And this wasn’t here before.
What the hell?
I gulp, drawing in air, observing the fresh flowers in the vase beside his name.
There is no moss here, because this had been freshly carved, recently opened, and very recently sealed. But there’s no way Dare can be here, because I just saw him last night. He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine.
As my hands palm his name, as I reassure myself, pictures fill my head, images and smells.
The sea, a cliff, a car.
Blood, shrieking metal, the water.
Dare.
He’s bloody,
He’s bloody,
He’s bloody.
Everything is on fire,
The flames lick at the stone walls,
Trying to find any possible way out.
The smoke chokes me and I cough,
gasping for air.
I blink and everything is gone.
My hands are on a blank wall, and Dare’s name is gone.
The flowers are gone.
I’m alone.
The floor is bare.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I’m crazy.
It’s the only explanation.
I scramble for the door and burst out into the sunlight, away from the mausoleum, away from the death. I fly toward the house, tripping on the stones.
“Calla?”
My name is called and I’m afraid to look, afraid no one will be there, afraid that I’m still imagining things. Is this what Finn felt like every day? Am I starting down that slippery path? It’s a rabbit hole and I’m the rabbit and I’m crazy.
But it’s Dare, standing tall and strong on the path, and I fly into his arms, without worrying about pushing him away.
His arms close around me and he smells so good, so familiar, and I close my eyes.
“You’re fine,” I tell him, I tell myself. “You’re ok.”
“Yes, I’m fine,” he says in confusion, his hands stroking my back, holding me close. “Did you think something happened to me?”
I see his name, carved in the mausoleum stone, and I shudder, pushing the vision away, far out of my mind.
“No. I…no.”
He holds me for several minutes more, then looks down at me, tucking an errant strand of my hair behind my ear.
“Are you ok? You’ve been gone for hours.”
Hours? How can that be? The sky swirls, and I steady myself against his chest.
I hear his heart and it’s beating fast, because he’s afraid.
He’s afraid for me because he recognizes the signs, he’s seen them before, he’s seen them in my brother.
“It’s ok, Cal,” he murmurs, but I can hear the concern in his voice. “It’s ok.”
But I can tell from his voice that it’s not.
Craziness is genetic.
I’m the rabbit.
And I’m crazy.
“Is your father’s name Phillip?” I ask him tentatively, and he glances down at me.
“Yes.”
“Mine is too.”
“I know,” he says. “But things aren’t always what they seem, Cal. Remember?”
That seems so silly. My father’s name is Phillip and his father’s name is Phillip and it is what it is. Dare’s arm is around my shoulders as we walk back to the house, and I can feel him glance at me from time to time.
“Stop,” I tell him finally as we walk through the gardens. “I’m fine.”
“Ok,” he agrees. “Of course you are.”
But he knows better, and he knows that I’m not.
Sabine is kneeling by the library doors, digging through the rich English soil, and she looks at us over her shoulder. When she sees my face, her eyes narrow and she climbs to her feet.
“Are you all right, Miss Price?” she asks in her gravelly voice. I want to lie, I want to tell her that I’m fine, but I know she can tell the difference. In fact, as she stares at me with those dark eyes, I feel like she can see into my soul.
I don’t bother to lie.
I just shake my head.
She nods.
“Come with me.”
She leads us both to the back of the house, to her room. It’s small and dark, draped in colorful fabrics, in mystic symbols and pieces of gaudy jewelry, shrouded in mirrors and dream-catchers and stars.
I’m stunned and I pause, gazing at all of the pageantry.
She glimpses my expression and shrugs. “I’m Roma,” she says, by way of explanation. At my blank expression, she sighs. “Romani. Gypsy. I’m not ashamed of it.”
She holds her head up high, her chin out, and I can see that she’s far from ashamed. She’s proud.
“You shouldn’t be,” I assure her weakly. “It’s your heritage. It’s fascinating.”
She’s satisfied by that, by the idea that I’m not looking down at her for who she is.
Her dark eyes tell a story, and to me, they tell me that she knows more than I do. That she might even know more about me than I do.
It’s crazy, I know.
But apparently, I’m crazy now.
Sabine guides me to a velvet chair and pushes me gently into it. She glances at Dare.
“Leave us,” she tells him softly. “I’ve got her now. She’ll be fine.”
He’s hesitant and he looks at me, and I nod.
I’ll be fine.
I think.
He slips away, and I don’t want him to go, but he has to. Because he’s part of this, I can feel it, and I can’t trust him. My heart says so.
Sabine rustles about and as she does, I look around. On the table next to me, tarot cards are splayed out, formed in an odd formation, as though I’d interrupted a fortune telling.
I gulp because something hangs in the air here.
Something mystical.
After a minute, Sabine shoves a cup into my hands.
“Drink. It’s lemon balm and chamomile. It’ll settle your stomach and calm you down.”
I don’t bother to ask how she knew I was upset. It must’ve been written all over my face.
I sip at the brew and after a second, she glances at me.
“Better?”
I nod. “Thank you.”
