Gemini

Chapter 24* A Fine Art

The memory fades, melts away into darkness. There I am, on my own, panting with my hands on my knees. Sam and Zoey are out from behind the counter, and my entire body is crumpled onto the floor like my bones have somehow melted. Zoey has her knife, and Sam is just staring at me. My fear is reflected in his face.

“Gemini,” I say hoarsely. My voice is a dry, scratchy whisper. “Please- I can’t, not anymore-” But a section of the floor next to me turned black like it was rotting, and crumbled away. Black liquid oozed from between the cracks and a single, rotting, skeleton hand pops out. It brushes my own hand and my scream pops my eardrums. It’s an incoherent mess of words, flying obscenities, and I scramble away from it. My back collides with a table and the table topples over. A vase crashes onto my head and my vision goes dark for a second, followed by a blinding pain that reverberates all the way down my body. The shattered pottery shards shrivel and turn into tiny grinning skulls, which all swivel to grin horrifically at me- and then they shudder and turn into scrawny, vicious red-eyed rats. They come at me in a wave.

“Get them away from me!” I scream, scrambling back on my hands and knees. “Sam! Zoey! HELP!” My gaze falls on them frantically, but they are just standing there and staring at me with grins on their faces. No, it isn’t faces- their hair is growing white, their skin puckered and wrinkled, and their skulls are growing smaller and smaller on their necks. Swaying on their feet, there is a moment as I forget the rats- and their heads drop off and roll onto the floor, coming to a stop and leering at me.

Sobs rack my body. This is a hallucination, it has to be. I will not let it win. I will not let it win. I will not let it win. I will not-

A rat drops down the front of my shirt. It’s little paws grab on my skin, and a searing pain fires through me as it nibbles away at my flesh. Another group of them swarms my hands. One begins to eat the mark Ariadne has left on my palm. I draw in breath for another scream-

And then I faint.

The first thing I hear when I come to is Sam and Zoey shouting.

“What did you do to her, you son of a b-”

“Let us go right this instant!”

“I’m warning you, if she doesn’t wake up-”

“Let us go right this instant!”

My eyes open blearily. They feel crusted up with dirt. I groan, trying to sit up, but I am… chained down? Alertness returns back to me in a heady, almost intoxicating wave, and I yank my arms. “Let me go!”

Silence. Then renewed shouting.

“Look, she’s awake!”

“Let us go, now!”

And then a deeper, manlier voice, that drowns out those of my friends- “Be quiet.”

The room falls quiet, as though a charm had been placed over it. I blink. I am lying face up on some sort of bed, with my limbs shackled to the bed posts. I cannot move, but I am free to speak. “Gemini?” My voice comes out hoarse and rough, and I cough to clear my throat. I can’t really see- my vision is hazy and foggy, and no matter how many times or how hard I blink, they don’t clear. A terrifying thought grips me: Am I going blind?

“The curse is working,” Gemini says, sounding rather pompous and pleased with himself. “I haven’t lost my touch after all.”

“What curse?” I demand, yanking at my shackles again.

“I blocked your sight.”

“What for?” three voices ring out at him. He chuckles.

“We can’t very well have the spirit inside you seeing what we’re doing, can we?”