, and Jane is in her bed. I close my eyes, and open them again, and she’s still there. She’s real.
She’s alive.
I fall back asleep to the sound of her snores. I’ve never felt safer.
The next time I wake up, her bed is empty, and I sit up in a panic, worried I dreamt that she was alive—
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