Earth — 7 Years Ago
It was forty minutes after midnight when the shout came through the trees. “We found her! She’s alive! We found Juniper!”
Members of the search party cheered and hugged. Many of them rushed forward, eager to see the missing girl. The distant wail of an ambulance reached my ears, but with it came another sound.
Juniper’s screams carried far ahead of her, shaking the excitement of those who had searched this forest for two days in hopes of finding her alive.
My mother stood nearby with her arm around a thirteen-year-old Marcus Kynes. Juniper’s mother hadn’t come out to search for her, but her younger brother had. His eyes were wide, his hands shoved into the pockets of his blue windbreaker.
“Is she hurt?” He appeared torn between running toward the screaming and fleeing in the opposite direction. “Why is she screaming like that?”
Mama’s gaze met mine. But she looked away again, swallowing hard as she squeezed Marcus’s shoulder. A wave of nausea roiled through my stomach, forcing me to close my eyes and count to ten as I took a slow breath.
Did Mama still have Juniper’s blood under her nails? Or had she washed it all away, scrubbed clean like the church’s wooden floors?
Juniper was wrapped in a heavy blanket as she walked between two men, her arms gripped so she couldn’t thrash away from them. People murmured as they stared at her wide eyes and bloody chest.
“She cut herself,” someone whispered behind me. “I’ve always said the Kynes family isn’t right. Drug addicts, all of them.”
That was the rumor we had been instructed to spread: Juniper had done this to herself. She was a crazy girl from an even crazier family.
Any accusations she made couldn’t be believed.
“Monsters!” Juniper screamed. She fought her rescuers as if they were the very monsters she spoke of, throwing herself to the ground and staring back into the trees. “There are monsters! In the trees! They…they came out of the ground…the mine!” She screamed again, clawing at their hands to pry them off. The ambulance had arrived, and the EMTs had a stretcher ready. One of them prepared a syringe, and Juniper balked, staring at the needle with renewed horror. “No! Get that thing away from me! Stop…stop!”
I clenched my hands tight behind my back. Merciful God, why did she live?
Juniper’s eyes were drooping, her shouting growing weak. Then her gaze fell on me. She raised a trembling finger, and my stomach twisted when I realized her nail had been ripped off.
“You were there,” she said. She tried to lunge for me, but her legs gave out. The EMTs had to lift her from the ground. Even with her body betraying her, Juniper kept fighting. “You were there, Everly! You saw…tell them…tell them, please!”
Her face fell as a warm hand came to rest protectively on my shoulder.
“You should go home, Everly.” My father’s voice was calm, comforting me the moment I heard it. Papa always knew what to do, what to say. He knew that the right path was not always the easy one.
Sometimes, it was frightening. Sometimes, it required one to do wicked things.
“It was you!” Juniper screamed, teeth bared, weakly thrashing her head as she was laid on the stretcher. “You did it! You left me down there! You’re a monster, Kent Hadleigh! You and your bitch daughter! Victoria!” Juniper laughed after she screamed my half-sister’s name, hysteria overtaking her terror. They pushed her stretcher into the ambulance, but that didn’t stop her from looking back at me again and saying viciously, “You watched. You watched and did nothing.”
The courtroom was full that night.
Ever since the old courthouse was converted into the Abelaum Historical Society, the courtroom had only been used for meetings of Society staff and benefactors. At least, that was the ruse we maintained. The two dozen people gathered there were indeed benefactors of the Society. They’d all donated time, money, and loyalty to my father’s goals.
Loyalty to my father meant loyalty to the Libiri. Children of the Deep God, worshippers of Its great power. We alone would reap the benefits of Its mercy when It was unleashed. When our goals were fulfilled, our God would be free, this world would change, and we would be granted Its favor.
But tonight, those goals had been shaken. Shattered.
As the congregation huddled in fear in the courtroom below, my family gathered in the attic. The tension in the air was palpable, as if I could sense the wringing hands, shuffling feet, and uncomfortable whispers drifting through the stale air from below. The rumble of distant thunder made me quake, and I stared at the ceiling, expecting it to collapse at any moment.
We had no idea how terrible the Deep One’s fury could be. Not yet.
