Chapter 24

We waited for Boyfriend to poof and went back to the house—and as soon as I opened the door, I heard my phone ringing.

I rushed to answer in case it was Dad. But when I reached my cell, there wasn’t a name on the screen. Just the black eight ball emoji.

My skin crawled. Dixon. I wanted his voice in my ear like I wanted one of those brain-eating amoebas.

Why didn’t he just text me? Nobody younger than thirty called anybody unless it was an emergency.

My hand hovered over the phone. 

What if it was an emergency?

I watched it ring. Let it roll over to messenger. Then I swiped to my call history.

Three missed calls this morning, all stacked on top of each other, plus one fresh voice message. All from Dixon.

Then—ding—a text. Call me.

What, he couldn’t just explain it in writing?

This couldn’t be good.

I went into the kitchen where everybody was gathered. Dr. Jacobs sat at the table over a pile of dominoes, where it looked like she was trying to teach Pine how to play Mexican Train. Martina sat on the floor, rubbing Winnie’s belly.

Mom stood at the stove, heating up a kettle for instant coffee—but even with her back to the doorway, it was like she could sense something was off. Because the second I came in, she turned and asked, “What? What’s wrong?”

Martina stopped in the middle of scratching Winnie under her jingling collar.

The dominoes on the table quit clattering.

I opened Dixon’s voice message and put it on speaker. We might as well all find out together.

“Yeah, so I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you need to pick up the freaking phone.” Dixon hissed every word, whispering mile-a-minute. “I’m not screwing around.”

I rolled my eyes. He’d better start giving me reasons to care.

“My mom won’t shut up about your mom,” he said. “And there’s this—this weird guy in my house. He looks like if Thor did hard drugs.”

“Holy—” I had to bite the inside of my cheek before I cussed right in front of my mom.

That was Crow. It had to be.

“And all this creep’s fate lines run straight back to you. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but you’d better start texting me back. Because if this is about what happened in quarantine, I am not letting you stand back and watch while I get crucified.” I didn’t know it was possible for Dixon’s razorblade tone to get any sharper, but it did. “We need to work together to cover this up, or get our story straight, or something. If you don’t get real helpful in the next twenty-four hours, I won’t think twice about siccing my Mom on you before she gets to me. And trust me—”

I cut the message short. Pretty sure I didn’t need to hear the rest of that.

Dr. Jacobs folded her arms. “So.” Her voice went dark. “They finally found him.”

Martina held Winnie’s front half in her lap, cradling her in the crook of her cast. “That was fast.”

“Divination probably helps.” Mom looked at me. “But Dixon—he doesn’t know?”

“About his mom’s cult?” I asked.

“The Order of the Handaxe.” Martina’s free hand went heavy on the air quotes.

“I don’t think he does.” Unless he didn’t want me to know he knew. Though I couldn’t imagine why he’d come up with a plan that overcomplicated.

“What if that whole call is bull?” Martina said. “His mom could’ve put him up to it. Maybe she’s trying to lure you out.”

“I don’t think she knows about me.” At least, not yet. Not until Dixon cracked, which might be sooner than later. But if he was bluffing . . . “There is one way to find out where Crow’s at for sure.”

The whole kitchen went silent. At this point, everybody knew about my soulshine connection. But nobody was about to ask me to look through his eyes.

“I could spy on him,” I said. “But at some point, he’ll notice me. He always does.”

“If Christine has him, we need to know.” Dr. Jacobs flipped a domino between her fingers. “That’d change the game.”

Pine nodded. He was for it.

In the end, everybody looked at Mom. Because really, when it came to my magic, she had the last word.

She stood by the stove for a long time, thinking, until the kettle on the burner let out a whistle. Finally, as she took the pot off the burner, she said, “We can’t give up our hiding place. If you open this door, and it goes both ways, will he be able to tell where you are?”

I thought back to the night of the party, in the paleo lab, with the blindfold. “Not if I sit in the dark.”

*

I sat on the floor of Dr. Jacobs pantry, wedged between a sack of potatoes and a plastic barrel of dog food. It smelled like peanuts in here. But when she closed the door, the whole pantry went pitch black except for a little ray of light slipping through the crack near the floor.

