Salt (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Gran is reading in the living room when I get home. The speech I had prepared in my head suddenly doesn’t seem so easy now that I’m standing here. If this were a movie it’d be simple. I could read her mind or blurt it out in a run-on sentence, and we’d cry and we’d both be good. I don’t think this is going to be like that.

“Penelope, are you all right?” Gran asks, putting her book on the side table. I look at her, study the sharp lines on her face and the crease on her nose from where her glasses sit all day.

“We should talk,” I say.

She looks nervous, but neither her nerves nor my own will stop me. I sit down on the white floral chair next to her. This is so nerve-racking. I’m pretty sure I’ll need a whole lot of Ben & Jerry’s to calm me down when this is over. But I need to know about Emmaline. Finding my demon, getting my magic back, it’s all led me here. To Emmaline. To this moment.

“Gran,” I start. I pull the journal out of my bag and set it on the table between us. She stiffens at the sight of it. “You know what this is. I found it, I read it, and I need to know why it’s been kept a secret. What does it mean?”

Gran shakes her head and starts to stand, but I grab her arm and kneel down before her. Her blue eyes stare into mine. They’re sad and scared.

“I’ve been searching for a way to get my magic back, Gran, and all of it has led me here,” I say.

She shakes her head. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I know she became a demon,” I say. “I know she had a child. Fill in the rest for me. Please.”

She’s like a deer caught in the headlights, afraid to move or breathe. But she does. “I wanted to protect you from this,” she says.

“The truth will protect me more.”

She looks at me and nods. Pats my hand and nods again. Then she’s moving, up the stairs and toward the attic. I follow her with the journal, not trusting to let her out of my sight. She moves through the crowded space like a pro.

She knows exactly where she’s put it. I watch as Gran goes to the window and then takes three steps left. She bends down, taps on the floorboards, and then pries off a huge chunk.

“This spot has been a secret hiding place for generations,” she explains. “As long as our family has lived in this house.”

I bend down beside her. Down the hole there’s a bunch of items. Papers all tied together with ribbon, a jar of teeth (at least that’s what it looks like), a vial of blue powder. She sets a cigar box beside me on the floor; dust flies off as she opens it. She pulls out this folded piece of paper, yellowed and faded.

“You can read this, but you can’t leave until we’ve talked. Promise me,” she says. Her voice is heavy, choked, and I get the feeling that she’s done this before.

I nod. “I swear.”

Gran looks at me over her glasses once more before she hands me the paper. Gently, I unfold the creases and smooth it out against the journal. I don’t look up at Gran, even though I can feel her eyes on me. I’m too afraid of what I will see.

October 1842

My dearest family,

You have many questions, I am sure, but please know had there had been another way for me to achieve the happiness you have desired for me in all these years, I would have sought it. If you read this, I am not with you, and you are in possession of my children. Take care of them. Love them more than you loved me. That is my last request.

I have left your world forever. I shall not return from whence I came.

The world I now serve is one you loathe, and thus, you shall loathe me. But the one who holds my heart is here; our love is strong and powerful and I must be with him. Entirely. I should not expect you to understand what I have chosen, yet I need you to know the truth. To know why I abandoned my own, and where I have gone.

This decision was not one I made lightly. It required me to renounce my service to God and drain another witch. To give up my essence. The time varies from the moment a witch absolves her essence and embraces the void. Days to weeks to months before one can fully transition, yet it is too late for me. Do not seek me. Ever. I cannot be found. The daughter and sister you once had no longer exists. I have become more. Mayhaps, the most.

My love believes that that one day a witch will come who can serve the essence and be enfolded into the void of magic. He claims this witch will be the most powerful demons ever bred, and perhaps, it shall be me. He believes it so. I am unsure, yet I still desire this path. He will accept me should I survive the transformation. No matter the outcome, I shall never return to you.

Do not mourn me, for I have not died. Now I finally live. With the transformation, I will be immortal and live far beyond you in my new world.

