The Killing Jar

  “You think that was easy?” She stood to face me, but when she spoke her voice was trembling. “Nothing about what I did back then was easy, Kenna, so don’t accuse me of things you don’t understand. I left because I wanted a real life, a decent life, and I want the same thing for you.”

  “No,” I said. “You want me to be something I’m not. You want me to be normal and safe and mundane. But guess what? I’m never going to be, but lucky for you I can keep Erin alive and healthy, so you can have a normal daughter after all.”

  I hated myself for the things I was saying, but I couldn’t stop. So many unsaid words had built up inside me, and now it was all pouring out like lava, consuming everyone in its path.

  Erin stood, too, glaring at me as though I were the lowest thing on the planet. A worm. A fungus. A virus.

  “And whose fault is it that I was born defective, Kenna?” she said. “Is it a coincidence that I shared a womb with you and came out sick? Is it a coincidence that Mom almost died before she could bring us to term? Or does it all revolve around you?”

  “Erin, don’t,” Mom said. “Please, just stop.”

  “No,” Erin said sharply. “Kenna needs to know what she did to us.”

  My mouth opened, but all of my harsh words had dried up and blown away. My heart, too, seemed to have shriveled in my chest. Illia had told me Kalyptra didn’t have children because if they did, they lost their gift. The only reason Rebekah had been able to have my mom was because she’d given birth before she became Kalyptra. But she hadn’t said anything about this. Was it true? Had I nearly killed my mom and Erin simply by existing?

  My sister, my twin, fixed her eyes on mine. “You ruined me,” she said. “So don’t act like you’re doing me any favors by saving me now. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have needed saving. If it weren’t for you—” She hesitated, but only for a moment. “We’d all be better off.”

  My brain went numb. My skin felt as cold as a corpse’s and I started to shake.

  I didn’t argue with Erin because I didn’t disagree. Instead I nodded, turned my back on my family, and walked out.

  I grabbed my guitar case in the foyer and headed toward my bedroom, wanting to be alone, but then I found myself standing at the foot of the stairs that led down into our unfinished basement. I hadn’t been down there since this whole nightmare began. I’d told myself I would never go into the basement again, but my feet had different ideas. They moved me forward and down, into the darkness.

  * * *

  It’s not easy to get blood out of cement. Cement is porous. It absorbs. It stains. It keeps.

  Someone had tried to clean the blood from the storage room in our basement where Thomas Dunn had killed my family. The blood itself was gone, but the stain remained, a permanent shadow cast by that night’s events. A permanent bruise on our lives.

  I stepped into the room and set my guitar case down. It smelled metallic, like pennies. All of the boxes and odd bits of furniture that had been stored inside were gone. It was just an empty, tainted room now.

  I moved to the one corner of the little room where blood hadn’t reached and sat down with my guitar case laid on my legs. My fingers traced the lyrics I’d scrawled on the case in silver pen.

  Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind. The Doors.

  I love you. I’m not gonna crack. Nirvana.

  There’s someone in my head but it’s not me. Pink Floyd.

  Why had I chosen these scraps of lyrics? They had spoken to me, but that had been another version of me. These words were so hopeless, so dark. I wished I could wash them away and start with new lyrics, bits of the Kalyptra’s songs, which were the kind of optimistic poetry I had never before imagined myself writing.

  And no wonder I had been depressed. Not only had I murdered a kid, but by simply existing I had destroyed my twin’s body and nearly killed my own mother.

  I unsnapped the brass clasps on the case and opened it, revealing my acoustic guitar. I lifted it out, cradled it in my arms like a sleeping child. For the last seven years, when I’d been unable to touch anyone, I had held on to this guitar. When I was so lonely I could barely stand it anymore, I had my music.

  I began to play, brushing the strings, arching my fingers to form chords. I sang, but my voice came out hollow and toneless. I hadn’t taken anima yet today, and I felt vacant, like my soul had taken a vacation from my body.

