According to the judge, death by burning was justified because of the unique circumstances surrounding the guilty. They were witches. Burning them was “the only way to destroy their evil.” Of course it didn’t help that when they tried to burn the sisters, they supposedly wouldn’t burn.
“Yeah,” I say. “But the whole thing was a trick. Someone wanted to incite fear so they made it look like the so-called witches wouldn’t burn.”
“They showed it live on TV,” Xave says.
“Yeah, so they could prove to the world that the sisters were REAL witches,” Beth says. “I think it was all staged. Another illusion, just like the tricks the Pyros did with fire. Whatever the case, it worked. When they couldn’t burn them, they—”
“Drowned them,” I say. I remember my mother’s face after it happened. After months of protesting she looked defeated. She didn’t say a word that day. Since then they’ve used burning as the primary method of execution, with drowning used only if burning doesn’t work.
“Sometimes the government makes me want to move to Switzerland,” Xave says.
“Why Switzerland?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
“Mostly the chocolate and the cheese,” Xave says, not missing a beat.
“That was a decade ago,” Beth says, bringing the conversation back to her favorite topic. “The fires haven’t stopped burning since.” Although there have been many groups protesting the anti-witch laws, in which my mom is a proud member, their efforts have been unsuccessful. More than a hundred witches have been executed so far, although it’s hard to keep count with the death toll rising by the month. The executions barely even get any news coverage anymore; they’re as normal as car accidents in L.A. and murders in Detroit.
“No one even cares about the death count anymore,” I point out.
“That’s where the conspiracy gets a little interesting and a lot disturbing,” Beth says. “There are all kinds of theories out there, most of which contradict each other, but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the reported witch death count is but a fraction of reality.”
“You mean, like, it’s closer to two hundred witches?” Xave asks, huddling closer to Beth’s side as we walk.
“No,” Beth says. “Try a thousand.”
My mouth drops open. “A thousand?”
“And that’s on the low end of the estimates. Some sites say they have sources that peg the number of executions at more than five thousand witches.”
“But that’s…” The word I want to say leaves a bad taste in my mouth as it rolls around on my tongue.
“Genocide,” Beth says, reading my mind.
“It makes the Salem Witch Trials look like a child’s birthday party and lethal injection appear as boring and humane as giving a child a timeout,” Xave says.
“It’s just not right, and that’s what I’m going to say in the newspaper,” Beth says.
With at least half the students’ parents likely in support of the anti-witch laws, her article will mean even more bullying for the three of us. But that’s Beth—she’ll never back down from something she believes in. And that’s just the way I like her.
“We’re behind you all the way,” I say.
~~~
When I get home, I leave my dirty cleats on the front porch and push through the door. My mom is folding laundry on our beat-up brown couch in front of the TV.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, the word not even sticking in the back of my throat the way it used to.
“Hey, Rhett,” she says, her gaze fixed on a news program. “How was practice?”
“Not terrible,” I say.
“How’s Xave?”
“He’s Xave,” I say.
“How’s Beth?” She pulls her stare from the TV for just long enough to waggle her eyebrows. Yep, she’s the closest thing to a real mom I’ve had in a long time.
“She’s great,” I say.
“There’s fruit on the table if you’re hungry,” she calls after me as I head to the kitchen. I dump my sports duffel and backpack on a couple of chairs and grab a banana, peeling it as I move back into the TV room.
There’s a rattle of footsteps scurrying down the stairs as Hurricane Jasmine approaches from upstairs. “Rhett!” my seven-year-old foster sister cries. “I thought you’d been kidnapped.” She throws her arms around me and I almost drop the banana.
“Um, why?” I ask.
“The witches,” Jasmine says, looking up, her chocolaty skin vibrant in the late-afternoon light.
“Jaz, I already told you,” my mother says, turning to face us with a swirl of blond hair. “The witches aren’t dangerous. They’re not even real witches. They’re just people, like you or me. They’re not the ones to blame for all of this. We’re to blame. Our fear and hate.” Finally I realize what my mom’s watching on TV—what had her so engrossed.
“A curfew?” I say, reading the headline at the bottom of the screen. A newswoman is jabbering on about how the witch threat level has just been raised. How there are more of them than we first thought when Salem’s Return began years earlier.
“The witches are starting to fight back,” Jaz says, her voice no more than a whisper. “They say no one should be out after dark.”
“Seriously?” I say in disbelief.
“Seriously,” my mom says. “It’s utterly ridiculous. The whole country’s gone half-crazy.”
“More like full crazy,” I say, slipping my cell phone out of my pocket when it rings.
When I press a button to answer it, Beth says, “Have you seen the news?” before I can say anything.
“My mom’s ready to march on Washington D.C.,” I say, which earns me an eye-roll.
“Is that Beth?” Jaz asks, tugging at the side of my shirt.
I pull away from her, shaking her off. “Now do you think I’m wasting my time with my article?” Beth asks.
“I want to talk to her,” Jaz whines, trying to grab the phone.
I hold it higher, out of reach. “I never said you were wasting your time,” I say. “I just said witches aren’t real. But that doesn’t mean the fake witches should be killed.”
