I was irrationally angry. It was the spell talking, I’m sure. It was ripping me to shreds inside. God, when I had seen Mike on the ground, unconscious, my whole psyche shut down. The spell was strong. Stronger than me.
“You can still love him.”
I met him with a startled gaze. “What?”
“You can still love Mike.” Varnie circled me slowly, like he was afraid I was going to bolt. Then I realized he was actually toeing a circle in the sand. Our circles have power. “I’m not asking you to change what you feel in your heart.”
My eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. “I don’t believe you.” I followed his movements from inside the circle. “You want me for yourself.” I slapped my forehead. “Oh God, Varnie. I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I said that. It’s like there are two people fighting for control of who I am right now.”
Varnie stepped into the circle and palmed my shoulders. “There now, hush. It’s the magic. It’s trying to protect itself. That’s probably what’s got you catatonic too. Just relax and look at me.”
I inhaled shallow breaths that did the opposite of relaxing me.
“I swear, Amelia. You don’t have to give him up. You can love Mike Matheny.” He paused, his lips thinning as he tightened his jaw and said the words he didn’t want to say. “You can love him until the day you die, if you want. We just need to get the dark magic out, okay?”
I nodded. Justifying it. He was right. I could still love Mike. “Okay, I’m ready.” And then the panic set in again.
Varnie held my arms firmly, his eyes closed. He would use a different sense to look inside of me. “Let me see it. Let me see the spell.”
I twisted in his grasp, but he didn’t loosen or relax his hold. I could feel something burn inside. Varnie was using his psychic light to find the darkness coiled deep in my heart like a cancer. It burned hotter, like a hot knife in slick butter. He was strong but I was stronger. I could push him out. I could . . . I closed my eyes, and I saw it too. It was so ugly, the dark magic. God, that had been inside me all this time? It looked like putrid flesh decomposing into . . . jelly. I gagged. That thing had been living in me for years. “Get it out, get it out, get it out!”
“Easy, Miss Amelia. I can’t get it if you don’t relax.”
Breathing had never been so difficult.
“Open your eyes for a second,” he told me.
I focused on him. Waiting.
“You have to trust me,” he said finally, when he was sure I was paying attention.
“I do.”
“No . . . I mean really, really trust me.”
“I do,” I repeated. “Wait, why?”
“Do you understand that I care about you?”
“Yes. Varnie, what is going on?”
“Do you know that I would never do anything to hurt you?”
“You’re freaking me out here,” I answered. Panic began churning in my stomach like a shaken can of Coke freshly opened.
Varnie rested his forehead on mine. “The thing, Mara’s spell, has entwined with your own energy. I think that’s part of the reason you’ve become so strong in magic so quickly, why you’re so intuitive. It’s going to hurt you a lot to separate the two, and you might not have the same . . . strength.” He took a deep breath. “I have to tear you apart to put you back together again.”
I could feel the darkness slithering inside me. I’d enjoyed the magical intuition it had given me. I liked being special, seeing things nobody else could see, controlling elements, being strong. But it was wrong, evil. “Get it out. I trust you.”
I think it would have hurt less if he had been ripping out my actual organs instead of the foul binding Mara had implanted in me. I felt things being tugged loose that I didn’t want to lose—faith, hope, dreams. They were all seamed together with ugly lies and manipulation and it was as if he reached into me with a hot poker and singed the good with the bad. I was losing more than Mike. I was losing me.
“Don’t give up, sweetheart,” Varnie said as I jerked in pain and cried out. “Remember, I promised to put you back together too, as soon as the hard part is over.”
I whimpered and lost control of my legs, falling into Varnie. I was a rag doll. No substance, no nothing . . . but then the pain ebbed and something else replaced the gaps inside me. Something pure and white. I clung to Varnie, letting him do all the work.
I began to feel better . . . but less. Less open, less aware, less me.
