Jesmyn spared an anguished glance. “I’m sorry, Peony, I really am. I’m not tryna hurt Gali, and you know I don’t agree with Sage half the time, but we don’t know if she’s in control of herself. I gotta protect you and Celestial.”
Celestial looked over at the mention of her name, faintly surprised. “You don’t gotta worry about me, Ma.”
Jesmyn’s jaw tightened. “I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about this shit Gali’s pulling.”
Sage scoffed, her hold on the sawed-off not wavering an inch. “Ibeenworried about the shit Gali be pulling. But none of y’all would listen to me.”
All the women were sweating now as roiling shadows danced over their bodies, Galilee’s light bouncing around the garden. They looked confused and scared, but it still took a monumental effort for Lucifer to restrain his fury. Fuck the promises he’d made. He would add his power to Galilee’s and burn these gardens and everyone in them to a cinder before he let any of them spill a drop of her blood. One of the Kincaids was holding back Collette, who was looking at Sage with pure violence simmering in her eyes. Celestial frowned, her fingers flexing spasmodically.
Galilee’s grandmother still hadn’t answered the question about evil. In the face of that silence, Galilee choked back a sob, and the temperature of the garden spiked precipitously, forcing gasps out of all the humans. Their white clothes dampened with perspiration.
“Galilee,” Lucifer called, unable to hold his silence while she suffered alone. Galilee turned to look at him, and grief was a clawing mask on her face. Lucifer’s chest tore a little. “Oh, beloved...”
“The Devil calls you like a dog and you answer like the whore you are,” Sage hissed out, her face contorting in disgust. Galilee’s mother broke out of the hold she was in to backhand Sage, sending her sprawling to the ground, the sawed-off tumbling off to the side.
“Watch your mouth,”Collette snarled, her lip curling with disgust.
Sage glared up from the seared grass. “Like calls to like, Collette. I warned you all. Itoldyou she smelled wrong. All that light was unnatural, and you still dragged her out of the woods and brought her home. Now it’s spilling out of her like a lanced boil.”
Celestial clenched her fist and stepped closer. “That’s enough,” she said quietly.
“Whenwill it be enough? We marched out here to rescue her from a monster, but look around you!” Sage gestured wildly to the burning garden. “Our own blood burns as she attacks us with fire—weraisedthe monster, cousin!”
Collette grabbed the sawed-off shotgun and leveled it at Sage in one fluid motion. “Insult my baby one more time and I’ll blow a hole in your face,” she invited.
Sage stared down the barrels of her own gun, then shook her head and smiled, her teeth smeared with blood. “Oh, but she’s notyourbaby, is she, Collette?”
A resounding silence poured over the garden, and Collette staggered back, her hold on the gun sagging. Sage grinned triumphantly, and in the surprised emptiness, Galilee looked to her mother, her face paling beneath her freckles.
“What did she just say, Ma?”
Collette could not answer, her eyes fixed on Sage with rapidly dawning shock and rage. Galilee swiftly turned to her grandmother, fear crawling over her face as she processed the words Sage had spat out.
“Nana Darling. She’s lying, ain’t she?”
Lucifer could hear every plea packed into the words.Tell me it’s not true. Tell me I’m my mother’s child.
When the old woman dropped her gaze, Lucifer was almost certain he heard Galilee’s heart break.
15.
Galilee
Her aunt wasn’t lying.
Sage had always been a heinous bitch as far as Gali was concerned, but truth had a particular taste, heavy and iron, and it was thudding all around them in the garden. It was in the bend of Nana Darling’s neck and the way she couldn’t look Gali in the eye, as if she was ashamed. Gali wanted it to be a lie, so badly she could taste the desire frantic on her tongue. She’d been raised to think that she’d come from Collette’s body, been born in her blood. She’d been loved by Collette, raised by Collette, and in that, she was her child, sure enough, but that wasn’t the point just now.
Sage was insinuating there was no blood between them. And if there was no blood between them, then there was no blood between Gali and any of the others. There was no blood between her and Nana Darling, who had aged years in the few seconds since Sage had spoken, and there was no blood between her and Celestial, who was looking at her with that same pity she’d had all Gali’s life, every time she’d tried to tell Gali the family was keeping a secret from her. Zélie and Leah looked just as horrified as everyone else, and Jesmyn had let her pistols lower, her mouth hanging open.
The power was spinning out of Gali now, far beyond dreams and buzzing mirrors and broken televisions. It was raging and hungry, her hands humming with light, and Gali didn’t think she could control it anymore. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, not when everything hurt this much.
“This the secret?” she said to Celestial, grief muddling her voice. “She’s not my mother?”
Nana Darling gave Celestial a sharp glance, but Celestial ignored it. “That’s some of it,” she replied.
Gali felt like rage was going to implode in her throat, like the stinging was going to shred her from the inside out.
“What’s the rest?” She wanted to shake her grandmother, bruise that stubborn silence out of her. “What else you keeping from me?”
