Page 113 of Scars Like Wings

As soon as my eyes burst open, all I felt was pain and confusion.

I woke up gasping for air, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest. The remnants of my nightmare still clung to my mind to the point where I almost didn’t recognize my own bedroom or my own cat asleep on top of my piles of blankets. How had I gotten here? What had happened before I had fallen asleep? Why was there such a thick fog for me to navigate through?

I remembered my birthday trip. Once Quinn and I made it to the front of the attraction, we regained enough cell reception to call 1313, the supernatural equivalent of 911. When the supernatural police, EMTs, and firefighters arrived, they sectioned off the scene and got to work.

While they were speaking to me and Quinn about what happened, they wheeled out two black body bags. My stomach plummeted as I realized those had to be the attendants for the ride. They hadn’t made it. Not having fed for so long after being used to a steady diet of energy, the vampire was in a frenzy, killing anything and everything he could to sate his hunger. They had been murdered, and I couldn’t even remember what they looked like. I remembered they had been kind and smiledas they helped us. But I didn’t remember their hair or face. Only their screams surfaced when I thought about them. They had been in the background, but they had both been people with lives that I now would only know the last moments of. Quinn pulled me in close so I couldn’t see as they wheeled them elsewhere, but I couldn’t shake how close I was to being in one of those bags.

As the investigators wrapped up, Maisie, Simone, and the cousins rushed toward us. They had been wondering what was taking us so long to return and had hurried to get off their rides when they saw the lights from the various emergency vehicles. Quinn took the cousins aside to tell them what happened, their conversations hushed and low enough for me and the girls not to hear, but they couldn’t hide their scrunched eyebrows and frowns or the way their eyes darted away quickly when we met eyes. They were obviously talking about what happenedandabout me. But what were they saying?

I was in the middle of telling the girls what had happened when Ophelia approached the tape surrounding us. Her otherworldly perkiness was gone in favor of something darker and far more lethal. She stared knives at me, her mouth formed into a snarl. Her hands swirled with a mustard yellow magic that she was ready to aim at me. Before she could raise her hands high, Maisie blasted her with her starry neon purple magic. Maisie’s power cuffed Ophelia’s hands, snuffing out Ophelia’s magic and bringing her to the ground. She struggled against her restraints before she started screaming.

“No! This wasn’t supposed to be like this! You were supposed to die, not him! It should have beenyou, not him! What did you do to him? How did you survive?” She screeched, her voice grating on my nerves but also reminding me of what Maisie’s father had said.You are worth so much more dead than alive obviously. Your kind always has been.Why did so many folkswant me dead? What did they know that I didn’t? My stomach swirled, and I tightened my arms around my sides.

“That sounds like a confession to me,” An officer said, picking her up. As he arrested her, Maisie’s magic dispersed from the magic-blocking handcuffs he used. She continued to scream and fight every step of the way as the cop put her in the car.

With everything that happened, the park closed down for the rest of the day. Since it was still relatively early in the day, we decided to walk along City Walk and explore it for more fun. We did an escape room, where Cooper and I surprisingly led the team to find all the clues. We played a few arcade games—well, I watched Quinn and Cody try to beat each other at skeeball, fighting games, and pinball. Finally, we had our dinner just as Quinn had planned at the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium where we enjoyed delicious food and a steampunk atmosphere. It was all ridiculously fun and a great end to the day. But it was also the end of our trip as we were heading home the next day. After everything I had been through, I kind of appreciated being able to be alone to think about what had happened.

Especially the parts I hadn’t fully told Quinn, Maisie, and Simone about just yet.

The pain in my eyes pulsed. Squinting through them, I could see in the darkness of my bedroom just like I was able to on the ride. The pain was so much worse this time with a burning that made me cry.

My skin felt raw, itchy, and dry, like someone had set it in the sun and stretched it too far over my bones. It no longer felt right, and it made everything hurt to move. I knew I had lotioned immediately after my shower. I had felt soft before bed. So, why did it feel like I hadn’t touched moisture in well over a decade and then walked through an Arizona desert for days on end? It was the most painful ashiness I had ever felt in my life. Aroundmy neck and on my chest, through my hoodie, my necklace was onfire. Somehow, it was a comforting warmth against the relentless chill making my entire skeleton rattle from shivering, even though my body was covered in a cold sweat.

I threw the blankets off of me, much to Din-din’s dismay, as she yowled at me and jumped from the bed.

On my bedside, I noticed my grimoire. I had never gone a night without having it near my bed, except for my birthday trip. Right now, it was wide open. The page it was on was much further in the grimoire than I had read about Mom meeting Pops. The pages were blank, though. When had it opened to this page? Did it have something to do with my dream about Mom and then Aunt Max’s and Pops’ deaths?

This was the first nightmare I had had about them since I was, what? Seventeen? Gods, for two years straight after, I had night terrors where I would relive that night over and over again. Sometimes, I would be in the position where I was when it had all happened. Other times, I would be Aunt Max or Pops in their final moments, bleeding out alone in the second-floor hallway. The worst would be when I dreamed about that boy with his blood-red knife buried in my stomach and his gun against my chest, waiting for him to shoot. Those nights would be when Everett would come into my room to calm me down as I screamed and sobbed relentlessly. I would be awake for hours after, full of dread and anger. This wasn’t too far off from that.

In my bathroom, I tried to rinse my eyes of whatever was causing the burning agony. When I looked up in the mirror to see if I could find the offender after several rinses, I caught a glimpse of my eyes.

What the fuck?

My eyes were a neon periwinkle blue with lavender purple on the edges. Thin black slits cut straight down the middle. They soon returned to their normal mudpie brown with my pupilrounding out again. The bathroom darkened around me, making me realize that I hadn’t turned on the light because I could see at the time.

I blinked.

Was I going crazy?

Had I imagined it all?

Was that possible?

“Cleo, please turn on the bathroom light,” I asked, my voice cracking as my anxiety grew.

“You bet, girlfriend! Are you okay? I’m sensing that your heart rate is very high.”

“I’m fine,” I said, even though I was certainlynotfine.

With the light on, I noticed that I was scratching at my hands and arms without even thinking about it. Every part of my skin, including my scalp, was almost unbearably irritated. It wasinsufferable. I grabbed my favorite cocoa butter and shea lotion to lather all over my skin with more product to salve the pain. Even though it was a new bottle, by the time I was done, I had used over half of it. I took my locs out of their bonnet, and I oiled each part around each individual loc to ease some of the pain.

None of it truly worked.

My reflection stared back at me in the mirror, my eyes wet and bloodshot, my lips parted, and my breathing erratic.

First, my back scars revealing themselves as scars to Quinn.

Second, the cold.

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