Damned if I Do (6 page)

Edie

It's about a ten minute drive from the Sacred Grounds Coffee Shop to Carl and Aunt Tessa's house. Their house is a small Craftsman that is always in the middle of remodeling. Aunt Tessa is one of those handy types who is never done with a project. Her wish list keeps morphing and evolving. She always sees something wrong with any little thing in her house. The last time I was here, she was painting the living room for the fourth time in two years, never satisfied with the color.

It's been three weeks since I was here last. I’d come over to see what Aunt Tessa had dug up from the volumes and volumes of Harker history. She tearfully told me that with five hundred years of history and sixteen Harkers who were infected like me, none had survived. It was one of those "oh-shit" moments where I really understood just how close my expiration date is.

I don't want another repeat of that, but it seems inevitable.

Aunt Tessa's already outside on the porch waiting for me as I pull up in the driveway. Carl must have told her I was coming.

Her long gray hair is down in loose curls, and she's wearing a simple black tank top with a flowy, knee-length She grabs me into a tight hug, compressing the air out of my lungs. Even though I'm not that big, she's tiny next to me. Still, her squeeze is impressive.

"Edie! How're you? How's Amelia and Graeme?”

I grin widely. "Fine and fine. You?"

"Well, you know, I've been reading up in Feng Shui and I think I've finally figured out what's wrong with the layout. You've dyed your hair!" she exclaims, changing subjects as if she flipped a switch. She touches a few strands from my ponytail. "The red is striking."

Since Christmas, I’ve gone through about four different hair colors. Blue, green, purple, and now red. I'd nearly forgotten that it is different now. The red really matches my mood these days.

"I needed a change," I say.

Aunt Tessa catches my somberness and nods. "I'm so glad you're here," she says. "You should stay for dinner. I didn't believe it when Carl said that you were coming over."

"She's here on business, Ma," Carl calls from the doorway.

Aunt Tessa steps back and I get a good look at Carl. He stands at my height with a crazy shock of bleached blond hair that's never combed. Carl looks to be the poster child of a stoner, except that he isn't, not by a long shot. He may be cheery and airheaded on the surface, but everything goes really deep within him. I doubt that I'll ever get to see every layer of him, but that's what keeps him fun.

"Hey, Carl," I say. "You ever do laundry?" He's never been seen without some sort of vintage Sublime shirt and he only has so many.

He looks down and shrugs. "Sometimes. About as often as you see ghosts."

My aunt turns to me with huge eyes. "What? You see ghosts?"

I scowl at Carl. "Just one. Meghan appeared to me on a hunt last night."

Aunt Tessa searches my face, waiting to see if I'll crack a smile and tell her that it's not true. "You never could see ghosts before.”

"Yeah, and she never could make coffee houses explode before either," Carl adds. "Edie is a bit different now."

"You blew up a coffee house?" Tessa asks me.

I shrink back from her hard gaze, because I know what's running through her head. "No, I didn't. I just…
nearly
…I stopped it." At the cost of my job, but that’s really nothing when you consider the alternative.

"So your powers have gotten stronger?" she presses.

"I think so? I don't know, I didn't use them much before I became the Harker."

"How's your scar?"

No one has seen the scar since it spread past my elbow, and the thought of others scrutinizing it makes me squirm.

"Fine.”

I can tell she doesn't believe me because she purses her lips. "Come inside," she says, her tone matter-of-fact and all business. "We need to have a talk."

She gestures for Carl to get the door. He obliges and my aunt ushers me inside. He gives me a knowing look as I cross the threshold.

“This is a new Sublime shirt,” he tells me.

“Uh huh.”

You can tell as soon as you step inside her house that Aunt Tessa dabbles in the occult. In the door jamb, you can see salt lining the trim, creating a barrier against evil spirits. Wreaths made of natural materials are above every door, and everywhere you look, you see earthy colors and relics. Everything seems fine for a normal witch's house, except for maybe a few things that are out of place that reveal her roots as part of a family of vampire hunters.

