Chapter 11
It was noon by the time Griff opened his eyes.
He blinked at us blearily, as if he’d taken an afternoon catnap in the sun and the day had gotten away from him.
Unlike me, Griff always looked the same from one life to the next.
It probably had to do with the fact half of him was already rooted in the underworld.
What could passing through the edges of death do to the son of the Jersey Devil?
Not much.
We were all crowded into his tiny bedroom.
Me, Justice, and even Rou. She’d never admit it, but I was fairly certain Griff was her favorite.
She always took him to collect dandelions with her for dandelion wine, made him lift the heavy iron pots in her kitchen, and had him water her rooftop plants.
She’d realized early on that Griff was happiest when he felt useful. She was kind that way.
Rou would tell me not to gift her attributes she didn’t have. She’d say she made him feel useful for purely selfish reasons. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not as if Rou wouldn’t cry in our soup and kill each and every one of us if Jagger asked her to. I know that. We all do.
“You’re finally awake,” Rou said, patting Griff’s cheek in a motherly sort of way. “What was it this time? Falling down an escalator? Tripping off the platform into the path of a speeding train? Stumbling over a live wire to be electrocuted in a puddle?”
Griff shrugged, his cheeks burning red. Unfortunately, these were all ways Griff had died in the past. Griff was extremely accident prone. When we were kids, we called it “accidentitis.”
Justice shook his head. His arms were folded, and he was leaning against Griff’s bedroom wall.
Unlike my barren, white-walled room, Griff had covered all four of his walls in posters.
His room was an explosion of neon and pastel, a crazy quilt of illustrated art.
It was years’ worth of museum posters, anime posters, movie posters, and concert posters, all pasted one on top of another. You never knew quite where to look.
Justice leaned against a faded Ragnor Bard concert poster. Years ago, I’d asked Griff why he’d hung that particular poster. Why did he want a conjurer in his room? He’d told me it was exposure therapy. Then he’d drawn a pair of horns and a mustache on Ragnor.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” he said. He avoided looking at us by studying the pitcher of iced tea and the tray of thumbprint cookies on his nightstand.
The cookies were half-gone. I’d given in two hours into our vigil and eaten four. Justice had fallen asleep sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, and when he woke up, he’d had six. Rou nibbled on two. That left crumbs and the last dozen for Griff.
None of us had talked while Griff came back into himself. But now he was awake, we wanted answers.
“Griff,” I said, and he flinched as if I’d hit him.
My mouth tightened.
I leaned forward on the wooden chair I’d scooted close to Griff’s bed. “What happened?”
When he finally looked up, his brown eyes were bleeding into black. The tendons on his hands were bulging as he shoved himself upright. The white sheet that covered him slipped down his chest and pooled over his legs.
Usually, he’d blush, because under the sheet, he was as naked as the day he was born. But today, the red on his cheeks was from something else. Anger? Betrayal? Hurt?
Rou clicked her tongue. “So you were murdered. Have a cookie.”
Justice pushed off the wall, suddenly alert. I glanced back at him and raised my eyebrows. He’d told me not to protect Griff, yet there he was, a shark scenting blood, ready to attack.
Griff grabbed two cookies and shoved them into his mouth, chewing forcefully. He always woke up starving.
“I have a roast in the oven and fresh-baked bread,” Rou added, smiling at her forethought.
“What happened?” Justice asked.
Griff swallowed the cookies and grabbed two more.
He ate them more slowly, taking his time, but we all knew he’d answer.
Whenever Justice spoke in that hard, flinty voice, you felt compelled to answer.
It wasn’t that he was using illusion—you just wanted to answer because you knew he’d fix whatever was wrong.
Finally, Griff swung his legs over the side of the bed and wiped his hands on the sheet covering him. He looked down at his hands. On the underside of his wrist, another black line was gone. He was on his eighth life now.
I didn’t want to think about Griff becoming a mine. He was a year older than me, but somehow, he’d always managed to seem younger. It was his innocence. The way he looked at the world. His earnestness and puppylike expression.
When he finally looked up, though, he wasn’t our soft and sweet Griff. He looked like his father. Black-stained eyes. Harsh, angled cheekbones. Bulging muscles and sharpened teeth.
Justice moved. Fast as a shadow, he palmed two knives and stepped in front of me.
Rou made a surprised noise.
