Chapter Twelve
Seth was able to find Ford. He was indeed married and his wife Amy was expecting.
She and Ford were setting up a refuge for the formerly Infected.
The medical care was offered by those with knowledge, but mostly it was a place where the scared or disfigured, the ill and injured could go without judgement or fear of being cast out.
That was happening more and more as the formerly Infected succumbed to a variety of illnesses; human illnesses that might have naturally affected them at an older age, but were tearing through the community with a ferocity no one could have predicted.
Ford wanted Seth to see if Mercedes and Roman would consider moving there.
Mercedes wasn’t sick yet, but she would be safe if anything happened.
Blackwater as a whole wasn’t throwing people out, but the formerly Infected typically lived in the city, away from the Colony.
They’d formed their own community by themselves, with Mercedes as the lone exception.
She loved Roman and their kids, and I knew there was no way in hell she was leaving her home. She’d tell them all to go to hell if they tried to boot her out.
Porschia didn’t let Seth out of her sight, and she glared at me every chance she got. This was going to be a rather long forever if she was as stubborn as she seemed.
I noticed her fingers twitching, her lip curl, and saw her sniff the air. Seth was human, and humans were food. Before she could hurt him, I pushed in between them. “Leave, Seth. Now,” I commanded.
The look of confusion on his face faded as soon as he saw Porschia’s fangs gnashing at him. He swallowed, promised he’d visit soon, and then left The Sand.
A second after he was gone, she calmed. She didn’t need food here. There were no humans, thus no temptation. However, if you placed a deer in front of a lion, it would feed. It was simply nature.
She clamped her hands over her mouth. “I tried to eat my own kid.” Tears bubbled up in her eyes. “I’m the worst mom ever!” she cried.
“You’re a night-walker,” I teased, grinning at her.
“I hate you,” she said, walking away from me into the tent.
“Hate me all you want. I still love you,” I replied. “I’ll never stop loving you.”
Days turned into weeks and weeks bled into months, and gradually Porschia’s anger faded into tolerance; which really meant that she learned to tolerate my existence in The Sand. She didn’t ask me to descend into the Underworld. Maybe that was progress in and of itself.
Seth visited when he could, but kept a safe distance from his mom when he came. She was adamant that he not come too close, and he seemed smart enough to know not to push her.
Preserved in The Sand, bound here, she was eternal. Her body stopped aging. Not that she hadn’t aged well. I loved everything about her. Most days she wore strength like armor. It was the nights that she crumbled that tore me to ribbons.
Tonight was one of those nights.
I heard her cry out from inside the tent and stepped inside tentatively. She was curled into a ball, clutching a round, white pillow to her chest. Every muscle in her body tensed when I sat on the edge of the bed. “What do you want?” she snapped.
“For you to be happy.”
She snorted derisively. “Not gonna happen.”
“You plan to spend eternity like this?”
“I guess I’ll have to!” she cried.
I sighed, deflating as the air left my body. “I can’t stand to see you like this.”
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered.
“This isn’t you. You… you’re a force of nature, not sadness incarnate.”
“I can’t help it, Tage. I feel lost here.” She sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. Flicking one of her fangs, she laughed bitterly. “I really messed up this time. Now, I’m not a wife or a mother. I’m nothing.”
Grabbing her shoulders, I waited patiently until she finally looked at me. “You will always be Saul’s wife, you will always be Seth’s mother, and you’re so much more.”
“But Saul’s dead and Seth’s gone. I’m trapped here.”
“With me. I know.”
Her eyes widened. “It’s not you. It’s just… I don’t know where I fit in now. I’m a mess.”
“You aren’t to me, Porschia. I’ve lived a hundred lifetimes, but none of them mattered until you came into the picture, jutting your chin out to let everyone know you weren’t afraid, even though your skirts trembled.
Nothing mattered until you challenged me.
Until you turned and showed me that even monsters could be good where it mattered most.”
“I’m not good.”
“You are. You always have been. If you weren’t, you would have hated your mother; but instead you loved her.
You still do, because you are innately good.
You miss your husband because he loved you and you loved him.
You miss your son because of the distance.
That’s all normal. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy here.
It doesn’t mean you can’t be happy with me, either,” I added.
“I can’t betray Saul, Tage.”
“You wouldn’t be, Porschia. And one day, you’ll see that.”
She needed her family. As much as it hurt me to admit it, she was lonely being here with me, so the next morning, I was ready for her.
I knew she had absorbed some of Seth’s power when she bit him.
I’d seen her wish for things and have those objects float toward her in submission.
I’d seen her intensify the wind or extend the dark night when she needed it to be a few hours longer.
Now, it was time for a test.
“Good morning,” I chirped.
She groaned, but finally answered, “Morning,” in return.
“I want you to try something.”
She raised one brow as she smoothed her hair, messy from a restless night’s sleep. “What?”
“I want you to project yourself to Mercedes.”
“I can’t do that. Seth can, but I’m not him, so…”
She was so grumpy in the morning. “Try,” I insisted gently.
