“I did not kidnap them.”
To even have to say it felt stinging and backhanded, as if I were having to prove something to my estranged aunt, and her unflinching gaze seemed to be pressing salt into the open wound she had scored onto my chest. As if I could have ever been capable of doing that. She searched my face, long and hard and unforgivingly. It felt like she wanted to scrape my face raw with that silly little detective badge of hers, to peel back the layers of myself to get to some sort of evil root that maybe she herself had placed there, or that someone else had, that would make things easier to explain. There was no easy way to explain how or why your loved ones vanished in the night three days ago, now. There would be no easy explanation that could be wrapped up neatly and smartly like a well-received gift. I ran my hand along Sacha’s spine, hoping that it would ground me, but my familiar simply stared at me with eyes that were as round and flat as two golden coins.
Finally, the coldness in her face seemed to lessen from a blizzard to more of a dull ache. “All right.”
My head was already pounding from the few moments I had been in Camille’s presence, and I had to squint at her against the light that swept outwards from the burning fireplace from my living room. “All right, what?”
“All right, Maëlle. You’re coming with me. To the house where they were last seen. I don’t trust any of what Cerise is saying. She may be, what, eleven, but she must know where her parents are if they were taken at the same time. I am bound by law to do a tactful and…corporeal…investigation, but you, Mae, are not.”
I ignored her quip at my niece, and focused more on what she was implying: I was almost unsure of what I was hearing. “You want me to…actually do it?”
Camille’s mouth twitched downwards into the beginning of a frown. “Yes. If you still recall any of what I taught you.”
I laughed despite myself, a short bark that bordered more toward something sardonic. “That’s bold. Don’t patronize me. You’re the one who left the craft.” The ‘left me’ part was left unsaid, but I felt it burning across my tongue as if I had lashed it out of myself like a molten whip. “I do hope that being a detective has afforded you the same satisfaction that being a witch did.”
It was a lie. I didn’t. Camille’s sharp, square jaw, her shrewd gray eyes, and the patient tenor in her voice had not changed. It was infuriatingly familiar, so familiar and painful and fresh that it left a metallic taste coating the inside of my mouth when I looked at her for too long. Six years, and the full weight of the night she had left had settled itself back into the space between my ribs, a crushing weight that I felt tighten around my heart when I caught her eyes. I had to look away and focus on what I was cooking instead. Camille stood in my softly-lit, warm kitchen cluttered with ancient pots and large butcher block counters, a gray and cold storm pelting the earth outside, and was pretending like everything was fine. Nothing was, and things hadn't been for a long, long time.
Peeled tomatoes, bay leaves, and the remnants of hand-cranked pasta cluttered the countertop amongst silver anchovies and clumps of thyme, backlit against the warm light of the kitchen that was at odds with the outside storm and darkness. The pasta bubbled and whirred in a large pot on top of my gas stove. For a moment, all of it was almost blinding, this fake scene of normalcy, coupled with Camille’s cool and unreadable façade. There was no escaping the wrongness of it all, and I hated my subconscious for gravitating to this recipe as the first thing I would eat that had some sort of real nutritional value. The last time I had made this had been with them. The tomatoes had even come from their garden. I could almost see my brother, Ives, at the door again, peering at me between the gaps of a lopsided smile, saying “I think we should start charging you, with how often you ask for our tomatoes.” I had not realized the pasta was running over until the sharp hiss of the boiling water spilling over the top of the pot made me jump.
The hot, foamy bubbles of the stewing pissaladière pasta hissed and splattered over the rim of the old deep, stained pot, splattering onto the warped kitchen floor with a sharp squeal. When I cursed, I almost felt the phantom hand of Ambre’s glare of retribution, and bit down on my tongue to stop myself from crying. I especially did not want to cry in front of her. With quivering hands, I turned down the stove slightly and watched the bubbles retreat. It looked like I had overfilled it. That was unlike me. As if to distract myself from this, I began turning the wooden spoon I had been using to stir it over and over again in my hands, a silent prayer that some horrible splinter would stick me and I could wake up from whatever type of nightmare this had become. I prayed for Camille to stay silent, if only so I could pretend that she wasn’t really there.