The living room is cluttered with books on the creatures of the night. Some are on the built-in bookcase on the far left wall. Some are incredibly old and crumbling with age, while others are so new, they're still shrink-wrapped, probably new additions in her research for a cure for me.

That's not all that's on the shelves though. I've had a look before and had a chuckle when I saw some modern sex manuals on it. Once, I asked her why those were there, and she hastily explained they were gifts from a friend.

She has a study full of books as well, so she's the best-prepared person I know to sort through any of this stuff. Since she hasn’t found anything, my hopes of finding a cure are slim to none.

"Sit," Aunt Tessa commands, pointing to the sofa. "You too, Carl. I'll be right back."

I sit, feeling awkward. My cousin follows suit, used to his mother's blunt manner. Aunt Tessa disappears down the hall.

"How'd it go last night?" Carl asks. "Did you get anything?"

"Dislocated my shoulder. And the vamps refused to speak, so I didn't find anything useful about Anthony."

"Bummer," Carl says, echoing my sentiments. "Was Jude there?"

I laugh bitterly laugh at the mention of the amnesiac vampire, ignoring the flutter in my stomach at the thought of him. "I never should have told you about him." Carl is the only person I've told about Jude. And Carl treats the idea of him as some sort of taboo subject. Which he very much is.

He shrugs. "You have a hot vampire on the inside who's willing to help track down another vampire.”

“I shouldn’t have told you about the tattoos,” I mutter.

“Tattoos are hot, Edie. And he’s doing this only for you. I’m curious. It's something you don't hear about every day."

"You just want to get into his pants."

"Probably. You don't?"

"He's…" I stumble for words, unsure where to proceed with that thought.

Luckily, I'm saved by Aunt Tessa, who comes bustling back into the living room with a proud smile. She is carrying an old leather-bound tome about the size of a coffee table book with her. Her finger is squeezed between the pages, marking her spot.

"How long ago were you bitten, Edie?" she asks.

"A little over five months."

"What magical powers have you acquired in that time?"

"Powers? Well,
all
of them really. I could do a little bit of pyrokinesis before, but nothing like I do now. I
think
I can see ghosts…" I mean, there’s always the possibility that I’ve finally gone crazy.

She gives a satisfied grunt at my non-answers and flips through the pages of the book to where her finger is bookmarking it. I can hear the brittle sheets rustling against one another.

"This book is the earliest known written record of previous Harkers,” she says. “From Elizabeth Harker in 1550 to Olga Harker in 1889. It tells how they died, their abilities, and their accomplishments."

"The Harker Verses," I say, remembering the book now. When I was younger, I was never allowed to touch it for fear that I would ruin it. It’s an antique, one of the precious accounts of my family’s history.

In answer, Aunt Tessa holds up the book, open to a page near the middle. Rendered in black ink is an anatomical drawing of a naked woman's body. Covering almost all of her skin are dark, angry blotches that are colored with a rusty red hue. Her scar. "Catherine Harker drew a diagram of herself two months after infection," she says.

"That’s after two months?" I ask, suppressing a shudder.

She watches me intently, and I realize that, unintentionally, I’ve given quite a bit away about the state of my sickness. "I've counted eight Harkers who were infected in this book. All had horrible scars that spread throughout their body. And they all died within three months. They all looked like this." She taps the page.

“Ma,” Carl says by way of a warning. “You’re not helping.”

“I want to try something,” she says, ignoring him. “We’re going to try to exploit this new…
development
. I want to see how strong you’ve gotten.”

I swallow self-consciously. “Uhm, okay.”

“Based on these histories,” she gestures to the giant tome in her lap, “the other Harkers that have been bitten in the past have displayed immense power, far more than a typical vampire hunter.”

“That’s supposed to make her feel better?” Carl asks, echoing my sentiment.

“It’s supposed to give her a timeline,” Aunt Tessa insists. “And if she can do what I think she can, she might be faring better than her predecessors.”

“But still dying,” I add.

