Chapter 3
Everything was relative, and Darcy was sure that there had to be something worse than having your mother sit you down at your kitchen table to tell you that you were only born because she made a deal with a horned demon named Mephisto.
There had to be.
So she was going to be cool. Calm.
Well, she was going to be that now. When she first heard the news, she mostly got bug eyed and accidentally burned her sensitive areas by dropping a mug of tea in her lap. And then started pacing the kitchen, crotchal region soaked through with Earl Grey, muttering to herself.
But that was then and this was now. She was Darcy Lewis, and she dealt with her shit.
Plus her feet were tired from pacing.
Diane had been sitting quietly sipping her tea, waiting for the eventuality of her daughter wearing herself out. She was rewarded for her patience when Darcy plopped herself back in her chair.
Diane handed her a dish towel for her pants, and Darcy accepted with a sheepish “Thanks”, wiping up what she could of the mess.
“So. I have some questions, I think,” Darcy began.
“You wouldn’t be my daughter if you didn’t.”
Darcy smiled, but her brows remained furrowed. “I guess we can start there. I am your daughter, right? Like biologically?”
“Yes.”
“And my father?”
Diane let her eyes focus on a water stain in the table. “I’m not sure. Mephisto said I would have a child. The next day I went to a sperm bank assuming that Mephisto had made me fertile, only to find that I was already pregnant. A few weeks along, they said,” Diane paused for another sip of her tea, swallowing and taking a deep breath before continuing, “Honestly, I didn’t question it. I told people the treatments had just taken a little longer to work. I was just… I was so happy that you were finally there.”
Darcy thought that maybe she should be mad at her mom. Maybe that’s what people were supposed to feel, that anger, when they find out they’re literal hell-spawn. But it was hard to muster up that emotion when she looked at the woman in front of her.
Diane Lewis, pale but still, head bowed but back straight. Clearly scared by how Darcy would take this news, but totally secure in her decision. This the woman who had had no problem bargaining with a terrifying supernatural being just as long as she got Darcy in the end.
It was hard to feel anything but loved.
Darcy wrapped her fingers around her empty mug, playing with the handle.
“Okay. It’s okay, I mean. In case you were worried about that. It’d be a little dumb for me to be upset about this whole thing considering I wouldn’t exist without it, right?” Darcy tried to cajole her mother into looking at her. “So instead of the Science I thought you used to get me, it was Magic. That’s weird, yeah, but not too different. All things considered.”
Diane did look at her for that last sentence. “All things considered?” Diane murmured, “I should remind you that you seem to have acquired unintended side effects from my little negotiation.”
“Yeah,” Darcy winced, “I have. I don’t suppose that Mephisto dude mentioned that when you guys were hammering out the details?”
“No. He didn’t. He said that I would have a healthy child, and I did.” Diane hadn’t thought to add a clause saying that her child should not exhibit any extraordinary abilities. She wasn’t sure that she could fault her past self for the oversight.
It had been her first and only demonic contract, after all.
“Do you think he knew this would happen? Like maybe this is a part of his evil plan? Although I can’t imagine why the devil would need a girl who can feel death. He probably has like a fancy talking mirror for that or those weird tiny devil minions like Hades has in Hercules.”
“No, I don’t think he knew this would happen. I was pretty specific on the wording. Mephisto can’t touch you, so it wouldn’t do him any good to have you powered.”
“Hold up, what?” Darcy stopped fiddling with her mug and scooted her chair closer to her mother, “What do you mean ‘specific on the wording’? Did you actually have a contract? Like that you signed?”
Diane smiled at the confused awe in her daughter’s voice. “Yes, there was an actual contract. I didn’t spend twenty years in a boardroom just to rely on the word of a demon. Apparently contracts are standard in a deal with Mephisto. Mine was very clear. If he comes in contact with you in any way, his claim on my soul is void.”
The reminder of what her mother had traded for her washed over Darcy like the cold mist of that other place earlier. “You really gave your soul for me. He’s going to kill you. Suck the soul out of you, just like we saw…” Darcy gagged on the last of her sentence, suddenly sick.
Diane slid out of her chair to kneel in front of Darcy.
