Poison Fruit

Cody fished the key for the padlock to his workshop out of the front pocket of his jeans, which I guess didn’t matter since they were already filthy. Inside the house, he let me turn on the water in the bathroom sink so he could wash his hands without getting soot all over the faucet handles.

“I’m going to take a quick shower and throw these clothes in the washer,” he said. “After that, I think I could sleep. You?”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said. “I’ll wash up when you’re done.”

In the aftermath of our shared bout of hilarity, apprehension set in. Before changing into a tank top and pajama bottoms, I did one last canvass of Cody’s bedroom to make sure there was no cold iron we’d overlooked. Thank God his bed had a wooden frame. It was strange knowing that dauda-dagr was locked away in his workshop. Ever since Hel had given it to me, I’d kept it within easy reach—if not in my belt or my bag, then no more than a few steps away at most. Without access to it, I felt naked and vulnerable. Under the circumstances, I suppose that was a good thing.

Clad in his plaid bathrobe, Cody emerged from the shower as I was stowing the hex charm under my pillow. “Is that it?”

“Yep.”

“What’s in it?” he asked.

“Henbane,” I said. “And my deepest, darkest fear. Other than that I don’t know and I didn’t ask.”

“Here.” Shrugging out of his bathrobe, Cody held it out to me. “Thought you might want to borrow it again.”

“Thanks.” I put it on over my pajamas, trying to ignore the fact that Cody was now bare-chested and in close proximity. “I’ll just wash up and go to bed. Um, Sinclair said you should stay out of my way and let the nightmare run its course. So if you hear me screaming in my sleep or something, don’t try to wake me.”

Green flashed behind his eyes. “If I think you’re in serious danger, I’m not making any promises, Daisy.”

“If I’m screaming or thrashing, it means I’m alive,” I said. “I think that’s pretty much all we’ve got to go on.”

“That and the possibility of permanent psychological trauma,” he said. “Confronting your worst fear? You’re swimming in some deep waters there.”

“Yeah.” I rummaged in my overnight bag for my toothbrush. “Right about now, I wish I had a bad case of arachnophobia. But it is what it is, Cody.”

He nodded. “Good hunting.”

“Thanks.”

After washing my hands and face and brushing my teeth, I hung Cody’s bathrobe on its hook and curled up in his bed, careful not to disturb the leather pouch under my pillow. The house was dark and quiet. I lay motionless, listening for any sound of Cody’s presence in the other room, willing myself to sleep.

In time, I did.

I don’t know how long I slept before the nightmare began. Hours, maybe. It’s hard to say. Time is relative in dreams. I’ve had dreams that seemed to last for an entire day in the seven minutes it took for my alarm to go off after hitting the snooze button.

This one didn’t seem like a nightmare at first. It was one of those dreams that started without a preamble. A mise-en-scène dream. I was standing in a hollow in the dunes, a long stick of driftwood in my hand, surrounded by a ring of people, mostly friends and family but a few others, too.

And I did something terrible.

Ever have a dream where you do something that would be unthinkable in real life in the most casual, nonchalant fashion? A dream where you kill someone, and your only concern is hiding the body so you don’t get caught? It was like that. I didn’t even have a reason for doing what I did. I just did it, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

With the stick of driftwood in my hand, I sketched the sigil to summon my father in the sand, called his name, and invoked my birthright.

For a moment, nothing happened, and I thought to myself, Well, that’s that. I guess it was a lie all along.

And then the dune shuddered beneath my feet. The sigil turned into a funnel-shaped pit, sand draining from it like an hourglass. A bellow of laughter rumbled from somewhere deep beneath me.

The soles of my feet began to tingle. A sense of power rose through me like a steady tide, creeping from my ankles to my knees, to my thighs, rising in a rush when it reached my groin and belly. It filled my chest with brightness; it filled my mouth with words of power and persuasion; it filled my hands with lightning.

And it felt good, so good. I felt a hundred feet tall and crowned with fire, my tail lengthening and lashing like a deadly whip.

It was real.

I laughed aloud for the sheer joy of it.

And then, one by one, the people surrounding me averted their faces. Cody. Jen. Mr. Leary. Mrs. Browne. Sinclair. Casimir.

“It’s all right,” I said to them. “Look, it’s okay!”

Only it wasn’t. Now, only now, did the horrible magnitude of what I’d done strike me, and I desperately wanted to go back and undo it. But it was done. All my joy ebbed away, and I broke into a cold sweat, appalled beyond words by my own action. I’d done it. I’d done it without a thought, and no one would look at me.

Lee. Sandra Sweddon. Stefan. Dawn Evans. Lurine.

My mother was the last, and she did look at me before she turned her face away. She gave me a look of such profound horror and disappointment that it felt like my heart was shattering inside me.

There was even a sound of something vast breaking—but it wasn’t my heart. With a clap of earsplitting thunder, a jagged crack tore open the sky above us. Golden brilliance spilled through it, accompanied by a celestial trumpet blast, a clarion call to arms that vibrated in the very marrow of my bones, announcing that the end of days was upon us.