Chapter Twenty-Five Soraya
Chapter Twenty-Five
Soraya
There is no such thing as too much power.
—Rules for Witches
Mom someone is trying to get into the house.
Soraya sat up and looked at her phone. It was late, and she’d been reading a book that was in no way edifying, after having eaten excessive amounts of Chinese takeout while still trying to recover from the best sex of her life.
Seeing her oldest son’s name on her phone screen was jarring, even if it was welcome.
The message he’d sent, however, wasn’t welcome.
She was up and moving around the apartment immediately, looking for shoes, for socks, for keys, for something.
Then she stopped.
Which house?
The one we’re staying in. On Candle St.
Where’s Dad?
He’s sleeping.
She doubted that. He was probably sexting someone. Or maybe he had a woman in his room for a prayer session that was actually him bending her over and . . .
I’m calling 911.
Why hadn’t Levi done that? Why had he texted her? Like he thought she could still fix his emergencies. Like she still mattered, which was a weird thing to think as she dialed 911, her hands shaking.
“911, what’s the location of your emergency?” The woman’s voice on the other end sounded like it was in a tin can far away.
“111 Candle Street. I’m not there, my son texted me and said that someone is trying to break in.”
“Your son heard someone trying to enter the house?”
“As far as I know. He didn’t give me a lot of details. He’s seventeen. But he doesn’t make things up.”
“We can do a welfare check.”
“Someone is trying to break into the house.” They weren’t taking her seriously because her son was a teenager, and she wasn’t there.
“We can have a police officer drive by, okay?”
“All right. All right.”
“What’s your name and phone number for a callback?”
She gave it. Resentfully. Because this wasn’t enough. Something was wrong. It was wrong.
She was halfway out the door before she had her coat all the way on. Because if her son was going to text her like she was the one who could save them, then she would damn well be the one to save them.
She got halfway down the stairs when she remembered she didn’t have a car.
Should she knock on Declan’s door? Should she tell him what was happening? Everything in her rejected that. She couldn’t show up to whatever was happening with him. She couldn’t involve him in this.
It wasn’t just because she was embarrassed about the sex. That after a lifetime of being puritanical and judgmental, she’d folded like a house of cards because a hot guy had given her a smoldering look within one hundred feet of a bed.
Though that was one reason.
She called Nora.
“Nora! Someone is trying to break into David’s house, and Levi texted me about it, and emergency services aren’t taking it seriously, and I have to go!”
“I’ll come get you.” Nora sounded stretched thin.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m . . . Ben is in the hospital. I’ll come over and get you and explain everything on the way.”
Ben was in the hospital?
Someone was trying to break into the house. She was having difficulty wrapping her head around all of this.
She paced the hall until Nora texted: I’m here. Then she ran down the stairs and out to the street and jumped into the passenger seat.
“Did you text Daisy?” Nora asked.
“I thought she was probably busy with . . . well, either her kids or Zach.”
“She was.” Nora pulled away from the curb. “Well, she was with Zach. Now she’s with the kids because Jonathan is also in the hospital.”
“What!?” Any worries she had about Nora looking at her and seeing harlot stamped on her forehead were gone now.
There were much bigger issues at play.
“Ben had a hiking accident. Jonathan had a construction accident.”
Soraya pulled her phone out and fired off a text to Daisy to ask if everything was okay. “How’s Ben?”
“Fine. For a cheating liar.”
“I’m sorry, Nora.” Soraya scrubbed her hands over her face. She felt cold. Like she was a hundred miles away from her own body. She felt like nothing was real.
“I’m not. It’s better that I know. It’s better that I see him for exactly what he is. Better that all of this came out, and if he had to fall down a mountain for me to see it all, then that’s what had to happen.” Nora sounded grim but resigned. Almost bloodthirsty.
She thought of the Tower card Nora had drawn that day at her apartment, that she’d quickly put back in the deck. Fire and men falling to their doom.
“This is the magic, isn’t it?”
Nora was silent for a moment. “I don’t know what else it could be.”
