Chapter 7
Once in Twilight, Khan trembled as
Shadow dissolved the mortal body he’d worked so hard to hold. He
strained to retain a semblance of Kathleen’s Shadowman but was too
weak to stop the cyclone of his dissolution. The cold, wild
tendrils claimed him again, and he became the Reaper, a Shadow-fae
consciousness wrapped in darkness. Instantly, the keening of his
scythe filled him, the curved blade a hated extension of himself,
paining him like a ghost limb.
“So lift the blade again,” a soft voice
said.
Moira. He didn’t look upon the lie of
her lovely face. The long fall of gold hair, the youth shining from
her sunny skin, eyes that matched the earth’s blue sky. Of her
three faces, this countenance promised life and health, but her
nature was age old and rotten with it. Fate.
She’d cut Layla’s lifeline from the
fabric of humanity, and he’d stood by and watched her do it. Moira
was the inevitable.
“All mortals must die,” she crooned.
“Even your woman. Only the blade is eternal.”
His scythe, his
fate. A legacy of death.
No. To take up his blade again would
sever him forever from Kathleen. He’d take what little time he had
with her, with Layla. Moira had already done her
worst.
He was here only to reclaim his
strength so that he could hunt the creature that Layla had
released. He knew the burden of letting loose something evil into
the world. He would not have her bear it. And then he would deal
with the gate.
A moment here and already he was
growing stronger. Shadow may have destroyed the illusion of his
mortal body, but it also fed him. He could feel the contrary stuff
snapping within, his power redoubling, his darkness
deepening.
“The human form Kathleen made for you
is lost.” Moira laughed. “What will Layla make of you? How will she
see Death?”
Only Kathleen had ever made him
beautiful, and it had taken every iota of strength to hold that
body in Layla’s presence. Without Kathleen, he was hollow. The next
time he saw Layla, she would alter his appearance according to how
she perceived Death. At least he’d seen her
to safety first.
“You said it yourself: she will reject
you, because it is human nature to do so. Life cannot make peace
with death. Between the two is Shadow. Bide . . . you . . .
here.”
Moira drew her shimmering skirts aside.
Beneath crawled the blinded, ravaged soul of a human woman. Her
eyes were sunken, and her hair was balding, long strands still
clutched in her own hands from when she’d pulled them from her
scalp. She’d died, but because he’d abandoned his post, there was
no one to see her safely across to the Hereafter, as was his
duty.
“Like so many others, she got lost in
the trees,” Moira said. “The angels try, but they have not found
this one yet. I keep her hidden; it’s so much fun to watch them
search.” Moira clucked with her tongue, and the mortal looked
around in terror. The woman’s spirit was dim, flickering with
exhaustion. She was losing herself to whatever illusion Moira had
trapped her in.
Pity flared within Khan. “Set her
free.”
Moira’s eyes twinkled. “Set her free
yourself.”
“I cannot. I will not.”
“It is your nature, Stormcrow,” she
said. He had as many names as he had faces. He preferred the one
that Kathleen had chosen: Shadowman. Moira shook her head. “And
nature always prevails.”
Khan smiled to match the sharp flash of
her gaze. There was no going back, not now, not ever. The world was
different . . . and so was he. But Moira had been trapped in
darkness age upon age. She couldn’t possibly understand, but he
tried anyway. “I want to
change.”
Moira laughed. “But you are
fae.”
Fae, yes. But not the same as he had
been. Kathleen had worked that miracle, and he would not, could
not, give it up. To prove it, he lifted a hand and banished the
illusion from the woman’s mind. He would not help her cross, but he
would not leave her trapped, her soul to burn out, either. The
kneeling woman froze, double blinked. Blinked again. Slowly her
gaze lifted from the root-gripped earth to him.
He’d known it would happen. Could
almost sense the order of her mind asserting itself. The perfumed
air of Twilight changed its humor, took on a familiar stench.
Likewise, his shadows stirred as the woman reformed him to match
her mental image. Shadow pulsed, then condensed into a settling
roil. Then went still.
