Page 39 of Midnight Waters

But a loud bang had him staggering against the wall as the opposite one exploded in a hail of rock chunks and splintered wood.

“Dad!” I raised my arm to cover my head as I ducked and hurried through the cloud of dust that had enveloped him.

“I’m all right.” Dad coughed as he clambered to his feet. “What was that?”

Excellent question.

I straightened up and swiped my hand through the cloud of debris to clear the air. A crumbling hole connected the hallway to the living room, through which a cacophony of shouts and bellows escaped.

Wendy brandished a potion bottle in the air that was a red colour too vivid to miss. Well, that explained the hole in the wall. Red potions were often the most explosive kind.

Where on earth had she gotten that? She couldn’t have made it. Even our family potion stores didn’t have ingredients to create a potion half that powerful.

“It’s not good enough!” she screamed as Keith, Lola, Sandra, and Isadora teetered on the edge of the room.

Wendy’s usually pristine bun had fallen into an ashy mess at the base of her neck, and there was a large coffee stain on her blouse.

“By Scorpio’s grace,” Dad muttered as he caught sight of the scene over my shoulder.

We hurried around to the living room archway and dashed inside.

“What is going on in here?” Dad asked. “Wendy, put that down for goodness’ sake.”

“You don’t think we’ve tried that?” Sandra said out of the corner of her mouth, hands out in surrender.

She still had her work scrubs on. What a thing to come home from work to.

“I can’t take it anymore!” Wendy sobbed. “Everywhere I go, there’s an Everhart taunting me about Ray. They’re glad he’s gone! They won’t be happy until we all are!”

Furious embers burst to life in the pit of my stomach.

It was bad enough that Adrian had gotten his jabs in when we left the hospital, but they wouldn’t sink nearly as deep into us as they would Wendy.

But then, hadn’t our family done the same to them the last time they had lost a family member?

Who knew when it had first begun? But each new death presented an opportunity for the opposite family to get revenge for the last family member they had lost.

Wendy’s eyes were red and puffy from hours of crying, her jaw taut and teeth bared.

I took a few careful steps forward, shaking off the warning hand that Dad placed on my shoulder.

I was no negotiator, but having friends across many departments in Nexus had clued me in to a few techniques.

Wendy had already used one potion to make her point, and I knew she would use the other. But something told me she wouldn’t use it on any of us.

“What do you want us to do about this?” I asked. “How can we help you?”

“They need to die. They all need to die!” she shouted.

“It makes sense.” Keith looked the least concerned out of us all, leaning his shoulder against the fireplace with folded arms. “If they’re all dead, maybe the curse will lift.”

“Oh, do shut up,” Sandra snapped, earning herself the stink eye from Lola.

I kept my eyes on Wendy and tried not to let my exasperation get the better of me. It was that kind of shortsighted thinking that led to more tragedy.

“What if their deaths mean the death of all our family, too?” I asked. “Has anyone thought of that?”

Wendy’s face crumpled, and with a wail, she collapsed onto the love seat behind her.

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