Chapter 14: Night: Celia and the Sister Duo | Sister Trio (Scenes 1-5)

Night: Celia and the Sister Duo

Sister Trio (Scenes 1-5)

The orphan by the oak was set,
Her arms, her feet, were bare,
The hail-drops had not melted yet,
Amid her raven hair.

—Sir Walter Scott,
“The Orphan Maid”

1

Katherine and Madison trudged through the amorphous realm of Mara's conscious thoughts, a blurry mass of ever-changing shapes and colors, trying to look for the silver thread leading to Nico's location, but neither could find it for the umpteenth time. All the while, Madison was still feeling tipsy over entering the Phantom Realms in her waking state, while Katherine felt no such aftereffects.

As such, Madison sat down, trying to regain her stomach. "Ugh!"

"You’re feeling it, aren't you?" Katherine said, still looking for the slightest trace of a thread somewhere below her feet. "Just hang in there; I'll find it eventually."

"Hope you find it before I throw up," and she laid herself flat on the ground, raising her knees with her feet flat on the ground, closing her eyes and covering them with her forearm. She stayed in that position, while her sister kept looking for the thread, and for a while Madison let her mind drift from one stray thought to another—

(breathing in fresh air, petting that dog in the park, folding origami cranes, looking out across the knoll at other couples, staring at her watch, eating powdered green tea kimchi, thinking of her date that she had stood up, roasting Celia's ass, getting a phone call from Katherine, taking a ride to the police station, roasting Celia's ass, going to Dad's bookstore, falling for Celia's antics, roasting Celia's ass, feeling a rush of horrible emotions, hitching a ride with Katherine to the house, getting to Celia's door, reading Celia's notes, roasting Celia's ass . . .)

—till something at the back of her mind surfaced in her thoughts, at first as incomprehensible as any conundrum Katherine threw her in Celia's room, but now a new set of links to an invisible chain of logic filtered past the static, focusing on the emotions she had felt and adding to them the human element of touch and even taste.

An impression of a kiss lingering on her lips, like the kiss of first love or even the kiss of death. And with it came fleeting images and sounds of guns pointed at heads, of applause and cheers and screams, of shedding tears and fraying nerves, of one last desperate struggle before the pull of two triggers, and of two percussive blasts and searing pain and static. And in that static came Mara's voice screaming out Nico's name, and a spreading pool of blood on the stage, and amid the cheers, the voice of a man riling up the crowd to a riotous applause . . .

When Madison jolted up from her nap screaming, her heart racing and her breathing short and frantic, catching her sister's attention.

Katherine came up to her and shook her back to her senses, saying, "Maddy, wake up, wake up," till Madison finally shook off the remaining residue of panic from her mind. "Are you okay?"

Madison sat up, wiping away the tears in her eyes, keeping her gaze to the ground as she collected herself and said, "There's someone else we weren't expecting."

"Who?"

"I don't know, but he's one twisted fuck," she said, getting to her feet with Katherine's help. "He made the twins play Russian Roulette in front of their parents, and one of them died. I don't know what happened to the other one."

"You mean Nico and Mara?"

"Yeah," she said, looking at her sister with a grim face. "I don't like this at all. If Celia ran into someone like him . . . If that man did anything to Celia, that fucker's going down!"

"Maddy, we have to be thorough," Katherine said. "I don't wanna miss any clues, if there—"

"Don't give me your detective crap! We've been loitering around here for half an hour trying to find clues, but there aren't any. So can we just go there, please?"

Katherine pouted and sighed, saying, "Fine, but if we miss something, it's gonna be your fault," and she summoned a mirror showing the Chinese pavilion overlooking the sea, their last known location, in the reflection. "They're not there."

"Fuck!" she said. "See what I mean?"

"Okay, okay, geez! Follow me," and Katherine stepped through the surface of the mirror, with Madison following in tow—

2

Into the pavilion, where they spotted a pool of blood in the center of the floor.

"Shit!" Madison cried.

Both sisters sprinted towards the stain in a panic, Katherine squatting down and placing two fingers on the bloody surface, and breathing in relief.

"It's not Celia's blood," she said, "but there's no Life left in it. I think it might be Nico's, the girl who died."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Katherine wrinkled her brows in thought, looking at her sister's incredulous expression, and said, "I know it's really hard to understand. I'm still trying to figure it out myself."

