The Seven Souls

Chapter 17 (Marigold)

"About the ghosts," I replied. "With the usurping part, I'm gonna need you to run that by me again."

"Okay." Gabe took a deep breath. "I don't think there's much that I need to run by you. It's just that why do you think Felipe wants his dad dead that badly? King Fabricio said he had the black tar situation under control, so why do you think that the little guy keeps yelling at us to kill him?"

"But he'd never do that," Wally piped up. "He's a good prince, and a good prince never tries to take the throne."

Gabe took Wally by the shoulder. "That's what you think."

"Alright, fine," I said. "Your reasoning is solid. The little twerp is pretty set in his ways about killing the king, but why?"

"That's the thing," Gabe told me. "I was trippin' when I discovered this, so I have no idea if this is just my brain doing its own thing or what. Like, while you were gone, I saw this ghost guy standing over my bed, and he was like, 'Dude, you gotta stop taking the weed. If you trip too much, the harmonics or something are gonna be all out of wack, and I'm not gonna have a body, and you're gonna be a vegetable,' which, like, what's the difference? I was already a vegetable when this was happening. What's a second brownie gonna do to me? But still. That could have been a hallucination, too. I don't know what's real anymore."

I looked down at Wally. He looked up at me. "Should we tell him?" Wally asked.

I turned to Gabe. "The ghost thing was real."

"Wait, are you serious?"

"It took me a few seconds to accept, too, but we were all born with the spirits of the Seven Souls inside of us," I explained. "That's why we have their powers, but I think they're all, like, exercising different amounts of control over our bodies. Like, Bruce said he went catatonic when Prince Lucien left his body, and you did, too. Wally seems to be just fine without Prince Leonard."

"Except I don't have my powers," Wally added.

"Whoever I inherited is an asshole because he just started talking with my mouth," I continued.

"Wait a minute." Gabe paused for a second. "Catatonic. That's what Bruce was like when we found out Prince Lucien made the black tar. I took him home and left him there, but I had no idea he was like that because he had Prince Lucien with him." He chuckled. "So that's who Bruce is without Prince Lucien controlling him. Explains a lot, actually."

Huh. He seemed to be handing this pretty well. Maybe he had taken so much THC that he was chill with anything. Maybe he was high right now.

"Well, here's your brother back." I shoved Wally towards Gabe. "Have fun cleaning all that stuff up. I'm out of here."

Wally got onto his knees and started picking up the contact lenses off the carpet. Gabe grabbed onto my hand. "Wait, Marigold. Don't go. We need your help with something."

"You realize I can teleport out of your hand right now," I told him.

"But we still need your help with something."

"What, you mean cleaning up the contacts? You've got four hands." I pointed at Wally, who had his wand in his hand making the contacts levitate their way into the box. "Wait a minute. I thought you lost your powers."

Wally picked up the green beach ball that had rolled up next to him. "Yeah, but I got them back."

"You did?" I knelt down and picked up the beach ball. "You're telling me Prince Leonard is actually in here?"

"Why do you say it like that? I thought we agreed that that's what happened to my powers."

"I mean, yeah, but I didn't know it was actually going to happen. It just sounds too absurd, you know."