Yes. Right. She still had a connection to all the minds she’d touched.
Linda realized, in her delirium, that maybe her Broken Hearts could help her out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MAXINE
C?’mon, keep moving! Don’t look back!”
Maxine had her arms wrapped around Gertrude’s waist. She was relieved, as she was booking down V Street, that she spotted the older woman cowering behind a tree. Gertrude hobbled as she ran, favored her left leg. Had she been hurt? Had her limp been there all along and Maxine hadn’t noticed?
She looked around her and saw unending carnage… roofs caved in, shattered glass, people lying in the streets… The most unexpected end to a day that had started off shitty. Maxine murmured her daughter’s name yet again, as if concentrating hard enough on Clea would form some sort of mystical barrier around her body, would protect her from attack. The sanctity of motherhood its own special charm that the demon dorlis thing would have to respect so she could survive.
Out of the blue, she felt it. A tug on her consciousness. After Linda’s confession at the agency, Maxine realized just how much she didn’t understand about her boss’s empathy. That it was far more expansive than anything she could have imagined. She felt the tug on her consciousness and understood instinctively what Linda was asking for. She needed help to vanquish this thing, to protect others.
Maxine took hold of Gertrude’s shoulders. “Please just… just run,” she shouted at the old woman. “I can’t go any farther. Run as fast as you can. Please.” Gertrude nodded, terror in her eyes, and hustled away.
Maxine propped herself up against a gate that surrounded a small playground. She clutched the cold metal as parts of her consciousness were pulled away. Linda… it was Linda, in her mind, calling upon her. She had never felt anything like it… except for when she and Linda had been in ritual. Maxine could feel Linda’s pain, could feel that something terrible had happened.
Maxine’s legs turned to mush. She managed to rest her back against the gate as she slid down to the ground. She couldn’t stand, was barely able to keep her body and head upright. Perhaps she could fight what was happening, could refuse to give herself over to Linda and get herself to safety. She grappled with her conscience for a fleeting moment, to calm herself amid the carnage to make the decision she wanted to make.
It ended up being a no-brainer. Didn’t matter how betrayed Maxine felt over Linda’s revelations. She had to help her boss. Really, her best friend for years now. It meant she would be vulnerable out there on the street, another potential victim.
She thought once again of Clea. Said her child’s name once again. Maxine had done everything in her power to ensure that her daughter wouldn’t end up being motherless, being alone as she was growing up. Yet here she was, making a certain choice.
“I’m so sorry, my darling. I’ve screwed up,” she whispered as tears flowed down her face, as she intuited what was to come. As she gave her soul self over to Linda.
Mommy loves you. Remember me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EVELYN
I?’m Evelyn Kendricks… Evelyn…” She had to keep on saying the words. Her name, an anchor that would bring her back to the present. How many times had she blanked out as she walked down Sixteenth to get to Linda’s agency? She’d made a wrong turn somewhere, unable to make heads or tails of her location, and somehow ended up three blocks away from the road that would take her to the town house. Within minutes of getting back on the right track, she found herself perplexed by the menagerie of people running toward her. Practically a stampede.
A man knocked her shoulder, momentarily took her in, and then stumbled over himself as he cried out. She’d just walked by two cars, saw the reflection of her burning gaze in the glass. Yes, she’d become a demon eye. She remembered that. Didn’t matter. She pressed on. She had to make her way to Linda, the person who could fix this, even as the sky grew darker the closer she got to the agency. As a strange buzz filled the air.
My name is Evelyn…
It was when she was three blocks away from Nueva Investigations, saw the carnage that surrounded her on the ground, saw some sort of massive shadow cloud in the sky with arms like tentacles writhing away, piercingand swatting and smashing, that Evelyn had herahamoment. Knew that the darkness she was witnessing in the sky was the same thing eating away at her soul. The shadow, real and menacing, fully in the world, out of control.
Evelyn now understood what she’d been hearing in the distance. A wall of pain made up of screams and moans. Unrelenting. Smashing into her body.
She began to shiver though she was very hot. She looked at the undulating mass of darkness in the sky, an externalization of what had been devouring her heart. She sat down and rested her head against the tires of a parked SUV. The shadow was relentless in taking what she treasured. Her memories of Grandmama, vanishing. The bits of time she’d had with Trevor, fractured and murky, didn’t matter how tight she held on. Still, she’d tried her best to keep her dancing blue hidden from the shadow. Evelyn’s sweet soul self, what she cherished above all. But it was hard to hide something that had become so central to her life.
She screamed as the thing bit into her silhouette with obsidian fangs. Her agony blended into the wall of terror that consumed her neighborhood, lost in the chaos.
Evelyn suddenly heard Linda’s voice, a faint echo, like when she was first summoned to the agency. Felt Linda asking for help, touching her soul with her mind. The spooky investigator who’d shown Evelyn who she was, who she could be in the future. Who’d revealed her dancing blue in the first place and asked for nothing in return.
“Sis, everything for you…” Evelyn murmured as she closed her eyes and drifted away and sent the last part of herself that truly mattered to Linda Villanueva before it was devoured.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LINDA
Linda felt her connection to her Broken Hearts, opened her mind to the whispers that she’d disregarded as phantoms. The principal who once contemplated ending it all after her lover absconded with her life savings. The librarian whose grief over losing his mother… his best friend… almost killed him. The landscaper whose wife left her for another woman twenty years her junior. Her beloved, stalwart Maxine. Her pain-in-the-ass Elton. All her Broken Hearts. All of those whom Linda had been in ritual with. She searched them out, asked for their help, so she could try to survive. She tried to gently remind them of the time they’d been in ritual, to push, to reopen the experience that most of them perceived as a dream. And most gave of themselves.
She felt it almost instantaneously, the rush of energy that filled her chest, her limbs. That made the pain from her lost arm slightly more bearable. “Thank you,” she said, though she knew they couldn’t hear her.
