Eternity tft-3

by Elizabeth Miles

  * * *

  “You’re home earlier than I expected,” Em’s mom said when Em pulled into the driveway. It was dusk on Monday evening and Mrs. Winters was in the yard, scrubbing their kitchen curtains by hand in a huge soapy bucket on the lawn. “I thought you were going to try and catch up on some homework with Gabby today.”

  “I couldn’t really concentrate,” Em admitted. “Thought I’d come home and see what was going on around here.”

  “Em, honey, we’ve got it under control. . . . ” Her mom leaned back on her heels and sighed.

  Sorry, Mom, homework and lab reports have been taking a backseat to fighting the bloodthirsty witches who want my soul.

  “I’ll get everything done,” Em promised. “We barely got any sleep last night and I have a lot on my mind. I didn’t know how bad it was, you know?”

  “Well, the damage is worst in the laundry room and the kitchen,” her mom said. “Your father took the day off—he’s in there now, ripping up what’s left of the linoleum. We’ll have to get new cabinets and patch up the walls. But it’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been. Nowhere close. Plumbing works.”

  “Can we, like, still live here?” Em looked up at the house and felt a wave of nostalgia. She just wanted to curl up on her bed and smell her family’s laundry detergent. What if Lucy’s words held meaning? What if Em actually had a fighting chance?

  “Yes,” her mom said. “Things are going to be in shambles for a few weeks, but it’s safe. We’ll be able to sleep in our own beds.”

  That was a relief.

  “What caused it?” Em asked, even though she thought she knew. The Furies were egging her on. Teasing her. Daring her. Turning this into a game.

  “Something with the wiring,” her mom said, waving her hand vaguely.

  Em kneeled down in the cold grass next to her. “Mom,” she said, reaching out to touch her mother’s arm. “Thank you for waking me up last night.”

  “You think I would leave you in a burning house?” her mom responded. “Only if you forget Mother’s Day.” She nudged Em with her shoulder, then grew serious. “I’ll always do what I can to protect you, sweetie. But I’ll be much more effective if I know what’s going on in your life. Like this Colin. Care to tell me who he is?”

  “He’s just an old friend of Drea’s who’s having a hard time right now,” Em said. “He had nothing to do with the fire.”

  “I’m not accusing him of anything, Emily,” her mom said, wringing out a curtain. “I just like to know the young men who visit in the middle of the night. Next time he comes over I’d like to meet him under more relaxed circumstances.”

  She tried to imagine Crow sitting on their living room couch, making small talk with her parents. . . . It was so absurd, she almost laughed out loud. “Sure, Mom, if that will make you feel better.”

  “It will,” her mother said. “Thank you for humoring me.”

  Em started to get up.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” her mom asked for the thousandth time.

  If her mother only knew—if she had even the slightest idea of what was going on—could she help? Would she be able to? It was tempting for Em to succumb to the childish notion: Mommy will fix this. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth. Not because she was worried that her mom would think she’d gone truly insane (though that would probably happen too), but because she was ashamed to admit the mistake that had bound her to the Furies in the first place. It was like light-years had passed since that fateful night when she and Zach shared their first kiss. She felt like a different person. She was a different person. And no one could fix things but her.

  “I’m gonna be fine,” she whispered, her throat hoarse with regret. She wished she believed it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Once I send this, it will be too late for me, Walt’s letter read. JD lay in his bedroom, rereading the thin sheet of paper for what felt like the millionth time.

  I started seeing the visions when I was young, the letter said. Thought I was just overdoing it with the late nights and the partying. I used to see these three figures. Dark. Women. Snakes in their hair. I saw them coming here. I knew they would come even before they did. Because they’d been here before, just like they’ve been everywhere.

  And then my Edie summoned them because she didn’t know any other way. There wasn’t any other way to get rid of him. That’s what she thought, anyway. I didn’t know everything—not then. She thought he was coming after Drea.