I pushed door back open and peeked out at everybody. “It works.” I pulled my earbuds out of my pocket and plugged them into my phone. “As long as I can’t hear anything that would give us away, we should be safe.”

Mom knelt in the doorway and rested her hand on my leg. “Do you want somebody to sit with you?”

Sort of. But it definitely couldn’t be her. “If Crow sees you through my eyes, he’ll know you’re not the mage he’s been talking to this whole time.” Plus, where I was going, she couldn’t really follow, anyway.

Pine opened the door a little wider, and Mom hardly had a chance to shift back before he stepped into the pantry.

He slid to the ground, and after a couple seconds of bumping shins and locking ankles, he got situated across from me.

It was a tight squeeze. His knees bumped up against mine, and his wide shoulders just barely Jenga’d in between the drawers full of canned food. But he fit. And in a voice as soft and scratchy as a saddle blanket, he said, “I’ll come.”

Crow already knew Pine was with me. And we were connected by magic, so unlike Mom, Pine could come along and see what I saw.

This might actually work. But still, I had to ask, “Are you sure you want to?” The last time we were in Crow’s head, he got slapped with some seriously raw trauma.

He nodded.

And to be honest, I was relieved to have some company. “Okay.” I looked up at Mom. “Good to go.”

“I’ll be right here,” she said, her hand on the door. “Right on the other side.”

“It’ll just be a sec.” I pulled up some white noise on my phone to drown out the real world. Before I put my earbuds in, I tapped Pine with my toe. “Hearing aids.”

He took them out and set them on one of the pantry shelves, and I put my earbuds in. If Crow tried to break down the door to my mind, the only clue he’d find on the other side was the stink of dog kibble. Not much to go on.

“Be careful in there,” Martina said, hovering in the background with Dr. Jacobs.

“Don’t worry.” I reached up for the handle and eased the door closed. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

And then, with a click of the latch, Pine and I were in pitch dark.

He sat so close to me, I was kind of relieved not to have to look him in the eyes. But his legs nudged up against mine and his body heat filled the little space right away, so I knew I wasn’t alone.

I pressed play on my white noise and sank into the roar of static. Here we go.

I tipped my head back, resting it on the wall behind me, and closed my eyes to search for Crow. I could feel his soulshine like the glow of a flashlight through fog. And as I peeled back layers of mist, I uncovered his senses one at a time.

The clean, lemony smell of furniture polish. A dull ache in his knees—arthritis, I guess—and chilly air conditioning. The windy hum of a ceiling fan.

With one last push, I broke into his vision. And suddenly, I was sitting in one of those dream homes on HGTV.

The eggshell-white walls matched the cream-colored couches. Dark wood floors reflected the golden light of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. An antique coffee table sat with its big, clawed feet buried in a plush area rug. This place was so big and clean, I could hardly believe anyone actually lived here.

Someone touched Crow’s shoulder.

He turned, and there was Mrs. Hemming, smiling with too-white teeth.

Ugh. Surprise.

“I want to show you something.” She stepped back, inviting Crow down a long hallway. “Will you join me in the mantic parlor?”

Did I hear that right—mantic? What did that mean?

Crow followed her down the hall, passing huge open windows that looked out on acres of green grass. Their front yard looked like a private golf course.

“It’d be nice to live closer to the city,” Mrs. Hemming said. “But when you have magic like ours, you can’t be too careful. A lot of unpleasant people out there are just dying to know the future.”

One of the doors they passed hung open just a few inches. Crow cut a quick look through the crack, and he instantly caught eyes with a teenage boy sunk into a beanbag and buried in headphones. Dixon, with a game controller in his hands and venom in his eyes.

As quickly as I recognized him, he was gone.

 “Old magic like ours, the strong stuff—it’s rare these days. Miraculous, even. When you’ve got treasure like that, everybody wants their cut.” Dixon’s mom paused in front of one of the windows to stare down on their winding driveway. The path circled a fountain with more tiers than a wedding cake. “We Hemmings have a knack for staying a step ahead of danger. We even managed to slip through the cracks in the magic registry. But it’s funny how quickly the tower you build to protect yourself can become a prison.” She heaved a sigh and brightened up. “Anyway. Moving right along.”

