The Reaping (The Fahllen #1)(66)
Author: M. Leighton

“What?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “Was he- what did he—”

“He wanted to find Grey,” I supplied, interrupting her stammer. “He was convinced he could save her.”

Janine bowed her head, I assumed in shame. I didn’t realize she was crying until I saw her shoulders shaking delicately. “I never wanted to hurt any of you. I just couldn’t bear to lose you both. You can’t imagine what that felt like. It was like being ripped apart,” she said emphatically, her voice quivering with emotion.

“Is that why you did it? To save us?”

Janine looked up at me with her puffy red eyes, a frown drawing her tawny brows together. “Of course. Why else would I give up my own life, my own soul?”

Something stirred deep in the pit of my stomach. “What do you mean?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She sniffed twice then reached into her pocket to pull out a tissue. After she blew her nose and took a moment to collect herself, she explained.

“When Bobby brought you and your sister to shore and you were both- both-” She began to sob again, but quickly pulled herself together to continue. “Well, I just couldn’t accept it. I was devastated beyond anything I can describe. And then when he left to go get help, a man stumbled upon us. He offered to help, but I told him Bobby would be coming back with someone. He’s the one that told me about the exchange.”

“What exchange?”

“The exchange of my life for yours,” she replied.

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me that all I had to do was take you into the woods, to this clearing not far from where we wrecked, and call out what I wanted, what I was willing to do for you. And that was it,” she said with a shrug. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was so desperate, so crushed, I would’ve done anything, absolutely anything, to have you back again.”

And I believed her. Her eyes were glittering green pools of misery and I could practically taste how badly she wanted me to believe her.

But one thing confused me. “If you made the deal for your soul, then how are you here?”

Janine shrugged. “It was part of the deal. I wanted to be a mother to you both until you turned eighteen. He promised he wouldn’t take me until then.”

The bottom of my stomach dropped out. That was only a few short months away.

Looking down at her hands, she confessed, “I didn’t tell your father. I didn’t think he’d understand. We didn’t even speak of it. I knew he wondered how you were alive, why I was so scratched up, but he never asked. He knew when he saw Grey, though, that something was…wrong.”

“Why? What happened?” Even though Dad had told me what he’d seen, I wanted to hear it from Janine’s point of view, I needed to hear it.

“Late that night, I got up to go see you. It felt so surreal, the whole thing, that I was afraid when I woke up, you’d be gone. When I went into your bedroom, Grey was awake. I picked her up and she was burning up with fever. I cooed to her and rocked her, but she just wouldn’t sleep. She was so restless. I thought I should stick her in the tub to cool her off so I took her pajamas and her diaper off. That’s when she started shaking and choking. Or at least it sounded like she was choking.

“I thought she was having a seizure from the fever. My first thought was that she was going to die again. I closed my eyes. I kept thinking that I couldn’t lose her again. Not again. It’s when I opened my eyes that I saw what she…what she…”

“She what?” I prompted.

“What she had become. She was a different color. It was like her skin had turned black, like the fever had burned her all of a sudden. It startled me so that I dropped her. But—”

Janine’s eyes had a faraway, haunted look that chilled me to my toes. “But what?”

“But she didn’t fall. It was like a terrible wind from…well I don’t know where it came from, but it seemed to lift her up almost. She just hovered there in the air.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And it’s troubled me to this day.”

I sat silent, motionless, digesting everything she’d just told me. It jibed with Dad’s account, only from another perspective. And that made all the difference in the world.

I began to think that maybe she really wasn’t the bad guy in this after all. Maybe there was a chance for us. I couldn’t deny that the prospect of having my mother in my life pleased me in several ways. It’s no fun believing that your mother’s pretty much the equivalent of hell’s mistress.

Janine laughed bitterly. “Your father was gone the next morning when I got out of the shower. He didn’t even give me a chance to explain, just took you and left.” Her eyes glazed over as she looked back through time. “It wasn’t long before I got the divorce papers from Byron. I went to him and begged him to tell me where you were. He wouldn’t of course, but I got a current mailing address from the courthouse. I drove down to see if it was the right one, and it was, so I kept track of where you moved after that.” She looked at me intensely. “I had to know that you were alright, that my baby was ok,” she declared in a voice thick with emotion. “And I always hoped…”

“But why didn’t you ever contact us? Why did you let me think you were dead?”

“I didn’t know at first. I was just trying to give your father some room. You know, some space to work things out on his own. I thought surely he would come back eventually, if nothing else to see Grey. But then, as Grey got older, I knew it wasn’t safe to bring her around you.”

I saw a chill pass through Janine and she pulled her sweater tighter around her.

“Wasn’t safe?” I shuddered. It was as if Janine had passed her chill on to me, along with an intense sense of apprehension.

I watched misery fill her eyes again. “No, it wasn’t. When your sister came back, she wasn’t the same. It started with her skin and the wind, but as she got older, I began to see something dark growing inside her, like evil was eating away at her soul,” she described, her lips curling in distaste. “She was always incredibly mature for her age, but she was also incredibly mean. I saw it with animals and other kids, sometimes even with adults. I knew I couldn’t risk your safety by bringing you two together. I had no idea how that would affect her, how she would react, what she might be capable of. So I stayed away.”