  They really got their claws in her. And so she made a deal with them, some sort of arrangement. After that, everything changed. She thought she was tied to them forever. She thought they’d never leave her alone. So I did what I had to do.

  I offered a sacrifice. What else do the gods ever want? It’s been that way forever. Greeks knew it. The Romans, too.

  The gods and goddesses want sacrifice, plain and simple.

  They want blood. Blood like the color of those orchids.

  I saw that in my visions.

  JD was starting to get pins and needles in his right arm. He flipped onto his other side and kept reading.

  Edie kept talking about fire. About how there had been a fire here, in Ascension. That’s when the Furies first infiltrated this place. I thought I could draw them back. With a fire. End it how it all began. I saw that in my visions too.

  The way I saw it, I was offering Drea as a sacrifice. An innocent. The way it happened in my visions, I put Drea in the middle of a circle of sticks and a pile of those red flowers. She was wearing a gold pin—shaped like a snake. It was her mother’s. I figured it was for good luck or something. I’d light the fire, watch it burn . . . and then they’d disappear. Drea would always be safe. It was like they got cheated. It was like they got tricked. Because they got nothing.

  Finally I broke down. I decided to try it. Follow the vision like it was an instruction manual. I brought Drea (she was still so little) into the Haunted Woods. Even back then, that’s what everyone called them. Where Edie had seen the Furies’ house.

  That morning, I’d taken her mother’s snake pin from its jewelry box. I stuck it to Drea’s shirt for protection and then I built a fire around her. She just sat there the whole time, looking up at me with those dark eyes. So trusting. It almost broke my heart.

  What could I do?

  JD shivered and looked over to his bedroom window. It wasn’t warm enough yet to keep the window open overnight.  After closing it, he settled back down on his bed, holding the letter above his face.

  The flames got higher and higher, until I couldn’t see her anymore. They were getting so close and it was getting so hot. She started crying. My little girl started crying.

  They weren’t there, and then suddenly they were—they appeared out of nowhere. They were screaming. Like they were in pain. Through the smoke, I watched their faces melting.

  And they left. Just disappeared into thin air.

  I ran through the flames. I grabbed my little girl. She was untouched. It had worked. I came home, hid the pin, and prayed that I would never see them again.

  I believed we were free of them. But it was too late. Edie had already done what she did. I was too late. I hope you’re not.

  —Walt

  JD scoured the page, making sure he understood what Walt Feiffer was trying to tell him. He held the paper in his right hand; in his left, he ran his thumb over the contours of the snake pin. Almost identical to the one he’d found near Henry Landon’s icy grave. The one Walt referred to in his note.

  He stared down at the page until the words started to blur. He felt sick to his stomach. He thought of little Drea, behind a wall of flame. . . .

  But if  Walt Feiffer had done it, couldn’t JD do it too?

  Sprawled on his twin bed, he focused on each letter, trying to block out the sounds of thudding pop music bleeding through the walls from Melissa’s room.

  It was only a few hours later, but he’d already memorized certain line
s.

  Edie kept talking about fire . . . and we were free of them.

  When he finished reading the note, JD’s hands were shaking. The paper was crumpled from how hard he was gripping it.

  He understood the banishment ritual. It had worked for Drea’s dad. It could work for him. And maybe he wouldn’t be too late. But he needed to find an innocent—someone who could serve as a sacrifice. Someone he would have to rescue at the last second, as Drea’s dad had rescued her. From beyond the wall of smoke and flame.

  The faint wail of a song seeped through the wall. Melissa always listened to her music too loud.

  Melissa.

  No.

  The idea bled into his mind quickly.

  No. I can’t put her in danger.

  But she would be safe. That’s what Mr. Feiffer’s note said. He could save her at the last minute.

  She’s my sister.

  Drea had been Walt’s daughter.

  But what if it doesn’t work?

  What if it does?

  What if I don’t do it?

  Em’s eyes flashed before his own. Big, trusting, light with laughter.

