Phantom Eyes (Witch Eyes) (27 page)

I turned to Lucien. My equal. My enemy. My eyes raged violet, and I could hear the Riders calling to me, cajoling from across the voids. Our eyes met, and voiceless conversations that were made up of sun flares and tsunamis passed between us before I finally bobbed my head once, sharply. “Do it.”

“Lucien, you can’t possibly—you told me you needed hi
m!” She still thought Trey was in danger. It was laughable.

The demon still didn’t understand. When I said “now” I meant
now.
My fury became an inferno in an instant, and I reacted. I lunged outside of time as the world fell to freezing around me. The others were trapped statues as I rushed forward, barely feeling my feet touch the ground. Even Lucien was caught up in the wake of time, his eyes stuck on the place where I had been, a cruel smirk forming.

I grabbed his arm, dragged him towards Catherine. I pressed his palm flat against her forehead, held it there, and stepped back through the bars of time’s cage, and roared, “DO IT!” My rage would brook no argument. There would be no cease-fire here.

I don’t know how it looked, if I was just a blur of speed or if I’d simply disappeared and reappeared standing between the two of them. I didn’t care. She would pay. She would pay forever if I had my way.

A demon lives to destroy, and in a way, this moment would destroy Catherine Lansing forever. “You are marked as fortune’s favored daughter,” the demon whispered. Black fire swirled around his skin, seeped into the follicles of her hair and the beads of sweat on her skin. “You will not die young, a victim of accident or chance. Wherever you will go, good fortune will keep you on your way. Your life will be spared for all of your days. Your mind will be as sharp as it ever was, your memory as clear as glass.”

In my haste to see it done, the wall trapping Trey had slipped and shattered. He grabbed me now, fingers digging into my skin. “What are you doing?” he demanded, shaking me.

“She doesn’t get mercy. She doesn’t get to forget and become something less.” I looked away from him, to where black fire was still being swallowed up by her skin. “She killed my uncle. And probably a lot more, too. I don’t want her to ever forget.”

“Why?” he whispered.

“Because I want her to remember. I was her destruction, but I was also her savior. Someone would have toppled her eventually; she’s made enough enemies. Now they won’t. Now she’ll live.”

Catherine looked up at me, and the horror I wanted to see in her eyes was truly there, leaking out the sides.
So fragile,
I thought, looking down at her like a pet.
I could shear your soul from your body and scatter it across all the stars in the devil’s sky.

“You wanted a weapon, Catherine,” I said, crouching down in front of her, cupping my hand under her chin and pulling her back to her feet. “Wish granted.”

“One more thing, Catherine,” Lucien said, coming to my side. In this moment, we were almost partners, with an impeccable sense of timing. “Braden and I came to an agreement last night. Your son’s contract was already voided.”

“What?” Catherine’s head whipped around as she looked at each of us in turn. Too much had happened, her mind had gone through so many different scenarios, but this was clearly not one of them. “Then why … ”

I looked up at Lucien and nodded. “Show her the rest.”

And so Lucien gave her a glimpse of the power he possessed, filled her mind with visions of Belle Dam’s former fate. All the lives that Catherine had affected, or altered, or ended.
He put faces to names, reminded her of sins long since past. Things even she’d forgotten. Even the ramifications—things she’d done that wouldn’t play out for another generation or two. A tangible glossary of her wasted, pathetic life.

Her punishment was knowledge. Walking the streets of Belle Dam and every time she saw a familiar face, she would be reminded of the crimes she’d committed against them.

“Jade, get her out of here,” Trey commanded. Jade did as she was told, first helping Catherine to her feet and then leading her out of the room. Trey stood above me as Lucien backed away. His disapproval hung like a chalk cloud in the air, infecting my skin with it.

“What are you doing?” he asked softly.

Who did he think he was, to question me? Did he not see me just bend the Rider to my will, force him to act as my puppet? And who was he? A boy stupid with the gold in his veins, who could not even comprehend the majesty of what was happening now.

