Chapter 20

"I don't even get a hello?" said Gran Mae, as I stared at her. "After all these years?"

"I… I…" I didn't have words. I didn't even have thoughts. It was impossible. Gran Mae was dead. This was someone else. A twin we didn't know about. A different daughter of Elgar Mills.

I took a step forward and realized immediately that this wasn't a twin. She wasn't even a human.

She was made of roses. Her skin was rose petals layered together, white and rose and blush pink, and when she cocked her head, the petals shifted slightly. The edges overlapped like the scales of an enormous serpent.

She blinked at me, and I saw that the irises of her eyes were the tight swirl of tiny rosebuds. When she spoke, her tongue was a seething mass of ladybugs.

I'm hallucinating,I thought with sudden relief. This isn't real. I felt weak-kneed, almost giddy at the thought. This wasn't real. It's the sleep paralysis. Or maybe it's just me. There was nothing wrong with Mom. Everything was wrong with me, all this time.

Oh, thank god. Because if this was actually happening, then it would be… the worst thing… ever…

"You aren't real," I said.

"What kind of thing is that to say to your grandmother?" she snapped. A ladybug crawled out between her lips and she dabbed at it with a napkin like a drop of blood.

I squeezed my eyes shut and dug my nails into my palms. I knew it wasn't real, so it should go away now, right?

Right?

I opened my eyes again and Gran Mae had pursed her lips in the way she did when I was ten and eating eggs for breakfast.

Mom's hand closed on my wrist. "Isn't this nice?" she said, in her panicked we-have-company singsong.

That tone of voice snapped me out of whatever hole I was sinking into. It was a hindbrain function, I think. When Mom talks like that, you're in public and what you say is a reflection on her and you will straighten up and behave right now or you will lose your phone privileges for a week.

Even decades later, my spine responded to that voice. I straightened up. "Hello, Gran Mae," I said to my hallucination. "It's… uh… I was surprised."

"I'll bet you were," said my grandmother. "Seeing as I'm dead and all." She folded her napkin and set it down at the table. There were four places set, with the good china plates from the cabinet. The ladybug climbed out of her napkin and began to trundle across the tablecloth.

"Err," I said. "Yes, that."

"Is that ham cooked yet?" snapped Gran Mae.

"I'll put it in the oven now, Mother. Sam, can you help?"

I backed into the kitchen, not wanting to look away from the rose thing with my grandmother's face. Mom had dragged the fixings for a Sunday dinner out onto the counter, or the closest equivalent she could find. There were cans of green beans and a box of instant mashed potatoes, and, sure enough, a ham. I lifted it into the pan she held out. It was frozen solid.

"You should have started last night," said Gran Mae. "You were never a very good cook, Edith. I tried to teach you, but you had no head for it."

"Yes, Mother." She closed the oven on the frozen ham and caught my hand. Her fingers closed hard over mine and I squeezed back. Both our palms were damp with sweat. It felt real, but so had the sleep-paralysis hallucination.

Leaves moved against the window behind Gran Mae and I realized that the roses were pressed up against it. That should have been the deck, but the leaves were there and the roses and the window was open just a crack and long rose whips poured through and twined around Gran Mae's chair, running up the back and vanishing inside the rose petals.

A puppet,I thought. A puppet made of roses, with vines instead of strings. I was almost impressed. I had never suspected that my imagination could come up with a hallucination like this.

"This can't be real," I said to Mom.

Her eyes showed white all around the irises. "It's real," she whispered. "It's all real. I told you she wasn't gone."

"Come here, Samantha," said Gran Mae. "Come sit down here and talk to your grandmother. It's been so long."

Mom's fingers tightened so hard that I felt bones grind together. "I need her to help me cook, Mother," she said.

Something lashed across the counter. Another rose whip, moving like a snake. It knocked the cans onto the floor and sent the silverware flying. Mom and I jerked back. Thorns rasped against the surface of the counter.

"Now, Samantha," said Gran Mae, not raising her voice.

"It's all right," I said to Mom, disentangling myself. If I talked to her, maybe I could draw her attention.

(The attention of a hallucination? Did that make any sense at all?)

"Well," said Gran Mae, as I sat down at the table across from her. "Look at you." Her rose lips were pursed again. "Not married, are you?"

"No, Gran Mae."

"Of course you aren't. No one wants to marry a little piggy." She drummed her fingers on the table with a clicking sound. She had no nails, only darker petals. There was something under the rose petals making the clicking. "You've been sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong, haven't you?"

I swallowed. If this was sleep paralysis, it was lasting far longer than the previous times. "What do you mean?"

"Digging things up. Never stopped to think things might be buried for a reason, did you?"

"You mean the jar of teeth?"

"Among other things." She drummed her fingers on the table again. "Edith! Are there collards?"

Mom's voice sounded choked. "I'll… I'll have to look in the pantry, Mother…"

"Then look! You should think of these things yourself."

"Yes, Mother."

I dug my nails into my palms again. Nobody should make my mom sound like that, but I didn't know how to fix it. It isn't real, I told myself again, but I was having a harder and harder time believing it.