My prayers went unanswered, but she chose to ignore my previous jab, at the very least. “You are only to use trace or location spells. Nothing else. And don’t touch anything if you don’t have to: we just finished up securing and vacating the cottage. Have I made myself clear?”
I turned to look at her. “One thing.” I pointed to Sacha, trying my best to hide the shakiness in my hands. “He’s coming with me.”
She bristled at the idea, at first, but agreed.
I had almost forgotten that it was November in New Auberon, but the cold, night air was a calculated reminder as Camille and I stepped outside, with me cradling Sacha in my arms as if he would somehow protect me. Fallen, discarded leaves stained the driveway and barren earth outside like blood, bruised and dark. The silence between us was as stiff as glacial ice, and reality was taking a sort of disillusioned sheen to it, like oil on water: was I really being roped into this, by her, of all people? I bundled myself into Camille’s cruiser, ignoring the chill that threatened to set into my bones, and braced as the car shifted and tilted as she arranged herself in the driver’s seat. The car started with a dangerous gurgle, as if it were back-talking its driver, but held steady after a few tenuous moments. The car idled. I looked at Camille when I realized she was staring at me.
“What? Did you forget where it is?”
“No. Put your seatbelt on.”
I gave her my best, incredulous look. “It’s right down the street.”
Her mouth tightened into a thin, pale line. “We’re not leaving until you put your seatbelt on.”
It held that same tilt of curt aggravation that I recalled scolding me for wrapping my fingers improperly around a wand. I held her stare for a few moments, looking for any crack or deficit in that polished, manufactured shield of indifference. I found nothing. She was as tough and unyielding as stone. I put my seatbelt on with exaggerated reluctance, and she peeled out of my driveway with such a force that my head bumped into the side of the passenger door.
“Glad you have your seatbelt on?” Was all she said.
“You’re lucky you’re driving,” I hissed, hugging Sacha close to myself as she sped down the road that overlooked part of New Auberon, a small, bright town that glittered below like some yellow precious stone set into its setting of dark, lush woodland.
Camille drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as the harsh crescendos of “Free Bird” played over the radio in harsh melodies that were somehow reminiscent of the sharp, metallic taste of blood—it was the radio, to be sure, and not the music, but I found myself gritting my teeth all the same, watching the speedometer climb to over 40. It was a small blessing that the drive was short. The cruiser’s golden lights washed across the cottage like artificial rays of sunshine, but the quality of the dirty beams showed how empty the house stood, dark and gaping, a lurking shadow amongst the edges of the forest. When we got out, the air somehow felt even colder, settling across my skin like a latticework of frost. I placed Sacha onto his paws, but he wove around my ankles—a reassuring gesture that seemed to say ‘I’m not leaving.’ I was grateful for it. Camille was lonely company, but she always had been—even when she had used to teach witchcraft rather than ignore it had ever even played a role in her life. A memory, faltering and faded, peeled out of the darkness of my mind then. It was so simple, the way her practiced hands had used to move through the air as if she were plucking and rearranging the strings of life, guiding my own. I remembered the two of us shuttered up in the attic of her old Victorian, rain erasing the world outside. It made my throat unexpectedly close. I had to force myself to listen to her speak in the here and now: it was always the more mundane memories that were the hardest to forget.
I had not even noticed that the rain had stopped until we were standing outside, facing the cottage my brother and his family called home. “We need to make this quick. I’m supposed to have you back at the station for questioning…well, five minutes ago, but I can be forgiven for taking a twenty minute detour.” Her voice was clipped and sharp. “I’ll stay outside. Come back out the moment you find anything—if you do. I know Cerise is lying. There’s something in there that needs a witch’s eye to be seen.”
