15. Where Death Wears Many Faces #2
My mother’s faint gaze shifts to her. “You always did have a steady hand.”
Mina blinks.
Then recovers. “I also have exceptional cheekbones and a willingness to threaten the dead, so let’s keep moving.”
Despite everything, my mother smiles.
The sight hurts.
I want to keep her smiling. I want to scream at her. I want to ask whether she watched me cry after she died. Whether she knew I kept her locket in the back of my jewelry box because wearing it felt too much like forgiving her.
Instead, I ask the question that matters.
“If you knew the curse woke for Thread Seers, why stop practicing?” My voice sounds thin inside the circle. “Why not train me? Why not teach me how to fight it?”
The candles dip.
My mother looks older suddenly, though ghosts should not age. “Because I thought refusal would starve it.”
Mina goes very still.
I feel my own breath catch. “Did it?”
“No.”
One word. Soft. Devastating.
“The curse did not die when I stopped matching,” my mother says. “It slept. It thinned. It waited. But hunger does not become harmless because no one feeds it. Sometimes hunger only learns patience and feeds on something else.”
A chill slides beneath my skin.
All those years I thought she chose fear over magic. That she chose caution over joy. That she looked at me and saw a mistake waiting to repeat itself.
Maybe she had looked at me and seen a target.
“You kept it dormant,” I say.
“I tried.” Her eyes meet mine. “I made fewer matches. I turned clients away. I pushed instinct down until it went quiet enough to mistake for gone.”
My chest tightens.
That sounds like grief.
That sounds like self-amputation.
“I thought if you became a journalist,” she says, “you would still chase truth. You would still serve love, in your way. You would expose lies without binding lives together in threads bright enough to be seen from the old dark.”
A laugh scrapes out of me, ugly and small. “So you wanted me safe and nosy.”
“You were already nosy.”
Mina murmurs, “Confirmed by multiple witnesses.”
I shoot her a look.
She lifts one shoulder. “Grief circle, yes. Perjury circle, no.”
My mother’s image wavers, but warmth moves through the air, almost like a chuckle.
Then the warmth fades.
“Refusing the gift has a cost,” she says. “Practicing has a cost. Silence has a cost. Speech has a cost. I chose the cost I thought would keep you alive.”
“And unprepared.”
Her gaze does not flinch.
“Perhaps. And yet here you are.”
The admission lands between us like a blade laid carefully on velvet.
I want to reject it. I want to keep my anger clean and sharp because clean anger is easier than complicated love.
But I see her now in ways I refused to see when she was alive: alone with her fear, her gift locked away, her daughter burning with the same power, the same hunger for connection, the same reckless faith that love could be made safer if someone paid attention.
“You should have trusted me,” I say.
“You were seventeen.”
“I was brilliant at seventeen.”
“You were terrifying at seventeen.”
Mina nods. “I believe this instantly.”
I ignore her. “You still should have told me.”
“Yes,” my mother says.
No defense.
No correction.
Just yes.
My throat aches.
I look down at the Lovers reversed, at Death, at the salt glowing faintly around us. “How do I stop something that feeds on speech and binds through silence?”
The mirrors darken.
All three at once.
Mina swears under her breath and presses her palm flat over the cards. “Something is listening.”
My mother’s face blurs. “You must understand the loophole.”
“What loophole?”
“The curse was made with rules. All old hungers are. It can listen where love is declared, where bonds are named, where fear teaches silence.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the edge of one.”
“Mom.”
The word breaks this time.
Not accusation. Plea.
Her outline trembles, and for one impossible second, I feel her hand on my cheek.
Not solid. Not enough. Still, my whole body leans toward it.
“How do I beat it?” I whisper.
Her voice thins to a thread. “Find the place where death wears many faces.”
The candles snap blue-white.
Mina tightens her grip on me. “Audra, hold.”
My mother’s eyes flash with urgency.
“There,” she says, “even the walls forget how to listen.”
The words strike the circle like thrown stones.
For one suspended second, nothing moves.
Not the candle flames. Not the smoke. Not my lungs, which have apparently decided breathing is a luxury best revisited later.
Then all three mirrors crack.
Not shatter.
Crack.
Thin silver lines split across the black glass, one after another, sharp as teeth.
Mina swears in a language I do not recognize, which is impressive because I recognize most swearing on principle.
“Hold the circle,” she snaps.