And the woman screamed.
The ultimate monster now stood before
her: Him. Death. The Grim Reaper.
Moira’s laughter rose. “You are as you
have always been.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. What horror had
his form taken? Would Layla see a monster as well? Would she
scream? “But I don’t choose it.”
The words had scarcely left his tongue
when he sensed the earth shiver, a great trembling as if it sought
to cast off something unclean. The devil.
Khan sent fingers of darkness skimming
along the veil. Mortal life sizzled on the other side with flashes
of emotion, innumerable voices raised in conversation, layering
into a great clamor of humanity. Everywhere soul-lights flickered,
some approaching for a cross, though he would not be the one to
shepherd them. The angels had better look sharp.
There! A sticky
suck of blood, the smear left behind by the devil.
Khan gathered great wings of Shadow to
him.
Moira laughed, “Fly,
Stormcrow!”
And he did. He had a devil to
catch.
He crossed the boundary between the
worlds, broke through the atmosphere, and found himself down the
street from the warehouse where the gate was created, near the
river. An unholy stain marred a spot on the street where the devil
had taken its first victim. The kill was not palpable to human
senses. The spilled blood had been washed from the street and the
smell of fear had dispersed into the wind. Yet the sense of evil
remained. Passersby would shudder. Neither animal nor insect would
draw near. But the devil was long gone.
Khan cast his Shadow out again. And
there, again, the creature had taken lives.
The devil had headed south, into a neighborhood on the outskirts of
the city.
This blot on the world, marked off by
yellow tape, was situated near racks of clothing within a large
store. Again, the signs of violence had been cleaned, but the sense
of evil could never be completely erased. This store would fail.
The building would go derelict.
Khan reached again. Where and how far
could the devil go in the short space of a single day? He sought
the stain of another wrongful death and found it along a highway.
Through Shadow he gathered himself to that spot.
The body was still there. The spirit
had crossed.
Khan crouched low to examine the
corpse. It had been a quick kill, more to incapacitate than to
murder. Across the gut were four long, bloody gouges, like the
swipe of a bear claw. The red stuff congealed across the belly. The
ground beneath was stained red. A vehicle was parked askew, off the
road. It was incongruous with its owner—the metal rusted and
dinged, while the body of the man had the sheen of wealth. If Khan
had to guess, the devil had preferred this man’s car and had stolen
it from him.
But to go where?
Mountains rose in the far distance. A
green sign just up the way read, WEST VIRGINIA
TURNPIKE. And then Khan knew. Of course. Where else would it
be headed? To whom would it be irresistibly drawn?
Segue. And Layla, who’d set it
free.
Layla sat on the bed, the blankets
still drawn but now covered with chicken-scratch notes she’d jotted
on a pad of Post-its she’d found in the bedside drawer. The sleek
digital clock next to the bed said it was 1:12 a.m., but there was
no way she could sleep. The ghost girl had made sleeping ever again
unlikely, and Custo’s cryptic warning had settled it.
She was in over her head. Khan had
promised her answers, but with the depth of mystery that existed
within Segue, answers could easily become a life’s
work.
But she couldn’t go back. How could she
live with the knowledge that the bump in the night might just be
real? That what she saw might be real? She’d be scared every
minute. Going back to her apartment, marrying Ty, and having kids
with all this in the back of her mind was impossible. She couldn’t
even imagine that life now.
She needed to be here. The place, the
people, even the magic . . . she’d never be able to shake them.
Where she fit in the scheme of things was now the driving
question.
The scattered Post-its noted each
probable “fact” she’d accumulated. There was no order to her
system, and she liked it that way. The happenstance disorganization
of her notes allowed her to make unexpected connections that neat
lines and categories would not allow. Right now, “mean girl ghost”
overlapped with “superhot Khan.” Why did the ghost hate him so
much? And north of that, “Talia,” whom Khan had said killed the
wraiths’ maker. But hadn’t he also said back at the warehouse that
he and he alone was responsible for the
wraith disease? Didn’t make sense. She rearranged the notes. Put
“Khan” next to “Custo.” Now there was a combo. Would Custo be able
to read Khan’s mind? Something told her Custo had better not
try.
