Elegy (6 page)

Chapter
TEN

I
didn’t remember when Joshua stopped me, nor did I remember how he convinced me to get back into the truck without being able to touch me. All I knew was that I went from tearing a feverish path through the wilderness near my mother’s home to sitting motionless in the passenger seat of Joshua’s truck as it bounced us down a roughly paved road.

“What . . . what happened?” I asked hoarsely. I had a bad taste in my mouth, and I had a bad feeling about how it got there.

“You were sick,” Joshua replied plainly. He kept his gaze trained firmly on the road, almost as if his life depended on how hard he could concentrate on the task of driving. I’d never seen him so intent on
not
looking at me.

“Do you hate me now, knowing that I caused someone’s death?”

My question dripped with self-pity, and I hated myself a little for asking it. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t want to know the answer anyway.

For a long time—an eternity, to someone who’s asked that kind of question—Joshua said nothing. When he eventually cleared his throat, I cringed, ready for something awful. Ready for him to tell me, finally, that I’d put him at too great a risk.

“Amelia, I love you.”

He said it so earnestly, so fiercely, that I leaned back in surprise.

“I love you,” he repeated. “And hell itself won’t stop that. Sorry to put it so dramatically but, well, it’s the truth. And I’m terrified because I can’t keep you or me or anyone we know from what’s coming. From what’s already
here
.”

I nodded bleakly.

“It must have happened right after we left. I don’t know how they convinced her to drive on
that
road again.” Then I recalled one image from the night of my death: a young girl with crazed, possessed eyes, watching while I drowned in the river below her.

“Actually,” I amended, “I have a pretty good idea how they did it. But I just can’t believe they would choose . . .”

When I trailed off, unable to finish, Joshua spoke one, low word.

“Serena.”

For some reason, I chose that moment to lose it. I dropped my face into my hands and began to sob messily, not bothering to hide my misery from Joshua. I cried like I hadn’t done in months, letting the full force of what I’d seen on my mother’s TV wash over me in a brutal, guilty wave. And as I sobbed, other things started to seep in along with the details of the morning news report.

Memories.

The image of an eight-year-old Serena on the day we met, beautiful and a little wild in her grass-stained soccer uniform. A whiff of the rancid volcano we’d tried to make together for a seventh-grade science credit. The slight chip on her right canine, from a rock-hard jelly bean we found in her mom’s couch that I’d dared her to eat. The heart she’d drawn around Doug Davidson’s name in bright-red ink, right on the front cover of her Government book, our first day of public school.

Our friendship had been the lifelong kind . . . for as long as I’d lived, anyway. Now,
neither
of us had a “lifelong” existence. Not anymore.

It was the thought of her, lost and alone and probably tormented in the netherworld, that ultimately made me stop crying. I swallowed back the last of my sobs and wiped furiously at my eyes, smearing the tears away haphazardly across my cheeks. As my vision cleared, I could see that Joshua had pulled his truck to the shoulder of the road, and he now waited patiently for me to work through this outburst of misery.

Yet another reason why I loved him; yet another reason why he deserved so much more from me than self-indulgent misery. He deserved my action, as did Serena, and Gaby, and my father, and every other wrongfully imprisoned soul. I wasn’t exactly sure
how
, but I knew that I wouldn’t go into the darkness without freeing the people I loved from the demons.

And I wouldn’t go without one hell of a fight.

I kept silent until the force of tears and sickness and loss no longer controlled me. Then, when I felt like my body would better obey my mind, I finally turned to Joshua.

“Please take me back to your house.”

Joshua began moving fast, as if he was dealing with an unstable situation—or person.

“That’s a good idea,” he said hurriedly. “We’ll get you back there so you can rest for a while, have some of my dad’s cooking, and then maybe—”

“No.”

My interruption wasn’t cruel, but it didn’t leave any room for argument, either.

“I’m done resting,” I continued, a touch more gently. “I’ve been resting since Christmas—since Gaby—and look what that’s accomplished. First, you and I love each other, more than ever, but our relationship is stalled. It will be, until something about
me
changes. Then, the demons are obviously a bigger threat than they were the day we met. And now, another one of my friends is dead.”

“None of that is your fault, Amelia—”

“I know,” I interrupted again. “Really, I do. Like you said: I didn’t create hell. I didn’t invite this evil into our lives. But I’m tired of my loved ones hurting because of the darkness. I’m tired of being its victim too. And I’m ready to do something about it.
Now
.”

Once I’d finished that pronouncement, I leaned back against my seat and did a quick self-assessment. I felt . . .
good
, actually. Surprisingly good. Galvanized, even.

But Joshua clearly didn’t know how to respond. As he drove, he opened and shut his mouth several times without saying anything. Finally, after taking more than a few miles to collect his thoughts, he nodded.

“Okay, then. What do we do next?”

Joshua’s question sounded just as fierce, just as determined as his earlier declaration of love. Which meant that both came from the same, good place inside of him. The place I loved most.

Despite everything that we’d gone through, despite everything to come, I couldn’t help but give him a wide, bright smile.

“I think it’s time to gather a coven of Seers.”

It was a good plan. Not to mention, it was the only plan I could come up with on short notice. But that didn’t make it any easier to implement. First, sheer numbers were not on our side, as Jillian wasted no time in telling me.

