Over her shoulder, Cecilia gasps. “His eyes!”
A small curl of apprehension buzzes along my skin.
Maybe Cecilia has that feeling too, because she looks ready to bolt from Pearl’s side.
Katherine shakes her head. “Told you not to mess with that red-eyed devil, but you did, didn’t you? Ain’t nothing good coming from a man you meet at the crossroads, Pearl. Nothing.”
Pearl’s eyes are filled with tears. She shakes her head twice, to deny Katherine or to deny what she’s seeing, I don’t know. “He’s my son,” she says with a trembling lip.
I speak to Louisa without looking, my feet already moving closer to the scene. “What’s wrong with his eyes?”
“A crossroads child,” Louisa says cryptically.
She doesn’t stop me or call me back. I’m almost at Pearl’s side, and my hands are shaking like my entire body already knows what’s wrong with this baby. What—and who—he’ll look like.
“He may look like a baby, but that is their disguise,” Katherine says, sadness and chastisement equally strong in her voice. “They cannot be trusted because it is in their nature to lie. You know this, Pearl. Just like his father, he will turn on you one day.”
I’m close enough to see the newborn now, standing between his mother and Cecilia. I lean forward, Pearl’s desperate voice loud in my ear. “He is my child!” And I see what I dreaded I might.
Two amber eyes, glowing and bright, stare up at Pearl from the baby’s soft brown face.
Then, defying Patricia’s comprehension like Louisa before her, Cecilia grips my elbow. Her eyes blaze with awareness and lock firmly with mine. I try to turn away from their fire, their burning—but she holds fast. “This is not a child,” she says fiercely. “It is a monster.”
The world spins and disappears again.
* * *
After we land, Cecilia pulls me with her in a fast walk. I don’t need to turn to know that Louisa is not with us. “This way.”
We’re back at Carolina, and it’s the pitch black of the middle of the night. Cecilia drags me toward the center of the campus at a dizzying pace.
“Why did you show me that?”
“Because you needed to see it,” Cecilia says breathlessly, echoing Louisa’s earlier words.
“I needed to see that baby?” I gasp. “What was he?”
She explains without stopping. “A crossroads child, born of a crossroads man. The father walked among us and shared our form, but in truth he was a demon born of the shadows. The child is half-human.”
I trip at Cecilia’s cold, distant explanation. She yanks on my hand to pull me up.
Born of the shadows, but shaped like a man. A crossroads man. Is that what Rootcrafters call a goruchel? If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d never think such a union could be possible. “What happened to Pearl’s baby?”
“They forced her to cast it away before it could grow large enough to do harm.”
Cast away.
“We are close now. Pay attention.”
I look around. I don’t know when we are, but it must be somewhat recent, because I recognize the buildings, the trees, the walking paths. “Are you taking me back to Patricia?”
“No. It’s Ruth that wanted you here.”
“Who is Ruth?”
Cecilia doesn’t answer, nor does she seem interested in talking. She stops us near a stone bench tucked under an old-growth poplar. Before I can ask another question, a familiar-looking woman walks past, hands tucked in her pockets, a modern messenger bag slung over her shoulder. She looks every bit a student.
“Ruth. Patricia’s sister.”
My eyes widen. Patricia’s sister?
Cecilia pulls me along with her again until we’re walking beside Ruth, who doesn’t seem to see us. She has headphones in, the old wired kind with a metal band over her straight brown bob.
The three of us—an enslaved woman from the nineteenth century, a teenage girl from the twenty-first, and a college student from the twentieth—weave between Carolina students lingering in the low brick courtyard of the Pit. I don’t know what will happen if I touch the undergrads nearby, and I don’t want to find out. We descend the steps down to the street level behind the Stores, and Ruth leads us down South Road and through the crosswalk toward the very center of UNC’s campus—the Bell Tower. Once we reach the edge of the Tower’s shadow, Ruth freezes, then abruptly ducks down behind one of the Tower lawn’s hedge borders and yanks her headphones from her ears.
“Why’d she stop?” I ask.
Cecilia points. “Because of them.”
Together, the three of us peer into the shadows behind the brick patio at the base of the structure, where a hooded figure stands in a dark patch of grass on the far side of the lawn, nearly hidden from sight. Whoever they are, they have placed themselves strategically, pausing right where the imposing landmark shields them from late-night passersby and blocks the dull orange glow of campus lampposts. The sound of low, harsh chanting reaches my ears. It’s not English. Not the Order’s Welsh, either.
I sway on my feet while listening, momentarily captivated. I’ve taken a half step forward before I snap out of the sudden daze. I shudder. Something isn’t right, here beneath the Tower’s shadow.
Cecilia nudges me. “Go on. Get closer. They can’t see you.”
“Just like you and Louisa couldn’t see me?” I hiss.
“Forces bigger than Patricia are at work with you,” Cecilia says, narrowing her eyes. “Her original walk has been pulled into the current of our family’s ancestral energy like a leaf in a river. The ancestors won’t release you until they’re done. Now, go.” She shoves me hard until I move around the hedge onto the lawn.
As I approach, the chanting figure turns away so all I can see is their black hooded sweatshirt and jeans. They look over their shoulder, as if a noise has caught their attention—maybe Ruth—and I freeze, but they look right through me like I’m not even there.
Even two feet away, I can’t make out their features. The hood is pulled low, but even their nose and mouth are shadowed shapes. Satisfied that they’re alone, the figure turns back, fishing out a small item from their pocket. A vial of dark liquid. The figure unscrews the vial and pours it over a gloved hand. It’s blood, I realize, and they coat their palms and fingers until the leather is glistening.
They walk slowly across the grass while swiping their bloodied glove in the air, palm out, leaving an arc of green mage flame in their wake. The flame hangs in the air like an emerald rainbow, then turns into liquid. Glowing aether flows down to the ground in thick trails. The figure backs away, chanting, and the aether spreads until it’s a shining veil taller than a man and at least twenty feet across. There’s a roaring sound, rising like a wave in my ears, and then a thick tear.
I feel the tug on my spine again, but just before the world disappears for the last time, I see dozens of partially corporeal clawed feet extend through the veil and land on the grass. A low howl begins out of sight, the garbled sound growing clearer, louder…
Hellhounds.
* * *