24. The Armchair is Horrid
The Armchair is Horrid
It’s hell not having Ash at my side, but Hazel, Grandma, and I don’t need an audience. We need to have this conversation alone.
The house welcomes me with a creaking hello. I like to think it missed me, but just because it’s slightly sentient doesn’t mean it has emotions.
Right?
Voices drift in from the open door to the backyard. It’s winter, you dummies, why is the door open?
I step through the living room, approaching the door, and the heat emanating from it is intense. Why in the world is it so hot? I tip-toe quietly to get a better look.
They better not have contacted a Fire witch without telling me.
There, in the center of the backyard, is a bonfire like I’ve never seen. Layers and layers of crisscrossed logs stand what has to be five feet high. All engulfed in flame.
As if it recognizes me, the fire cracks at my arrival outside. The smoke billows toward me. Welcoming me.
“I’m burning the negative energy this family has accumulated. I’m hoping the smoke of it clears your lungs enough to say what is on your minds,” Grandma announces from next to the pyre. “That, and I’m sick of the armchair in the guest room. It’s horrid.”
True to fact, an armchair sits on the very top.
“I told her this would give us lung cancer,” Hazel grouses from the other side. Decidedly downwind from the billowing plumes.
The smile on Ash’s father’s face from the photo I saw in Ash’s bedroom flits through my mind. “Cancer isn’t a punchline.”
“That’s not what I—” Hazel’s face is stricken.
I shake my head. It was a cheap shot. “I know. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“There’s a lot left unsaid here,” Grandma says.
“Some of that is my fault, a majority of that is your mother’s, and a lot of that is both of yours.
” She holds a hand up to prevent the responses that are on the tips of both mine and Hazel’s tongues.
“You’re adults now. You’re not responsible for the trauma of your upbringing, but addressing it and not repeating the same mistakes? That is your responsibility.”
That shuts us up. She’s not wrong and there isn’t really anything else to be said about it.
Grandma stands taller. “I’m on the waitlist for a family therapist, but just like in the human world, our therapists have long waitlists. So in the meantime, I was hoping we could at least open the door to better communication.”
Well, damn, Grandma. Someone has been putting in work.
The fire catches my attention again. I’ve never been around this much at one time, and my heart is practically leaping toward it.
“I’ll start,” Hazel says, taking a deep breath. “I have some resentment for having to be a parent when I was a kid. It’s hard for me to separate my anger and I’m sorry for saying what I did last night.”
I should be paying attention. I know she’s saying something I need to hear, but the whispering. The whispering is so much louder. So insistent.
Help.
“What help do you need?” I ask, stepping closer to the flame. “Who are you?”
Help me.
“Who are you?” I ask again, holding a hand as close to the fire as I can without burning it.
Laura?
For the first time, I recognize the voice. I know that slightly judgmental lilt, that defensive tone. I make sense of the whispers, and it’s worse than I ever imagined.
“Mom.” Even as I say it, I can’t believe it. I knew she wasn’t dead, I knew it. But being able to hear her through fire? That’s not good. It can’t be good.
“Mom? What are you talking about?” Hazel’s yanking me away from the fire, but I can barely feel her touch. Her voice is a soft melody a million miles away.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
“Where are you?” I yell at her, voice shaking with emotion. “How do I find you?”
I’m left unanswered. The connection is broken. I’m in my yard, with my sister and my grandma; they stare at me as if they’ve seen a ghost.
Lucky them. I’ve actually spoken to one. I may have started moving on with my life, but Mom found a way to fuck it all up again.
My eyes burn with tears as I try to wrap my head around this. If only I could have kept the connection up longer. Why couldn’t I? Where is she?
“Come,” Grandma whispers, taking my hand in hers. “Come inside, dear.”
“Here, dear. Drink this.”
Grandma stuffs a warm mug in my hands, but nothing compares to the heat of the fire. The lick of the flames.
Everything else is cold in comparison.
I lift the concoction to my lips, wrinkling my nose at the smell. “What the hell is in this?”
“Best not to ask about Grandma’s teas. They usually taste awful—no offense—but do exactly what you need them to,” Hazel says. She’s a solid fifteen feet away from me and I can tell it’s not because I smell.
It’s because of what I said.
Her arms hug around herself as if trying to build a wall against whatever the hell she’s feeling. Fear, if I had to guess, based on the way her eyes keep darting around. She’s like a deer in the woods, easily spooked and careful.
“Now, if you can, tell us what happened,” Grandma says. Her voice is calm, but she can’t hide the terror in her eyes. The what-the-fuck energy we’re all feeling.
Bitter fluid slides over my tongue and I do my best not to spit it out. However it tastes, I’m sure it’s worth it.
I clear my throat of the ball of emotion lodged inside. “I could hear Mom.”
Hazel gasps, clutching herself even tighter.
“At first, it was just a voice asking for help. But then the voice said my name; it called me Laura. I knew it was Mom. How could I not? She apologized and then I lost her.”
“You lost her?” Grandma asks, hand on mine. She grips me too tight, her eyes wild. But I don’t ask her to let go.
I nod. “I couldn’t hear her anymore. I wasn’t connected anymore.”
“How is this possible?” Hazel whispers. “We watched her get devoured in a Hell-destined ball of water with an obsessed warlock.”
“She needs help.” I squeeze Grandma in return. She has to believe me. “We have to help Mom.”
“I haven’t heard of something like this before,” Grandma says.
It’s unsettling that I’ve found the one thing she hasn’t seen—she prides herself on never being surprised by anything.