A soft knocking sound had Layla
crumpling the note in her hand, her heart leaping. She held her
breath. She didn’t think she could take any more
today.
The knock sounded again. Still soft.
Tentative.
Someone was at the door. A ghost
wouldn’t bother to knock, a wraith would bust in, and Khan would
simply step out of the shadows.
Layla glanced at the clock. 1:23 a.m.
The strange place obviously kept strange hours. She crawled off the
bed, scattering notes on the floor, and tiptoed to the small living
room of her Segue suite. All quiet. The one-bedroom apartment was
lovely—fireplace, flat-screen TV, comfy couches in warm, welcoming
tones. It had every possible comfort except peace of
mind.
She approached the door and put an eye
to the peephole. The warped figure of a woman, white blond hair in
a loose ponytail, was moving away down the hall.
Talia. Had to
be.
Layla jerked open the
door.
Talia turned. She was midway down the
long corridor to the elevator. “I’m so sorry if I woke
you.”
Her voice was like her knock: soft,
tentative, kind. Layla shook her head to say, No, I
was still awake, but the words themselves were caught in an
incredible tightening of her throat. The late-night hush of the
hall roared in her ears. Her sight wavered with the vertigo of an
out-of-body dream. Talia.
“I saw your light and thought maybe . .
.”
All Layla could do was nod.
Yes, any time. I’ve wanted to talk to you for so
long.
Talia approached, a nervous half smile
winking in her eyes. Khan’s eyes.
Seems like forever.
Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you. Layla’s mind
reeled. Talia blurred in her vision and Layla fought to swallow an
unreasonable sob.
“I’m Talia Thorne. Mind if I come in?”
Talia’s tone had a note of apology. “The days get so crazy around
here that we might not have a moment alone tomorrow.”
Layla swiped at her tears, snuffling,
and trying to laugh at herself. “Don’t know what’s come over me.”
She held the door wide. “Please, come in.” Talia was so pretty. So
very pretty. Her eyes—they were more exquisite than she had ever
imagined. And she was here. Right now. Layla gestured to the
kitchenette. “Can I get you anything?”
Talia’s smile grew. “I’m good, thanks.
And I only have a minute. The babies are restless tonight. I just
wanted to say hi and introduce myself. Couldn’t wait until
morning.”
All the questions Layla had stored in
her mind about the wraiths and Segue and Thorne Industries became
jumbled in her spinning head. This was the interview of her life,
and all she wanted to do was cry. And hug a strange woman. And cry
some more. What was the matter with her?
“I hear you’ve had a big day. Why don’t
you sit down?” Talia made a show of glancing
around. “Every light’s on in the place, so I expect you’re as
terrified as I was my first night here.”
Layla lowered herself onto the red sofa
that faced the small fireplace. “Scared out of my
mind.”
Talia laughed. “You’ll get used to it.
The east wing isn’t haunted, so you should be able to rest easy
here. West wing, on the other hand . . . well, it stays quiet when
I’m around. Ghosts don’t like me much.”
“The little girl ghost doesn’t like me
much either.”
“Then we already have something in
common. Why don’t we find out what else?” Talia took a seat next to
her, her brow furrowed, then leaned over to pull something from
Layla’s pant leg. She lifted a Post-it. “What is Custo?” she
read.
Layla held her breath. She didn’t want
her story to break the moment. Her story didn’t matter at all. This
was what was important; she knew that now. Not some stupid story.
Talia.
“An angel,” Talia answered. “And I mean
that literally. As in from the Hereafter. Don’t let his rough edges
fool you.”
Angel. Talia’s answers were just as
absurd as Khan’s were about magic. About Shadow. How could she
believe? Considering the day, how could she not?
“Wraiths?” Layla croaked.
