Banishing the Dark (The Arcadia Bell series) (33 page)

His dad grabbed his arm and jerked him to his side, and that’s when Jupe swung around and got a look at Cady and her mother. They looked frozen in place. Like storefront mannequins or one of those stupid artist hippies in the Village who painted themselves to look like statues and jumped out at people.

And Cady’s eyes were all messed up. Her pupils had disappeared. They were nothing but silver.

“Get behind me!” his dad snapped.

But he couldn’t, because—

“Leticia!” he shouted, seeing her move in the shadows.

“Don’t go near them!” Dad shouted toward her as he steered them all toward Priya. “Circle around this way.”

Leticia jogged and met them, Foxglove bounding behind. Jupe grabbed her hand and pulled her behind his dad. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, but he could tell that she was freaking out. And how could he blame her? Dad had gone all Hellboy, Cady had turned into a black and white reptile, a body-painted psychopathic witch just fell out of the sky and nearly broke his arms holding him hostage, and a shirtless boy with a broken wing had crash-landed at their feet.

Sort of put Leticia’s naked-altar-sister, racist-grandma family to shame.

Still, Leticia was a warrior. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Jupe that she managed to keep a level head in the middle of all this crazy shit. She didn’t scream, and she didn’t run. She just looked up at his dad and said, “What’s happening to them?”

“Cady said she was going to let her mom take her body,” Jupe said. “Does that mean her mom’s soul is inside her?”

Dad’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two frozen women. “I’m not sure.”

“Maybe they swapped bodies, like some kind of bad ’80s movie,” Jupe suggested.

Dad shook his head. “Cady looked like this yesterday, when she had a . . . vision.”

“What kind of vision?”

Dad held his shotgun as if he wasn’t sure if he should be aiming it or not. “Like an out-of-body experience. She traveled somewhere.”

“Where?” Jupe asked. “Do you think she took her mom back into the Æthyr?”

“She is still on this plane,” a pained voice said at their feet. “I can feel her, but I cannot hear her anymore. I cannot verify exactly where she is or whether her mother has control over her, and I am not sure if I can locate her in this state of injury.”

Jupe bent down to inspect Priya. “Dude, are you okay?”

“I need to heal, or I won’t be able to fly again,” he said through gritted pointy teeth.

“We know healers. I can call one,” Jupe offered.

Priya’s skin crackled with static. “I can find a healer in the Æthyr, but I cannot stay here much longer. And if I leave, Enola may return with me.”

For a moment, Jupe thought this was the best idea in the world. But if Cady’s mom returned with Priya, she might kill him. Or torture him and use him to fly back down here again. Or if she was inside Cady’s body right now, she might try to take Cady’s soul along with her.

Crap. There were too many possibilities. But he suddenly thought of one that might be the answer to all of them.

“Shoot her mom’s body,” Jupe said to his dad. “You have a clear shot—just shoot her.”

Leticia shook her head. “I don’t think you should. If you destroy the mother’s body while the soul is inside Cady’s body, will the soul be trapped?”

“Crap,” Jupe said. She might have a point.

“And what if they’ve swapped bodies?” she said. “You might be killing Cady’s soul.”

“When magick is present, anything is possible,” Priya mumbled.

Okay, now Jupe was right back to being overwhelmed by possibilities. “What do you think, Dad?”

He didn’t answer. Just stared at Cady with a helpless expression.

Leticia shook her head as if she was unsure about all of it. “This is strange magick.”

“It’s not magick,” his dad said. “It’s one of Cady’s knacks.”

“She’s not human,” Leticia said, flicking a glance from his dad to him.

No use denying it now. Not in the middle of all this. “We’re Earthbounds,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but it’s not something we usually talk about with, well, you know—”

“Humans,” she finished.

He nodded. When she didn’t look at him, he felt a fresh burst of panic in his gut. Because they couldn’t see halos, most humans didn’t believe Earthbounds really existed. Cady said half of her order didn’t, which was stupid, because they were all about summoning demons from the Æthyr. Leticia had never mentioned the subject, so he didn’t know how she felt about it.

Or how she felt about him, now that she knew the truth.

But what could he do? She either accepted it or
she didn’t. Knowing this didn’t make him feel any less anxious; he liked her way too much.

Exhaling heavily, he studied Cady’s frozen scaly body, partly scared, partly worried, and a little bit amazed. It was so quiet. Even Foxglove had stopped barking. Was that a good sign? He wanted to ask about the baby, what with all this talk of soul swapping, but he didn’t want to worry his dad. Dude was already on edge.

“She sort of looks like a dragon.”

Jupe glanced at Leticia, heart thudding in his chest. She flashed him the tiniest, quickest smile he’d ever seen. But it was just enough to give him hope—about her, about him and her together, and about this whole damn mess.

“Oh, Mistress,” Priya moaned. “I have failed you again.”

Jesus, what a whiner. Jupe glanced down at the guardian, who was still struggling to stay on this plane. Then Jupe turned to his dad, who looked as if he was seconds away from a heart attack.

“Come on, people, have a little faith,” Jupe told them. “I mean, it’s Cady. And she’s pretty damn strong. She survived that fight with Dare, and she’s rescued a lot of people. She pulled me down off that roof last fall, and she went girl-on-girl with Yvonne at Christmas. Oh, and she beat the crap out of that girl magician with the school desk—and that was before she could shift into a dragon.” He flashed Leticia a
little smile of his own and waggled his eyebrows at her, because just saying all this out loud made him feel a million times better.

“If she can do all that,” he added, “surely she can handle one crazy mother.”

White walls surrounded me. I stood next to a perfectly made double bed, which would have perfectly tucked hospital corners if I lifted up the plain bedspread to check. His-and-hers closet doors were both shut, but no doubt the space behind them contained neat rows of perfectly pressed clothes.