"Let's change tactics, then," Madison said. "First, get to Celia and get her to safety. Then we'll ask her about it. Sounds good?"

"Just wait for a little bit longer, okay?” Katherine said. “If I run out of options, then we'll do it your way."

Madison sighed. "Fine."

So Katherine pressed her hand on the blood-stained ground and closed her eyes, focusing on the vision she had of Celia and Nico and Mara and wheedling through the chaos of Celia's emotions in that erratic moment of insanity, pinpointing one dominant emotion to the exclusion of all else. And through the long black tunnel of eternity, she opened her inner sight and saw Celia kissing Nico and suffering a paroxysm of grief so great that it brought tears to her eyes. But through it all, she persevered and saw the scene unfolding from Nico comforting Celia to the introduction of that man that Madison mentioned, the man in the white suit and black gloves, now taunting Nico, and now mentioning something to Celia before she had teleported away, something that nearly made Katherine's heart stop—

"And as for you, darling," he said, looking at Celia with a slasher's smile stretching across his face, "I can smell the blood of Amelia Hearn in your veins."

And all at once, the stab of horror that had pulsed through Celia's heart at the mention of her grandmother's name now pulsed through Katherine's heart.

In her mind’s eye, Katherine saw Celia placing her hand on the floor, as a darkness more than night flooded into the seams of Nico's barrier, filling Katherine’s mind with Nico screaming at unspeakable images flooding her head. She saw Celia's seal of pink roses glowing through the darkness, before blinking all three girls out of sight, but not before Katherine (like Celia) heard the man's last words:

"Your mother killed her."

Katherine jerked her hand away, shaken and horrified, her pupils shrunken to bullet points of fright, saying under her breath, "Oh my God," and placing a hand to her mouth.

"Kathy, what is it?" Madison said, grabbing her sister and shaking her by the shoulders. "What happened? Is Celia hurt? Is she hurt? Tell me, God damn it!"

"Celia's not hurt, okay? Calm down!" she said, shutting her inner eye from the damning revelation about her own mother and willing her mind to forget about the man's accusation, yet it was just as her mother said. “It can’t be true. It’s just not true.”

"What's not true?"

"That man's a liar," Katherine said, getting up to her feet. "It wasn’t her fault.”

"Kathy, what are you talking about?"

But Katherine stayed silent, wondering if she should let Madison know about it, but before she was about to let her sister into her thoughts—

"Oh, but it is, darling," the man said behind them.

Instantly, both girls jumped and turned and saw the man himself, the suit and gloves and all of his vile presence standing on the edge of the pavilion.

"Who are you?" Katherine yelled.

"No need to shout," he said, raising his hands to placate her, then bowing to them. "I am Lord Aaron Rancaster, 6th Baronet Rancaster, the last of the Rancaster Baronetcy."

For a moment, neither sister spoke. His candidness as well as his name had dispelled their thoughts, but only for a moment.

"What did you do to Celia?" Madison said.

The mention of Celia's name put a smile on his face, saying, "Are you two relations of hers? Sisters, perhaps?"

"Listen buddy," Katherine said, "we're not your friends. We know what you did, so don't be coy with us!"

"I stand accused of a crime I know nothing about," he said. "Ex post facto, is it not? Is it not? Is it fucking not?"

And all at once, a darkness more than night washed out the surrounding scenery, surrounding the pavilion with his illusion. So both girls stood on their guard, alert for anything he might throw at him, but he just stood there with his hands raised like a complete imbecile.

Which wasn't lost on Katherine, now keeping her eyes on his hands, while something nagged her at the back of her mind. He was too confident for someone in such a position of weakness. His pose was just a ruse, but of what kind she hadn't yet figured it out.

He said, "You two are just like your younger sister. Too obvious. The real master of the field doesn't reveal his hand, until it's time to lay the cards on the table. So before I lay my cards down, can you guess the cards in my hands? What say you, redhead? Care to guess?"

"Fuck this dude," Madison said, and her hair began to float in anger and fear. "I'm roasting him."

"Don't!" Katherine said.

"But—"

"I said, don't!" And to make sure she didn't do anything rash, Katherine grabbed onto Madison's hand in a tight grip, feeling waves of anxiety surging through her, then said to the man, "Whatever you're planning, it's not gonna work."

"Ah, I can see that you're the brains of this outfit. Good, more fun for me!" he said, still standing there with his hands raised. "What say you, braid girl?"

