Amelia spoke up. “Clowns.”
Varnie ignored her. “Nightmares are a necessary part of the continuation of our species. Our subconscious taps into that collective. We
need
those instinctive fears. Under is supposed to be the conduit, but Mara just gathered too much power. She’s warped, but she provides a function pivotal to our psyches.”
Ame chewed on the end of her braid. “Can’t we just keep a
Big Book of Scary Things
to pass down to each generation instead?” She looked at her watches—she was wearing three that morning. “We need to get out of here soon.”
Donny gave Varnie a sympathetic smile and the rest of her coffee to drink to encourage his bladder, and he went around the corner to fill the jar. Haden and I couldn’t start smudging the perimeter until he finished, so I rested on the bumper of Donny’s car. It really began to sink in that I was different from my friends. I couldn’t touch certain herbs, and the witch jar made me seriously queasy. It was unnerving to be confronted with proof that I was not exactly human any longer. I was . . . Other.
Haden joined me. “You okay?”
“Did that jar make you sick?” I asked.
“A little. I guess I’m used to the feeling more than you are, though. There are lots of things in this realm that make me sick.”
“Really? Like what?”
Haden traced a loopy pattern on the leg of my jeans while he thought of his answer. “Horseshoes, especially above doors, pure silver, some herbs . . .”
“So, we’re evil then? That’s what this means. The same things that ward off evil things like Mara make us sick too.”
“I have spent most of my life believing that, Theia. That I was marked, corrupted by my birth. And then I met this girl.” He paused, his fingers finding mine in a tight squeeze. “And she made all my dark corners light. And I realized that the measure of who I am doesn’t have to be the way I physically react to St. John’s wort. I’m going to make something of myself because you showed me I’m capable of it.”
I rested my head on his shoulder and tried to make sense of my new lot in life. “Maybe it’s more like an allergy. Donny is allergic to strawberries; I’m allergic to pure silver.”
“Exactly,” he said, kissing the top of my head.
“Do you really think you could kill Mara? I know Varnie said that we needed her . . . services or whatever, but if we didn’t?”
Haden chewed on that thought for a long time, staring into the distance far away from me even while he was so close. “She’s not the only mare demon. Humans need Under, but I don’t think they need Mara—she’s carrying the torch, but it’s the torch, not the runner, that is necessary.”
“She’s still your mom.”
“She wouldn’t give a second thought to killing me.”
I squeezed his hand. “I think we both know that’s not true. I don’t blame you for not trusting her, but if she wanted you dead, you’d be dead, Haden. She must feel something for you, even if it’s not what we equate with love.”
He drew me in close. “If I have to end her life, I will. If I have to take her place . . .”
“No! Don’t say that. You can’t go back there. Being human is too important to you.”
He pressed his lips to my temple. “You heard Varnie.”
“Let’s just get through this double date, okay?” I vowed that I would do everything in my power to keep Haden from taking Mara’s place.
And we said nothing else while we waited for Varnie’s coy bladder to finish its job.
CHAPTER EIGHT
T
he Salad Bowl was already a gaping maw into hell before any of us set foot in it that night, but I don’t think our presence helped it any.
A few years ago, the bowling alley’s owners had taken out the liquor bar and replaced it with a salad bar. Unfortunately, being a bowling establishment, the place had always smelled like feet; now it smelled like feet and blue cheese dressing.
Varnie, Ame, Donny, and Gabe were camped out at Lane 1. We’d asked them to stay home, just in case there was trouble, but they refused. Haden and I arrived early to secure a lane and try to settle in before the big show. Haden looked ridiculous in rented shoes, but rather than them making him uncomfortable, I think he was happy to have such a silly human experience.
Several lanes were still empty, but it was by no means quiet. The constant rumble of the balls before the thunderclap of their crash against the pins set me on edge. So did the continuous electronic music of the video games in the arcade. The loud children’s party a few lanes away was annoying, but it was also frightening. They were just kids. What if they were harmed by Mara’s malevolence?
“Theia, relax. If you don’t breathe, this night will be a lot worse.”
I nodded, my fingers shaking as I tried to unknot the laces of my shoes. Haden put a stilling hand on mine and I met his steady gaze. He took the shoes from my lap and worked on the knots while I concentrated on breathing.
“Tell me what’s on your mind. Talking about it will help.”
I shot him an incredulous glance. “Are you being serious?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start. This night is going to be a huge disaster.”
“I disagree,” he said simply.
I took a deep breath. “You want me to talk, fine. First of all, my father is going to meet you for the first time. This will not go well. This would not go well if we were thirty and you were a successful neurosurgeon. He doesn’t want me to date. He won’t like you.”
“I’m not that bad.” Haden smirked and I wanted to hit him.
“You’re a demon.”
“Half.”
“You want to shag me,” I argued.
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to tell
him
that.” He handed me back my bowling shoes with the laces unknotted and ready.
“Okay, so let’s pretend that my father is a normal bloke and move on to the fact that he’s
dating
your mother.”
