I imprinted myself on it—pure focus from years of training myself not to read objects with a casual touch.
My head rang with the force of its dissent. It didn’t want to share; didn’t want to help. It wanted to take and devour, as the flames had done.
For an eternity, we struggled—fought.
I didn’t know if I could win.
Pain became a constant, and then—
The images I sought came pouring through me. The house gave me back my own uncertainty and terror; it gave me my mother’s anger and determination. She hadn’t been afraid. The now-broken windows of our house became my eyes. I watched as they came from the woods; twelve, in dark robes, hoods pulled forward to mask their faces.
They mounted the stairs and did not knock. A woman opened the door for them, then slammed it in their faces. They argued on the porch, brands raised. The tallest of them shook his head, and then they took the door down with their shoulders.
My mother was dead when they reached her. But I’d already known that. I’d lived her death, where she gave everything she was to me in a final working. It wasn’t her fault that I was broken.
I watched with the house’s peculiar detachment as they carried out a ritual around her body, a circle of twelve in dark robes, lighting candles. I could not hear their chants, but I felt the dark energy curling through the walls, twisting what had been good. I tried to moan, but walls had no mouths.
The twelve poured something from a red can—gas perhaps—and then set the place alight, after they completed their night’s work. Nobody stayed to watch the fire. They melted into the woods while my body curled and blackened, killing heat exploding my windows outward.
Death. Vengeance. A house could crave such things until it achieved something like sentience. It had me, and it did not mean to let me go. Helpless, I twisted, immolated like one condemned to hell.
I’d assumed too much. This was more than I could manage, and I wasn’t coming out. Satisfied with my torment, the house showed me the scene again and again while I burnt. It craved suffering, and I served.
There was something wet on my cheek, sloppy, small, and insistent. Though I wanted desperately to drop down the dark hole, the tiny thing wouldn’t let me. It yapped insistently and tugged on my hair. Such devotion touched me and it kept me tethered, despite the pain and nausea.
Then I heard voices from far away. It sounded like a quarrel, but I couldn’t make out the words. I sailed down the dark tunnel, expecting to find those I’d lost, and emerged on the other side. The sky was heavy, overcast. Did it rain in hell?
Jesse’s taut face flickered into sight. I tried to sit up, and the full anguish of my maimed hand hit me like a fist in the stomach. I vomited into the damp leaves where I lay, retching so hard that I felt as if I were turning inside out. Someone held my head and murmured. Wracked with dry heaves, I moaned. I couldn’t keep my eyes open; it was too much. Without lifting a hand to save myself, I sank.
I surfaced to an argument. Someone’s arms were around me. I recognized his scent before I opened my eyes.
“We should get her the fuck out of Kilmer,” Jesse was saying. “She’s been out for three hours, and that burn on her palm needs medical attention.”
I was lying on the mattress I’d surrendered to Shannon, and I felt as though I’d been hit by a truck. That was ameliorated slightly by feeling Chance beside me.
“If you touch her, I’ll kill you,” Chance said conversationally. “The doctors won’t know what to do with her. They’ll run tests, stick her with needles, pump her full of drugs, and then say she’s a medical mystery.” He took a breath, as if trying to rein back his protective instincts. “You don’t understand how much she hates hospitals. Just give her time, all right? Corine is strong. If I didn’t think she could do it, I’d have tried to talk her out of it. Trust her to know her own limits.”
Joy came streaming through me like sunlight.
“I’m okay,” I tried to mumble. It came out unintelligible, but the sign of life rendered both men speechless, I assumed with relief.
Eventually I got my eyes open. Everything looked strange and distant, as if I peered through a gauzy veil. My hand throbbed like a son of a bitch.
Chance’s arms tightened around me, and I didn’t try to get away. “Shannon, get the salve I left in the living room.”
Motion flickered at the edges of my vision, but I still couldn’t focus right. She must have fetched it, though, because I felt him applying the ointment to my injured palm as he’d done so many times before. His mother’s remedy soothed the worst of the pain. More than once, I’d considered the cream magickal. Now I suspected it just might be. “What happened?” I asked. That time, the words came out more or less as I intended.
“You were . . . inside a long time. And the pain—” Jesse’s voice actually broke. “Christ Almighty, Corine.”
“So we pulled your hand off the wall,” Shannon continued. “But I wasn’t sure we did it fast enough, ’cause it didn’t seem to do much good. You puked and then passed out.”
“It’s an evil place,” I said, low. “Hungry. But it’s different than what lives in the wood.”
“The site needs to be cleansed,” Jesse agreed. “But that’s not our first priority.”
I acknowledged that with a tired nod. My stomach still felt queer and queasy. I was in no condition to argue with anybody about anything.
Shannon added, “You should have seen Chance. He was freakin’ out.”
Chance gave a wry half smile, but he didn’t deny it. “So we came back here to wait it out. Butch is relieved to see you awake, let me tell you.”
The dog jumped up onto the mattress and licked the back of my uninjured hand. He yapped once as if to corroborate. In response, still too shaky to get up, I stroked his head.
Shannon sat down at the end of the mattress. “Jesse wanted to take you to the hospital. I was starting to think maybe we should. You gonna tell us what happened out there?”
“Water, first, please.” My throat ached as if I had really survived a fire.
I drained two full glasses before I felt any better and pulled away from Chance.
Jesse settled near Shannon, ready to listen. I took that as my cue and set the empty glass on the floor beside me.
“Just tell me it was worth it.” Saldana stared at his hands. His voice sounded hoarse, raw. “Tell me you learned something. Tell me you didn’t go through that for nothing.”
What he really meant was,
I related what I’d seen in bare-bones terms. There was no point in expressing how bad it had been; Jesse knew, and the other two had some idea, based on my reaction after.
“So,” I concluded, “they performed a ritual around my mother’s body.” It hurt so much to speak the truth. “She killed herself before they came in.”
No wonder I’d never felt even a whisper of her. According to nearly every religion’s lore, suicides went straight to the worst circle in hell—and they didn’t get day passes to come whisper reassurances to the living.
“Why would she?” Shannon asked.