This time, I didn’t protest it, and my silence was a kind of omission. I turned my attention to the cottage that my family and I had grown up in, and what, now, belonged to my brother and Ambre and Cerise. The cruiser’s lights went dark. Thankfully, the moon’s light was beginning to reappear amongst the gray ribbon of parting clouds, casting the world in silver and shadow, and my pace quickened to move over the gnarled tree roots and strewn rocks and branches that littered the overgrown pathway toward the side door. The air burned in my lungs with its crispness, and I watched Sacha, a black cat melting over dark ground, slither into the darkness of my own shadow. I breathed a sigh of relief to know that he was coming inside with me.
Going in the front door did not seem like a good idea. I was almost at a run, though I did not know why. Maybe the idea of finding out what had happened—the idea of there being some sort of reasonable explanation for their disappearance, that it was something relatively simple, like a troll or an overgrown gnome, since sometimes those types of creatures could get confused—sent me into a whirlwind pace. I felt the reverberations of the cold, compact earth travel up my legs.
The air circulated in my chest, cold and bright. I paused for a moment, waiting, poised. The windows remained dark and hollow, unbroken by movement. I closed my hand around the side door. I knew it would be unlocked.
“Be ready,” I whispered to Sacha, but my voice sounded hollow and winded, like a lone, withered leaf, to my own ears. I cringed—it did not inspire confidence. Steeling myself, I forced the door open to hear its familiar squeak, wincing as the sound sliced through the darkness like a blade cut from the harsh glow of the stars above. It was warmer inside, but not by much. The foyer was hidden by shadow, but the half-moon gave some light, drifting over the old portraits and photographs, the ancient end table, the enchanted wallpaper that was, now, showing withering leaves to mark the season of fall. My footsteps sounded obstructively loud in the silence. It still smelled like cinnamon and wind-kissed laughter. Even the fireplace had long gone out near the kitchen: peeking my head through the entryway, I saw only ash that had days ago relinquished their last kisses of heat. It reminded me that I might have, just maybe, left the pasta still boiling on top of the stove at my own home. I imagined them laughing at me in that strange, kind way that they had, and kept moving.
I prowled the lower level with wide senses and wider hopes, looking, searching, for anything amiss. Ives’ worn copy of Alice Isn’t Dead sat next to his favorite chair, indented and with worn, stained leather from repetitive use. ‘Practical Magic’ sat in a DVD case beside the table that I found extremely difficult to look at. I kept moving, so that I wouldn’t start crying. All the windows were locked, as were the doors. The darkness held no answers here, so I turned my attention upstairs. Subconsciously, I felt myself beginning to chew on the inside of my mouth as nervousness turned my veins into a lightning bottle.
I could feel Sacha curling around my feet, more like an anomalous shadow now, as I crept up the ancient spiral staircase, side-stepping the middles that creaked and groaned under the stress of my weight. It was funny how much a house could change with time, but how its bones and beating heart seemed to stay the same under all the different layers of wallpaper. I felt more nauseous the closer I got to the final landing, and a sweat that felt sticky and cold, the type that happens just before a faint, collected on my skin as I finally arrived. I wasn’t sure I could do this.
Ives and Ambre’s bedroom was first, a door carved from one of the yew trees that had used to stand watch in the front pathway, but now sat inside the cottage. It was unlocked, and the gold, engraved handle was cold and hard underneath my palm. I felt like throwing up. For a moment, I just stood there, listening, hoping, praying. My heart felt like it was beating so fast and hard that I could feel it in my teeth. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t want to. Did Camille really think something supernatural had taken them that she and the rest of the police department could not find? That she needed me to, something that Cerise knew or didn’t know she was hiding from us? My family was made of witches. It wasn’t promising if a cluster of them vanished in the night. Almost as if it were happening beyond myself, the door opened silently, like a swinging pendulum.
My breath went still, and the world seemed to stop in the same moment my heart dropped.