My aunt doesn’t address my comment. Probably for the best, because that’s a spiral of self-doubt I don’t want to go down at the moment.

Instead, she says, “We’re going to try some magic.”

Carl frowns. “Ma…”

Whenever his mother “tries” some magic, something usually goes horribly awry. She’s like a mad scientist in that she’ll dabble in stuff that she shouldn’t, but only because she’s curious.

“She’ll be fine,” Tessa says. She looks at me, imploring me with her eyes. “Don’t you want to try to see Meghan again?”

She hit me in the gut there. For the chance to say that I’m sorry for everything, I’d do anything to see my sister again. Absolutely.

“Yes.”

She pats my knee and stands. “Follow me then.”

Edie

Another aspect of the Sedgewick household that is so quintessentially “Aunt Tessa” is her sacred space where her altar is set up. It’s a small room towards the back of the house that she keeps under lock and key and spiritually cleansed. She keeps the windows covered by linen curtains. In the center of the room is her circle surrounded by candles, and in the center of that is her altar, a small table with items of magical power.

It feels immensely old and powerful, and at the same time, so uniquely Aunt Tessa.

My aunt kneels on the pillow at the base of the altar.

“Edie, come sit in my circle right here. Carl,” she says, “can you get the lights?”

The lights flick off, throwing us into darkness. Aunt Tessa strikes a match to light up the candles around us and on the altar. I wonder for a moment if I should offer to do it with my pyrokinesis, and quickly strike that thought from my mind. If we’re really testing my powers, I should probably conserve my energy, despite how insignificant it may seem.

"Let’s have a look at your scar," Tessa says. She waggles her finger at me. "Take off the hoodie."

I open my mouth to protest.

"
Now,
Edie," she says.

I let out a breath and proceed to take off my hoodie. This is the first time I've really shown my scar to anyone. I peel it off, cringing at Carl's sharp intake of breath behind me.

"
Edie
," he murmured, his voice full of sympathy, "I…I didn't know…" The last time he saw it was right after Meghan's funeral. When it started spreading over my arm, I took to wearing long sleeve hoodies to hide it.

I refuse to look his way. It feels like I've let them in on a deep, dark secret, one that exposes my biggest weakness.

Aunt Tessa looks at me apprehensively. “It hasn’t spread as far as I thought it would.”

This comment catches me off guard, since
I
think it looks like I’m turning into a leper. Compared to Catherine Harker though, I’m the picture of perfect health.

She notices my shocked expression and offers a warm smile. “Still not great, though.”

I open my mouth to say more, but she’s muttering the incantations to close the circle, bringing me in with her. I don’t want to interrupt her magic.

When she finishes, she adjusts her position to sit facing me. Her eyes are bright and keen and she rubs her hands to get the blood flowing in them. “Ready?”

No.
“I guess.”

“If this works, Carl, it’s about to get very cold,” she warns him.

“Now, Edie,” she says, focusing solely on me. “I want you to get into the same mindset you had last night.”

I nod, mystified. “Okay…”

Meghan had appeared to me when I was trying to clean up the mess. I wasn’t thinking about anything, really, so it must have been my clear head.

I try blocking out all thoughts, except this little niggling in the back of my mind keeps warning me that this won’t work.

Aunt Tessa places her palms on either side of my temples. “Okay, Edie, I want you to close your eyes.”

I comply, shuttering the world from me.

“Now count back from ten.”

In my mind, I start counting while Aunt Tessa starts her recitation.

10…

9…

“I, Tessa, follow thee, Edie across the Void.”

8…

7…

“Let us tarry awhile and see Beyond.”

6…

5…

The temperature drops and I can hear Carl’s sharp intake of breath at the change.

4…

3…

“We’re ready,” Aunt Tessa concludes, her voice now sounding far away.

2…

1…

“Open your eyes…”

I do.

And Meghan is right in front of me.

“So you’ve finally found your way to me, Edie,” she says.

