Salem's Revenge Complete Boxed Set (79 page)

Rhett

A
lthough both Xave and Mr. Jackson counseled that there was nothing we could’ve done differently, that the minds of the humans were already made up, I still feel like a big fat loser. A week ago I’d convinced myself that my purpose was greater than the vengeful path I was on. I thought I could make a difference, that I could help bring about peace in a world that so desperately needs a break from the killing.

But now I feel like a fool for thinking I was more important than anyone else. Because I’m not. I’m just a lost teen with an uncanny ability to Resist magic. All it took was a single silver-tongued, well-dressed dude to pull everyone away from me, like the Pied Piper skipping along playing his damn flute.

“Maybe you should denounce your alliance with the magic-born and kick us out,” Xave says as we walk side by side toward the ruins of the White House.

My head snaps toward him. “Are you serious?” I say. “I could never do that.”

“I mean you could pretend. Gain their trust again. Give us time to prove ourselves to them.”

I shake my head. “That’s not the way it should work. You helped save them the last time. You’ve already proven yourselves.”

“I know,” Xave says. “I just wish there was another way. They won’t last ten minutes out there.”

He’s right, which is what scares me. Not because we’re just guessing, but because I’ve
Seen it
. It was Trish’s final gift to me before she gave her life to save Laney. A vision of a dark future, in which thousands of humans were destroyed by the magic-born. But before I decide anything, I have to know exactly what the vision means.

Tara rises from where she’s sitting and glides across the lawn to meet us. “Rhett Carter,” she says. “Xavier Jackson. I’ve been expecting you both.”

Of course she is. They don’t call them Clairvoyants for nothing.

“Then you already know why we’re here,” I say.

“The vision Mother gave you,” she says. Considering I only knew Trish as a nine-year-old girl, it still freaks me out the way the Claires refer to her as their mother. I try not to think about it too much in case my brain explodes.

“Do you know what I saw?” I ask.

“We all saw it,” she says. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. The vision felt so personal, like it was a gift from Trish to me, a secret shared between two confidants. My face must give away my astonishment, or she just read my mind, because she says, “There is nothing personal about our magic. What one of us does, the others feel. Our visions are shared, as is our pain. We saw what she showed you, and we wept. We felt our Mother’s agony as she ripped herself apart to save her sister, and we cried tears of joy and sorrow for her sacrifice and death.”

I’ve always thought of the Claires as being so strong and untouchable. The idea of them mourning for both their mother and humanity with the same tears sends a shiver of emotion through me. “I think I understand,” I say. “But I need to know: Is there more? In the vision I was powerless. The end was coming and people were dying and there was no one to help them. They were lost souls.”

“There is no more,” she says, and my heart sinks into a morass of despair.

“Then there is no hope,” I say.

“I wasn’t finished,” she says, gently chiding my interruption like a patient schoolteacher to an unruly student. “Hope isn’t a single act, or a vision of the future, or even a rope that magically appears so you can grab onto it. No, hope is created from
within
yourself, by sheer strength of will alone. Hope cannot be given, nor taken away. Hope dies a thousand deaths under the weakness of humans and magic-born alike, and hope lives forever in those who promise to nurture it.” She extends her hand and touches my face, her skin so soft I could close my eyes and imagine rose petals brushing my cheek. “You are hope,” she says. Next she cups Xave’s chin and he can’t hold back his smile. “And you. A human and a magic-born, not mired in fear and hate, but connected by love and friendship and…” Her eyes twinkle like blue diamonds.

“Hope?” I say.

