Page 13 of Jacinth

Who was I kidding? I was already going to have those regrets.

I wondered if Gladys would consider joining a choir.

Midnight. I was supposed to see Orion to return the amulet.

“Birdie, I need a favor. You give this back.” I unlooped the chain from around my neck and held it out.

“No, keep it on, Jace. We have the entire day. Don’t ruin it because of one asswipe who doesn’t know a good thing when it accidentally enchants him. Besides, the others are totally hot for you. I refuse to discuss this further, but I think you owe it to yourself to see where it goes.”

I shook my head, already in self-preservation mode, and dropped the amulet quickly around Birdie’s neck.

It was as I felt my soul hurled through space and time back to the cemetery that I realized my mistake.

My beautiful shoes would lie abandoned on that bathroom floor. Birdie had better look after them.

***

The world around me steadied, and I became aware that I was standing at the property line, just inside the gate of Silver Springs cemetery.Home sweet home, I thought sarcastically as I drifted my once again non corporeal ass back toward my gravesite.

I was wandering through a dense thicket of trees when I saw them. Father Dare and a little boy spirit I had played catch with a time or two. He looked like one of those ‘street rats’ inOliver... Actually, his name could have been Oliver. I was completely unreliable with names. They just didn’t stick with me.

Father Dare was chanting, but the tone, the rhythm, it was anything but calming. He turned, and the light caught an amulet around his neck. It looked similar to the one I had returned to Orion, except it was jet black. The volume of his chant increased until I felt it in the pit of my incorporeal stomach.

Suddenly, a dark smoke spewed out and surrounded poor Oliver. I blinked, and it was over. Father Dare stood alone in the clearing. His amulet seemed to suck the light from the day.

Soundlessly, I made my way out of the trees and sprinted for my gravesite as soon as I was free. It may have been a childish thought, but I felt safer, closer to familiar territory.

That was definitely not an exorcism.

Problem was, I had just run away from the people most likely to be able to help me.

CHAPTER 11

Skyler

I was still standingover my brother when Birdie emerged from the bathroom. With a studiously blank face, she approached Orion and dropped something on his chest. The heavy thunk as it slid across the expanse of his t-shirt and landed on the floor told me more than I wanted to know.

Jace was gone.

“You don’t deserve her,” Birdie said. With a flick of her hair, she stalked out, sucking all the oxygen from the room with her departure.

“It’s—”

“If you tell us it’s for the best, I’ll damn well hit you again.”

Orion froze. I knew my behavior was uncharacteristic, but I wouldn’t apologize for it. The clarity and grounding I had experienced in Jacinth’s presence was already fading. A sweat chilled my neck at the thought of slipping back into the ebb and flow of time. I followed in Birdie's footsteps, away from my brothers, and pushed through the door…

Into a darkened auditorium. Orion sat in the front row alone, elbows on knees, head low. By the length of his hair and the clean shave, I could tell this was a younger version of my eldest brother. A beam of light sliced through the room, highlighting his hunched form as a door opened behind me.

“Orion, it is time. We need you to testify before we can move forward with the graduation.” The voice was weathered. The dry rasp suited the face that was revealed as the elder moved aside to allow Orion to exit.

I followed the two as they proceeded down one corridor, then another. The confident clip of their feet was perfectly in sync as it bounced off sterile white walls.

“I regret it has come to this,” Orion muttered and received a grunt in response, which may have been anything from agreement to admonishment for speaking out of turn.

“You are too powerful to be held back by the misdeeds of others. You owe it to the fates to see justice done.”

It was Orion’s turn to grunt, and then there was no more time for conversation. The door was alarming for all that it was completely innocuous. Indistinguishable from any other portal exiting the halls we had just traveled, but the hush that immediately fell over the pair as they opened the way through was telling.

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