Girl One(124)

“No,” I said instead. “If you leave here, it’s going to be your choice.” For most of her life, Fiona had been under Bellanger’s control. I wasn’t going to take away her decisions again. Around us, the wall of flames spasmed and cinched like a sudden muscle twitch.

I turned. I took my mother’s hand. We began walking out of the chapel together, and I didn’t let myself look back. Would Fiona follow us? I was so intently aware of Fiona behind me that I was confused when I heard my name shouted—not behind me, but in front of me.

It was Cate. Cate. Running into the chapel, her gaze fixed right on me. I was furious at her for returning, and then I was overwhelmed with joy, because of course she came back. Of course she wouldn’t have walked out of the flames without me. But Cate’s glance slipped past me, and she was pointing, her face wide open with horror, and I turned, thinking Fiona was in danger—

Everything happened too fast. A series of images and impressions.

Bellanger was on his knees, but he held a revolver, aimed at me. His face was so pale and distant that he barely seemed conscious. His hand didn’t shake. The revolver. Orange Shirt’s gun. That’s where it’d ended up. I acknowledged this in a flash of quick, instinctive understanding, realizing that I’d let him out of my control. And then—

The gunshot cracked through the noise. Instinctively, I looked down at myself, searching for the blood. Nothing. I turned around to Cate, who wouldn’t look at me, her face pulled tight with shock. Confused, I turned to my mother. She wasn’t there. I had to look down. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t: a drumbeat in my head.

I did. I looked down.

My mother on the ground, crumpled. A single red blot in the center of her forehead, her eyes glassy and unseeing. I’d just gotten her back. I’d just gotten her back and now she was gone. The shock of it brought me to my knees, my stomach hollowed out. I reached for her, hand shaking. I pulled her into my lap. I could feel how empty she was, all that stubborn life gone, the brilliant brain I’d barely understood already sinking into blackness. I put my hand on her stomach, imagining myself nestled there, decades ago, the impossible product of her impossible dreams. Safe inside her.

“You take something from me,” Bellanger said, and he didn’t even sound triumphant. He sounded exhausted. “I take something from you.”

I opened my mouth and nothing came out but a wail of grief and anger. I had to tell him to drop the gun, and I couldn’t find the words. As I watched, the revolver was yanked from his hand by an invisible force, sent spinning across the floor, out of anybody’s reach. Fiona looked to me and my mother, her eyes wide, fattened with flames.

Cate knelt beside me. I thought she’d reach for me, and I couldn’t bear to be touched right now. I didn’t want to be reminded I was still here. But she reached for my mother instead. Gently, she ran her hand over my mother’s forehead, like she was smoothing back her hair. Cate’s eyes fluttered closed, her lips drooped open. The rhythm of her hand kept up, steady, her skin vivid and alive against my mother’s quickly fading flesh. I watched, heartbeat dull against my temples, waiting for something. Waiting for my mother’s eyelids to flutter. Waiting for her to gasp for air.

Nothing. Blood was smeared on my mother’s forehead now, matted through her hair. The shot had been so direct. My mother didn’t have any thin threads connecting her to the world anymore. She was already gone, and even if Cate thrust her hand through the layer separating life and death, my mother’s fingertips were too far down to reach hers.

“Cate—” I said, my voice broken. “It’s hopeless.”

She didn’t answer. I could see in her face that she was hurting, sweat beading her forehead too thickly, lips gone bluish. She’d end up killing herself too if she kept this up.

Movement behind me. I realized that Fiona had approached. She stood over Cate, face blank, watching. Watching. I wanted to shout at her to get away, but I didn’t have the energy. Fiona reached out a hand. Delicately, she touched Cate’s shoulder. I saw Cate twitch slightly, like she’d been brushed by a cold breeze. Her face loosened for a second, then she drew a deep breath. Her hand stilled. She pressed her palm hard against my mother’s forehead. They stood arranged like that: Cate connected to my mother, Fiona connected to Cate.

All three of their faces were glowing in the firelight, but it seemed to come from inside their skin, a buried source of radiance.

I looked back at Bellanger. I wanted to see him seeing them. Watching them undo what he’d done to my mother. His eyes were wide with awe.

My mother opened her eyes. She gasped. Cate fell backward as if she’d been pushed, but she was half laughing, catching herself on her elbows. I said my mother’s name and she turned her head immediately, seeking out my voice. She looked perfect. The gunshot wound had been absorbed back into her skin, and she was glowing, the fatigue scrubbed away from beneath her eyes, her cheeks flushed and eyes alert. As if she’d had the past few weeks erased from her body’s memory. “What happened?” she whispered.

“Magic,” Cate said, her whole face alive. “It was magic.”

My mother repeated the word silently, tasting it in her mouth. Fiona looked from one of them to the other, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. It seemed impossible that she wasn’t responding on a bone-deep level to the sheer power of this: a Mother lost, a Mother brought back.