Instead of speaking, Katherine summoned a mirror below her feet, taking Madison with her into the mirror just before two man-sized hands snatched them from behind—

3

And dropping into Katherine's dream realm of hallways and mirrors. And on landing, both girls split up just as the reflection above their heads changed to a deep black hue, preventing Katherine from dispersing it. The mirror surface began bulging outwards and cracking the reflection into a spider web of cracks, as the man from the other side tried to get in.

So Madison threw her seal on the mirror, exploding it into a shower of glass shards and a light spray of blood over their heads, and rocking her sister's domain with a percussive shock.

A moment passed, with both girls breathing hard after a close escape with death.

Katherine dispersed the broken mirror, leaving the upper part of the walls and mirrors below coated in a spray of blood, the man's blood. But no sooner had she done so when a vision entered her mind, and she sucked in breath.

"Celia's here," she said, then summoned another mirror against the wall and entered it, with Madison following in tow—

4

And stepping through the one-way mirror in Katherine's boudoir and finding Mara on the bed, Nico clinging to Celia, and Celia forming her seal underneath their feet, and both sisters saying, "Celia, wait!"

On spotting her sisters, Celia canceled her spell and collapsed onto the bed next to Mara, relieved that it was her sisters and not that crazy man in the white suit. "Geez, you two could've used a better entrance than an explosion!"

Both sisters sprang up to Celia and dog-piled her over the bed, squishing her into the padding and against the springs, making it hard for Celia to breathe under their combined weight.

All the while, Madison said, wrapping her arm around Celia's head and giving her a vigorous noogie, "We had a damn good reason, brat-face!"

"And you scared us half to death," Katherine added, digging her hands into Celia's sides, pinching her there and jabbing her thumbs into her waist. "Now feel my wrath, you little troublemaker!"

Celia was now kicking her legs against the bedside and flailing her arms over the bedsheets and wrinkling them, struggling to breathe under Madison's headlock, feeling her scalp burning and her sides aching and every muscle in her body straining under the combined assault.

Looking on with widening eyes, Nico got on top of the bed by Mara's side, touched both sisters on their heads, and said, "Um . . . Do you two always do that to her?"

At this, both sisters looked up at Nico and stopped their assault on Celia, getting off of her and letting her breathe.

Celia took massive gulps of air, her chest heaving on the bed, before sliding off of it and collapsing down to her knees on the floor, leaning against the bedside in exhaustion.

Katherine and Madison traded glances, and Katherine said, "I think we overdid it a little."

When Celia finally regained her breath and got to her feet, steadying herself on the bed, she said, "You two nearly killed me! What the hell?"

"You're lucky I didn't just roast you on sight for what you did," Madison said, arms akimbo with her glaring eyes boring through her youngest sister. "You nearly gave us a heart attack! We honestly thought that guy did something to you!"

"And now we find you in my dream realm inside my private bedroom with two other girls without getting my permission," Katherine said, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring sunspots through her soul. "On top of that, you broke into my room and used one of my mirrors, and you endangered not only your own life but our lives just to get here! Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in right now?"

"I'm sorry, okay? I really am," Celia said, "but I didn't have a choice. It was an emergency!"

"Was it an emergency when you stole Dad's keys?" Madison yelled. "It's bad enough that we had to pick you up from the police station, and it's gonna get worse when dad and Mr. Faraone come back and find their bookstore trashed!"

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"And was it really an emergency when you broke into my room and used my mirror?" Katherine yelled. "Because it became an emergency when we thought something happened to you! Does that even mean anything to you?"

Celia remained silent, blinking back tears that now welled in her eyes, because her sisters' words had hurt her. Of course, she knew she wasn't under any time pressure when she did those things, and of course, she felt bad about messing up the bookstore, and of course, she felt bad about making her sisters worry, and of course, her sisters' feelings meant something to her. She just didn't want to inconvenience her sisters more than she already had when they picked her up from the police station, but of course, they wouldn't understand that.

So she glared hellfire at her sisters and said, first to Katherine, "Kathy, I know I stole your mirror, and I'm sorry, but you always have your door closed, and you never ever give me permission, anyway! And I didn't 'break' anything while I was in there. I just took what I needed, and that's all." Then to Madison: "And, Maddy, I did you a favor when I took those keys, because with you handling them, you probably would've lost them like you did last time you were at Dad's bookstore, and it took me and Kathy hours to find where you last put them—it was aggravating!" Then she addressed both sisters, saying, "And if you think, just because you're older, and just because I'm still a minor, that you two can boss me around like I'm still a little kid, then you don't fucking know me!"