Casting my eyes upward allowed me to avoid the horrendous sight at my feet — my father’s captive demon, Leon, writhing in a binding circle as the wrath for tonight’s failure fell on him.
Kent Hadleigh had always been a calm man. Composed, collected, eloquent. It made people trust him and put their faith in his leadership. But those of us who were closest to him knew rage simmered just below the surface. Righteous anger that he would unleash the moment he was behind closed doors.
Demons could heal from almost anything, but Leon’s flesh was raw, crisscrossed with deep gashes. The words my father used to inflict pain sounded so ugly, so full of hatred.
“Scissa carne,” he chanted again, and Leon made a sound like a throttled scream. “Cum ardenti sanguine.”
The smell of burning flesh made me nauseous. My eyes flickered quickly toward my mother as she stood beside the demon’s binding circle, muttering. She’d drawn the circle herself; rings, lines, and runes, carefully assembled to contain the powerful hellion within. The spell she uttered bolstered my father’s power since he had none of his own.
There was a brief silence, filled only with Leon’s labored breathing, before my father snapped, “She’s fifteen! A fucking child got away from you! You expect me to see this as anything other than defiance?”
Beside me, my step-brother, Jeremiah, smirked with sadistic satisfaction. My step-sister, Victoria, looked bored, and her mother, Meredith, did too. The suffering in front of them had no impact, as if the wretched screams didn’t even penetrate their ears.
“Scissa carne!”
Across the binding circle, I met my mother’s eyes. Her blonde hair was tied back, her blue eyes dark with power as she wielded her magic. My mother could craft spells without words; with mere intent and focus, she could summon the elements, make objects move and charm them to behave how she wished.
Meanwhile, to use any magic himself, my father needed the little book currently clutched tightly in his hand. A grimoire, passed down through the generations of our family, allowing each subsequent patriarch to not only wield magic, but to control the demon whose sigil was written within.
No one except a few trusted worshippers knew what Leon truly was. He looked almost human; demons usually did. Given the opportunity, demons would kill us in a heartbeat and revel in our pain. Or worse, they would trick humans with irresistible bargains in exchange for ownership over one’s soul.
Once your soul was sold, there was no going back. You would become theirs for eternity, bound to a demon and destined for Hell.
Father said it was a fate worse than death.
Outside the family, people thought Leon was hired by my father from a private security firm. They’d thought the same thing when he served my grandfather, and his father, and so on, all the way back to the source of all this: Morpheus Leighman. The man who started our worship, who discovered the Deep One’s presence.
Like my father, Morpheus had not been a witch. Magic did not come inherently to my father’s bloodline. My mother could use it, but I had been blessed with mere whispers of magic, tangled threads of power that I could scarcely unravel, let alone control.
But as my father often said, a young woman did not need power. She needed an obedient mind and a submissive heart.
Finally, Father stopped. He drew in a deep breath, stroking his hand over his short gray hair.
“Return to your room in the house immediately,” he said, his voice hoarse as he spoke to the demon who lay curled in a bloody heap on the floor. “You are not to leave your binding circle unless I instruct you otherwise.”
Leon’s golden eyes squeezed shut before he vanished with a wisp of smoke. My shoulders slumped, tension I’d been unaware I was holding finally flooding out of me. As Mama knelt down, using a rag to swiftly wipe away the chalk lines of the binding circle, Meredith watched her, nose wrinkled in disgust. She detested us. I was proof of her husband’s infidelity, proof she could never avoid.
Having my father’s wife and his mistress in the same room was a recipe for disaster. Doubtlessly, it was only Father’s foul mood that kept Meredith from saying something rude.
“Tidy yourselves up,” Father snapped, tapping his hand irritably against Jeremiah’s shoulder before roughly straightening his jacket. “All eyes will be on you the moment we step into that room.” His gaze fixed on me, so heavy my shoulders shrank. “Keep yourselves composed. We must reassure them we remain in control.”
“Yes, Father.” My words were so soft, I wasn’t entirely sure if he heard me. We followed him out of the attic. Jeremiah was right at his heels, then Meredith, Victoria, and then my mother and I. Mama’s hands were cold when she clasped mine as we made our way down to the courtroom.
