Too often, I find myself standing in front of my father's orb just to make sure a Shade hasn't taken residence there, dragging him into the Void and leaving me behind, too.
Every orb in the hall holds within its shimmering glass the natural course of a soul's lifespan. When the orb vibrates on its shelf, it indicates its soul has become unstable. That some demonic Shade from the Void has attached to its host in attempts to feed from the distress present in the brain and drag that soul closer to the Void. I imagine that the Seers are accustomed to reading Robert James's orb. They probably even have some type of running joke within the hidden aisles of the Hall: Orb 21 in aisle 119 is pulling an ole' Robbie James again. Better get the fire extinguishers.
When I was eight, and my mom first began telling me of her duty to the world beyond the Peripherals, I began to watch for signs in the humans around me. Nervous ticks that twitched with indecision, haunted circles underneath the eyes, bruised with the crushing force of overwhelming choices. My father's tell is always his hands. They flit and tinker, stumbling and creating, shifting through gadgets and tools and electrical wires.
The day my mother died, the day Robert James hammered its letters into my ring, was the day I rushed home to find my father half buried in the twisted, cut wires of our electrical box, half-conscious with his brown hair staggering towards the ceiling.
No one knew if it had been intentional or not.
The Council had stepped in then, Serah Mallory herself releasing her manipulative skills onto the Shade tearing my dad's mind apart. I had only been ten years old, not nearly well-enough trained to handle an orb, let alone a Shade. And my own father had been my very first name. Being only human, my father had no idea of the demonic fight, of how closely he had dangled over the Void.
As for my mother's death, he had been told by Seers disguised as police officers that his wife had been a victim of a hit-and-run accident. They had even procured her mangled car from God only knows where, seeing as the last time she had been in the car was when she had picked me up from school earlier that afternoon.
"Secrets, Guinevere," Serah had whispered to me, stroking my hair. "You can't let him know."
Often, I doubt it all. But mostly, I find myself grateful that my father stills lives.
His orb almost shattered that day.
Which explains why, when I finally push open our front door and a clatter of trinkets crashing to the floor greets my ears, I shoot a look straight to my ring. I pause, halfway in and halfway out of the slim space cracked between the doorway and the bricked wall of our home's exterior. But the silver remains cool and unmarked around my lightly bronzed skin. For a second, I peer at it, but it still doesn't jump to life even after I flick it. Still, I slip through the door carefully, treading through the pile of junk that now litters our boxy entryway, watching closely for a flash of darkness, a shadow that moves a bit too fluidly, like oil oozing from a nozzle.
Then again, the sun still shines in the sky, so I suppose I have a few more hours until Shade began to make their appearance into our world.
"Dad," I call out, tip-toeing over a coil of lethal looking wire and old batteries that look partly melted, "what's going on?"
Cardboard boxes are scattered on the floor, marking a disorganized path to the kitchen from where I smell fire.
"I think I finally have it this time, Guin!"
One of our kitchen devices sits on its food-stained side as my father's hands prop it up. He spares a glance at me as I come to rest against the white granite countertop, arms crossed. His eyes are so wide that I can nearly see my entire outline in the muddy, brown pool of them.
"Just look at it," he flourishes, fingers caressing the buttons of the torn apart mechanism in a familial embrace.
I try to keep my panic wrapped tightly behind by ribs by purposefully ignoring the scorched marks on the ceiling above his head. Instead, I focus on his latest invention. "It's our microwave," I respond in a slow, measured way, gearing up to deter him. He always fiddles with our appliances when his brain slips into the spirals of anxiety and loneliness. "You destroyed our only means of nutrition."
"'Destroyed' is such a harsh term," he says, already tinkering with some invisible nail with a screwdriver.
"So is 'starvation.'"
His tongue clucks twice against the roof of his mouth. It's the strongest reprimand he'll ever give to his sarcastic daughter. "But it's solar-powered now, Guinny."
I can't help the tight smile that threatens to encourage my dad. "I'm all for this environmental fad, but there are no windows in here."