“Regular people who gave up their souls
for immortality. My father accidentally let something bad into the
world, and I took care of it a couple years back. Segue mostly now
hunts and kills the remaining wraiths, though”—big
sigh—“they seem to be reorganizing now, gaining momentum. I
should warn you: Segue is not the safest place these
days.”
The whole world wasn’t safe with those
creatures on the prowl.
“And what is Khan?” How
can he do all the things he can do? Why do I feel so strange when
I’m with him?
Talia’s expression sobered. “Custo and
the wraiths—and ghosts, for that matter—all have their origins in
humanity, but Khan is of an altogether different race. Khan is
fae.”
Fae. The word
had a lot of meanings, but Talia had to be referring to an
abbreviation of fairy. More fantasy stuff. Magic.
But, if what Talia said was true, the
fae existed. And if Khan was fae, then Talia had to be, too. Just
one look at those tippy-trippy eyes confirmed it.
“It’s simple, really.”
Layla felt a spark of joy-shock as
Talia squeezed her hand for a moment. Layla’s heart hammered as
Talia took a deep breath and blinked away tears herself. But what
had caused the welling of emotion, Layla could not guess. She was
near bursting with it, though.
Would it be too creepy if she, a
stranger, was to touch Talia’s hair? Layla fisted her hands in her
lap so they wouldn’t stray. Yes. Way too
creepy.
“There are three worlds,” Talia began.
“Mortality, Shadow, and the Hereafter. Mortality is where humanity
lives—ghosts are the souls of people who don’t want to cross into
the Afterlife; wraiths gave up their souls to live forever and have
become monsters because of it; mortal angels, like Custo, are the
souls of very good people who died and came back to dedicate
themselves to humanity’s well-being.”
“So all this is about life and
death?”
“Isn’t everything?”
Not necessarily. Didn’t have to be.
Those stakes were way too high. Why couldn’t everything be about
beaches or going to the movies or . . . love? Why did she have to
be afraid?
“Where does Khan fit in?” Where do you? Where do I?
“Ah. Shadow is the realm in between
here and the Hereafter. It’s the place of dreams and nightmares.
It’s where all the stories are true.”
“His magic comes from there?”
You must have some, too.
“Yes. In fact, Shadow is a much better word than magic, because it connotes all the borderland
possibilities of inspiration and impulse that the twilight
Shadowlands promise.”
“What about me?” Because these last four years—no, my entire
life—has been a hell of questions and searching and
life-ruining obsession. Why? Please, if you’re answering questions,
answer that one. No one else will.
“You’ve been a bit of a traveler
through the three worlds. You just don’t remember.” Talia’s
expression strained as if to hold back strong feeling. She stood,
stepped away a short space, wringing her slight hands. “But some of
us have crossed paths with you before.”
Impossible.
There was no way.
Layla had crossed paths with
none of them. She’d been alone from the day she was born. Her life had been a
misery of foster home after foster home. A stint in some halfway
house for troubled teens. A chance at a prep school scholarship. A
ruined engagement because she didn’t know how to love. That was her life.
Now this . . . this . . . madness of a
story. Shadow. Angels. Fae.
It took all her effort, but she tried
to smother the bursting feeling. She couldn’t trust it. No. That
feeling always ended in heartbreak. Every. Single.
Time.
She couldn’t breathe. And what the hell
was a traveler between the worlds?
Her heart labored for oxygen. Sounds
cluttered her mind: a shush-shush-shush with
no possible source and the kat-a-kat of the
gate.
She was going crazy. Freakin’
certifiable. She gulped for air.
“Take it easy,” Talia said. “You’re
okay. It’s a lot to take in at once.”
Layla’s eyes spilled over. She tried to
inhale again, but she couldn’t get anything good because her chest
was already full. The space that had been empty all her life was
near bursting with a Yes! and It can’t be and . . .
I don’t believe any of
this.
But when she looked into those faery
eyes beside her . . .
“We’ve crossed paths,” Layla had to
say. How terrifying to utter those words, but she couldn’t feel
this way without some kind of . . . of what? A shared history? “I
know we have.”
