CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

She's positively livid. Even in silence, with her arms crossed and her face stony, her gaze projects a murderous fury. I'm suddenly reminded that that very same gaze kills – a power she never utilises and never speaks about, but that is well-known amongst Avexyrs, even if they don't yet have a name for it. A cross between necrogenesis and death vision, she has the ability to look a person in the eye and kill them at will. Just like that.

And if this is what her eyes look like when she's angry, I can only imagine what they must become when she kills.

"Where's what?" I respond meekly.

Harrison looks from the counterfeit stone anchor to me. And then his eyes flick very slightly left towards the hearth, which still burns with fire.

"The real anchor," Katherine seethes, teeth gritted.

"It's right there. On the table."

"Don't play games with me, Melissa. Because this isn't one. We know you swapped them out, even after you promised to let the council deal with this little debacle."

"Little debacle, huh? That's what the danger to Caden's life is to you? A little annoyance disrupting your lazy leadership? Because god forbid the council ever do anything besides sit around and bicker."

Katherine slams the table with her palm, making me jump. "We're tying to save lives! Scott's son! My daughter! You. This is no joke, Melissa. You've set us back two days with your nonsense and now we're left with very few options. You better hope for your sake that we can fix this mess you've made for us."

I take a deep breath and look her in the eyes. "I don't have it."

For a minute, she just stares at me, as if deciding what to make of my statement. "I don't believe you," she says at last.

"It's gone."

"Melissa, I'm warning you. Where is it?"

"Like I said. Gone. Destroyed. Poof. It doesn't exist anymore."

Katherine backs up a little. "What do you mean? What have you done to it?"

"She melted it," Harrison says, coming to my aid. Katherine looks at him like she only just noticed he was here. "In the fire."

Behind her, Scott folds his arms. "Impossible."

"It's the truth," I say. "I was trying to break the curse."

"Melissa!" Katherine exclaims. "Are you insane? You–"

"Relax, already. It didn't work – I couldn't do it. But I threw the stone into the fire and it – kinda melted."

"No," Scott says, stepping up to the table. "You couldn't have. Anchors are indestructible."

"But I'm the curse creator, and by extension, the anchor creator. If I destroy it, it's destroyed."

"Listen, there are two conditions that have to be met for an anchor to be destroyed. First, it must be destroyed by the one who created it. And second, it can only be destroyed during the breaking of the curse it sustains. Therefore, as you didn't break the curse, you didn't break the anchor."

"But I saw it melt."

Scott sighs and starts to move towards the lounge room. "Was this the fire you used to destroy it?" He points to the fireplace, still burning away, painting the room orange.

I nod.

Warm light flickers on his face as he leans close to the hearth and peers into the flames. Then, in an Aha! moment, he grabs a fire poker and digs something from the ashes, nudging it out onto the floor. He collects it in both hands, tossing it back and forth between the two until he deposits it on the table before me. "Miss Melissa, may I present," he spreads his hands, "your melted stone."

And he's right: It's the same stone I threw into the flames and watched melt down to nothing, now whole again, as if the whole melting instance had been an illusion – a trick of the light.

We all stare at it for a moment longer, the ordinary little thing somehow managing to capture the attention of everyone in the room. Then Katherine snatches it up and slips it into her pocket. "Perfect," she says. "Now it's mine."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Well I can assure you, we won't be melting it. But a little tampering should do the trick. I think we have just the spell."

"Spell?"

"We're working with Renée," Ethel says, speaking for the first time. "In light of the situation, she's agreed to cooperate."

"I thought you said witches didn't care for matters of the world – only the otherworld."

"They don't. But if we don't find a way to disentangle you from this curse, Melissa, you die. And that would disrupt the prophecy. Seresin don't care for sides in an earthly war, but they do care for the natural order of things – for fate. And your death would be a major disruption to that."

"Right. So she's going to use her witchy-woo to...what?"

The band of council members before me stays frustratingly quiet.

"This is my curse. You can't just keep me out of the loop."

"I think it better we let you know the plan tomorrow," Katherine says, "once we've sorted it out for ourselves."

I stare at them, gob-smacked. "You don't have a plan?"

"Melissa," Ethel says coolly, "it's not that we don't have a plan. The problem is that we have several, and we're unsure which of them won't be manageable and which will present our best bet."

"Luckily," Katherine interjects, "we have the rest of the afternoon, and the evening, to sort it out. We'll let you know what we've come up with in the morning."

They look about to leave, but just before turning away, Katherine adds, "And don't think there won't be repercussions for skipping school. I'm sure you can imagine my dismay when, minutes after we learned the stone was a fake, I got a call from the school informing me of your unexplained absence." I shrink down into my seat. She sighs. "Look, I'm not sure how long this will take, so if I'm not home tonight, make sure you eat up and get a good night sleep. Excuse my French but, tomorrow is going to be one hell of a day."

-:-:-:-:-

A few minutes after everyone's left, Harrison says, "I want in."

I blink at him. "I'm sorry?"

"The plan. I want in on the plan, whatever it may be."

"I don't think that's a very good id–"

"I want to be there. When it all goes down."

Now I'm shaking my head. "No you don't."

"Yes I do."

"No. You don't. You don't understand what's coming."

"Oh, and you do. Is that it?"

"Yes!" I throw up both hands in frustration.

Harrison has a death grip on his empty mug. His eyes flicker with anger. "You can't just pick and choose where I get involved."

"I sure as hell can. You aren't meant to be caught up in all this. You don't belong here."

"Oh no – you dragged me into this world. You can't just drag me back out."

"Can't I?"

He takes a deep breath. "You're being naïve. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't un-know what you've told me. You can't un-involve me, just as I can't un-involve myself. My sister plays a part in all this. Sooner or later, I'm gonna get dragged back in."

"That doesn't mean you have to be around tomorrow when shit hits the fan!"

"That's exactly what it means. You once came to me asking for help because you'd had a vision in which my sister killed someone you loved. You came to me. Remember that? It was last week. Now I can take many a guess at what will happen tomorrow, but I'm betting it's going to involve that vision of yours, in which case, you need me. You need me because I'm the only one who can get through to Lauren. You need me because otherwise your friend will die."

I look at him. I've never had a vision that didn't come true and some part of me deep down knows that nothing has changed. But here I find myself, once again grasping at straws, as if there's anything that can stop me from drowning in a tide this powerful. My vision is shoving the future in front of my eyes and saying watch, and watch again. It isn't just suggesting a possible future – it's forcing it to fruition. It's clamped down hard and shows no signs of letting go.

"You need me."

I look down at the table, unwilling to mention any of this to Harrison. Because the moment I do, it'll be real. Because the moment I do, I'll be resigning myself to an impossible future – one in which Caden is no longer around.

Harrison leans back in his chair. "It's settled then."

I'm frozen, stuck staring at the table as my mind shuts down, falls eerily quiet. There's no more thinking to be done. "It's settled."