by Tracy Wolff
“No. Something else. We’ll talk about it when we get there.”
That doesn’t sound ominous at all. I’m about to press for details, but my uncle looks grim. Really grim, and it scares me more than I want to admit.
Before Katmere, I never imagined I’d be afraid of walking into a library. Then again, before Katmere, I never imagined a lot of things.
25
And the Blackouts
Just Keep
on Coming
As soon as we get outside the casting room, Jaxon stops me with a light hand on my wrist.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, more than willing to take as long as possible to get to what I’m rapidly beginning to think of as the library of doom. “Do you need something?”
“No, but I’m pretty sure you do.”
I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. He just tilts his head to the side—and listens like he’s waiting for something. A minute later, Mekhi is standing before me. And holding a large black jacket that I recognize as Jaxon’s.
He grins at me and bows, presenting the jacket as if to royalty. “My lady.”
For the first time since I woke up in a giant magical circle, everything seems like it might be okay. Mekhi isn’t treating me weirdly. He’s grinning at me like he always does. And I can’t help but grin back.
I give a mock curtsy and take the jacket from his hands. “My liege.”
“I’m going to want all the details later, but I’ve got to book it to my next class right now. See ya, Grace!” And with that, he vanishes. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how fast vampires can move.
“You didn’t have to ask Mekhi to do that.” I take off my ripped-up blazer and don Jaxon’s jacket, inhaling his scent as I do.
“I know.” He watches me carefully. “I like taking care of you.”
My already battered heart aches a little more at his words and the look in his eyes. I just wish I knew how to respond. There’s a part of me, a big part, that wants to lean in to him and press my lips to his. But I also know my gargoyle won’t let me yet, which is super frustrating on pretty much all the levels.
I mean, why let me kiss him that first time when I just got back to school, only to make sure I never let him near me like that again? It bothers me, and I can only imagine that it bothers Jaxon, too, even though he doesn’t say anything. In the end, I do the only thing I can do. I hold his gaze, hoping he can see in my eyes just how much his caring means to me.
“Come on, let’s go,” Jaxon finally says, and there is a gruffness to his voice that isn’t usually there. He holds a hand out to me.
I take it, and the two of us head down the winding steps together.
“Do you know what Uncle Finn wants to show me in the library?” I ask as we make it to the correct floor.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I got a frantic text from Macy telling me that you were missing, so the guys and I started looking, along with Finn and her. They texted us that they’d found you in the tower, but that’s all I know.”
“I don’t understand,” I tell him, a shiver running down my spine as we finally make it to the hallway the library is on. “I went to the library to research gargoyles around noon, but I don’t remember doing any research. I don’t remember anything, actually, after I sat down to work.”
“It’s five o’clock, Grace.”
“But I was in the library. Did Amka know when I left?”
“You would think, but I don’t know. Like I said, she called your uncle and Macy, not me.” There’s something in his voice that I can’t quite identify, but he doesn’t sound impressed.
Apparently, Jaxon feels like he deserves to be notified about things related to me. Which is annoying, because he doesn’t actually own me. And yet, I think about how I would feel if something happened to him… Yeah, pretty sure I would want to be notified, too.
He holds the library door open for me, and then we walk inside, only to find a conspicuously empty open glass case. Whatever item was displayed there is gone, the bed of purple velvet empty in that one spot.
“Is this what you wanted to show me?” I ask my uncle. “I don’t know what happened. It was fine when I was here earlier.”
And if anyone had actually tried to break into it when I was here, I would have seen them. So would Amka. The exhibit is diagonally across from the table she set up for me and directly in front of the circulation desk.
“What do you remember from when you were here earlier, Grace?” Amka is the one asking me questions now, my uncle hanging back and following her lead.
“Not a lot, honestly. I remember our conversation and sitting down to work, but that’s it. Did something else happen?”
“You don’t remember working?”
“No. I remember getting ready to work, but I don’t remember opening a book or taking any notes. Did I do that?”
“You took all the notes.” She picks up a notebook from her desk and hands it to me.
I flip through it, and she’s right. It’s more than half full already, with information about gargoyles that I have no recollection of but am now itching to sit down and read.
“I did all this in five hours?” I ask, surprised by how thorough the note-taking is, when usually I hit only the highlights and rely on my really good memory (present situation obviously not included) to fill in the blanks.
“Actually, you did all that in an hour and a half. At one thirty, I closed the library for a few minutes and ran out to my cottage to get some medicine for a sudden headache. You said you were doing well, so I left you working, but when I came back, you were gone. And the Athame of Morrigan had been stolen.”
Horror moves through me as all the threads of the story start to come together in one glaring realization. “You think I did this?” I ask. “You think I stole the…” I wave my hand in the air.
“Athame,” Macy fills in. “It’s a double-sided ceremonial blade for witches. This particular one has been in our family for centuries.”