“Are we really considering the possibility Mom is—what—alive and trapped in Hell?” Hazel asks, throwing her hands up in the air.
Frustration boils over. “Are you calling me a fucking liar?”
Before Hazel can open her mouth, the front door bangs open. It jumps on the hinges and slams against the wall. The house groans in reply, annoyed at the slight damage that probably did.
Ash stands there, head swiveling until he meets my gaze. “There you are.”
I shouldn’t immediately want to jump his bones. But damn, the protectiveness in this man’s eyes does things to me.
He strides over with confidence, with purpose. I’m the purpose.
“Are you okay? You disappeared for a few minutes. Literally disappeared, as if you weren’t here anymore, and I’ve never felt—” he cuts himself off by pressing a kiss to my forehead. He lingers after, pressing his nose to the top of my head. “Scared the shit out of me.”
“I’m okay,” I reply. Has anyone given this much of a damn about me before?
Grandma hums. “Seems I was right all along.”
I glare at her from around Ash’s hulking form, but it does nothing. Despite her words, both her and Hazel are staring at me with mouths open. They’ve never seen me like this with someone before.
“Believe me now, Hazel?” I ask, trying to distance them from Ash and my closeness with him. “I was talking to Mom in Hell and that’s why Ash couldn’t feel me.”
“You did what?” Ash rears back. “What now?”
Hazel sighs. “It’s not that I thought you were lying, I promise. It’s just . . . beyond anything I ever thought possible. I’ve been trying to mourn her . . . and . . . I don’t know how to process any of this!”
I deflate. I have to learn to stop picking at her. We were so good at being sisters for so many years. It’s ridiculous that a handful of months have destroyed all that.
“We can talk about this when you’re done?” Ash asks. He’s probably worried, but he’s being that safe calmness in the storm that he always seems to be.
“Wait for me upstairs.”
He presses another kiss to the top of my head and goes for the stairs.
“Second door on the right!” I call after him absentmindedly. I completely spaced on the fact he’s never been inside the house before.
The silence that follows is deep, deafening in the absence of any noise. Even the house doesn’t know what to do.
“Mom is alive?” Hazel finally breaks the silence.
I nod, something in me knowing the answer before she even finishes asking. “She is. Whether Draven is using his magic to keep her alive, or she’s using her own, she’s alive. And she needs our help.”
A tear slips down Grandma’s cheek, but she can’t form words. Not yet.
And I don’t blame her. Grandma and Mom have barely seemed related, let alone mother and daughter, but I can’t imagine how Grandma’s feeling.
“So we’ll help her,” I say. “We’ll help her because despite all the shit she put us through, she doesn’t deserve to suffer in Hell at the hands of Draven.”
Hazel’s cheeks are wet, and she doesn’t protest.
There’s nothing more to discuss tonight. We need time to process before we untangle these emotions.
But Ash? Ash deserves a conversation.
Anxiety grows around the room like vines around a tree. It’s practically growing out of the walls by the time I close my bedroom door behind me.
His feelings are valid. Repeating that to myself does nothing to quell the defensiveness sliding up my skin.
“Please. Explain to me what’s going on.” His request isn’t unreasonable. He deserves that, at the very least.
I sigh. Where the hell do I even begin?
Actually, Hell is probably a good place to start.
“Do you remember the daemon incident at the market? When my sister was attacked?”
He nods. I bite my lip at the way his forearms bulge as he crosses them.
“His name was Botis, and he was sent by a warlock named Draven. Draven and my mom apparently had some sort of affair—the details are murky—before she met my dad. And whatever it is ended when she met him, because my dad was her soulmate. This pissed off the warlock, because of course it did, and he decided to make her pay. So she banished his brother to Hell, he killed our dad, and she’s been hunting his family.
Although the details on that are murky too, because I don’t think any of them are his blood relatives.
But whatever. And then he kidnapped Noah—that’s Hazel’s human soulmate—so we went to a meetup Draven set up.
And Mom dissolved her and Draven in a giant water bubble.
We’ve been assuming she’s dead, but I didn’t really think she was because the fire told me she wasn’t.
And tonight the fire was so big and unfiltered and I could finally hear it.
Really hear it. And it was her, and she’s alive so now we have to go get her.
” I exhale a heavy breath. I may need a drink after that.
Ash blinks. Blinks again.
Opens his mouth to speak, then shuts it. Blinks once more instead.
“It’s a lot.” I twirl a lock of blonde hair between my fingers. Ugh. I have to stop doing that. It’s a nervous habit and I look like a worried child when I do it.
In a moment, he’s across the room and I’m buried in his arms. One hand is splayed across my lower back, the other tangled in my hair.
Both pressing me impossibly close.
“I am so fucking sorry, Laura.”
It’s the use of my first name in this way that pisses me off. “I don’t want your pity. I don’t need it.”
He pulls back, forcing me to meet his gaze. “I’m not pitying you, Goldilocks, I’m telling you I’m fucking sorry.”
That’s almost worse.
He presses the sweetest, softest kiss to the top of my head, and it hammers at the cracks in my heart so hard that they all splinter.
Sobs wrack my body, leaving me heaving and gasping into his t-shirt. Every single tear I’ve kept locked inside since my mom disappeared, since Hazel left, since Dad died, is determined to finally be free.
And I can’t stop it.
“Come here,” Ash says, lifting me into a bridal carry. He lays me down on my bed, takes off my shoes, and settles in beside me.
His arms hold me until his shirt is soaked to the bone and I have nothing left. Until my breaths even out and I have nothing left.
Until I hear him whisper, “I love you, Laura Hollis, and I’ll be your safe place until the day I die.”