She smiles and her teeth are scary. I look away, and she roots through a cabinet. She extracts her prize and hands me a box.
“Take this at night. It’ll help you sleep.” I glance at her questioningly. She adds, “By night you are free, child.”
I don’t know what that means, but I take the box, which is unmarked, and she nods.
I glance at her table again. “Are you a fortune-teller, Sabine?” It feels odd to say those words in a serious manner, but the old woman doesn’t miss a beat.
“I read the cards,” she nods. “Someday, I’ll read yours.”
I don’t know if I want to know what they’ll say.
“Have you read Dare’s?” I ask impulsively, and I don’t know why. Sabine glances at me, her black eyes knowing.
“That boy doesn’t need his fortune told. He writes his own.”
I have no idea what that means, but I nod like I do.
“You’ll be ok now,” she tells me, her expression wise and I find myself believing her. She’s got a calming nature, something that settles the air around her. I hadn’t noticed that before.
“My mother never mentioned you,” I murmur. “I find that odd, since she must’ve loved you.”
Sabine looks away. “Your mother doesn’t have happy memories from here,” she says quietly. “But I know her heart.”
“Ok,” I say uncertainly. “Sabine, why did my mother leave here? Why does my father have the same name as Dare’s?”
Sabine is so knowing as she sinks back into her chair.
“Your father as you know him isn’t your father,” she says simply, and I gasp, my hands shaking as they grip the chair.
“What do you mean?”
&n
bsp; “Phillip has raised you as his own. But you are the child of Richard Savage.”
My breath
My breath
My breath.
“My uncle?”
I can’t
I can’t
I can’t.
Sabine nods, and she’s unhesitant, as though this is just another face of life, as though it weren’t unnatural.
“Yes. It was necessary. Your mother did as she was told.”
“Necessary for what?”
I’m still appalled, and sickened, and Sabine hands me a basin and I vomit into it.
“Your mother and uncle came together, and you were conceived,” Sabine tells me. “Your mother fled to France with her lover, and she conceived again. She gave birth to twins… you and Finn. But you don’t share the same father.”
“Phillip,” I utter. “Phillip is Finn’s father? And Phillip is Dare’s father?”
Sabine nods, pleased that I have grasped it. “Yes. They are half-brothers.”
“And Finn, my twin, is only my half-brother?”
She nods again. “It happens very rarely in life, child. But you are rare.”
I’m afraid to ask, but I do it anyway.
“Why?”
Sabine pours more tea and hands it to me, and I can’t help but drink it because it calms me it calms me it calms me, and I’m on the verge of hysteria.
“Because you are a descendent of Judas, and of Abel. Your blood is as powerful and old as is possible. Your brother is a descendent of both Cain and Abel. If he is sacrificed, the cycle will finally be broken.”
“What cycle?” I ask and my lips are numb they’re numb.
“Cain killed his brother,” she answers. “Abel made a sacrifice to God, and Cain was jealous so he killed him. God is owed another sacrifice from this family, a true sacrifice, one born of grief and torment, to pay for the sins of your fathers.”
“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” she nods. “Dare understands, though, because Dare is of Salome. Salome harnessed the curse of Judas into a ring. The ring you gave back to Dare. You are all cursed, and only you can stop it by making the right choice, by not betraying what is right. The Rom believe curses are real, Calla. And surely by now, so do you.”
“I…”
My lips can’t move.
“It’s one for one for one, Calla,” Sabine adds. “That’s the way it’s always been. Make the right choice, and this will all end.”
Maybe her tea has valium in it, because I find myself agreeing. I find myself deciding that she is right.
But as I walk into my room, I decide I must’ve imagined the whole thing. Salome? Cain and Abel? Judas? Ancient biblical curses and Dare’s grave?
These things are impossible. Rom beliefs aren’t real.
I’m confused, like normal. I haven’t been sleeping well.
Obviously.
That’s the explanation.
I raise my hand to tuck my hair behind my ear, and that’s when I freeze.
My fingers smell like carnations and stargazers, the flowers that were on Dare’s grave.
It was real.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“We’re related,” I tell Dare, and my voice is urgent and my hand is on his chest. “We can’t…we can’t…we can’t be together.”
Dare’s face is pained and he knew.
“You knew,” I whisper, and the pain in my heart pangs loud loud louder, and he looks at me, and his gaze is so sorrowful and real.
“Things change,” he tells me, and I snort with disgust because we were together and it was incest and I still love him more than anything but Finn. I still love him I still love him I still love him.
“God, I want to die,” I groan, and I push him away and he shakes me hard hard harder.
“Don’t you ever say that again,” he snaps. “Don’t you ever. We’ve been through worse and we will weather this storm, Calla. We’re not truly related. It’s just complicated.”
I look at him and my eyes feel like they will explode with pain and with sadness.
“I don’t want to live if I can’t be with you,” and my words are painfully raw with honesty. “I truly don’t.”
“It won’t be this way,” Dare insists, and he is hiding something from me.
Something
Something
Something.
“What is it?” I ask, and I’m hopeful for just a moment.
