Eye of the Storm (3 page)

"Do you mind if I sit?" She jerks her head at the kitchen table.
 

"Be our guest," says Mira, sprawling back in her chair. I can almost see the flames of curiosity burning in Mira's eyes.
 

Mason pulls back a chair for Asher and then perches on the back of the sofa between where both Jax and Evis sit with their spines twisted around as if just turning and kneeling on the sofa to stare would somehow be too obvious, but looking like naked pretzels isn't.

The cabin's drafty, and Asher seems to take no notice of the shades' nudity, which either means she is used to shades or thinks we're nudists and doesn't care. I'm willing to bet this rent-a-cabin that it's the former. I'm just glad that she's not about to birth one.

Asher sits, and Mira darts a glance at the thawing steaks.
 

"Talk," I say to Asher. My curtness is a little lessened in heft by the gurgling sound that escapes my midsection.

A thousand possibilities flit through my head in answer to my own questions. She has information about shades. She's part of a cult and thinks her baby will save us all. She's just a big fan of my work. She's here to bunny-nap Nana. She's an assassin after Gryfflet. She wants to congratulate me on killing Gregor.

Asher looks around at each of us, and I notice she's careful not to let her gaze linger longer on any one face than another. None of my barely-entertained flights of fancy prepare me for what actually comes out of Asher Anitsiskwa's mouth.

"I knew your mother."

My mother exists in such isolation in my mind.
 

I never knew her. Whenever I pictured her it was always in selfish connection to myself. What I'd missed out on. What it might have been like to grow up with her, what her hair may have smelled like. If she would have liked chamomile tea or preferred coffee. What family could have felt like. What things she would have taught me if my hands hadn't been destined for the hilts of swords. To bake bread, perhaps, or to change a tire or both. Wondering if she would have loved me. I never thought of who she might have been, what connections she may have had. Even when I saw the news article about her disappearance, I don't remember it mentioning any family or close ties.
 

But someone must have missed her. What if that someone was Asher?

I have no memory of Eve Storme, but Evis has all of her memories.
 

Without thinking, I move to the side of the sofa where my brother is still twisted around, his face full of confusion and every muscle on his body frozen in that rigid shade way that means he's freaked.
 

"You knew our mother," I say finally, my words feeling like blocks of wood that dissolve to sawdust as they leave my mouth.
 

"Eve Storme," she says. "She and I go way back."

"No!" Evis blurts it out and untwists his body to get off the sofa and stand by me. He tugs at my arm as if my attention's not already on him. "I don't
know
her."

Mira's hands go carefully to the hilts of the daggers in her belt, her lips thin with distaste. If Asher's lying, I know Mira's thinking we can't just send her trundling off into the Kentucky wilderness. But none of us are keen on the idea of killing a norm, and a pregnant one to boot. I was sickened enough having to do it when it came to stopping the births of shades. I resolve that it will not come to that. That we're even entertaining the thought of hurting this person makes my tongue bitter. I meet Mira's gaze and shake my head so slightly it would be imperceptible were she not looking directly at me. No violence. Not now. Not here.
 

Asher looks at Evis and I now, and I think it's grief I detect in her gaze. If she saw the shift between me and Mira, she doesn't let on. Either she's an Oscar-worthy actor or she really did know our mother enough to mourn her.

"If you did know our mother," I say, "Evis would know you. He carries all her memories."

"Not all of them."

This time it's not just Evis who freezes. Jax and Mason go still, and Asher sees it.

"It's unlikely that the two of you would have any discrepancies in your memories of your hosts," Asher says to them, and her voice is gentle like waves lapping on a shore. She's reassuring them. Why?

I can't make heads or tails of this woman. She isn't trying to hide any emotion. She showed up here unarmed — though some witches don't need to reach for a weapon to be dangerous — and probably days away from her due date. She's at our mercy, and she knows it.
 

"Please explain." I take Evis's hand and hold it tight. He doesn't squeeze back. I can't imagine what he must be feeling. I don't even know what I'm feeling.

"It's a long story." Asher suddenly looks very tired.
 

"Until the world ends, it seems like we've got nothing but time," I tell her. "Start with how you got through wards set by some of the Summit's best witches."

"I used this," she says. Asher holds out an amulet after digging it out of her pocket. Looking closer, it's a small glass phylactery with blood in it. And not just blood. When she holds it up to the light, I see squiggles against the glass. Hair.
 

Somehow I know without asking that the hair is the same yellow-orange as the hair on top of my and my brother's heads.
 

Somehow I know without asking that the blood in that phylactery belongs to my mother.

"Does anyone know what that is?" I ask, hoping Mira or Mason will have some sort of explanation I can trust more than this stranger's.
 

Mira shakes her head, but Mason nods. "It's like the spell Gryfflet used to track Gregor."

"I never saw any such thing." I hope Mason's right. I hope he is.

"Only the spell maker is supposed to see it, or it clouds the path. Gryfflet got around that nuisance by managing to tie it into the apps on your phones. Or at least that's what he told me."
 

I wish Carrick were here. He'd know. He helped Gryfflet make that spell. I'd call him right now, but I don't want to distract him.
 

"Okay," I say. "So you've got a tracking spell aimed at my mother. How'd that get you through the wards?"

"It's not just a tracking spell," Asher says. "It is that, but it's more. It cloaks me in her essence, and the wards that are in place here are geared to your DNA. It was a gamble — I was prepared to set off any warding that existed here. But it got me through just fine."

