Fortunately, what felt like our five hundredth argument about finances was interrupted when the front door slammed and Donna stomped her way up the stairs. I’d called her to see if she could pick up some supplies from the hardware store for me. Since the kids would be getting back from their first day at school, I also planned to use this as an opportunity to introduce them to the concept of mystics. Originally, I’d hoped to take them up to meet Harry, figuring that because they had been raised Catholic, he might not have come across as shockingly as the concept of witches, but time had gotten away from me. I’d be lying if I said this damned bathroom wasn’t the biggest drain on my time.
“Hey guys,” she said, squeezing past Desmond to drop a bag full of copper fixtures on the floor in front of me. “I took the liberty of getting some insulation. Trust me, Nai will thank you when she doesn’t have to take freezing showers this winter. Oh, and the sealant you asked for was all wrong. I got this instead. It’s waterproof and weather proof.” She looked around at the small room with an appraising eye. “We might want to go ahead and replace the subfloor in here. I can see where there was some damage and we don’t want the shower falling through the floor. Speaking of which, that drain needs to come up a few inches.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I left enough room for the tile…”
“Here, let me see that.”
The wrench was out of my hands before I had a chance to protest and Donna began undoing the fitting I had just spent an hour putting in.
“You left room for the tile, but were you going to stick tile to a wooden floor? We need to make sure there’s room for the backer board. Honestly, Seth! I thought you said you knew what you were doing?”
“My mistake, looks like you already hired a competent plumber.”
I met Desmond’s smirk with a glare and stood up, moving over to check the leads on the toilet and sink. At least I knew they were properly installed, admittedly, with Donna’s help.
“Hey, have you guys checked this place for residuals?” Donna asked, putting her ear to the drainpipe that she had ‘expertly’ adjusted. “I’m sensing a lot of conflict in here.”
“Not yet,” I said, wondering if what she was feeling wasn’t the residuals of the irritation I was feeling toward Desmond. “We did a sweep of the basement and attic, but we were mainly looking for Discordant squatters after we found some pixie dust in the corners.”
“Well, that could have been there for years. We still have glitter all over our bathroom from last week. I can do a reading, if you’d like,” she offered. “If there’s anything bad we can do a cleansing. Actually, I’d recommend one anyway, you know, being an old house and all. Oh no, is this seriously what you were planning on putting up in the shower?” she asked, switching gears with a frown as she picked up the small ceramic ledge. “Uh-uh. This ain’t gonna work if you have a teenage girl living here. We’re going to need one of those floor-to-ceiling thingies with racks for every product you can imagine and some you can’t.”
“A reading would be appreciated and no, that’s just the soap dish,” I assured her, shaking my head to keep up with Donna’s dizzying tangents. “I do not pretend to know what women need in the shower and was planning on letting Nai pick out her accessories after the room is finished.” Looking around the gutted closet, I added in a mutter, “If it gets finished.” When I looked it up online, several DIY forums assured me that a small bathroom was a weekend job, but five days into the project, I had barely finished installing the plumbing. I’d even taken the day off of work, which was something I’d never done before.
“You know, there’s no shame in asking for help,” Donna said sternly, but her expression was one of amusement.
“I did ask, and I appreciate what you’ve done.”
“You asked me to buy stuff,” she huffed. “Look, I’ve done this before. You have not. We can probably get the framework and the rest of the plumbing set up today. We’ll do the reading and cleansing on this place tonight, and I’ll come over tomorrow after Desmond gets up and finish out the shower and tiling. By the time Nai gets home from school, she’ll have a finished bathroom.”
“That’s generous, Donna, but I can’t ask you to take off of work,” I reminded her. Sometimes, Donna’s enthusiasm got the better of her.
“Eh, actually… I was let go yesterday,” she said quietly, suddenly sullen.
“Oh, Donna. What happened this time?” This was the third job she’d lost in a month and I was beginning to worry.
“Officially, I was let go because I wasn’t a good fit with the corporate directive. Unofficially, the pipsqueak manager had a grossly overblown problem with the fact that I was trying to educate our customers on the dangers of ingesting processed foods.”
“You worked at Applebee’s,” Desmond said, daring to vocalize what I wouldn’t. “I wouldn’t exactly call the manager’s issue grossly overblown.”
“Yeah, well…” she huffed. “Whatever. If people want to poison themselves…”
“You know what? Why don’t we do that reading now?” I said, cutting Donna off before she went full blown into one of her favorite topics. “I think I’m sensing a little conflicted energy as we speak.”
Chapter 4
Land of the Lost
The way my sister complained, you would think we had been sent to the North Pole or something. Okay, so Blackbird was kind of out there in the middle of nowhere, but it’s not like we grew up in a huge city or anything. We came from Minnesota. Rural Minnesota. Well, okay, the suburbs, but the way she carried on, you’d think we lived in some high-rise apartment in downtown Minneapolis. I think she just wanted to have something to complain about because she thinks that’s what she has to do.