As if just noticing his surroundings, he turns his head in a near-impossible 360 degrees angle that his long, thin neck allows. It doesn't take long for him to deduce that there are, indeed, no windows in the square, limited floor plan of the kitchen. The kitchen that we've lived in for nearly two months now.
We still haven't bothered unpacking.
"Well," he begins like the thought is newly awakened, "I will admit that the lack of sunlight does prove to be a setback."
I touch him on the shoulder as I make my way towards the haphazardly magnetized pamphlets stuck to our fridge. "I'll just call for takeout. Where's Leo?"
"Drawing in his room," he replies to the question of my younger brother's whereabouts. His head is already stuffed back into the open door of the microwave.
"Chinese tonight? If there is such a thing as good Asian cuisine in Confederate America."
My father snorts at my dramatic tone. "You should study those history books before school starts."
School.
It made me snort with laughter. School is too vague of a term for it. Down here in Middle Tennessee, 'school' is referred to as Battlefield Preparatory Academy, a private school for the privileged descendants of Civil War heroes, no doubt. For a war that they had lost, the South sure seems fond of it.
I sigh again. "Dinner, Dad?"
But Robert James is already back to muttering equations and probabilities under his breath as he tips the microwave backward to observe some answer that must be tacked there to the appliance's bottom. I grab the first foldable menu I can find amidst the mess, and then my ring constricts around my finger.
The menu falls to the floor, and my swift inhale sticks in my throat like a poorly chewed spoonful of the fried rice I was just about to order. It's my dad; it has to be. Robert James. My mind spins out of control, swirling with his mathematical mutterings and absent ideas, and I turn my back on him, clutching my left wrist to my chest and then up towards my eyes—
Jam.
The toast condiment.
My exhale rustles the menus decorating the fridge. I don't even bother to read the rest of the name because the relief unties my strung muscles until I laugh shortly under my breath. The ring loosens and cools against my skin. Jam disappears. I smile, twirling the band around my finger just to mock Serah Mallory and her idle threats. Six months ago, I never would have allowed enough time to pass for a name to repeat itself into my ring without any action on my part. But, then again, six months ago, I had a partner.
Six months ago, I breathed in Serah's words like they were my own. Now, however, her words are fibrous strands that I'm forced to chew on but can never quite swallow.
"Go ahead and laugh," my dad says then, having heard my relieved chuckles, "but hipsters everywhere will buy into a solar paneled microwave."
O O O
My mattress is far too soft.
I flop onto my back instead and stare at the ceiling. The overhead fan has been switched on to full blast, but still the humidity creeps in from the Southern night air. My sheets are tangled into a useless pile at the edge of my bed that I swear wants to smother me. I can hear the cicadas like an out-of-tune instrument even though my windows are firmly shut. Since moving here two months ago, I swear it has only gotten hotter and wetter. When we left California, we hadn't seen rain in months. A week and half without it here and Southern Baptists are calling down the apocalypse, glory, glory, hallelujah.
Welcome to the town of Liberty Forrest, Tennessee: home to Johnny Rebs, freelance farmers, and former belles who bake pecan pies from scratch. I exhale, the air thick and unmoving, and allow the moonlight to glare against the ring on my finger.
I wave my hand idly back and forth, catching the light and reflecting it against the ceiling.
There are times when I miss the beach and blue skies, miss the regulated seventy-five degree temperatures and the smell of salt on the breeze. That was all before six months ago happened. After that, the tide had gotten into the habit of whispering his name, a lulling noise that drove a mallet straight to my heart and left me a paranoid shell of a person. Even now, remembering the outline of myself that I had faded into threatens to gape the gap in my soul wide open. I swallow the soundless cry, but it gets stuck. I try not to remember those things, so I strain my eyes open, staring at the white propellers of the fan as it swings around and around—
"Guin!" My door swings open and little footsteps pad softly against the carpet of my bedroom. "Guinny, look!"
Leo jumps into my bed just as I slip my ring-clad hand underneath my thigh, sitting on it just in case it decides to act up in my younger brother's presence. He slides up close, his little seven-year-old body warm with sleep-sweat as he waves a piece of paper in front of my face. The edges are badly perforated like he has hastily ripped it from his sketching notepad only seconds earlier in his haste to get to me. His cheeks are pink with heat and a glob of smeared paint.