She led him to a carved door at the end of the hall. The knob was set into a lock so old it had an actual, cartoony keyhole.

She took out a big iron key, clicked the door open, and turned up the lights to reveal a small, empty, windowless room.

Every wall inside was a mirror. The green-tinted panes were angled toward each other so that they created infinite reflections. Rows and rows of Crows stretched into forever, disappearing on a curved horizon.

Back in my own body, goosebumps prickled on my skin.

Crow paused in the middle of the room, looking between his reflections. Had he ever seen himself in such HD clarity before?

“I scry here often,” Mrs. Hemming said. When she closed the door behind herself, even the back was covered in glass. “These mirrors sharpen my probability sight. They also allow me to show you what was, and what could be.”

I’d only gotten a real look at Crow once before, in the museum—and that was only for a second before I locked myself in the paleo lab. But he looked a heck of a lot cleaner than last time.

His button-down shirt and pressed slacks looked tailor-made to fit, which couldn’t have been easy since he was on the short side, with thick arms and a wide chest like an MMA fighter. His mane of blond hair was untangled, and someone had sculpted his beard and trimmed the edges perfectly clean. Seemed Mrs. Hemming had gone full My Fair Lady on him, although it looked like she hadn’t gotten him to wear shoes.

Crow came close to one of the mirror walls and touched the cold glass, studying his broad nose, sharp cheekbones, and the deep-set wrinkles that shaped his icy eyes into halfmoons.

And then, he looked a little deeper, into his own eyes. Into his soul. And suddenly, I felt his attention sweep over me and stop.

I stiffened. Maybe, if I stayed quiet and still, he’d move on.

But his eyes opened just a little bit wider, glinting with a sudden realization.

Every cell in my body turned to stone. Busted.

“Welcome,” he said. The word came from somewhere deep in his throat.

All of Mrs. Hemming’s reflections steepled their fingers and leaned in, like they didn’t quite catch that. “I’m sorry?”

He ignored her, staring into himself—directly at me.

I definitely felt the opposite of welcome. He almost looked disgusted, like he hated the feeling of me looking through him like a telescope.

I waited, ready for him to push me out of his mind or break down the door to mine.

But after lingering for a second to study me, Crow turned to look back at Mrs. Hemming.

Apparently, he had nothing to hide.

Meanwhile, in the dark pantry, in my real body, I felt Pine’s squarish hand on my arm—signaling that it might be time to back out. We knew what we needed to know.

But something was happening here. Something Crow wanted me to see.

I put my hand on his to show him I understood, to ask him to wait. And he didn’t pull me out. I got the sense he was about as invested as I was.

So we waited.

When Mrs. Hemming saw Crow was ready to talk to her again, she picked up like a professional. “Your fate line stretches thousands of years long. It’s a beacon only we Hemmings can see—one that shines so brightly that it drew us to you despite the impossible distance.” She gestured to the mirror in front of him. “Would you like to see?”

Crow faced the mirror and squared his shoulders, almost like he was bracing himself. “Show us.”

From the outside, that might’ve sounded like a royal we. But I knew what he meant—the three of us. He was inviting me and Pine to watch.

Mrs. Hemming stepped into the corner and turned down the chandelier on the ceiling, dimming the whole room. She took a deep breath and bowed her head, probably focusing her magic. “With your permission—your past.”

The shadows around us shifted, and the line of reflections stretching in front of and behind Crow changed.

Suddenly, each reflection was different. Hundreds of versions of him were captured and arranged in rows like snow globes, stretching to infinity.

The reflection directly behind him seemed normal—just him, clean for the first time in a week, dressed like a big, meaty Ken doll.

But the reflection behind that made my heart stop cold. It was a skeleton. His skeleton. The crumbling one on display at the museum.

Behind those bones stood another living reflection. This Crow was cloaked in a pair of huge black vulture wings. Glowing red rings of magic circled his head like a crown—so many more than the single circle I’d seen around him at the museum. He stood tall, but his face was hard and tired, his eyes were hollow and hungry. With his chest and torso bare, I could see a whole xylophone of ribs under his skin. If his arms weren’t so thick and his back wasn’t so straight, I’d think he was a hundred years old.