“Remember who you are,” the boy bleated. It was hard to remember why I should care. Why his voice affected my body. “This is the demon talking. Not you. You have to fight it.”

“I am fighting,” I said quietly. “And I’ve only just begun.”

“No,” he said, and he risked death by laying his hands upon me. Curiously, I did not strike him down, though the desire was there. “This isn’t you. You’re not the boy with the violet eyes. Your eyes are blue, or green, but never this. Come on, you can remember. For me.”

But it wasn’t Trey who broke through to me. It was Riley.

“Braden?” she whispered.

Human instinct won out over demon influence. Somewhere inside of me a flame went out, and when I spun around, I was myself again, my thoughts as clear as they’d ever been before.

It was getting worse. Whatever was happening to me, this
degradation,
it wasn’t going to get any easier to control. The longer I was out here, the more likely I would do something I would regret. If any part of me remained human long enough to regret it.

Riley’s eyes were open, focused and sharp and a far cry from the girl who’d been lost.

“He came after me,” she said simply, eyes staring at Lucien though they didn’t have any fear, “and then I don’t remember anything.” Her smile was slow in coming, but when it formed it was just like the memory of her in my head. A knot in my chest unraveled, and if I accomplished nothing else, at least I’d made good on my promise. I’d found a way to bring Riley back.

“Did you save me?” she asked.

I trembled, and Trey’s hands slid over my shoulders, squeezed me and pulled me tight against him. “He did.”

“Go away,” I commanded Lucien, my voice little more than a rasp. He dipped his head, the curl of his lip the only hint of disdain he allowed to surface. He was well into the hallway before I quietly added, “Don’t go far. You have one more appointment tonight.”

I’d bargained for three days, but I was barely going to make it through one. Grace had made a very bad deal. She thought she’d won a victory, when she bargained my three days down to three midnights, returning me only hours before the first. She thought there wouldn’t be enough time for me to go off the rails. Now I knew it was too much.

Trey started to explain to Riley what she’d missed, but it didn’t prove necessary. Despite having spent every day since her attack in a psychotic state, Riley had an easy grasp of what had gone down in her absence. “And now Braden swallowed up one of the wellsprings so that he could go toe to toe with Lucien and not get bitch-slapped again,” she concluded.

Neither Trey nor I knew what to say. I rubbed my hands on the bottom of my jacket again and again, the feel of something slick on my skin that I couldn’t get off.

“Get out,” Riley said finally, and my attention snapped back to her.

“What?”

She looked at me like I’d ridden in on the short bus, then gestured down at her outfit. “If I’m going with you, I can’t exactly go in a hospital gown and my robe, now can I?”

“You’re not going with us,” I said, almost in stereo with Trey’s protest. But Riley didn’t want to hear it. And since allowances had already been made for Jade, because I honestly couldn’t tell her no after what I’d done to Drew, the same went for Riley, too.

She stopped me before I reached the door. “I remember what you’re going to do,” she whispered, lowering her voice so it was just the two of us. “It won’t work.”

“No, it will. You’ve said it yourself all along.” The jacket wasn’t cutting it so I tried wiping my hands down on the bed sheets. Riley wouldn’t need them anymore. “Take in the wellspring, become that thing, and I could beat them.”

“Beat them, maybe, but you’re not just trying to beat them, Braden.” She rested her palm against my cheek, and I flinched at her touch. It wasn’t that long ago that she’d hijacked my brain with a little skin-to-skin contact. But nothing happened this time, the demonic power inside me still dormant. “It doesn’t balance. There’s two of them, and only one of you.”

In all things, balance.
It had been beaten into my head often enough. My heart thudded and then rolled to a stop in my chest. It wasn’t going to be enough.

I
wasn’t going to be enough.

thirty-five

The last time I’d been in a cemetery, I’d been fighting for my life. Well, actually, the last few times I’d been in a cemetery. The night air was a cool breeze off the bay, salty and fresh. There’d been a morbid tint to my thoughts ever since I’d left Riley’s hospital room. I knew this was where it had to end. It was poetic.