They were there, but not. Ambre and Ives looked like they could have been sleeping, at first. For a few long moments I could only stare. How were they right here? The police had searched the entire house, and had found nothing: only when I seemed to have entered, the two most searched for people in New Auberon had reappeared, as if they had never left at all. I almost cried. Trepidation and all caution left as I leapt forward, desperate. I jostled the bed, expecting Ambre to snap on the lamp with blurred eyes, for Ives to look at me with a growing scowl as sleep still fought to cover his eyelids, to ask what I was doing in their house at this time of night. I kicked it again. They did not move. I grabbed Ives’ shoulder, shaking him, but he felt as cold and stiff as stone. I grabbed his hand. It was as leaden as marble, and the air reeked of magic: a harsh, sulphuric smell like rotting eggs. I gagged on it as it filled the inside of my mouth.
I reached my hand out again. Ambre’s auburn locks felt like they had been carved out of a sheathe of granite, and I stumbled backward, nearly tripping over the armchair facing the large outlooking window with growing anger and indignation. It was beginning to feel like a trick. A cruel, cruel trick, or enchantment, or torture. Camille was right. Something had been done to them. Cerise must still be enchanted, even now, to forget whatever had taken them: but why had it brought them back now? I had to lean against the strong wooden post of their bed, barely unable to stand, forcing my mind to run through a repertoire of all things diabolical that had a tendency to reek of sulphur. It was like picking through a slug-filled maze, trying to grasp an answer that always seemed to be slipping out of reach like shadow made liquid.
Well. Maybe there was one that worked, but it made my skin feel clammy even considering it, and the shadows seemed darker than before. I swallowed my fear.
Sacha lingered by the doorway, unmoving, and I looked at him with a tumult of anger, fear, and grief welling inside my chest. It was too much for one person to feel. “Stay,” I simply said, pushing past him as his shadow began to lengthen across the moonlit floor.
Cerise’s door was peppered with cherry blossoms and a hand-written note declaring her own name in glittery ink and stick-on flowers, and I shoved it open with such a jarring force that I surprised myself. It stung my shoulder after I had shoved it open. The covers of her bed had been rumpled and pulled down close to the foot of her sleigh bed surrounded by an overhang of starry curtains, and one of the large, old windows stood open, letting a chilly draft swirl and dance inside the room—but that was all. The curtains shielding the window billowed outward like a silhouette, and I slammed the window shut with such a violent force that I almost hoped the delicate panes of glass would shatter. I had not even noticed that I had started to cry.
I stumbled back out into the hallway, past a silver beam of moonlight, to find Sacha bent over them with a glassy look that made him seem far away. When he noticed me in the doorway, light and consciousness returned to his amber eyes.
“Camille,” was all I breathed, and he understood.
I ran. My feet pounded down the stairs with such a fervency I was sure they would break. I almost wanted them to. I blasted out the front door, this time, with reckless abandon, to find Camille jotting something nonsensical—playing hangman, or something else useless—on her notepad, propped against the hood of her car. Her face dropped. I was gagging, unable to speak, but she rushed toward me and placed her steadying hands on both of my shoulders. My chest was heaving, as if I were drowning underneath some invisible floodwaters, and Camille did all that she could to pull me above the surface. She shook me with such a snappy force that it startled me out of my panic.
“What? What did you find?”
“They’re…they’re there! Why—why? Did you know?” My voice sounded raw and desperate, and I almost thought she was about to slap me. The look her eyes took frightened me even more.
She pushed past me as if I had been nothing more than a shadow chased off by the wind, and bounded up the front steps with a flashlight and gun—no, not gun, wand drawn, but that couldn’t be right, she told me she had burned it when she renounced all that we were—and disappeared into the deep dark of the cottage. I was entirely stumped. I stood there for a moment, leaning back against the still-warm hood of the car, trying to catch my breath, before following. I found Camille standing over Ives and Ambre, with a look akin to something manic swimming behind her slate-gray eyes.
