“You do look so much like them,” Duvall murmured.
She had Alex’s full attention now. “Them?”
“I meant to say her. Your mother, of course.”
“You said them. Is more of my family here?”
“No.”
“Of course not,” Alex said more to herself than to Duvall. “Why is everyone related to me gone?”
“Some people just have magic in their souls. It is unfortunate that they are the ones who don’t get to stick around long enough to reach their full potential. The brightest lights burn out the fastest, or maybe they are just more difficult to conceal.” She shook her head at Alex’s bewildered expression. “Don’t be fooled by the utopian pretense of Eidolon. There is a reason why our city is surrounded by walls and gates, among other invisible barricades.” Duvall’s voice lowered. “Even though our little Garden of Eden itself has been known to contain its fair share of snakes.”
“What?”
“Never you mind.”
Alex couldn’t drop the subject. She clutched on to it, grasping for any tidbit of information about her family. “Can you tell me what happened to my mother?”
Duvall leaned over a bucket that reeked of old gym socks and rotten honey. “Unfortunately, I don’t know. Nobody knows. She disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Presumably gone, I’m afraid.”
“Why is that presumed?”
Duvall poured some of the goop into Alex’s paint tray. “Fear. People are afraid of the unknown. And no one could predict the extent of what your mom could do.”
“But Ellington Reynes told me that my mother didn’t have any special talents.”
Duvall adjusted her shawls, and her jewelry clinked softly. She reached into the bucket and extracted another paint roller. “Sometimes a mind will take its time before opening itself to its gifts. Some buds wait longer to blossom.”
“And why would anyone assume she had something worth waiting for?”
“There was enough evidence.” Duvall allowed Alex to ponder the meaning of this. After a few minutes, she clunked one of her heels against the bucket. “The Rhodo gel has a little kick to it, doesn’t it?”
“It stinks.” Alex lifted her paint roller from the tray. The mixture clung to it like a gigantic wad of yellow bubblegum. It pulsated, gripping the side of the container like the tentacle of a squid.
Duvall hummed a tune, harmonizing with the squeak of her paint roller spreading the gel over the wall. With her free hand, she held out a stone and extended it in Alex’s direction. “Tell me. Were you immensely strong-minded in life?”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked, gingerly dipping the tip of her brush into the goo.
“Oh you’ll need much more than that,” Duvall barked. She placed her hands on her hips, and the paint roller continued to spread Rhodo gel along the wall all by itself. “I mean, were you intelligent?”
Alex attempted to let go of her roller as Duvall had done, but it slammed to the floor with a clatter and a splat. “Average, I guess.”
Duvall seemed disappointed. “What about your strength?”
“Physically?” Alex laughed and picked up her roller. “I could barely lift my pencil without breaking a bone in my finger.”
“Any special gifts?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“If you had them you would understand.” She twirled the stone with her fingers. “You weren’t one of the gifted, were you?”
“Huh?”
“Magical?”
“Not that I know of.” Alex slopped a glob of gel against the wall, where it stuck like superglue. She kneaded the slime with the brush in her other hand to try to smooth it out.
Duvall placed her free hand back on her paint roller, which squeaked like a rusty old swing. Finally she said, “Undoubtedly your bloodline runs deep here. There are few explanations to explain why you are so skilled. Heredity might be the answer.”
Oh my gosh, thought Alex, not her too.
“Spirits evolve like anything else. Members of certain spiritually inclined families are more talented. Where did you say you were from?”
Alex swiped her hair from her eyes with her forearm. “Parrish, Maryland.”
The creaking from Duvall’s roller ceased abruptly. “Come again?”
“Parrish? It’s a tiny town outside of Annapolis.”
Duvall turned and began painting feverishly. “That’s a busy town.”
“Not really. It’s actually pretty small.”
“I wasn’t referring to the physical world, my dear.”
Alex dipped her roller into the tray. “I suppose there were a lot of ghost stories. Is Parrish like Eidolon?”
Duvall shook her head. “Not the same at all.”
“Then why is Parrish is so”—she used the word Duvall had provided—“busy?”
“Some towns just are, my dear.”
Alex didn’t appreciate the vague answer. She absently rolled the goo onto the wall, lost in thought.
“Pick up the pace over there. We need to coat the entire perimeter, but just about six feet or so. It doesn’t have to be higher than the height of the average human. No one is going to back into the wall twenty feet up.” Duvall’s bony arm swept the length of the ballroom. “Newburies will be ballroom dancing in here. Once the guests are chased into the room, they have to make their way through the horde of masked dancers, who have various weapons to flash in their faces. There’s also a stunt guest who runs through and gets stabbed, a scene that propels the other guests to the walls, where they have to fight their way out of the Rhodo gel.”
“Sounds traumatizing,” Alex said.
For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the clinking of Duvall’s bracelets and the shlop of the slime bucket. It was quite uncomfortable, especially since Duvall kept staring at her and inching closer with the stone. By the time Calla arrived to save Alex, Duvall’s outstretched hand hovered close enough that if Alex had turned her head, her nose would graze the rock.
