Watch Me Burn: The December People, Book Two (20 page)

“I don’t know much. It’s not very helpful.”

“I don’t care,” Dad said. “Just tell us.”

“We’ll find Evangeline. I don’t know how or when, but I know she’s not going to die now. Because I’ve seen a vision of her in the future. So, I know I’m going to see her again.”

“What is the vision of her?” Dad pressed.

“A vision of her alive in the future. That’s all you need to know right now. Somehow or another, she makes it out of this.”

“And your mother?” Dad asked.

He could lie and say she’d survive too, but he feared he wouldn’t get away with it. What he said about Evangeline was true, and he didn’t want them to doubt that by lying now.

“I have no information about Mom.”

“You don’t have any visions of her in the future?” Emmy asked, breathless.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean anything. I can’t see the future like I’m looking through a window. It’s just certain things. It could be a good thing I don’t have a vision. If Mom gets better and lives a normal, happy life, I wouldn’t see visions of that. I just see the things that…I don’t know, leave a mark. On time, or fate, or whatever. So, I think that means Mom is not going to die, at least if she does, it’s not soon. I’m not close enough to see it yet.”

“Okay, thank you,” Dad said.

Patrick could hear a difference in his voice. Patrick’s vague pronouncements actually did change something in him. At least they gave him a reason to keep going.

“And Julie,” Dad continued. “If there is anything else you’ve seen about her you’re holding back, now is the time. Everything is different now. Whatever has happened to her has probably happened to Evangeline. It’s personal now.”

Patrick tasted bile in the back of his throat. He had only shared the details of the vision with Evangeline. He had told the others he had seen a vision of her and that’s why he reacted. But he didn’t tell them about the torture. Now, he was so grateful he had left that part out.

“Well, in my vision, she’s alive too. But that’s about all I know. It does mean there is still hope. I’ll pay attention. Keep looking for new visions,” Patrick said. “But right now, there’s nothing new. Like I said, everything around her is darkness. I didn’t see anything useful about where she is or who might have taken her. That’s the truth.”

Dad nodded solemnly. He had been right, of course. What once happened to strangers now happened to them. No longer a curious mystery to fill their summer boredom, this was their story now. But it had been personal to Patrick for a while now. Patrick’s powers had limits. He couldn’t foresee a deadly earthquake in China or the results of a Presidential election, no matter how much of a “mark” those things might have on the fate of the world. When he said he saw things that left a mark on fate, he meant things that left a mark on his fate. Due to selfishness or the limitations of his magic, Patrick had never foreseen anything that wouldn’t occur right in front of his face.

avid didn’t know how he would have made it through the next few days without Carson’s advice. “Just be a man.” Whenever David felt he might fade away, he repeated those words to himself.
Be a man
. And when David said this to himself, he didn’t mean it in the gender specific way. He really meant,
be a person
.
Be a human being. Do what people do. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feed your children. Feed yourself. Do the dishes. Sleep at night. Wake up in the morning. Shower. If your wife is sick, you take care of her. If your children are scared, you tell them everything will be okay, even if you don’t know if it will. You pray to a God you’re not sure is there. Do what people do.

This basic sentiment kept him together. As Carson said, sometimes the simplest magic was the most powerful. And as a dark wizard on the brink of losing his mind, the chance to actually be a person—be a husband, be a father, was the most beautiful and unattainable magic he could imagine.

However, although this kept him sane from moment to moment, he knew he would need more in order to save his wife and daughter. He needed to be a wizard. The root of his problems was magical, and would need a magical solution.

When Mom came home from the hospital, she looked really sick. Emmy had never thought of Mom as a happy, upbeat person, but she must have smiled and laughed more than Emmy had realized. Because now she didn’t and Emmy noticed the absence. Mom stayed in bed most of the time. And next week she had to start chemotherapy, which would probably make her sicker. As soon as she got the chance, Emmy showed Mom the bracelet, too. And told her where she had found it. Mom’s normally bright blue eyes had turned grayer. Cloudier. She stared at the bracelet a long time before answering, not even sitting up in bed.

“In the truck?” she asked.

“Yes. Do you know how it got there?” Emmy asked again, trying her best to be patient.

