“Cassie!” I shout again, heart slowly chipping away as I realize I may not do what I came here for.
“Almost there,” Sanura says as the shadows near the edges of our feet. “It’s time, Faye. Pull us out, or we will both be stuck here permanently.”
My feet land on the grass outside the hut. I watch in horror as the shadows roll in like a tidal wave, swallowing up the cotton field in its large, gaping mouth.
“Faye!” Sanura shouts, watching the shadow move in at an alarming speed.
A flare of red streaks like a comet amongst the backdrop of black. Cassie. “Run!” I shout to her, watching her scramble forward, holding the wisp of my power in her hand as the shadows clip and claw at her back. Panic has painted her face white.
Mouse, you have to go! Weldon shouts through my mind.
Sanura grabs a hold of my shoulders and shakes me. “Girl, you better make due on your promise.”
Warning flares in my eyes. “I’m not leaving without her.”
He’s giving you the antidote now. Wake up, Faye! Weldon urges me.
I feel the serum pushing through my bloodstream, coaxing me awake, but I ignore it and reach out for Cassie, refusing to leave. She’s just a foot away from me. No more time to wait. No time to think. Shadows move in. Blur the world. Ice fills my veins. Cold. Empty. Pain… so much pain. Fingers reaching out for mine.
And then the shadows swallow us whole.
DYING ONCE IS HARD.
But dying twice…
Mouse, Weldon calls softly, and it’s the first breath of air I take.
Alesteria has already pulled the crown off my head as I sit up, gasping for air. I think I might hurl as my vision swoops and swirls in front of me, spinning me faster and faster as the gravity of what I just witnessed tries to plunge me back into reality. A chisel has been taken to the back of my eyes, beating harder and harder.
“Mouse, please. Just give yourself a second. You literally died. Again,” Weldon says, tapping into the strength of his demon to hold me down. He eases me back against the chair as I struggle, trying to form words against my shivering lips.
Cold. I’m so very cold.
“Keep her still,” I hear Alesteria says. “Shit.” There’s so many sounds beating at my eardrums. Shuffling feet. Pained moaning that doesn’t fit within this room. Whispers of panic. A loud, sharp bang as a metal tray is knocked over. Cursing. The doors opening and closing. It’s too much to process. My head feels stuck inside a vice. Twisting. Squeezing.
My thoughts are lymphatic, chugging through a sludge of dreariness. Overwhelmed by the sharpness of this plane.
“Let me help you, dear.” Cecilia’s calm voice is like a ray of hope beaming through the pain. Hands press against my shoulder, and then the pain disappears all at once, replaced by a glowing warmth.
“Thanks, Cecilia,” Weldon looks up and says, still pinning me to the seat.
I feel myself return. Feel my power inching through my veins, desperate to reunite with me. “Let me go, Weldon,” I bark as a surge of anger flows through me. “She was right there. She was right there, and you took her from me!” I shout, the hot sting of tears pulsing behind my eyes.
“Mouse—” he starts to say, but I use what little strength I have left shove him off me.
I force myself to my feet, knees wobbling and wet warmth streaming down my cheeks as her panicked eyes flash before mine. “I told you to wait! She was fleeing, Weldon. She was right there, and you pulled me back! I’ll never get another chance to tell her I’m sorry! I’ll never—”
“Faye?” A hand grabs mine, her voice dissolving the pain like sugar in water.
I stumble around. Fall back into my chair the moment my eyes connect with hers. Crystal blue with streaks of silver like moonlight on a coursing river. Strawberry hair glowing beneath the lighting like a crown upon her head.
“You’re here?” I ask, blinking through the blurry haze. Hands shaking. Heart puttering.
A small smile… one I never thought I’d see again, rises like the sun across her lips. “All thanks to you, hero,” she says, reaching for my other hand.
Cecilia is fussing over her, pulling twigs out of her hair as a witch nurse searches for a vein, trying to administer an IV. There’s no color to Cassie’s skin as reality slowly makes its way back into my mind. Blue lips. A shaky smile. She’s teetering on the edge of wakefulness and sleep. Hanging on by sheer determination.
Everything swims back into focus. The Dwelling.
Sanura.
I turn and find her huddled in a corner, slumped over, unmoving. Alesteria is trying to coax her awake by running smelling salts under her nose. Wistar is laying one of the lounge chairs flat while Garrick stands behind Alesteria, holding out a sheet to wrap Sanura in.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask Weldon, who looks like he needs a drink.
“Try being dead for centuries, and then ask that question,” he says, eyes moving over the many different nurses and Elites coming and going within the room.
I think about what I promised her. How she’ll be when she wakes. If I made the right decision or not by agreeing to bring her back.
Alesteria looks over at me at the thought, and I can’t tell if she’s angry or not. Hysteria has shielded her eyes before she turns back to Sanura and tells Wistar and another nurse to lift her up so they can get her on the chair.
“It’s going to take a little bit to bring her up to par,” Cecilia says, watching in sorrow beside me. “Poor thing. She’s been in the dark for so long.” She turns, hands clasped in front of her as she looks down at me. “You should go, dear. We’re going to have to move them to the hospital so they can be looked after until they’re back to full health.”