“My kids might be in danger.”
“But it’s David’s fault,” Nora said. “Whatever is happening is David’s fault.”
“Maybe.” Soraya wrung her hands together. “But if something happens to them because we messed with power and spirits and whatever else that we weren’t supposed to, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.” Her throat went tight, fear making it hard for her to speak.
“If magic is real, it won’t do that.”
“Of course it would,” Soraya said. “Everything has a cost. You can’t just cast a spell and get everything you want. You can’t just make everything work the way you want it to and not have any . . . side effects. You can’t.”
By trying to get revenge, they’d done damage.
Soraya had known they were messing with real power, and she’d let herself get sucked into it anyway because she was so angry. Because she was so . . . so . . .
“Holy shit.”
She looked up when Nora swore and saw an orange glow in the distance. Her heart stalled, and when they rounded the corner, she could see for sure that the glow was flames. And that those flames were enveloping David’s house.
Nora stopped the car in the middle of the road, and Soraya scrambled to undo her seat belt, then ran down the street toward the fire.
There was a police car in the driveway with the lights on, red and blue, but no fire trucks yet.
It took her a moment to register that the kids were standing on the front lawn, and David was sitting there, holding something against his arm. The cops had someone in handcuffs.
“What’s happening?” she shouted, running to the scene.
The world was on fire. Hell was on earth.
She’d had sex with someone she wasn’t married to. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
It couldn’t all be a coincidence.
“Ma’am, stay back.” An officer held her hand out, trying to stop Soraya’s forward motion.
“Those are my kids!” Soraya said.
That made the officer relax, just a fraction, and Soraya went past her to grab both boys, holding them tight.
“Mom, oh my gosh. Pastor John lost his mind. He lit the house on fire, and he tried to shoot Dad.”
“What?” She whipped around to see that Levi was right. John was, in fact, the man in handcuffs being pushed into the back of the police car.
She could hear sirens in the distance, coming toward the house. Everything was a blur, and they were herded away from the residence and out into the street, just as the flames burst through the windows. She clung to her sons, David standing distant from them.
“Look what you did.” She turned to look at David, who had an expression of horror on his face. She’d been talking to herself, but she knew she couldn’t take all the blame. He was the one who’d slept with John’s wife.
“I know I . . .”
She moved closer to him. “You’re bleeding.”
“I was shot,” he said.
“David, this . . . this is not okay. All of this. It’s not okay. You need help.”
“I know I do.”
He sounded genuinely contrite. Was it the house burning down? His kids being in danger? His own life being in danger?
Was it having his facade go up in flames along with everything else? He couldn’t hide anymore. Everyone knew.
Was that the reason he was finally admitting it?
The neighbors were out on the streets now, too, watching the house burn. They were on a stage. They had been ever since David’s video had played at church, and now it was all crashing down on them.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Levi held on to her more tightly. Jaden didn’t say anything. He just let her hug him.
“I forgive you,” she said. It was easy to forgive her kids.
She’d been part of raising them in the place that had taught them to make her the villain for what she’d done. She’d made other women in her situation the villain in their hearing.
She knew better now.
So she would do better.
She would help them do better.
A prayer, a promise, and a spell all rolled into one.
An ambulance drove onto the street, and she moved to David on instinct. “Come on, you need them to look at this.” She walked him over to the paramedics and then moved back to the boys. “Do you want to spend the night with me tonight?”
“What about Dad?” Jaden asked.
“He might have to go to the hospital.” She thought about Ben and Jonathan. Would all their husbands be in the hospital tonight? She felt sick.
“Yeah. I want to stay with you.” Jaden’s shoulders shook. “All our stuff is gone.”
It was. But not the most precious possessions, because they’d been at the other house, and she’d taken them with her. “I have our pictures,” she said. “I have your birth certificates and your passports. I have your stuffed animals.”
“You do?” Levi asked.
“Yes. I had to bring what was most important to me.”
“But you left us,” Levi said.
