Page 119 of Shifting Hearts

ELEVEN

JASON

I didn’t recognize Steven the day he showed up. The friend I remembered was gone; in his place stood an enemy, the kind I should’ve finished the night I killed Adrienne.

I should’ve listened to Zack. I should’ve listened to Gabby. Every warning I’d ignored felt like a fresh cut. Meanwhile Cass and Morgan’s tangled love only grew, and wherever Morgan’s cup had cracked, I hadn’t seen it happen. I didn’t much care when it did. I was already empty.

Steven lingered for a few days, watching, warning them both that something was wrong with the new twins. They blinked at him as if blind. Then he left as quietly as he’d come. Life kept pretending.

One night I sat and watched them again, Cass and Morgan, shameless as tides. They fed from a junked-up mark, veins full of someone else’s poison. Morgan looked glazed, high on whatever the boy had been given. Cassandra, slick and perfect, was the only one sober. I tasted bile.

Adrienne’s game gnawed at me. What had she been playing at?

The door eased open. Bibi and Babilon slid in like animals claiming a den. Bibi in a sheer nightie that clung and betrayed everything; Babilon in nothing but boxers. The sight sickened me. Morgan had told them no, told them a thousand times, and they didn’t give a damn.

“Just like that, baby,” Cass purred. She smiled up at Babilon as he crept behind her, mouth finding the hollow of her shoulder. He flipped her onto her back, kisses tracking from collarbone down the ridge between her breasts. It was obscene and clinical.

Cassandra rose from the bed while Babilon continued on Morgan. Bibi planted herself at the foot of the mattress like a guard.

“Make it quick. I don’t want her to suffer.”

The words were casual. The meaning was murder.

Something cold and loud uncoiled inside me. I sprang up before I’d decided what I would do. Action felt better than paralysis.

Bibi climbed onto the bed, settling on Morgan’s other side. “Get up, Morgan,” I begged, leaning over Babilon as he kissed her, trying to shake her free. Cassandra stayed by the door, watching.

“Get up,” I said again. “You need to move. They’re going to?—”

Morgan didn’t move. Her limbs lay heavy, expression blank. The drugs had her in a net; she wasn’t enjoying it, not really. She was drifting somewhere inside herself where my voice could not reach.

How do you wrench someone back from that? How do you pull a ghost from a body that refuses to fight?

Cassandra urged them on, a silk whisper turning into a command. “Do it. Now.”

“Get up.” I roared, voice like a snapped bone. “Get up, or you will die.”

Morgan stirred, slow as drowning, head lifting, eyes fogged, focusing on Babilon with the confusion of someone pulled from sleep. Cassandra barked the order and the twins moved like puppets.

Then Morgan’s hands flared. First a blue, hungry light, then a tongue of heat that licked Bibi’s thigh. She screamed, a raw animal sound, as flesh blistered and smoke curled. Babilon reached to pull her back—and Morgan’s hands found him next. His skin blackened where her palm passed.

Cassandra screamed like a banshee, clawing at the air, begging. I stood nailed to the wall, every sense a stone, watching her chamber become an altar of flame as Morgan lost whatever brittle tether kept her human.

Raymond appeared out of nowhere, syringe glinting. He plunged it into her neck, emptied it in one practiced motion. Morgan collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, the fire guttering and dying as if exhausted by its own fury.

My mouth tasted ash. What the hell had just happened?

They hauled me forward; hands firm, unyielding.

I followed because there was nowhere else to go.

They left Morgan slumped on the floor of her chamber.

The door closed behind us with a soft, final click, and all I could do was wait, heart pounding, hands empty, while whatever fate they decided for her took shape in the dark beyond that door.

This was it, the cup finally cracking. They said Bibi and Babilon’s deaths would be the hinge.

She woke with her head pounding like someone had hammered at her skull. The drug left a raw, aching hollow behind her eyes. For a long moment she just listened to the room, fingers pressed to her temple, trying to remember where she was.

