“Jaxon,” I whisper, because I don’t know what else to do. “Please.”
He nods jerkily, his eyes a burning-hot obsidian that sizzles along every inch of my skin as he looks at me.
“The reason we haven’t been able to figure out what happened to Hudson,” he says in a voice that tears like broken glass. “The reason we haven’t been able to find out where you left him, or where he went, is because he’s been here all along.”
I lock my knees in place so I don’t crumble, then wait for him to drop the bombshell that’s been living in my head the last several minutes, the bombshell that I don’t want to hear—don’t want to know—but that I all but begged him to let loose.
“The reason we haven’t been able to figure out where at Katmere Academy Hudson is hiding is because all along, he’s been hiding inside you.”
27
When the Evil Within
Really Needs to be
the Evil That’s
Out, Out, Out
His words—expected and yet a total shock—go off inside me like a bomb. Like a nuclear reactor at the most dangerous stage of meltdown. Because this can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening.
I can’t have Jaxon’s evil brother inside me.
I can’t have him taking control of me whenever he wants.
I can’t have him wiping my memories out of existence.
I just can’t.
And yet, apparently, I can. I do.
“It’s okay,” my uncle tells me. “As soon as I get back to my office, I’m going to make some calls. I’ll find someone who knows how to deal with this and get them to Katmere as soon as possible.”
“And I’ll start doing research,” Macy adds. “Like Amka said, there are some spells that might work, so she and I can contact several different covens and see what we can find out. Plus, we’ll keep researching. We’ll find a way to get Hudson out of your mind. I swear.”
Her words reverberate in my head, spinning around and around and around as I try to grapple with this new nightmare. As I try to figure out if I can actually feel Hudson inside me, his oily fingers on my heart and mind.
I try and try and try, but I can’t find anything. No thoughts that aren’t my own. No feelings that don’t belong to me. Nothing out of the ordinary except, of course, the whole body-snatching routine he’s doing.
As I’m trying to come to terms with this nightmare, this new and horrible violation, the conversation rages around me. Jaxon, Uncle Finn, Macy, Amka, all throwing their two cents in about how to fix this.
About how to fix me.
Everyone giving their opinion on what, to me, is the most personal problem of my life. The most personal problem anyone could ever have—someone else living inside your skin, taking you over whenever they want, making you do horrible things you would never willingly do.
“What about me?” I ask when I can’t stand the discussing/bickering for one second longer.
“I promise we’ll fix this,” Uncle Finn says. “We will get him out of you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I tell him. “I meant, what do I do? While you four are all trying to figure out how to save me, what can I do to save myself?”
That gets their attention, has them eyeing one another as they try to figure out what I mean. Which is just proof that there’s a problem, right?
“Grace, honey, there’s nothing for you to do right now.” My uncle addresses me in the deliberately calm tone of someone who expects the person he’s using it on to go hysterical at any moment.
But the hysteria is gone. Not forever, as I’m sure it will be back before this nightmare is over, but for now. And in its place is a determination not to be placated, a determination to never be placed in a situation like this one ever again.
“Well, then I guess we’d better find something for me to do,” I tell him. “Because if we’re right, if Hudson is actually living inside me like some kind of parasite, there is no way I’m just going to sit back and wait to see what you guys come up with. Doing that is what’s gotten me into every terrible situation I’ve been in since I got to Alaska.”
The words are harsh and, in another situation, another reality, I would never have said them. But in this situation, in this reality, they needed to be said.
And the people I’m talking to need to listen to them…and to me. Because there is no way I’m taking a back seat for one more second. No way I’m just going to sit around and let them prevaricate and tell me half-truths and hide things from me in the name of protection. Not now. Not anymore.