“I don’t want to leave her,” I say, looking back to Cassie.
An understanding smile moves across Cecilia’s lips. “You did what you set out to do. What I knew you would do. You have righted a wrong, and now you should go complete that circle by telling the one person this revelation will mean the most to.”
Gavin.
I’m out of my chair without another word. Without pausing or waiting for Weldon. I hear him muttering expletives to himself as he hurries behind me. I feel like I’m floating on a cloud as my feet wobble awkwardly toward the elevator.
“Mouse, could you slow down? You’re going to fall,” Weldon says as he falls in line beside me.
“He needs to know she’s here. He should be with her, by her side.” I press the elevator button, and, when it doesn’t ding fast enough, I turn for the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Weldon scoops me up within his arms the moment my feet fall out from under me and rights me back up, turning me to face him. “Will you just take a damn breath for a minute?”
“Weldon, I told you! I have to tell him! He needs to know!”
He rolls his eyes hotly and shakes me one good, hard time. “Aren’t you forgetting something, woman?”
I stare at him.
He exhales forcefully. “For the love of all things holy. Why waste time walking when we can get there in an instant?”
He smirks when it registers what he’s saying.
And then he pulls me into a shadow.
WE LAND IN THE MIDDLE of the living room. Gavin is on the couch with Chrissa curled up against him, watching a documentary about animals in Africa. He takes one look at me and is on his feet. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” I shout a little too loudly, the madness of my excitement throwing my senses off.
“Mouse here has gone and outdone herself,” Weldon says, helping himself to the wet bar in the corner of the room. He pours himself a full glass of scotch, and then turns wearing a smirk. “Better prepare yourself.”
Gavin’s watching me, a huge question resting in the middle of his forehead as Chrissa moves onto her knees on the couch, looking between the three of us.
“Gavin, I did it. I brought her back,” I say, the words tasting weird, almost unreal in
my mouth.
He stares at me. Blinks a few times. Not at all the reaction I was expecting.
“Who?” he asks, and I realize he’s light-years from understanding who I’m talking about.
He gave up on the idea the night Bael died.
“Cassie,” I breathe out on a whimper. His face dissolves in a blur of tears as I try to swallow to even my voice. “I brought her back from the Dwelling, Gavin. She’s here. She’s being moved to the hospital. She’s alive, Gavin. She’s back!”
I hear the door shut behind him before I can wipe the tears from my eyes.
Weldon groans in the corner, shaking his head. “There goes another one. Why get there in an instant when you can run?” He turns from me, pouring another glass. “You people, I swear.”
“Can you tell Jezi and Jaxen?” I ask Weldon. He wants to be used. What better way than to alert them to her return.
He smiles a thank you and disappears within a shadow.
“Cassie is really back?” Chrissa asks. I almost forgot she was in the room.
I make my way to the couch and sit next to her, opening my arms as she curls up next to me. “Yes,” I say, holding her close.
“I always knew you would bring her back,” she says, looking up at me with such admiration in her gaze.
“Oh, yeah?”
She grins. “Yep.”
“Well, I sure didn’t.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re an adult. Adults worry too much. It clouds your vision,” she says matter-of-factly as her eyes drift back to the television.
I laugh. “You’re just so sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“You brought her back, didn’t you?” she poses, reaching for the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table.
I toss her words around. I did. I thought I could, and so I did. I spell her name I tattooed on my forearm to disappear as a smile widens my face. She’s back.
Just as she always should have been.
LATER, I WAKE MYSELF UP after my chin falls to my chest, a scream dangling on the edge of my lips.
A line of sweat has broken out across my forehead and the back of my neck, but I feel too weighted down to wipe at it. I blink in my surroundings. A filmy layer of dim light blankets the room in soft blue. Low voices stab at the quiet from the program on the television. Chrissa’s still tucked up against me, lightly snoring, with a blanket wrapped around us both.
“You want me to grab her?” Jaxen asks from across the room, the darkness softening the tone of his voice. He’s tucked into the chair next to the window, watching us. A glowing shape amongst the shadows.
A yawn tugs free from my throat as I nod, careful not to wake her. Pieces of my dream still ripple through my mind, hovering on the edge of consciousness. I was running from something in my dream, a wide, gaping mouth, screaming out for someone who wouldn’t hear me.
I help him with the blanket as he scoops her into his arms, tucking her against his chest. Her head rolls back into the crook of his elbow, and then she shifts against him, tucking herself against his chest. I follow him down the hall to her room. Move her covers aside so he can lay her down. When she’s covered up, he pulls me against him as we stand back, peering down at her. Moonlight has wrapped her in its soft glow.
This is what I want for my future. Him. Me. Our kin.
I think he’s thinking the same thing because he squeezes me just a bit tighter.
When we leave her room, he guides me into our room and shuts the door, preventing me from going anywhere. He switches on a small lamp and points to the bed, telling me to get in. He knows what I’m thinking. Where I want to go.
“Even if we went there, Faye, they wouldn’t let us see her,” he says as he pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it to the corner of the room. “She was put into a deep sleep so they could run some tests on her while she recovers. She has a lot of recovery to do. It’s a wonder she was even awake when she crossed into our plane.”
