Page 32 of Magpie
There is a shrouded figure in the distance, and I concentrate solely on it, until the figure comes into sharp focus. It is the boy. I see him standing in front of me, a goofy smile plastered across his face. I recognize the look in his eyes instantly, and another soft smirk graces my lips at the sight of it.
“He is in love,” I say, my voice sounding far away in my own ears. An understanding of the boy and his life fills me, as though I have known him since he was born. His thoughts, his memories, his emotions whirl before me, and I am lost in them. My voice drifts from my lips, but I’m unaware I’m even speaking. “He is starting his last year of high school. He’s focused on football, but secretly wants to study archeology.” I can’t help but laugh at the image of a small child playing with dinosaur toys that blooms in my mind.
“You’re doing so well,” Alister praises, his deep voice cutting through the gentle joy of the childhood memory. “What else?”
“He plans to propose to her at prom. He dreams of a family, of playing with his sons and daughters. He tells everyone he wants a dog, but he really wants a cat,” I rattle off as his hopes fill my mind.
Alister’s grip on me hardens, and the smile fades from my lips as I begin to lose sight of the sparkling memories, the glittering joy of youth and hope, the desperate longing for the future. There is a dark tinge around the boy, beginning to soak into him, covering everything until he is nothing more than a shade. Red fissures swirl in and around the darkness, like so much redthread tying him down. I realize all at once that the darkness is blooming from me, yet I cannot stop it, can’t contain the red thread that binds him.
“Keep going, Magpie,” Alister whispers, his silky voice seeping into my ears, his commanding embrace tightening, verging on painful. There is a hunger in his voice I have never heard before, and I am frightened by the intensity of it. My heart is racing, pounding a funeral march in my ears.
“A car accident,” I say, choking on my own voice, my eyes growing wide. I want to tear my gaze from the boy, but Alister is pinning me in place, and I find I cannot move. He is all I can focus on, the shadowy figure cut with red thread. Until the scene blurs, shifts, then sharpens before me.
I cry out as I feel the steering wheel jerk in my hands, the car spinning out of control. My head slams against the window. Cracked glass, a splatter of blood, and the piercing scream of a girl next to me. I hear her shout my name, and I turn to catch her wide blue stare in the split second before we slam into a guard rail.
The feeling of falling.
Darkness.
Then, pain.
I gasp, my vision filled with flashing red lights, a ringing in my ears, and the world turned upside down. The smell of gas and burning rubber coats my senses. I focus on the bloody windshield first, splintered glass and gore illuminated in the flickering emergency lights. Then I see her. Hanging from her seatbelt, her blonde hair dangling around her, drifting gently in the wind from the shattered windows. She’s splattered in red paint, and I can’t for the life of me understand why. Until she twists in the shifting seatbelt, and I fully take her in. Half of her face is caved in, her one remaining eye wide and unseeing, her mouth open in a scream that will never grace her lips.
Then thereisa scream, and I don’t know if it’s his or mine.
“I didn’t see the truck, I didn’t see the truck,” I sob, pitching forward and holding my head in my hands. “Becky, please—Becky, wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
I weep openly, soul-ending grief coursing through me as tears flow down my cheeks in rivers. I know my hands are wet with tears, but it feels like blood, her blood as it leaks from the giant wound covering half her face. A face I have known since childhood. A face I will never see again.
I am still there, hanging upside down in the car, wishing I had died instead of her, until Alister’s touch brings me back. His hand is stroking my hair, a soothing gesture, but all I can see is the shattered windshield, the reminder of her last moments alive.
Before I killed her.
I felt her remaining years as they were stolen, ripped from her with my own hands. I feel them entering me, filling me, warming me for the barest moment, before Alister’s touch has them sliding out of my body like a conduit.
“Very good, Magpie,” he says, his voice quaking with power. He continues to pet me, and I continue to sob. I cry into the night, long after the vision fades. I cry on as the couple laughs, holding hands and strolling from the park, getting into their car for the last time.
Iwatch Maggie leave, my eyes trained on her until she is nothing but a speck in the distance. I turn, looking but not seeing the glittering store in front of me. My sanctuary, and my home, these last several decades. I thought it would be my reward, my end to a story that was written in so much blood.
I move through my store, letting my fingers trail over the crystals, taking in their gentle whispers and their soft energy. They beg me to take them, to mold them, to create something great and powerful like I used to, but I don’t. I never will. Not again.
Sitting at the table, I slump forward, the weight of endless years pressing down on my shoulders. Unbidden memories of the past, of a life I thought I buried, rise to my mind, and I am lost in the swirling haze of them, like so much smoke trapped in a crystal ball.
Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and cup my hands over the chunk of crystal on the table in front of me. Whispering the incantation, I feel warmth and power spreading down my arms and flowing into the crystal. I continue to whisper to it, speaking the words of the ancient spell as the crystal melts and takes shape under my hands. When the last ounce of warmth has left my fingers, I pull my hands away.
On the table in front of me is an iron key with a lifelike black widow spider nestled at the top of the handle, its gleaming red diamond shining in the dim candlelight.
“There you are,” Alister says as he walks into our room. Coming up behind me, he leans over and kisses the top of my head, and I smile at the gesture. I start to lean back into him, start to reach for his hands on my shoulders, but before I can move, he has plucked the key off the table and pulled back from me. I twist in my chair, studying him as he holds the key up in a shaft of candlelight, examining it.
“I tried to make it exactly as you described,” I say, watching him inspect the key, turning it over in his hand. He pops it into his jacket pocket.
“Perfection, as always,” he says, flashing me that dazzling smile.
I give him a halfhearted smile in return. The effort of creating spirit keys always leaves me feeling hollow and weak. Each time it takes a little more of me, and each time it takes longer to recuperate from the effort. I hope, as I always do when I create a new key for him, that it will be the last time. The last key. Thatit will finally be enough for him. But I’m not foolish enough to really let myself believe that. He will ask me for another one, as he always does, and I will be powerless to say no. I can deny him nothing, no matter how it might be killing me.
“I should rest now,” I say, massaging my aching hands as I stand and move to our bed. Before I can make it more than a few steps, he sweeps me into his arms and steals my breath as his lips find mine. I moan into his mouth, throwing my arms around his neck and pressing myself to him. It has been solongsince he touched me, and I am aching cold in his absence.
“Come,” he says, breaking the kiss and taking my hand in his. “I want to show you something.”