Katherine and Madison and Nico looked at her in shock.

And with tears now trailing down her cheeks, Celia released a seal below her feet and was about to teleport from the room, when Nico wrapped her arms around her. "Don't go! It's not like that—they're really not like that!"

And all at once, Mara's own accusation that Celia had forgotten her promise to Nico fluttered up in Celia's mind, and something inside her cried out for mercy.

She said, "I'm sorry, Nico."

And she fell to her knees and cried in front of her sisters.

Then the world around Katherine and Madison grew smaller inside the room. Everything else that had dogged them up to this moment fell away from their minds, and their former glares and expressions of shock softened into sisterly concern.

So they reached out with hands of mercy and touched her shoulders, and Madison said, "We didn't mean to make you cry."

"You had us scared that time," Katherine added. "It hurts me to think that you'd do something so dangerous and not let us know." She then sighed, and said, "Don't you trust us? We'll have your back no matter what happens."

Celia stayed silent, still crying, so Nico had the final say, still clinging around her waist: "They're your sisters, Celia. They love you more than you know."

5

After reconciling, the three Hearn sisters and Nico left Mara sleeping in Katherine's private bedroom and went to Katherine's library, where the three Hearn sisters sat on the salon sofa, while Nico sat by the cafe table. Celia sat between her elder sisters with Katherine on her right and Madison on her left, holding their hands as she told them what happened to her. She told them everything, from last night's dream when Celia and her friends encountered Mara and Nico to Mara stabbing Colbie, from the promise they made to Nico to find Mara to everything Celia and her friends did in the old Rancaster district to find Nico and Mara, from their encounter with the wolves and escape from the old district to their subsequent questioning and detainment at the police station, from her own attempt at finding Mara alone to her initial meeting with Nico and Mara in the Phantom Realms, and from her first encounter with Aaron Rancaster to his damning words about her grandmother's death at the hands of Celia's mother.

When Celia finished, her sisters just sat there on the salon sofa, looking in amazement at her and Nico sitting at the cafe table before them. Still, Madison was skeptical of Celia's last point about Rancaster's accusation of their own mother killing their grandmother, but Katherine shook her head.

“Maddy, listen to me,” Katherine said. “We both had that vision, but did you hear him, too?“

“No,” she said. “Why?”

“Because I also heard him saying it," Katherine said, “word for word, just as Celia said.”

"You can't be serious," Madison said, looking at Katherine and Celia in horror. "Please don't tell me you two actually believe what he said.”

“It’s complicated,” Katherine said.

“What’s so complicated about it?” Madison said. “He could’ve been lying just to screw with us, but you two seem to think—”

"Look, I'm not saying what he said was true," Katherine said.

“Then what are you saying?” Madison said.

Katherine scooted herself towards the edge of the sofa and faced her skeptical sister, saying, “It wasn’t Mom’s fault, okay? I know that for a fact, but . . .“

Katherine averted her gaze.

“But what?” Madison said, looking at her eldest sister.

Yet Katherine stayed silent for a spell, keeping her gaze to the floor, seeming to roll things through her head as though wrestling with a hidden weight chained around her heart.

Which Madison picked up on and said, “What are you hiding?”

Without looking up from the floor, Katherine sighed and said, “Let’s just drop it for now.”

“Kathy, look at me,” Madison said.

But Katherine was obstinate.

“Looking at me, damn you!” Madison yelled.

This time, Katherine looked at her and said, “I said, drop it.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” Madison said.

Katherine said nothing but never averted her eyes.

“Celia and I deserve to know,” Madison said, “so spill it!”

“Maddy, please,” Celia said, caught in the middle of a skirmish that threatened to blow up into a rare fight between her older siblings. “Just calm down, both of you.”

“I won’t,” Madison said, “until I get an answer.”

“Jesus, Maddy,” Katherine said. “Can’t you just drop it?”

“Fine,” Madison said and got up from the sofa with clenched fists and glared at Katherine. “Have it your way, but I'm not gonna sit around and wait on your sorry ass! I’ll ask Mom right after I wake up from this dump!” She then headed out of the library, saying to herself, "Fucking can't believe . . .”