But Nai wasn’t the only one down on this place. Desmond and Bogie both complained and even Seth said some unflattering stuff about how backwards it is here. I guess they could be right, but I didn’t see it. Perhaps I’m just an incurable optimist. I mean, yeah, I felt the weirdness just like everyone else, but the town itself wasn’t to blame for all the Discordant activity, was it? Maybe it was, but still, it wasn’t a bad place.
I didn’t really know what to make of our new house though. I’m glad we weren’t all going to stay in the tiny apartment above the bar, but the house Pete moved us into… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t the only technically dead inhabitants. I never believed in ghosts, but then again, I never thought I’d meet a demon either, so the possibility of a haunted house wasn’t that weird. I just hoped any ghosts I met were friendly. Seth said that pixies had been using the house to throw parties while it was empty, but that there weren’t any now.
Pixies. I really can’t wrap my head around that. Or angels. Man, when Seth told me what they really were, I kind of got creeped out. If I hadn’t seen that vampire at the mall, I don’t think I would have believed they were real either. And to think that the girls in my school thought vampires were sexy! I didn’t get a good look at him, but the smell alone turned my stomach. Seth and Desmond are so casual about it too. Like, there’s a part of me that wants to yell at everyone I see to be careful because monsters are everywhere, but that would be silly and I don’t think anyone would be happy with me if I got locked up in a mental hospital. Well Nai might be happy about that, but you know what I mean.
There was a sort of strangeness to the town that I had to admit was weird. I mean, everything seemed kind of normal on the surface and it wasn’t horrible, like everyone else said, it was just odd in sort of a Twilight Zone way. I wanted to believe that I only felt that way because I was in a new place, but to be honest, it was probably something bad. Pete had said that there was something about Blackbird that made it attractive to the Discordant and I was inclined to agree.
Even our house was kind of spooky. It sat right next to the river and was pretty old, so everything had this weird, musty smell. Seth assured me that once it was lived in, the smell would go away, but I don’t know. I mean, I alread
y went through half a bottle of Febreze and I sure the heck wasn’t going to start jamming my nose into the carpet like the people in the commercials. It still smelled like a swamp monster was hiding under my bed. Swamp monsters are totally real, by the way. But Desmond assured me that the only place they hung out was Louisiana and didn’t hide under beds. Still the house was creepy. The floors were old and warped, and they creaked in some places. Even the windows had that weird funhouse mirror effect because they were so old that the glass was all melted. Nai loved it because it was creepy. I suppose it was good that she had one thing she didn’t complain about.
I worried about her. I know she told me not to, and even Seth and Desmond told me it was okay, but I still worried. I didn’t like to think about the fact that she almost went to Hell. She’s a pain in the butt and has never been nice to me, but she’s still my sister. In a way, it’s my fault. I got all of the good parts. I don’t get that either. I guess what I mean is that I get that we were once one person, but what I don’t get is why we had to be split into a good and bad half. Wasn’t there enough of both to give us each a little?
Pete said that over time we would both balance and be ‘normal’ people. When I asked him how long that took, he said usually a couple of cycles. Cycles are lifetimes. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that too. It’s like, reincarnation is real, only it’s not. I always thought that when you were born, you would either be a good person or bad person, and when you died, God would determine if you went to Heaven or Hell. This sort of happens, but then your soul starts over in a new body. It’s all a bit confusing. I’m just glad Nai didn’t go to Hell.
I thought maybe if I tried doing something bad, I’d start to balance and maybe Nai would too. I tried to remember pranks that the mean kids at school thought were funny. I was going to put a thumbtack on Seth’s chair, but then I thought about how that might really hurt and scrapped the idea. I went with a whoopee-cushion instead. Everyone laughed, well, everyone except Nai. She thought it was lame. She thinks a lot of things are lame. Desmond said it was a good start, but I think he was just trying to make me feel better. I’ll show him though. As soon as I work up the nerve, I’m going to pull a huge prank on him. Maybe. I mean, Desmond is pretty big and definitely stronger than me.
Those guys are pretty odd too. I can tell they are both powerful and I can see their souls. It’s hard to describe what I see. Pete told us that we’ll know right away if someone is balanced or not. Seth and Desmond are balanced, but they kind of have a connection, like me and Nai. Well, not exactly like us. They aren’t a split soul, but their souls are kind of connected. Nai said they knew each other in their past lives, but she wouldn’t say anything else and Desmond gave her a death glare just for saying that. That’s fine though. Their lives are none of our business.
* * *
“This is so stupid. We’re dead. Why do we even have to go to school?”
“Because we still need to act like we’re alive, Nai,” I said. She’d had this argument about twenty times with Desmond. “We’re going to have to get jobs and make money to survive, just like normal people.”
“We have jobs,” she grumbled and kicked an empty pop bottle for emphasis. “I don’t get why we’re supposed to pay our own way when we didn’t sign up for this in the first place.”
“Well, we have to fit in, right?”
“Desmond doesn’t.”
“Yeah he does. He owns the bar.”
“But he doesn’t work there,” she argued. “Why can’t we just be heirs or something?”