“I left Dad. I’m sorry that it didn’t make sense to you.”
“I know that he . . .” Levi looked down. “I’m sorry I acted like I did. I didn’t believe he did anything really bad because he said he didn’t. He said you were . . .”
“I know what he said.” Or at least she knew a variation of it. She was doing her own thing. Walking away from what they knew. From the faith. Walking away from her marriage was that terrible. “It doesn’t matter now.”
The female police officer approached them. “I’m sorry, I know the timing is bad, but I need to get some witness statements from the boys while everything is fresh in their memory.”
“Oh . . .”
“It won’t take very long.” The woman gathered the boys to her as she started to ask them questions.
Nora came running up a moment later, and so did Daisy, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. “Soraya, are you okay?” Daisy’s eyes were wide with fear.
“No,” Soraya said. “No, I’m not okay. I can’t . . . I can’t do any of this anymore. I need to leave the apothecary. I need . . . I have to stop this.”
Guilt gnawed at her. Guilt and rage and so many other emotions.
But guilt was her friend. Guilt was the one she knew best.
Daisy grabbed hold of Soraya’s shoulder. “Soraya, you don’t want to leave the apothecary. We . . . we’re doing good there. You’re doing good. And Aggie . . .”
“I’ll figure it out.” Fear and regret were tearing Soraya apart, her whole body aching, shaking like she’d just been chased by a lion.
“My kids could have died. Maybe you can believe we didn’t do this with our spells, but I can’t escape the feeling that it’s a punishment for meddling with what we shouldn’t have.
I almost let darkness consume me, and look what happened. ”
“Soraya . . .” Nora tried to walk after her.
“I’m taking my boys home. Back to my apartment, and I’m not . . . I can’t do this.”
Her car that she’d left for David was in the driveway, and she still had her set of keys in her purse. David was in the ambulance, and she went to check in on him one last time.
“We’ll take him and make sure there isn’t any other trauma. Would anyone like to come with him?”
“No.” Soraya didn’t listen as David protested her simple answer. She went back to the boys in the car and started the engine. She had her kids back.
But she’d almost lost them. Nothing was worth that. Nothing.
They got into the car, Levi in the front, Jaden in the back, his knees folded up against his chest. They were both so tall.
But when she looked at them, she still saw them as little boys, and being separated from them like she had been was so painful.
Tonight had been terrible. But they were with her.
“You should have seen him,” Levi said. “He was unhinged. Yelling at Dad about taking his wife and humiliating him and . . .” There was a short pause. “Dad made us get purity rings.”
Soraya couldn’t help it. She laughed. She laughed and laughed until tears were streaming down her face. Until she was just crying, clutching the steering wheel, the streetlights going blurry until they were like stars.
She slowed the car and eased into the space she used across from the apothecary.
“I know,” she said, wiping the tears away. “Oh. I know, it’s all so absurd. I’m sorry.” She hiccupped. “I’m so sorry about all of this.”
They went upstairs to the apartment, and she made beds for them, then sat in her own, unable to sleep for a long time.
She felt so lost.
She’d known who she was once. What she believed. What she wanted. She’d known how the whole world worked, and she could see that now for what it was. That arrogance that was actually masking fear. Because if everything was black and white, you never had to question anything.
Now she questioned everything, and she constantly felt like she was about to slip and fall.
Tonight, she had.
She felt like she’d done the wrong thing. Had gotten lost in a quest for vengeance and potentially caused serious harm.
But she didn’t like what she’d said to Nora and Daisy.
Didn’t like the idea of leaving all of it behind.
Partly because she couldn’t go back to who she’d been before.
Even standing there with David in front of the burning house, that was clear.
She couldn’t go back.
But she didn’t know how to go forward.
For now, her boys were sleeping down the hall from her. Maybe that had to be enough. Maybe there couldn’t be anything else.
She picked up her phone and opened the text chat for Declan.
I’m sorry. I can’t do dinner.
There. It was done. Over. She was ending it.
Pulling herself back from the edge.
She had to.