“Paleo ordered me to come and get you.” Calla shriveled under Duvall’s piercing glare. “We, um, we’re supposed to begin walkthroughs as mock visitors.”
“Oh,” Alex said, absolutely relieved. “Professor, would you like me to finish before I go?” They had barely finished one wall. The room was so massive Alex doubted it would be coated in time.
Duvall was mumbling words under her breath, words that made no sense. “No, dear. I’ve got it under control.”
“Okay,” Alex said, backing away slowly. She followed Calla toward the front foyer of the mansion, but halfway there, she realized she had left the paint roller but accidently taken the brush. She darted back down the narrow hallway.
Alex reached the ballroom and gripped the side of the door, preparing to deposit the brush quickly and avoid another weird conversation. When she rounded the corner, she stopped dead in her tracks. Duvall had vanished, and in her place, covering every inch of the enormous room, was a thick, dripping layer of gel. How had she finished so quickly?
If the task was so easily accomplished, why had Duvall asked for help? And why had she wasted her time in awkward silence with Alex?
***
“Can I show you something cool?”
When Jonas asked, Alex had hesitated, and he didn’t blame her. Her mind probably conjured the image of a childhood Jonas asking her that very same question right before beheading her favorite doll and holding up the head like a trophy. No wonder she seemed wary of what “something cool” might be.
He held out his hand and she eyed it like it was a bear trap. Would he ever release her if she gave him that much? She smiled, of course. Alex was always too polite to reject him completely. She reached out and cupped her hand around his bicep, barely grazing his arm, accepting the invite but not the gesture. That was good enough for Jonas. He took what he could get.
He debated whether or not to share this place with her. At first, he�
��d adamantly thought no, but Alex made things difficult. He’d never known how to handle himself around her. Alex was like a sunset on the horizon, beautifully unreal like the fingertips of the world grazing the edges of heaven, and yet painfully unattainable. Something he knew he could never reach, although that didn’t stop him from wanting it.
Since he could remember, he’d searched for hiding places. His brothers took up so much space that he couldn’t always breathe around them. This place he’d found by accident while attempting a detour during one of Van Hanlin’s scripted chasing routes. Among the trees that stretched so high they could, quite possibly, be gateways to eternity, one tree was different from all the others. It had thick leaves like a giant’s teardrops and branches that swayed without wind. Short and stout, it was blatantly out of place, overshadowed by its surroundings, kind of like Jonas.
Alex followed him beneath the protection of the tree and sat down. “What did you want to show me?”
“You’ll hear it before you see it.”
She cocked her head, listening for something. “Hear what?”
“Wait a few minutes.”
Alex folded her tiny hands in her lap.
He shifted his eyes as far as he could to look at her without turning his head. He wanted so badly to reach out and grab her hand.
“Where do you go when your brothers are around?” she asked out of the blue.
“What do you mean?”
“You aren’t you.”
Perhaps she sniffed out his vulnerability here. Jonas knew very well that the sullen person he became in the presence of his brothers was the type of person Alex became without them. “Where do you go when they’re not around?”
“Point taken,” she said.
He held her gaze longer than he was allowed. Her oversized eyes matched the dusk, whatever shade of blue was left to survive alone without the light from the sun. It was a bittersweet color. Like the ending of something good.
“In all seriousness,” Alex pressed him. “You sneak off a lot. I think maybe I’m the only one who notices.”
She noticed when he wasn’t around? Something inside of him fluttered. He’d missed that feeling. Optimism. “You aren’t the only one, believe me. My brothers have never really trusted me. Without Chase to babysit, they’ve been watching me like a hawk.”
“Why?”
Who would they ridicule without him? They couldn’t possibly turn on each other. “Who knows? Boredom?”
“Do they have a reason to be concerned?”
Jonas wondered if he should tell her about his little secret. He always seemed to get himself into messy situations. It wasn’t a reason for concern but rather something he was proud of, an opportunity, but it was also something he was supposed to keep to himself. Alex made him weak. He would tell her everything if it meant he could keep her.
Kaleb was the leader; Gabe was the genius; Chase was the heartthrob. He’d never voice it aloud, but he was dreading Chase’s return. Charm filled the air when just Kaleb and Gabe were around, but when Chase returned, it would spill over, and he’d be forced to wade through the weight at his ankles. It was tiring to keep up with them. And who was he if he didn’t maintain his own role?
“No,” he finally replied. “They don’t have a reason for concern. But if they didn’t assume I was up to no good, something would be wrong.”
“What do they think you’re up to?”
He grinned mischievously. “You.”
“Ah,” Alex sighed. “You’re using me to get under their skin.”
Of course she wouldn’t take it seriously. He began to respond, but stopped when the air around them began to ripple. “Here they come.”
“Who?”
He lifted a finger to his lips, and within seconds, there came a palpitation so intense the world seemed to tremble. “This is what I’ve been waiting to show you.”
Hundreds of butterflies swarmed the tree. “Why are they here?”