This
was where it had really started, where Lucien had set me onto the path for Grace, and I’d become so enmeshed in Belle Dam’s secrets that I jumped through every hoop I could find.

The cloud cover opened, and a sea of stars wished us on our way. Anticipation whispered through the trees like it was Christmas Eve, though that was days past. Belle Dam was hushed, sleeping lightly, ready to wake up in the morning at the moment that everything was different.

Because after tonight, it would be.

Lucien had vanished into the shadows, likely more comfortable traveling on his own than with a bunch
of teenagers. Jade and Riley were insistent about coming along, and neither one would hear a word of argument. But since the real showdown was happening in the lighthouse, and not the cemetery, I didn’t lobby very hard against their going with us. Trey shot me a disapproving look, but a few minutes more with my friends was a small price to pay.

Trey drove, but when I tried to take the passenger’s seat up front to ride next to him, I’d been pushed into the back with Riley on one side and Jade on the other. This new, restored Riley was a quiet creature, prone to long silences and eyes that held too much knowledge. It was hard to say how much she remembered after what had happened to her, Riley deflected questions with the ease of someone who had been asking them for half her life.

Jade, however, was not prone to any such silences. “I
get
that you’re pitting the two of them against each other,” she said, repeating my own words back about what I expected to happen tonight, “but what’s the outcome? Do you really think that they’ll take each other out?”

“Of course,” I lied. I liked my version of the story better than the reality. My friends didn’t need to know what Riley had confided in me, or my own fears. As far as they needed to be concerned, everything was going to happen just the way it was supposed to. Until it didn’t. “They’re evenly matched. Or at least, they will be. Then all we have to do is wait them out. They’ll destroy each other before breakfast. No doubt
.”

“And you’re not worried she’s going to turn on you? She’s already done it once before,” Trey said from the driver’s seat, and the lack of approval in his words halted the conversation for a minute.

“He’s lying.” There was no emotion to Riley’s voice, and it sounded so strange and flat that I thought for a minute that Lucien had fooled us all, and Riley wasn’t fixed after all.

“It’s a good pl—” I started, but Jade pushed me back, showing a physical strength that I wouldn’t have expected out of her. She leaned in front of me, staring over at Riley.

“What do you mean? What’s he lying about?”

Riley’s auburn hair was limp and pulled back, and the clothes she wore hung off of her like she was hardly bigger than a hanger. She’d lost a lot of weight in the hospital, and probably still needed to be there for a while. Another reason why jailbreaking her hadn’t been a good idea.

“They can’t kill each other,” she said softly, playing with the fringe on the edges of her sleeve. “He knows that. Everything’s too bound up into everything else. He’s playing at something else.”

I gritted my teeth and tried not to let it show too much on my face. I
was
lying, and Riley was exactly right about everything, but why the hell was she telling
Jade
? Why was she trying to ruin everything? I had one chance, maybe, and the last thing I needed was Riley trying to sabotage me from the sidelines. Especially since she knew more than she was saying. Why blow the whistle on me if she wasn’t going to reveal everything she knew?

“I’m not
playing
at anything,” I said, my voice harsh. “Lucien doesn’t know yet. That’ll give Grace a little bit of an advantage. But being in the lighthouse will give Lucien one, too. He won’t be bound so tight.” One I could handle. But not both. Each of them had worlds of experience on me, and the times I’d gone against them I’d just barely survived. If they decided to set aside their differences and destroy the upstart who’d brought them together, there wouldn’t be enough left of me to scrape off the floor.

Jade’s expression hardened, and she turned to look out the window. “I want to see her suffer. She attacked you, she
killed
Drew … I just … someone should be there to make sure he gets justice.”

“Oh.” I saw the expression on Riley’s face. She
remembered
what had happened to Drew. She knew who was responsible
.
Dammit!

“Stop here,” I told Trey, even though we were still blocks from the cemetery. “I’ll go the rest of the way on my
own.”

Trey met my eyes in the rear view mirror, his expression perturbed. “It’s just a couple of blocks. Relax. You’ve got this.”

“Drew’s—” But I didn’t let Riley finish. I whirled on her, got in her face.