An involuntary shudder racked Haden. “Okay, yeah, I don’t really want to go there right now.”
“Now let’s tack on that she’s here to wreak havoc on our lives. She’s an angry demon and we don’t know how to stop her. We don’t even know what she wants.”
Haden put his arm around me. “And that is the bright spot here. By participating in this double date”—he paused to shudder again—“we have the opportunity to find out what she wants. The more information we can get, the better we can prepare ourselves. It’s the
not
knowing that’s scary.”
“I’m pretty sure the
knowing
will be just as frightening. What if she hurts our friends? Or the children over there? What if she’s already been snacking on my father? He looks very tired.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “You’re not exactly defenseless, lamb.”
I shifted so I could look into his eyes again. “What do you mean?”
“You have a little something extra in your veins now.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“There’s power there, Theia. You could explore that, find out what you’re capable of.”
I was capable of draining the life out of people. That was more power than I wanted.
Haden sighed heavily, as if reading my mind. “You might surprise yourself. Have you tried running or moving something heavy?”
I shook my head. I’d never even thought of testing my limits.
“You may have heightened physical abilities. Or maybe mental ones. Try bending a spoon with your mind or something.”
I sent him a wry look, unable to figure out if he was being serious. Bending spoons wouldn’t exactly stop Mara from destroying my father. Before I had a chance to find out if he was teasing me, the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees instantly. Haden and I looked at each other rather than the door. We didn’t need to see it to know she’d arrived.
“Showtime,” he said, squeezing my shoulder once more before we faced our nightmare.
The unnatural chill that accompanied Mara’s entrance into the bowling alley caused everyone to rub their arms absentmindedly while they carried on laughing, talking, and throwing balls down the lanes, oblivious to the dangerous predator in their midst. Haden stood like a gentleman, forcing manners and etiquette like a veneer atop his wary stance. As I joined him in getting to my feet, suddenly I was smacked with awareness of all the human essence glowing around the hapless prey in the room. The shine of souls was beautiful—the luminous colors were brilliant in shades of jewel tones and pastels. Some sparkled with vibrancy while others seemed muted and dull. They were captivating until they became intoxicating. I drew in a sharp breath as a knife of longing stabbed me everywhere at once.
I was hungry. So very hungry.
Mara smiled prettily as she saw my reaction, knowing that her presence amped up my awareness of my demon urges. The backs of my knees shook and threatened to buckle me to the floor, but Haden’s low voice reassured me. “She’s throwing everything she can at you right now, lamb. That’s all the power she has here—at least tonight. If you can fight it now, it won’t get worse.”
The steadiness of his words and the timbre of his voice penetrated the gnawing ache to absorb the lights around me until I could make sense of what he’d said. I just had to gain control—Mara was strong, but I could be stronger. I lived with her in Under for a long time and I lived to tell about it. At least in this realm, she had to pretend to be civilized.
As she and my father approached, I concentrated very hard on putting the ravenous, throbbing urges behind a steel door in my mind. Mara arched a brow and she and my father stopped at our lane.
Father looked ridiculously perfect in ironed jeans and a sweater that tried too hard to be casual. The aura of his soul startled me—it was dim, far too dim—and I wanted to pounce on Mara for leaching his soul while he was trying to be happy for the first time since my mother had died. But instead of attacking her, I had to make nice.
“Father, Mara,” I said, “I’d like to introduce you to my friend Haden Black.” An awkwardness of epic proportions ensued, though Haden remained unruffled despite shaking hands with my stern, overprotective father and then his own mother, who was pretending she was delighted to meet him. My father watched Haden very closely. Had it been up to him, I would never date while in high school—or likely college—but he handled it better than I anticipated. Had I been a stronger girl, I would have forced this issue long ago. I’d assumed the confrontation would have been more explosive, but perhaps I underestimated my father’s ability to be reasonable.
Then again, everything had changed since my return. My father treated me like I might run off again at any moment because of something he said or did. Though I’d never been a fan of his stern demeanor before, I missed the security of our old relationship. I’m sure it’s something that happens to all children when they grow up and leave home—but I hadn’t left and I certainly didn’t feel grown up. Mostly I felt lost and confused.
Mara, the only one of us who seemed comfortable at all, made small talk. My father offered to get “refreshments,” and had a normal boy my own age been with us, I’d have been mortified trying to explain why my parent couldn’t say “snacks” like a normal dad would have. Luckily, Haden spoke even more formally than my father at times. When my father suggested that Haden accompany him, dread coiled in my stomach like a serpent. Haden shot me a cautious glance and I pretended I was going to be all right without him. I stole a look at our friends to make sure they were still safely a few lanes away.
Once the men were out of earshot, Mara cackled lightly. “Oh, Pussycat. The smell of your fear is still the sweetest ambrosia. And how nice of you to bring your darling friends along for added entertainment.”
“What do you want?” I watched my father and Haden take the long way to the snack counter, each of them wearing masks of grave seriousness while my father appeared to be the only one speaking.
“I want a lot of things, Theia. And when I want something, I take it. Like your father.”