Varnie let me down easily to the sand again. He kept murmuring. Nonsense words. They comforted me, though. He sat behind me, pulling my back to his chest. The esoteric Amelia began putting herself back together inside me wearily. I think the only reason I was centered enough to stay in the visualization was because of Varnie.
We stayed like that for a long time.
Then I opened my eyes, and I was back.
“I’ve become the girl who had to be rescued by the boy,” I lamented, a little disgusted with myself. Some savvy divinator I was, right? Haunted by evil for four years while I ran around yammering about the healing power of crystals.
“I got to be the white knight. I’m pretty stoked about it actually. How do you feel?”
“Shaky, sick, embarrassed.” I looked deep inside myself. “Free.”
“I love you, Amelia. I’m sorry I waited to tell you until it was too late.”
His declaration surprised me. Too late? “Varnie . . . I—”
“It wouldn’t have mattered if I had told you before now, when you were still in that thrall with Mike, but it just seems a colossal shame that all that time is wasted.” He rested his chin on my shoulder. “I’m really, really sorry.”
“Varnie, what are you talking about?”
Varnie didn’t answer my question, but continued talking as if I hadn’t asked. “Running away has always been what I do best. But I didn’t run this time, did I?” His voice seemed sad . . . or maybe resigned. “Staying on the go, that’s what kept me alive those years when I had no one to count on.”
“Why did you have to run?”
He took a deep breath, coming back to the conversation and not whatever was going on inside his head. “Sometimes the things I see in my visions can see me back. And they don’t appreciate being noticed. And then there are the medical professionals with their pills and syringes and fancy jackets with the arms in the back. They poked and prodded and overmedicated me and
still
my visions came. It’s a hell of a lot easier to outrun a pissed-off creature of the night when you’re not doped up on clozapine, so I’ve learned to keep moving and keep away from white coats.”
He never talked about his life before we met him. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have his visions and no support system. “You didn’t run this time,” I said, encouraging him the best I could. “What changed? What made you stay in Serendipity Falls?”
He cleared his throat. “My biggest fear used to be that my psychic talent would get me killed. But the first time I was the recipient of one of your world-famous smoosh hugs, my biggest fear was that I would let you down. That when you needed me, I would abandon you or not be able to help you.”
I turned so I could see him. I’d never noticed that his nose was crooked before. Just a little, like maybe he’d broken it once. It made me want to kiss it. “You’ve never let me down.”
“When you were in my arms, in the cabin, you felt so small. You were so gone . . . vacant. I swore I would do anything to bring you back. And it’s time to go back now, sweetheart.” He stared at me like he was memorizing my face. He picked up one lock of my hair and smiled. “Pink.”
I didn’t want to leave the beach, but he was right. It was time to go find our friends and get out of Under. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
Something passed through Varnie’s eyes, and even though he was smiling there was an unbearable sadness. My palms turned icy cold. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. I brought my hands to his cheeks, felt the scruffiness there. I needed the physical connection because something between us was fading even as we sat in the sand. “What?” I asked on a shaky breath.
He wrapped his warm hands around my wrists. “You need to know what you’ll be seeing when you wake up.”
My eyes began to burn with forming tears. “Whatever you’re about to say, I don’t want to hear.”
“Gabe and Donny are just about to your cell. You won’t be alone for long.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “There is blood.”
“The wall? I saw it in front of my chair.”
Varnie closed his eyes. “Not the wall. Amelia, there was a struggle behind your chair. You weren’t awake, not even in your catatonic state, when we first got to Under. There was a creature, a . . . troll, for lack of a better word. He was going to hurt you. I had to fight with him.”
My brain raced to catch up with what I somehow already knew in my heart. I let myself live in denial a little longer. “You killed him?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Amelia . . .”
“No!” No. If he didn’t say it, whatever came next wouldn’t be true.
