compassion to the distress Macy tries to hide but simply can’t, and a weight starts to grow in my stomach. A weight that gets heavier and heavier with every second that passes.
A weight that nearly pulls me under as the truth crashes into me.
“No,” I tell them, shaking my head as panic and disgust and horror wrench through me all at the same time. “No, no, no. It can’t be.”
“Grace, it’s okay.” Jaxon steps forward, lays a hand on my arm.
“It’s not okay!” I all but shout at him. “It’s the opposite of okay.”
“Breathe,” my uncle says. “There are things we can do to try to fix this. “
“Try to fix it?” I answer with a laugh that even I can tell borders on the hysterical. “I have a monster living inside me.”
“There are options,” Amka says, her voice deliberately soothing. “There are several options we can try before we start to panic—”
“Not to be rude, Amka, but I think you mean before you start to panic. Because I’m already there.”
Panic races through me, and this time I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to stop the attack. At this point, I’m pretty sure not even a dump truck full of Xanax would be able to stop it. Not when my head is swimming and my heart is pounding out of my chest.
“Grace, it’s okay.” Macy reaches for me, but I step backward and hold my hand up in the typical gesture for give me a second.
Thankfully, everyone does. They give me more than a second, in fact, though I don’t know how much more. Eventually, my now-familiar defense mechanisms slide into place.
I’m nowhere close to being okay—at this point, I can’t even imagine what okay would feel like—but I shove my panic down deep inside me and focus on keeping my mind clear.
I need to be able to think.
I need to figure out what to do.
Scratch that, we need to figure out what to do, because as I stare at the four concerned people looking back at me, I realize that just because it feels like I’m alone—more alone even than the day my parents died—I’m not.
Jaxon and Macy and Uncle Finn and even Amka aren’t going to let me do this alone, even if I wanted to. And the truth is, I really, really don’t want to. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
“So,” I manage to say after a few attempts at clearing my throat. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything,” Jaxon tells me, and he reaches a hand out, grabs on to mine. It’s only after our palms connect that I realize how cold all this has made me. Jaxon’s palm feels burning hot against my own.
“Can you say it?” I ask.
Jaxon’s grip tightens on my hand. “Say what?” he asks, but the look on his face tells me he already knows.
“I just need you to say it so I don’t feel like there’s something really wrong with me. Please.”
Jaxon is looking more haunted than I have ever seen him. Normally, I’d be the one to comfort him when he looks like this, but I can’t. I don’t have it in me. Not now. Not yet.
“Jaxon,” I whisper, because I don’t know what else to do. “Please.”
He nods jerkily, his eyes a burning-hot obsidian that sizzles along every inch of my skin as he looks at me.
“The reason we haven’t been able to figure out what happened to Hudson,” he says in a voice that tears like broken glass. “The reason we haven’t been able to find out where you left him, or where he went, is because he’s been here all along.”
I lock my knees in place so I don’t crumble, then wait for him to drop the bombshell that’s been living in my head the last several minutes, the bombshell that I don’t want to hear—don’t want to know—but that I all but begged him to let loose.
“The reason we haven’t been able to figure out where at Katmere Academy Hudson is hiding is because all along, he’s been hiding inside you.”
27
When the Evil Within
Really Needs to be
the Evil That’s
Out, Out, Out
His words—expected and yet a total shock—go off inside me like a bomb. Like a nuclear reactor at the most dangerous stage of meltdown. Because this can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening.
I can’t have Jaxon’s evil brother inside me.
I can’t have him taking control of me whenever he wants.
I can’t have him wiping my memories out of existence.