all the electric circuits fried the minute he tried to turn them on. He wrote about how beautiful it was and that he found a gorgeous palace where the court of the queen and king took care of him. He met the queen, who was interested in what had happened in the worlds since she’d taken her throne. She told him she could not leave the plane until her time was done and another took her place. He asked why. She said because the energy that kept the planes aligned came from her. It flowed from her body because her body was made of the magic of the original planes. The Heaven plane, the Hell plane, and the Earth plane. When it was clear that more planes were needed, they were built, but they required energy to keep the walls up and save them from falling into chaos. So the Heaven plane gave up a box of its magic, the Hell plane created a whole class of demons to spread the magic, and Earth gave a daughter, one woman from which the magic could flow.”
Now my dad stood. “The transference box. The Planeswalkers. Summer was made from the box. She’s not of the Earth plane.”
“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Charlotte admitted. “The scientist called her the Day Queen and she claimed her king was beginning to fade. She told him no one form is truly immortal. Only the soul is forever, and it transforms many times. Her king’s body was failing after millennia, and she intended to go with him. So another Day Queen must be created.”
“Can we all remember that this dude spent the last hundred years of his life in an insane asylum?” Taggart pointed out.
Charlotte gave her husband a nasty look. “Sometimes brilliance looks like madness, and your people are not known for their tolerance of anything that doesn’t fuel profits.”
“But Summer came to be on the Earth plane.” Papa paced as he spoke. “Summer was born from sex magic, from the union between a vampire and his companion. At the time Daniel was a vampire. But for years he believed he was human. He lived a human life before he walked the night. As we’ve discovered, companions are part angel. All three planes were represented that night. And let’s not forget that consequential things tend to happen around a nexus point.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. “There was a nexus point there? Are you kidding me?”
Mom held up her hand. “Yeah, I didn’t know it at the time. The way it was explained to me by the bean si, I have no written fate.”
“You are fate,” Charlotte breathed. “Walking, talking fate.” She turned my way. “And you are the only one who can save all the planes. Summer, you have to find a way to the Summerlands. You have to take your place, and you have to take that damn charm off.”
My hand came up to protect the only thing that chained me. “You’re wrong. I’m not some queen.”
“Yeah, baby girl, you can say that as much as you like, but she makes sense,” Momma said.
“That creature in the lake, he was trying to take your charm off.” Marcus moved in behind me. “What if he knew it’s blocking your power and he was seeking to free you?”
“And the demons came to the brugh seeking magic,” Dad mused. “Do you think they were looking for Summer?”
They began talking, debating whether or not I was some sort of energy conduit to power the planes. I stepped away. It was easy to pull myself into the shadows.
They were wrong. I wasn’t some sort of fated being. I was a mistake.
I was a killer and a thief, and it was right that I couldn’t access my magic. If I could access my magic, why hadn’t I saved Marcus and myself from being taken in by Taggart? Why hadn’t I gotten us out of that cell?
Because you belonged in that cell. Because you didn’t want out of the cell or the execution that would follow. Because you’ve craved it since that moment you truly knew who you were.
“Summer?”
I turned, startled at the sound of Dean’s voice. I forced myself to take a deep breath and banish those dark voices in my head. I hadn’t talked to Dean much. I’d been wrapped up in meeting my parents and then in soothing Marcus.
And myself. Being around the vampire eased something deep inside me, centered me.