by W. J. May
“Dad’ll be out,” she said quietly. “So you don’t have to worry when we get home.”
Her mother just nodded, staring straight ahead, and Kallie was suddenly reminded of Petra sitting in the back, her eyes closed to slits but her attention focused on them. Petra had to know that what she had done had turned Kallie’s mother and father against each other, and Kallie felt rage building up inside her. When they got to the house, she wasn’t gentle as she hauled Petra out of the car and into the house.
Her mother hung back, clearly hoping she wouldn’t have to get involved. She’d insisted on driving because she said the distraction would keep her from doing something regrettable, and Petra had surprised Kallie by staying far away from her mother. Whether she didn’t want to be in a car crash, or wasn’t sure she could take Kallie’s mother in a fight, Kallie wasn’t sure. Whatever the case, any restraint had now vanished. As Kallie tied the manacles against the back wall in the basement, Petra smiled cruelly over at Kallie’s mother where she hovered on the stairs.
“What’s the matter? Afraid you’ll see your husband?”
“Stop it,” Kallie warned her.
“You know…” Kallie’s mother swallowed. “I’m not sure we ever did get married. Did we?”
“Oh, that’s right. You got the baby and the responsibilities, but never the wedding. Pity. You would have looked so pretty in a wedding dress.”
“Stop it,” Kallie hissed again.
“Kallie, it’s all right.” Her mother was fighting for composure, but she still managed to maintain it.
“Yes, it’s perfectly all right.” Petra bared her teeth. “Your mother just wants to keep everything that’s mine.”
“All right, that’s enough.”
“Kallie, I can handle this.” Her mother motioned her back and descended the stairs slowly.
“Mom…” When had she become peacekeeper for everyone? Caleb and Liam, Petra and her mother, her father and mother, the Reds and the Blues… there were probably a ton more to add to the list.
“I said I can handle this.” Her mother’s bright blue eyes were fixed on Petra.
“What, while I’m chained to a wall?”
“Oh, did you actually want to fight?” Her mother’s gaze narrowed. “I don’t think you do. Not right now, when I’ve just fed and you can’t use your powers.”
“How clever of you to figure that out.” Petra turned her head away.
There was weakness there, suddenly, in the set of her shoulders, but Kallie’s mother didn’t move to hurt her. She drew a deep breath. “Why did you do it?”
Petra looked back, and for a moment, she looked as lost as Kallie felt. “Do what?”
“Make me…this.”
“I didn’t turn you into a vampire.” Petra’s eyes narrowed. “I would’ve done a better job. I could have made you—”
“No.” Kallie’s mother shook her head. “Why did you use me to hide them?” She looked at Kallie, just for a moment, and the tangle of grief and love and guilt hit Kallie in the gut. “I have to know. Why’d you do it?”
“It needed to be done.” That was it. No other words to offer comfort or to explain.
“What did I ever do to you?” The words were wild as her mother hissed them out. “What did I ever do to you?”
“Well, most recently, you turned yourself into a Blue so you’d have an uncontrollable urge to kill me. Is that enough?”
“No!”
“You turned my daughter against me,” Petra spat.
“You turned your daughter against you when you let your Reds beat her father every month. You turned your daughter against you when you revealed yourself to her and expected everything to return to normal after two decades of not being in her life. You turned her against you when you didn’t even offer to help clean up the mess you made!”
“What happened to him was not my fault!” Petra’s eyes grew panicked. “I didn’t know what was happening to him. They swore he wasn’t being hurt. If Kallie had been willing to get to know me, she would have seen that I wasn’t in control of everything.”
“And why weren’t you in control of it?” Helen pressed. There was a savage satisfaction in her eyes.
“Because I reached for something great!” Petra was cried out. “And you wouldn’t know about that, would you? You never—”
“Measured up to you? I know. I know, Petra, believe me.” Helen’s hands clenched, and with an oath, she lashed one fist against the wall. There was a deep thud and her face contorted; cracks spider-webbed out from her hand.
Petra fell silent.
“You think I could possibly be unaware of what it meant to reach for great things?” Kallie’s mother looked on the verge of tears; her voice was soft, broken on her own grief. “After growing up with you? Do you possibly think I wouldn’t understand that, after everything?” She stared down at her sister. “I spent my whole life watching you be more than me. I knew from when we were kids, when you would give me little fireflies to play with. I knew you always saw more than I did. Did you think I never noticed? Did you think when we were kids and you told me you were going to be a witch, I didn’t believe it? Do you know what it was like to grow up with an older sister who was better at everything? That I would never have an ounce of your ability? That I belonged in the shadows?”
There was a long silence before Petra began to speak, “Mom and Dad—”
“Mom and Dad were jerks, but even they saw it!” Helen shook her head helplessly. “And I did what I could. I did! I tried to keep you out of trouble!”
“You told me not to pursue it!”
“It was getting you in trouble!”
“You might as well have cut out my own heart,” Petra spat. “My power is who I am.”