The way she looked, I half thought she would kill me herself with one wrong flick of her wrist, and I couldn’t help but stare at the wand she clutched with an almost sort of betrayal. “I thought you burned it.” My voice still wavered when I spoke.
“There are some things you just can’t get rid of,” she repeated, but she sounded more morose than the last time. Her face was pale and drawn, almost sunken. She did not look like the aunt that had used to steady me as I bent over her cauldron in her old attic. It made my throat dry to see her look so…gray.
“Don’t you smell it?” I almost wheezed, still working past the painful, icy lump in my throat that was draining something dark and cold into my stomach as it thawed. “Sulphur. And Ives and Ambre have been…”
“Replaced.” Her eyes flickered in the darkness. “I see that.”
“All paths lead to the same crux. We haven’t had a changeling in town in years,” I croaked, unable to look at the mocking stone visions of the two of them for any longer. “Not since...well.” I stopped myself. Not since she had left. The last changeling, the last, horrible thing that twisted itself into others, ripping lives and souls apart and crawling inside the open cavities its raw-edged wounds left, was, in many ways, what I thought had driven her out of witchcraft. Out of our family and into a self-imposed exile and detox. They took the guise of others and tried to live their lives, while the real soul, the real Ives and Ambre, were somewhere else: and, sometimes, they simply took to take against some perceived slight that they held, and changelings hated witches nearly as much as the borer and the ash tree. They were imposters, dark and shadowy and more powerful than a witch by magical prowess alone. I tried to read Camille’s expression, but it was as unreadable as a river’s surface.
Was she hurting, as much as I was to see this? Was it worse for her when, last time, the changeling had taken her wife? I don’t know why I found myself talking, but the words were slipping from my tongue before I could silence them. “That wasn’t your fault. We had never encountered a changeling before. We didn’t know--”
“Stop. Talking,” Camille snapped, a venomous, blinding anger so hot in her words that I recoiled as if I had been slapped. I could see that the knuckles on her hands had turned bone white. After a moment, and another deep breath, she seemed to have refocused herself, but I could still see the tremble in her hands when she spoke.
“I remember it, but you say this like the first changeling ever left our town at all. It could have never left.” There was an unhinged quality to the almost incredulous laughter that I heard buried somewhere beneath her outward coolness. “I don’t want you to be right.”
I smiled, puffy-eyed and cold. “Do you think I want this to be true?”
She snorted, and I noticed that her eyes were glassy with the reflective sheen of tears. She contemplated on something for a moment, chewing on the inside of her mouth. I could feel my breath beginning to get ragged, and Sacha’s attempts to distract me from my rising panic were close to useless, though they were soft reminders that, whatever would happen on this night, he was my one and true companion. ‘Working couple,’ we were usually called. I looked back up to Camille. Finally, she spoke.
“…I wish I had been stronger, then. You and Cerise…wait.” Her eyes widened, and became filled with such a frightful light that it felt like I was staring into two horrible, twin moons. “Cerise. Cerise!”
I understood. I didn’t want to, but I did. We both broke for the door at the same time, and pelted toward the station in her beat up cruiser, clutching Sacha the whole road down. His usual ability to slide his calm over me like a growing tide did little to calm my racing heart, but I clutched onto him like a liferaft all the same. This time, she didn’t remind me to put on my seatbelt, and the speedometer read over 60.
The police station was off of the town square, a respectable, gray building reminiscent of a fortress with its high columns and black, iron fence: in the darkness and bad fluorescent lighting of the parking lot, though, it looked more like an embarrassing caricature of a castle than anywhere law enforcement would call a home. New Auberon was a well-to-do town that looked like Anywhere, USA: it had a small, quaint Main Street and town square fanned by flower boxes and string lights, surrounded by cute, old houses and people who led their own well-to-do lives, people who remained unaware of people like me. And Camille. She nearly ripped her car door off of its hinges in her rush to get out, and I followed: by now, Sacha had changed himself into an ebony snake that burrowed deep in the pocket of my jacket to remain unseen. We passed by the other police cruisers quickly, and Camille grabbed my wrist as she yanked me through the side door, pushing me ahead of her with such a force between my shoulder blades that I thought they might crack.