“I am holding!”
“You are emotionally flailing in a circle-adjacent manner.”
“My dead mother just gave me a riddle while supernatural eavesdroppers attacked your décor.”
“Then hold with purpose.”
I tighten my grip on her hands.
The salt ring flares brighter, white-blue and angry.
The candles bend sideways as if an invisible wind has shoved into the room.
My mother’s spirit flickers so hard her face becomes three faces at once: the young woman from old photographs, the mother I remember, and something older in the D’Amour line wearing her eyes.
“Mom,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. “What does that mean?”
Her image jerks. The mirrors darken beyond black. Something presses from the other side.
Not a person. Not a ghost. Attention. Hungry, patient attention sliding over the circle, testing the salt, tasting the shape of my name.
Mina’s fingers dig into mine. “Do not answer anything that speaks now unless it sounds exactly like your mother.”
“That seems like a detail you could have mentioned earlier.”
“I assumed you knew not to chat with random séance intruders.”
“I am under stress.”
“You are always under stress. It’s part of your charm.”
A whisper moves along the walls.
Not Audra. Not even close.
Weaver.
The word curls through the room with silk-soft delight.
My blood turns cold.
My mother’s spirit twists toward the sound. For the first time, fear crosses her face.
“Fate,” she says. “Listen only to me.”
“I’m trying.”
“Death has faces.”
“Yes, we established that in the least convenient possible wording.”
Mina shoots me a look.
“What? If riddles wanted respect, they should be clearer.”
My mother’s mouth trembles like she almost laughs.
Then the force outside the circle slams against the mirrors.
One candle goes out. The room drops several degrees. My breath fogs.
Mina releases one of my hands long enough to snatch a black-handled knife from the table and drag the blade through the candle smoke. “By salt, by glass, by blood unspilled, this circle is closed to all but the named.”
The salt ring flashes. Something shrieks inside the walls. Or maybe the walls shriek.
At this point, I am no longer emotionally available for architectural distinctions.
My mother’s voice thins. “Too many faces confuse the listening.”
The words come faster now, slipping, breaking.
My pulse hammers.
“What place?” I ask. “Mom, where?”
Her outline tears at the edges.
Mina presses both palms to the table. “Audra, anchor to the name. Anchor to love. Anchor to bloodline.”
And then she is gone.
My mother. The woman I loved. The woman who lied. The woman who tried to save me badly because terror made her choose silence over trust.
The blue flame gutters. The circle buckles.
“No,” I say. “No, don’t you dare leave me with cryptic nonsense and vanish. That is terrible parenting.”
Mina slams her palm over the Death card. “Fate!”
A rush of cold air bursts upward from the bowl, blowing my hair back from my face. The candles flare once and then go out. Silence crashes into the room.
Real silence this time.
Mina and I sit across from each other in the dark, still gripping hands over the table, both breathing hard.
A cracked mirror falls from its stand and hits the floor with a sad little clink.
Mina exhales. “Well.”
I stare at the empty bowl.
My heart is broken. My head is spinning. And for the first time in days, hope is alive enough to scare me.
“That was helpful,” I say.
Mina gives me a look. “That was a haunted crossword clue delivered during spiritual siege warfare.”
“Yes,” I say, wiping my face with one shaking hand. “But helpful adjacent.”
Mina lights the emergency lantern because the séance candles have all died dramatic deaths, and apparently we are pretending that is normal.
The lantern flickers once, considers the emotional state of the room, and settles into a steady amber glow.
The séance space looks worse in ordinary light.
Three cracked mirrors. Salt scattered across the table. The Death card bent beneath Mina’s palm. My mother’s hair still curled in the bowl like a question no one wants to answer.
I stare at the empty space where Audra D’Amour just existed. My chest aches with all the things I did not say. I forgive you. I don’t forgive you. I understand. I hate that I understand.
“Tea?” Mina asks.
I look at her.
She lifts one shoulder. “I’m genetically incapable of processing spiritual trauma without putting the kettle on.”
“Your genetics are very British for someone born in Oregon.”
“My soul has always enjoyed damp weather and emotional repression.”
I almost smile. Almost.
Then the phrase returns, heavy and strange.
“Where death wears many faces,” I whisper.
Mina pours salt into a little silver dish and sets it between us, as if the words themselves might need a perimeter.
“Too many faces confuse the listening,” I continue.