“Who?” Justice asked. “Who, Griff? A name.”
I peered around Justice’s back. Griff narrowed his black eyes on me.
“You and Mari,” he said. “You two wanted to kill each other. What does it matter who killed me? Why worry about enemies when your best friends will be the ones to kill you in the end? You want a name? You. You and Mari.”
He shoved out of bed. The naked lines of him bulged, tendons flexing and muscles twisting. He was three seconds from releasing his father’s form.
He pinned me with his stare. “Is there any of you left? Or was Rou right, and you’re only a monster now? If Jagger told you to kill me, would you do it?”
Justice pushed between Griff and me. “Don’t ask her that.”
Griff twisted his mouth. “Why not? We already know your answer. You’re the reason Mari’s a mine.”
“Children—”
“Yes,” I said, in my new, hard voice. “I’d kill you. Someday, you’ll be the same. Stop raging against reality. What happened last night?”
Griff stared at me, wide-eyed. His shoulders slumped, and his father’s form stopped fighting to break free. He deflated, all the anger and fight collapsing.
“I never truly thought you’d be like him,” he said, nodding to Justice. “Turns out I was right. You’re not like him. You came back even worse.”
I held still, all the air sucked out of me by Griff’s words.
His eyes weren’t tear-filled like they had been for the past two weeks; instead, he looked at me as if he was infinitely sorry and mourning the loss of something good that he’d never get back.
Like a child who’d plucked all the petals from a daisy, not realizing new petals wouldn’t grow in their place.
He looked at me as if I were ruined and gone.
What could I say?
I’m still me? I’m trying to save you. I’m still here.
I’ve hidden my good so it won’t be devoured.
Please, don’t lose faith in me.
No. I couldn’t say any of that.
I knew without a doubt that everything said in this room would be repeated to Jagger. Either Rou, Justice, or even I would tell him word for word.
So instead, I held Griff’s gaze and said, “You say worse, I say better.”
I heard the echo of Griff’s old, “Don’t say that.” And the response: “Not saying it doesn’t make it less true.”
But he didn’t tell me not to say it—he only stared at me for a long moment, his eyes shifting from black back to soft brown.
“I followed you last night,” he finally said, turning aside.
I raised an eyebrow. So he was the presence I felt.
“I watched you burn the Night Den. Then . . .” He paused, and I could see him choosing to hide something of his own. “The Smith—Alterra—saw me. He hunted me.”
My heart gave a hard jolt at Finn’s name.
Justice let out a low, snarling noise, and Griff looked at him swiftly, then back to me.
“Finn?” I questioned, ignoring how his name made my heart kick and my chest ache. “Finn Alterra hunted you?”
He wouldn’t. Finn knew Griff was an innocent. He knew how much I cared about him. He wouldn’t hurt him. Not ever.
Griff gave a slow nod. “Hunted me like a wolf. Ran me. Bled me. Cut me with illusion. I think . . . I think he was toying with me.”
Next to me, Justice held frighteningly still, the knives in his palms.
I was still as well, but only because I couldn’t think. Finn did this? Finn? Denial pounded through me. I may do terrible things, but Finn never would. He was supposed to be the light in my dark.
“Toying with you?” Rou asked, clicking her tongue. “Did you change forms? Did you fight? Fly?”
Griff shook his head.
“Why not?” I asked, my voice hard.
Griff flinched. “Why not? He’s a conjurer. Alterra—”
“The Smith,” Justice corrected.
He was right. Finn was the Smith now.
Griff nodded. “Before the Smith killed me . . . he told me to give Mari a message.”
Griff stared at me, his eyes bleeding to black again. A spidery itch crawled over my spine.
A message.
From the doorway, a rocklike laugh rolled through the room. The avalanche sound hit me, and I stiffened in response. The poisoned heat in my blood scalded my veins. I held still as pain twisted through me.
I curled my fingers into my palms and counted my breath.
One.
Two.
Three.
Jagger stepped into the room, crowding us closer. A drop of sweat trickled down my spine. He smiled down at me as if he knew the exact amount of hurt scraping through me and he delighted in it.
“I’m curious,” Jagger said, his voice laced with gloating humor. “What message did our delightful Smith send by way of your death?”
Jagger spoke to Griff but kept his flat gray gaze on me. He was waiting for my reaction. Would he see it in my expression, or would he feel it in my blood?