Talia nodded. A smile flickered.
“Briefly.”
“And Khan is so familiar. He acts as if
. . .” As if he knows me already. Maybe she
shouldn’t confess the exhilaration that came when he was close. The
coil of need that turned in her belly when she looked at him,
regardless of his silly hair.
But Talia laughed freely. “Yes. I
expect Khan is very familiar.”
“Then we were—?” Layla meant to say “a
couple” but wasn’t ready. She’d been “a couple” not too long ago,
and look how that had turned out. And now Khan? A . . . a . . .
faery?
Oh, God, this was not
happening.
“You bet.”
“And . . . um . . . why did I travel
between the worlds?” Layla was afraid to hear the answer.
“How?”
Talia shrugged. “I’m not sure.” Her
face had drained of color. Her black eyes were wide, shimmering
with feeling. “But I’m glad you’re back. Very glad.”
Life and death. If Layla had traveled
through the three worlds, particularly to that last one, she’d have
to have been dead, then returned to life. . . .
“Am I an angel, too?” Seemed
preposterous, but in the scheme Talia had described . .
.
Talia shook her head. “No.” She backed
her way to the door. “But I think you
are.”
Don’t go. Not
yet.
Layla stood to beg her
back.
But Talia already had her hand on the
knob. “Now for sure you won’t get any sleep tonight.”
“What am I supposed to do?” She
couldn’t possibly go back to her old life, not after today. She’d
been lonely before, but now she was completely lost.
“Do? Your story is just getting
started. I’ll assist you with all the research you need. I’ve been
doing a little writing on the subject myself. Actually, the wraiths
are a very good place to start contextualizing the
rest.”
Wraiths. Right. Her story. Everything
else might be upside down, but her story was still valid. The only
thing valid, maybe. There was work to be done. A war to
cover.
Okay. Research was good. This
world-traveler thing . . . Talia, Khan . . . she’d think about all
that later. She couldn’t handle it now. The confusion. The pressure
in her chest.
“Try to settle in, if you possibly can.
It’ll all work out.” Talia opened the door with a quick swipe of
her hand across her eyes and let herself out. “In the meantime,
welcome to the family.”
Khan’s Shadow settled at his shoulders
with a gasp of relief. Segue remained secure, and he was here ahead
of the devil. Layla’s heart still beat, even and strong. All was
well.
There was time left for them
yet.
He sought the familiar form Kathleen
had made for him, but it would not come. He organized Shadow into
the shape of Khan’s body, but it would not hold. It was a futile
effort, but he had to try.
He’d found Layla, and lost himself. On
the mortal plane, he could now only be Death.
Stretching himself into the dark
corners of Layla’s room, Khan had to make do with watching. As he’d
watched and waited for Kathleen most of her life.
He observed as Layla sat unmoving in
the center of the bed, her arms around her shins, her chin on her
knees. Bits of yellow paper were scattered around her like petals.
Thin eddies of disquiet trailed through the air, weakening as she
deliberated silently. The trails cut off when she straightened, as
if coming to a decision. Layla brushed the bits to the floor and
leaned over to switch off the bedside light. The low-hanging clouds
in the sky outside permitted no moonlight or starlight to touch the
world, so darkness filled the space.
Kathleen. Layla. Both brave, both
willful. Both lacking caution when it was needed most. Both
treating with Death. And yet, still different. He’d thought that
the soul alone constituted the entirety of a person, but perhaps
that wasn’t true. What defined her?
It was a question for the angels, with
an answer they would not share with the fae. Hence, the great wall
that divided their realms, a relic of an ancient war between the
races.
Khan extended within the shadows, drew
closer, the deepness of the dark a cloak to hide him. He could
sense the wire of tension and anxiety that kept her consciousness
high, away from rest. But sleep is kin to Death, so with a soft
stroke, he released her.
“Please remember,” he whispered as she
tumbled into fitful slumber.
He followed her down, into Twilight,
where he could be anyone he chose.
Talia’s voice echoed in
Layla’s sleep-slipping mind. “Welcome to the
family.”
