Incandescence

35: Tick, Tick, Tick

Alice looks ready to kill.

         "You," she shouts into the air, body still sprawled on the grass. "You really shouldn't have done that, bitch."

         "It's okay," I say, getting up to protest. "Alice, it's okay. She's on our side –"

         "She just possessed me! How can you defend her after that?" Pulling herself up, Alice braces her hand against the shed to steady herself and murmurs something under her breath, voice too dim for me to hear. Then there's a rush of air around us and I feel something, an unearthly charge, prickling the hairs on my arms, causing goosebumps to rise on my flesh.

         For a moment, the air is filled with it.

         Then a sudden light forms, illuminating everything. It spreads out like a growing sphere, incandescent, its focal point that one patch of air Alice is fixated on. And just like that, it implodes. A puff of smoke erupts in its wake and a rotting, burning stench fills my nostrils.

         Gone. Just like that.

         "You . . . you banished her, didn't you?" I say.

         Alice says nothing, and when I glance at her she's leaning against the shed, eyes shut, face pasty and sweaty.

         "Are you okay?"

         "No," she says, one eye flicking open, iris foggy. "I just . . . I need to lie down."

         As much as I don't want to help her after what she just did, I swallow my reluctance, putting out all the candles and then shoving everything in the bag. I place her arm around my shoulder and act as a human crutch, and the two of us stagger inside. We somehow manage not to wake her father up and make it back up to her room without saying a word. Alice takes it from there, shrugging me off and slumping down on her bed. She shuts her eyes again and for a moment I think she's fell asleep, but then she murmurs something I don't quite catch.

         "What?"

         "I said be glad you're not a medium," she mutters. "All this ghost business really takes the energy out you."

         You have no idea. "I told you not to banish her – she was with us. She was trying to help –"

         "By taking over my body? I don't call that helpful."

         "She told me things," I say. "She's been trying to tell you things for months now but you kept refusing to listen to her. Typical Alice; never got the time of day for anyone."

         "Someone sounds pissed."

         "I am pissed. Charlotte was only trying to help and you banished her! D'you even know where you sent her?"

         "Should I care?"

         I smack my hands to my forehead, because it's either that or I slap her. How can she be so uncaring? She just sent Charlotte off to God knows where and she's acting as though all she did was kick her out her house for a little while.

         "If she spilled her ghostly secrets then I was probably doing her a favour. Chances are, she woulda been kicked off Earth for interfering, anyhow." Her eyebrows rise with genuine interest as she asks, "What'd she tell you, anyway?"

         I take a deep breath before saying, "It's Lilith."

         "What's Lilith?"

         "The Furies, the rebellion – everything. She planned it all," I say, and then go on to explain what Charlotte told me, including all my own observations as I go along. Lilith. All this time, it's been her. Even when Daniel told Mason and me her story, it never once clicked that she could have any say in the present-day events. I associated her with necromancy on its own, when really I should have been taking a look at the bigger picture. One with great power. With a reason to hate humans. With a reason to want revenge.