Mind Games: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 6) (16 page)

“You’re running out of time,” the ketchup-haired girl said from behind me, but when I whirled around, she was gone, leaving me alone in the bathroom with my colored hair.

Chapter 19

“What did you do to your hair?!” my mother cried as she entered my room, blue ceramic plate in hand. A grilled cheese sandwich, chips, and a pickle sat perched on top. Her left hand gripped a can of cherry cola so hard the aluminum beneath her fingertips was starting to crinkle.

“Nothing,” I squawked, my cheeks heating up as I ran my hands through my hair one last time. “Honest.”

“Uh huh,” she said, her voice calm but brimming with unspent anger. “Your hair just dyed itself lavender magically?”

“Actually,” I started to say when she let out a little cry of distress as she marched into the room and dropped my food onto my desk. The plate hit with a crash, and I was surprised it hadn’t broken under the impact. Ignoring it, my mother grabbed the orange pill bottle from its perch beside my green desktop lamp and pulled it open. She poured some pills into her hand and thrust them at me.

“Take these, now,” she said, pressing them into my palm and holding out the can of soda.

“I can’t take them on an empty stomach,” I said, looking from her to the sandwich and back again. Even from here it smelled good enough to make me want to leap across the room and devour it whole. “I need to eat first.”

She let out a long, slow breath before nodding. “Okay. You’re right, Lillim.” She stared at me for a long time before sitting down next to me on my bed. “Why did you dye your hair without saying anything?” I sighed, trying to think of a reasonable lie as she reached out and ran her fingers through my hair, pausing briefly to massage my scalp. A little shudder of pleasure ran down my spine. “Though you did a good job of it.”

“Oh?” I asked, somewhat surprised. I’d been worried it looked horrible because maybe I had done it and only hallucinated it turning purple naturally. I’d been scared as hell I’d look in the mirror and find my hair covered in splotches or be back to its normal drab black. That was why I hadn’t gone directly downstairs after dressing. No, I’d spent the last several minutes staring at myself in my bedroom mirror.

“Yes, you have real talent.” She smiled at me, and even though it didn’t quite reach her eyes, it felt mostly real. I felt myself relax against her.

“I didn’t quite remember doing it, and I was worried…” I trailed off as she held me close and stroked my hair.

“It’s okay. Why don’t you eat something and take your pills.” She got to her feet and moved across the room, and the sudden absence of her body against mine left me feeling cold and alone. “If you want, you could bring your food into the living room. Maybe we could watch a movie?”

“Okay,” I said as she smiled at me one last time and hurried into the hallway. I got to my feet, sparing a final glance at my mirror and delighting in the fact my hair was still soft lavender. The irony was not lost on me. I’d always hated the color until I lost it. Well, if it turned out this world was fake, I was never going to dye it black again.

The thought made me smile as I snatched my sandwich and took a bite. I chewed slowly, savoring the three kinds of cheese my mother had used when another thought made my food congeal into a leaden lump in my mouth. The ketchup girl had told me I needed to die to wake up. If I accepted her advice as truth and did it, I wouldn’t be coming back to this world, well, ever.

It made me wonder if I could do it, could risk it? Sure, lots of signs pointed to everything being fake, but then again, so many signs pointed to this world being real. Every inconsistency explained away by my whacked out brain. If I was truly being possessed, whoever had done it was playing for keeps.

I looked down at the brightly-colored pills on my blue plate and heaved a sigh out of my lungs. What if those little pills were the only things keeping me from going insane? Still, I couldn’t chance it. Maybe they were some kind of way for Jormungand to keep me beneath his thumb.

“Those pills are just chains designed to keep you bogged down,” the ketchup girl said from behind me as if echoing my thoughts. I turned to see her sitting cross-legged on my bed wearing the exact same outfit I was though the sparkly ponies seemed more fitting on her.

“You know, popping in and out like you’ve been doing isn’t exactly making me think I’m sane,” I said, swallowing the bite of sandwich and lifting my cola.

She smiled at me and put one slender finger to her chin as if considering my words. “You may have a point, but if you remembered who I was, me popping in and out of your reality would seem normal.” She shrugged in a way that suggested it was my fault for not remembering her adequately.