The high school was only a few blocks from our house, which was good, because neither of us had a driver’s license, and also because the short walk meant that I only had to listen to Nai’s complaints for a few minutes. It was an older brick building and way smaller than our old school. When we went to register for classes, both Nai and I noticed something off, but we had no idea what it was. Desmond said we were sensing the residual energy of the students who had been there last. I guess it’s no secret to anyone that teenagers are a little more emotional than adults, but we both knew that what we felt was different. We didn’t find any lost souls, but there was definitely something weird that day. As we approached the school on the first day of classes, it was there again and we both stopped, as if we had reached a physical barrier.
“Do you feel that?” Nai asked with a weird look, like she was going to be sick.
“Yeah,” I said, probably with the same look. This wasn’t right. “Come on.” I picked up my feet and pushed onward, even though I really didn’t want to. When we reached the front doors, I nearly fell right back down the stairs. The wave of emotional turmoil was overpowering. Just like Seth and Pete told us, there was nothing really tangible about what we were experiencing, but just the fact that we felt anything at all was bad.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Nai said with a wince. “This can’t be normal. I know angst. This is not angst.”
“It’s like… Nai, I think everyone here is lost,” I said. “Not just the students, but the teachers too. How the heck are we supposed to blend in and act like normal students if we need to save everyone?”
“Ugh! Forget them. Who’s gonna save us? Seriously, puking in the hall on the first day of school is not cool.”
“Well take a Tums or something because we have to do something!”
“Ugh! You’re the worst!”
“New students?”
All of the sudden, the feeling got a thousand times worse and it was all I could do not to join Nai in doubling over. I turned toward the sound of the voice and saw a girl around our age with a clipboard in her hand and an obviously fake smile on her face. She was definitely lost. Unfortunately, I was too overwhelmed to do anything more than nod.
“What the hell do you care if we are?” Nai snarked at the girl, standing up straight.
“I’m the student liaison,” the girl replied, wincing a little at Nai’s attitude. “I’m here to wel-”
“That doesn’t mean you care, just that you’re trying to win brownie points with the cool kids.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My sister is just-”
“You heard me,” Nai cut me off. “You just want the popular kids to notice you, which is really pathetic, you know. News flash, honey: They don’t like you and neither do I. Go play with the nerds and accept who you are.”
“What? I… Go to hell!” she yelled and stormed off.
“Nai! What are you doing?”
“What?” she said with a shrug.
“That’s not how you make a good start at a new school! That poor girl was lost!”
“And now she isn’t!” Nai shot back with a smug smile.
“Huh? Whatever. Like yelling at someone is going to solve anything,” I said, shaking my head at how mean Nai could be.
“Jem, don’t be a complete idiot. Don’t you feel that?”
I was about to tell Nai to stop lying when I noticed that she was right. The girl was talking to a group of kids by a locker. She was still angry and gesturing rudely at Nai, but she wasn’t lost.
“Okay, but still, that was mean!”
“Was it? She was trying to be someone she wasn’t. She didn’t even like the same things as the girls she was trying to impress. She has friends and she just needed to be reminded that her priorities were whack.”
Okay, she kind of got me there. I never really understood why some kids wanted to hang out with people they had nothing in common with just because they were popular. But still, Nai’s way of handling it was just plain mean.
“Come on, now we have to find our lockers. On our own,” I added, rolling my eyes.
I’d expected senior year to be tough, but this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. Every class was filled with the overpowering emotions of the lost. It was a good thing that most teachers just handed out lesson plans and did an overview because there was no way I was going to learn anything with my brain
being bombarded. I was able to talk to, and actually save a few kids, but there was no way I was going to reach them all. I had hoped that Nai was having better luck than I was, but when I saw her in the cafeteria, she was staring at her phone and not even trying to help.
“Anyone in there?”
“Shut it,” she said, not even looking up.
“Nai, we have work to do.”
“Just give me a… dammit!” She looked up and glared at me. “I was this close to killing Desmond’s boss rush score.”
“Seriously, you’re playing Monster Curse?”
She gave me a ‘duh’ look. “It’s work related.”
“For a Warrior maybe, but we’re Guardians. We need to save people, not kill Discordant.”
“Jem, look around you. Every friggin’ idiot in this town is lost. We’re not going to save them all. Not unless we figure out what is causing them all to be like this.”
She had a point, but that was Desmond’s job. “Okay, fine,” I said, playing along for now. “What did you find out?”
“That there’s probably a portal to the Chaos realm somewhere in town, allowing the Discordant easy access.”
“Duh,” I said, exasperated for the eleventy-billionth time today. “Seth told us as much. No one has been able to find it.”
“Okay, but Seth also said that one Discordant can’t affect everyone and there are other factors. Some Discordants, like werewolves and pixies, don’t even create lost. They just create chaos. He also said that most people here are unbalanced enough that they are in danger of becoming lost. Not that everyone here was lost. For everyone in this school to be as lost as they are, we’re dealing with a shit ton of Discordant. Don’t you think that we’d notice if demons and vampires were running amok?”
Okay, she did have a point. “So what do you think this means?”
“I think there’s something bigger here.”
“Like what?”
Rise of the Discordant: The Complete Five Book Series Page 22