Alas, a life in hell is not one for witches, and my children are too innocent to survive there, which is why I send them to you. I never belonged in your world, but they do not belong in mine.

This path is meant for me to follow. This is the life I was destined for, my chance to obtain all the things I dream of beyond this world and this body. Azsis assures me that we will be together forever, and that is my greatest joy. I beseech you, dear family, not to tell my children of my lostness, but of my life. Tell them to find a path, and to follow it as I have.

Eternally,

Emmaline

Holy shit.

Azsis is my demon. Azsis was Emmaline’s demon, her love. God. She became a demon, and they had children together. No wonder it all led me to the same place. Azsis started everything.

Gran is watching me closely, her eyes glistening. Everything I read is spinning in my head, connecting dots and pieces to a whole picture made up of one word:
Demon.

“The name of her children?” I say, my mouth like cotton.

Gran inhales beside me. “Twins. Beatrice and Clara Spencer.”

Beatrice Spencer was my very-very-great-grandmother. Emmaline was her mother. That’s the family tree—the real one.

Emmaline had a child with a demon—the demon that killed my family and took my essence. That child was born into my family seven generations ago. I share its blood. I have demon blood running through my veins. Why would Azsis do that to his own family?

Demon. Demon. Demon.
The words resound through my head. I slam the page down and gasp in air to match the racing of my heart. I have to stand, to pace, to keep moving. If I stop I may never stand again.

Everything makes sense now. The way the demons are always finding me. The statement about how I smell. My powers still working even though I don’t have an essence.

Because, somewhere, I have a connection to the void.

To demonic magic.

And so does Connie. And my mom. And Gran. Everyone in my family.

That’s how my magic works with theirs. Because I can connect to that part of them. The demon part of our heritage that still exists within me.

I am a demon. Suddenly, it all makes sense.

I’m going to be sick.

“Penelope, sit down here,” Gran says. I feel her hands on my shoulders guiding me to a chair. I know she’s talking, but I only hear my own heart beating.
Open your eyes.
The truth was right there all this time. I didn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it.

My eyes focus in on Gran. “Why wouldn’t you tell me this?”

Her lips quiver. “I-It’s a long story, Penelope.”

“I’m a
demon!
A demon.” I repeat it until it fits more into my own head. It sounds wrong to say about myself, but it feels oddly natural. The piece I’d been missing. I look right at her. “I think I can handle a long story,” I say.

Gran touches my hair, my arm, and then nods. She stands and wrings her hands together. “We don’t know everything, Penelope. You have to understand that it was a long time ago.”

She pauses and I cross my arms. I know it looks like I’m mad, which I am, but I’m really trying not to puke. Gran sits beside me on some old dusty beanbag chair. Normally, I’d make a joke, but my brain doesn’t want anything to sway her.
Demon.

“One day Emmaline’s parents opened the door—months and months after she left—and there were two babies there on the doorstep. Two girls, that journal, and that letter with their names on it. Emmaline’s youngest brother, Matthew, and his wife raised them.”

Gran twists her wedding ring around her finger. “They had to be very careful—not knowing if they were demonic or not. There was no sign that they were any different, but when they were old enough, the girls were told about their mother.”

I shift in the seat, confused. “So Beatrice and Clara weren’t demons?”

“No, but demon blood flowed through them.” Gran pauses, then gets up off the chair and returns to the spot in the floor. I watch her back while she digs around for something and comes back with a long piece of parchment. She spreads it across the floor. It’s a family tree, more detailed than the one in the Umbra I had read. With more names.

“If you look at the family tree, you’ll see that both girls only had one child—and that was purposeful.” I move closer to the paper and Gran runs her finger down the line. One child each. “Since they weren’t certain how the demonic gene got passed along, they weren’t sure what could happen. To not have children would have been safest prevention, but it would have caused many questions. Children continued the magical line and they were expected, needed even. So they believed they could have fewer children and lower the possibility of having a demonic child.