I whipped my head back towards her. “Leave him alone.” A pressure began building inside me and my voice roughened with quills of anger, but Mara simply laughed at me. “He’s done nothing to you,” I argued. “He’s not part of this.”
She scoffed, fingering her pearls and ignoring the bowling shoes I knew she had no intention of putting on. “He’s quite savory, darling. I’m trying to control my nibbles, but it’s getting more and more difficult. Part of me wants to consume him entirely.”
I closed my eyes. “You’re killing him.”
“I’ve a ways to go yet. I suppose what’s left of your father will depend on you, won’t it?”
How could anyone look at her and not see the ugliness that tendriled around her like thick ribbons of rancid smoke? People see what they want to see. I’d never realized how often we make excuses for the unexplainable or the unthinkable until I met Haden and found out that our world is made up of smoke and mirrors.
How had we survived so long against evil when we refused to see it?
I glared at Mara. “What do you want from me? What must I do to save my father?”
“Oh, you can’t save him; I didn’t mean to be ambiguous about that. He’ll belong to me, just like everything and everyone you care about will belong to me. You can’t save any of them. But I’ll let you destroy yourself trying to mitigate their damage.” She touched my arm and the ice of her hatred froze my bones. “Crossing me was a terrible, terrible mistake. Remember that when your world falls apart.”
Mara removed her hand and winked at me as the woman in the next lane screamed. Though I knew better, I turned my back on Mara to see what was happening to the woman.
I didn’t recognize her, but her fear was a pretty aquamarine color—and it looked and smelled like spun sugar. I took a step towards her without thinking. It was then, as I shook myself out of my hungry stupor, that I realized she was in distress about the bowling ball she’d put her fingers into. Instead of a normal ball, it looked like it was made of flesh missing the top layer of skin. I’d barely registered how disgusting it looked when another rolled out of the return, veiny and moist with God-knew-what oozing from it.
The woman didn’t drop it, as one would have expected; she just stood there screaming while the bloody discharge trickled down her arms. I couldn’t move either. I just stared at the pulsing orb in her hands. Other people looked to see why she had screamed and gasped before they started bolting towards the door.
The crowd panicked, ratcheting up the tension. Mara disappeared and I tried to find our friends and my father, but Haden swooped me into his arms, ready to rush the door. “Come on.”
He didn’t look like a boy anymore; his preternatural
otherness
outshone all his human qualities when I was in danger. His demon speed made me close my eyes and get motion sickness. As he set me down, someone pushed into me and I was flattened against a window. I felt the effects of the protected casement even though it was on the other side of the glass. It burned and the flesh of my right hand began to blister. As the pain registered, I felt something inside push out of me like a huge exhale and the glass window blew out in shards—as did all the windows in the building.
Haden covered my head, but the damage was done as the glass was blowing out, not in. Everyone around us was afraid and it electrified me. Even though I knew it was wrong, I enjoyed their panic. It made me feel stronger, more powerful.
And very, very ashamed.
“Save my father,” I pleaded with him, holding my burned hand to my chest.
He shook his head. “I’m not leaving you.” He began pushing against the mob, trying to ease me through, but I resisted, ducking under his arm and turning back towards the lanes.
“Damn it, Theia!” Haden pulled me against his chest. “I’m taking you out of here. I’ll come back for them.”
Haden tried to tug me away, but I refused to run. I saw Amelia standing on a bench with Varnie. She turned her head sharply and was staring with intensity at the snack counter, so I followed her gaze as it landed on Mara. A look passed between Mara and Ame, and then Mara grabbed my father’s face and appeared to kiss him before she disappeared as if she’d never been there.
“No!” I cried, knowing that it wasn’t a simple kiss and running towards my father even as he fell to the floor.
* * *
Hours later, in the hall of the ICU in Serendipity Falls’s only hospital, the cloying odor of disinfectant mixed with the scent of disease blanketed my sinuses. And yes, apparently I could smell disease. It was not delicious like fear; rather it was unappetizing, like sour milk. My father slept in the room across the hall, attached now to machines that breathed for him and monitored his vital signs. The unnaturally bright lights of the hallway seemed to bore into my skull through my itchy eyes.
The doctors couldn’t tell me why he wouldn’t wake up. But I knew.
There was nothing I could do for him by keeping vigil in the corridor, but still, I couldn’t go home. I was afraid to leave him alone, unguarded, and afraid to be alone with my own fears too. So I sat there holding my bandaged hand and waiting for nothing to happen.
“You should eat something,” Haden suggested.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You can’t help him by not taking care of yourself.”
I closed my eyes, close to snapping at him. “I can’t help him anyway.” I didn’t want to say something I would regret, but I was close to my breaking point. Guilt weighed so heavily on me. It was all my fault that my father lay unconscious in a hospital bed. “I can’t even see the aura of his soul. I tried, but it’s not there.”
Then again, I had no control over when the auras appeared. I’d purposely been trying to block them from my vision since I’d returned, so maybe he still had one. Maybe.