One man at a nearby desk started at her entrance, both parts puzzled and concerned. He looked washed out and gray from the lights. “What—“
“Where’s Cerise?”
He blinked, confused. “She and Detective Dunlap just got back from getting McDonald’s. They’re in Room C.”
Camille walked by without another word, as set and wired as before, and all I could do was aim him a helpless look as I was tugged along. “You’re not saying anything to him?”
“What? Tell him that a little eleven year old girl in that room is a changeling with teeth longer than my fingers? Come on,” she hissed, leading me down a long, narrow corridor. Old and scuffed plaques outside the doors read ‘INTERROGATION ROOM A’ and ‘INTERROGATION ROOM B.’ Laminated signs beside the doors warned passersby to be quiet. They made me want to scream.
Camille didn’t even knock before entering Room C, and Dunlap nearly began choking on his McNuggets from the look on her face: Cerise, though, looked placated, demurely sipping on a soda with dead leaves sticking out like fiery flakes in her brightly colored, blonde hair. “Hi,” was all she said, before her eyes found mine.
The sight of her knocked all of the conviction out of me. It would have made perfect sense for the changeling to be Cerise--the only one to come back, to be cherished and nurtured and protected after what had happened to her parents--but, looking at her now, the strength of that belief dissipated in my chest like a fast moving fog. She looked like...her. Her blonde hair was tangled with twigs and leaves that were nearly interwoven into the soft skin of her scalp, catching the light of the fluorescents like shards of fire, and the eyelashes that framed her amber eyes were thick and dark, and the weight of that stare seemed to be pressing down on my chest like the soft, billowing weight of the earth during a cave-in. She smelled like damp leaves and wind. Something in her face changed as she looked between me and Camille, and I watched her eyes deepen into honeycomb wells that glistened with confusion.
The fluorescent lights overhead began to blink and stir, flickering and shifting, moved by some unseen force to irregularity. I raced forward, ignoring Dunlap’s protest, placing my hands on either side of her face. I felt the stinging needles of her tumult and confusion stirring underneath her skin. They placated with my touch. I didn’t remember her being able to do that. It made me nervous for half a second, wondering if, maybe, it was true, but the familiar look in her eyes dissuaded me from that idea. This was Cerise. It had to be. My heart almost felt crushed at the sight that she, at least, was okay.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
She nodded, and I stepped away, unable to ignore the burning holes I felt Camille’s stare etching into my back any longer, but I kept my eyes glued on to her for as long as I could. I tried to soak up the image of her and imprint it behind my eyelids before I looked away.
I came up beside Camille and gave her a harsh elbow, but the strange look that was painted on her face stopped me from ridiculing her in front of her colleague, her anger fleeting. It was a strange sort of wonder that held a mix of sad, horrified defeat in those cool, gray eyes. It almost frightened me more than finding Ives and Ambre as something close to petrified statues. What did she see? “Camille?” I murmured, but she ignored me.
Dunlap haphazardly offered a half-eaten pouch of French fries in her direction, so earnest that it made my heart ache. “Do you want any?”
“N…No,” Camille said, turning away and pushing past me with that same annoying coldness that she always had. This time, I didn’t let her get past me. I aimed Cerise one last, helpless look before stopping Camille. I grabbed her wrist and jolted her to look back toward me, closing the door with my other hand.
“Start talking.”
“What good will it do?”
“It might save you from me.” My eyes flickered down to the wand she had only just hidden up her sleeve before plowing into the station. “It’ll answer me, you know. Choose your next few seconds wisely. I think I already know what you’re going to say.”
A pause. A set jaw that began to loosen. Gray eyes that opened a bit like the sea. “Does Cerise seem normal to you?”
“What does that even mean? She’s as much as herself as she can be! Would you if…that happened to you?” I whispered, harsh and incredulous. “She’s eleven! How else is she supposed to react?”
