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“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means cats live, perhaps twenty years?”
Carter eyed the kitten. “Can I make it… can I…”
His thought process was so perfectly transparent, it was quite adorable.
“No!” Gideon snapped the word firmly. “Do not try to turn animals.”
“Why? Does it not work?”
“It works,” Gideon says. “It just doesn’t end well. You are too new a fledgling to turn anything. Not even a fly. Understand?”
Carter nodded. “Understood.”
Gideon was very proud of him. Such sweet obedience.
“Good boy.”
* * *
In the very middle of a dark and stormy night, Maddox found himself alert. He had been watching over sleeping Will, as he did every night now. He did not dare let the boy out of his sight, fearing Will’s potential desire for a return to wildness. Their relationship was undergoing deep repair, but it would not take much to damage it again. Will was strong but fragile.
He felt her before he saw her. She carried melancholy on the very breeze, and when he looked out the window, he saw the wraith Candy staring through the glass with an increasingly rotten visage. It was a grotesque and supernatural sight enough to make him shudder. He felt William stir in his sleep, similarly disturbed.
Getting up from the bed, Maddox put a finger to his lips at the figure in the window and went outside to see what it was that had brought her back.
“Carter is not here,” he opened the conversation. “And William is sleeping. I would ask you do not interfere with his rest. He needs it. He is recovering from months of trauma. Well, years. Really.” Maddox’s tone was elegant but pointed.
“I want to see my son,” Candy rasped.
Her desire was not the desire of a living woman. It was not borne of softness or love. This was the desire of a dead thing, a static thing that did not change or evolve, but which banged along with a purpose like a wind-up toy car hitting the same wall over and over again. Candy wanted to see her son, but she could not truly love her son. She could not repair any damage. All she could do was attempt to complete her post-mortem mission.
“He doesn’t want to see you.”
“William. Carter. I want my sons.”
She was decaying. Where she had once had the power to form full sentences, as death reached out to claim her, she was becoming increasingly simple, and ever more dangerous. Maddox noticed the black claws on her fingers dripping with venom, and saw how the teeth in her mouth were largely missing, but those that remained were sharp.
“There is no way to reclaim your son in this life,” Maddox told the wraith of Candy. “William has chosen a new family. I am that family. Slowly, and with great pain, he has discovered that there are some who will never abandon him. I have put a lot of work into getting him to allow for that possibility, let alone believe in it, and I will not have you destroy all the work he has done on himself.”
The wraith fluttered. She looked frustrated, as if she wanted to reply, but couldn’t manage the words. The force animating her was becoming less sophisticated and more desperate. She was becoming dangerous. One would have to be very careful as to what was said to her. At this point, the right combination of words was like arming and aiming a weapon.
“You might have better luck with Carter.”
“I want my son,” she whispered, her voice cold like the wind.
“Carter is your son,” Maddox repeated.
“I need my babies…. One is already with me.”
Maddox looked with the eyes of the undead and saw a little glimmer further back, behind Candy. It took form briefly, in the shape of a young girl. He understood in that moment precisely what Candy wanted. She could not remain animated in the living world much longer. Life did not tolerate the presence of death for too long. This was not the realm for her.
She had perhaps once had the desire to gain William’s forgiveness, but like all things that overstay their deaths, her initial goals had become warped and now all she wanted was to claim her children.
Maddox leaned in. “You’ve never mothered Will. He is not your true son. He is a motherless monster who would never join you in the grave. Carter is your baby,” he reminded her. “And you know where to find him.”
Something flickered behind the wraith’s eyes. She turned about, took the glimmering hand of the small girl just barely visible in the trees and led her away into the darkness.