“Yes, honey, he’ll kill me, but not for a long time. Not while you still need me. And no, I didn’t give my soul for you. I would, but that makes everything seem so much more selfless than the ordeal was. In fact, it was selfish. I traded my soul for me. I traded it because I was so desperate to be a mother,” Diane pulled Darcy into her arms, “I knew that my life wouldn’t be complete unless I got to be your mom, Darcy.”
For the second time that day, Darcy was sobbing into the soft skin of her mother’s neck.
“But I’m always going to need you! You can’t just die, there has to be something…” Darcy cried.
“As long as you need me, I’ll be here. I promise. But that won’t be forever. That was my choice that I made a long time ago, and I don’t regret it. I never have and I never will.”
Darcy kept crying.
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So sometimes Darcy felt like screaming.
It would be normal for someone in her position to channel her frustrations into a good scream, but she knew this wasn’t the same thing. She had aggressive dance parties in her room to relieve her stress, anyway.
No, this was something else entirely. It started at the base of her spine, a chill from deep within herself, that crawled up her torso and stuck in her throat. It took everything she had to stop the scream that wanted to escape.
Diane noticed. Of course, she noticed when her daughter suddenly clamped her mouth shut, folding her lips so that she could bite them together, abruptly going preternaturally still. She wondered what the kids at school thought of the incidents.
So it was Diane who suggested giving into the urge.
“What? I cannot have heard you correctly, Mother. You did not seriously just suggest I go practice my witchy voodoo.”
Diane had waited until she had her daughter alone in the car and trapped in the confined space with her for an hour while they drove to her mother’s old house. It was located in the country in the middle of a sprawling, wild estate. Diane hadn’t been able to part with her childhood home after her mother died so she kept it as a sort of escape for her and Darcy.
It was close enough to the beach for it to have been a favorite place of her daughter’s as a kid. Diane thought a weekend at the familiar sanctuary was just what the doctor ordered after the last month.
“I think we need to face the elephant in the room, as it may be. We need to understand what exactly it is that you can do, or else you’ll be blind and unprepared. The more we know, the better off you’ll be.” Diane didn’t take her eyes of the road, but she could still see Darcy roll her eyes in the passenger seat. It was hard to miss when she put her whole head and shoulder into it.
“You’re making it sound like this is just some totally harmless thing. Like we discovered I could throw a ball really far, and it’ll just take one training montage set to an 80’s hairband song for me to be in the Major League.”
Diane smacked Darcy’s foot from where she was trying to rest it on the dashboard.
“I am not doing that, I understand that it isn’t a normal situation, but we don’t know anything about your abilities. The issue I have is that it’s only a matter of time until the instinct gets the better of you. You’re going to bite through your lips one of these days, and it won’t be enough to hold it off.”
Darcy tucked her chin into her chest, arms crossed angrily over her chest. “You don’t know that,” she said petulantly.
“I do know that,” Diane sighed, “because I can see that it’s getting worse. Yesterday, you clenched your fists so tightly that your nails cut through the skin of your palm.”
Darcy hunched her shoulders more. “How did you know?”
Diane let her head fall back against the headrest. “Because you bled on the carpet, honey.”
A suspicious sniffle emanated from the passenger seat. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about. But we need to work on this. You can’t go on like you have been.”
“What if I can’t handle it? What if it gets worse?” was Darcy’s watery reply.
Diane smiled. “Darcy Lewis, I taught you better than that. There isn’t anything in this or any world that a Lewis woman can’t handle.”
“Grandma’d be mad I even questioned it, huh?” Darcy laughed, a couple of tears still threatening to drop.
“I think she’d give you a pass, but just this once.”
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Darcy wouldn’t let her mother be with her when she experimented, for lack of a better word. It wasn’t high on Darcy’s wish list to rewatch her own mother’s death, so on the off chance that proximity was important, she told Diane to stay in the house and made her way to the beach.
Her grandmother had built an enclosed gazebo so that she could enjoy the ocean in her old age, and Darcy had long since filled it with hammocks and claimed it as her own. There was a life size cut-out of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the corner to prove it.
The beach was private property, but that didn’t always stop people from wanting to enjoy it. Darcy and her mom didn’t mind given that they weren’t even here consistently. Luckily, no one wanted to brave the early winter chill so the beach was mercifully empty.
Darcy sat in a hammock and tried to bolster up her courage. She looked at Spike, wished she had sprung for a complimenting Buffy cut-out because she would have been a little better for inspiring bravery, and let out a scream.