“You were also my sister.” Helen’s face twisted. “You could have been there for me. You could have tried to appreciate that I was helping you the best I knew how. I’m sorry for what I did when we were older. I’m sorry I stopped saying I believed in you. The truth is, I never did… I just didn’t want to. But, Petra…it was never easy. You were always telling me I was less than you, and still I loved you, and—”
“It isn’t my fault that’s true,” Petra said simply.
Kallie saw her mother’s face go white, saw the way her shoulders curved in, and she knew anger like she’d never known before.
“Shut up.” Kallie’s voice shook as she moved forward. “You. Shut. Up. You don’t know a damned thing about my mother if you’re saying that.”
“You didn’t know her when—”
“I’ve seen the woman she is. Day in, day out, for my whole life! She raised me. She put up with all my tantrums. She never once thought about leaving Dad. She’s a nurse! She has strength you can’t even imagine. So if you think being a witch is something better than being the woman she is, you’re wrong. She’s worth your respect just for existing, because she’s incredible. She loved you, and you couldn’t even find it in you to say that she was as good as you when you were little, because you had a talent that she didn’t have? You were an illusionist. And you just…wrote her off?” She cast an incredulous look at her mother, and the woman turned her face away. She could not meet Kallie’s eyes, and she saw how deeply Petra’s words cut. Her mother believed them. “She’s your little sister! You were supposed to protect her, not the other way around!”
Petra said nothing, but Kallie’s mother drew herself up.
“I couldn’t be the sister you wanted. I didn’t measure up and I couldn’t help you become a witch. Was it really worth taking my whole life from me?” Helen shivered, the anger and helplessness she felt made Kallie’s heart break for her.
“He wasn’t your husband! She isn’t your child! Why shouldn’t I take them back?” Petra pressed.
“Not then!” Helen’s yell was a half-sob. “Not then! Before! You took everything from me, don’t you understand? Was I dating someone? Who might I have loved without this? Who might I have ended up with?” She met
Kallie’s eyes for one moment, and there was an apology there, but the words came out anyway. “What about my children, Petra?”
No one spoke.
“And the worst thing…the worst thing…” Kallie’s mother was rocking back and forth now, her eyes closing. A single tear traced its way down her cheek. “The worst thing now is this is the only life I want, and I can’t even have that. Because it’ll always be false. It’ll always have been built on lies!” She swiped angrily at her cheek with the back of her hand. “Why? Why did you have to—”
“To save you.” The words were so harsh that Petra’s voice wasn’t even recognizable.
“What?”
“They were coming for you, too. I did it to save you.”
“It was convenient—”
“Convenient?” Petra shot back and scoffed. “In what way? To give up my husband and baby? To send you far away? Erase your memories and let you go? They knew where you were. You know why you don’t remember those months before this all happened? Because they were hunting you. You were going out of your mind, and I took you away from all of that. Do you know how much it took to do the working that hid you from them? Can you even…” Petra looked away.
“You expect me to believe—”
“You remember when we were little? I was four. You were two. And I made fireflies over your crib and Mom and Dad thought they were real and yelled at me. And you started crying and reaching out for me, and you wouldn’t stop until they let me sleep in your bed, and you snuggled up on my shoulder and went to sleep with your arms around me.” Petra’s hard face softened a moment before she locked her emotions away. “And when I was fifteen. You never stood up to them. You never did.” One blazing look said what she thought of that, but her face softened unwillingly. “You didn’t let them send me away. They wanted me to go to some boarding school, and you were the reason they didn’t.”
“Yeah.” Helen’s face was wary.
“Well. Anyway, that’s why.” Petra looked away, her profile cold and controlled. “So you can stop thinking I didn’t…” Her voice trailed off. “Just go. You think you don’t have anything, but you’re not chained to a wall. You don’t have this collar around your neck. You never have. I’ve always had to wear one; it’s just a matter of who’s holding the lead to keep me tied up and a prisoner. Just go, Helen.”
Helen didn’t say anything, and as Kallie took her arm to lead her away she stopped to look back.
“Will you help?” Kallie asked. She fixed her eyes on Petra. “Will you help us?”
“I’ll help.” There was no tone in the words, and Kallie could not see her face. She waited for a long moment, but Petra said no more, and finally Kallie followed her mother up the stairs.
Chapter 12
“You’re going to do what?” Kallie’s father, who had just—at her insistence—sat down on the couch, leapt up again. His eyes were wide. “No. No, no, no.”
“Dad, if you’d just listen—”
“No. I forbid it.”
“Okay, look, we can have this really long conversation about what’s wise and what’s safe, but you know I’m just going to do it anyway.”
“No, you aren’t. Not if I lock you in that basement.”
“Dad.”
“I’ll do it,” he warned. “There’s no way in hell any of this is safe, Kallie. What are you even—”
“If you’d sit down, I’d tell you.” Kallie crossed her arms, and looked at him as he sat. “Thank you. Okay, so. James and the Blues built a spell that was just diagrams from old parts of the vampire kingdom… empire… thing.”
“What did the diagrams show? It’s a spell, you said? Then what does it do?”
“That’s the thing… none of them actually knew. They wanted to do this ritual, sacrificing a Red and a Blue inside this spell they didn’t know anything about. And, yes, apparently James is some scholar, but can you at least see why I don’t want to do things that way?”