  With that, JD got up, marched out of his room, and knocked on Melissa’s door. It was time to send the Furies back to hell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SMASH.

  The greenhouse window broke easily, several shards of glass spraying out onto the cement floor inside. Em looked down at her hand, amazed that it didn’t hurt—not one bit. Not even that fresh laceration on her right knuckle, which was rapidly healing in the last of the moonlight.

  Em reached her hand through and twisted the lock on the door, which squeaked open rustily. She looked around behind her at the quiet, dewy fields, the buildings with darkened windows, and the long driveway to the road. No one was around.

  And so she slipped inside.

  Just before the dawn of what was possibly her last day on earth as Emily Winters, Em was breaking and entering.

  She was still shaken from Crow’s confession and Lucy’s odd insights. Shaken, shocked . . . and scared. For him, for her, and for everyone.

  After Crow had left her outside the Dungeon, she had frantically reviewed everything she knew: Edie killed herself to save Drea from the Furies. Ty was trying to take over Em’s life. Skylar seemed to be left alone now, but her sister Lucy could hear the Furies—likely a result of her brain damage turning her, as the book had put it, “mad.” But then again, Lucy wasn’t exactly a trustworthy source, babbling about albinos and mouths and seeds.

  That was how she’d made the connection.  Albino flowers . . .

  Hadn’t Nora mentioned rumors of an antidote, a way to clean the slate and become pure again? Something derived from nature, something derived from the Furies’ source?

  Em’s heart started hammering and she stood up, pacing the alleyway.

  She wondered if the secret was in the seeds. If it was possible that she had literally ingested the Furies’ evil, and if it was possible that the white flower held an antidote. Was it feasible, even, that the same seeds had properties of both evil and good?

  Ty had said that evil always contained the power to destroy itself. That she wanted to be “good.” What if the very thing that symbolized the Furies’ evil was the key to their undoing?

  She had practically flown to the greenhouse. She couldn’t even remember the drive. She knew that if there was any connection between the plant world and the Furies, she would find it at the greenhouse.

  Once she was inside, the atmosphere was claustrophobic; shining her flashlight around the space, Em noticed the yellow-white film that had accumulated on the inside of the glass panes. The plants looked more cooped in than they had before.

  “Hello?” Her voice echoed thinly off the walls. On her tiptoes, shining the blue light in front of her feet, she made her way slowly down the center aisle of the greenhouse, toward the wooden table where she’d sat with Nora, Skylar, and Hannah Markswell the other night. Her shoes clicked against the cement. To the left was a rickety metal shelving unit filled with books about gardening, landscaping, and botany, some of them ancient and some brand-new. She positioned herself so that she could see both the front and the rear doors, and leaned over so she could read the books’ spines. Plants of the Northeast. Growing Annuals Indoors. Victorian Horticulture. She ran a finger down the row. Next to those was a set of black three-ring binders, each labeled with a name. Nora’s was one of them.

  Em pulled the binder from the shelf and opened it to find loose-leaf papers marked in Nora’s neat cursive. Notes. Each of the gardeners kept notes on their plants, on their findings. Nora’s appeared to be arranged alphabetically by type of plant: heliotrope, ivy, violets. The largest section, however, was labeled with a simple F.

  Em flipped quickly to those pages and found exactly what she’d expected to find: Nora’s observations about orchids. The terms were scientific, but Em’s breath hitched. Nora was attempting to breed what she referred to as the “albino orchid.”

  I am starting to believe that the red orchid turns white only during a full moon, Nora had written. It has happened to me twice now. There must be some significance. The moon must be at its peak in order for the flower to open its petals and reveal the seeds inside. The seeds can be good or bad—they can yield new plants, or shrivel in the dirt. It wilts almost instantly—usually within one hour of having bloomed. The flower is extremely rare, extremely sensitive. As yet, I have not succeeded in keeping it in bloom.