"Maddy, come back," Celia said.

"Fuck off!"

Celia got up, but Katherine grabbed her hand and pulled her down and said, "It's no use, Celia."

"But—"

"You don't know her like I do," Katherine said, leaning back against the backrest of the salon sofa. "Maddy's just pissed, okay? Let her deal with it on her own. She'll come back."

"Are you sure?" Celia said.

"I'm sure," Katherine said. "Don't worry. I've got mirrors all over this place, so I know where she is." Then she noticed Celia's hand trembling beneath her grasp, and when she looked at her face and saw her eyes glistening with tears, she added, “It’s okay. Maddy and I have our differences, but nothing’s gonna come of them. I promise.”

“I hope so,” Celia said, then pulled her hand from Katherine’s grasp and wiped her eyes. “I’ve never seen you two fight like that. Like, ever.”

That’s when Katherine looked at Nico for the first time, sitting stiffly with her hands on her thighs, squeezing them together as though she were suppressing the urge to pee. She said, "I'm sorry you had to see that. Maddy gets that way a lot of the time, but it's normal."

Only then did Nico relax a bit on her chair, who had been sitting like that the whole time she had been watching. She said, “Was it that bad?”

“What is?” Katherine said.

“Whatever you’re not telling,” Nico said. “Was it that bad?”

Katherine nodded.

"I see," Nico said, then slumped in her chair and relaxed her hands over her thighs.

"What is it, Nico?” Celia said.

“Do you have something on your mind?” Katherine added.

Nico nodded her head, stiffening in her chair again, and said, “It’s the way you two fought. It sort of reminds me of my parents' fights, but theirs were more frequent . . . and scary.”

“I’m sorry,” Katherine said.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Celia said.

“Sure,” Nico said.

So Nico told them about her parents’ deteriorating marriage and the increasing frequency of their bickering, which later turned into heated arguments, which later turned into full-blown skirmishes replete with yells and curses echoing up the stairs into Nico and Mara’s bedroom like the screams of hell on the nights when sleep was impossible. As such, Nico also told them about the nighttime games she and Mara played, consisting of tickling and pinching each other and having fun, which later turned into touching and fondling and being naughty, which later turned into hugging and kissing and making love. Nico then told them about her parents finding out their secret, first her mother and then her father, both of whom said what they needed to say to their daughters before their subsequent abduction by Rancaster.

Nico stopped.

Both Hearn sisters looked at Nico’s shame-faced self, both sisters glued to their places on the sofa, their eyes wide and their hearts filled to bursting.

After a pregnant pause, Katherine said, "Maddy and I saw some of what happened to you and your sister when we had our vision, and Celia filled in a lot of the details about it, but we still don't have the whole picture. We still don't know how you and Mara ended up in Celia’s dream dive with her friends last night, and we still don't know how the wolves fit into all this.”

“Those wolves were his wolves,” Nico said.

“His wolves?” Celia said. “They were Rancaster’s?”

Nico nodded, but stayed silent.

After another pregnant pause, Katherine said, “Nico, I know this is gonna be difficult for you, and if you're not comfortable telling us what happened next, then you don't have to answer. Nobody's forcing you to tell us. Do you understand?”

Nico nodded.

“Okay,” Katherine said, crossing one of her ankles and sitting forward on the sofa. “Do you know what happened after you died?”

At her question, Nico squeezed her hands over her thighs and said, "Yes."

"Then do you remember what happened to Mara after that?"

"Yes," she said under her breath.

"Do you remember how the wolves were involved?"

"Yes," she said in a whisper as tears began trailing her cheeks.

At this, Celia got up from the sofa and sat by Nico’s side, pulling her chair closer to her and placing her hand on top of hers and giving it a squeeze. She said, "Nico, I'm here for you. If it gets too difficult, you can stop, okay?"

Nico said nothing, but she nodded her head.

With that, Celia turned to her sister on the sofa and nodded, saying, “Go on.”

So Katherine said, "Nico, we need to know why you and Mara landed in Celia’s dream dive last night, because everything that’s happened today stems from that. Can you tell us about it?”

For a moment, Nico paused and took a deep breath to steady her nerves, even as she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, and looked at Celia and Katherine in turn. She looked to their expressions of compassion and knew that she wasn't alone anymore.

She said . . .

Tsuzuku

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