Page 101 of Ruled By Fate

That night, Brie dreamt of the accident. The car seats stained red around her, her mother’s gasp of horror. The chain placed around her neck, the miraculous healing of her wound, a beast of shadow ripping her mother away. But instead of seeing the moment of her mother’s death, the wraith with its hand in her chest, the way her face had paled a moment before going forever blank, the image shifted. She found herself in a round, white room with a single painting hanging inside. She floated, as though disembodied, through the featureless expanse, for some reason trying to look anywhere except at the painting. But there was nothing else in the room — no windows, no doors — and soon enough, she found herself face-to-face with it.

It was her mom. In fact, it was an enormous oil portrait of a very familiar photograph, one she kept tucked up behind the sun visor of her car. Her father had taken it, catching her mother in an unguarded moment by their kitchen window, just turning her face to him and reaching out her hand.

Brie knew every angle and line of that photograph by heart. But the painting unsettled her somehow. Something was wrong. Although she couldn’t say why, she knew that this wasn’t her mother at all.

She floated closer, puzzling over what it might be, inexplicably afraid. She lifted a hand in a gesture mirroring her mother’s, stopping just before her fingertips touched the canvas.

All at once, it clicked. The eyes. Those weren’t her mother’s eyes.

One was green, and one was blue.

As she leaned in to take a closer look, they moved, flashing to the right and staring straight at her. Then a hand made of oil paint reached out of the canvas and grabbed her wrist.

She let out a wild scream.

The eyes followed along as she tried to stumble backward. The painted hand stretched and twisted with her attempts to escape. But there was no escaping that iron grip, and there was no containing it. The paint began to spread up her arm and down her hand, covering her like a second skin in colors of flesh and light. She struggled uselessly against it, but it was like trying to escape her own body. She cried out and tried to tear it off with her fingernails, only to find her other hand trapped in the oil as well.

The rest of the painting started to melt into a hateful tar, dripping and spreading across the floor. The drops grew into dark, dense pools where they fell until the whole of the room was drenched, and it threatened to swallow her up. All the while, those eyes glinted and followed her.

“Please!” she screamed, over and over. “Please!”

When she woke up, she was still screaming.

Cameron was there, trying to calm her down.

She gasped for air and raked her fingernails down her arms. Angry, red scratches appeared for a moment before immediately healing themselves. He drew closer and held her as her eyes flew wildly around the bedroom, latching onto every familiar sight and possession to reassure herself it was only a dream.

“It’s alright. It’s alright.” He chanted it over and over like a soothing mantra, holding her against the steady beat of his heart. It took a few minutes before hers began to match the rhythm. It took another few minutes for her to catch her breath. When at last she was quiet, he glanced down at the top of her head.

“Was it the girl?” he asked quietly. “The girl from the hospital?”

She remained silent.

“It’s enough to give anyone nightmares,” he murmured, tightening his grip. “Just knowing there’s someone in your hospital, someone you work with, who would poison a child like that.” He shook his head and held her closer still. “Such an evil, arbitrary thing to do.”

Her blood ran cold as she realized that in all the drama and madness of the evening, she hadn’t even told him yet. So much had happened, it didn’t even feel like the same day.

She pulled away slowly, gazing up at him. “It wasn’t the girl,” she said. “And it isn’t someone in the hospital.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It was the woman, Cameron. The woman I saw,” she clarified, “the one who was talking with Matthews. The girl saw her, too. Only…”

“Only what?”

“Only Kylie said she had silver horns.”

Cameron tensed for a moment, before paling with a look of irrepressible dread. When he finally managed to speak, it was in a voice so quiet, Brie could barely hear. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened at the hospital today.”

? ? ?

“Tell me again.”

Brie was sitting at her kitchen table, a mug of basil root tea untouched before her. Cameron paced frantically around the kitchen island.

“Which part?” she asked wearily.

“All of it.” His voice had taken on a wild tremor she’d never heard before.

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