“What the hell? Where are my images?”
“I—I don’t know...maybe Rasure switched them out,” Cadence said as she focused on my painful expression. “You want to talk about this? How do those images make you feel?”
“They make me feel like someone is trying to screw with me. And they’re cold-hearted.”
“Because they are digging up these emotions?” she pressed.
“No, because all of these were cataloged into a story, books I was going to give our family—it took me years to build them—and someone just ripped them apart and stuck them in a box. For what? To hide that Rasure has taken heirlooms from this house, heirlooms that are priceless to her because the energy in them doesn’t belong to her.”
My response seemed to leave her baffled. I figured she would be angry, too. I guess it was a good thing she wasn’t.
“Is that all, Indie? You’re not upset about looking into those moments?” she asked, once more glancing to the image in my hand. It was of me when I was five, sitting on my father’s lap as my mother stood behind him.
“Why would I be upset? I feel bliss when I look at these shots. That is the glory of film. It captures the emotion,” I said with a weak smile as I remembered every moment of that day and felt warm bliss ease through my soul.
“And the glory of theater is becoming someone else. You’re on stage right now, Indie, and playing the part rather poorly. You’re upset. I know you are. You were robbed. Life was cruel to you long before they left. You were cursed with nearly killing everything you touched. For God’s sake, you were born in a graveyard—no one even bothered to claim your mother’s body. You need to face this.”
“On stage? Really? Call me crazy, but being adopted by the Falcons is hardly a bad break, and neither is having a birth mother with the foresight to deliver me into their arms. And the cold…I don’t think that was a curse anymore.”
A look of disgust came over her innocent image. “It’s isolated you.”
“No,” I said, nonchalantly glancing to where Skylynn was standing. “It shielded me, and it pointed to the one person that would give me warmth.”
“Is this about Wilder? Has he reignited an old flame in you? If so, you need to know that that is an illusion and it will fade just like it did last time. He’s been less than faithful to the memory of the two of you.”
“It’s not Wilder,” I said under my breath as flashes of Phoenix—new and old—exploded in my mind.
“You’ve been seeing someone else? That guy that was in the darkroom? Why would you not tell me?” There was an accusing pain in her tone.
“I’m not the only one keeping secrets around here,” I said as I glanced over Cadence, trying to see this different person Mason had said she was when she wasn’t around me.
“So now you’re deflecting, too. You need to face this,” Cadence said again as she crossed her arms.
“I have faced it! What is your problem? Why are you trying to get all of us to go back to our darkest days?”
“Because it’s healthy.”
“OK then, where are your pictures? Where are the images of the underfed, terrified girl my parents brought home? Where are the files that outline the abuse you went through before then?”
“Don’t go there,” she said with a glare.
“Doesn’t feel good, does it? If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.”
“You’re mad about Mason and Wilder, and you’re taking it out on me.”
“If I was mad about that, then you would be the only person who deserved to have that anger directed at. Why would you do that to Gavin? You know how he feels about ‘all or none.’ And why would you set Wilder up with some girl and not tell me about it?”
“So you’re not over him.”
“I was never into him, not in that way,” I said, slamming the images down onto the bar. The room began to freeze over, simply because I was beyond frustrated with her. I was ready to tell her she was dead and that she needed to get over it and move on.
“You could have fooled me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you play that ‘I’m-broken-and-can’t-be-adored’ card to a T—quick to tell your darling interests that you’re cursed just so they will fight harder for the girl they can’t have.”
“‘Quick’ my ass. They figured it out.”
“Yeah? How’d they do that again?”
I was so furious that I violently shoved the box with my family’s images causing the pictures to fly across the room and rain down around us.
“Three boys in six years...that hardly makes me out to be what you are insinuating. How many boys have dared to get close to you? Double my number and that is just the ones I know about. I was glad when you started dating Gavin because I knew he would calm you down, allow you to see that love is not a physical act.”
“How would you know if it was, Miss ‘you-can’t-touch-me-or-I’ll-freeze-you-to-death’?”
That was the coldest blow she had ever thrown at me. At first, all I could do was stare at her as if she were nothing more than a stranger. “I’m not fighting with you anymore. Life is too short. We have different ways of seeing the world around us, and that’s fine. You were by my side through my darkest years. You were the sister God spared me. I’m grateful for that. Grateful for you. I love you.”
“Why does it feel like you are telling me goodbye? Stop trying to weasel your way out of this argument. Let’s get it all out now.”
“I told you life is short. We all have to go our own ways at certain points.”
“I see. So Rasure was right, you’re going to kick me out, too. The money and power have gone to your head, and because I’m not the sister you want me to be, because I made a few mistakes, hurt one of your ‘almosts,’ I’m not worthy enough to live in your kingdom.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’m not kicking you out, and if you believe anything Rasure says, then you need a reality check.”