“Here here,” my mother says, raising a pair of my underwear like a banner.
“What about the curfew? Do you think that’ll stick?” I ask, holding Jaz off with one arm.
“Who knows?” Beth says. “Before all this started, I’d say no. But now…”
“Hey, my sis wants to talk to you,” I say, hoping to avoid getting clawed by Jaz’s purple-painted nails.
“Sure. I love your sister.”
When I offer the phone, Jaz grabs it with two hands and starts all over again with, “I was worried you and my brother had been kidnapped!”
As Beth tries to reassure my sister, I turn my attention back to the TV, where the newswoman is elaborating on the current situation. “Multiple anonymous threats from pro-witch organizations have evidently come through various law enforcement agencies over the last forty-eight hours. Although our sources were unable to provide specifics, they did say that the threats were violent in nature and suggested a large-scale response to Salem’s Return. Citizens are being urged to remain in their homes with their doors locked whenever possible.”
“Unbelievable,” I say.
“As if,” my mother says. “More likely I’ll be accused of being a witch and get tied to a stake than a ‘witch’ attacking our house.”
“Don’t say stuff like that,” I say. The last thing we need is cops on our doorstep because my mom joked about being a witch.
Jaz hands me the phone. “Beth says she’ll talk to you later. She has conspiracies to unravel.”
“Thanks, I think,” I say.
Just before I head upstairs to get a shower, I notice Jaz locking the front door. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“The witches,” she says, as if that explains everything.
I shake my head and take the steps two at a time to the second floor.
A half hour later I?
??m showered and back downstairs watching TV with my sister while my mom makes dinner. The front door rattles as someone tries to open it.
“The witches!” Jaz cries, clutching my side.
There’s a click and the door eases open. “Anyone home?” my father hollers.
Jaz runs to him, wrapping her arms around his leg. “You’re not a witch,” she says.
“I guess you’ve all heard the news,” Dad says, walking inside with Jaz still stuck to his leg. He hangs his tool belt on a hook in the closet. After retiring from the military, he became a handyman, quickly gaining a reputation for being able to fix almost anything.
“Jaz thinks the witches are going to kidnap us, Mom thinks the government is made up of fools, Beth thinks there’s a major conspiracy, and Xave wants to move to Switzerland.”
“And what do you think?” Dad asks me, picking Jaz up and throwing her on the couch beside me while she laughs gleefully.
“I think there are no witches and the sooner we all realize that the better,” I say. “I mean, didn’t we learn our lesson after the Salem Witch Trials? We were idiots then and we’re idiots now. Some things never change.”
“I’m with you, Son,” my dad says.
As he moves to the kitchen to kiss my mother hello like he always does, I wonder how it’s possible that my life is this good. Maybe I’m not connected to any of the people in my life biologically, but I love them just the same. My parents, Jaz, Xave, Beth—they are the best of the best. That thought sticks in my mind all through dinner until I lay down to sleep. When I think back on my darker days, they almost feel like just a bad dream. A distant nightmare. I smile as my eyes flutter closed and sleep takes me.
Chapter Three
Shrieks and screams tear me from an already forgotten dream. They’re not human, the howls. Well, maybe some are, but certainly not all—not the ones closest.
As I sit up sharply, heart leaping forward to sprinting speed, another ear-rending
screeeeeeech!
shatters the night. Metallic. That’s the only way to describe the sound. Like we’re in Oz and the tin man is being ripped in half by impossibly strong hands, reduced to shredded hunks of scrap metal.
Screeeeeeech!
I flinch away from the window, as if it might burst inwards, but no…whatever’s tearing through the metal is outside. At least for now.
Voices from the other room, muffled at first and then raised, shout, “Jasmine! Stay in your room!”
“What’s happening?” my sister cries through her door.
“Just stay inside!” Dad’s voice thunders through wood and plasterboard. “Rhett! You, too! My gun, Trudy!”
“Take it,” my mother says. There’s a double click—chook-chook!—and my father’s heavy footsteps pound past my room and rumble down the staircase.
Kicking my legs over the side of the bed, I almost trip on the sheets, which are tangled around my ankles like vines. I high step and manage to slip free. Two long strides and I’m at the window, peering into the unlit yard, searching for the source of the ruckus.
Under the glow of the half-moon, the wrought-iron fence around our front yard is shining, mangled, and ripped in several places. The white, wooden gate at the end of the brick path is missing…no, there it is! Two jagged halves lie on opposite sides of the yard, splinters scattered like straw. Whatever did that is strong beyond imagination…
There are shadows on the lawn.
The dark echo of the big rosebush, tenderly cared for by my father; a wheel barrow, still half full of mulch, casts a black spot amongst the lush, green grass; the shadows are moving. Not the roses or the barrow, but others, darker and lurking, creeping toward the front door.
There’s a bright flash of light and the rosebush bursts into flame, its thorny stems painted with chaotic red and orange strokes. Glowing orbs appear in the midst of one of the moving shadows and they’re—they’re—
—staring at me.