Hopefully neither.
I focused on the burning in my veins and made my face as smooth as rock.
“The Smith said”—Griff spoke in a low growl I’d never heard from him before—“to tell Mari he was going to kill everything and everyone she loved. Then he was going to slit her throat while she watched the world burn.”
A splash of surprise flooded me, followed closely by denial. Then, last and most potent . . . fear.
Jagger’s laugh rolled through the room, crashing over me and burying me in his glee. His sharp teeth glistened, and his eyes shone.
“This,” he said, laughing still, “is perfect. He hates you.” He wiped his eyes, tear-filled from poisonous mirth. “You killed him, and he hates you. You burned down his home, and he hates you even more. Oh, Mari. If only you knew. If only you realized. You would find it funny too.”
His blood nipped at me. It bit sharp-toothed into my heart, and I let it. I let Jagger taste the surprise and the confusion, but I kept the fear, the denial, and everything else hidden.
I looked at Justice. He was watching me. His expression asked, Do we kill Alterra? Send him to his final death? I looked away.
Outside, a sudden crack of thunder shook Hell Gate’s stone. Rou threw her hands over her ears. Justice lifted his arms as if about to throw both knives.
I spun toward the window, expecting an army of conjurers to descend.
A flash of lightning split the blue sky.
Another crash.
It was so loud my ears rang and my eyes watered.
Then a floodgate opened inside me. A river of power exploded. A torrential rain swept through me, a flash flood filling me with power.
Before Jacob, my power had been a trickle. Then it was a swift river. Now, it was a raging, wild torrent.
I gritted my teeth and gripped the back of the wooden chair. I fought the black curtain swinging at the edge of my vision. I couldn’t pass out. I couldn’t let on that anything was happening.
I fought with the torrent inside myself, trying to wrestle it and contain it.
Sweat broke out on my forehead, and I clenched my muscles.
I was being torn apart. The power felt like it might swallow me.
My vision went black. My ears filled with a roar.
I felt as though I’d been thrown into rapids and swept underwater.
The raging current and the sharp underwater rocks were ripping me apart.
“—Mari?”
Someone gripped my arm. I blinked, shoving away the black curtain covering my vision.
It was Justice. He’d pulled me to the side and held me tucked against him, out of Jagger’s sight. I realized I was shaking. I couldn’t stop. It was as if a giant were holding me in its fist and shaking me violently up and down.
Justice had wrapped his arm around me and was keeping me upright.
I concentrated on the feel of his arm, the warmth of his hand, the firm line of his side.
I pressed into his strength and willed the new power toward my core, where it could sit in a deep, endless pool instead of crashing through me in a raging current.
Slowly, the shaking stopped, the roar in my ears fell silent, and I could stand on my own again.
It had taken maybe five seconds.
In that time, another thunderous crash split the room, and more lightning speared the clear blue sky. I pushed away from Justice, and he let me go, only lifting an eyebrow.
“All right?” he mouthed silently.
I nodded.
I was all right, but either my dad or my brother wasn’t. Someone in my family had just died.
Across the small room, Rou screamed and crashed to her knees.
“Rou!” Griff cried, dropping next to her.
She gripped her head in her hands and dragged in a drowning man’s gasp. Her hair writhed like pale seaweed in stormy water. Her sandstone-colored skin turned muddy-gray, the color of turbid, violent waters shoving sediment to the surface.
Griff hunched over her protectively, wrapping his arms around her. Outside, distant thunder rumbled, crashing in echo to the thunder that had roared over Hell Gate. Streaks of lightning shot across the sky.
When Rou lifted her head, I realized she was fighting to hold her form together.
It was as if we were viewing her from underwater.
She was translucent waves, rushing water, and refracted light.
I blinked, trying to focus on the moving wave of her face.
She was more spirit than solid. Her eyes glowed like lightning striking a river.
“Well, well,” Jagger said, peering down at Roumelade, “what could this be about?”
She stared at Jagger, her sometime lover, her eyes flashing between tempest-gray and storm-blue.
She stood, rising like mist from the water, pointing to the south.
“It’s coming.” Her voice was the inhuman crash of a thousand roaring waves. “A conjurer shook the ocean’s floor. It’s coming. A tsunami is coming to bury you all.”