“She’s strong,” I say through another yawn, thinking about Sanura and how her recovery will go.
After shucking out of his boots, he unbuckles his pants and drops them, kicking them to the same corner. “Gavin is with her right now. When she comes to, he promised to let us know,” he says as he slides into bed with me. I find myself against him like I always do.
This. I missed this.
“You feel so good,” he says as he pulls me closer, pressing his lips along the top of my hair. “So warm.”
I smile against his chest.
A few beats of silence skip between us.
“You knew you were going to get her back, didn’t you?” he asks as he plays with the ends of my hair, twisting them between his fingers.
“No,” I admit. “I wanted to, but I didn’t know.”
“I’m proud of you,” he says.
“She deserved a second chance.”
“I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you, Faye Hadley Middleton, but I sure am glad I found you.” He tilts my chin up to meet his eyes and plants a soft kiss against my lips. “You saved my brother,” he says, the declaration so much deeper than just four words.
“And you saved me,” I say, kissing him back.
TWO WEEKS ELAPSE BEFORE CASSIE is released from the hospital.
And in those fourteen days, winter has seemed to pull everything and everyone into its hibernation. The canal has frozen solid, forcing the vendors who use it back onto the slush-slick streets. Snow has blanketed the rooftops and the sidewalks.
Everything is a thick white blur.
The fight against the paranormal has almost come to a standstill. With Charlie controlling the Underground, the amount of demonic activity on the streets has dropped drastically, cutting the need for sweeping teams. A vote was cast, and a plurality of elders decided against sending any more Elites out in rapid waves to conserve bodies and what little funds we have coming in from the UN.
Evangeline returned from her time away to a sleeping world with a pack of Lost Crows quadruple the size she had before. Mack reinforced the need to keep them within the sequester until enough time had passed for the citizens of Ethryeal City to adjust. They filled up the twenty-story apartment building she was given, head to toe with wolves unspoken for. Misfits who never had a place to go until now.
Mack has called me in with Katie twice since the first letter from Eliza. He even asked Meredith in after Katie’s insistent imploring, knowing her opinion was of great value since she knew Eliza and the Darkyns better than any of us. Within that time frame, four letters were received. The first three were mostly asking Katie how she was and responding to the few questions Mack had slid in there about what was happening and where they were hiding.
Eliza has yet to give us a direct answer.
With every letter, I can see Katie leaning more and more toward asking to find her mother, or asking them to bring her in. Eliza’s words are precise. Sharp as ever. She talks about Katie’s childhood. Sweet memories she clings to within the darkness of being a Darkyn. She tells her she’s realized how wrong she was for deserting her father. How much she misses him and how she wants to make it up to Katie.
Even I have to admit, she has me going.
Meredith seems to think maybe she’s had a change of heart now that she’s seen Mourdyn for who he is—nothing more than a weak witch feeding off his own, but I still hold my reservations close. I remember the way Eliza was with Katie. I never forgot how she looked at me. But then, I look over to Meredith standing behind the Elite writing the letter this time, watch her point out the sentences here and there that are too mechanical, and realize that people can change.
We do it every day. Every breath we take in is a change in our body. Every thought we think. Every piece of life we’re exposed to. We’re ever-evolving beings trapped inside a body that changes just as quickly as our minds do.
I just hope Eliza’s change is happening sooner rather than later.
Mack uses the momentum of the letters and emotions di
splayed to land the blow he’s been waiting for from the moment he learned of Eliza.
On the fifteenth day since my return from the Dwelling, I’m called in with Katie and Meredith to Mack’s office. There’s a cot in the corner of the room, sheets disheveled across it. The wall it rests against is covered with sticky notes the color of rainbows wearing scribbles of his handwriting, a stark contrast against the large screen taking up the back wall with images from the Underground coming in and out.
The trash can is overflowing with plastic plates and cups. Papers and envelopes. The table can barely be seen beneath the uneven stacks and stacks of papers forming small towers like an unstable city just waiting for someone to crash into.
Like our city.
“We’ve summoned her,” he says after Katie, Meredith, and I take our seats.
I reach for Katie’s hand under the table and pull it toward me, offering her what strength I can.
“She has responded and is being picked up as we speak,” Mack continues, not realizing the impact of his words as they beat against Katie’s heart, one after the other, bringing her back to life. “We gave her a secure location and sent a full team should something go wrong.”
Katie’s hand tenses within mine.
“Nothing will,” Meredith says as she looks over at Katie and winks surely. “Your mother has come to her senses. I can feel it.” She’s nodding her head ever so slightly, and then smiles a small smile when Katie nods along with her.
Mack clears his throat, shifting the attention back to himself. “I’ve called you in out of courtesy, and expect the same respect in return,” he clarifies, using his diplomatic voice as if he’s addressing a room full of strangers being informed before a mission. It makes me wonder if he has any feelings… ever. Does he not realize what this means to Katie? How this is affecting her? Maybe he does, and maybe he just doesn’t care. Judging by the distant, chilled look in his eyes, I’m thinking it’s the latter.
I couldn’t be more disappointed or disgusted with him.