“Do you understand what it means?” Abraham knew the words meant everything to her, and she clung to his as if they were part of the prophecy. “The first Natural born into the Duchannes family would be Dark, a Cataclyst.” He was talking about her. “But the second will have a choice. She can Claim herself.”
Sarafine found the courage to ask the question eating away at her. “Why are you helping me?”
Abraham smiled. “I have a boy of my own, not much older than Lena. Your father is raising him. His parents abandoned him because he has some very unusual powers. And he has a destiny as well.”
“But I don’t want my daughter to go Dark.”
“I don’t think you truly understand Darkness. Your mind has been poisoned by Light Casters. Light and Dark are two sides of the same coin.”
Part of Sarafine wondered if he was right. She prayed he was.
Abraham was also teaching her how to control the urges and the voices. There was only one way to exorcise them. Sarafine set fires, burned down huge cornfields and stretches of forests. It was a relief to allow her powers free reign. And no one got hurt.
But the voices still came for her, whispering the same word again and again.
Burn.
When the voices weren’t haunting her, she could hear Abraham in her head, bits and pieces of their conversations looping over and over again: “Light Casters are worse than Mortals. Filled with jealousy because their powers are inferior, they want to dilute our bloodlines with Mortal blood. But the Order of Things will not allow it.” Late at night, some of the words made sense. “Light Casters reject the Dark Fire, from which all power comes.” Some she tried to force deep into the shadows of her mind. “If they were strong enough, they would kill us all.”
I was lying on the floor of my trashed bedroom, staring at my sky blue ceiling. Lucille was sitting on my chest, licking her paws.
Lena’s voice found its way into my mind so quietly I almost didn’t hear it.
She was doing it for me. She loved me.
I didn’t know what to say. It was true, but it wasn’t that simple. Sarafine was sinking deeper and deeper into darkness in every vision.
I know she loved you, L. I just don’t think she could fight what was happening to her. I couldn’t believe I was defending the woman who had killed my mom. But Izabel wasn’t Sarafine, at least not right away. Sarafine killed Izabel, just like she killed my mother.
Abraham was what happened to her.
Lena was looking for someone to blame. We all were.
I heard pages turning.
Lena, don’t touch it!
Don’t worry. It doesn’t trigger the visions every time.
I thought about the Arclight, the way it pulled me out of this world and into another randomly. What I didn’t want to think about was the last thing Lena said—every time. How many times had she opened Sarafine’s book? Lena was Kelting again before I could decide whether or not to ask.
This one’s my favorite. She wrote it over and over inside the covers. “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.”
I wondered whose heart Sarafine had meant.
Maybe it was her own.
11.24
More Wrong Than Right
It was Thanksgiving Day, which meant two things.
A visit from my Aunt Caroline.
And the annual bake-off between Amma’s pecan pie, Amma’s apple pie, and Amma’s pumpkin pie. Amma always won, but the competition was fierce, and the judging the subject of lots of noise around the table.
I was looking forward to it more than usual this year. It was the first time Amma had baked a pie in months, and part of me suspected the only reason she’d done it today was so no one else would notice. But I didn’t care. Between my dad dressed in his sport coat instead of pajamas like last year, Aunt Caroline and Marian playing Scrabble with the Sisters, and the smell of pies in the oven, I almost forgot about the lubbers and the heat, and my great-aunt missing from the table. The hard part was that it reminded me of all the other things I’d been forgetting lately—the things I hadn’t meant to forget. I wondered how much longer I would be able to remember.
There was only one person I could think of who might know the answer to that question.
I stood in front of Amma’s bedroom door for a good minute before I knocked. Getting answers out of Amma was like pulling teeth, if the teeth belonged to a gator. She had always kept secrets. It was as much a part of her as her Red Hots and crossword puzzles, her tool apron and her superstitions. Maybe it was part of being a Seer, too. But this was different.
I’d never seen her walk away from the stove on Thanksgiving while her pies were still baking, or skip making Uncle Abner’s lemon meringue altogether. It was time to grow those kneecaps.
I reached up to knock.