Henry came in then, always the theatrical comfort, like a father who only appears when the scene demands it. He paused, drawing the moment out, but Morgan didn’t care for his drama. She shoved past him and I followed, because wherever she went mattered.

She barreled into Cassandra’s chambers and Cass sprung up from her chair as if the chair itself had stung her. Fear showed on Cass’s face in a clean, delicious line; part of me savored it. A small, ugly smile pulled at my mouth. I wanted to hear how the witch would talk herself out of this.

“What happened?” Morgan demanded.

“Get out of my room!” Cass snapped, brittle.

“What did you do to me?” Morgan screamed, coming closer until the words burned between them.

Cassandra’s fear flickered and then vanished, replaced by cold fury. “Do to you? Do. To. You. This is about what you did to Bibi and Babilon.”

Silence hung. Then Morgan’s face crumpled. Tears — dark and furious, welled and spilled. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“You scorched them without thinking. Bringing them into our bed was stupid, but I expected a tantrum, not annihilation.” Cassandra’s voice was venom and performance all at once. She lied again, but she didn’t need to; the motion of the lie served her.

“No, no, no.” Morgan sank to the floor, hands clawing at her head. “Where are their bodies?”

“Their bodies?” Cassandra’s smile was a blade. “They turned to dust, Natasha. Like everyone else you burn.”

Morgan froze. Then a thin, high keening ripped from her, folding her over on the carpet. Cass shook her head with the air of someone tired of crude surprises. Morgan steadied and looked up, voice low and raw.

“Someone else was in the room with us,” she said. A growl threaded the words.

My skin went cold.

“What are you on about?” Cassandra asked, blinking like she hadn’t been in the room at all.

“There was a voice. One I didn’t know.”

I stopped. Did she hear me? Had she heard the whisper I couldn’t risk speaking? My throat went dry. I tried, soft as a confession, “Can you hear me?”

“Bibi attacked me,” Morgan insisted, eyes vacant.

“Nobody attacked you,” Cass said flatly.

“She attacked me!” Morgan pushed, wild.

“Nobody attacked you, Natasha.” Cassandra’s voice snapped the claim back down.

“No,” Morgan breathed, smaller.

I tried again, but she didn’t look my way. Whoever, whatever, she’d heard had retreated into the hollow the drug left behind. Shock rolled over her like a tide; Cass hustled to her side with the practiced care of someone who’d rehearsed this exact moment a thousand times.

A part of me felt relief, cold and late. Finally, the storm had a lull. But it was relief poisoned by regret, decades too late to mean anything useful.

“Natasha, please. Don’t do this.” Cassandra’s plea floated; it sounded less like mercy and more like a command.

“You wanted her dead?” I asked, though I didn’t expect an answer that would make sense. Women had always been riddles to me, beautiful, furious riddles, and in that moment they were more inscrutable than ever.

Cass kept her locked in her chambers, and the days bled together. Morgan barely moved, just sat slumped at the edge of the bed like a statue cracked but not yet fallen.

I stayed across from her, back against the wall, trapped in the same monotony. Time dragged, each second stretched thin until it felt like weeks. The only company I had left were my own memories, looping endlessly.

The window gave me a glimpse of the outside, but not enough to escape. And still, every time my eyes slid back to Morgan, the same truth gnawed at me, she needed to feed, or she’d petrify.

At last the door creaked open and Cassandra entered. Even her face, the last one I wanted to see, was a small relief against the crushing stillness.

“You must feed,” she said, jaw tight, words pushed through clenched teeth.

“I’m not hungry,” Morgan muttered without looking at her.

Cass stood there a beat longer, then turned and left.

And still Morgan sat, hollow and stubborn. Still here. Still breaking.

Cass returned days later, the room humming with the same dull cruelty. This was worse than pathetic.

