Daughter of Chaos

Chapter Seven

The goddess looked totally at ease, and I glared at her. The first thing that came to mind was the accident I had just witnessed. "Well?"

She stared at me impassively. "Well, what, little Witch?"

I threw my breakfast on the counter and rounded on her. "Well, did I just kill someone?"

"Life always gives way to death. It is the way of things."

Her answer infuriated me. "Look, lady," I said, dangerously rude but beyond caring, "you still haven't told me anything, and now I think I just killed those people in that car!"

She looked at me, her face calm but her eyes smoldering from my insulting tone. "Someone was supposed to die today."

I sank down in a chair and buried my head in my hands, but she continued talking. "Two people were meant to die; two people died. But those two were not the two that were meant to die."

I looked up at her, startled.

"A pedestrian like yourself was meant to perish. As was the passenger. But," she added tonelessly, "you called upon the power of chaos and altered the course of events."

Horrified, I pressed her. "So I killed the two people in the car? It's my fault?" I waited for her to tell me no, but I knew the truth in my gut. I was a freak, a murderer, like Cindy said.

The goddess shook her head slightly. "It is more complicated than that. You have done something I do not usually see Reds do. You turned the chaos of the situation inside out."

Seeing my dumb expression, she explained herself. "The driver of that car would have been injured, but lived. He would have lived with the crushing guilt that he had killed two innocent women, and in three years' time, the pressure would have been too much for his mind. He would have purchased a rifle, walked into the street, and opened fire on a large crowd at a summer picnic. He would have killed a child and wounded three others before turning the gun on himself."

Her words washed over me like a death sentence, and I shivered at her emotionless tone. "How can you know what he would have done?"

"You forget your training. I am the goddess of the crossroads, and I see three ways."

I remembered the strange triple-headed wall plaque in Principal Snout's office and shuddered. "The past, the present, and the future?"

She inclined her head without speaking, and I tried to process everything she was telling me. It was impossible. My brain kept getting stuck on the fact that two people had died today because of me.

The goddess answered my thoughts. "What you did today—" She paused, her yellow eyes fixed on me. "You confounded chaos. Two people died today, but the thread that bound those future deaths to today has been snapped."

Her words sank in, and I started to cry. No matter what she said might have happened in the future, I had used Red magic to kill. I'd broken the Rede and every other rule that had ever been instilled in me about magic, and I hadn't even meant to. No wonder Dad said I was dangerous! Hecate watched me for a moment, her features like stone. I gulped for air and wiped my cheeks, trying to straighten my shoulders under the goddess's harsh gaze. If she could see the future, maybe she could help me sort things out. Finally, I got a grip on myself and looked her in the eye.

"I need to know. I need you to tell me, right now, without any more games, what Red magic is. I need to know what I am doing before this happens again."

Hecate looked past me and spoke. "You would have done well to have raised this child with manners. Her arrogance displeases me."

I followed her gaze over my shoulder and nearly fell out of my chair. Mom was kneeling on the floor behind me, her forehead pressed to the cold linoleum. How long had she been there? Had she heard that I was a murderer? I twisted in my chair, petrified at the thought that Mom might have heard I'd become an uncontrollable monster.