“Maybe they just like the tree, but I’ve been here three times now when it’s happened.” Jonas liked to think they flocked to this tree in particular because it was different. It was proof that bigger wasn’t always better.
“It’s like magic.”
He was pleased to find her so in awe. He’d known she’d appreciate this. The butterflies were all different sizes, all different colors, a Monet painting blotching the world. With a whispering whoosh, the tree shifted its branches in a ticklish shudder. He watched Alex reach out her arm. The first butterfly to land on her was black and blue, proving a bruise could be beautiful, as though it knew how her life had been.
“Ever heard of the butterfly effect?” he asked. “If the wings of one butterfly can alter the path of a storm … ” He waved at the scene around them. “Imagine what this could do.”
He liked the idea that something so trivial, so small, could have such a big effect. It gave him hope that with even the slightest imbalance, the weight of the world, and maybe even the fate of the world, could be shifted.
Then maybe he’d stand a chance.
On October first, the last-minute preparations for the Moribund Mansion of Morgues had turned into such frenzy that the manor itself had actually begun to hum like the steady buzz of a beehive. That evening, Duvall partnered Alex with Skye and gave them a bucket the size of a baby pool filled with giant spools of what seemed like thick white yarn. She ordered them to decorate every nook and cranny of the house with fake “spider webs,” a task that proved to be extremely tricky because Duvall had invented the substance, and when the threads broke, they regenerated.
Skye ended up in the doorway of the billiard room, swaddled by the adhesive. Duvall drifted past and paused to commend Skye for being so creative. “Next year,” she cackled, “we should assign spirits to be stuck in the webs, screaming for help!”
There seemed to be a competition among the teachers to outdo one another with fresh ideas for the mansion. Strobe lights, mirrors, and fake murders would only get you so far, Van Hanlin had said.
“Alex Ash!” Duvall snapped her fingers. “Remove your friend before the webs go down her throat. That would be extremely uncomfortable for her.”
“Technically, her throat doesn’t exist anymore, right?” Madison asked from across the room.
“No, it doesn’t exist, but she hasn’t been dead long enough to believe that. She’d feel the pain of it.”
It took Alex nearly an hour to extract Skye from the heart of the web without breaking any of the threads. “Thanks,” Skye chirped once her face was freed. “I bet this is the stuff we diagrammed in Duvall’s ABC class the other day.”
The diagram had been excruciatingly difficult even with accelerated brainpower. Alex was grateful that Jack had been her partner. The compound was a mixture of dozens of elements, many of which the physical world had yet to discover. Duvall’s periodic chart was nearly two times the size of the one Alex had used for chemistry when she was alive.
Alex struggled to disentangle the rest of Skye and finally freed her arms. “I wonder if it’s the same goop Duvall used in the ballroom. Rhodo gel, or whatever it’s called, was even stickier.”
“Rhodo gel?” Skye asked in surprise. “That’s what she wanted it for? The ballroom?”
Alex examined what was left to unravel. “Yeah.”
“I was there when Duvall started to prep the ingredients in her test tubes. It seemed like a pain to make, so I thought she had a more significant purpose for it. Amid a million other ingredients it has peppermint, ginkgo, basil, rosemary, and of course rhodiola.” She spun her hands in circles around her head. “All that cleansing stuff.”
“What would she need to cleanse?”
“Good question. Rhodo gel is supposed to make someone understand things that aren’t clear to them. Why would she use something so complicated to gloop a bunch of walls when she could have just used this?” Skye kicked the baby pool of webs.
“Maybe to help the guests get out of the ballroom?”<
br />
“Maybe.” Skye lifted a finger to her chin thoughtfully. A thick thread of web broke off from around her elbow and twisted its way around her torso like a vine. “Damn,” she murmured.
Alex began to unwind it, twirling Skye around like they were partners on a dance floor. The released threads clung to Alex like static. “This is probably the sort of thing they do at couples counseling retreats.”
“I doubt they have witches there to spin webs.”
“So Duvall really is a witch?”
“Of course. You have to understand that the word witch merely means someone who is gifted,” Skye picked at her fingers. “What? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“You say it so nonchalantly.”
“Say what?”
Alex glanced around nervously as the taboo reached her tongue. “Witches,” she said in a low voice.
“How else would I say it?” Skye let out a tiny laugh. “And you don’t have to whisper. Why do you think—Oh.” She paused, her smile fading. “You sit with the Bonds during Duvall’s class, don’t you?”
“So?” Alex was defensive. She didn’t understand why everyone felt the need to pick on them.
Skye snorted. “The typical Bond thing to do. They’ve infected your pretty little head already. I thought under all that hair you had more sense.”
Alex self-consciously spun her hair around her finger. “Why would that be typical?”
“Multigenerational spirits stick to their stereotypes. Everyone knows that Gossamers”—she pointed her thumb to her chest and winked—“are always captivating. Darwins are always aggressive. And Bonds are always cursed.” Skye plopped down on the floor with her long legs blocking the hallway. “They really haven’t told you anything?”
Alex shook her head.
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