“You need to feed. Please, my love.” Her voice was forced soft. Morgan didn’t answer. Cass left, and came back in a flash, hauling Morgan upright as if she were a rag doll.

“You’re giving me no choice. If you won’t feed, I’ll make you.”

Raymond appeared behind her, a pale girl in tow. My stomach turned. I expected violence; I expected Morgan to lash out. Instead she stared like a ghost, hollowed and distant, part of the woman I remembered on Christmas, broken and unfamiliar.

“Drink!” Cass barked. It was a command that didn’t land. She lunged instead, sinking her teeth into the girl. The scream shredded the room; I shut my eyes against it.

Cass forced Morgan’s mouth to the wound. Blood slicked Morgan’s lips. She drank, not with hunger, but as if pulling herself through a black tide. I looked away and heard the girl’s heartbeat thin, then stop.

Morgan convulsed and hit the floor, heaving blood into her hands.

“Stop it! Just stop it!” Cass screamed, frantic now as if the scene had slipped beyond her control.

Morgan wiped her mouth and lifted her head, eyes locking on Cassandra. “Fight this. Please.”

“I don’t want to fight anymore. Get out!” Morgan spat, voice ragged.

Blood sprang at the corners of Cassandra’s eyes. “I’m not leaving you, Blaze.”

“I said, leave!” Morgan hissed. Cassandra backed away, and for the first time in a long string of horrors she obeyed.

That feeding became the pattern. Whenever I thought Morgan would petrify for good, Cass returned with more blood and more force. Days bled into weeks. Time lost its edges.

Once, I watched Matt and Raymond tinkering outside with a fire gun; something about their movements finally made sense. Blaze, who had always been strong until the night Collin “killed” her, was gone. What remained was Cass’s maintenance, keeping a corpse of a woman alive for the coven’s sake.

I stood and moved to the foot of Morgan’s bed. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling like someone reading a page she couldn’t remember.

“This is pathetic,” I said, because silence was unbearable and words felt like ballast. I didn’t expect an answer.

Tears burned behind my eyes anyway. “I didn’t think it would come to this. I never imagined you would lose yourself like this.” My voice cracked on the confession.

“I know where you belong,” I told her. “And you do too, you just refuse to remember. I don’t blame you.

I wouldn’t want to remember either. If you still want out, I’d do it.

Maybe we were never meant to be, Morgan.

Maybe it wasn’t fate; maybe it was power.

I got that wrong. I’m strong enough now to let you go. ”

A part of me knew none of this was entirely her fault, Cass’s gift bent her, and Morgan never asked for any of it. But the darkness she’d become that was hers.

I wiped my cheek. I didn’t know why I still showed feeling. I told myself I didn’t love her anymore. I wasn’t sure I believed it.

Cassandra tried everything. When Morgan finally refused the livestock and lay curled in silence, Cass brought her begging instead, pleading like a lover and ruler rolled into one.

I never imagined this stage for her: not the surrender, not the want to die.

Still, I kept talking. Kept dragging her through the filth she’d made of her life, telling her to stand like a man and own it.

It was the territory we all walked, sin and survival.

We’d all done ugly things; none of us, though, had burned through people the way she had.

My cup took longer to crack than hers, but even if her reign was brief, the damage was private and total.

I had no one in my pack to share it with.

When words failed, Cassandra resorted to fast food, bags of blood. Morgan sipped them like charity. The portion barely sustained her; her stomach cramped, she doubled over, a small animal with a broken ribcage.

“This is what happens when you don’t feed,” Cass snapped. “You need regular blood. You can’t let months slip by.”

Months. How long had we been trapped in that room? How long had this gone on?

Morgan had told me, in the drugged, half-remembered hours, that she didn’t know how much time had passed, that Cassandra had refused to let her die.

When Cass left the chamber, I stayed. I kept talking, making her relive every ugly thing she’d done, whispering the names of her sins until the words might break something loose.

If she could hear me, really hear me, then maybe this pathetic half-life could finally end.