But the mouth that
formed the words was on the face of some puffy lady who was
escorting her down the front hallway of a house. “I’m Mama Joyce,”
the woman continued with a smile. “You can shorten that if you
want.”
Layla hugged her
backpack tight against her chest to stop her heart from beating so
hard. She hated new placements. This lady seemed nice, but Layla
wasn’t going to call her “Mama.” Her mother was dead, and only
babies said that anyway, not seven-year-olds. So it had to be
Joyce, who did kind of look happy, like her
name.
“I have two
special-needs kids here now.” Layla felt Joyce’s soft arm come
around her.
Layla knew that
special needs meant like you. The arm on her shoulders felt heavy, just like the
word schizophrenia that she carried from
foster home to foster home. Layla still couldn’t read (too dumb)
but she knew that word. Schizophrenia meant she saw things that
weren’t there. Meant she couldn’t tell the difference between what
was real and what was “in her head.” Which didn’t make sense,
because what she saw was not in her head.
Never in her head.
“This is a safe place,”
Joyce said, pushing open a door. In her free hand was a plastic bag
with Layla’s new medication, handed over by the caseworker. The
doctor was “trying something different.” But the way he’d said it
made Layla’s tummy hurt. Like he wasn’t so sure after the last
“episode.”
“Micah and Jonathan
have been with me a long time,” Joyce said, “and they’re doing
great.”
One of them was in a
funny kind of laid-out wheelchair. The boy’s body was all wrong,
his mouth stretched weirdly to the side like he was trying to tell
a big secret. The other boy was kneeling, and he rocked, rocked,
rocked his body while he mumbled, Dead man, dead man, come
alive, which was part of a rhyme Layla knew but
couldn’t remember from where. The room was clean. Smelled okay,
too. The TV was on—a kid’s show—but the sound was soft. Nothing
like at the last house.
Layla’s caseworker had
said that Joyce wanted to save the world, one kid at a
time.
Somebody needed to save
the world. Dark people were everywhere, squeezed into shadows and
trying to get out. And when nighttime came and the shadowy patches
grew, the dark people came after her. Their long fingers scraped at
her skin, so cold, snagged her hair, and the voices whispered bad
things—should be dead, already dead—in her
ears so that sometimes she ended up in a ball on the floor,
rocking, rocking, rocking like that boy. One day the dark people
would find a way out of the shadows, and then, yep, the world would
need to be saved.
The doctor called it
paranoia. Said nothing could hurt her. But when the dark people
pulled at her hair, it did so hurt. She
wasn’t pulling it out herself, no matter what anyone
said.
Grown-ups didn’t
believe her, and she didn’t believe them. Which is why she stole
the knife. She could take care of herself.
Layla’s gaze flicked
over the room, then stopped. There.
She went tight and
cold, and clutched the backpack closer. Joyce had told her
something about the boys, but she hadn’t heard. Her heart was
beating too loud and making it so she couldn’t breathe
right.
’Cause one of the dark
people was right . . . over . . . there. In the big triangle of
shadow made from the lamp and a chair.
Which meant the dark
people were here, too, in Joyce’s nice house. The dark people were
everywhere.
The shadow man
crouched, dark, dark, dark, his long hair shining like a slick
waterfall, as he watched her. But he didn’t have greedy meanness in
his tipped-up eyes. His eyes were sad.
“What happened here,
Layla? Will you show me?”
The dream folded in on
her, rolled into a muddle of color, darkening into the night. Walls
fell and switched around and stood back up again so that Layla was
in a bedroom, still clutching her backpack, but dressed in a
nightgown, the cold from the floor twisting up her calves. The
messed-up covers where she’d been lying had princesses all over,
which was dumb because no one ever really got to be a princess. A
new teddy bear was on a kid-sized desk that Joyce had gotten just
for her.
“I thought you said she was
nonviolent,” Joyce argued from way far off. “I can’t keep a violent
child in the same home as an autistic one. He’s making so much
progress. I can’t help them both.”
