Fantasy Life (49 page)

Lyssa blinked hard, feeling tears threaten. She didn’t want to feel them. She didn’t want to feel anything.

“Besides,” Athena said, “you don’t regret the marriage. It gave you Emily.”

Lyssa glanced at her grandmother. Athena was looking with actual worry at Cassie, and Lyssa finally understood why. Cassie should have said that. She always defended Lyssa’s marriage by citing Emily.

But she didn’t now.

“What’s going on, Mother?” Lyssa asked again.

“Ask your daughter,” Cassie repeated.

“I did, and she doesn’t have a clue. Tell us. What are you afraid of?”

Cassie looked at Emily. Cassie’s expression was cold.

“I heard her, Roseluna, tell you to join them,” Cassie said to Emily. “And you did, didn’t you? That’s why the vision came up. You did it to separate us, to make me hate Mother, to make me attack Spark. That’s why, right?”

Emily tightened her grip on Lyssa. “Mommy?”

“It’s okay,” Lyssa said. She slid her daughter down to her legs, then pushed Emily behind her. This was what she had always expected, that she would have to defend her daughter against the world.

Even against her own family.

“My daughter isn’t Machiavelli, Mother,” Lyssa said. “She has no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then let her answer,” Cassie said.

“No,” Lyssa said.

“You know what happened,” Athena said. “We saw it earlier. The vision didn’t spring up until you took Emily’s hand. She was already holding mine, and I was remembering. That memory is one of my strongest, Cassandra, and it came again when I saw Spark Walters. There’s no conspiracy here. Only truth, maybe for the first time between us.”

“But Mother doesn’t like the truth,” Lyssa said. “She likes to pretend that everything is happy and pretty, even when she knows otherwise. I was never the perfect daughter, Mother, and you certainly weren’t a perfect Mom.”

“Lys,” Athena said. “Your mother was right about Daray, and I was wrong. He loved her. Even at the end, he was defending her.”

Cassie’s eyes filled with tears.

“But Mother didn’t believe that when she was telling me about him. She thought he had abandoned her. She thought he had killed her friends and tried to kill her—”

“He was your father, Lyssa,” Cassie said, her voice so low that Lyssa had to strain to hear it. “What was I supposed to do? Tell you how awful he was?”

“Maybe that would have been better,” Lyssa said.

“But it would have been wrong,” Athena said. She reached out, took the hands of her daughter and her granddaughter. “The selkies want us to fight each other. Think about it, Cassandra. They keep trying to immobilize you because you’re our power source, our beacon. You make all of us stronger. But if you’re weak, you weaken us.”

Cassie’s fingers were limp in Lyssa’s.

“It’s your power mixed with Emily’s that makes visible visions. Your power mixed with mine would have given me superhuman strength. Your power alone is formidable. Imagine it in tandem with the rest of us,” Athena said. “That’s what the selkies fear. They know you, probably through Daray, who loved you. They are now rebelling against everything we’ve done for them, and they know you’re the only one who can stop them.”

Cassie looked at her mother, her lashes wet. Cassie looked like a little girl, like Emily had the day that Lyssa had told her she still loved her, no matter what had happened to Reginald.

Lyssa reached behind her and took Emily’s hand. “They want to separate you and Emily, Mom, because you two are strong together.”

Emily clutched Lyssa’s hand tight. “I didn’t do nothing, Mom. I didn’t like Great-Aunt Roseluna. I don’t know her family. I wouldn’t help them hurt you.”

“I know that, baby,” Lyssa said. Then she raised her head toward Cassie. “And you know that too, Mom. You’re just looking for someone to blame. You’ve been angry all these years at my father, and he didn’t deserve it, and you’re feeling guilty. But Grandma’s right. What happened then is past. You can’t change it. You can only make a difference for the future.”

“And, if I understood you, Cassie,” Athena said, “we don’t have much of a future. Not if we don’t take some actions now.”

Cassie blinked hard. She looked down at Emily, then at
Lyssa, and finally at her mother. “I don’t know what kind of action to take,” Cassie said.

“That’s because we don’t know exactly what they’re planning,” Lyssa said. “But you said Roseluna went inside your mind. I know you, Mom. You can do that too. Go inside hers. Find out.”

“She’d be blocked,” Cassie said.

“Would she?” Athena asked. “She thinks she destroyed you. Why use all that extra energy to block you out when she doesn’t have to.”

