I bolted up the steps with Shayna in my arms, falling on my knees more than once on weedy legs. “Emme! Emme!”
I kicked opened the door and lay Shayna on Emme’s snow-white carpet. As I swayed toward her bed, I already knew what to expect. Yet it didn’t stop me from throwing back her dainty pink-and-rose-colored quilt.
Emme’s face seemed more angelic in death despite her pale lips, despite her slack mouth, despite her clouded eyes. I shook her limp form hard. “Don’t you leave! Your sister needs you. Your sister needs you!”
I shook her harder and harder, until my shakes turned into that gentle rocking my mother soothed us with as children. It always comforted Emme. Always. Would it comfort her now? My gulps and wails seemed to come from someone else, too loud, too desperate, too frail to be from me. “Why did you have to die, baby?” I asked as my grief soaked her face. “Don’t you know I need you, too?”
The babbling of secretions followed by one long hiss from Shayna’s mouth told me she was gone, too. And just like that my heart broke in one, two, three pieces. Symbolizing the loss of the only family I had left.
Numbness masked and eventually dried my sorrow. Slowly I let Emme slide back onto the bed. With the greatest of care, I arranged her perfect blond waves around her sweet face and closed her mouth and eyes. I kissed her forehead, just as I’d done when she was little and missed our mother’s touch. I straightened her legs and then positioned Shayna next to her with their hands touching.
They’d want to be together, I thought wearily. I tucked the quilt against their sides, not wanting them to be cold. Maybe Taran would want to be with them, too, I reasoned.
I stumbled down the steps, passing by the kitchen phone. I picked up the receiver and punched in some numbers, figuring I should call . . . someone. But the numbers didn’t make sense and formed strange symbols I couldn’t make out.
“I should do laundry,” I decided as an afterthought.
I gathered the dirty towels from every bathroom, confused why I felt so cold and why my hands continued to tremble. I thought I heard someone ask me a question, but that didn’t make sense.
They were all dead.
I dumped everything in the washer and turned the knob to start it. Time to clean the kitchen. I better clean the kitchen. The kitchen needs to be cleaned.
The part of me clinging to my sanity tried to slap me out of my shock. But the slap wasn’t hard enough to register, and I no longer cared . . . about anything.
The right side of my ribs banged into the countertop as I fumbled around the kitchen. The table appeared to hold the biggest mess, well, next to all the blood. Papers and receipts covered most of the surface, but it was the scroll the witches had left us that caught my attention.
I lifted the rolled up pieces to my nose and took a whiff, filtering through the other aromas fused into the thick paper until I found Larissa’s scent. My nose remembered it the moment my delicate senses reached it. She reeked of licorice and sunflowers, of all things. A unique blend. Too unique. Easy to find.
I tucked the parchment beneath my arm and I shoved my bare feet into a pair of sneakers Shayna had abandoned near the foyer. A laugh I hadn’t expected broke through my hoarse throat, mixing with the sniffles that continued to irritate my nose. Shayna wouldn’t need her ratty canvas shoes anymore, would she?
I sighed, staring back at the mess in my house. But it would have to wait. It wasn’t time to clean, or scrub, or tidy up.
It was time to hunt.
Chapter Ten
Protection. The last challenge. The one I catastrophically misinterpreted.
This whole damn thing had been about me, at least at first. Beast. I was one. Self. I fought me. Protection . . . I didn’t need to protect me. I needed to protect them. And I failed. God, had I failed.
My sweat-soaked palms slicked the steering wheel. I struggled to keep our Subaru on the road. My nerves wouldn’t allow me to focus, and my tigress could already taste Larissa’s blood.
I wiped my clammy cheeks and concentrated on the stretch of highway ahead. The last time I’d spoken to Danny, he’d mentioned that members of the clan supposedly gathered around Meeks Bay to practice making it rain this time of year. I hadn’t construed it as useful information then, but now it seemed helpful—valuable even. Perhaps one of the witches would lead me to Larissa if I asked politely.
Or not so politely.
If I thought about it, Meeks Bay provided the perfect location for a bewitching rendezvous during the winter months. In the summer, hordes of campers would rent out the surrounding cabins or spend the day lounging on the beach. In February, tourists were too busy skiing their way down the mountains of Squaw Valley. It should be deserted for the most part in winter. Good. I didn’t need an audience, not for what I planned to do.