Near midnight, Matthew and I had holed up in the top floor of the watchtower. We sat facing each other, the toes of our boots touching. We spoke with hushed voices, as we had in the back of that van with Jack and Selena.
A gas lantern flickered light. Outside, a storm raged. Cyclops stood watch below.
“I’m ready.” To take on psychotic mass murderers. To head into the skies with a winged boy. A gust rocked the watchtower, making it shudder. Not exactly the greatest conditions to fly in. . . .
After Selena and I had secured Gabriel’s help, I’d checked on the mare (doing much better; still pissed at me), then headed to the tent Jack shared with Matthew.
I’d tried to rest, but as soon as I lay down on Jack’s cot, his familiar, pulse-quickening scent had surrounded me. I’d alternated between bouts of missing him and jolts of panic about his imprisonment.
There’d been little sleep.
“Do you want to go tonight?” I asked Matthew.
He shrugged, like I’d asked him to go grab a slice. “Got stuff to do.”
“Like what?”
“Stuff,” he answered, sounding like such a teenage boy.
“Will you tell me about the Lovers? Anything at all?”
“Duke and Duchess Most Perverse.” He lowered his voice even more. “Their card’s upside down. Reverse. Perverse.”
“But what does that mean?”
He rocked forward and back. “Animus, animal passions, disharmony, conflict, jealousy. When they say love, they mean destroy. They want retribution because they chronicle and remember.”
“What are their powers?”
His rocking slowed. “They don’t use them as they have.”
“What did you mean about smite, fall, mad, and struck?”
He nodded. “Sometimes the world spins in reverse. Sometimes battles do too. The word carousel means little battle.”
I nodded back as if that made sense. “Matthew, what will they do to Jack if I fail? Will they mesmerize him? Control his mind?”
“They are vain. They practice their craft. With sharp tools, they remove things, discard them, transform people. You begin as one thing and die as another.” A gust punctuated his low words.
Chills skittered over me. Here we sat in a tree-house type structure, telling scary stories by lantern light. As kids used to.
Post-apocalypse, all the stories were real.
“You don’t want to know more about their craft.” Matthew shivered. “I didn’t. Power is your burden; knowledge is mine.”
“What power?”
“You have more abilities now.”
Though I grew weaker overall from lack of sunlight, I had learned a new skill.
When I’d been in the gardens beneath Death’s home, preparing for the Devil’s attack, I’d unwittingly taken the knowledge of those plants into me—along with all their relatives.
Before, I’d revived and controlled plants and trees, but I’d never known them. Now I could recreate them without seed; I could generate differing spores to make one sleep for a time—or forever. The same with the toxin on my lips.
“Phytogenesis,” I said.
“Phytogenesis,” he echoed solemnly.
“Did you plan for me to fight Ogen? So I’d be among all that green as blood was spilling?” Trusting him is a free fall.
“Claimed your crown yet?”
My hundredth frown of the night. “Like on my card?” The Empress tableau and Tarot card depicted her/me with a crown of twelve brilliant stars. “Is that what you meant?”
He stared at his hand. Subject closed.
Okay . . . “Even when I fought Ogen, I spared Death and Lark. I controlled the red witch.” Matthew should give me props.
“You can muzzle her, but can you invoke?” Or none at all.
Invoke the witch? “She comes out when I’m under attack.” Pain drew her in a hurry. Fury as well. “It’s kind of automatic. Why would I invoke her?”
“Jack is missing.”
I sighed, resigned to letting him steer our conversation. “Yes, he is.”
“Your heart aches again. His does too. Hopes. High. Dashed. Love. He reflects over his life.”
“Like what?”
“Crossroads and missed opportunities. He has more regrets than the very old. Wishes he’d never lied to you.”
“So do I.” He’d lied with as much skill as he read people. I rose and walked over to the lookout slot, scanning as if I could see him.
Even though I feared I could never trust him again, I still loved him.
“He wishes he could have seen you just one last time.” Matthew’s tone turned sly. “I could show you his reflections.”
Trespass in Jack’s mind? But then, he had listened to the tape of my life story—without permission. “What he’s thinking about right now? Show me.”
“From his eyes,” Matthew whispered.
A vision began to play, so immersive that the world around me faded away. As Jack’s memory became my own, I was transported into the ramshackle cabin he’d shared with his mother. Through an open doorway, I could smell the bayou, could hear frogs and cicadas.
His mother was smiling down at him. She’d had stunning good looks, with her tanned skin, high cheekbones, and long raven hair. Jack had gotten his coloring from her.
But shadows laced her gray eyes as she introduced him to two visitors.
Maman calls me over to meet them: a middle-aged woman and a girl around my age, maybe eight or so. Everyone says Maman and I are dirt poor, but this pair doan look like they’re doing much better.
“Jack, this is Eula and her daughter, Clotile. Clotile’s your half sister.”
She’d been tiny, all skinny legs and big soulful eyes. Sadness filled me because I knew Clotile’s ultimate fate.
Less than nine years from that day, she would survive an apocalypse—only to be captured by Vincent and Violet.
Clotile had escaped them, just long enough to shoot herself. Jack still didn’t know why. Had she committed suicide to give him a chance to get free? Or because she couldn’t live with what the Lovers had done to her?
I tell Maman, “I doan have a sister.” I got a younger half brother though. Earlier this summer, Maman had driven us all the way to Sterling to show me my father’s mansion. She said it should’ve been ours. We’d watched Radcliffe and his other son, Brandon, tossing a football in the front yard.
My half brother kind of looked like me. But this girl’s scrawny with light brown hair and pale skin.