An arctic current ran under the surface of my skin. Was this who Dixon’s great-great grandma saw? The survivor she mistook for a god?

But Crow looked past that, staring deep down the line of reflections.

In the low light, each layer got harder and harder to make out. But in almost every scene, Crow was carrying someone. Some of them were newborn babies, squirming and reaching to touch his face. But the others—adults, children, old people—lay completely still in his arms. Open-casket still.

I made sure I had Crow blocked before I spoke to Pine through our private channel. What am I seeing?

A Crow guides us in and out of life, Pine said. It felt like we were whispering in a movie theater. When my sister was born, we brought her to him. When my father died, the Crow went to see the bones.

So, most of these memories were beginnings and ends.

Crow wasn’t a name. It was a job. A job that seemed to leave him with way more bodies than babies.

“You were the last,” Mrs. Hemming said gently. “The last of them all.”

Crow turned a slow circle, looking down the long lines, scanning a catalogue of bodies. It almost seemed like he was searching for something.

Then, hidden far in the back, he focused on one of the images—a boy in his arms with a head of red hair.

A wave of sickness surged through the tunnel that linked me to Pine, flooding my entire body with a deep, murky chill.

In the real world, in the dark pantry, I hooked my fingers around his.

I would’ve shut my eyes if I could’ve. But Crow didn’t look away. Which meant I couldn’t, either.

Crow’s far-off reflection was only a shadow, but I could tell his arms were smeared with something wet and dark. His head hung low over Pine’s chest, and for a second I thought he might be praying. But then I saw his shoulders shudder, and the floodwaters in me churned.

Was he . . . crying?

“What do you see?” Crow asked.

“I see a starving king who gave everything he had to his people,” Mrs. Hemming said softly. “I see a man willing to bear terrible choices for the good of all.”

She assumed he was talking to her. But Crow was looking into his own eyes. Looking at me.

And I only had one word for this blood-boiling B.S. I see a hypocrite.

A long, slim smile slid across his face, revealing large teeth and sharp canines. He let out a quiet laugh—a single, sharp breath.

“You were forced to make impossible choices.” Mrs. Hemming said. Why did she feel like she had to reassure him? “But for peace and survival, sometimes we have to make sacrifices. I know that better than most people.”

Sacrifices like Pine, I snapped. Sacrifices like me. I shouldn’t have been talking to Crow. But if neither of them would say it out loud, I would. You’re not complicated. You’re just evil.

“I saw the Pine.” Crow was still locked onto me. “All of him, from the beginning. And out of love, with care, I destroyed him.” He paused, and for a moment all I could hear was the angry roar of blood in my ears, until he said, “And now, you see me. All of me, from the beginning.” His stare softened. “What will you do?”

Pine strangled my hand with a grip so tight I thought he might crush my fingers.

I squeezed right back.

Mrs. Hemming just stood in the corner, stunned silent by the question. Like this might be a test. And she might be failing.

“I’ve studied your entire life, and I can’t find a single selfish part of it. Everything you did, even the worst things”—she looked down the rows, full of newborn babies and the long, long dead— “you did for them.” She crept a few steps closer to him, keeping her hands clasped and her head down, totally at his service. It was almost scary, seeing her so dirt-humble. “With my whole heart, I believe in the clarity of your character and the strength of your magic. And more than anything, I want to help you build the kingdom you deserve.”

“Kingdom,” Crow repeated.

“It might be better if I show you.” Mrs. Hemming’s voice wobbled just slightly. “With your permission?”

He nodded.  

She bowed her head. “The future.”

The light in the mirror shifted and whirled like a night sky timelapse, a trick of her magic.

“This is where things get a little more abstract,” she said. “Your yesterdays are set. But your tomorrows are constantly changing. Everything you’re about to see is a possible future—but the image closest to the front is the most likely to come true.”

She and Crow faced the mirror, and the images around them glitched and shuddered until every possible version of them found its place. At least, for now.

The first reflection in the row was the same as the last time. Just Crow in a button-down, clean cut and barefoot, with Mrs. Hemming by his side. I guess, in a way, that was the most likely future because it was already happening.