“What’s the point?” she said, slumping into a chaise.
“Just try. I think you can do it.”
“I don’t know how to do it,” she argued.
“Clear your mind and call out to her. See what happens.” All I knew was that she had to do something other than sit around, swim, or walk. She needed to know she could live here and still see her family when she wanted. She could be happy again.
With a deep huff, she sat forward with her elbows on her knees. Her nightgown changed into a deep blue sundress with a wave of her hand. I laughed. “See? If you can change clothes at will, you can talk to your sister. Just focus on her.”
She closed her eyes, and I saw the moment she stopped fighting and let her mind call out to Mercedes. What I didn’t expect was that she couldn’t actually project. Instead, Mercedes materialized in front of her, holding a silver spoon to her mouth.
Around her food, Mercedes stammered, “Porschia?”
I blew magic around Porschia, telling her that she did not crave blood.
“Mercedes?” Porschia asked, eyes wide as she stared at her sister. Mercedes wore jeans and a thick woolen sweater. “How…?”
“You did it!” I laughed. To Mercedes, I said, “She needed some sister time.”
Mercedes swallowed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Okay.”
I gave them some distance, but stayed close enough to keep the blood craving at bay. Close enough to intervene if something happened.
But that morning, nothing did. The two spent an hour laughing and talking about what was happening in Blackwater.
Porschia learned that their father was sweet on an older woman who lived down the street and baked apple cobbler for him every other day.
Roman was doing great. Their kids were having lessons each day with a man who made it his life’s mission to drill mathematic facts into their heads.
All was well.
“How’s Seth?” Mercedes asked.
“He’s fine. He’s living with Ford and Amy, but I think he’s uncomfortable. He feels like he’s in their way since the new baby was born.”
“He can come live with us,” Mercedes offered.
“I’ve told him he can have the cabin.”
“How are you?” she whispered.
“I’m better now that I can talk to you. I was going stir crazy here alone.”
“You aren’t alone, Porsch. Tage is here.”
I didn’t tell her that I didn’t want him here, because I did. I didn’t want to be alone, but I missed Saul. And being here with Tage felt wrong and weird.
“It feels like I’m stuck in a dream most of the time.”
Mercedes moved across the rug to sit beside me on the lounger and hugged me to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know this can’t be easy. I can’t tell you how thankful I am that you took Sekhmet out, but the price you have to pay…maybe it wasn’t worth it.”
“It was,” I said adamantly. That demon had to be stopped. Sekhmet was bad on her worst day, but Sekhmet amplified by Seth’s power, unleashed into the world? That would be cataclysmic. “She would have killed everyone,” I whispered.
‘Unstable’ was a kind way to describe Sekhmet.
“Has he said anything about you killing his sister?” she asked, ticking her head in the direction Tage had walked.
“No, it’s like he just accepted it and is glad it’s over, but I can’t imagine he doesn’t still feel something.”
“You miss Saul.”
I swallowed. I did. I missed him so much. “I do,” I answered.
“Can you see his grave, there in the clearing? There’s a door there, right?”
“I can.” I sat beside it a lot, just staring at the mound of earth that hadn’t sunken back in yet. Tage stayed away when I went there.
She hugged me again. “Can I come back?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” she chirped, standing up. “I need to get back home, but I want you to bring me back tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?” I stood.
“Yep. Same time.”
I laughed nervously. “I don’t know how to send you back.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out. You have to try, and if it doesn’t work, you can open the door in the clearing and I’ll walk back.”
“It’s winter, Mercedes. You don’t have any shoes on.”
Mercedes wiggled her toes, wincing. “Then I sure hope you can reverse what you just did.”
Tage waltzed back into the tent with a huge grin on his face. “Just concentrate and imagine placing her back into her kitchen.”
I closed my eyes and pictured Mercedes sitting at her kitchen table, spoon at her mouth, just as she was when she first arrived. When I opened them again, she was gone. “Do you think I put her back in her house?”
Tage nodded. “I think so.”
For the first time since being bound here, I felt infinitely lighter.
I felt free.
“I need to work on projecting myself instead of… whatever that was. I want to see my Dad, but I don’t want to hurt him if there’s a rough landing involved. It would be best if I could project to him.” Grimacing, I imagined him landing in a tangle of limbs on the sand.
“We can work on that with Seth. He might be able to tell you how better to do it.”
“You can’t do it?” I asked incredulously.
“Not as easily as he can. It comes naturally to him, whereas I’d have to have a spell.”
Worry filled my mind. Seth was out there all alone with his abilities, and no one to guide him.
“Don’t worry. He’s with Ford, and you know Ford will look out for him.”
“How did you know I was worried?” I asked as he stepped toward me. His toes brushed mine.
With his thumb he brushed the wrinkle that sat on my forehead between my eyes. “I worry about him, too. But I trust your brother.”
“I just worry that if something happens that Seth can’t control, even Ford won’t be able to help him.”
“Seth is old enough to help himself, Porschia. We just have to trust that he will if the situation arises.”
He was right. It was time to let him fly.