Chapter Thirty-Three What is past is prologue
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
What is past is prologue
IN THE VISION, THE WORLD dissolved into fragments of light and time.
This bracelet had passed through many hands.
Over the course of centuries, it had seen many lives coming through and leaving the gates of Westfield.
In the midst of Reconstruction, the ring at its center had been engraved.
Its body had been forged in the smoky aftermath of Appomattox, and the string of shells and glass beads that lined it had been woven together long before slave ships and bondage, in the bustling markets of an African village.
I had little control, and the vision jolted me through the past, from hundreds of years ago to months before it had wound up with me, to when the bracelet had been slipped off a dying man’s wrist and placed into the possession of someone else.
I could feel the emotions steeped in the bracelet, and the most recent memory embedded in the jewelry swallowed me like a breathless wind.
Red and blue lights flashed over a face so familiar that the mere glimpse of it set my heart racing, from the warm brown skin and piercing brown eyes, to the lashes that were as ebony as his locs, to his lips always on the brink of laughter, and the birthmark just beneath his bottom lip.
Jojo. My Jojo, the old version of him, months ago in the mere hours before I would find Kasem in the alleyway.
It was nearly closing time at the mall, and Jojo stood at the doors, pacing, waiting for someone.
I recognized the first figure that approached him; it was Kasem’s bodyguard, Liam, the same one who had shown up at Gus’s.
He’d also been with Jojo that night—I’d seen him from the windows of Center City Mall not long before I found Kasem’s body.
“Have you found him?” Jojo snapped.
“Not yet,” Liam said. “And you need to calm down.”
Jojo spun to face Liam, his expression dark with rage. “Don’t tell me to calm down. It was your job to protect him. What are we paying you for if you can’t do that?”
“I don’t answer to you,” Liam said. “I answer to the Board. And they are pleased with the work I do.”
“The Board knows it’s meant to serve the Saint James family, and I’m telling you now: Find my brother. And find the other two.” He gestured to Liam’s lily crest. “You’re Sigma, right? You graduated how many years ago? What about a locator incantation?”
Liam scowled. “An incantation like that would require something of your brother’s, which we don’t have. Besides, our fraternity, as you are well aware, has rules when it comes to incantations that cross the boundaries of personhood.”
Jojo could barely contain the cool rage radiating from him. “I’ll do it myself. Just find him, any way you can.”
Liam nodded and retreated into the dark while Jojo headed to his car, slipping into the passenger seat. He searched through the glove compartment in a feverish rush, pushing paperwork aside until he found a letter—the same one from Kasem that I’d read that night.
It hadn’t been burned yet; the handwritten note was perfectly legible in its entirety. Kasem’s signature was marked at the bottom, his neat handwriting refined at the edges by his artist touch.
Jojo held the corner of the letter and whispered under his breath. As he did, smoke began to curl at the corners of the paper, and the letter began to burn.
“Find my brother,” he said. “Show me where he is.”
Smoke gathered against the windshield. Faintly, an image of Kasem emerged in the fog, his body slumped near an indistinguishable dumpster somewhere in the alleyways of Center City Mall.
My heart hammered in my chest.
Magic. Jojo was performing an incantation. Just like Kasem had after the woodshop. Just like what I’d witnessed members of Theta perform at the summoning.
Suddenly, Jojo’s phone dinged—a message from me, asking him if he was okay and if he could help Louisa and me pack up.
In the present, I could feel Kasem next to me, his hands holding mine, anchoring me in my own timeline just as the vision tethered me to the past, to Jojo sitting in his car.
I watched as Jojo texted me, his hand trembling. Outside the car door, something pounded on the windshield. He glanced up and came face-to-face with Pete and Jay.
“I heard you were looking for me,” Pete said, sneering. “Well, here I am.”
“Where’s my brother?”
A wry grin curved across Pete’s lips.
“Oh, they haven’t found him yet? That’s unfortunate.”
Beside him, Jay reached into his pocket and pulled out the cowrie shell bracelet.
The bracelet gleamed ominously, pulsing and breathing in the moonlight—almost sentient. It was a living artifact, churning with memories.
Tentatively, Jojo lowered the window. When he did, Jay handed him the bracelet, a pleased look in his expression.
“Just like you wanted, right? If you want to know where he is, no need for that botched attempt at an incantation. All you needed to do was ask us. He could be anywhere in these alleyways. Let us help you.”
Jojo shoved the letter and the bracelet in the glove compartment.
A look of suspicion crossed Pete’s expression. “We fulfilled our part of the deal. But our marks aren’t gone.”
