Big Burly looks at us and a couple other demons are hissing, then Carter is pushing me out the door. My mind is racing. Open my eyes. Someone I daily see. The answer has been in front of me the whole time. Gran. The only person who could know is Gran.
Carter’s phone beeps and I think it’s the tracker, but the look on his face says it’s not. “Poncho found something about Kriegen. I’ll go check it out.”
“I have to go home right now.”
To talk to Gran.
Somehow, I know it’s her. The way she’s worked so hard to protect the secret of my magic—she knows how to hide secrets. But it’s time to come clean.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Gran is reading in the living room when I get home. The speech I had prepared in my head suddenly doesn’t seem so easy now that I’m standing here. If this were a movie it’d be simple. I could read her mind or blurt it out in a run-on sentence, and we’d cry and we’d both be good. I don’t think this is going to be like that.
“Penelope, are you all right?” Gran asks, putting her book on the side table. I look at her, study the sharp lines on her face and the crease on her nose from where her glasses sit all day.
“We should talk,” I say.
She looks nervous, but neither her nerves nor my own will stop me. I sit down on the white floral chair next to her. This is so nerve-racking. I’m pretty sure I’ll need a whole lot of Ben & Jerry’s to calm me down when this is over. But I need to know about Emmaline. Finding my demon, getting my magic back, it’s all led me here. To Emmaline. To this moment.
“Gran,” I start. I pull the journal out of my bag and set it on the table between us. She stiffens at the sight of it. “You know what this is. I found it, I read it, and I need to know why it’s been kept a secret. What does it mean?”
Gran shakes her head and starts to stand, but I grab her arm and kneel down before her. Her blue eyes stare into mine. They’re sad and scared.
“I’ve been searching for a way to get my magic back, Gran, and all of it has led me here,” I say.
She shakes her head. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I know she became a demon,” I say. “I know she had a child. Fill in the rest for me. Please.”
She’s like a deer caught in the headlights, afraid to move or breathe. But she does. “I wanted to protect you from this,” she says.
“The truth will protect me more.”
She looks at me and nods. Pats my hand and nods again. Then she’s moving, up the stairs and toward the attic. I follow her with the journal, not trusting to let her out of my sight. She moves through the crowded space like a pro.
She knows exactly where she’s put it. I watch as Gran goes to the window and then takes three steps left. She bends down, taps on the floorboards, and then pries off a huge chunk.
“This spot has been a secret hiding place for generations,” she explains. “As long as our family has lived in this house.”
I bend down beside her. Down the hole there’s a bunch of items. Papers all tied together with ribbon, a jar of teeth (at least that’s what it looks like), a vial of blue powder. She sets a cigar box beside me on the floor; dust flies off as she opens it. She pulls out this folded piece of paper, yellowed and faded.
“You can read this, but you can’t leave until we’ve talked. Promise me,” she says. Her voice is heavy, choked, and I get the feeling that she’s done this before.
I nod. “I swear.”
Gran looks at me over her glasses once more before she hands me the paper. Gently, I unfold the creases and smooth it out against the journal. I don’t look up at Gran, even though I can feel her eyes on me. I’m too afraid of what I will see.
October 1842
My dearest family,
You have many questions, I am sure, but please know had there had been another way for me to achieve the happiness you have desired for me in all these years, I would have sought it. If you read this, I am not with you, and you are in possession of my children. Take care of them. Love them more than you loved me. That is my last request.
I have left your world forever. I shall not return from whence I came.
The world I now serve is one you loathe, and thus, you shall loathe me. But the one who holds my heart is here; our love is strong and powerful and I must be with him. Entirely. I should not expect you to understand what I have chosen, yet I need you to know the truth. To know why I abandoned my own, and where I have gone.
This decision was not one I made lightly. It required me to renounce my service to God and drain another witch. To give up my essence. The time varies from the moment a witch absolves her essence and embraces the void. Days to weeks to months before one can fully transition, yet it is too late for me. Do not seek me. Ever. I cannot be found. The daughter and sister you once had no longer exists. I have become more. Mayhaps, the most.
My love believes that that one day a witch will come who can serve the essence and be enfolded into the void of magic. He claims this witch will be the most powerful demons ever bred, and perhaps, it shall be me. He believes it so. I am unsure, yet I still desire this path. He will accept me should I survive the transformation. No matter the outcome, I shall never return to you.
Do not mourn me, for I have not died. Now I finally live. With the transformation, I will be immortal and live far beyond you in my new world.
Alas, a life in hell is not one for witches, and my children are too innocent to survive there, which is why I send them to you. I never belonged in your world, but they do not belong in mine.
This path is meant for me to follow. This is the life I was destined for, my chance to obtain all the things I dream of beyond this world and this body. Azsis assures me that we will be together forever, and that is my greatest joy. I beseech you, dear family, not to tell my children of my lostness, but of my life. Tell them to find a path, and to follow it as I have.
Eternally,
Emmaline
Holy shit.
Azsis is my demon. Azsis was Emmaline’s demon, her love. God. She became a demon, and they had children together. No wonder it all led me to the same place. Azsis started everything.
Gran is watching me closely, her eyes glistening. Everything I read is spinning in my head, connecting dots and pieces to a whole picture made up of one word: Demon.
“The name of her children?” I say, my mouth like cotton.
Gran inhales beside me. “Twins. Beatrice and Clara Spencer.”
Beatrice Spencer was my very-very-great-grandmother. Emmaline was her mother. That’s the family tree—the real one.
Emmaline had a child with a demon—the demon that killed my family and took my essence. That child was born into my family seven generations ago. I share its blood. I have demon blood running through my veins. Why would Azsis do that to his own family?
Demon. Demon. Demon. The words resound through my head. I slam the page down and gasp in air to match the racing of my heart. I have to stand, to pace, to keep moving. If I stop I may never stand again.
Everything makes sense now. The way the demons are always finding me. The statement about how I smell. My powers still working even though I don’t have an essence.
Because, somewhere, I have a connection to the void.
To demonic magic.
And so does Connie. And my mom. And Gran. Everyone in my family.
That’s how my magic works with theirs. Because I can connect to that part of them. The demon part of our heritage that still exists within me.