She’s smiling at me, although it’s sad, one of the ones I’m familiar with. It’s the kind of smile that we shared when we would reminisce about our dad. The one that we had when we lost our first cat. Unfortunately, we’ve had to smile that way quite a few times in our lives, or not smile at all.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her, a note of accusation in my voice.

She looks amused at my reaction. “You’re the one who came to me.”

I take stock around us.

We’re alone in a space by ourselves. It’s bright around us, though not blindingly so, and I don’t have to shield my eyes to see anything. It’s white and colorful all at the same time. We’re sitting on a bench, one that I recognize from childhood. It was in our backyard when we were kids, a wrought-iron one that was handed down from our grandmother. Meghan is wearing a simple maxi dress, and I’m still dressed in my tank top and jeans.

It’s like she never died.

“I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore…”

Meghan smirks. “Kansas? No. Austin? Somewhat.” At my confused look, she laughs. “You’re in a trance in the physical world, but you’re here in the Void with me.”

I’m more overwhelmed than anything else. I want to tell her everything, tell her that I’m sorry.

“Don’t act so surprised,” Meghan says. “You always discredited your own abilities.”

“Being the Harker was supposed to be
your
thing.”

“Yes. Then again, we never could control our own destinies, could we?” She sighs and leans back. “We’re at the mercy of Fate.”

“I miss you,” I blurt.

“I miss you, too. You’re doing fabulously in my place though.”

“No…”
No I’m not. No one can ever take your place. Graeme needs you. Amelia needs you. I need you.

I don’t say it aloud, but Meghan knows what I’m thinking. Just like she always did.

“I wish I could be there,” she says, putting an arm around me. She feels too cold, like she is really dead. But for a moment, it is as if she never left and we’re two kids again. She even smells like she used to. This is what I was missing in my life. I needed her when I was younger, I need her now. “I left you in such a bad state.”

She nods at my scar. I try to cover it, although there’s no way that I can hide it with my tank top. For never showing anyone how far the scar has spread, I feel exposed now that three people have seen it.

“It’s better than what happened to you,” I say guiltily.

Meghan’s face darkens. “Don’t blame yourself for that. Don’t ever blame yourself. We had no control over what happened.”

I suck in a deep breath and tears prick at the corners of my eyes. This is what I wanted, the chance to apologize for my inability to save her life. I didn’t think I’d ever get it.

“I’m sorry.”

After a long pause Meghan replies, “It’s not your fault, Edie.”

I rub my face with my hands, emotions bubbling over, threatening to take control. “I’m trying to take care of everything before I…join you… For Amelia.”

If I kill Anthony, there wouldn’t be immediate danger for my niece. She could grow older at least. It kills me to think that I won’t be there to protect her in the future. Amelia is young, innocent. And unlike my childhood, I want her to live free of this darkness that’s been swirling like a miasma around my life. I’ve already been failing her.

“You never did take the possibility of a cure seriously, did you?” Meghan asks, breaking into my thoughts.

“What?”

She gives me an enigmatic smile. “Seek out the Progenitor,” she says cryptically.

I let her words sink in. I know I’m in some sort of alternate plane, but at the moment, I find it hard to suspend my disbelief.

“The Progenitor?” I ask skeptically. “A legend?”

“You really think he’s a legend?”

We’ve both heard about the Progenitor since we were little girls. He's like the Boogeyman, a figment of the dark that was used to scare us into listening to our mother.
Be good or else the Progenitor will come and get you,
or
Go to sleep so you can fight the Progenitor.
Meghan used to terrify me with pranks of him.

“The father of all vampires,” I say evenly, making sure that we’re both on the same page. “The guy that has been alive for a million years. The original vampire. We’re talking about the same guy?”

The Progenitor has even popped up a few times during Aunt Tessa's research. Across the many tomes and volumes of the Harker literature, there is a lot of speculation about him, but no evidence to support that he actually exists.

Maybe Meghan’s been dead too long and it’s going to her head.

“Find him,” my sister says. She leans in to me, her hazel eyes darkening and it feels like she’s looking deep into my soul. “Find him at all costs.”