“Who are you?” I asked and took a sip of soda, wondering whether or not the pills would make her vanish. I was half-inclined to think they would, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. The last time I’d been drugged up, she’d hidden me away in a cave, or at least, I remembered her hiding me away in a cave. If I took these ones in front of her would she drag me away to some other hidden alcove until they wore off or would she just vanish into the ether?

“I am the queen of life.” She grinned at me. “It’s why I know Zef is a fool. That old coot has been in love with me forever and it has blinded him. I know this because I send him many gifts, and he never, ever returns them.” She stared pointedly at me like I was exhibit A. “Well, with a few trifling exceptions.”

“The queen of life, eh? Like Isis?” I asked, setting my soda down and staring at her.

“Your sword spirit?” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Not so much the same at all.”

I smirked. “You’re good,” I replied, tapping my temple with my finger. “Apep did say Isis was one of my sword spirits. But how do I know you are real? How do I know I’m not just standing here talking to myself like a crazy person?”

The ketchup-haired queen of life smiled at me like I’d finally guessed the right answer to her question and sauntered toward me. She reached out and tapped me once on the chest. “Boom,” she whispered.

Light exploded behind my eyes as my breath whooshed out of me. I felt myself falling, felt my head strike the edge of the desk and bounce off as I slid to the floor.

The sounds of the front door opening filled my ears. It was the last thing I heard as the world slid into darkness. It was quite a bit different than the last thing I saw. The ketchup queen stood over me, her lips compressed into a weird kissy face that reminded me of a duck as she waggled her fingers at me in farewell.

My eyes snapped open with a start, leaving me staring across the vast expanse of a dark room. I was still wearing the skintight snake leather, but my wrists felt heavy. Attached to the bangles on my wrists were claws vaguely reminiscent of the ones Mattoc had summoned when he had called upon Apep’s power back when we’d journeyed through the fairy courts. One had two bone-white blades curving outward far beyond the edge of my hand while the other had three, foot-long razor sharp prongs made of smoky black metal.

Was this how Apep looked when properly manifested, or was this just what they looked like when twisted by whoever was using my body as a puppet? I could feel whatever it was inside of me, but I didn’t think it realized I was watching. The fingers of my left hand drummed aimlessly along the armrest of the throne.

A silver sphere hovered in the air a few feet away. Color flashed across its surface, reminding me of a television in a darkened room. The image of Ian stood in the center, clutching a black katana that looked strangely like Haijiku, the blade I’d gotten from Jiroushou Manaka when I’d escaped Hades. He fought for his life against another teenager who looked vaguely familiar. Ian bobbed and weaved, throwing ice and sleet at his opponent who fired back with bolts of garish green lightning.

“Your plan just may work, brother,” a wolfish voice said from my left, and I craned my head toward it to see an albino man stepping forth from the darkness. His body resembled a skeleton that had been dipped in yellow wax only his nails were quite a bit longer than they should have been, ending in thick, tapered claws. His thin lips were twisted into a grin, making his pink eyes seem amber and lupine as he leaned against the stone wall and stared at the sphere in front of me. “But I fear you have moved too soon. We should be playing chess, not running at them like a bull.”

“My plan will work, Fenris,” I said, annoyance filling my voice. “While you and our sister Bel, leave father Loki to rot, I will bring him back and his vengeance will be terrible.” I stood and gestured toward the sphere in the center of the room. “My plan also has the added benefit of causing the horsemen to rip each other limb from limb first.”

“And what of the God Thor?” Fenris asked, raising one pale eyebrow. “Do you not fear your death at his hands? Even you cannot ignore the twists of prophecy. If Ragnarok comes, you will die along with him, dear brother.”

“Not while I have this body,” I said, running my fingers down my chest, drawing Fenris’s eyes to my barely concealed cleavage. “It is much too strong to be defeated with me at the helm.”

“If you say so, brother.” Fenris stared straight into my eyes, and I got the feeling he was looking not at his brother, but at me in particular. “But I don’t think you’ve thought this all the way through.” He gestured at me, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Then again, you never do.”

