Banishing the Dark
Page 79

“Cady said she was going to let her mom take her body,” Jupe said. “Does that mean her mom’s soul is inside her?”
Dad’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two frozen women. “I’m not sure.”
“Maybe they swapped bodies, like some kind of bad ’80s movie,” Jupe suggested.
Dad shook his head. “Cady looked like this yesterday, when she had a . . . vision.”
“What kind of vision?”
Dad held his shotgun as if he wasn’t sure if he should be aiming it or not. “Like an out-of-body experience. She traveled somewhere.”
“Where?” Jupe asked. “Do you think she took her mom back into the Æthyr?”
“She is still on this plane,” a pained voice said at their feet. “I can feel her, but I cannot hear her anymore. I cannot verify exactly where she is or whether her mother has control over her, and I am not sure if I can locate her in this state of injury.”
Jupe bent down to inspect Priya. “Dude, are you okay?”
“I need to heal, or I won’t be able to fly again,” he said through gritted pointy teeth.
“We know healers. I can call one,” Jupe offered.
Priya’s skin crackled with static. “I can find a healer in the Æthyr, but I cannot stay here much longer. And if I leave, Enola may return with me.”
For a moment, Jupe thought this was the best idea in the world. But if Cady’s mom returned with Priya, she might kill him. Or torture him and use him to fly back down here again. Or if she was inside Cady’s body right now, she might try to take Cady’s soul along with her.
Crap. There were too many possibilities. But he suddenly thought of one that might be the answer to all of them.
“Shoot her mom’s body,” Jupe said to his dad. “You have a clear shot—just shoot her.”
Leticia shook her head. “I don’t think you should. If you destroy the mother’s body while the soul is inside Cady’s body, will the soul be trapped?”
“Crap,” Jupe said. She might have a point.
“And what if they’ve swapped bodies?” she said. “You might be killing Cady’s soul.”
“When magick is present, anything is possible,” Priya mumbled.
Okay, now Jupe was right back to being overwhelmed by possibilities. “What do you think, Dad?”
He didn’t answer. Just stared at Cady with a helpless expression.
Leticia shook her head as if she was unsure about all of it. “This is strange magick.”
“It’s not magick,” his dad said. “It’s one of Cady’s knacks.”
“She’s not human,” Leticia said, flicking a glance from his dad to him.
No use denying it now. Not in the middle of all this. “We’re Earthbounds,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but it’s not something we usually talk about with, well, you know—”
“Humans,” she finished.
He nodded. When she didn’t look at him, he felt a fresh burst of panic in his gut. Because they couldn’t see halos, most humans didn’t believe Earthbounds really existed. Cady said half of her order didn’t, which was stupid, because they were all about summoning demons from the Æthyr. Leticia had never mentioned the subject, so he didn’t know how she felt about it.
Or how she felt about him, now that she knew the truth.
But what could he do? She either accepted it or she didn’t. Knowing this didn’t make him feel any less anxious; he liked her way too much.
Exhaling heavily, he studied Cady’s frozen scaly body, partly scared, partly worried, and a little bit amazed. It was so quiet. Even Foxglove had stopped barking. Was that a good sign? He wanted to ask about the baby, what with all this talk of soul swapping, but he didn’t want to worry his dad. Dude was already on edge.
“She sort of looks like a dragon.”
Jupe glanced at Leticia, heart thudding in his chest. She flashed him the tiniest, quickest smile he’d ever seen. But it was just enough to give him hope—about her, about him and her together, and about this whole damn mess.
“Oh, Mistress,” Priya moaned. “I have failed you again.”
Jesus, what a whiner. Jupe glanced down at the guardian, who was still struggling to stay on this plane. Then Jupe turned to his dad, who looked as if he was seconds away from a heart attack.
“Come on, people, have a little faith,” Jupe told them. “I mean, it’s Cady. And she’s pretty damn strong. She survived that fight with Dare, and she’s rescued a lot of people. She pulled me down off that roof last fall, and she went girl-on-girl with Yvonne at Christmas. Oh, and she beat the crap out of that girl magician with the school desk—and that was before she could shift into a dragon.” He flashed Leticia a little smile of his own and waggled his eyebrows at her, because just saying all this out loud made him feel a million times better.
“If she can do all that,” he added, “surely she can handle one crazy mother.”
White walls surrounded me. I stood next to a perfectly made double bed, which would have perfectly tucked hospital corners if I lifted up the plain bedspread to check. His-and-hers closet doors were both shut, but no doubt the space behind them contained neat rows of perfectly pressed clothes.
The blinds were tightly shut, just as they were in the rest of the house, to hide dark secrets from snooping neighbors. On the surface, they wouldn’t have seen much if they’d been able to peep inside: no decorations, no paintings, no framed photos—not in here. Those would be out in the living room, to prove to visitors that we were a Normal Family and that there was nothing to see here, move along.