Chapter Text
The smell of vanilla batter wafting from the kitchen was making my stomach churn, even as I hunched over the notebook in my lap. I tried to focus on my work and not the soft sounds mom made as she cooked. I didn't want to hear them.
Mom's grief smelled like vanilla batter, chocolate icing, and sprinkles. A childhood favorite of Molly's that mom continued to make on her birthday, even though she wasn't here to enjoy them. I'd eat mine when she brought it in, but I wouldn't really taste it. It'd be hard to swallow, knowing mom, Alicia, and Amanda had cried over them during the baking process. Hope and Harry would tuck their homemade cards beneath Molly's dusty pillows tonight when no one was looking.
For two years there had been one question dominant on everyone's mind.
Was Molly still alive?
The question was beating a tattoo against mom's skull even as she tried to lose herself. She watched the soothing, circular motion of the red Kitchenaid mixer spin the creamy batter around and around the bowl, blinking furiously against the stinging at the corners of her eyes. I burrowed deeper into the couch, hunching my body double over the notebooks and manilla envelopes in my lap.
I hated this. Hated the powers that had been trickling in since my thirteenth birthday. Magic, but nothing so defined as what Harry did, most of the time. I'd been trying and had some minor success. Largely, it was just...awareness. Feelings. Impressions. Thoughts, if they're loud enough. And ever since Molly disappeared? The entire house hadn't stopped screaming. It got bad around the holidays. It was the worst on her birthday.
It's doubly so for mom today, because dad's in Hamburg, fighting some monster or another. Molly's gone. And at any minute, she could get a call to tell her dad's gone too. Her thoughts were the loudest tonight, and my eyes burned, tears gathering at the corners of them though I tried to stop it. My throat closed off, the anguish choking me as well as mom began to cry in the next room.
Mom wanted to believe she was alive, but in truth, she'd given up sometime around the year mark, certain that if Molly was somehow still alive, she'd have found a way to come back to us.
Dad still held onto hope, like a fierce burning ember clutched tightly to his chest. The ember's life was waning away, with the passage of time. He was not resigned to the idea, the way mom was. Doubt crept in when he was weakest. When he returned home from fighting evil. When he was weary, upset, or supporting mom through one of her breakdowns.
Matthew, Alicia, and Amanda all had varying levels of awareness. Matthew and Alicia could remember her best and had the most sense of loss out of all the kids. Alicia thought about Molly more often than Matthew did. Or at least, he didn't think about her at home.
Then again, he was never home. Matthew had signed up for as many extracurricular activities as he could and rarely slouched through the door before sundown. It was easier to sleep at night and not dream when he was aching and tired.
Hope and Harry asked about her, infrequently. I tried to be on the lookout for the signs, and intercept them before they got to mom. Sometimes I didn't succeed, and I'd hear her crying in the early hours of the morning, just like she was now.
I had to take mom's sleeping pills away three months ago.
A doctor had prescribed them a year ago when she'd collapsed in the supermarket from exhaustion. She hadn't been sleeping well for a long time, apparently. When the depression had crept into her mind like an insidious weed, and the planning had begun, I'd cleared the medicine cabinet and her bedside table of anything she could use and called Father Forthill, claiming that my mother was ill and that we'd need a babysitter for the evening.
Father Forthill told dad later that the call had saved her life.
I'd heard the troubling saying time and time again, from friends and well-meaning counselors. Parents will often divorce after the loss of a child. My sister was dead, in the minds of most everyone who knew her. As Karrin Murphy had explained in careful tones to my parents, the likelihood of finding a missing person alive decreased dramatically after forty-eight hours, and got less with every passing day.
They hadn't split. Not yet. But I was constantly on the lookout for the signs. There were more lines on my father's face than ever before. They fought more frequently, and my mother spent more time in bed than anything else. They'd stopped sparring together. I was now dad's primary partner.
I didn't think I was much of a challenge, at fifteen. I had nowhere near the muscle mass that dad had accumulated over his long career as a knight. On the off chance Sanya came over, I got a reprieve.
I rubbed at my temples vigorously, trying to get the intrusive thoughts out. When that failed, I fell back on my usual recourse and dug an MP3 player from my bag, shoving the headphones attached into my ears. The loud guitar riffs of DC Talk's Jesus Freak blared into my ears. It wasn't a perfect solution. I could still get impressions, but with music screaming in my ears, it was harder to hear everyone else. It wasn't like I was trying to listen in of everyone's thoughts. I didn't want to hear them. I didn't want to eavesdrop on everyone's feelings and private musings.
This was the last night I was going to take this. I had the power and knowledge to put the question to rest for good. I was going to use it.
Glancing around surreptitiously, I slid the manilla envelope from under the notebook, lifted the tines, and peeked inside.
The first picture was Molly's, one of the many that had been taken down to cushion the blow for mom. Only one remained on the mantle and was often hidden behind mine. Tears of my own spilled over when I traced the curve of her face with my fingernail. It was funny, how quickly a person's visage could fade from your mind when you didn't see it every day. Now, when I thought of her, I pictured her as a younger, sassier version of mom.
Her face had more baby fat than I remembered. She had a small, straight nose, a smile that could light up a room, and luminous blue eyes that crinkled at the edges when she smiled. The last picture we had of her, she was fourteen and just leaving middle school, posed with friends in her school uniform. Had I managed to surpass her in age? That didn't seem possible. If she was dead-and I, unfortunately, thought she was-then my last birthday had made me older than she would ever be. I memorized her features. It would be essential to keep this picture firmly in my thoughts for tonight.
There were other things in the folder too. A veritable mountain of research, as well as a painstaking notes I'd taken when Harry and Karrin had been over months before. Just like everyone else, he was struggling hard not to let the strain show, but I knew the truth. His failure to find Molly and bring her back safely chafed. He still couldn't figure out why his spells had failed after the first initial success in the library.
I'd pretended to do my homework, all the while scribbling down every detail his thoughts could give me about his latest case. The grimoire he'd been brooding over was a slim, black book he'd uncovered in the Art Institute of Chicago. I still wasn't confident that the translation from German to English was completely correct, but I had to act. It was now or never.
I slid the folder into my book bag and feigned nonchalance as I walked down the stairs.
"I'm going out," I called as I passed the kitchen.
"Where?" My mother's weary voice came from deeper inside the kitchen. I couldn't see her, but I could picture the look on her face. It was a careful blankness that she'd cultivated over the past two years, so as not to betray what she was feeling beneath. It was a little futile now, as she wiped away the tears she'd been trying not to shed.
"The park," I said after a moment's consideration. "I need to clear my head. I'll be back in an hour, okay?"
"Alright then," my mother muttered distractedly. Then; "Amanda no, don't eat the raw batter."
I crossed over to the front door, slung the backpack over my shoulder carefully, so as not to disturb its contents, my thoughts on the contents of the envelope.
During her visit, Karrin had been dwelling on a serial case that S.I. had been unable to solve. Girls killed every fall or winter, while cold gripped the city. Blonde girls, between the ages of fourteen to eighteen, who were torn to pieces or went missing for good. Girls like Molly. She'd begun thinking it a few months ago, but couldn't bring herself to broach the possibility with my parents. Not until she could find some proof. It was too horrible a possibility to put into their heads unless she could prove it was true.
And now, thanks to her thoughts and Harry's, I could.
I'd use the Word of Kemmler to prove what had happened to Molly once and for all.
I walked out into the deepening twilight, head held high, back stiff and determined, with everything I'd need for the ritual strapped to my back.