"Good to know these wards would be useless if a shithead parent were after you," Mira mutters.
 

I almost say,
Good thing neither of us have parents
, but I stop myself because if those words came out, I'd be a shithead Ayala. I already feel like one for even thinking it.
 

I don't know whether or not to believe Asher about an amulet getting her through the wards. If she was desperate enough to try, though, I can let her fudge that detail. I just won't let her fudge on the rest.
 

"Tell me how you knew our mother." I feel Evis next to me. His unease, his distrust, his confusion. I know what that's like, to doubt everything you think you know.
 

"She was my roommate in college, and my best friend for the past forty years." Asher sees Evis's face just as a wave of fury from him almost engulfs me, and I think it's only my tight grip I have on his hand that keeps him from running at the woman. She sees it, or senses it. She stops. "Your mother was not a hells-worshiper."
 

I open my mouth to object, my free hand nearly pointing at my brother, because hello, case in point. He has our mother's memories, and if he doesn't remember seeing Asher's face at all, what she says next better be convincing.

Asher goes on, so quickly that her words jam together. For the first time she looks flustered. "Your mother was devoted to ending the threat of demons. I was with her through her pregnancy with you, Ayala. When you were born and taken from her, she became obsessed with learning everything she could about the Mediators. She wanted to learn how to help you."

Now my hand squeezing Evis's is more to anchor myself than to hold him back. I want to believe what she's saying. Oh, do I ever want to believe those beautiful words. I think every Mediator would love to know that their parents fought in secret to aid them.
 

Mira looks about as trusting right now as if she's been handed a piece of toast smeared with shit and someone told her it was Nutella.
 

"Prove it," is all I can manage to say.

Asher doesn't have much on her, just the winter coat she's wearing and a small backpack. Her feet are covered in leaves and sodden, and I feel like an asshole. She reaches for the backpack. Her hands tremble. In spite of the size of her belly, with most of us standing around her, she seems very small.
 

"Jax, go grab a couple pairs of clean socks from my room." I turn to face him, still holding on to Evis.
 

Jax looks bemused, but he gets up, stretching to sort out the kinks he's worked into his back from sitting in a near-spiral. He returns a moment later, and I motion him to give Asher the socks.
 

"Your feet are probably freezing," I say. "Take off your shoes. Put those socks on."

Asher rummages in the backpack, but she gives me a thankful nod as she pulls out a small album of photos. "I don't know if you'll take these as proof."

She reaches out a hand with the album, and I step forward to take it. Evis comes with me. I get the feeling he's holding tight to my hand for the same reason I'm gripping his. We step back to the sofa and lean, and I have to let go of him in order to open the album.

The first page is two women. One is unmistakably Asher, though thinner and not pregnant, fewer lines on her face and a brighter light in her eyes. The other has hair the same color as mine and a smile so wide it looks like it'll take over her face. They're at a music festival, outdoors in the sun. I can almost feel the humidity, almost hear the cicadas. I hear a sharp intake of breath from Evis. My own breath freezes in my lungs as I process what I'm seeing.

Our mother. Eve Storme. There she is, on the page. A face I've never seen, and yet bits of it are reflected back at me every time I look in a mirror. Her nose is my nose. We have the same widow's peak. Her skin is freckled enough that she almost looks tan. The picture was taken in the height of summer, it seems. Both she and Asher are in white tank tops, both with colored bras showing throw them. Their arms are around each other's waists, and their grins look like they've just been laughing about a shared secret.
 

I look closer at this woman who brought me and my brother into the world. I've always wondered what color her eyes would be. It's a shock to not see Mediator violet or shade indigo in her irises. Instead, they're gray.
 

She looks alive. She looks beautiful. She looks normal.
 

For a long time, Evis and I simply stare at the picture. Neither of us make a move to turn the page. It's obvious that this woman is our mother. I can't help the tightness that constricts my throat or the sting in my eyes. There's nothing I can feel, but at the same time, I feel everything. A maelstrom rages inside my head at the image in front of me. We stare so long that I forget there's more to ask, a deeper explanation needed. It's clear as day that Asher and my mother knew each other. Which means Evis's memories are wrong.
 

"We need you to tell us right now why Evis doesn't remember you." I don't want this to escalate, but from the way I can feel the roiling thoughts in my brother's mind, if he doesn't get answers now, things are going to go south. Fast.

"Because I set up a mental warding that kept him from knowing me." Asher struggles to reach her feet around her pregnant belly, but she shakes her head at Mason when he steps forward to offer help.
 

She manages to get the dry socks on while the rest of us process what she's just said.
 

"Why?" I ask. I can feel that Evis doesn't believe her, and I feel the same echoes of distrust from Mason and Jax.
 

"We thought it was safer. We weren't sure what her son would be like or how much control the hellkin would have over him. If they could look into his mind. Demons have telepathic links, you know."
 

No, I don't know. My mouth falls open, and I close it right away because that I can believe. I'm living it. It explains a lot, busting through some of the battles I've been through with the equivalent of red arrows pointing to moments where the hellkin shifted strategy or coordinated without speaking to each other. And in the wake of that bulldozer of information comes a question that pops out of Mira's mouth before I can voice it myself.

"Why the fuck don't we know that? It seems, you know, relevant." Mira sits forward in her chair now, her eyes intent on Asher.
 

"It's not common knowledge." Asher seems to choose her words carefully, like she's looking at an array of the English language and sifting through to find the right ones.