No, that wasn’t right.
Mama Joyce had said that later. After the
blood.
The room went scary
quiet, and Layla made her breathing even quieter. Her heart did
that running-away thing that always happened when the shadows came
close, but her heart was trapped inside, like
her.
Layla’s throat hurt to
call out for help, but she bit her lips. At the last home she’d
called out and got slapped for waking the other kids. And then
she’d still had to stay in bed anyway, the dark ones touching,
scraping, pulling. She hadn’t even been able to hide in the
bathroom until morning like she usually did. That was a bad
night.
Shhhhh.
Layla stood stone
still. Her heart stopped, too. The dark people were
coming.
Whispers filled the
air—should be dead—the words all on top of
each other. Already dead.
Why did they say
that?
Dead, dead, dead.
Something brushed her
cheek.
She could turn the
light on herself, run for the doorway, flip that switch, but the
dark people would just come back tomorrow and the tomorrow after
that and forever. She shook when she thought about it, scared and
mad and tired and all by herself.
Tonight she’d show them
that she could be mean, too. Even meaner than them. She’d cut them
if they reached for her. Then they’d leave her
alone.
Layla backed to the
window and into the squares of soft starlight. The crisscrosses of
the windowpanes’ shadow left x’s all over her. The floor was even
colder there.
Greedy tipped-up eyes
gleamed from the closet. From the corners. From under the
bed.
Layla unzipped her
backpack and reached inside. Found the handle. Drew out the knife.
“Stay back!” she said, pointing the blade into the
room.
The dark ones smiled
and moved forward, their shadow bodies wavering like black water.
Closer and closer.
“I said stay back!”
Layla jerked her outstretched arm so they’d see what she’d
brought.
They laughed.
Can’t hurt us.
She bet she could. She
had to.
Layla squeezed her eyes
shut, made herself brave and mean, and slashed the knife through
the air.
More
laughter.
She slashed again and
again. “Never come back! Never, never!”
She slashed for them to
leave her alone.
She slashed until the
laughter broke with a cry of pain.
And then she opened her
eyes.
“. . . down the knife,
honey,” Mama Joyce was saying. Her face was all
red.
The light was on. Blood
ran from one of Mama’s arms. She was kneeling, her good hand out as
if she wanted Layla to stay, like a dog.
Layla let the knife
clatter to the floor. “I’m sorry . . . Mama.”
Mama grabbed for the
covers and pressed them to her arm. “Not your fault, honey.” Tears
ran down her face, so it had to hurt bad. “Not your
fault.”
Yes, it was. But Layla
didn’t say that.
“You saw something
scary?” Mama asked.
Layla nodded. Bad
things. Tears fell down her face, too.
“Are they gone
now?”
Layla nodded again,
even though she knew they’d be back.
Mama nodded herself.
Her face had a worried look on it, the red of her cheeks going
splotchy. “Do you know how to call
nine-one-one?”
And that’s when Mama
Joyce gave her back. She had wanted to save the world, one kid at a
time. Just not her.
Khan watched from Twilight, the dream
shadows of the fae creeping by him into Layla’s childhood bedroom.
The colors of the dream were bright and harsh, like the intensity
of her dread. She was trapped in an old nightmare, one that had the
sense of recurrence. Layla had been here many, many times
before.
He lifted a hand and cast Layla’s mind
deeper into sleep, beyond the reach of memory.
Same spirit, same will as Kathleen’s.
And now, also, the same ability to see through the veil and into
Shadow. Or she had once. And here he’d thought that Shadow was a
revelation to her. Deep down, she’d known. Deep, deep down, she’d
known all along. Of course she had. She and Kathleen had the same
soul.
But where Kathleen had seen fairy tales
in Shadow, Layla received nightmares. His fault. The ability to see
beyond the veil often attracted the attention of the fae, who would
divert themselves by driving the mortal mad. If he’d been in
Twilight, where his duty lay, he’d have surely found her. He’d have
spared that child her loneliness and pain.
Instead, she’d overcome and found
him.