She doesn’t confirm my answer as correct, because we all know it is. “It’s not because there’s no hope that there’s not more to the vision,” she counsels. “It’s because there
is
hope that the ending can be changed.”

~~~

There’s still an hour before the time designated by Cameron Hardy for the trial. I was hoping to delay things, thus ensuring I wouldn’t have to deal with those crazies anytime soon, but Cameron insisted. “All American
humans
have the right to a fair and speedy trial,” he said, as if quoting some law book. I noticed how he emphasized the word ‘humans,’ making it sound as if criminal magic-born would be either shot on sight or left to rot in prison without trial.

With hundreds of eyes staring at me, I had no choice but to agree to his terms, the trial time set for noon. Just another unnecessary distraction when we should be planning for the battle with the Shifters.

Since the allegiances of the humans are drifting further and further away from where I’d hoped they would be, I’ll have to depend more and more on the magic-born. We’ll need the help of every willing and able witch and warlock if we’re going to have any chance.

Every
witch, I remind myself as I step inside the large tent set up for Mags, the Medium we met after our last mission. She sits cross-legged in the center of the tent with her eyes closed, as if asleep, or perhaps deep in meditation. On each side is a heavily armed witch hunter, both of whom are probably itching for her to make a run for it so they can pull the trigger. They hesitate when I say, “Leave us,” but then shuffle out, eyeing the Medium warily the whole way.

“Rhett Carter,” the witch says without opening her eyes.

“You said you’d help us,” I say.

She says nothing.

“Does your power diminish with time?” I ask. “Or strengthen with experience?”

Her eyes flash open to reveal abnormally cloudy whites surrounding irises so dark they appear to be extensions of her pupils. With trembling hands, she grasps a few locks of her long, stringy, gray hair and begins to braid them together. “You’re asking whether the reason I didn’t fight back when you found me was because I was simply too weak, or because I truly didn’t want to harm you.”

Pretty much. “Yes.”

“My body is weak but my mind is strong,” she says in response.

“Prove it,” I say.

Her wrinkly skin seems to twitch in delight. “Hold on to your hat,” she says, although my head is bare.

She extends her arms, closes her eyes, and starts murmuring under her breath. I notice a slight breeze caressing the outside of the tent, as if searching for a way in, but other than that, nothing happens for a long minute.

I’ve been duped by a fraud. This woman can’t conjure the soul of a mouse, much less a full-fledged furious human poltergeist. I shake my head, taking the first step to leave her, when the first chunk of her hair drops from her head.

It’s the one she was working with her fingers, already half-braided. But instead of hanging from her scalp, it’s now resting in her lap, as if pulled up by the roots. There’s an embarrassing bald patch on her head, as if she had a particularly bad haircut. I frown, wondering whether her body is failing her, the final throes of death taking her hair first, then her heart.

More hair drops, blanketing the floor like feathers from a molting bird. But no, it’s not just her hair falling out. For, littered amongst the gray locks are fingernails, having torn themselves free of her fingers, tumbling around her crossed legs.

It’s like she’s coming apart before my very eyes. I stare on, horrified, as she continues to whisper, her lips barely moving. Soon she’s fingernail-less and fully bald, her scalp wrinkly and pocked with sun spots.

If she’s aware of her baldness and lack of fingernails, she doesn’t show it. The breeze picks up until it’s a stiff wind, shaking the tent like a sail whipped across the open waters of the ocean. Someone shouts something from outside the tent, one of the witch hunters perhaps, and a sudden gust bursts through the entrance, slapping my face and ripping at the tent poles.

My breath leaves me as the tent is thrust upward, as if sucked into a massive vacuum, rocketing overhead like a kite in a hurricane. Fighting to stay on my feet while the wind buffets me from all sides, I stare at Mags, who is no longer bald. It’s not hair, but fingernails that grow from her scalp, lengthening by the second and then bending, folding down around her dome, like grotesque dreadlocks.

From her bare fingertips issue strands of greasy, ash-colored hair, drooping all the way to the ground, like some nightmare version of Rapunzel’s princely rescue.

I want to hurl, remembering the other two magic-using Mediums I’d encountered previously—the way their bodies did strange things as they cast their spells. Wrenching my gaze from Mags, I look to the sky, which is suddenly full of shadows.

There are more screams all around me, from witch hunters and Necros alike, bandying together, preparing for yet another battle, this one on our own turf. This was a stupid idea, I realize. I brought the Medium back to our home, and then invited her to attack. I’m a genius sometimes.

The shadows descend, whirling around us like a phantom army, picking up tents and logs and cooking utensils, showering them down upon us. I narrowly avoid getting clocked in the head by a skillet, and dodge a pair of metal tines just before they impale my leg. The hellish ghouls cackle from above, relishing the closest thing to freedom they’ll ever get, enjoying the chaos they’ve managed to render.

And the only way to stop them is to—

“Stop!” I shout, as I spy a witch hunter creeping up behind Mags, a crossbow aimed at her head. The bolt is pulled back and locked, ready to shoot. Its purple shaft leaves no doubt that it’s been magged up. The witch hunter gives me a sideways glance then ignores me, firing his weapon.

I push my every thought toward that bolt, willing it to miss, to disintegrate, to disappear entirely. Anything that will stop it from hitting its mark.

It snaps in half, the two pieces clunking to the ground.

I exhale deeply and shout, “Mags! Enough! I believe you!”

The moment the words leave my mouth, the wind slackens. With a final, hooting burst of laughter, the shadowy poltergeists fade away and anything tangible left in the air plummets to the earth like dead weight.

Mags opens her eyes and smiles devilishly.

Once more, her hair hangs from her head and her nails poke from her fingertips.

~~~

“I can’t believe you asked her for a demonstration and not me,” Xave says, hurrying along beside me to keep up.

I cringe. Why won’t Xave let it go? The thought of seeing him do…whatever it is that he does to reanimate corpses—dark
things
I expect—makes me shudder. “I already know you’re able to do what you do,” I explain. “Mags was a question mark. I needed to know she could perform in battle.”

“You’re still disgusted by me,” Xave says. “Great.”

Well, at least one thing hasn’t changed. Drama follows Xave around like a shadow. “I’m not,” I say. “Not by you.”

He reads between the lines. “By what I can do.”

“Can you blame me?” I say, stopping suddenly. “I’ve seen the end results and it’s not pretty.” Images of malformed faces, clawed hands, and fanged mouths whirl through my mind. Sewn-shut eyes. A rattling voice.
Rhett-t-t-t-t.
I bite down hard and will away my final memories of Beth’s reanimated corpse.

Xave stops, too, looking stunned, like I’ve slapped him. “I was screwed up,” he says, his voice pleading now. “I thought I could save Beth, that I could do better with her, bring her back for real. I should’ve left her in peace—I know that now. But I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve honed my skills. They’re not what you think.”

I don’t need this right now. We’re heading to the murder trial, something that could be a critical moment in history, and we’re arguing about magical demonstrations? “Okay,” I say, just to shut him up. “You can show me later. I promise.”

The smile that lights up his eyes immediately makes me regret my promise.

~~~

The judge for the trial is Floss, as agreed by both Cameron Hardy, Mr. Jackson, and me. I’m hoping I don’t regret that decision later. The jury is randomly selected from the crowd, an even split of humans and magic-born, five and five. Although I urge them to sit together as a united body, they refuse, moving swiftly to opposite sides.

I’m just a spectator, having not witnessed the actual events, only arriving in time to clean up the aftermath and prevent any further crimes from being committed. Tillman Huckle sits next to me, his long legs spread out in front of him. “This is better than watching Law and Order,” he says. He’s chomping handful after handful of microwave popcorn, seemingly oblivious to the fact that half of it is missing his mouth, fluffy buttery crumbs tumbling into his lap. He even crunches the leftover, unpopped kernels.