“Not another word. Just shut up. Shut up! You’ve been in a hospital bed talking like a lunatic for over a month!” I don’t know where the rage came from, but it poured out in my words, fed by the guilt sweating out through my skin and the self-loathing that had been eating away at my insides.

I was close to losing it. I had to get out of the car, which was suddenly smaller than it had been moments before. Legs pressed up against mine on both sides, it was a million degrees, and there wasn’t any oxygen. I opened my mouth to take a breath, but there was nothing there. Just bodies, shifting at my sides, pressing in on me. Questions lobbed over my head. Panting breaths that weren’t doing a bit of good. Too much. Too much too much too much too—

Red and violet sparks burst out of the console, the emergency brake yanked up and the power siphoned into the sky like a strike of reversed lightning. Rotting guilt, suspicion, so guilty oh so guilty put on the cuffs burning against the skin soft melodies and hot spilled hearts weighed against everything that was to come. Crystal eyes like the Library at Alexandria, filled with books worlds memories than any thousand lifetimes before. Eyes that are not eyes, silvered mirrorglass, eyes sharing burden though burden is unspoken.

My hands covered over my face, my head pressed down over my knees, and there was air—cool air—spilling in at my sides. Time had passed, but I couldn’t be sure how much. Long enough that my heart had settled and my breaths came slow and even. Too long.

“Braden,” Trey said softly at my side. I looked up, felt the tears on my face, and saw his expression. Stricken, but still determined. Over his shoulder, Riley and Jade were wrapped around each other, Jade having turned so that her body was between Riley and me. Like I was a threat.

I
was
a threat.

“It’s getting worse,” I whispered.

Trey didn’t put it into words, but he nodded. “That’s the thing that you’re afraid of, isn’t it? Whatever it is that you’ve been running from. Ever since your uncle died.”

I hadn’t told anyone about the vision. About what I could become. At least not the people in my real life. Lucien knew, of course. And Grace. But I thought if I could shield the rest of them, if I could keep this deep, dark secret away from them, they wouldn’t look at me the way Jade looked at me now.

I closed my eyes, and felt something burn out inside of me. “She told Jade.” It wasn’t even a question. It didn’t need to be. I knew from the moment that Riley had opened her mouth that they were going to find out. Riley was going to tell everyone what I’d done to Drew, and worse, she was going to tell them
why.
That I’d done it to get my power back, that Drew’s friendship had been weighed against my need to be special, and lost.

“Are you okay?”

I opened my eyes again. Trey was still looking at
me
like I was the one who needed comfort. He wasn’t surprised by any of it. “How long have you known?” I asked dully.

“Long enough,” he said quietly. “You could have told me.”

“Ever notice that I don’t tell people a lot of things I could?” I asked. Lucien would be here any time, it wouldn’t be good for him to find me having a panic attack, or even a heartfelt conversation in the back of Trey’s car. “The more I talk about … anything, the more chance there is that it all gets screwed up.” I sighed. “I screw everything up.”

“Ever notice that things get that way even without you?” Trey asked. “Not that I’m not saying you do more than your fair share, but really. You don’t have a monopoly on being an idiot.” He patted me awkwardly on the knee and then turned around to deal with his sister. I don’t know what he said to her, and the truth was that I didn’t want to know. The last thing I wanted to deal with right now was Jade knowing what I’d done to Drew. Riley bit at one of her fingernails, having tucked her hair up into a brown knit cap sometime after getting out of the car.

There were so many variables, so many different ways that tonight could go off the rails. But there were a few things that absolutely had to happen. The confrontation had to take place in the lighthouse, I had to do it by myself, and … I had to say goodbye before I went.

But runaway emotions interrupted before I could accomplish any of those things. “Is it true?” Jade demanded, the moment I was out of the car.

“Jade—”

I heard the slap before I felt it. Saw the shimmering line of tears before I saw the animosity in her eyes. It was like it happened to someone else, that was how disconnected I was. I pressed a hand against my cheek, feeling the warmth like it didn’t belong to me.

