The Killing Jar (20 page)

I swallowed hard, thinking of Erin, of the helpless dread I felt every time she caught a cold. “Anya got sick, too?” I asked, although I wasn't really asking. I already knew. If Anya were alive, wouldn't she be here now?

Rebekah nodded, and the tears in her eyes slid free and trailed down the sides of her nose. She wiped at them absently. “I haven't talked about Anya in a long time, but I think about her every day. I write down every memory I have of her to preserve her. She was brilliant, my sister. Brilliant and fascinated with learning and kind to everyone. If there were any fairness in this world, she would have lived, not me. She was by far the better of the two of us.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, my own voice thick with emotion. Rebekah's twin sounded so much like Erin. And the way she felt about her twin was the same way I felt about mine. That she was the better of the two of us. That she deserved life, not me.

I wondered why Rebekah had never mentioned a desire to meet Erin.

“I lost my entire family in the space of a month,” Rebekah continued. “For a long time after, I wished the influenza had taken me, as well. But when I married and became pregnant with your mother, all of that changed. The marriage didn't last, but I had my Anya. I had a reason to live again.” She wiped at one eye with her long, elegant fingers, naked of their silver rings. “I created Eclipse for her, and I gathered a family for her, so she could have the kind of childhood I remembered. The kind I lost. A beautiful dream that would never end.”

Rebekah's mouth closed and she turned back toward the mountains just as a sliver of sun appeared, spreading honeyed light across the farm.

“Do you hate her?” I asked, fearing the answer, because I didn't want to believe it was possible to hate your own child. I didn't want to believe it was possible for my mom to hate
me
, even though I'd taken something intrinsic from her. Because of me, she was no longer Kalyptra. How could she not hate me for that?

Rebekah stared straight at the sun as it rose, her gaze unwavering, not even squinting against the brilliance. It was like she'd trained herself to look directly into the searing light.

“I used to believe love was not a choice. That a sister must love her sister. A child must love her parents. A mother must love her children. But now I know that you always have a choice, in everything you do and everyone you love and everyone you hurt. And so I no longer consider your mother my child. That is my choice.”

My heart lurched like I'd been punched in the chest. “Then you must not consider me your granddaughter.”

She shook her head and turned to me, her skin and hair the color of champagne in the new light of day.

“You're Kalyptra. That makes you family.”

Then I understood why she had never asked about Erin, never mentioned a desire to meet my twin.

Erin wasn't Kalyptra. She didn't have our power. She meant nothing to Rebekah. Nothing at all.

During my time at Eclipse, I had formed a bond with Rebekah that obscured what I felt for my real mom. Even before Jason, she had kept me at a distance, and now I thought I knew why. Because I had taken her power and made her ordinary. But the idea that Rebekah cared nothing at all for my twin chipped away at my fledgling love for my grandmother, weakening it at its foundation.

“Do you miss them?” Rebekah asked.

She didn't have to say their names. I tapped my fingers on the balcony railing, creating a nervous rhythm. I didn't know how to answer her question. At first, being away from Erin and Blake felt like being separated from two of my limbs. But the longer I was at Eclipse, the less I thought about my mom or Erin or Blake. I was so busy immersing myself in the world of being Kalyptra, in music and anima and unconditional acceptance, that I hadn't had time to miss them.

“It's complicated,” I answered finally, and quickly changed the subject. Rebekah's story had brought up something, yet again, that I still didn't understand.

“Rebekah, where did we come from?” I asked. “I assume no one else in your family was Kalyptra, or they would have been able to heal themselves, or be healed by you. Did you not know you were Kalyptra back then?”

I thought of her use of the word
influenza
instead of simply calling it the flu. I tried to remember the last time there'd been an outbreak of the flu that killed entire families of people. I was pretty sure that hadn't happened in a really long time. Rebekah looked no older than forty, and a youthful forty at that. My first night at Eclipse, she had said anima was the ultimate panacea, a vitamin that could cure any disease, heal any wound, as well as expand our consciousness, tearing down the veil between the mundane world and the ethereal. It made sense that anima extended life, but for how long? Were we to become immortal? Would any of us ever die?

