Page 64 of Abducting Sarah

“The fuck?”

“What can I say?” I sighed. “Justice is thorough.”

CHAPTER 18

Sarah

“How do you know all of this?” I asked Deacon, still trying to make sense of everything he’d just dropped on me.

“I have pieced it together from many stories of other people and I have not shared this suspicion with anyone but you. Constance’s gift as a conduit played a large role in why she was so well-respected, so when we went to war, Justice used it as an opportunity to get rid of all the conduits. He blamed them for not warning us of the impending war. He argued they should have seen it coming and since they did not warn us, they were treasonous and he had them executed. He declared the old faith was treason, as well.”

I listened to Deacon and tried to keep my shit together but felt like I was falling apart.My father, whom I’ve never known, was an alien. I was half-Ladrian and a conduit that had theability to communicate with ghosts. And Justice Bateen, my fucking uncle, sounded like a complete lunatic and asshole.

“Deacon…this is a lot for me to handle right now…I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of it. I miss my pills,” I said, wondering if this was all just another wild hallucination. It certainly felt like one.

“You mean those drugs that had Ode Hrimp so worried about you?” he asked.

I nodded and sat on the ground. “I have no idea how to handle any of this information.”Or really, if any of it was actually real.

He sat next to me and pulled me against his warm body and I automatically cuddled close to him. “You have done well, Sarah. You have had a lot of new things come to you in a very short span of time. I think it is time for sleep.”

But I was too wired for that, and my mind whirred with a dozen different questions. “I don’t think I could sleep if I tried, Deacon. Why don’t I look half-Ladrian? Why don’t my sisters?”

“Our bodies do not mix that way,” he said, stroking a hand along my arm. “You either look like one or the other. Most often, the offspring will take after the mother.”

Mom. I huffed a big breath, trying not to cry. In the years since her death, I had wanted to speak to her several times, but none so desperately as right now, discovering I was half-Ladrian. “I wish I could talk to her. Ask her about Volatile and everything else. It’s cruel to find this out now, when she’s dead and gone and I can’t ask her questions about what happened.”

“You have not seen her ghost?” Deacon asked, sounding surprised.

“No.” I sniffled and shook my head. “I’ve tried, but it’s not like I have any control over what I see.”

He gave me a gentle squeeze. “Actually…there might be a way.”

Hope rippled through me. “How?”

“Just a moment—I need to ask my father something.”

He went into the house, while I sat under the stars. Without any light pollution, I saw them all. It was a beautiful night, in spite of the circumstances.

I’m half-Ladrian. I’m a conduit. Is any of this real?

My fingers tugged at the grass beneath me. It felt real. All of it. Everything since I had looked out the window at Ryan’s and had seen Jac lurking along the tree line had felt real.The ghosts are not hallucinations. Every bit of this is real.

Once that thought hit me and really sank in, somehow everything felt easier.

For years, I hadwantedthe ghosts to be hallucinations. If it was just me that was crazy, then ghosts weren’t real, and the afterlife was a peaceful place. Better to have one crazy woman, rather than countless ghosts who wandered the world and could not speak to their loved ones. It seemed cruel, like a ghost’s afterlife was some sort of sick joke. So, for a long time, I had wanted to be crazy.

But accepting the truth made my internal struggle quiet down. It was as though I could breathe fully.Finally.

It was real and it was true.

A flock of birds flew overhead, blotting out the moons for a minute. I watched as they soared together, on a mission going somewhere fast.Strange—I don’t really see birds fly like that at night back home.Then, they started to circle over the house. They were large birds and squawked loudly at one another. One landed on the roof of the house. It stared at me, and in the night’s light, I studied it.

Silvery feathers reflected the starlight, making the bird glitter. Its beak was long and pointed, but dark. But it was the eyes that took my breath away. They were missing. Just two hollow spots where eyes should have been.

What the fuck?

More birds landed on the roof, all of them staring at me with their absent eyes. One hopped off the roof and onto the lawn, just a few feet from me. I almost jumped away, but I held still instead. It was taller than it had looked before—taller than me sitting on the ground.I should get to my feet. But my body would not listen.

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