Cassie’s gaze darted between Lyssa and Athena. The movement made her look nervous. It made her seem afraid.

“I can go with you, Grandma.” Emily’s voice was small, and it got even smaller with the next sentence. “If you want me to.”

Cassie looked down at her, and this time, a single tear fell. She crouched, put her arms around Emily, and rocked them both back and forth.

“I’m sorry, child. I’m sorry I said all those things.”

Emily put her arms around Cassie. “It’s okay, Grandma. I say dumb things too when I’m mad.”

Athena snorted and turned away. Lyssa smiled.

Cassie kissed the top of Emily’s head, then stood. “All right. Let’s find out. But I don’t want to do it here. Let’s go home.”

Lyssa looked at her mother. Cassie was still afraid, but willing to step by it. Her request to go to Cliffside House made sense. The house had its own magic. It would give that extra measure of protection.

“All right,” Athena said. “But let’s go quickly. I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

Cliffside House

They went home in Great-Grandma Athena’s old car. Mommy’s car looked hurt, like Emily had felt inside when Grandma Cassie was so mean. But Emily didn’t say anything. She’d felt what Grandma Cassie felt the whole time they were in Great-Grandma Athena’s memory, and Emily’d never felt anything that bad, not even when Daddy died (even though it was close).

Great-Aunt Roseluna wasn’t far off thinking that she’d destroyed Grandma Cassie; Roseluna’d come awfully close. If Grandma Cassie had that much pain inside her all the time, she had to be awfully strong. Emily had no idea how she went from day to day.

Great-Grandma’s car might’ve been old, but she didn’t drive it like little old ladies should’ve. In fact, there was nothing about Great-Grandma that made Emily think about little old ladies. The way she’d pushed Grandpa Walters off that cliff—that made Emily actually feel better.

Sometimes there was stuff you had to do, just to survive, and no matter how many times you told people that, they didn’t always understand.

But now, after seeing what Great-Grandma had done to try to save Anchor Bay, to try to get revenge for Grandpa Daray and for Grandma Cassie, Emily knew there was at least one other person who understood.

Maybe that was why Great-Grandma always looked at her funny. Not just because she was a Walters (and now Emily understood why that bothered Great-Grandma—it bothered Emily, and she didn’t want to think about it), but because they
were kinda the same. Tough people who took action they didn’t always think about.

Mommy wasn’t like that. Mommy thought about everything, and Grandma Cassie thought about stuff so much she could barely get out of bed without thinking about it first.

So when they got to Cliffside House, and Great-Grandma Athena said they had to go into the closet that scared Grandma Cassie, Emily went right in. Because she knew that sometimes you just had to take action. You couldn’t think about it.

Grandma Cassie was already thinking too much. Emily could tell. Grandma Cassie didn’t want to do any of this. She was even rethinking what she’d done to Grandpa Walters, even though, from Emily’s point of view, Grandma Cassie hadn’t done much.

Great-Grandma Athena might’ve done something worse. Great-Grandma Athena might’ve killed him, if she had the chance. Mommy might’ve got the law to help her, because that’s what she always did.

And Emily didn’t know what she would’ve done. Something. Something to show Grandpa Walters you can’t treat people like that. Even if they’re not human people, but selkie people instead.

Cliffside House was cold. Nobody had turned up the heat in the morning. But sunlight poured in all the windows, making it seem like a much more friendly place than it’d been the night before. Then it’d seemed kinda spooky—in a good way—and now it seemed almost pretty.

Except in the closet, which, Emily had to admit, was a little too dark and damp and cavelike for her tastes.

The front part of the closet smelled like Great-Grandma Athena’s perfume—all heavy, syrupy, the only old-lady part about her. The front part even had a light that made the furs and the coats kinda shine. The light wasn’t as strong as it could’ve been, and it was really yellow. Emily had never seen a light that
yellow before. Maybe the yellow was why the light got sucked into the black floors and black walls, leaving no shadow.

She thought the no-shadow part was the creepiest part of all. Not even the back of the closet compared for creepiness, and the back of the closet didn’t even seem to be there. It just kinda disappeared into darkness, but Emily could see farther than, say, Mommy could. Before the darkness got really black, the floor turned into laid rock, like the fake cobblestone stuff they had at one of the old houses in the Frank neighborhood in Madison. Emily could feel the floor slanting downward, and she thought at the base of it she could hear the boom of the sea.

