The Price Guide to the Occult(51)
A faint sound, like that of a ripped seam, caught her attention. She looked down and watched with detached interest as the skin on her legs, as cracked as a dry riverbed, split open. Blood trickled to the floor. She grimaced in disgust.
They didn’t heal, these wounds. Nor poked a red-taloned finger into a particularly deep and ugly gash on her arm, and then smeared the gore across the reflection in the tarnished, gilded mirror.
The skin on her mother’s face was split, tiny black scabs on her cheeks looking like the cracks of a broken cup. She ran her fingers through her hair, and red strands floated to the floor.
She spat blood into the sink.
When she twisted on the bathtub faucet, the spigot coughed and sputtered before a trickle of brown water came out. When the tub was full enough, Nor slid into the cold, dirty water and raked her nails across the scabs on her body. Blood stained the muddy water pink.
Look at what she’d been reduced to. “And for what?” Nor rasped. There was no longer anything saccharine in that voice. Even her own gift — her delicious form of mind control — had waned.
She needed the girl. It had been her spilled blood that had brought him back in the first place, her sacrifice that had started it all. She looked more like him than ever. She also looked like Judd. She’d happily carve out any similarities the girl had to either. She just needed a way to get to her.
A bolt of lightning opened up the sky like a vein. Shortly after, the horizon began to glow red with fire, and Nor saw a spectacle she’d never seen before. She didn’t think there was anything but trees on that side of the island, but shadowy forms towered over the tree line. They were glaring at her with irksome, all-seeing eyes.
The fire spread and the sky grew brighter. Nor dug her fingertips into the nail bed of her opposite hand. Slowly, she pulled out her blackened nails, one by one, then dropped them to the bathroom floor.
Nor awoke with a start, the red of her mother’s blood painted on the insides of her eyelids. Her cheeks burned as if from a fever. Heat licked the side of her body. The room was on fire.
The room was a pyre of heat and smoke and fire. The blaze crept up the window curtains, hissing and popping. Thick tongues of flames spread across the carpet. Only the couch remained untouched by the fiery assault, and Bijou stood at the end of it, barking angrily at the smoke edging around them, stalking its prey.
Terrified, Nor scooped up Bijou and leaped to the center of the room, the only spot free of flame. The blaze immediately engulfed the couch where she and Bijou had just been sleeping. If they were going to get out alive, she had no choice but to brave the inferno. She dashed straight through the fire and headed for the stairs. As she ran, the flames shrank from her; they evaporated like puffs of steam on contact. She didn’t suffer a single burn. Her clothes were untouched, and Bijou’s fur smelled only vaguely like smoke.
With her hair flying behind her and Bijou’s wet nose tucked against her throat, Nor ran up the stairs past the body of a man lying slumped halfway up the steps, its skin black and raw. She plowed through the front door just as the windows of the basement exploded.
“Nor!” A screech rang out, and suddenly Nor was caught in a crushing embrace. “How in the hell are you not dead?” Savvy cried, gripping Nor’s face with freezing hands. Savvy’s tearstained face was smudged with soot, and there was a burn on her arm.
“Here,” Nor said, pressing her hand against the burn. She felt a slight pinch, and the wound started to mend. Savvy stared at her arm in wonder.
“Have you seen Reed?” Nor asked. Savvy pointed across the compound, and Nor breathed a sigh of relief when she saw him, half-hidden by the statue of the woman with the bowl held over her head.
Nor turned back to the house. The fire was a raging monster, a black fire-breathing dragon scaling the roof and dropping burning shingles onto the crowd below. Some people were still in their pajamas. Others had obviously thrown on whatever clothes they could find; one man seemed to be wearing his wife’s housecoat. Many of them were carrying buckets, vases, and watering cans to and from the fountain. Pike, Sena Crowe, and Gage stood knee-deep in the water. They couldn’t fill the containers fast enough.
“What happened?” Nor asked.
“Lightning,” Savvy said, sobbing. “It struck the house, and everyone else could get out, but they’d locked you in the fucking basement. Cliff went in after you.”
“Cliff?”
“Your guard.” Savvy sniffed. “The one who got you out.” She ran her fingers through Nor’s waist-long tresses and pulled away a handful of singed strands. “What did you do to your hair?”
Nor remembered the body on the basement stairs. She felt sick to her stomach. “Savvy, Cliff’s dead.”
“Cliff’s dead?” Savvy wailed.
A whooshing crack filled the air as a great billowing cloud of fire erupted from the roof and spilled onto the neighboring houses. A woman screamed. Another bolt of lightning cracked purple across the blackened sky. Fiery ash rained down on the crowd, and soon everyone was covered in cinders, their faces contorted with so many different emotions. Fear. Grief. Defeat.
Nor set Bijou on the ground and splashed into the fountain. She had always thought that story about Rona and her wooden behemoths — the aegises, their protectors — had been a myth, a story elevated into legend by exaggeration. Nor pressed her hand against the wooden statue’s leg.