On and on. Every time I learned something new about the Kalyptra, it opened the door to a hundred more questions.

Rebekah shook her head. “I wasn't always Kalyptra. None of us were. We chose what we are, and
became
Kalyptra, all of us, including your mother. And then she chose to cast off her gift.” She smiled fondly at me, but something dark glittered in her eyes as she said, “You are the only one of us who was born Kalyptra, who never had a choice.”

She started to turn away, and I grabbed her sleeve. “Why are we like this? Why can we do what we can do? What does any of it mean? Please, Rebekah, I want to understand. I want to know everything.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “You want to know things that only a true Kalyptra can know.”

“You said I
was
Kalyptra. That I was family.”

“Do you want to go home?” she asked.

The question jarred me. “Y-yes. No. I mean, I do, but I want to be here, too. I want to be in both places.”

She shook her head slowly, disappointed and clearly hurt. “Until you choose us, you aren't one of us. I can't tell you what you want to know, and I can't let you live in our world.”

I sucked in a breath as though I'd been hit in the stomach. “Rebekah…” I said, not wanting to believe she'd meant what she had just said.

I can't let you live in our world
.

Rebekah turned her back on me and went inside, signaling that our conversation was finished. If there was one thing I had learned about my grandmother, it was that once she decided something was over, there was no changing her mind.

Feeling hollowed out and emotionally drained, I followed her inside, where Cyrus was now sitting up, rubbing his eyes like a drowsy toddler who'd just awakened from a too-short nap. But when he saw me his eyes cleared and he stood up, a hank of dark curls tumbling over his brow.

“Are you okay?” he asked, searching my face.

I touched my brow where I'd split my scalp open before realizing he wasn't referring to the wound. I felt another undeniable rush of warmth for him, but Rebekah's icy response froze my blood.

“She's fine,” Rebekah answered for me. “In fact, I think she's ready to go home.”

 

L
AST
D
AY

Bully ran at me full tilt when I called to him from the fence, and then bounced and bleated when I offered him the parting gift of an entire bunch of carrots.

“I'm going to miss you, kid,” I said as he munched distractedly on his treat. I tousled the wild tuft of hair between his ears, trying not to cry and not really succeeding.

It had been twenty-four hours since Rebekah had decided to send me home, and I was still in shock. Every time I broke the news to another Kalyptra that I was leaving, I had to white-knuckle my emotions to keep from bursting into tears. The next morning, Cyrus would drive me home.

I should have been elated at the prospect of being reunited with Erin and with Blake and my mom and my guitar, but mostly I just felt anxious. I wasn't the same person I'd been when my mom had dropped me off at Eclipse. I didn't know if I would fit into my old space in my old world anymore.

“I don't understand why you have to leave all of a sudden,” Cyrus said, leaning against the fence beside me, arms folded tight across his chest. He'd been nearly as upset as I was when Rebekah told me I had to leave. We'd spent a lot of time together, and I'd grown attached to him, to his easy smile and his country-boy charm. I woke up every day looking forward to seeing him, to taking anima with him and feeling the connection between us grow, like we were sharing the same dream, the kind from which you never want to wake up. But I hadn't realized the feeling was mutual.

Cyrus went so far as to question Rebekah's decision that morning after the midnight glory disaster, earning a sharp rebuke before my grandmother sent us away.

“I must have done something to make her mad,” I said.

“What were you talking about before she said it was time for you to go home?”

“A lot of things. She told me about her twin, and why she founded Eclipse. And I asked her some questions she didn't want to answer because … I guess because I'm not really one of you.”

He nodded, eyes veiled, and I could see that a part of him agreed with Rebekah. Whatever secrets the Kalyptra had, they didn't trust me with them yet, and maybe they never would.

I gave Bully one last scratch behind the ears as he finished his carrots. He bolted back to the herd, feet barely touching the ground.

“I'm going to miss him.” I wiped at a tear leaking from the corner of my eye. “I'm going to miss everything about Eclipse. Except maybe the midnight glory.”