  Em read the passage several times. As she closed the binder, she realized her hands were shaking. It was starting to make sense. If the flower was special, then its seeds must be unique too. The seeds can be good or bad. Just as the red seeds from the Furies’ evil flowers had launched her transformation, the seeds from the albino orchid could counter their effect. When the seeds were bad, they were very bad. And when they were good, they were saviors.

  “You were right, Lucy,” she said into the silence.

  When the light brings up the albino, Lucy had said.

  Good or bad.

  Ty wanted those seeds too. They’d make her good, make her human again.

  The red orchid turns white only during a full moon, Nora had written.

  Em pulled her phone out and clicked over to her mariners’ calendar—the one JD had downloaded to her phone one night when they were hanging out. It listed high and low tides, what time the sun would rise and set, the phases of the moon. A combination of humidity and nerves made the phone slick in her hands. What was the date? She could barely remember.

  And when she pulled up today’s date, Em’s heart leaped from her chest. The full moon was tonight. It all made sense: the same night as the play, just as Crow’s vision had predicted. She had one final chance to save herself. And Ty had to be thinking the exact same thing. Those seeds would save her, or, in the wrong hands, condemn her forever.

  * * *

  The school day had been itchy, like wearing a wool sweater with nothing on underneath. She’d spent half of fourth period shaking in the corner of the girls’ bathroom by the cafeteria, even as everyone bustled around her, psyched to see buds blooming on the trees, looking forward to spring break. She wanted to say good-bye to everyone one last time, but couldn’t stand to even look at them. Just like she couldn’t bring herself to pick up Crow’s insistent calls and texts. Just like she was avoiding seeing JD, and Gabby, and Skylar, who were all going to the play.

  And now she was back at home, hiding in her room, trying to stop her whole body from trembling. Because it was tonight.

  Do or die.

  Her last chance.

  “Thank god it’s finally calmed down out there.” Her mom poked her head into Em’s room. “Remember how terrified you used be of thunderstorms?”

  Em did remember. The smallest bolt of lightning, the thinnest roll of thunder, would send her shrieking into her parents’ room, into their bed, under their covers. That was before everything else got scary. Even now
, a part of her wished she could just run for their bed as she used to, and hide. Instead, she was curled up in her own, pretending to do homework and staring at her laptop at the foot of the bed. Thank god the Winterses had been able to keep living in their home after the fire—if Em were stuck in some bland hotel, she’d probably lose her mind completely.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” asked Mrs. Winters, breaking into Em’s thoughts. They were going to see the school play with the Founts; her parents saw every performance at Ascension, even the ones Em wasn’t in. Weirdos.

  “I’m sure,” Em said. “I’m just not feeling all that well. Tell JD I said congrats.” She kept her eyes on her computer screen, afraid to look at her mom. She was scared she might start to cry. She’d been home from school for hours and all she’d done was leaf sadly through last year’s yearbook and rifle through a wooden box filled with special letters and mementos. She wanted to hold everything in her hands—not just the pieces of paper and scraps of tickets, not just the photographs and shards of beach glass, but the feelings that came with them. The hilarity of one of Gabby’s disjointed notes, passed between classes, unfolded in secret. The excitement of her first trip to Portland without her parents. The peacefulness of summer days spent on the sand and in the salty ocean. Would she never feel those things again?

  Mrs. Winters nodded, then came into the room and ran her hand once over Em’s head. “Everything will be okay, sweetie,” she said.

  Hot tears pricked the backs of Em’s eyes. But will it? She turned and gave her mom a weak smile. “Thanks. I love you.”

  Right before her mom left the room, Em spoke up again. “Mom? Also? I wanted to ask you . . . Can you make homemade mac ’n’ cheese tomorrow night?” If she was still here, and still Em, there was nothing she’d want more.

  Her mom tilted her head quizzically and then smiled. “Sure, hon, if that’s what you’re craving. We can have a nice family dinner, the three of us.”