“I want to tell you everything, but it’s something you have to figure out for yourself,” he tells me. “You have to see it, or you won’t believe it. It’s complex, it’s complicated, it’s real.”
His fingers lace with mine and the touch doesn’t feel wrong, it feels right.
He pulls me to him, and he kisses me, and his lips are warm and his breath is hot and his body is hard against mine.
“This isn’t wrong,” he tells me, and his lips move against my cheek. “Does it feel wrong to you, Calla-Lily?”
No
God
No.
It feels as right as anything.
His hands splay against my back and he whispers. “Don’t ever say that you want to die, Calla. It’s not your fate to sacrifice yourself. It’s not.”
“How do you know what fate has planned?” I ask him, and I pull away so that I can see into his face and he is so serious so serious so serious.
“Because I just do.”
“That isn’t an answer,” I tell him.
“But it is,” he says, and then his hands fall away and he walks into the house.
I’m alone, and the answers chirp from the trees, across the moors and I have to get them. I have to get the answers, because my sanity is slip slip slipping and if I don’t figure it out soon, I’ll be lost.
I know that.
I know that.
So I find my brother, and I insist that we seek out the truth. Finn loves me so he comes and he’s doubtful, but he’s here.
I stand at the mouth of the woods, and the trees bend and hiss and sway, and words form on my lips.
“One for one for one.”
“What does that mean?” Finn asks me, because he’s standing at my elbow.
He won’t leave me, not now that he thinks I’m as crazy as he is.
“We have to keep each other sane,” that’s what he said yesterday after I told him what happened in the mausoleum and in Sabine’s room.
I look at him now.
“I don’t know what it means,” I tell him honestly. “I just hear it in my head, over and over.”
Finn looks at me, and he’s scared and his pale hand grasps mine.
“That’s bad, Cal,” he tells me, and he doesn’t have to say the words because I already know. Of course I know.
I step into the mossy forest, and I’m surrounded by the cool ferns and shadows, and I don’t know why, but I know I’m supposed to be here.
“Don’t,” Finn urges me to come back, and he won’t follow. “I don’t like the way it feels in there.”
“I don’t either,” I tell him, but I keep going, one foot after the other, because I’m being pulled by an invisible tether or a cord.
Finn stays and his face is worried, but he’s unable to follow, and I don’t judge him for that. The feeling in the woods is oppressive, and dark, and terrifying.
There’s something here.
Something here for me.
Ahead of me, a shadow moves, it lurches, it glides.
I follow it, unable to remain still. It flits in and out of trees, and so do I.
And then finally, finally,
It’s gone, and I’m alone.
I feel the stillness, and I taste it with my tongue, and I’m alone.
I stare about, I whirl in a circle, and there are charred wooden pieces arranged in a circle, a bonfire.
I see something amid the ashes, something brown, something tattered, something old.
I b
end and touch it, and it burns my finger.
The embers are still hot.
I rock back on my heels and prod at it with a stick until it falls away, out of the embers and to safety.
It’s a book and it falls open and the first page stares up at me, with my brother’s scrawling handwriting.
The Journal of Finn Price.
My eyebrows crimp and knit, and I take a breath, because why was Finn out here?
I wait while the breeze cools the pages, and even though they are charred, there are still some left that I can read.
NOCTE LIBER SUM NOCTE LIBER SUM
BY NIGHT I AM FREE.
ALEA IACTA EST. THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST.
The die has been cast.
The die has been cast.
Serva me, servabo te.
Save me, and I’ll save you.
Save me.
Save me.
Save me.
My breath comes in pants and I can’t I can’t I can’t.
Because Sabine said these words to me, these same exact words, in different times and places.
She said the same things to my brother?
What do they mean?
The pages are fragile and the edges come off in my fingers, black and charred, but I can still make out more of the words.
I’M DROWNING. DROWNING, DROWNING.
IMMERSUM, IMMERSUM, IMMERSUM.
CALLA WILL SAVE ME OR I WILL DIE I WILL DIE I WILL DIE.
SERVA ME, SERVABO TE.
SAVE ME AND I’LL SAVE YOU.
SAVE ME.
SAVE ME,
SAVE ME, CALLA.
AND I’LL SAVE YOU.
There are stick figures and symbols, and some of the faces are scratched out, and I don’t remember his journal being so morbid or nonsensical when I found it so long ago. If it had been, I would’ve taken it straight to our parents because this, this, this is crazy.
I stare at a picture, and it’s of two boys and a girl. One of the boys is scratched completely out, but I can still see his eyes and his eyes are black and I know the boy is Dare. Finn scratched out Dare.
ONE FOR ONE FOR ONE.
THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST, IT’S BEEN CAST.
ONE FOR ONE FOR ONE,
AND IT WON’T BE ME.
IT WON’T BE CALLA.
ONE
FOR
ONE
FOR
ONE.
I’m frozen as an ominous feeling builds in my belly, spreading to my chest where it threatens to stop my heart. Dark fingers seem to grab my shoulders and shake hard, harder, harder until my teeth chatter.