I shake my head. “But the longer that goes on the more likely it would become.”

“Exactly, but they didn’t know the genetics back then,” Gran says. She rearranges the way she’s sitting, and I sit beside her, the whole of our family spread out next to us. “Beatrice made sure her child knew about her biological parents, and I believe that’s why there are so few of us—one a generation until my sister and me.”

I look to the family tree, my eyes following along as she speaks. But then I stop and point to Clara. Clara, who had one child, who also only had one child, but that child had four. Gran nods at my unspoken question.

“Clara’s family didn’t adhere to the same belief in the power of a smaller family versus a larger one. By the time Seraphina and I were born, I had twenty-four cousins—and that’s not including the rest of the family.”

Clara’s family doubled and tripled up until the time Gran was born. My family is huge. Gran starts to say something else, but I put up a hand. “Wait. Why have I only met like nine of them?”

Gran looks away from me. She rolls up the parchment a little ways, then stops suddenly.

“Because those are the only ones who survived.”

I open my mouth to speak and close it again, confused. Gran turns back to face me, takes my hand in hers. “Things were different back then. The Nons were fighting a war against another country, and so were the witches—against demons. They were powerful then, tapping into something we didn’t have. I had a cousin named Suree, and she was so smart,” Gran says, removing her hand from mine. She twirls the ring she always wears around her finger.

“I was only six at the time, but she was my favorite person.” She holds up the ring. “This was hers. I would follow her around everywhere. We were at the park one day, Suree was next to me on the swings, and we saw Enforcers stationed all around the playground. They were tracking demons. They had this thing back then that worked sort of like a dog whistle—only affecting those on the same frequency of demons.”

Gran’s voice cracks, and I pull her hand to mine. “What happened to her, Gran?” Even though I feel like I know the answer, I need to hear it.

“She fell over, off the swing, and started convulsing. Blood poured out of her ears, her eyes, her nose, and her mouth. She yelled, pulled at her hair, and dug her nails into her own skin. The Enforcers took her away. We never saw her again.” She has to pause to take a breath, to force back the tears. I’ve only seen Gran cry once, and that was when Mom died.

“There were others too, others who woke up one day, claimed themselves demonic and started killing witches. Alfie Spencer was one of them. He eventually killed his own wife and then he led the others away from our world.” Gran wipes away tears from her eyes. Her hand squeezes mine and then she pulls me into a hug.

“Gran.”

“I didn’t tell you about this because it’s an ungracious part of our family history,” she says in my ear, her tears touching my face. She looks at the tree, pointing to a name.

“My grandfather was in the Triad. He used his power to hide all traces of Emmaline, the demon Azsis, and the demonic carriers in our family history right after it happened. He stepped down once the job was done and everyone swore to never speak of it if our family renounced Triad claim. It was better for the common good to keep it quiet. That’s why there were no records; I thought this journal was lost.”

I nod and gulp back some of my insecurity. For the first time, I feel like it makes sense. Like I make sense. “Did Mom know?”

“She did.”

“Then why not tell me and Connie? Why keep it a secret? It’s something that affected us too.”

Gran sighs and rolls up the family tree. “No one on Beatrice’s side of the family had any abnormalities in magic—not for six generations.”

“And then I was born.”

“No, and then your parents were killed. Your essence was stolen and your magic still worked, just differently.” Gran shakes her head and tosses the paper back in the secret place, replacing the floorboard. “Maybe we were misguided, but everyone I loved died that year; I couldn’t watch that again. I couldn’t risk anyone finding out, Penelope. I couldn’t lose you like I lost others. Not after losing Genevieve.”

Gran is almost in tears again, so I rest a hand on her shoulder. “I’m still here.”

Gran smiles, but I can’t smile back. This isn’t that easy.

“What happened to the demon Azsis?” I ask. I wonder if Gran knows that he’s the one who killed Mom and Dad. That he’s the one who stole my powers.