We should have been gathered in St. Thaddeus tonight. It was the first church to be built in Abelaum, over a hundred years ago, and we had claimed it as a place of worship for our God. But the forests around that church and the White Pine mine shaft nearby were still crawling with state and local police, scouring for clues as to what exactly happened to Juniper. Local police were deep in my father’s pocket, but the others were a clear and present danger.
If they found the church, would they find the bloodstains? Would they realize the candles were recently lit, the pews dusted by flowing white robes, the herbal scent of incense still hanging in the air? Would they see my mother’s guilt? My father’s? My sister’s? My own?
Mama’s eyes were open, but her mind was in some far-off place. Powerful witches like her could cast their spiritual selves beyond the Veil, into the vast expanse known as the Betwixt, a place outside of time and space.
A skilled witch like Mama could wander there, but it was dangerous. She had never allowed me to attempt it.
Within the Betwixt, one could see and discover many things. One could walk through time, see into the future or the past, connect with spirits and otherworldly beings, even God Itself.
The courtroom doors slammed open, the entire congregation flinching in fear as my father strode down the aisle toward the podium. The rest of us took our seats at the front of the room: Meredith, Victoria, and Jeremiah on one side, my mother and I on the other.
As my father turned to face the room, the congregation fell silent. Soon, the only sound remaining was the patter of rain on the courthouse roof, interrupted by thunder.
Father spared us a brief glance. The intensity of his gaze withered my insides.
“Tonight, we had planned to gather here in worship and thanks,” he said. “Instead, we gather in sorrow, in repentance. For we have failed our greatest calling.”
Murmurs of horror and fear rippled around the room. Father sighed heavily, gripping the edges of the podium as he looked down upon us: his family, his flock.
Thunder crashed again, the rumble louder than ever. The building shook, and Mama’s hands flinched. We could both feel it: a presence in the back of our minds. Like snakes twining up our spines, like worms burrowing into our bones. God saw everything within this little town, but It was drawn to the magic in my mother and I.
“Someday, our God will rise,” Father said, his eyes fixing on me with a weighted sense of finality. “It will choose a blessed vessel, It will walk among us. It will bless those who have remained loyal, and It will inflict holy suffering upon those who refuse to believe. But first, we must fulfill our duty. We must offer three souls.”
Someone in the crowd was sniffling, their shuddering breaths making me twitch.
“Juniper Kynes was meant to be the first sacrifice,” Father said grimly. “My faithful daughter, Victoria, brought her to us, as gently as one would lead an innocent lamb. But such is the nature of man to fail. Our sacrifice escaped. She defied God, she wasted her bloodshed, she squandered her suffering. So we gather here to beg for forgiveness. And to condemn, wholeheartedly, the great betrayal that has befallen us.”
There was a crack of thunder so loud that several people cried out in despair. Some clutched their chests in terror; others squeezed their eyes shut.
“Who among us is the traitor?” Meredith said, her sharp voice grating on my raw nerves. “There is no place within the Libiri for disloyalty. God sees all.” She nodded determinedly, and although she didn’t glance over at us, my half-siblings did. Victoria’s expression was impossible to read, but Jeremiah’s narrowed eyes were sharp with suspicion.
But my mother and I had done our duty. Mama guided the sacrifice, I bore witness.
Neither of us could have known Juniper would escape. She’d been thrown into a flooded mine, twenty feet down a sheer muddy shaft, then boarded in and left to her fate.
My stomach lurched, twisting at the sickening memories. The screaming, the blood. She’d begged us to stop.
We should have stopped.
Mama’s fingers squeezed tighter in warning. She wasn’t a diviner, as my grandma Winona had been, but she still possessed an uncanny ability to sense my thoughts. My fears bled into hers, festering between us like an infection.
“The betrayer will be found,” my father said, his words heavy as his eyes combed over the crowd. “The Deep One knows their heart, their disloyalty. Retribution will come. Have faith! God’s will cannot be stopped. Juniper may be beyond our reach now, but there are other options from her bloodline.” Whispers spread through the crowd, the name “Marcus” dropping from several lips. “Now, I ask all of you to go directly home. Be cautious, keep your faith close to your heart but not your tongues. I will be speaking with the sheriff tonight. Spare your words if anyone asks what you saw. May the Deep One have mercy on us all.”