“That’s not helping,” Trey snapped, moving in between us. Jade huffed and opened her mouth to argue before she gave up and spun around on her heel. When she tried to put an arm around Riley and pull her away, Riley resisted.

“I have to go to the grave,” I said, numb to what I should be feeling. “Lucien will meet me there.” Maybe goodbyes weren’t such a good idea after all. “I’m sorry,” I told her, even though I wasn’t s
ure I was. “I had to.”

“Braden, shut up.” Despite everything, Trey still had my back. I didn’t get it.

I made sure to look Jade in the eye. If Riley was to be believed, I wasn’t going to make it out of here anyway, so why not. Maybe if I made her hate me—maybe that hate would be better than anything else she might feel. She wouldn’t have to miss her friend when she could hate the guy who stole her kid’s father away. Maybe my death could give her some comfort. It was better if I deserved it. Cleaner.

“I made a deal with Grace,” I said, only looking at her. “She’d fix me, and all I had to do was open the door so she could come back through to this world. But it took a lot to do what she did in the first place. And it would cost a lot to bring her back. I knew that, and,” I swallowed, “I did it anyway.”

She stared at me like she’d never seen me before. Like the last four months had been a lie. And maybe she was right to do that. Maybe they were. “How?”

I knew instinctively that the question was “how could you?” but I chose to answer “how did you do it?” instead. “With a knife,” I said simply. “Grace made the Shifter line as a backup. A way out if she couldn’t get back on her own. But no one ever had the juice to make it across before. Until me. So she needed an escape, and I provided it.” I held up my hand, palm out, like she could still see the blood that had pooled against my skin, hot like betrayal.

“That’s enough,” Trey said, pushing me towards the cemetery. “Go home,” he snapped at his sister. “The keys are still in the car. Take Riley back to the hospital and then just go home.”

“No, wait,” Riley said, trying to twist around Jade, who was suddenly blocking her like this was a football game, and not a goodbye.

“Come on, Riley, you need your rest.” Jade looked like all the fight had drained out of her.

“But he’s got it all wrong,” she said, a hint of her old fire stirring to life.

“No, he doesn’t,” Jade said quietly. They were a strange pair, Riley in street clothes and boots, while Jade still wore her dress and jewelry. “Drew’s gone.”

“And Braden will be too,” Riley insisted, squirming around Jade. Once Riley slipped past her, she charged towards us, her limbs flailing awkwardly as she ran for probably the first time in a month.

Trey caught her easily enough, scooping her up by the waist, under some misguided belief that Riley was going to hit me. But really, if Riley wanted to try punching me in the face, she wouldn’t be able to do half the damage that Jade could have done.

But Riley didn’t have revenge on her mind. Once Trey had settled her back on the ground, she looked up at him and announced, “He’s not planning on coming back.”

That
was why Riley hadn’t said anything before. She wanted to wait until the last possible minute and rally a defense. I might have talked my way out of it if I had more time. But the demons under my skin were starting to itch, and I couldn’t avoid them for long.

Trey wasn’t an idiot. And Riley might have been recently crazy, but she was insistent enough that he glanced over at me before looking back at her. “What do you want me to do about it?” Because it was clear that Riley wanted
something.

“Braden thinks—”

“Enough of that,” I whispered harshly, looking around the cemetery. There was no telling what kinds of ears were listening in. I concentrated on a silvery web, drawing the magic into a complex pattern that created a bubble. For a moment I considered only including the three of us, but whether or not she hated me, Jade was still a part of this in her own way, so I extended the bubble to include her. I lined the spell with tiny bits of demon power. Not enough to make me lose control, but enough to ensure that no one would be able to spy through the fringes of the spell.

“Braden thinks he can trap them in the lighthouse with him. Maybe they’ll kill each other, maybe not,” Riley said, the moment the spell was solid enough to keep us under the radar. Almost like she
knew
the spell was done.
How much of what we did to her left a mark?
I wondered. Lucien had suggested that she wouldn’t be
exactly
the way she’d been before the attack, but there’d been no suggestion about how different she’d be.