“Meghan, I—”

She sits bolt upright, her eyes wild. “Someone’s here.”

A beat passes and she turns back to me. “Edie, listen to me,” she says desperately. “Don’t trust them. Promise me.”

“Meghan, I…I—”

“
Promise me
,” she insists. “Before—”

I blink. In one instant I’m in the Void, and in the next, I’m back in Austin at the altar, where Aunt Tessa’s hands are still on either side of my temples.

I wheeze out a shallow breath, a burst of white cloud coming from my mouth. It’s freezing in this room. It had been air conditioned only a few minutes ago, and now the heater is on, and I can feel the cold shedding off me like flakes of ice.

I fall backwards and catch myself on my hands. Even the hardwood floors are frosty. Aunt Tessa sucks in air as she shakes off the cold. Her skin is almost blue from the cold, and she’s watching me with wide eyes.

“Holy shit,” Carl gasps. “That really happened.” He’s rubbing his own goose-fleshed arms, trying to rub life back into them. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“That,” my aunt says at length, “is how you can go into a trance and visit the Void. Which you did beautifully.” She offers me a smile, which I don’t know how she’s able to do, seeing as my cheeks are frozen. “You’re getting so much stronger.”

“Edie,” Carl says, his voice nearly strangled, “it was like you were dead. In a freezer.”

I blink away tears that I can’t seem to stop. My encounter with Meghan has left me shaken. “How long was I out?”

He checks his phone. “Three minutes.”

It felt so much longer. The crack of a headache fires off like lightning, and I hold my head in my hands. The light from the candles is enough to make me squint. It feels like a migraine came out of nowhere.

“Ow.”

“That may be a side effect of your trance,” Tessa explains gently. “The headaches.”

“You could have warned me.” All I want to do is lay down and sleep this off.

“Sorry, hun.”

“Meghan didn’t mention it either.”

She grins and gets to her feet. “So you
did
see Meghan. That’s exactly what we wanted.”

“Yeah.” I take her proffered hand and she helps me up, which only serves to make black spots streak across my vision. The memory of my encounter with her already feels like it’s fading from my mind. “She said that I need to find the Progenitor.”

“What?” Carl screeches. “
The
Progenitor?”

“Yes. I made sure that I heard her right.”

“Impossible,” Aunt Tessa says dismissively. “He’s a myth. There’s no evidence that he ever existed.”

“Meghan sure seemed to think he was alive. And she mentioned something about a cure.”

There’s a shocked silence.

“A cure?” Carl breathes.

Yeah, I don’t believe it either. Another flash of pain splits my head and I groan. “Ugh, hurts so much.”

“Go nap in the guest room,” my aunt commands. “Sleep it off.”

I nod, which only makes it hurt worse. “Okay.”

Aunt Tessa turns back to her candles, mutters the incantation to open the circle, and guides me out of the room.

“Are you okay, Edie?” Carl asks, putting a hand on my bare left arm to help me. I’m too spent to even protest the touch. Usually I wouldn’t want anyone to touch the scar. It feels like I’m infecting them with some unseen pathogen, even though there’s no way for me to actually spread this disease.

“Yeah. She told me to trust no one.”

“What, she thinks there’s a mole or something?”

My heart sinks as I consider the horrible feeling that she could possibly be meaning Jude. After all, what reason does he really have to help me if not to get close to me? I trust him. I think. I can’t let it cloud my judgment.

I don’t say so out loud, because Tessa’s right here, and while Carl may know about his existence, I don’t want too many people knowing about the amnesiac vampire. It feels like I’m a dirty cop with a crush on a criminal.

Carl knows exactly what I’m thinking and meets my eyes. I give him a slight shake of my head to tell him not to mention it. The good thing about my younger cousin is that he knows when to abandon a topic. He buttons up, and follows me to the guest room. I blindly collapse on the bed, barely able to hold myself up. Then I remember there’s something else I need to do: check with some vampires that the Progenitor is real. I know the best place to start, and the best person to do it with.