I want to be outraged that they think I could do this. But the truth is, they have every right to suspect me. Especially since I have absolutely no idea what I was doing during the time Amka left the library.
“We don’t think you stole it,” Uncle Finn tells me in a voice I recognize as deliberately soothing. “But we do think something is going on inside you that makes you do these things, and that’s what we want to try to figure out so we can help you.”
“Do we really know?” I ask, my voice coming out higher and louder than I want it to. “I mean, are you sure I’m the one who did this?” It’s not even that I doubt them, it’s just that I don’t want to believe them. Because then I have to start wondering. What kind of powers does this gargoyle inside me have? And why is it using me to do these terrible things?
Jaxon wraps a supportive arm around my waist, then rests his chin on my shoulder as he whispers in my ear, “It’s okay. We’ve got this.”
I’m glad he thinks so, because right now, it doesn’t feel like I’ve got anything.
“That’s why we wanted you to come here, so we could all rewatch the footage together. See if we can figure out what’s really going on.” My uncle walks behind the circulation desk.
“Nobody blames you, Grace,” Macy says with a reassuring smile. “We know something else is going on.”
My knees get weak at theirs words—there’s footage?—and at the grim look on my uncle’s face. Because if they’ve seen the footage already, then they know for sure that I’m the one who stole the athame.
The knowledge hits me like a body blow.
I know it’s naive, but I think I’ve been holding out hope all day. Hope that there was another explanation for the blood on my clothes this morning. Definite hope that someone else attacked Cole, and now hope that someone else stole the athame.
Because knowing t
hat it’s me, knowing that I did all that and have no recollection of it whatsoever, is beyond terrifying. Not just that I can’t remember but that I really don’t have any control over what I do when I’m like that.
I could actually kill someone, and I would never know.
Panic starts to bubble up in my chest, my breath coming out in shallow puffs. I count to ten…then twenty. My heart is beating so fast, I start to feel light-headed. I don’t take my gaze from my uncle as he fiddles with the computer on the circulation desk and then turns the monitor around to face me.
“It’s okay,” Jaxon says again, even though it’s not. Even though it’s about as far from okay as it can possibly get. “I promise you, Grace, we’ll figure this out.”
“I hope so,” I answer as we all crowd around Uncle Finn to watch the video footage. “Because how long can this go on before I end up in prison…or worse?”
My stomach sinks as I watch a recording of me on the screen—doing things I don’t remember doing.
According to the time at the bottom of the footage, I got up from the table where I was reading and taking notes at exactly one thirty. I went over to Amka and said something to her. She nodded with a strange look on her face, and less than a minute later, she got up. But instead of leaving, like she’d said earlier, she walked over to the glass case housing the athame and several other precious magical items, all of which, it turns out, were under a protection spell, my uncle explains.
And at 1:37, the librarian went ahead and opened the case like it was nothing. Then she walked out of the library and didn’t come back.
“What just happened?” I ask, looking from Jaxon to Amka to my uncle and then back again. “Did I use some kind of special gargoyle power?”
Amka shakes her head as the video continues to roll, and I watch as I reach into the case and scoop out the athame, snagging my jacket on the way out. “I have no memory of doing that, of unlocking the case.”
“Hudson,” Jaxon says, voice low and vehement and maybe even a little…scared? Which messes me up in all kinds of ways, because Jaxon is almost never scared.
“What?” my uncle Finn demands. “What about Hudson?”
“When we were kids, he used to do that. He has to speak directly to the person, but he can persuade anyone to do anything for him with merely his voice.”
“Do what?” I ask as razor-sharp talons of fear rake through me. “What did Hudson do, Jaxon?”
Jaxon finally manages to pull his haunted gaze from the video. “Use his power of persuasion to get people to do whatever he wanted.”
26
Possession Is
Nine-Tenths
of the Law
Jaxon’s words hang in the air between us for several seconds, the power and horror of them an actual physical presence that has my body tensing and a chill running over my skin.
“What does that mean?” I finally whisper, the words falling like grenades into the silence between us. “Is Hudson here? Did I bring him back with me? Is he persuading me to do things?”
“He’s definitely here,” Uncle Finn agrees. “The only question is what we do next.”
“Well, where is he, then?” I demand. “Why haven’t we seen him?”
I look from my uncle’s sad face to Jaxon’s enraged one, from Amka’s quiet compassion to the distress Macy tries to hide but simply can’t, and a weight starts to grow in my stomach. A weight that gets heavier and heavier with every second that passes.
A weight that nearly pulls me under as the truth crashes into me.
“No,” I tell them, shaking my head as panic and disgust and horror wrench through me all at the same time. “No, no, no. It can’t be.”
“Grace, it’s okay.” Jaxon steps forward, lays a hand on my arm.
