Nine...ten...I’ve lost my mind again...”
My mind wasboth mystic and madness.
My lips moved, and I couldn’t stop them.
I heard myself singing the words over and over, and the voice surrounding me didn’t sound like my own. The voice was strangled with numbers and vowels and syllables trying to be freed. But I couldn’t let them go ...
I.
Couldn’t.
Break.
Away.
A scream poked through my song, and I snapped my eyes open.
All around me, blinding light, stainless steel and a haunting knocking thumped in my temples. A spooky drum sound. A …thud … thud … thud.
I was standing in the Cantini kitchen.
“Mother!” Camora’s razor-sharp voice ricocheted off the appliances. Tears streamed down her paling cheeks as she stared at me with terror in her eyes. The timbre of the one word, like a stone curlew screeching across the night, made my blood turn to ice. “Mother, come quick!”
The tile was cold under my bare feet.
Something else was cold in my fist.
I looked down. A butcher knife was in my hand.
It trembled at my side, but my fingers wouldn’t let the sharp knife go.
The knocking never left. Thethud … thud … thud.
Cyrus and Viola pushed through the kitchen door.
Viola halted behind the table. “What’s the meaning of this?”
What’s the meaning of this?my mind mocked, and a laugh rolled off my lips. It was something you’d hear from an old, privileged woman with means, stumbling upon a sight she disapproved of, like something you’d hear in a movie.What’s the meaning of this?
“I was only coming down for a drink and heard singing. When I flipped the light on, she was just standing there holding a knife,” Camora blubbered through fast tears. “She was juststandingthere.”
“Adora,” Cyrus said, holding his palms out in front of him.
My head snapped in his direction.
The three of them took a step back.
They were all scared of me. As they should be.
I was scared of me, too.
The full Beaver Moon was here, and I hadn’t tossed another letter into the sea. I willed my arm to drop the knife but could not do so. I should have told Cyrus and Viola I didn’twantto hurt Camora, that it was more of a need, but nothing would come out. I was paralyzed by this knocking sound that surrounded me. Thisthud … thud … thud… that mocked my heart for beating.
“Adora, drop the knife,” Cyrus said carefully.
I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.
Sleep paralysis had taken me before—a period between consciousness and sleep. Where your entire body felt heavy, you couldn’t move. You couldn’t even speak. But this was not sleep paralysis.