The blinds were tightly shut, just as they were in the rest of the house, to hide dark secrets from snooping neighbors. On the surface, they wouldn’t have seen much if they’d been able to peep inside: no decorations, no paintings, no framed photos—not in here. Those would be out in the living room, to prove to visitors that we were a Normal Family and that there was nothing to see here, move along.

But not at the back of the house. No need for them. Because we weren’t a normal family, and there was no need to keep up appearances behind closed doors.

I never was allowed in this bedroom, so naturally, I always tried to sneak inside. And I’m sure I was
successful a time or two, but the memories I had of this room had likely been wiped away by magick. And I’m sure that when I did make my way in here, I would have noticed the only thing of interest, a set of closed curtains on the inner wall.

That’s exactly where my focus was now. Until a confused moan drew my attention.

My mother looked a thousand times more disheveled in this light, a thousand times more feral when contrasted against the tidy cleanliness surrounding her. And in bringing her here, I felt as though we’d switched places: she was now the one panicking, and I felt as if I were standing in front of a wildcat that had been defanged and declawed and had just had its balls chopped off.

“What is happening?” she said, looking around wildly. “Where are we?”

I forced a smile. “Why, this is your bedroom, don’t you remember? It doesn’t exist anymore, as I’m sure you know. Plowed down with the rest of the houses on this block to make way for condos. Miami real estate waits for no one.”

She tentatively took a step before reaching out for the bedpost. “
Mon dieu
. What have you done?” A quick anger flared behind her eyes, but the rumble of a truck passing by on the street outside made her flinch.

Putting some distance between us, I headed to the curtains on the inner wall and wrenched them open to reveal what lay behind. Built-in bookshelves
lined the wall below my waist. The lower shelves near the floor were filled with occult books—mostly first-edition copies of my parents’ greatest hits—and on top were a velvet cloth and several ritual items: a chalice, a ritual dagger, a salt cellar, a caduceus staff, and a carved wooden box for red ochre chalk.

Innocuous stuff found in every magician’s home. I kept far more dangerous things in Tambuku.

But it was the thing above those supplies that drew my interest. A small two-way mirror let me see into the room beyond. A child’s room with a small bed, bookshelves, a toy chest. A picture map of the constellations on the wall and plastic stars pressed into the ceiling.

And on the floor, in the middle of a round rug with a woven man-in-the-moon design, sat a slightly older version of the Sélène I’d glimpsed in the winter home. Perhaps four or five years old, she lay on her stomach, engrossed in a picture book, lazily kicking her feet in the air.

“Did you watch me through here all day?” I asked. “You could’ve played with me instead. Or were you trying to keep your distance so you didn’t develop any pesky maternal feelings?”

My mother walked up to the window and drew in a sharp breath, a look of amazement on her face. But when the shock wore off, her shoulders dropped as she quietly stared at the child in the other room. I could practically feel her guard drop. “This . . . is an incredible ability.”

“Useful. It’s good to see the past as it really was. Especially since you stripped so many of my memories.”

“Enjoy your stroll down memory lane. I will find better uses for this ability.”

“ ‘Better’ is subjective, but I don’t doubt you would use it for something more ambitious,” I said. “This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it? I’m sure you stood here watching that child in there, dreaming of having access to powers like this.”

She tore her gaze away from the glass long enough to give me a once-over. “I certainly did not dream of commanding them in that ugly reptilian body you’re wearing, but now that you have made a hash of my dreams, I suppose I will learn to tolerate it.”

“Hey, you’re the one who mated with a serpent, not me.”

Oh
, the look she gave me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it burned right through my eyeballs and out the back of my skull. In the past, that look would have been enough to make me cower but not here. Not now. And when she saw this, the fire fizzled and was replaced by something less sure. She scratched at the bloody symbols drying on her arm and refocused on the mirror. “At least your body is still young.”

“And I’m not a notorious serial killer wanted by the FBI, so you wouldn’t have to duck security cameras in airports anymore.”

She cocked a brow. “When I get possession of
those powers, every camera in the world will want to take my photograph.”

That sounded about right. She was always happy when she was commanding attention.

“Can she hear us?” my mother asked. I didn’t answer—I honestly didn’t know for certain—so she tapped on the glass with a knuckle. Five-year-old me jerked her head to the side and stared up at the window, which I remembered looking like an ordinary framed mirror above a desk from her point of view. “She hears us,” my mother whispered.

More than heard us, apparently, because little Sélène pushed off the rug and warily walked toward the desk below the mirror. She pulled a chair out from beneath it and stood on top of it, peering right at us. My mother stared back at her. No one spoke. After a few seconds, little Sélène gave up and headed back to her book.

“Extraordinary,” my mother murmured. “You could always see things no one else could.”

“Maybe it’s not just me. Maybe you should walk to the kitchen and say hello to
your
younger self.”

A small laugh bubbled from her mouth. “You have no idea how to wield this power.”

“And you do?”

“Darling, I know things about your powers you couldn’t fathom.” She lifted her chin to the mirror. “In your head, you are still that little girl in there. Naive. Submissive. And only breathing because I’ve allowed you to live. Would you like me to show you the fruits this ability can yield?”

“I don’t need any more magical instruction from you, thank you.”

“Oh, I’m done teaching. And I’m done waiting. I’m ready to take the reins now.”

“And you really believe I’m so submissive that I’m just going to allow you to slip inside my body without a fight?”

A slow smile spread across her face, cracking the dried blood on her skin. “
Ma petite lune
, you already have.”

I snorted, ready to hurl a retort, but there was something about the absolute confidence on her face. It tripped me up. Made me doubt.