“That means he’s not dead yet,” Jojo said, and I couldn’t tell if it was relief in his voice or despair. When he slipped out of the car, he locked the doors and threw the key inside the barely parted window. “You’re still marked by the curse, and it will take you.”
Jay growled, realizing that Jojo wasn’t playing by whatever arbitrary rules they’d laid out in this twisted deal of theirs. The bracelet was now locked away and out of reach, yet their marks lived on.
“Take me to my brother,” Jojo said.
Suddenly, it was as if the air had been sucked from my lungs. Something felt different, like the past and the future had become one twisted thing that seethed before me.
Pete and Jay looked past Jojo, past their own reflections in the car window, past the barrier of the vision in my mind—until their gazes bore directly into me.
I clenched my hands, only realizing that I’d buried my nails into Kasem’s outstretched palms in the process. His breath hitched. But he squeezed my hand reassuringly, urging me to continue channeling.
In my visions, I’d always been able to see other people. But they’d never looked back at me before. They’d never seen me watching.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
When Pete and Jay spoke, it was in unison: a chorus of nails on chalkboard, a disjointed echo that raked through the back of my mind.
I wanted the vision to end. I wanted to tear myself away from the bracelet’s clutches.
But time caught me in its suffocating grip, and Pete’s and Jay’s empty eyes stared deep into mine.
“B-b-b-beware the mark of b-b-b-b-blood debts. For what’s so wrought on borrowed time will pay the price of a life duly expired and a death well owed.”
Then, horrifically, Pete reeled backward, his head snapping at an unnatural angle.
Swampy water seeped from his eyes, spilling from his mouth as he choked, and choked, and choked.
And Jay transformed in front of me—weeping red welts burst across his skin, and flames rose from his flesh.
They jerked forward, their bodies twisting so violently that their bones broke and their eyes bulged.
The two men screamed and writhed, the mud and the water and the flames taking over their bodies.
I was witnessing their deaths, a vision of their futures playing before me through a memory of the past. Pete’s and Jay’s demises would be painful and tormenting, and they would take place soon—unless they could fulfill their debt to the curse.
Unless they could kill Kasem.
Somewhere, someone was screaming. The sound was shrill and violating, like terror come to life in one splitting syllable.
“Sianna. It’s all right. Nothing can hurt you. Nothing will hurt you.”
I opened my eyes and looked up.
Kasem.
I’d fainted, and at some point, we’d ended up outside the quiet room. Here he was, holding me in his arms as a crowd began to form around us, the bracelet discarded at my feet.
And the person who had been screaming this whole time—it’d been me.
Pain surged against my forehead. I pressed my palm to it, and a trickle of blood dripped down from where my nails had scratched the surface of my own skin.
I’d been screaming and clawing at my face, as if I could erase the image of Pete and Jay dying before me, both in the past and in the future to come.
“They’re going to die. They’re going to die in Westfield.”
He held me closer, and I buried my head in his chest, closing my eyes as tears blurred my vision. Seeing that spirit of Nathan—that had been frightening. But this, this was something else entirely.
Kasem picked up the bracelet and then turned away from me.
“Can I please borrow those?” Kasem said. He was speaking to someone in the crowd and his voice was calm, despite the fact that in his arms, I could feel him trembling. “She’s very sensitive to touch, and I think they might help her.”
“Um, sure,” the person said.
It was one of the people who had rented a nearby quiet room, likely a design and fashion student who’d been sewing a piece for an assignment.
She handed Kasem a set of gloves. They were wrist-length and made of black lace with intricately woven patterns of moths.
At the cuff of each glove, right at the wrist, was a button clasp.
He pulled the first glove over my hand, and then the second, before sliding his family bracelet back onto my wrist. The lace of the gloves created a barrier of sorts from the bracelet, but I could faintly feel it pulsing against my wrist and the memories of the past churning within it.
I gathered my breath, looking up at Kasem finally.
“I’m all right,” I whispered.
“Are you sure?”
I made to stand, but the ground lurched beneath me.
“Should we get help?” someone asked.
“I’ve got it,” Kasem said. He held me steady and knelt in front of me, even as the dizziness made the world sway.
“I kind of need those for an assignment,” the design student said, eyeing the gloves we’d taken from her.
Kasem reached into his pocket and pulled out two hundred dollars.
Her eyes brightened. “That works.”
Whispers filled the crowd, but Kasem’s attention was solely on me.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine. I can stand by myself.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m just trying to help. Let me help you, okay? Just for now.”
I hesitated. Tentatively, I wrapped my arms around his neck and let him lift me. His pulse steadied my own racing heart.
He swept me off my feet, and I gasped as he held me in his arms.
“Where are you taking me?” I whispered, my voice hoarse from screaming.
“Angelica. She can help us.”