“I couldn’t let him get you. He wanted to hurt you. I couldn’t let him . . . but . . . he had a weapon, a sword. He stabbed me. Amelia, I killed him, but he killed me—”
I sobbed. “No! No, you’re just wounded maybe. We need to go back in there and stop the bleeding. I can maybe heal you—”
“It didn’t hurt for very long. I was so full of adrenaline that I barely registered that I was stabbed until he was dead and then things got hazy. There really is a light, sweetheart, and it’s beautiful. But I couldn’t leave you, not until you woke up.”
Waves of cold washed over me. Over and over, drowning me in disbelief and denial. “Then we’ll stay here.”
“Amelia.”
“I can’t go back there knowing you’re gone. I just want to stay with you. Please, Varnie. Let’s just stay here at our beach.”
“We can’t stay here. You need to go back and live a big, full life. You’re free of that spell now, and our friends need you.” He kissed my hands, tears spiked on his lashes. “I need you to keep going, keep living. I need to be able to take the next step and know that I didn’t let you down when you needed me most, Amelia.” He kissed my lips. A sound, hard kiss that tasted like good-bye. “You have to go back now.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“I’ll always be with you.”
We both watched the tracks of each other’s tears as they rolled down our cheeks. “We didn’t get to be together. We didn’t get our chance. I’m too selfish to let you go.”
It wasn’t fair. He sacrificed everything for me and he didn’t get a shot at happiness? I believed in karma and a universe that provided and could be trusted. This was all wrong. It just couldn’t happen.
“I wouldn’t change a second of it. I would fall on a thousand swords to keep you safe, but, sweetheart, you have to be strong for both of us now. You’re still in danger and I can’t protect you out there. I barely had enough energy to show Gabe and Donny how to find you.”
If I died, his act of bravery would be in vain. That’s what he was saying. He needed me to honor his life by living mine.
“I understand.”
Most people don’t get a long good-bye. Maybe it was better that way. There was so much pressure to say the things that had never been said. To hold on to every second. I would miss his friendship, his mentoring. He’d taught me so much. And he’d saved me—not just from a monster but by plucking out the darkness from inside me. I owed him everything.
I traced my finger around his lips. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank—”
I pressed my mouth to his to stop the words. In the kiss, I gave him a piece of my heart that would always belong to him. I knew that wherever he went next, he would take care of it.
“It’s time,” he said, and then he was gone. It was so abrupt, but at the same time it felt like a clean cut.
I heard Donny calling my name. I closed my eyes and clutched a handful of sand. When I opened them again I was sitting in a chair. I opened my fist and the sand fell through my fingers.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Theia
E
very time I tipped the snow globe, another terrible scene depicting my miserable friends brought me low. The scenes in the red and black petals would last only until the last heart-shaped confetti settled on the bottom, so I had to keep turning the glass ball. I wanted to send it crashing to the wall, but it was my only link to the people I loved and I desperately needed to stay connected somehow.
It was frustrating not to hear what they were saying, but I could see enough to know none of us would be the same. I’d watched in horror as Varnie gave his life to save Amelia from the sickening creature who was going to hurt her. My heart seized as Varnie’s blood poured from his wound, as he took his last breath. I shook the ball again, hoping, praying that I was wrong. That Varnie would get up. I just couldn’t accept that he could be gone. His absence would be a hole in our hearts forever. I cried until my heart felt like a wrung-out rag.
Like a hero, even death hadn’t stopped him. His aura changed in front of my eyes as it rose out of his body in a ghostly form. It solidified and roamed the castle in search of someone to save Amelia.
It had taken a lot of energy to break down the door. I was surprised that Donny and Gabe didn’t seem to notice that Varnie was becoming more and more transparent as they neared Amelia’s cell.
I shook the beautiful globe and it showed me ugly things once more. Gabe and Donny, such as they were, had found Amelia and they mourned Varnie, though not for long. They seemed to know it would be best to honor him by finding a way safely home. I cried as they pulled Ame away from his body, and rage built like an inferno inside my soul.
I hated Mara.
