Page 66 of Runaway Magic
“Darling, I’m so glad they found you!” His mother cooed and flapped her hands distressingly.
“Um.” This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. Threats and menacing glares, sure, but motherly concern? He hadn’t known Elanor had it in her.
“How could they put you in a crate? I could slap that boy sometimes. Sterling!” She shouted through the door. “The future heir of the family doesn’t belong in a dog crate! You go find something better for him this instant.” Elanor made a shooing motion, presumably to Sterling.
“What do you want, Elanor?” Cym did his best to channel Fourteen by making his voice as cold as possible.
Tears sprang up in his mother’s eyes, and her lip began to quiver. “Baby, how could you ever—” She cut herself off and looked toward the open door. “Okay, he’s gone now. Honestly, that little shit is going to be trouble later.”
In a split-second his mother had gone from a forty-something, cooing socialite to an ageless, calculating creature. It wasn’t that her features had changed, but more like a hidden depth had emerged, exposing something dank and rotten. Cym gaped at the transformation.
“Oh my, was I supposed to keep up the façade with you too? Well, tough. You’ll be toast soon enough, and I’m sick of this charade.” The woman in front of him made a harsh barking noise that sounded inhuman. Cym realized it was laughter and cringed inwardly.
“You aren’t my mother, are you?” At this point, he sincerely hoped she wasn't.
“I’d give you points for cleverness, but since it took you thirteen years to notice, I’m going to pass.”
“Who… what are you?”
The woman studied him as though trying to decide if the conversation was worth her time. She shrugged. “Why not? We have a little time before the big event.”
“What event?”
“Your coronation, silly. Do try to keep up.” The imposter wearing his mother’s face moved closer to the cage but stopped herself. “Kids today, honestly. If you could just refrain from asking so many questions, you’d find that illumination would come sooner.”
She looked around the garage until she found a stool. With a grimace of distaste, she gingerly moved the stool closer to Cym, but not too close. She reached into her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, and placed it on top of the stool before perching delicately on the edge.
“I’m your grandmother, the first Hester Blaike. With about two—no wait”—a pink-tipped fingernail touched her mouth thoughtfully—“three greats in front of that. I suppose technically I’m all your grandmothers and your mother. It’s kind of funny if you think about it. You’ve known me longer than you ever knew your mother.”
“Run that by me again?”
With a disappointed sigh, the woman said, “I suppose it was too much to hope for any real intelligence in a child who spent most of his life alone in a room.”
Anger spiked in Cym’s chest in violent shades of pink, making his skin feel too small for his body.
Elanor-Hester’s eyes widened slightly, and she scooted back on the stool, but her voice was steady. “Let me spell it out for you then. I make my way through life by possessing my heirs. Once my current body dries up, I hop into a new one, easy as pie. Hester is the name I prefer, by the way.”
“And you plan on hopping into me next because Elanor is drying up too fast for you?”
“The process does seem to be subject to the laws of entropy, unfortunately. Your mother lasted half as long as the last one for some reason.”
Hester’s body jerked like a marionette. For one ghastly moment, it looked as though she had broken her own neck, but then she sat straight, and the wrongness around her intensified.
“Love, should you be giving out all of our secrets, right now?” When she spoke, no trace of humanity remained, instead leaving Cym with the impression that the words spilling out of the creature in front of him were a thick sludge oozing across his skin. There was nothing left of humanity inside whatever he was facing now.
Another horrible jerk and the wrongness faded drastically, and Cym was looking at Hester again. The woman laughed, a high-pitched squeal of joy that clashed with the situation. “Darling, you’ve just given away our biggest secret of all. You are such a tease.”
Cym felt like reality was fracturing, and he gripped the bars of his cage tightly, unable to do anything but stare helplessly at the monster in front of him.
Hester laughed again. “Look at him! I think you broke him, sweetie.” She waved a hand in front of Cym. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter what you know or what state you're in, we only need your body. You see, the process is almost complete, so however long you last will get us the rest of the way. Right, dearest?”
Her body spasmed once more, giving way to the nightmarish presence. “We could probably do it now, but I’d rather be certain, wouldn’t you? No one wants to enter the Demon Realm at anything less than fully charged.”
Understanding dawned on him at last. From an early age, the children of the magical community were taught aboutnightmares. They were such a plague that the Guard wanted every person to have the knowledge to be able to spot a nightmare possession. Before Cym had been locked away, he’d been brought up on stories of nightmares being defeated by dreamwalkers.
His favorite one had been about Guardian Shael and her battle to destroy the nightmare-turned-demon that had subjugated an entire village. It had possessed the town elder and was using its power to consume unsuspecting travelers and anyone who had no family. At the height of its power, it had gone on a killing spree and had wiped out half of the town before Guardian Shael and her team arrived. Shael and her team had sacrificed their lives to bring it down before it could enter the Demon Realm, bloated on stolen life.
“How did no one notice?” Cym’s voice was quiet as he absorbed the revelation. “Most of the people in our family are powerful enough to see you for what you are.” Cym himself should have been able to see it.