The second reflection in the row was also the same as before. Mrs. Hemming stood next to Crow’s crumbling, incomplete skeleton.

I actually let out a sigh. That seemed like a best-case scenario for me and Pine. If he was on track to getting poofed, it meant we were doing something right.

But the third reflection in line threw me off. This scene was different than anything Mrs. Hemming had shown us in his past.

Crow Number Three wore a traditional feather cape over a black suit fit for a CEO. His long blond hair was braided back, and the rings of light around his head shone down on him like a blood moon.

Mrs. Hemming hovered close by in a classy pencil skirt, a lanyard around her neck, a binder marked with colored tabs under her arm, and her handaxe pin clipped to her jacket. She almost looked like his campaign manager.

But the most interesting thing—and the trippiest, too—was the crowd gathered around them. They looked like Crow and Pine, stocky and fair, with big faces and deep-set eyes. But they kept clipping in and out of the scene, like the details might still be up in the air.

There were so many people included in that vision, the crowd blocked the other reflections behind them. If there was another possible future back there, I couldn’t see it.

Crow immediately zeroed in on that third prophecy, stepping up to touch the glass. “My people.” He turned to look at Mrs. Hemming, guarding any glimmer of hope with a straight face. “In my future?”

Mrs. Hemming rested her hand on his shoulder. “I see a deathless king. A human species resurrected. An entire nation born out of ashes. It’s what legends are made of.” She stepped away from him, backing into one of the blind corners. “But it only works with the two of us together.”

When she disappeared from the mirror, the order of all his probabilities rearranged.

The skeleton, my personal favorite, was still front and center.

But now, behind it, new Crows blinked in and out of sight, shuffling and reshuffling themselves so quickly they were hard to make out.

The reflection that settled into Slot Three hunched under an old coat and knit hat, looking sick and lost. Homeless, I think. Another Crow stood in a dark suit, hovering behind what might’ve been a college-aged Dixon like his personal attack dog. Way in the back, there was even one version of him wearing a brown-and-green State Park uniform. That one actually looked sort of happy.

“In order to access your people’s the remains, you’ll need my connections,” Mrs. Hemming said. “And in order to protect them once they’re back, you’ll need good rapport with people in power.”

Crow set his short finger on the cold glass, pointing to the version of himself made of bones. The most likely outcome. “And this?”

Mrs. Hemming made a little tsk behind her teeth. “I believe that’s the fault of the necromancer.”

His stormy eyes darkened, and a growl rumbled in his throat like thunder.

My heartbeats accelerated. That couldn’t actually be true. Was I really the only thing that made Crow the Skeleton more likely than Crow the Prime Minister?

“The necromancer the final piece,” Mrs. Hemming said. “If possible, I’d prefer to have her on our side. Evelyn’s sharp as a needle. But if she can’t be convinced . . .” She set her hands on her hips and sighed, then waved the problem away for another day. “Anyway, we’ll have to find her, first.”

“She’s here,” Crow said.

Mrs. Hemming stared at him for a moment like she might’ve misheard. “Excuse me?”

He tapped a finger between his eyes, pointing at the place where he felt me in his brain.

Mrs. Hemming tipped her head and narrowed her eyes.

I knew she couldn’t see me. But on instinct, I shriveled.

“She’s inside?” Mrs. Hemming asked.

“Listening,” Crow said.

“Huh.” Mrs. Hemming cracked this little smile—like I’d actually impressed her, and that didn’t happen too often. “Well. If Evelyn’s so interested, maybe she’d like to join us for a discussion. Say, sundown tonight, at the old chapel near her place.”

I knew the one. Painted blue, with a little white steeple on top and a historical marker out front. There was a graveyard close by, so I’d never visited. But I’d passed it a few times.

Mom and Dad hoped to convince Crow to leave me alone. But at this point, I could only imagine one ending—deploying my raptor bodyguard to make Skeleton Crow a reality.

Either way, if the so-called god king planned on showing up at that chapel, we had a chance to finish this once and for all.

Okay, I said to Crow. Maybe it was time he got what he’d been asking for all along. To meet me face-to-face. I’ll be there.