The air smelled of charred frankincense and pungent cinnamon. Smoke drifted before my half-lidded eyes as I inhaled, filling my lungs until they ached.
Distantly, a clock ticked. It was my lifeline, the measure by which I knew I was still alive and not merely a ghost drifting through the Betwixt.
The Veil was thin. Midnight was approaching.
There were whispers all around me. Some kind, some cruel. My vision was little more than a haze of white smoke, and the edges of my limbs felt fuzzy, almost incorporeal.
Tick, tick, tick. A countdown. But where it started, and when it would end, I had no idea.
The wolf was coming.
When I stretched out my mind, I could sense my father’s energy. It presented itself to me like a bad taste in my mouth, a smell in my nostrils that made my stomach twist with anxiety.
Callum was close. In reality, where my body sat still and silent like an empty husk, he wouldn’t take his eyes off me for even a moment.
If something went wrong, he would know. He would guide me back.
Tick, tick, tick.
The scent of blood flooded my nose. The wolf had arrived.
My father’s energy churned, like the air before a storm. I sensed anger. Rage. It bubbled up inside me, like a pot boiling over. Hatred. It sunk its claws into my skin, it ripped and tore at my chest like a predator trying to claw its way out.
With a sharp gasp, my eyes flew open. The world twisted and spun, and I slumped to the side. But Callum’s arms swiftly wrapped around me from behind, holding me tight, squeezing me as I came back to reality.
“Deep breaths, darling. You’re alright.”
It was several moments before I could control my tongue enough to speak. And when I did, all I managed to choke out was, “He’s dead. She did it. He’s finally dead.”
My father was barely recognizable.
His skin had a gray pallor, with a hardened sheen like porcelain. He was lying at a strange angle in the little garden shed outside his house, slumped against the wall, body broken. Blood had pooled beneath him, sinking slowly into the concrete floor. His glassy eyes stared into nothingness.
A pistol was in his hand. A weak attempt at making this look like a suicide. But a shot to the head didn’t break one’s legs in multiple places.
As the metallic stench of blood filled my nose, I felt as if I had stepped outside my body and was drifting through the Betwixt again. There but not there. Body and mind gone numb.
I withdrew a syringe from my pocket.
“Are you alright, Everly?” Callum’s voice seemed far away. It shook the silence of the night, even though he spoke softly. The distant sounds of a party drifted through the air from the house — my family’s house. Doubtlessly, Victoria and Jeremiah didn’t even know our father was dead yet.
But when they did…when they discovered this…
All hell would break loose. Without Kent’s careful control, no one within the Libiri was safe.
“I’m fine,” I said. It felt like a lie as it rolled off my tongue, and I frowned. This wasn’t sadness coursing through me, it wasn’t regret. There were no tears in my eyes and no tightness in my chest. Before I could think too hard about it, I jabbed the syringe into my father’s leg and pulled the plunger back, filling it with his blood.
“It feels appropriate that the man who wanted to free the God most will help make the weapon to kill It,” I said.
After capping the syringe and tucking it into my bag, I hesitated to leave. If I was going to say goodbye, now would be the time. My father was gone, but his legacy was not. My thoughts kept swirling, round and round like water being sucked down a drain. I thought of all the cruel things he’d said to me. All the times he’d turned his back when he knew how Meredith was treating me. How he manipulated my mother, his children, his wife.
Surely, there was something good. A memory I could hold on to. Like the day when, as a child, he’d taken me to the pier at Pike’s Place Market. Just the two of us. We took the ferry across the lake, got ice cream cones and walked together through the bustling market. He took a photo of me sitting on top of Rachel the golden piggy bank, and there was a brief period of time where the photo was framed in his office.
But there were no more photos of me in the house when I left. Childhood memories, high school dances, accomplishments big and small —everything I did was forgotten. Inconsequential.
Maybe he loved me once. Maybe he tried.
Maybe I’d only ever been a means to an end.
That was close enough to a goodbye. If I had barely been his daughter, then he had barely been my father, too.
Callum was waiting for me outside the shed. Leaning my head against his shoulder as I came to stand beside him, I listened to the distant music emanating from the house. Victoria had been throwing those parties every Halloween for years, but I’d stopped attending after the last time she’d used the occasion to play a nasty trick on me.
Things were so different this year. In the space of just a few months, my entire life had been turned on its head. Everything had changed. I had changed.
“We should go back,” I said. “We need to complete the ritual tonight.”
“As my lady wishes.” His arm wrapped around my shoulders. We weren’t far from the house, and he was keeping a careful eye out for anyone snooping around. Juniper and Zane had already left, disappearing into the night once the deed was done.
“Do you grieve for him?” he said.
“No. I’ve spent most of my life grieving for him. Wondering why he didn’t love me. Why I wasn’t enough. Wondering how he could possibly look at his family, his children, like we were all just assets for his mission.” Part of me wanted to cry. But those tears were behind a wall I couldn’t seem to break down. “But I think my grandfather treated him the same way. And my great-grandfather before that.”
Taking a deep breath of the crisp night air, a strange but comforting feeling washed over me. The magic in the air had shifted and the rot that infected this place had shrunk, if only a little. We were standing upon a precipice, our toes moving ever closer to the edge.
Either the edge would crumble beneath our feet, or we would leap into the unknown. But the events set in motion could not be undone.
“This family has been cursed for six generations,” I said. “Passed down from parent to child, every generation sowing the same rotten seeds. But I’ll break it. It ends with me.”