“Does that mean you will not do your part?” I stepped off the dais and began to approach him as he slinked backward into the darkness, his body already becoming strangely insubstantial.

“Oh, no,” Fenris replied, his lips fading like the last fading grin of a Cheshire cat. “I will most definitely do
my
part. It is yours that causes me to worry. I fear you have bitten off more than you could ever hope to chew. That’s the problem with swallowing things whole after all, dear brother.” He was gone in an instant. As I stood there looking at the spot Fenris had occupied, the surroundings faded away, leaving me staring up into the smiling face of ketchup girl as she stood over me.

“Don’t you see?” she asked, reaching out and tapping me on the forehead with her index finger. “Your body is being controlled. You must break free.”

“How do I know that wasn’t another delusion?” I asked, but even as I said the words, I knew it had been real, at least as real as anything I’d ever felt before. Still, it felt unreal. Had Jormungand seriously just had a conversation with the Norse deity Fenris about releasing Loki while in possession of my body? It seemed fantastical and very, very scary.

I wasn’t sure what Jormungand’s game was exactly, but if the Dioscuri archives were at all correct, Loki had been trapped deep within the Earth while acid dripped on his face for the last couple of millennia. If he broke free, and that sounded exactly like what Jormungand was trying to accomplish, his wrath would be terrible and absolute. At least, I was pretty sure it would be given what I could remember.

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?” The ketchup queen clucked disapprovingly. “Look, I can’t help you if you don’t want to be helped.” She held her hands out as if saying, “work with me here.”

“How come you can talk to me like this?” I asked, getting slowly to my feet. It was difficult because my head throbbed, and I felt warmth running down the side of the face. I touched the spot. It stung.

“The others could, but I drew the short straw.” She shrugged.

“And I’m important enough for you to care about, why?” I pulled my fingers away from my temple and stared at the blood covering the tips.

“Because if you don’t force Jormungand out, he’ll kill the horsemen. Not just one, but all of them. If that happens, no one will be able to stop Loki from rising.” The queen smiled at me like that made sense and maybe it did, but not to me, that was for damned sure.

“I don’t follow,” I replied, leaning heavily against my desk.

She waved her tiny hands dismissively. “You don’t need to understand the situation, Lillim. Just know the people destined to stop this particular event won’t be able to do so if you can’t wake up. You need to do it now.”

“Then why would Zef tell me to wait?” I asked, gesturing at her with my bloody fingers. “Let’s say I believe you because I’m insane and for some reason, believe a girl who looks like she should be on a fast food poster. Why would Zef give me the exact opposite advice? He’s not dumb.”

“No, he’s not,” the queen said, staring at her shoes like they were terribly interesting. “He thinks Death will win.”

“Death will win?” I asked, confusion filling my voice. “How will death win? What does that even mean?”

“Not death, but capital-D, Death.” The girl shrugged. “He thinks there will be a moment when Death strikes down Jormungand, and in that moment, you’ll be able to shove him out. That’s why he asked you to wait because if you do, Jormungand won’t be able to find a new host in time. He thinks it will work because Death has Mjolnir.”

“That seems like a pretty important set of facts to just ignore. The whole host thing, someone armed with the mythical weapon destined to kill Jormungand, you know, the minor details.” I stared at her, and as I did, I realized she was hiding something from me. “Why are you trying to get me to do it now?”

“I don’t want to risk you, Lillim. If you throw Jormungand out now, well, he’ll just find another host. That’s fine, but if you go along with Zef and fail, you’ll die along with him. We can’t risk it.” The queen looked up at me, her eyes dark and filled with unreadable thoughts. “Assuming of course Death can do his damned job, and I won’t lie, I don’t think he’s up to the task. He’s broken, and not in a good way, but in a very, very bad way.”

“You can’t risk me dying?” I asked, fighting the urge to laugh because almost everything she said sounded like the insane ramblings of psychopath. “What makes me so special?”

“Thes Mercer needs you to bring him back.” She sighed. “You’re the only one who can do that.”

“Thes Mercer is dead,” I said before I could stop myself even though I didn’t remember who he was at all and was just going by what I’d been told.