"We've got to have collards," said Gran Mae with a sniff. "Father always insisted on collards at the table. Not that I'd ever use canned."

"I was reading about your father," I said, hoping to distract her. "Elgar Mills."

Petal lips curved. "Father. Yes. I heard you talking about it. You're always so busy, Samantha."

"They called him a sorcerer."

"Oh yes." Her smile widened, showing white petal teeth. "He knew things, Father did. So many things."

"I read some of his letters," I offered.

The smile died. She narrowed her eyes at me. "You shouldn't read other people's letters," she said.

"It was on—" I started to say, and then a hot line etched itself across my forearm. I looked down, shocked, and saw blood welling from a dozen small cuts. A rose whip curled around my right wrist, slick and green and shockingly prehensile.

"What…?" I tried to yank my hand back and the thorns on the whip dug savagely into my skin. "Ow! What the fuck?"

"Samantha!" Gran Mae stared at me. "You know what happens to little girls who swear!"

I swallowed. This didn't feel like pain in a dream. This felt like pain right here, right now, and if that was true, this was happening right here, right now.

This is true. This is real. Gran Mae is here.

(But it's impossible!)

It doesn't matter what's possible. It's happening.

(But—)

If it was just you, you could curl into a little ball and scream all you want, but if it's real, Mom's here too.

I took a deep breath and shoved the screaming down. "I'm sorry, Gran Mae," I said, trying to sound contrite, and clamped my left hand over as much of my forearm as I could to try to stop the bleeding.

Gran Mae shook her head and leaned back, looking into the kitchen. "I can't believe you're using instant mashed potatoes."

"I'm afraid I don't have any real ones," said Mom carefully. "I wasn't expecting company."

"Excuses." Gran Mae sniffed. "You should always keep some things on hand, in case company comes by."

"Yes, Mother."

"What is our guest going to think? You know it reflects badly on the way you were raised, Edith."

"I'm sorry."

I had to distract her again. "You must have learned magic from your father," I said.

Gran Mae's rosebud eyes snapped back to me. "Magic. Yes, I suppose you'd call it magic."

"What do you call it?"

"Power," said Gran Mae. "Will. Everything is will. Will and blood. And occasionally teeth."

I nodded as if this made sense. "So your father taught you."

She made an indelicate noise. "Father didn't teach me a blessed thing."

"Err…"

"He was much too busy. And so obsessed with his children. His… other… children. Not me." She narrowed her eyes and the rosebuds compressed, briefly giving her oblong pupils like a goat's. "Never me."

"His other children?" I asked weakly.

"Oh yes. The ones he made. The ones who turned against him." She laughed softly. "But I learned anyway. It was easy. He never noticed what I did, as long as his dinner was on the table. All I had to do was pay attention."

I swallowed. It had been twenty years since I had spoken to Gran Mae, and it's very different being an adult than a ten-year-old. Had she always sounded so angry and petty and gloating? Had I just thought it was normal when I was a kid?

"That was very clever of you," I managed.

"Trying to butter me up, Samantha?" She rolled her eyes. "You haven't gotten any more subtle since you were a child. It was clever of me, though, not that he noticed." The rose whip tightened again and pain stabbed up my arm. From the kitchen, I heard the clatter of cookware and the beep of the stove.

"Father was like that," said Gran Mae, almost dreamily. "I loved him, but he never realized that other people were just as smart as he was. Rather like you, Samantha. Always thinking he's the smartest one in the room." She shook her head. "Couldn't even pretend to be normal too. Also like you. All I wanted was a nice, normal life, like everyone at school. Like everyone on TV. It's so important to be normal, don't you think?"

"Yes, Gran Mae," I said dutifully. Blood was oozing down the sides of my wrist and staining the tablecloth ladybug red. I hoped that Mom couldn't see it.

"He was sick for a long time, you know," she said. "I took care of him. Me. Not any of his freak-show friends. People always asked how I could stand to be a nurse for dying people. Ordinary people are nothing compared to a dying sorcerer. He was never grateful. None of you are ever grateful."

"I'm sorry, Gran Mae." The rose thorns felt as if they were burrowing into my skin and sawing along the tendons.

"Mmm. Father was sorry too, when I finally got tired of him. Amazing how easy it was. All that power, all those years, and all I had to do was just let his other children in and walk away." She laughed softly. A single ladybug crawled across her teeth.

I swallowed. This did not seem like a safe line of inquiry. I groped for something else. "Why did you send the ladybugs?"

"Me?" She laughed. "Stupid child. The ladybugs were your fault."

I blinked at her. "What?"

"You gave the roses blood and demanded ladybugs. What did you think was going to happen?"

I didn't have time to do more than gape at her, because the front door opened.

"Mrs. M?" called Phil. "Samantha? Grandad said you left a message for me? Something about nails?"

Oh god.

I twisted in my chair, feeling the thorns tear into my wrist, not caring. "Phil!" I screamed. "Run!"

But it was too late. It had been too late, probably, since he passed the gate with the white picket fence and the roses growing in the yard. The door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass in the windows and Phil said, "Wha—?"

Gran Mae's smile grew. She dabbed another ladybug away with a napkin. "I see that our dinner guest has arrived."