“Cerise is eleven, but that…thing,” she said, spitting out the word in such a low whisper that it almost came out as a growl, “is most certainly not. That is not her! It’s using a glamour on you! Isn’t that obvious? Didn’t I teach you better? That thing…that thing replaced her. I’m certain of it.”
I started. “You’ve lost me. I’m a witch, and you’ve lost me. It...it can’t be. No. I don’t even think a changeling has the digestive capability of eating McDonald’s.”
Camille opened her mouth to speak, but Cerise opened the door, looking between the two of us with wide, placated eyes. She yawned, wide and convincing, and slid her small, cool hand into my own. My heart clenched. This had to be her. The other part of my little coven. I did not know what I would do if it wasn’t.
“I’m tired. Can we go home now?”
I gave Camille a helpless look, and the look she gave me screamed ‘Don’t, whatever you do, don’t.’
Instead, I said “Okay,” and Dunlap dropped us off back at my cottage. Camille had refused. For the first time that night, I had really felt the cold sink deep into my chest.
How was that possible, with my niece returned to me? Even though Ives and Ambre were gone, at least she, above all else, was safe, right? I ushered Cerise upstairs to change once we got back, needing a moment alone, and gave the pot on the stove a helpless glance. I sighed. “Sacha,” I murmured, reaching into my pocket. “Maybe you can help me clean this up.”
I startled, and it suddenly felt like I was breathing through nothing but a small hole the size of a pin in my throat. My fingertips brushed nothing but air. “Sacha?” I repeated, feeling my fear collect in my chest like lightning. Where was he? “Sacha?” I said, again, hearing the high vibrato of fear beginning to make my voice waver. I had never—could never—be without him. He was all I had to keep me safe. Everything I was was because of him after Camille had left me.
“Sacha?” I asked, louder, more desperate, staring around as if the world was vast and terrible and dark. He was gone. How could he possibly leave my pocket like that?
The world was beginning to spin. I flattened my palms against the butcher block countertop for anything steady, trying to keep my balance. Too much had gone missing from me within the past few days. Suddenly, a wash of golden headlights. “Free Bird” was blaring.
Did Camille have him? Had he chosen to go with her? Nothing was making sense. I began to start toward the door, but something strong and hot grabbed my hand. It was Cerise, and her amber eyes were wide and terrified.
“Don’t open the door.” Her voice was tiny and harsh, but somehow not young at all. Not the voice of an eleven year old girl.
In the end, I didn’t have to make that choice. The door swung open on its own as it had before, because Camille, that Camille, and the real one, knew that I kept the key hidden underneath the left flowerpot. Sacha, back as a black cat, hung limp and ragged from her hand. He was alive, but barely. I felt my throat begin to close again. It felt like a part of me was dying.
Her smile was wide and terrible, with teeth too sharp and too wide, a little bit longer than Camille’s fingers, actually. The whites of the eyes were as unnaturally bright as freshly powdered snow. That gray, though—that gray that had held me steady and taught me how to levitate my first broom—was cold and lifeless. It was fake.
“Why?” Was the only thing I managed to choke out, staring at it as the world seemed to become too bright and dark in the same heartbeat.
The changeling smiled, and I wondered if I would be finding out, shortly, where Ives and Ambre were, where the real Camille was, if they were still really anywhere at all. I suppose Camille really had not taught me better. The thought almost made me smile and laugh as I felt the first, hot tears beginning to roll down my cheeks.
“It’s easier if the two of you are in the same place,” it answered, taking a slow, languid step forward that seemed to take forever and happen all at once.
I had entirely forgotten, again, that the pasta had still been boiling until Cerise grabbed the pot off of the stove, and hurled a glimmering, steaming silver arc at the changeling. The one time my forgetfulness came in handy, and Camille wasn’t actually here to see it. All the specks of pasta almost looked like stars as they flew through the air.
Comments