  “You shouldn’t be down here.”

  My hands froze on the strings. Erin stood in the doorway, her face pale, as though she might throw up. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the broad stain on the cement.

  “I figured this was the one place where no one would come looking for me. Not that you’d want to see me.”

  “I’m sorry for what I said up there,” Erin said, holding up her hands and shaking her head miserably. “I was upset and everything just poured out.”

  “I’m sorry I ruined your life.”

  She looked stricken. “You didn’t,” she said, but there wasn’t much conviction to her words. We both knew they weren’t true.

  “Erin, seriously, it’s okay,” I told her, but my hand clenched involuntarily on the guitar strings until I felt them cutting into my fingers. “I’d rather know the truth. When did Mom tell you?” I asked.

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” Erin said. “I analyzed the facts and I guessed. I guess I guessed right.” She shrugged. “But it’s not like it’s your fault, Kenna. You are what you are. You didn’t choose to be born this way.”

  A monster. A killer.

  No. I was Kalyptra. Rebekah had told me there was no shame in what we were, and that was what I wanted to believe, but it was getting harder to do that with every passing hour.

  I nodded. “Now that we’re all on the same page, it—” It makes my decision easier, I almost said, and then stopped myself. “It’s something I can deal with,” I finished.

  Erin hung her head. She picked at a loose string on one sleeve. “I feel like I’ve lost you,” she said in a quiet, defeated voice.

  I swallowed what felt like a wet sock jammed down my throat. “You haven’t lost me. We’re just different, like you said. I was born the way I am, and you were born the way you are. We didn’t get much choice in the matter. We’re kind of the worst twins ever, you know?”

  She laughed dryly at this. “Yeah, we’re the worst.”

  Her laughter died off quickly, and an uncomfortable silence stretched between us. I had never once in my life felt uncomfortable around my own twin. Maybe she had lost me a little bit. Or we had lost each other. If Erin didn’t need me to keep her alive—if, that was, she would let me—would it even matter if I disappeared into Eclipse forever?

  I cleared my throat. “I need to be alone, okay? I have a lot to think about.”

  “Okay.” She sniffed, turned around, and I knew she was crying. She paused, but didn’t look at me as she said, “You should check out Blake’s blog. It might remind you of what you’ve been missing.”

  When I was alone again, I sat for a long time, clutching my guitar, my muscles straining with tension until they trembled. I stared at the bloodstain on the floor, my teeth clenched. My problems hadn’t started here, but this room, with its stain that wouldn’t wash off, was a perfect metaphor for my life.

  I stood abruptly, holding my guitar by the neck. Then I swung it over my head and smashed it into the wall. The strings twanged and the wood snapped and cracked like the trunk of a falling tree. I beat the instrument against the wall until it splintered to a hundred pieces, and then I fell to my knees among its remains and grasped them, squeezed them into my palms until they pierced skin and blood welled up around sharp shafts of wood.

  I wanted to cry, but instead I bled.

  For a long time, I only knelt there, watching my palms fill with crimson, thinking there was nothing I could do to wash away the stain. The only way to escape it was to leave.

  ANYA

  My mom knocked on my b
edroom door around midnight, which was late for her. She woke at five a.m. every day to drive to her bakery, so her standard bedtime was a sensible ten p.m.

  Sensible. That had always been a word I used to describe my mom. But now she made no sense to me. Why would she leave Eclipse for this? Why would she have children when she knew it would strip her of her power and might even kill her?

  I remembered the message Joanna had given me to deliver to my mom.

  Tell her she was right, and I was wrong. Tell her I wish I’d come with her. I wish it more than I can ever say.

  Why did Joanna wish that? What was I missing?

  It was then I remembered, too, what Joanna had told me about my mom’s guitar, that there was something hidden inside it. So much had happened since my hurried departure from Eclipse that I’d forgotten all about this new revelation.