“It’s just math, Amelia,” she mumbled through an enormous bite of cold fried chicken. “One, two, three.”

To illustrate, she used her cleaned drumstick to point at Scott, then Joshua, then herself. She swallowed her huge bite and added, “Three versus—what?—thousands of demons and their ghost slaves? No offense to anyone at this table, but I don’t like our odds.”

I groaned and let my forkful of potato salad clatter to my plate.
Math
, I laughed to myself. How quickly Jillian forgot that I’d helped Joshua to an A in Calculus last semester, while she almost failed basic algebra.

Aloud, I said, “That’s why we’re going to get a lot more Seers, Jillian. Because the larger our circle, the greater power we have to open the netherworld. And that’s the most important part.”

“Aside from the killings?” she asked drily.

“That’s
not
going to happen again.”

I answered so sharply that Jillian actually sank back in her chair, temporarily chastened. She should consider herself lucky that I hadn’t followed my first impulse and thrown my fork at her.

For the second time today, the four of us were gathered around the Mayhews’ breakfast table—this time, with a Southern-fried lunch of the weekend’s leftovers. When Joshua and I had arrived back at the house, Rebecca and Jeremiah were already awake; this necessitated a flurry of explanations about why the two couples were together so early in the morning, instead of sleeping safely apart. Jillian and I crafted some impromptu slumber-party lies that, although thin (
nail painting! gossip! chocolate!
), convinced the older Mayhews to leave us alone with a few plastic containers of leftovers and an entire afternoon to plan our attack.

“Personally, I think we should talk to Ruth’s and my gran’s old Seer group,” Scott offered.

Joshua and I replied simultaneously: “No chance,” on his part, and “That’s a fantastic idea,” on mine.

Joshua turned to me, blinking rapidly. “What? You can’t be serious, Amelia.”

“I’m very serious. We
need
them. As your little sister so sweetly pointed out, there’s strength in numbers. And in the old coven’s case, experience. Two newbie Seers and one who hasn’t technically been triggered yet aren’t going to keep the netherworld open for very long.”

“Hey,” Scott protested. “I could, like, hold my breath for a really long time, or something. You know: get ‘triggered’ or whatever.”

I smiled at him gently. “Scott, in a weird way, that’s very sweet. But I don’t think an intentionally failed suicide attempt is what we’re really going for.”

When he grinned back at me sheepishly, I noted, “A-plus for enthusiasm, though.”

“I think it’s a mistake,” Joshua insisted, running one nervous hand through his hair and then resting it on his neck. “We can’t forget that the Wilburton coven wanted to exorcize Amelia. Just a few months ago, actually. I’d bet none of
them
have forgotten that fact.”

To my surprise, Jillian actually took my side and began to argue with her big brother.

“So what?” she challenged him. “I doubt that would matter, if they knew we were all after the same thing. Besides, they’re probably leaderless without Grandma Ruth, anyway. If we ask them really nicely, maybe bring them a few extra cases of Ensure as a peace offering . . .”

Although Jillian kept talking, I stopped listening. Not because she offended me with her disrespect, but because of something she’d just said. Something that gave me an interesting, if dangerous, idea. I turned it over in my mind, treating the idea as carefully as I would a delicate seashell with sharp edges. Razor sharp, if past experience served.

But worth it, I ultimately decided. Maybe even necessary to our mission. I mentally rejoined the conversation as Jillian continued to poke fun at her Seer elders.

“. . . you know, throw in some denture cream. Ask them if we can see pictures of their great-grandchildren—”

She stopped short when she caught my determined stare.

“What?” she demanded. “Why are you looking at me like I’m a crazy person?”

“Actually, I’m looking at you like you’re a
brilliant
person.”

One corner of Jillian’s upper lip lifted in suspicion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ignoring her hostile sneer, I flashed a knowing little smile. “It means that someone should give your grandma Ruth a call.”

For a moment, no one responded. Then Joshua and Jillian burst into raucous laughter. Joshua actually started to tear up, and Jillian curled sideways across her chair as if all the cackling had given her a cramp. But their laughter died when they noticed that I hadn’t joined in.

“I’m not joking,” I said evenly, once they’d quieted down. “Ruth Mayhew is the most powerful Seer we know. We’d be idiots to try and do this without her.”

Jillian snorted lightly, reached into the pocket of her dress, and flipped out her cell phone. She used it to gesture meaningfully at me.

“Okay, Fearless Leader. Why don’t
you
call her, then?”

Again, she wore that derisive sneer. But I could tell from the glint in her eyes that she didn’t actually hate the idea; she was just too afraid to make the call herself. So I glanced over at Joshua. He met my gaze squarely, but like his sister, he clearly balked at the thought of making such a call. I understood this fear far better, coming from Joshua.

To put it mildly, Joshua’s relationship with his grandmother had been strained for the past few months. Because of me—but also because he’d chosen a different kind of Seer life. The kind that included coexistence with the dead, something Ruth staunchly opposed. This opposition should have struck her from our list of possible partners. And yet . . .

“I’ll make the call.”

Thankful that I’d practiced dialing a few times on Joshua’s cell, I snatched the phone out of Jillian’s hand and scrolled quickly through her list of contacts. The photo that corresponded with Ruth’s phone number made me shiver a little, but I clicked Dial before I could chicken out—and before anyone around the table could stop me.