I whirled about quickly. There was no image, only a murmuring. I strained my ears to try to make out what was being said, but the voices were so faint, seeming to come from worlds away. And then they stopped altogether. I rose and crossed cautiously to the center of the room. Again, I could make out the faint but distorted sound of feminine voices. Was that a cry of pain? Desperation? I recognized Ellen’s voice and could almost make out her words. I caught an image of her and Iris huddled over my mother, but the vision looked like a poorly preserved kinescope being projected onto the room’s current reality. The image froze and then stretched like a rubber band, wrapping around and going through itself, reaching up and feeding into the portrait of my mother. I realized that any emotional imprint made on the day of my birth had long ago been channeled into the painting.
I tried to focus, to tune into the faint energies. I grasped the painting’s frame, pressed my hands against the lacquered oils. I could feel small eruptions of energy flare off the painting, but what I had come for was locked away—the energy that had been channeled into the work had been permanently transformed. I took my hands off the painting and put them over my face. A sob formed in my breast, but I stifled it. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to know the truth.
My arms trembled, and my hands quivered, but I would not give up without making one final effort. I forced my anger and disappointment into a hard, tight ball and raised my hands. The orb shot from my fingers, landing right where I had aimed it: the spot where I had seen the three women together. I stalked forward, focusing all my power on expanding the sphere of energy. I could see the flickering image from the past stretch distortedly across its surface. I fell to my hands and knees, leaning in to try to interpret the jerky movement of the grainy, bulbous vision. The room around me crackled with my magic, and the smell of ozone flooded my senses. I forced myself to ignore these distractions. I channeled more and more energy into the orb. Distorted sounds, out of sync and incomprehensible, arose in waves. Then, with no warning, the glowing sphere collapsed in on itself and was gone. I had forced too much energy into a fragile moment. I heard wailing, and it took me a moment to realize that I was the one making the sound.
I fought a growing sense of hopelessness. I held my hands out again, trying to build up more energy for a last-ditch effort, but my concentration was broken when my peripheral vision alerted me to something floating down from above. I leaned my head away, but a soft speck landed on my cheek. I reached up and tried to brush it off, managing only to smear it. I looked at my hand and realized that it was ash. My mind had no sooner registered this realization than other flakes began to descend from above, thick and heavy, covering me like dry, gray snow. The ashes formed a thin powdery layer all around me, but rather than resting where they lay, they lifted back up, whirling around me like a slow spinning dust devil, some of the ash working its way into my nasal passages. I jumped up and ran to the easel, whipping off the cover to use as a shield against the ash. I froze at the sight of Connor’s face staring back at me.
The easel held more than just a simple portrait. It was a triptych—the canvas had been divided into three equal portions. Both side panels had been completed; the one on the left showed Connor as he had been in his youth, and in the one on the right, his face had been turned into a demon’s, the same hate I had witnessed the night he died shining through the image’s eyes. The center panel was still inchoate. A few layers of paint gave the impression that Iris had made many attempts at beginning this portion. I realized she was using her art in an attempt to reconcile the two images she held of her dead husband: the man she thought she had married and the monster he had proven himself to be. My eyes glided straight over the reflection of his youthful glow on the left, drawn to the image of the flames I had seen devour him. Here on the canvas they were frozen in time. We had held no funeral for Connor. There had been no remains to bury; no body had been found. The fire elementals had feasted well. Ashes were all that had been left of Connor.
Ashes. I began swatting at the dust with the tarp, trying to wipe Connor’s remains from my skin, shake his ashes from my hair. Then I heard Connor’s laughter. I spun around toward the sound. The ashes coalesced before me, taking on a definite form. A hand, smoldering, reached out of the dusty cloud and grasped at me. I leapt back.
“I will live again. I will live through you.” I felt his words more than I heard them. The hand fell formless, and the cloud of swirling ashes rushed up in an attempt to surround me, envelop me, enter me. His spirit was attempting to possess me. No, it wasn’t me he wanted; his spirit was trying to supplant that of my unborn child. That simply was not going to happen. I forced myself to regain control of my magic. I slid away from Iris’s studio and into my own room.
For once I was ready. I had been preparing for this moment since the day after Connor’s death, when I’d witnessed his essence lurking in a mirror. An attempt had been made to cleanse the house, to balance out its energies and remove anything with evil intent, but somehow I’d known the sneaky bastard would manage to slip through. Neither of my aunts nor Oliver had mentioned sensing his presence, but for months I felt him lurking on the periphery, just beyond capture. Angry. Jealous. A black cloud of hopelessness that fed on its own shadow.
I threw open my closet door and dug deep behind the shoes and boxes of high school memorabilia. I grasped the cool neck of the bottle I had hidden there. I shuddered a little at the sight of my creation. It had started out as a simple cobalt-blue glass bottle, but Jilo had coached me, showing me how to clothe it in clay and paint it with natural pigments. What had once been a simple container was now an effigy. A crude but recognizable image of the man who had been so willing to sacrifice me for power, even though he believed himself to be my father. “When you make a spirit trap, the image don’t have to be dead on,” Jilo had told me. “It just got to be the image you hold of him.”
And it certainly did reflect my image of him. I’d captured his smugness. His rapaciousness. His cruelty.
I felt my blood pulsing in me. My temperature alternated cold and hot. My focus narrowed, blocking out everything but the burning anger I held for Connor. I felt confident. I felt in control. The door to my bedroom shook, then began to bend in and out as Connor tried to force it open. It looked for all the world like the door was breathing, expanding as it gasped in air, flattening as it let it go. I stood there in the silence. Waiting. Listening. My pulse pounded in my own ears. I took a step toward the door, and it began to shake so hard I halfway expected it to pull off its hinges, and then it stopped cold.
“Come on, you son of a bitch,” I muttered under my breath. “This time I am ready for you.” I pulled the cork out of the neck, grasping the stopper in my sweaty palm. I felt his sudden panic. I knew he had realized that the balance of power had completely changed. I was no longer the powerless girl he could injure and leave to die. He moved away from my door. I could feel his energy retreat. Instead of pursuing me, he began to flee. At that moment I realized Connor’s spirit had no power outside of what I myself had loaned to it. By charging Iris’s studio with magic, I had given him enough energy to manifest. And I had just shut off his supply. I grasped the spirit trap tightly with both hands and used my magic to swing the door open.