Harriet shivered, and the shield tightened, growing a little stronger and a little thicker. Norma wasn’t going to do this. Not again. Not to anyone else. Harriet would make sure that she was Norma’s last victim.
Norma said, “I should have wrung that baby’s neck the moment she was born. She’s been nothing but trouble, watching and judging me with those beady little eyes. For centuries, she’s sneered at everything I do. She thinks she is so much better than the rest of us. It makes my skin crawl.”
Leah said, very quietly, “She’s just a baby. And you have no right to talk about her like that. Not after everything you’ve done to us.”
Norma rolled her eyes.
“You know I was the one who killed you, don’t you?” Leah said.
“It was the child, not you,” Norma said dismissively. “Don’t bother trying to protect her now. It won’t make any difference.”
“Not then.” Leah smiled. “Not your disintegration. Your death, the first time. Two thousand years ago.”
Norma actually took a step back, her shock throwing her off her stride. “What? No. What are you talking about? That was poison. An attack from the Celtic tribe.”
Leah shook her head. “It was me. I overheard you discussing the rebellion in the Celtic tribe with Rufus and Vini. You were planning to kill my father, their leader. Or had you forgotten that I was taken from the Celtic tribe when I was young? That night, I took your poisons from under the floors. I used them to stop you hurting my real family. And I don’t regret a thing.”
“You poisoned yourself, too? Your baby?” Norma said, blinking. She didn’t seem to believe her yet.
Leah shuffled Claudia onto her hip and untied her shift dress, revealing deep scars running down her chest. They were stab wounds, gouged through her stomach. “After you died, I tried to get away, but I was caught by the general. When he saw your corpses, he killed me and Claudia. He called me a barbarian.”
Norma stared at the stab wounds. It was clearly undeniable evidence – Leah hadn’t been poisoned like Fabian. The story she had thought she’d known was wrong.
Norma’s lip curled over her teeth, but she still looked disconcerted. “Well. Thank you for telling me. That’s going to make your death all the sweeter.”
My father – Norma, Fabian, the Trickster, whatever you want to call him – is right to hate me. I really was judging him for all those years and if I could, I’d kill him too. I don’t blame him for disliking me.
I can recognize so many of my father’s tactics and methods in how Norma chooses to do things. The manipulation, the poison, the control, even the knitting needles – that’s all Fabian.
I only found out the truth about Norma recently. A few weeks before Harriet’s death, I saw a vision of Norma hugging Vini. It baffled me. I had no idea who this old woman was, or why Vini was treating her with such tenderness. It took me a long time to scan the past and future for enough information to work it out. Finally, it was the vision of Harriet and Norma on a campus tour that helped me connect the dots.
Since then, Harriet’s behaviour has made a lot more sense. She was raised by a monster. Not the horrifying kind, but the human one. Whether man, woman or ghost, Fabian is always the same: swollen with self-interest, but without human decency.
I understand Harriet better than anyone. She was abused and made to feel like nothing, just like my mother and me. I don’t blame her for basing her behaviour on her grandmother’s. Being a good person isn’t an option when someone so strong-willed tells you that you’re weak, makes you feel helpless and spends all their time chipping away at you. Just being functional is hard enough.
Chapter 26
KASPER
Kasper ran over to Felix, who was slumped on the ground, totally limp. “Felix, are you all right?”
Kasper’s finger had been torn away by a shapeshifting ghost and the wound was leaking blood down his wrist.
Felix groaned, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. “I can’t do this. Please, go away.”
“You have to get up, Felix. We need your help.”
“You don’t need me. I’m weak, I can’t do any more.”
Kasper grimaced. “Rima has lost her fox. She’s no help. It’s just us, buddy.”
Felix groaned. “Please, don’t make me.”
Kasper hooked his arms under Felix’s armpits and dragged him to his feet. “Tell me what we’re going to do,” he demanded, pointing at where Norma was interrogating Leah. “We can’t leave them there.”
Felix slumped. “I have no idea.” A tear rolled down his cheek. He looked completely broken, like his spirit had been destroyed. He seemed ready to let himself disintegrate.
Kasper didn’t know how to behave around him, after what had happened in the tunnels. He was desperate to curl his fingers around Felix’s, but now wasn’t the time to try to fix what was broken between them.
As Felix staggered to his feet, the Tricksters seemed to be at an impasse now. None of them could get past the mysterious shield that had sprung up between Leah and the Tricksters. Kasper wasn’t even sure who had made it.
“How have you been, sis?” Vini said to Leah.
“Not too bad, Vini,” Leah said, eyes fixed on Norma. “How’s the ear?”
“Still aches.” Vini touched his earlobe, which was torn away.
“I’m sorry about that,” Leah said. “I don’t know if I ever said.”
Kasper coughed. Leah had done that to him?
“Seeing as we haven’t seen you in four score decades, I’d say you haven’t apologized for anything,” Rufus said.
Moving away from the Tricksters, Rima came up to Kasper and Felix, with Cody cradled in her arms. Tears were streaming down her face. “She went straight for Cody, like she knew I would stop fighting immediately to save her.”
“Cody is going to survive,” Kasper said. “Look at her, she’s getting better already!”
The fox wasn’t a Shell yet. She was taking in the energy dissolved in the air from all the destroyed ghosts. The Tricksters’ army were still fighting the other students all over the roof, leaving a wide circle around Leah’s bubble. Motionless, Harriet watched them, too.
Rima spat something bloody into her palm. It was a chunk of hair and skin. She held it out, looking proud. “I got this from Norma. We can use it to destroy her using Leah’s ritual, like we were going to do with Harriet’s eyelid. We need to get rid of the other Tricksters and their army first, though. We can’t do anything if the three of them have Leah trapped like this.”
“I can attack Vini first?” If Kasper could get Vini out of the way, that would make it easier for Felix and Rima to destroy Rufus. Leah had said they were strongest as a trio, and Vini was the weakest link.
Rima shook her head. “I have a plan for him. But you two need to be ready to finish him off. Then we’ll go after Rufus. OK?”
Kasper nodded. It was something to do, at least. Better than standing here, watching. “Yeah, Felix? That sounds good, right?” He nudged his arm.
Felix was grinding the base of his palms into his eyes blearily, glasses askew. “Whatever,” he mumbled. “It’s not like we’re going to win, anyway.”