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Chapter 15
Margo
As soon as the door closed behind them, Amelia fixed her angry stare on me. “Why?” she hissed.
I stared back, still in shock. Everything had happened so fast. One second, all was normal, and the next… “Why? Why what?”
“Why didn’t you do anything?” A single wet tear rolled down her cheek. “Why didn’t you use your gift? Why didn’t you warn us? You saved some random family from a car crash, but you couldn’t do anything for the person sitting across from you? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I… I mean…” My head and heart hurt. I’d had no warning. Nothing. And now a whole family could have their hopes ruined. I saw Perdita’s heartbroken expression so clearly in my mind. And Dorian… what would he think? He hadn’t even looked at me before he left. Did he blame me, too? “You know I can’t control it.” My voice refused to stop shaking.
“I’ve been trying to teach you how,” she snapped. “But apparently everything else in the world is more important to you. How could you, Margo? How could you let this happen? You heard her. She won’t try again. My brother will never—” She sucked in a sharp breath. “They don’t deserve this.”
“I know,” I said in a pitiful voice. Tears had formed in my eyes, too. I couldn’t think straight. “I’ll try harder. I’ll try now. I’m sorry, all right? I don’t know how to do any of this!”
She pushed away from the table with a loud sniff. “Then let’s do it. Here. Now. Maybe you can still save the baby.”
I faltered. “I don’t drive death away, Amelia. I’m only drawn to where it’s going to happen.”
“You don’t even know that for sure.” Her voice turned cold. “Do you think your boyfriend will agree?”
“Dorian said—”
“Dorian will change his tune now! You know how precious Perdita is to him. Do you think he’ll pick you over her?”
I plucked at the fluff on my jumper. He wouldn’t. I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want there to be a choice. “I’ll try,” I said, though I felt unsure. “I’ll do whatever you want. I want to help them. You can’t think that I don’t.”
She was already clearing a space on the floor. “We can do this. Together. If I call out to my ancestors and use my magic then we’ll figure this out together. Make new magic. Do something special. Maybe this is why.” She kept muttering to herself, so I helped her organise the room instead of listening to her words.
My head felt fuzzy, full of conflicting thoughts. Glancing down at my trembling hands, I wondered if there was something I could have done, after all. Was it my fault? Had I protected myself, done exactly what everyone had been telling me to do? Everything I said I wouldn’t?
Amelia grabbed some candles to light in a circle. We both sat within their protection, cross-legged as we looked at one another.
Doubt hit me right in the stomach. “Is this okay? I mean, maybe we should wait for—”
“You can do this,” she insisted. “We can do this.”
Her eyes terrified me all of a sudden. That single-minded determination was suffocating, but I listened to her words. They were irresistible because they moved me to the right end of Special. What if I could not only warn of death but also drive it away? What if I could do more?
Amelia cried out to her ancestors, sometimes in English, sometimes in words I couldn’t understand. All at once, a gust of air rose up, the candles flared, and the lights of the Christmas tree stopped flashing. I thought I saw the figure of an old woman leaning against the wall to my left, but I ignored the apparition. Maybe we had opened a door again; maybe it was my imagination. I pushed away the sense of foreboding creeping up on me.
“Open the eyes in your mind,” Amelia murmured. Her eyes had turned silver, flashing with unnatural light. Even her voice had deepened, loaded with power. I finally understood why the pack was so wary of her, why even Dorian’s voice changed when he spoke of her. She was so much more than any of them.
“You can do this. You’ve found death before.” She reached for my hands. “Now do it again, but this time, send it away.”
“I don’t know how,” I whispered. I felt nothing. There was no death, no chill, nothing but the unrelenting flow of power coming from Amelia.
“Think of the car crash, of how you were led right to it.” She squeezed my hands. “What led you there? Where is it? Find death, hold on to it, force it away from Perdita.”
Nodding, I thought back. Something…. Some kind of string had tied me to the danger of death. I had broken it. I had changed the sequence of events to avoid death altogether. I could do it again. I thought of Perdita, of the blood, of her pain, of the unhappiness in her eyes. I thought of Dorian’s excitement about the baby, of his panic and worry.
“Push,” Amelia commanded in a voice that wasn’t hers. The relentless flow of her magic pushed against me, increasing in power and shielding me with warmth. “I can feel it,” she whispered. “All over you. Now reach for it, take it, control it, make death yours. This time, you are in charge.”
A slight chill crept over me, caressing my skin, comforting me with its familiarity. It wasn’t scary this time, not trying to hurt me. It simply existed. Could I really take it, really control it? Could I really make it mine? With Amelia’s strength at my fingertips, perhaps I could.
I focused my mind on the sensation, tentatively reaching out for it. It didn’t retreat, merely responded to my touch, adjusting itself around me. It was there to be taken, and I couldn’t breathe with the power of it all. This was the closest I’d come to understanding death and all it was made of, yet I couldn’t describe it in words. Those words didn’t exist.
“I found it,” I whispered, my voice dry and wispy. “You’re protecting me from it, so I think can touch it. I think I can use it.”