Unnaturally large eyes in the dark. The shadow raises a finger, points at me through the glass…
The wheelbarrow rockets through the air, spinning and sending clumps of brown mulch flying in all directions, heading right toward me…
I dive and duck just as the window explodes inwards, glass shrapnel raining all around, tinkling like crystal wind chimes. There’s a whoosh! and a whoomp! and a heavy crash as the barrow bashes into my door.
A scream. Jasmine.
A shout. My father.
A gunshot. Then another.
Covered in shimmering glass shards, I push to my feet, ignoring the spots of blood welling up from my skin and the pinpricks of pain. The wheelbarrow is on its side in the hall, having destroyed my bedroom door. I barely spot my sister’s bare foot as she climbs past and toward the staircase.
“Jasmine, no!” my mother shouts, clambering over the barrow after her. “Rhett, stay here,” she says through a mop of unkempt blond hair.
My entire family is running toward the danger and I’m frozen, glued to the floor, unable to speak, unable to act.
There’s a roar of agony from somewhere downstairs, another gunshot, and then my sister’s scream, a wail of fear and terror. Something snaps inside me and I can move again, charging through the opening, leaping over the barrow, rebounding off the wall, half-stumbling down the hall. I take a sharp left and bound down the steps two at a time.
A cool breeze hits me in the face, unimpeded by the front door, which is wide open and hanging awkwardly by a single hinge. To my left the couch is overturned, splinters of ceramic from a broken vase littering the wooden floorboards around it.
Where’s my family?
I glance into the yard, where the rosebush is nothing more than a glowing pile of ash. The moving, bright-eyed shadows are gone. Are they inside?
“Mom?” I say, surprised when my voice comes out more than a whisper. “Dad? Jaz?”
No answer. Silence. Silence. And then…
A scream. Not inside—but somewhere else, down the street perhaps. Another house. Can’t worry about that now. Have to find my family.
I tiptoe into the living room, stubbing my bare toe on something hard. My father’s gun skitters away, clattering across the wood as more screams fill the night. Screams of terror and pain. Neighbors, friends…what’s happening?
I bend down and reach for the gun, my brown skin appearing even darker in the shadows…
“Death finds you,” a voice says from behind.
My heart skips a beat as I whirl around, instinctively taking a step away toward the tipped-over couch. Fluorescent bulbs stare back at me, too bright to gaze at directly. I shield my eyes with a hand, trying to discern who or what is connected to the blinding light. “Where’s my family?” I say. A black cloak, thin at the top and flared out toward the bottom, sits below the eyes.
“You won’t need them anymore,” the eyes say.
I reverse another step, feeling the gun clatter against my heel.
I crouch down, watched by the animal eyes the entire time. Blindly grab for the gun. It’s warm and soft. For a moment, I risk tearing my gaze from the black-cloaked menace standing before me.
I’m holding a small, dark-skinned hand.
Screaming, I drop it and fall to the side, my breath coming in ragged heaves, my heart in my throat, my brain finally catching up to my senses.
“No,” I breathe. And again: “No.”
Jasmine watches me with wide, white unseeing eyes. Her neck is wet and glistening with spilled life.
Tears blooming like dewdrops, I wail at the presence, at my sister’s body, at the empty room, my cries joining the screams and shouts that seem to be everywhere now, a cacophony of despair. “What have you done?” I cry. I’m dreaming—oh please let this be a nightmare. Pinch myself. And again, harder. A groan gurgles from the back of my throat, a cry of rage and hurt.
I jump to my feet and charge the shadow, forgetting my father’s gun because I don’t need it, don’t need anything but my own two f
ists and unbridled anger.
I blink and it’s gone.
Ohcrapohcrap.
“You can’t fight me,” the voice says, behind me again.
I whirl around to face it, my heart stuttering in my chest, my every instinct urging me to get the hell out of the house. The shadow is hovering over my sister’s dead body.
It’s a woman’s voice. I only now realize it. What is she?
“Get away from her,” I growl through my teeth.
A laugh. How could she be laughing when Jasmine is broken beneath her? Who is this psychopath? “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Your family”—she points at the couch and it flips over as if it weighs no more than a feather, revealing the still bodies of my parents—“is waiting for you in hell.”
They’re not moving, not breathing: dead like Jasmine. Just like before. Not again.
I clamp my eyes shut as a flash of pain sears through my skull.
When I open my eyes, they’re still there. My newest family, the first one I’ve felt comfortable with in a long time—since after I lost my first foster family—gone to a place I can’t follow. The glowing eyes are still there, too, still staring. I run at the she-demon, and this time she doesn’t vanish, and I hit her so hard, like I’m hitting the tackling machines at football practice, but it’s like crashing headfirst into a stone wall. Her icy hands clamp around my throat and she picks me up like I’m not big for my age and over six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds. Like I’m the size of one of the dolls Jasmine will never play with again.
“Guess we’re doing this the hard way,” she says, and I can see her teeth, straight and white and in perfect little rows above and below her lips, not rotted and sharpened into fangs like I expected. She squeezes my throat and I can’t breathe and I’m surprised when I realize:
I don’t care.
Breathing doesn’t matter. The sharp rap of the heartbeat in my chest doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now that they’re gone.