“Of course! They were prepared to sacrifice people on the off-chance that it would help.”
“Exactly.” But her feeling of triumph was cut short when she remembered what had happened with Liam. “That was what I said,” she said quietly.
“Kallie? Is something wrong?”
“Trying to reunite my family.” She forced a smile. “Caleb is captured. Nothing much else.”
“What about Liam?”
When her head jerked up, she saw eyes that knew far, far too much about her. Her father might have been a vampire, might have raised her with a woman who wasn’t her mother, might have seen his life turned upside down—but he was still the man who had raised Kallie from when she was a baby, learning her moods, seeing her first childish deceptions. Her father knew her through and through…and he’d noticed that she never spoke of Liam anymore.
She shook her head silently, still too scared to put everything into words and see his happiness. And repeating what Liam had said to her was too much. She could not bear to say what he thought of her. Because when push came to shove, when James demanded loyalty…Liam had chosen the Blues over her.
A tiny piece of her insisted that that wasn’t fair, that Liam had been lied to, that he had tried to speak up for her, and that she was the one who’d walked away rather than calling James on his lies. Liam wasn’t one to sacrifice innocents—surely he would have listened to her. But it hurt too much to think about.
Her father sighed. “All right. Tell me about this plan.”
“Well, unlike James, Petra is actually a witch.”
“Are you sure? How could James have done a spell otherwise?”
“Anyone can use magic. Magic is just there. Apparently. But witches know a specific way to do it, and they’re more attuned to it. The way James described it it’s like trying to make a piece of furniture from a tree trunk. He’s just got one kind of saw, and Petra has all of the tools.”
Her father raised his eyebrows, but nodded.
“Right. So Petra thinks that just doing the spell here, with only a few vampires around, won’t do anything. Well, it won’t do enough. I’ve been doing some studying. Not much, but I’ve figured out a few things. Spells don’t travel very fast on their own, and it’s possible that no other vampires would ever get changed—it would only change the ones who were there when the spell was released.
“She says there’s an artifact up north that might amplify everything. Old, very old. It might not even exist anymore. But she thinks she knows about where it is, and we can go get it and do the spell there. And because she’s stronger…well, I’m guessing she won’t need as much power from blood.”
“You’re guessing? With Petra, I’d make damned sure.”
“She doesn’t seem to be exactly sure what we’re going to find,” Kallie admitted.
“That’s comforting.”
“Dad…”
“I’m just saying all of this could go wrong so fast. I should go with you.”
“Mom—”
“Is a Blue. It’s going to be hell for her to try not to attack Petra while they’re sitting in a car together for days, driving north. And have you considered how you’ll find shelter? We had to redo this whole house to keep sunlight out. Where will you stay during the days? What if the car breaks down and you get stuck in the daylight?
“The Rogue Reds are going to be pursuing you. Kallie, Caleb may be valuable to them, but you’re a Hybrid. The thought of them tracking you down and doing to you what they did to me…” His face went grey. “I can’t bear it. I’m going half out of my mind just thinking about it. And your mother—they’re going to kill her. Just kill her, outright. She’s just a Blue to them.”
“Dad…”
“And you tell me that Petra isn’t even sure what she’s going to find. She’s not sure if the artifact is there, and if it is there, she’s not sure if it will have enough power to do this spell.”
“You told me it was impossible,” Kallie reminded him. The words sounded too harsh and she shook h
er head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. But you said, everyone said, it couldn’t be done. Even James didn’t want to admit it could happen. But Petra…at least she has a plan. She has things she can try.”
“Kallie, she only wants your love.” Her father shook his head. “She’ll do anything, say whatever it takes. You want to know how I think she got in over her head with the Rogue Reds? She promised things she couldn’t give, and now it’s all come crashing down.”
“That could be true.” Kallie shook her head. “It probably is. You know her better than I do. You’ve suffered more than I have. But, Dad—right now, I’d do anything to get this war ended.”
“Because you’re hoping for Helen and me to get back together?”
“Yes! And you don’t have to, I’m not going to make you, but there isn’t even any hope of it if you can’t be in the same room together.”
“Kallie, you don’t understand—”
“I understand how much you love each other,” Kallie said flatly. “And that’s all that’s important.”
There was a stricken silence. When her father spoke, his voice was so hopeful that Kallie wanted to cry. “She loves me?” he asked.
And she saw the truth: when her father said that he shouldn’t have done what he did, that he shouldn’t have built his life on a lie, Kallie had thought he was talking about her mother not knowing whose child Kallie was, who he had really married.
She had been wrong. What tormented him, what was killing him a little more each day, was the thought that perhaps Helen had never truly loved him at all. That she had been tricked into being his wife.
“She loves you,” Kallie told him, her voice shaking. “She does.”
He turned away, and she thought she heard a sob. When he turned back, it was to hold his arms out for a hug. He held her tightly and she felt his breath stir her hair.
“You don’t have to do this. I won’t forbid you, because I know you won’t listen. But believe me when I say that we can find another way. We can find another ally. If you do this, have it be because you trust that Petra can help you. Okay?”