“May the Deep One have mercy,” the congregants echoed. My lips were numb as I repeated the words.
As the crowd dispersed, Mama led me out into the hallway. The Historical Society was dark, all the lights turned off except for those in the old courtroom and the entryway. Mama tugged me through the crowd, moving hurriedly, leading me into an empty storage room.
She let go of my hand to pace in the tiny, dark space. I watched her for a moment, waiting for her to say something, but she was wringing her hands silently.
“Mama, what —”
She grasped my arms before I could finish.
“Don’t speak of this to anyone,” she whispered, teary-eyed. “I need to tell you…Everly, you need to know the truth —”
We jumped as the door was shoved open. My father stood there, his eyes alternating between us, his brows drawn sharply together.
“I need to speak with you, Heidi,” he said. “Alone. Now.”
She followed my father back down the hall, to the vacant courtroom. The rest of the congregation was leaving, the somber silence of the crowd saying more than words ever could. No one dared to walk to their cars alone. They went in twos and threes, huddled together, glancing cautiously into the deep shadows beneath the trees.
As I waited for Mama to return, a sharp haunting cry pierced the night. Those who hadn’t yet left the building froze in place, glancing between each other, eyes wide with fear of what lurked in the dark. The Deep One wasn’t the only strange being to inhabit this town. Abelaum was like a vortex; the Veil was thin here, the presence of the Deep One attracting all manner of strange creatures. These creatures were not friendly; they were not the magical fairytale beasts from my childhood story books. They were predators, eternally ravenous, supernaturally strong. Humans made for easy prey.
“They should have eaten her.”
My sister’s voice made me flinch. Before I could turn, she slipped her arms around my waist, embracing me as if to comfort me, her chin resting on my shoulder. But her words were far from comforting.
“Father said it would take powerful magic to hide Juniper from the Eld beasts. Even Leon couldn’t find her.” She smelled like artificial vanilla, her acrylic nails tapping lightly against my collarbone as she held me close. “How is that possible, Ev? Hm? Because the only people in the family with powerful magic are Dad…and your mother.”
She laughed as I jerked away from her hold, drawing my sweater tighter around myself. Less than seventy-two hours ago, she had led Juniper into the forest. She’d given her LSD, waited until the hallucinations took hold, then led Juniper straight to St. Thaddeus.
She’d betrayed her best friend out of loyalty to God. She hadn’t even flinched when Juniper screamed. She hadn’t cried. It was uncanny, but my sister had always been good at playing her part.
It was impossible to know who she truly was. She was fifteen, yet she wore her emotions like masks, picking and choosing at will.
“What are you trying to say?” Even at a low volume, my voice felt too loud. It always felt too loud. But I was meant to be seen and not heard.
She smiled at me tightly, as if the action pained her.
“Maybe I’m not saying anything at all,” she said innocently. “Maybe I’m just trying to figure out where the hell we went wrong.” She stepped closer, that strange expression still frozen on her face. “But you know what? I think I figured it out. Dad made a mistake, sixteen years ago, when he decided to fuck your whore mother.”
The words speared into my chest. Victoria waved her hand dismissively, her voice taking on a breezy tone as she said, “But mistakes happen, and God sees them. It will make sure those mistakes are taken care of.” She reached up, delicately touching a strand of my blonde hair; a mirror image of my mother’s. “You’ll never be the daughter he wanted. No matter how hard your mother tries to sabotage me. Maybe you should start giving some thought to who is going to protect you when she’s gone. Mommy won’t be around forever.”
“It’s time to leave, girls,” Meredith called sharply, waving to us from down the hall. Victoria flicked her brown hair over her shoulder as she turned away, but I remained where I was. Mama was still talking to my father, and part of me didn’t want to leave her alone with him.
Victoria’s words kept echoing in my head.
Who is going to protect you when she’s gone?
Within two short years, I had my answer. When Mama took her own life, she left me alone.
And there was no one at all who could protect me.
