Page 142 of Bound By Fury

“A spirit-medium. I can read tarot, divine messages from the dead through channels like the Ouija, I see auras, but mostly, I… embody Spirit. I am a vessel of possession. My grandfather was a tongji. I am as well. We never know which generation will have it. I have it. It’s who I am. It’s how I know that you’ve been lying to us. It’s how you should know that whatever is going on with you, you can tell me.”

Sam’s feigned nonchalance slips, their face twisting with every new word from Daisy’s lips.

I shake my head. Even if she’s telling the truth, that doesn’t mean they can know about me. My power. The hunters.

If I’m killed, who’s to say they won’t die right along with me?

I can’t risk that.

“I don’t care what you are,” I spit. “Just… stay out of my way.” My words aren’t hard. They’re soft. Fragile. Teetering.

Daisy throws up her hands. “You’re impossible!”

Kicking off the door, Missy stands beside Daisy and Sam. “You’re really fucking yourself over right now,” she says.

“Yeah? Like you care.” I zip the bag and throw it over my shoulder. “Think whatever you want about me, but you’ll never understand—”

“Because you won’t let us understand!” Sam says, grabbing the other strap of my bookbag and pulling. “Just put the bag down and chill out so we can talk.”

After everything that has happened over the last twenty-four hours, I recoil from their touch, my powers rushing forward and zapping the air between us.

The popping zing startles them. “What the hell?” they screech, jumping back.

This is exactly why I’m leaving. I might be a weapon, but I don’t want to be the thing that hurts the people I care about. A deep well of shame cracks open in the pit of my stomach when I see the way they’re all looking at me.

Like I’m something to be afraid of.

I grab Lovey, my charger, and my wallet and shove them into my duffel before shouldering past them and walking out the door.

“Where are you going?” Daisy asks, a defeated edge to her voice.

“Home,” I say, almost too low to hear. “Maybe y’all should, too.”

PART FOUR WILLOW WEEP FOR ME

FORTY-EIGHT

WILLOW ESTATE IS ROTTING.

The front garden is overgrown. Brown and yellow weeds rise between decaying summer bushes and drowned perennials. The grass is dead, wilted beneath puddles of murky water and windblown piles of autumn leaves. In the pale, shadow-cast light of the storm clouds overhead, the chipped burgundy paint has lost its remaining luster, the house seeming more gray than anything.

When I enter the foyer, my bags slip from my hands. Even though I’m only sixteen, Gigi left the house to me. To be transferred into my name on my eighteenth birthday. She’d always said that Willow Estate was a living, breathing thing. That it was more like a familiar than a house, meant to belong to the women who built it, and their daughters and granddaughters and so on.

But Willow Estate is gasping for breath. Thin layers of dust coat the table in the hallway and obscure the pictures of Gigi and my late grandfather.

I slowly make my way through the first floor, each step more painful than the last.

In the kitchen I open the fridge and sigh as I’m met with two cans of Diet Pepsi and a handful of expired condiments. I collect the grocery bags from where I left them at the front of the house and set them on the counter.

My mind is still hazy, the sight of Petunia standing in a pool of blood stained on the inside of my eyelids. At least I had the forethought to grab a taxi to Dollar General before coming back to the estate.

Exhausted, I put the food away. Some ramen and a few apples, deli meat and bread. Just enough to hold me over while I figure out what I’m going to do next. When I’m done, I trudge up the steep staircase, my heavy bags thumping behind me. On my way to my room, I ignore the cracked-open door across the landing.

I haven’t taken a bath since the night of the funeral. After months of communal showers, I waste no time ripping open my duffel and hauling my toiletries to the bathroom. Despite the violence with which I scrubbed my skin last night in the shower, Maureen’s blood is still caked beneath my fingernails. I feel shattered and guilty. Dirty. Wrong.

The faucet to the claw-foot tub is cold as I turn the knob. Waiting for it to fill, I pull my clothes off and kick them under the sink. I stand in front of the mirror, bare several times over, and my face crumples as I meet my own reflection.

I don’t even recognize her, this ghoul of a girl.