I’d yet to see Haden, though whether that was a blessing or a curse, I didn’t know. My three friends got lost in the twisty corridors of the castle. I couldn’t warn them that the halls changed on a whim. They held hands as they searched for a way out of the concrete nightmare and I knew they would never find one.
They came upon an atrium with a high arched glass dome for a ceiling. Above the glass roof, huge winged creatures soared, occasionally diving at one another in aggressive combat. It was daylight outside, but they looked like bats. Huge bats with red eyes and wingspans about six feet across. One landed on the glass. It wasn’t a bat but more like a twisted black goblin, and it was staring at them, licking its lips.
My perspective of the scene changed. No longer could I see the atrium roof inside the glass, but the globe I held became the roof. It was then that I noticed my friends could see me back, as they pointed at what must have seemed like the eye of a giant staring at them as if they were a live-action diorama.
Then the flying horde, hairy and slimy, found a way into the atrium through an opening in the glass. My friends huddled together in the middle as the beasts swooped over their heads like dive-bombing birds. I realized I was going to watch them die. I wanted to look away, but could not. The monsters were maniacal as they terrorized their prey with grins of huge teeth, sharp and yellow. One swooped low and slashed a talon across Amelia’s cheek. I choked on my sobs as the red blood welled up on the cut.
The goblins began landing and circled my friends. There were dozens of them and more yet in the air.
Then came Haden.
He was magnificent. He entered the atrium, an army of creatures behind him, each ghoulish and unsettling, but obviously on his side. Dressed in black from head to toe, Haden wielded his sword with grace and cunning, slicing his way through the horde of creatures.
Those who fought with him represented the myriad nightmares Mara brought to humanity. A spider the size of a Volkswagen skittered alongside a hellhound with large ruby eyes. A man with no facial features, just taut skin, carried a club of iron spikes. A woman with hair made of asps floated above the ground making horrible clicking noises. A horned demon with oozing skin lesions lumbered in behind a row of skeletons.
Haden moved with a preternatural grace. Though I was frightened for him, a part of me was in awe of his skill, his strength. He was single-minded in his purpose. I marveled that he was the same boy who looked at me with love, for this man was someone I’d not yet met. The pride I felt was a bittersweet pill, for he was there to save me but he wasn’t mine anymore, and this man, the one who battled so valiantly, had kept himself a dark secret when we were together.
I think my heart stopped beating altogether as I tried to keep track of the chaos. There was blood. A lot of it. I tried to keep watch on Donny and Amelia—the skeletons that had come in with Haden gave my friends weapons and were protecting them, but things were changing fast.
Haden looked up once, into the eyes of the giant, and I knew he recognized me. In the seconds that he’d been distracted, an enemy got too close. I cried his name and gasped as I saw him go down—but the last heart-shaped petal fell and I had to shake the globe once more.
Instead of taking me back to the atrium, the scene displayed was one of the many hallways in the castle. I shook it again, frustrated. What had happened to Haden? Again, all I could see was the hallway. I peered closer, wondering what Mara wanted me to see when all my friends were in another part of the castle. I looked deeper into the ball, holding it so close that it touched my skin.
An almost imperceptible change in the shadows caught my interest. I sensed the movement before I saw it. The shadows seemed to gather into themselves and take substance. As the lines became more defined, an icy sensation grew inside me. There were no features, no hands or feet. Just a cloak of darkness that continued to grow. And then it moved.
Chills raced up and down my spine. I felt like I was watching the embodiment of fear. It was even worse than Mara, and every instinct I possessed warned me of impending doom. The creature created from the shadows would have no match. I knew it was death. It was unforgiving and obscenely graceful as it slithered through the corridor. It seemed as though it wasn’t moving so much as the distance was stirring to accommodate where it wished to be.
It left a trail of frost in its wake.
I didn’t want to see it anymore. The stark dread pooled inside my limbs so that I felt I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed when the moment came that the scene changed once again. Death’s cloak slipped through a wall and descended upon a girl sitting in a chair.
Holding a snow globe.