“How have you done this?” I ask her. “How are you making us crazy? How are you doing it? Is it your tea?”
She laughs and it’s like a cackle. “Of course not, child. I have my old Rom ways, and I adhere to them. Everything will come to pass as it should. Time is fluid and it can change. You can change it. You can change it to the right thing if we just wait long enough.”
“And Dare?”
Sabine shrugs. “He doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the end.”
My veins turn to ice and I don’t understand. All I know is that all along, my memories have been real, even when they haven’t seemed possible. The deva ju, the craziness.
“One for one for one,” Sabine tells me. “You are of Judas, and you must betray your brother in order to set things right. There are sacrifices to be made, girl. You must be strong enough to do it.”
My mother’s words in the book she left come back to me come back to me come back.
May you always have the courage to live free, and the strength to do what is right.
My breath hitches and hitches and hitches, because it seems that my mother was saying to sacrifice Finn, to choose to live free with Dare. But that can’t be right. She told me that I couldn’t be with Dare.
But then things changed,
Again
And again. And who knows anymore?
“You’re the crazy one,” I tell Sabine as I study the look in her eyes, the unsettling, unbalanced gleam. She doesn’t deny it.
The door bursts open and Dare is here, thank God, and he grabs me.
“We’ve got to go, Calla.”
I look at him, and his eyes are wide and full of pain and guilt, and I pull away.
“It’s true?” I ask softly.
“You came to get us? You were going to kill us for Sabine? You were going to kill Finn?”
His dark eyelashes are inky against his cheeks as he closes his eyes and he sighs, so loud. “I was so small when I agreed. She was my mother, and I just wanted her back. Sabine told me that if I participated, my mother would come back. I didn’t know all of this would happen. I didn’t know.”
“But you knew that Finn or I would die,” I press, and his fingers are cold against my own.
He opens his eyes and stares into mine, and I want to dive into his, to swim in them, to float.
“When you’re a child, you don’t understand mortality,” he offers simply. “Not really. And once we started, I couldn’t stop. It was a bullet out of a gun, and I couldn’t put it back. I’d already agreed, and a Roma’s word is a bond.”
He’s part Roma, and I know that now.
“When I realized, as I got older, what it all really meant, I’d already fallen for you. I can’t let it be you. I’ll do anything to stop it.”
“But we’re cursed,” I say quietly, and it feels like the only answer. “You’re Finn’s brother, and I’m Finn’s sister, and I’m a child of incest. Everything has been orchestrated because of some grand belief in Roma magic.”
“It’s not just a belief,” Dare sighs. “I wish it were, but it’s not. Cal… you change things. You’ve changed them over and over your whole life, without even knowing it. You loved your brother so much that you’ve literally changed time to bring him back. It’s because you’re descended from Abel. God made him the Judge of Souls and so are you. You know what is right. You know.”
Sabine watches us and she’s serious and silent.
“I don’t believe you,” I say and it sounds like a whimper.
“You don’t understand anything yet, do you?” Sabine is snide. “Time is fluid and malleable, and you yourself wield the power to change it. It’s a tapestry and we’re the pieces.”
I’m confused and I’m stunned, and Dare is silent and strong and he stares at me.
“This is real,” he tells me. “All along, you’ve known it, but you were afraid you were crazy.”