Guilt washed over her face. “Sorry.”
I looked away, fighting tears, then nodded once to tell her I wasn’t mad. She walked over to me and hugged me as tight as she could. “Let’s just go to the coffee bar. This is too hard on you right now. You’re freezing.”
“Go ahead, I’m right behind you. I want to clean up this mess first.”
“I’ll help.”
“No, I got it. I really just need a second to breathe. We’ll clean it up later,” I assured her.
She nodded once and looked down before walking away. I reached to grab her arm. As I stared forward, I said, “I really do love you. I’m grateful to have always had you.”
“The feeling is mutual. I’ll get my purse and meet you downstairs.”
I smirked, knowing she could never say the word ‘love.’ She told me once that she feared if she did, the world would have an excuse to take that person away from her. What she didn’t realize was that she had already lost us all, and I just wanted to hear that word once from her lips. If my own sister could not tell me how she felt about me, how could I expect or believe anyone else who did?
Cadence was eager to leave this room. I knew the mess was making her insane.
Just as she went to cross the threshold, she stopped. “What is this?” she said, waving her jacket over the white line that was now there. “Snow?”
I didn’t even bother to answer. She was out of danger. The wind from the waving of her jacket had broken the line. I knew she wouldn’t be shocked the way I was when I tried going down the stairs.
Within the next beat of my heart, the room was put back together and Skylynn was standing in front of me, holding a stack of photos.
“Who tried to trap us in here? Who took my pictures? Is Rasure walking by me and I can’t see her? Is that what is happening?”
“I put the salt there.”
“Why?”
“Call me cautious,” Skylynn said, raising one eyebrow.
“You think I’m going to run aw
ay from you. That I could if I wanted to.”
“Nope, not at all. You were looking for these,” she said, handing me the images.
“Did you switch out the images?”
“I have better things to do with my time, but they were easy to find.”
“How were they easy to find?”
“When you want something, your energy reaches out for it, calls it to you. I saw the path, found them in the back of the closet in a box labeled ‘scuba diving.’”
“Really,” I said under my breath as I took the images from her. “Does that energy thing work with everything, for everyone?” I asked timidly, wondering how revealing I was being.
“Yes…though it is more clearly defined when it reaches for love, the one that completes us. Oddly, though, those in love rarely see that connection.”
“Little early for the ‘L word,’” I muttered, knowing we were having a coded conversation. She was telling me that my energy was reaching for Phoenix, but he could not see it.
“If you call an eternity too early, I would hate to see what you call a substantial amount of time.”
I wasn’t listening to her. I was looking through the pictures. I was almost halfway through the boring inventory of photographs when one image stopped me in my tracks. The image showed me on my tiptoes, reaching for the clock on the mantel. I was no more than six or seven at the time. I was trying to get my Barbie doll up there, pretending that was the peak of her castle.
It didn’t make any sense that this image was stored with these, but it did clear up one thing: those clocks had been switched out. When this image was taken, that clock was mine. When I was little, my mother used to tell me that I had the most vivid imagination she’d ever seen. It wasn’t an imagination, though, it was memories. I would act out stories around the seemingly boring furniture in our home, thinking nothing of it.
“She switched them,” I said, slamming the images down on the bar and turning to leave. I was going to go with Cadence to the coffee bar if I had to fight my way there. I needed Gavin. I knew he could hack into our security files and tell me when anything left this house.
When I reached the hall, I saw Cadence walking down the stairs. I cringed, but just as I was about to tell her no, she had passed the third one and not given any reason for me to think she was in pain. I let out a gasp, grateful that Skylynn had broken that salt line moments ago. I went to follow her, but right as I stepped forward I heard the sweetest sound.
Nervously, I glanced over my shoulder. There, I saw two of my sisters, Lucy and Melody. My mom was with them. She was braiding Melody’s long blonde hair as Lucy waited her turn. They were talking about absolutely nothing that really mattered, such as what grades they got in school or what charities they were working with.
I simply couldn’t stop myself. I turned to walk toward them, but as I moved forward the blissful scene changed. Now all of them, all seven of my devils, were there, screaming in agony, but the sounds of their voices were silenced by what could only be water. Only, the water looked like flames...light blue flames.
My mother’s eyes met mine, and I saw a warning there, one that I used to see when I was about to fall or stumble when I was little. She was telling me to watch my step, to stop, but I had to get them out. I had to save them. I started to run forward, but Skylynn stopped me. I pulled my arm away from her. “They need my help!”
Right as I said that, the horrific images vanished and the innocent scene with my sisters and mom returned.
“That they do, but not this way,” Skylynn said with a sting of anger in her tone as she glared down the long hallway.
“You don’t understand,” I said as my heart broke and the hall turned to ice.
