Freeks(74)

When no spirits came, I leaned forward and gasped in surprise. I’d spent much of my childhood fantasizing about what possibly could be hidden inside the trunk—everything from cursed candles to skeletons to actual monsters were suspected—but somehow, the small arsenal of weapons that it actually contained had never occurred to me.

The trunk was practically overflowing with weapons of every sort—jewel-encrusted swords, ancient daggers with wooden handles, crossbows with ornate designs, something that looked like an ice pick made out of ivory, and even a pistol.

“Weapons?” I asked, incredulous. “Why did Grandma have all this?”

“I told you,” Mom said, giving me an odd look. “For battling the dark arts.”

Gideon picked up the pistol carefully. “Why did your mother have a Luger?” he asked my mom.

He slid out the magazine, and when he cleared the chamber, a shiny silver bullet popped. After all this time one would’ve thought the silver would be tarnished and dirty, but it sat in the palm of Gideon’s hand, shimmering like it was freshly polished.

“Different enemies require different weapons,” Mom explained absently. She crouched down and began rummaging beneath all the weapons.

“And he’d best be careful.” She cast a sidelong glance at Gideon. “That Luger belonged to one of Hitler’s officers before he was decommissioned for hunting werewolves.”

“Fortunately, being a Nazi isn’t contagious,” Gideon replied dryly, but he set the gun aside on the counter. “How did this come into your mother’s possession?”

Mom waved him off. “Basima never told me how she came by most of these. She fought on the side of good more often than not, but she spent most of her time in the company of many unscrupulous characters.”

I reached for a particularly ornate-looking dagger, and no sooner had my fingers brushed the cold steel than Mom slapped my hand, hard.

“Don’t touch. Many of these weapons are cursed.”

“Gideon got to touch them,” I grumbled, rubbing my hand.

“Lyanka, we talked about this.” Gideon’s voice was soft and careful. “Mara is at an age where you must begin to show her how to use these things. And she should help us with this, because we’ll need it.”

Mom breathed deeply. “Be patient. I’ve spent all my life trying to protect her from this, and now I must ask her to join me.”

“Join you in what?” I glanced between the two of them. “Why are you talking about me like I’m not here?”

“Here it is!” Mom exclaimed, ignoring me for the moment, and lifted out a large book that had been buried underneath the armaments.

It was a little bigger than a record, and three times as thick as anything Stephen King wrote. The cover appeared to be made of leather, stretched so taut it had cracked and been sewn together in several places so it looked like a patchwork Necronomicon.

“This grimoire has been in our family for generations,” Mom explained, wiping the dust off the cover. She stood up and held the book to her chest with one arm, then reached out and took my hand. “Let’s sit and talk.”

I glanced over at Gideon, who offered me a half shrug, and then we both followed my mom over to the table. She dropped the book of magic onto the table with a loud thud, and I took the seat between her and Gideon.

“You know who I am,” Mom said, still holding my hand. “I’ve spent my life talking to the spirits, communing with the dead and those that exist on another plane around us. You know the power that I have, the one that I believe you have.”

I nodded numbly. “I know about your power, but I haven’t really shown much of my own.”

Mom smiled sadly at me, then looked to Gideon. “I discouraged you from getting in touch with your power, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Gideon leaned toward me, resting his arms on the table. “And you know what I can do. That I’m a divining rod for others who have extra senses. I felt yours the day I met you, and it’s been growing stronger as you’ve gotten older, the same way it did for your mother. You have the gift she has.”

“Okay,” I said, growing increasingly uneasy with the way they were talking to me like this. It felt like they were about to tell me they were splitting up or they had cancer or something.

“I thought that I could protect you from what became of Basima, and what’s happened to me,” Mom explained. “Of the darkness. Of the insanity.”

She shook her head. “But there is greater darkness out there. There are dangers that will seek to hurt you because of who you are, because of the gifts you have, and if I don’t teach you to protect yourself…” Mom trailed off, swallowing back her tears.

“The thing that’s stalking us”—Gideon motioned to the swamp behind the camp—“it’s not of this world. I felt it last night, when I barely stopped it from devouring Luka.”

It was starting to feel like all the oxygen had been sucked from the room. The heat, the mustiness from the trunk, everything they were saying—it was all coming together into a heady concoction where I felt out of place and disconnected from everything around me.

Somehow, I managed to ask, “What is it?”

Gideon shook his head. “I’m not sure. I’ve never encountered anything like it before. It felt like…” He furrowed his brow, trying to form the words. “Like a black hole. It sucked in all the energy, becoming this indistinguishable darkness that’s almost impossible to look at directly. But what I do know is that it’s powerful, and it’s very hungry.”