“It’s not okay!” I all but shout at him. “It’s the opposite of okay.”
“Breathe,” my uncle says. “There are things we can do to try to fix this. “
“Try to fix it?” I answer with a laugh that even I can tell borders on the hysterical. “I have a monster living inside me.”
“There are options,” Amka says, her voice deliberately soothing. “There are several options we can try before we start to panic—”
“Not to be rude, Amka, but I think you mean before you start to panic. Because I’m already there.”
Panic races through me, and this time I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to stop the attack. At this point, I’m pretty sure not even a dump truck full of Xanax would be able to stop it. Not when my head is swimming and my heart is pounding out of my chest.
“Grace, it’s okay.” Macy reaches for me, but I step backward and hold my hand up in the typical gesture for give me a second.
Thankfully, everyone does. They give me more than a second, in fact, though I don’t know how much more. Eventually, my now-familiar defense mechanisms slide into place.
I’m nowhere close to being okay—at this point, I can’t even imagine what okay would feel like—but I shove my panic down deep inside me and focus on keeping my mind clear.
I need to be able to think.
I need to figure out what to do.
Scratch that, we need to figure out what to do, because as I stare at the four concerned people looking back at me, I realize that just because it feels like I’m alone—more alone even than the day my parents died—I’m not.
Jaxon and Macy and Uncle Finn and even Amka aren’t going to let me do this alone, even if I wanted to. And the truth is, I really, really don’t want to. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
“So,” I manage to say after a few attempts at clearing my throat. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything,” Jaxon tells me, and he reaches a hand out, grabs on to mine. It’s only after our palms connect that I realize how cold all this has made me. Jaxon’s palm feels burning hot against my own.
“Can you say it?” I ask.
Jaxon’s grip tightens on my hand. “Say what?” he asks, but the look on his face tells me he already knows.
“I just need you to say it so I don’t feel like there’s something really wrong with me. Please.”
Jaxon is looking more haunted than I have ever seen him. Normally, I’d be the one to comfort him when he looks like this, but I can’t. I don’t have it in me. Not now. Not yet.
“Jaxon,” I whisper, because I don’t know what else to do. “Please.”
He nods jerkily, his eyes a burning-hot obsidian that sizzles along every inch of my skin as he looks at me.
“The reason we haven’t been able to figure out what happened to Hudson,” he says in a voice that tears like broken glass. “The reason we haven’t been able to find out where you left him, or where he went, is because he’s been here all along.”
I lock my knees in place so I don’t crumble, then wait for him to drop the bombshell that’s been living in my head the last several minutes, the bombshell that I don’t want to hear—don’t want to know—but that I all but begged him to let loose.
“The reason we haven’t been able to figure out where at Katmere Academy Hudson is hiding is because all along, he’s been hiding inside you.”
27
When the Evil Within
Really Needs to be
the Evil That’s
Out, Out, Out
His words—expected and yet a total shock—go off inside me like a bomb. Like a nuclear reactor at the most dangerous stage of meltdown. Because this can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening.
I can’t have Jaxon’s evil brother inside me.
I can’t have him taking control of me whenever he wants.
I can’t have him wiping my memories out of existence.
I just can’t.
And yet, apparently, I can. I do.
“It’s okay,” my uncle tells me.
“As soon as I get back to my office, I’m going to make some calls. I’ll find someone who knows how to deal with this and get them to Katmere as soon as possible.”
“And I’ll start doing research,” Macy adds. “Like Amka said, there are some spells that might work, so she and I can contact several different covens and see what we can find out. Plus, we’ll keep researching. We’ll find a way to get Hudson out of your mind. I swear.”
Her words reverberate in my head, spinning around and around and around as I try to grapple with this new nightmare. As I try to figure out if I can actually feel Hudson inside me, his oily fingers on my heart and mind.
I try and try and try, but I can’t find anything. No thoughts that aren’t my own. No feelings that don’t belong to me. Nothing out of the ordinary except, of course, the whole body-snatching routine he’s doing.
As I’m trying to come to terms with this nightmare, this new and horrible violation, the conversation rages around me. Jaxon, Uncle Finn, Macy, Amka, all throwing their two cents in about how to fix this.
About how to fix me.
Everyone giving their opinion on what, to me, is the most personal problem of my life. The most personal problem anyone could ever have—someone else living inside your skin, taking you over whenever they want, making you do horrible things you would never willingly do.
“What about me?” I ask when I can’t stand the discussing/bickering for one second longer.
“I promise we’ll fix this,” Uncle Finn says. “We will get him out of you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I tell him. “I meant, what do I do? While you four are all trying to figure out how to save me, what can I do to save myself?”
That gets their attention, has them eyeing one another as they try to figure out what I mean. Which is just proof that there’s a problem, right?