  Mom sat on the edge of my bed. She seemed drained of energy, like she hadn’t slept in days. I thought idly how much better I could make her feel with a small infusion of anima, but I had a feeling she would decline an offer to help her even if I made it.

  I was afraid that you would turn out like me. That you would be too weak to control your gift.

  That was what she’d said during our disastrous family meeting. But what exactly did that mean? Had my mom been unable to handle her need for anima? Had she let it overwhelm her like I had almost done?

  Had she hurt someone, like I had, and been unable to forgive herself?

  Something about this sounded extremely plausible, and it explained why Mom would go to such drastic measures to rid herself of her gift. But had she known what the risk would be to her life?

  I had my laptop open on my legs. It felt uncomfortable to be using technology again, like I was breaking some kind of rule. She glanced at the screen and saw a window open to Blake’s art blog.

  She squinted at the screen. “Is that you … riding an ostrich?”

  “Yeah.”

  Blake had been busy while I was away. He’d drawn more than a dozen insanely intricate panels dedicated to the extraterrestrial ostrich story he’d been inspired to create while we sat in his 4Runner at Folk Yeah! Fest. I’d forgotten all about it. That day seemed like it had happened in a past life.

  Blake had made me the alien ostrich leader, a gray-haired warrior girl who rode on a silver-armored ostrich and wielded a guitar that doubled as a machine gun. The drawings were insane and wonderful, and they’d garnered more comments than any of Blake’s other works to date. And, I was pleased to see, there wasn’t a single troll among the commenters.

  Blake had titled the series The Gray Girl and included a dedication: To Kenna, my reluctant muse, my music guru, and my best friend.

  When I’d read the dedication, tears had sprung to my eyes. Blake was the best, he really was. I didn’t deserve a friend like him, much less a boyfriend. Not that he was my boyfriend, even though last night I had practically mauled him in the woods. Now I wasn’t sure we were even friends anymore, not after this morning. A lump formed in my throat at the thought.

  “I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I miss your gray hair,” Mom said.

  I closed the laptop. “Things change,” I said.

  “That I know,” she said softly. She twisted her hands on her lap, gazing at my empty guitar case. “I saw what’s left of your guitar in the basement. Are you okay?”

  I looked at my hands. Where the splinters from my busted guitar had pierced them, there was now unbroken, pristine skin. I’d taken anima after my little freak-out and had healed them. But I didn’t think she was asking whether I was physically okay.

  “You should have told me,” I said. “About why Erin has always been so sick. About why you had us in the first place.”

  “Kenna … what good would that have done? You couldn’t help what you were, or what you were doing.”

  “But you could have,” I said.

  “I could have done many things differently, but I didn’t.”

  My mom lowered her eyes, and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. Instead, she took a deep breath and sighed it out.

  “I knew that having you and Erin would be a risk, but a necessary risk.”

  “Did you even want us?” I asked. “Or were we just a means to an end?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that, Kenna. I was your age when I made the decision. I couldn’t see far enough into the future to gauge what the consequences would be. But once I had you and Erin, I knew I wanted you even more than I wanted to be Kalyptra. I wanted to live in the real world with you, not in some forever daydream. So I made my choice, and I’m willing to live with the consequences.”

  I shook my head at her. “I don’t buy it.”

  “You don’t buy what?”

  “That you just decided to leave one day. There’s something you’re not telling me.” I changed track suddenly, catching her off guard. “Joanna gave me a message for you.”

  I told her what Joanna had said, and watched as hope and pain warred on her face.

  “Who was Joanna to you back then?” I asked. “What did you and she have planned that she didn’t follow through on?”

  For a moment I thought my mom would refuse to answer. Her expression closed and became unreadable, and her eyes traveled the room, as though searching for a safe place to land.