"It's nearly eleven, Leo. Shouldn't you be sleeping?" I grab his tiny wrist to keep the paper from scratching my cornea.
He quirks a serious look at me, the same aqua eyes that we both inherited from our mother narrowed in conspiracy. "Shouldn't you?"
"I'm seventeen, you turdhat!" I hiss, but I ruffle his light brown hair affectionately.
He laughs at his favorite insult, which just came from my mouth so it makes it somehow funnier, and then he resumes shoving his sketch under my nose. "Look at what I did," he breathes, but he's holding it so closely to my face the I go cross-eyed trying to observe it. "I just did it. It was a dream."
My cheeks pale, a shiver threatening to crawl up my spine despite the humid heat. I take the crinkled paper from his hands and lower it, heart pumping. Leo's gaze is on me, waiting for my reaction, a miniature artist wringing his hands in anticipation of potential critique. The first strokes I see are white-foamed waves frothing against the sand: the beach. Okay. This is safe. He's drawing our old home, but as I traverse the short strokes of my brother's paintbrush, a creature lurks in the bottom corner. A scaling, black hand clawing around the edge of the page, bleeding back into the beige parchment, and then reappearing where the Shade's head should be.
A head made of eyes and jagged incisors, teeth rising like mountains out of the leathery landscape of its flesh.
An Occuli.
Somehow, I keep my hands steady as I lower the sketch, and though I know the origins of that Shade, Leo should not. But if he does—
"I miss home, too." I tell the lie easily, kissing him sloppily on the cheek. He rubs at the invisible mark vigorously and shoves me away with a disgruntled objection. "We always liked building sand castles."
"That's not even the coolest part," he complains, making a grab for his picture. I hold it out of his reach, as if we're playing keep away. "That creature in the corner—"
"You'll give me nightmares, Leo," I cut him off with a cluck of my tongue, "but can I keep it until morning? It won't be so scary then."
He groans and mumbles, "Fine, you baby," underneath his breath before he scrambles down from my iron-cast bed. Though the metal design is beautiful, interwoven with flowers and leafy stems, it was built with a purpose. Like myself, I guess. Shades absolutely detest the smell or taste of iron; it suffocates their darker ethereal origins, snuffing out whatever hellish oxygen keeps them alive.
I won't allow Shades to come for what's left of my family.
"Don't ruin it," Leo warns with a pointed look at his masterpiece and an accusing finger pointed my way. "I want to show daddy."
Because that's just what we need. Showing our dad the very same Shade that so often appears in his orb. Not that he would ever recognize it. But Leo was born with the potential to see, a splash of Paqad blood in his veins, and under no circumstances can he ever know.
"I'll watch over it," I soothe. "Now, go to sleep. No drawing scary monsters until morning."
He pulls a face at me. "You're not my mom, Guin," he whines before he walks out of the room and into the darkened hallway illuminated by the Harry Potter nightlight plugged into one of the electrical sockets. "Lumos," Leo whispers to it, and the light flickers on.
I watch after him, voice lodged in my throat; he's not even old enough to remember our mom.
I'm hardly old enough.
My door shuts with a soft snap, but I don't move until I detect his feet on the other side of the wall. I hear a muffled sneeze, and then his headboard knocks against the wall as he scrambles onto his mattress and settles down. I don't hear anything else for a solid ten seconds. Fifteen. Forty-five.
Grabbing his drawing with shaky fingers, I silently stalk to my private bathroom adjoined to my room. I catch a glimpse of my shadowed reflection in the mirror above the sink but hastily look away. I've always had a fear of looking into reflective glass at night and seeing a specter on the other side; now, that ghost is myself, a paler, emptier imposter with nothing to hold onto except her brother's taunting painting. Without another thought, I crumple up Leo's drawing into a tight ball and then shove it into the toilet. I flush. And flush it again. It takes three times for it to get sucked down and into the septic system.
If Serah Mallory ever finds out about what my brother sees, she'll be gunning for Leo's talented Sight.
So I flush the toilet once more, just for good measure.