“I do. I understand that death is calling you, showing you everything you want to see, everything you don’t want to see, that it is inviting you in, but I’m not letting you go without a fight.”
“If I see them, I’ll have even more of a reason to fight,” I said as I stared at the gentle lines that indented around my mother’s eyes when she smiled.
“You were corralled on this hall because your memories are the strongest here. Rasure wants you to see this. To yearn for it. To want this more than fighting her.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. The woman was finally right about something,” I said as I went to move forward. Before I took another step, Skylynn had me pinned against the wall.
“You’re angry about your sisters, about your parents. I get that. I do. But you need to be angry about so much more than this. You’ve lost more than this family, more than I could explain to you. You give in right now, and you will not gain anything and Rasure and all those like her will not only continue to do what they are doing, but the souls they have will remain theirs.”
I locked stares with her. “What are you saying? How many souls does she have that I know?” I couldn’t bear to ask if she had my family’s souls, if that was what that image I just saw meant, if they had been in that kind of agony this whole time—it would be more than I could stomach. The grief and regret would very likely end me.
“More than you want to know about.”
I felt like I was going to puke. I leaned forward and tried to breathe, but the fog leaking from my mouth was near blinding. “Clocks, keys, souls…you’re going to have to help me understand, Skylynn.”
Before she could say a word, everything around me changed.
Chapter Twelve
I was standing at the beginning of my death, seconds before Gavin’s uncle was set to come in the door and tell me my grandmother was dying. Before I could find the guys and tell them that we needed not only to find the key but the right clocks, everything moved again and now I was sitting on the beam running across my room with Skylynn at my side.
“Tell me you fast-forwarded time, that you didn’t bring me here only for all of them to crash into the lake on their own.”
“I can’t move time, but yes, I did stop you from repeating that.”
“Why would you do that?” I fumed as the beam I was on turned to ice, nearly causing me to slip off. Skylynn gripped me by the arm before I could.
“Because if you keep reliving that moment, you will fall into it, you will give up.”
“I’m not a quitter!”
“Agreed, but you are standing at the edge of the veil, the one place every soul is tested the most.”
“I’m not with them, and now they’re going to drown.”
“If you were not with them, what reason would they have to speed down the road trying to reach your house?”
My insides caved in. “It is my fault, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is. If I let those guys go, seemed stronger, found a way to lie or something, they would be long gone and not my friends, not racing toward their death at this moment.”
“Not being able to lie is a virtue to your soul. It rewards you with fewer demons to fight. And they would have stayed with you no matter what.”
“Why, because they like to be around girls who are freaks of nature and have commitment issues?”
That made her laugh. “No, because they are supposed to be with you, whether you or Phoenix like it or not.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I told you before, our soul reaches out for what it wants, what it needs, and it pulls those things to us, one way or another.”
“I don’t love them in that way.”
“No, but you need them.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I saw your soul reach out for them. They weren’t even in the same state as you and had no reason to be. At first I thought your soul was calling them because they were in pain like you, because that was your purpose: to heal those who’d been down your path. So, I altered circumstance and brought them into your life one-by-one.”
“Are you trying to tell me you did some kind of supernatural hook-up that failed miserably?”
“No. I neve
r intended for anything on the romantic side of things to happen. I already knew where your heart belonged. I knew they were eternal friends of yours, guardians that you had chosen for one reason or another.”
“And when it became romantic, you didn’t think to tell me that? You didn’t think to stop me from hurting them?”
“You never hurt them, and it was never romantic. You were just following the path of life. You thought that loving them was logical, but love is never logical. The way you feel about them is mutual. They love you, want to be in your life, but not in the way that will complete you.”
“Well, they have a funny way of showing that—at least Wilder does.”
She sighed. “Wilder was all you. I had nothing to do with his arrival, so I’m sure it may be different with him.”
“Are you saying that you have no doubt that Mason and Gavin are supposed to be with me in death? That I pulled Wilder into this by mistake?”
“I do now.”
“Why now?”
“Because if they weren’t, they would be chasing their own demons, either mad or moved on by this point. But they’re awake and plotting. It takes strong souls to do that.”
“What do you mean ‘plotting’?”
“I mean that they know when they are going to be moved and do what they can to alter it, even change the path. They are committing to death, committing to you.”
“An army of vengeful spirits...how lucky can one girl get?”
“We have to figure a way around that.”
“Not letting go.”
“I meant what I told Phoenix—either he turns you, or I find someone else to do just that,” she assured me.
“You mean to tell me that there are souls that will cross him?” I asked, meeting her stare.
“No, at least not many. But who says they have to know the whole story?” she said, raising one brow.
Skylynn was the one person in my life that knew me to my core, that had seen my darkest hour, my bravest battles—the one person that I already owed way too much to. I could not let her risk herself for me. “Listen, it sounds like you two have enough issues between you. I’ll figure this out.”