  After a long moment, she looked at me with such sadness that I felt it infect me like a flu, making my skin chill and my stomach churn. “There is what I thought Joanna was, and what she actually was. I thought she was my soul mate. I thought she loved me, and I knew I loved her. We made plans to leave Eclipse together, but when the time came to actually do it, she balked and refused. It was too late for me to turn back then. I was already pregnant, and she knew it. She’d gone with me to Rushing, and helped me choose my … my target. I thought I would have to try multiple times with several different men, but I got pregnant the very first time. Joanna … she didn’t, but she was with me every step of the way, right up until it counted.” Mom’s mouth quirked in a forlorn smile. “Turns out there is a big difference between a lover and someone who loves you.”

  I blinked at her once, the truth hitting me harder than I’d expected. Despite the rumors that had always wandered through town, people speculating on whether or not my mom was gay, I’d never really taken the notion seriously. Though she was beautiful, my mom seemed sort of asexual to me, but now another layer had peeled back, revealing the core of the person hidden deep inside her.

  “Does it bother you?” Mom asked when I didn’t say anything.

  I quickly shook my head. “No. I’m just … I’m a little … well, it’s a lot to take in.”

  “I understand.” She stood abruptly, crossing her arms over her chest, seeming vulnerable with this new truth out in the open. “You need a new guitar,” she said, trying to change the subject. “We should go shopping in Portland this weekend. It’ll help get your mind off things.”

  “I played your guitar when I was at Eclipse,” I told her. “Joanna said you would have wanted me to have it.”

  “My guitar.” Her gaze became distant and slightly confused, as though she were recalling a memory that made her as sad as it did happy. “Rebekah wouldn’t let me take it when I left. She said she was going to burn it.”

  “But she didn’t,” I said. “Maybe she’s changed. You did.”

  “Rebekah isn’t made of the stuff that changes.”

  “Then why did she tell me I could come back to Eclipse whenever I want?”

  Mom blinked at me. “She did?”

  I nodded, and her hand went to her lips, her eyes moving back and forth as though she were reading invisible text floating in the air.

  Then her eyes focused on me. “I know I haven’t always been the kind of mother you wanted, but I’d like to change. I have been thinking a lot about this, and I decided the whole family needs a fresh start. A new house. A new city. Erin started applying to colleges, and it turns out she’s eligible for a
ll kinds of scholarships. We could go anywhere in the country. How about the East Coast?”

  “The East Coast?” I said, stunned. “What about your bakery?”

  “I’ll expand,” she said, shrugging.

  But I wasn’t really concerned about Mom’s bakery, even though it was her pride and joy, and every time I’d ever asked her if she wanted to open more locations she’d balked, claiming she liked the idea that there was only one in the whole world. No, what I was thinking about was what was really going on here, my mom wanting to put distance between Eclipse and me.

  “I know it’s sudden,” Mom said. “But I don’t think we can stay in this house after everything that’s happened.”

  She was right about that. I couldn’t live in this house, but the East Coast was not the alternative I had in mind.

  “It’ll be good for you and Erin to live someplace where no one knows you,” she continued. “You can start over.”

  That was the same thing Rebekah had said to me my first night at Eclipse. Tomorrow you start over—and I had. I wasn’t ready to do it again. I liked who I was at Eclipse. I wanted to be that person, not the wreck of a person I’d been since I got home.

  “When is all of this happening?” I asked, clenching my fists until my nails dug into the meat of my palms.

  “We should start packing tomorrow,” Mom said.

  My lips parted and a shocked breath escaped. “Tomorrow,” I repeated, wishing I’d heard her wrong. “That’s too soon.”

  “Why wait?” she said. “We should move before summer’s over so you can enroll in time for the start of your senior year.”

  “But what about the house? You’ll have to sell and that could take months, if anyone will even buy it at all after what happened here.” I had her there. I almost smiled in triumph.

  Then she shook her head, and my relief turned to dread.

  “I’ve already had offers from people who want to study what happened to the land. And I’ve been getting calls from news programs willing to pay very well for an exclusive interview with me. I’ll call the highest bidder and tell her I changed my mind.”