I thought Cyrus would laugh, but he turned to me, his face serious. “I'm going to miss
you
, Kenna.” He raked a hand through his tangled curls and looked at the toes of his boots. “More than I know how to say. Eclipse is better with you as a part of it. As a part of us,” he added softly.

For a moment the air between us was charged, almost crackling with electricity. I felt myself pulled toward him, a kind of horizontal vertigo.

“Kenna!” Cyrus and I both jumped at the sound of my name, and turned to see Sunday jogging toward us through the field, afro bouncing and bracelets jangling. She had legs like an Olympic runner and her dark skin practically glowed under the bright sunlight. She wore one of Illia's creations, a short yellow sundress with tiny, crystal buttons. She grabbed me by the wrist and tugged me away from Cyrus, toward Eclipse House.

“What's going on?” I asked, scrambling to keep up with her. I glanced over my shoulder at Cyrus and saw him standing next to the fence, arms hanging heavy at his sides and an abandoned-puppy-dog look on his face.

“I have to draw you before you leave,” Sunday said. “Your face begs to be immortalized.”

“It does?”

“Oh yes. Those eyes of yours. The cheekbones. Exquisite, just like Rebekah's.”

Sunday led me to her studio and shut the door. Her studio was next to Illia's, but I'd never been inside. It seemed to have been designed with her particular skills in mind, as it was almost all windows and skylights, letting in light from every direction. There were stacks upon stacks of painted canvases covered in cloth leaning against the walls. Eclipse House was enormous, but clearly there was only so much wall space on which to hang her art. If I'd known she had so many unhung works lying around, I would have asked her for a few to decorate the bare walls of my room.

“Is it okay if I look?” I asked Sunday, lifting the sheet that covered a row of finished canvases. Her back was turned to me. She was busy setting up for my portrait, gathering her paper and charcoal and arranging a stool in the light, and merely grunted a reply that I took to mean yes.

I peered beneath the sheet, expecting paintings like the rest that adorned the hallways and walls of Eclipse House, colorful, surreal depictions of what the world looked like through the lens of anima, when the veil was lifted to reveal the true splendor that most people would never know. But these paintings were nothing like the other works of Sunday's I'd seen. These I could only describe as troubling.

My lips parted and I forgot to breathe as my eyes roamed the first painting, a disturbing depiction of bodies writhing in a pit, ringed by people with Eclipse moths the size of baseball gloves perched on their faces, hiding their eyes, replacing them with black moons. The next painting was of an Eclipse moth with its proboscis unfurled and inserted into the pupil of a small child. The third was of Rebekah. I knew it was her, even though a moth the size of a hardcover book had alighted on her face and concealed her eyes. I knew her by her mouth and her chin and her glorious hair. Where her eyes would have been, the Eclipse moth's black moons represented them. In the painting, Rebekah was naked, her arms held out to her sides and her palms turned upward. In each palm she held a flaming moth, and a huge pair of powder-white wings extended from her back. There were more paintings—dozens more, all of them grim and disturbing, most featuring faces obscured by Eclipse moths with flaming wings and naked men and women with moth wings and oil-black eyes—but I didn't get a chance to peruse them.

“What are you doing?”

I whirled around to find Sunday staring me down, her hands on her hips and an expression on her face that was angry, but also fearful, as though she'd been caught stealing. I'd never seen her anything but happy and smiling and laughing that raucous, infectious laugh of hers, so this sudden change in her was as jarring as the sight of these grim, unsettling paintings she kept hidden away.

She marched toward me and snatched the sheet out of my hands, lowering it over the paintings and obscuring them from view.

“Those are private,” she said sternly, though her voice was trembling slightly.

“I—I'm sorry,” I stammered. “I asked you if I could look, but I guess you didn't hear me.”

She took a breath that lifted her shoulders and let it out in a loud huff. Then she smiled and waved her hand. “It doesn't matter,” she said, all evidence to the contrary. “I just don't show my darker work to the others.”