Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(83)

“Use your brain, Sélène,” she said in a low voice. “How do you think I am here with you? We are not flesh. We are observing a moment in time constructed of memories. Your memories. You opened the door and guided me through.”

Was that true? Was this just a piecemeal reconstruction of a series of memories? The first time I’d experienced this, when I saw Dare talking to my parents back at the cabin in California, was that a dormant memory, something my parents had hidden with magick but not stripped away completely?

“Dare,” my mother mumbled. “I couldn’t be happier that you burned that devil up.”

All my muscles turned to stone.

My mother’s smile widened. “Surprised? Yes, I can read your thoughts. I can see all of you now. Aren’t you listening? You invited me inside. We are sharing the same body. You, me, and that monstrous child growing in your belly.”

Oh . . . God.

“Three souls cannot inhabit one body,” my mother said. “Let me show you what power looks likes when the person wielding it knows what she is doing.”

The white walls melted like spring snow. Floorboards fell away. Nighttime swirled around us, and the musty scent of my childhood home in Florida was replaced by damp earth and trees and the mineral scent of red ochre chalk.

Trees. Night. A clearing. A rocky hill in the distance.

Panic shot through me as cool night air chilled my skin. I tried to move, but my hands and ankles were strapped to a post. The metal of a sacrificial oracular bowl cooled the bottoms of my bare feet, waiting to catch my blood.

Bound in Balboa Park. Last September. We were back where my parents had tried to sacrifice me and steal my power. The worst night of my life. Only it was just the two of us here now in the dark. No elemental creatures bound in the great circle before me. No Frater Blue. No father.

“Victoire!” My mother’s laughter echoed off the rocky hill as she spun in a circle with her arms outstretched, face tilted up to a full moon.

I struggled against my bonds as hysteria blotted out reason. Rope bit into my wrists and made my fingers tingle. I tried to rock the post and the heavy oracular bowl and only managed to draw my mother’s attention. She halted her swirling dance and stalked toward me.

“This is how you wield power,” she said, getting in my face. “You are in my memories now.”

But it wasn’t a memory—not exactly. Things were missing. I wasn’t naked and covered in a red veil. The ritual circle wasn’t charged.

“Why do I need protection?” my mother answered, reading my thoughts. “Your devil lover isn’t coming to save you this time. After I kill your soul, I will take control of your reptile body and lay waste to him with fire, exactly as you destroyed Dare. Then I will use magick to snuff out the life of your child.”

I snarled and strained to bite her cheek, but she jerked out of my reach, laughing.

This wasn’t actually happening, no matter how real it felt. I had to get control of myself and think. But how could I, when she was listening to my thoughts?

“Not just your thoughts,” she said. “I see everything. All your mistakes. All your fears. And all your weaknesses. Your friends and so-called family, the mundane life you’ve cobbled together from the scraps I left you and the misplaced loyalty you’ve given away freely. I see it all, Sélène.”

Unbidden images of Lon and Jupe popped into my head. I tried to shake them away, but it was impossible. My thoughts were tangled, tripping on her words. But when she sighed and closed her eyes with a look of deep satisfaction settling on her face, I remembered Lon telling me how to keep him out of my thoughts when he was transmutated.

If we were really inside my body, then why was I giving her control?

My mother’s eyes snapped open.

I immediately put up a barrier in my head.

“Go on,” she said, “if that makes you feel better. I don’t need your memories.”

“Are you sure? Because it seems pretty barren out here. Why did you choose not to remember Dad?”

“Alexander is dead. He was weak, and I am strong.”

An oblong shape glinted on the ground between us. She stooped to pick it up and showed it to me: the ceremonial dagger she’d tried to use on me the first time I’d been tied up here. The blade gleamed in the moonlight beneath the white of her smile.

“That’s not how I see it,” I said, ignoring the fear gnashing at the edges of my thoughts.

“See what?”

“You said Dad was weak and you’re strong. But all I see is a middle-aged woman whose life is filled with failure. You failed to create a Moonchild when you had my brother. You failed with your stupid idea to unite all the occult orders. You failed when you tried to take over all the orders by force—double fail, really, because you got caught by savages instead of ruling over the occult world like some kind of pope.”

Defensive anger flared behind her eyes. “I am not in jail.”

“No, but you’re a wanted felon who had to leave the order in disgrace and abandon your home to live like a rat. What else? You failed to sacrifice me and siphon my powers last year. You failed to keep your husband alive in the Æthyr.”

“But I slaughtered the demon who killed him.”

“Who cares? What do you have now? The shoddy clothes on your back? You have no family, no friends, no roof over your head. Where’s your occult army? No one’s here to defend you. No one’s got your back. Everything you’ve tried to accomplish has backfired. Hell, even your stupid publishing career was a flop—you never had a single book hit the bestseller lists.”