Great-Grandma Athena made them all sit down on the floor. Mommy sat next to Emily, who sat by Grandma Cassie, who sat as close to the door as she could get. Great-Grandma Athena sat between Grandma Cassie and Mommy, so that she was protecting everybody from anything that came up that slanted floor.

Emily felt better now, knowing that Great-Grandma Athena was there.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Great-Grandma Athena said to Grandma Cassie. It was a sort of sideways way to push her to find out what was going on.

“It’s okay, Grandma,” Emily said. “I said I’d go with you.”

“It’ll be too dangerous,” Grandma Cassie said. “If she knows we know—”

“Mother.” Mommy was using her I-have-no-more-patience voice. “If we don’t find out, we’ll die. You might want to, but I sure as hell don’t.”

Great-Grandma Athena rolled her eyes at Mommy, but Grandma Cassie just sighed.

Grandma Cassie held out her hand. She wasn’t afraid of asking Emily for help, which actually made Emily feel good. Not even Mommy, who said she really trusted Emily, would ask Emily for help.

Emily took Grandma Cassie’s hand. It was dry and cold, the skin even rougher than it had seemed before. Or maybe that was because Emily’s hands had got all scraped up when she fell in the parking lot.

Still, it didn’t hurt to touch Grandma Cassie. The owies on her hand weren’t so bad as they looked.

Grandma Cassie took another deep breath. “Ready?” she asked Emily.

Emily nodded. Her heart was pounding really hard. She wasn’t sure exactly what Grandma Cassie was going to do, but she figured it was something like looking for that ship, that
Walter Aggie
ship they’d looked for before.

So Emily closed her eyes at the same time Grandma Cassie did, and then she pictured herself holding hands with Grandma Cassie as they walked through this tunnel. It was weird because the tunnel looked something like the closet, only lighter and cooler and it smelled more like the sea.

The walking changed to flying-floating when Grandma Cassie got the sense of Great-Aunt Roseluna. Roseluna was far away, and Emily wasn’t sure how she got there. Did the selkies have boats? That seemed weird, since they could live and swim underwater and everything.

But Emily didn’t have much of a chance to think about it since Grandma Cassie shushed her and told her to be really really really quiet.

So Emily was, not even pretending to breathe or nothing, just hanging on and letting Grandma Cassie handle everything.

They kinda floated over the water. After a while, the sea looked all the same. Waves and stuff, but not big ones, and no ships. Just lots and lots of gray water in all directions.

Except over the place where the
Walter Aggie
was—and Emily wasn’t sure how she and Grandma Cassie knew that was the
Walter Aggie’s
spot. They just did.

Over that spot, ten selkies, their pelts on, stood on a barrier in the water, a barrier that Great-Grandma Athena had made to protect the sea and the refuge. The selkies were holding knives in their hands, and they were looking in the water.

As Grandma Cassie got closer, she gasped—a sound so loud it echoed over the water. Emily peered over her shoulder, saw even more selkies floating in a big, big circle, treading water, and holding knives too.

“Oh, my God,” Grandma Cassie said, only it wasn’t really saying, it was more like thinking. “Emily, you have to go back. Can you find your way back?”

“No,” Emily said. “I gotta stay with you. I promised.”

Grandma Cassie shook her head—or shook her imaginary head—anyway, Emily felt the disagreement. And Grandma Cassie said, “You’ve got to tell my mother what we’ve seen here. Tell her I’m going to try to stop it.”

“Stop what?” Emily asked.

“Em, honey,” Grandma Cassie said. “You saw the storm that happened because Grandpa Daray died, right?”

“Yeah,” Emily said, even though she didn’t really get how it all worked. But she knew that now was not the time to ask.

“That’s what happens when one selkie bleeds to death in the ocean. Imagine how bad the storm’ll be if forty selkies bleed to death, all at the same time.”

Emily couldn’t imagine it, except maybe that the storm would be so big it would go over the mountains to Portland. Or maybe it would go along the coast, north to Seattle and south to San Francisco, killing everything in its path.

Emily shivered, or maybe that was Grandma Cassie, shivering with fear.

“You need me,” Emily said.

“We need my mother,” Grandma Cassie said. “She’s the fighter. I’ll see if I can hold this off until she gets here. Tell her. Please.”