Mom used the tip of her fingernail to touch one of the charms—an ancient symbol for the sun—a circle with a dot inside.

“I don’t understand,” Mom said.

“Yeah, no one understands.”

“This is why you cared so much. Why you kept sneaking out. You thought Julie had some link to our family, and that scared you. If it hadn’t been for the bracelet, would you have gone to that forest? Would you have taken Evangeline there?”

Emmy considered it for a moment. “No, probably not.”

Mom nodded. Her skin looked gray too. “I wish I had a good answer for you, Emmy. But I think the bracelet found its way there as part of a spell. Probably the same spell that affected your father. Maybe it wanted Evangeline all along, and that’s how the spell bent fate to make it happen.”

“That’s not how magic works. A bracelet cannot materialize in the truck.”

“I know. I’m sure it didn’t,” Mom said. “Perhaps I tracked it into the truck on my shoe or in the folds of my clothes.”

“Okay…so where were you where you might have just happened to get the bracelet stuck to you?”

Mom stared at the ceiling. They both must have had the same thought, because Mom said, “Not your brother’s apartment.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve been skipping out on work, visiting him almost every day to work on my spell. It’s complicated. Takes time. I was with him when Julie disappeared.”

Emmy thought Mom would lie to be Jude’s alibi, but she had this weakness in her voice. She sounded too tired, too unfocused, to come up with a proper lie. As if she talked in her sleep.

Emmy collected the bracelet in her hands. She had grown used to it now. The jarring energy of the bracelet had grown comforting. As her own talisman provided a source of protection and strength she could touch and hold, Julie’s talisman served as all of Emmy’s fear and weakness bundled up in an object she could touch and hold, that she controlled, that she could break if she wanted. But she had no interest in breaking it. She put the fear right back in her pocket.

Evangeline had gone missing three days ago, which in missing person time, meant bringing out the corpse-hunting dogs. Of course, Julie had gone missing weeks ago. Long enough that the news had grown stale, at least until Evangeline’s disappearance. Now the news believed a serial kidnapper was preying on the local teens, and everyone needed to feel afraid all the time.

Emmy’s family could use magic to keep annoying people away. The press. Curious neighbors. Even detectives had trouble finding them. They would ring the doorbell and then immediately turn around and go back to their car, as if they had waited there for ten minutes instead of three seconds.

Emmy didn’t like this. The Vandergraffs got what they wanted. They had become invisible to the world, but that meant Evangeline had become invisible too. The news people rarely mentioned her name and called her “the second victim.” As much as she doubted the abilities of the Mundane police, she didn’t want them to forget about Evangeline altogether and stop looking for her. Everyone would cry for Julie, but this “second victim” would fade out of their memories.

She wondered if the spell worked on their own family too. Uncle Carson and Aunt Jess didn’t come back after they had visited Mom at the hospital. Uncle James didn’t notice or care his niece had gone missing. And Me-Maw and Pa-Pa, Mom’s own parents, hadn’t come to see their daughter at all. If the spell wasn’t working on them, this proved dark wizards who didn’t practice magic were exponentially more evil than those who did. How could they think practicing magic was more evil than abandoning their family?

Dad drove out to the forest alone every single day, and spent most of the day there. Emmy assured him she would look after Mom while he looked for Evangeline. Patrick helped too, but he also picked up a few more guard shifts at the pool to help with money…or just to escape. Emmy thought they should pay him more than ten dollars an hour, since he could prevent accidents before they even occurred.

This left Emmy alone in the house with Mom and Xavier a lot. She didn’t know which of them depressed her more. At least she understood Mom’s problem. Xavier scared her. He had stopped going through the motions of watching television or playing video games and did nothing.
Nothing.
A combination of sleeping and staring into space.

Emmy had to take care of Xavier too, because if she didn’t make him sandwiches and bring him water, he would die. She had tested this by refusing to bring him breakfast and lunch. Finally, at 3pm, she gave in. She barged into his room without knocking. He sat at his desk tapping his fingers. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she dropped the peanut butter and jelly and plate in front of him with a loud clatter. He looked at it, but his reaction was still miniscule, so she kicked him in the shin as hard as she could.