Nothing happened.
Well, a pelican got startled off his perch on the roof and fell, but nothing unnatural happened.
Darcy frowned and tried again.
Still nothing.
Like any self respecting human when faced with a conundrum, she called her mother.
“Nothing’s happening!” Darcy exclaimed as soon as she heard Diane pick up.
“Are you doing it right?” Diane asked.
“How would I know? I’m screaming my head off out here and all it’s doing is scaring the wildlife,” Darcy said.
“Maybe you aren’t yelling loud enough,” Diane thoughtfully replied.
“I honestly couldn’t yell any louder, Mom.”
“Maybe it isn’t about the yelling?”
Darcy considered this, but all the incidents had her shouting in some way. Diane had told her that her voice had given her vertigo. It was definitely about the yelling, but maybe that wasn’t the only thing it was about.
“I’m gonna try something. Talk to you later.” Darcy went to shut her Razr, but paused when she heard Diane’s tinny voice saying something else. “Sorry, Mom, what?”
“I was going to say ‘Knock ‘em dead’, but that seemed in poor taste.”
“Mom! Now is not the time for jokes!” Darcy said.
“It’s always the time for jokes. You’ll learn that when you’re old. Good luck, and I love you.”
“I love you despite your terribly timed humor.”
“Pot calling the kettle black, Darcy,” was Diane’s parting shot.
Rolling her eyes, Darcy put the phone away and settled back into her hammock.
She took a deep breathe and thought about where this all began: that night with her grandmother.
She remembered screaming, yes, but she remembered the cold more. A shiver ran through her at the memory, but instead of recoiling from it, she embraced it. She imagined that she was there, in that other place, imagined the dark haze enveloping her body.
The more she focused on the sensation, the more she realized that it wasn’t just cold that she was feeling. It was like when you step into a lake on a hot day, your legs are cool while your torso is hot. Your body is in two different worlds, one known, sticky, burning and the other strange, slippery, cold.
Darcy could feel the here and now: waves crashing softly against the beach, the creak of the wind against the old wood, the smell of salt. But she could feel the other place at the back of her neck, could feel the edge of the cold and sense the incoming dark.
Finally, there was a scream building in her belly.
She let it go, and her world was black.
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Darcy learned. Her mother had been right, as usual. The more she practiced with that other place, the more she discovered. With that gained knowledge, she was in control of her impulses, never overcome with the need to scream.
By the time she graduated high school, Cum Laude despite a rough bout with German and on her way to Culver University, Darcy knew how to go to the other place, spitefully dubbed Mordor’s Scarier Sister or MSS for short.
She never spent much time in MSS because she realized it was incredibly draining to maintain her presence there. The longest she’d lasted was about ten minutes. She’d also determined that it wasn’t just some vision or creepy astral projection, Prue-Halliwell-style, but that she physically went.
Proving that had involved awkwardly filming herself with her mom’s old tripod camera alone in her room, tapes immediately ripped apart, of course.
Over time, she’d realized that while screaming would work most easily, she could get similar results if she hummed in a specific pitch. It took more focus, but was ultimately less conspicuous than shrieking her head off.
A melancholy trip to the hospital during the summer after graduation, with her mom idling the getaway car in the parking lot, proved that proximity wasn’t the only factor that affected visions. It was only the terminal patients that really incurred any reaction within her. She couldn’t truly explain it because it was overpoweringly instinctual, but it was almost as if she could feel the cold more strongly coming from them.
She only saw one of their deaths. She didn’t want to, for her own sake and for the sake of their privacy and their dignity. She was pretty sure what she was doing was already a violation of some sort, but she couldn’t think of any other way to test her ability.
For most of the patients, she just knew which were closest to death. There was one towards the end of the hall, an elderly man she could see through a cracked door, sleeping in his bed. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. The thought that he was going to die within the hour suddenly registered, and she knew it with the same certainty that she knew the sky outside was blue.
Unknowingly, she had begun humming in that one low pitch, couldn’t have stopped it if she had forced her fist in her mouth. She wasn’t focused enough to fully get dragged to MSS, but it didn’t matter. She could still see what would happen, it was just hazy like she was looking through cheesecloth.
The man would roll over in forty three minutes, take a deep breath, and never exhale.
Darcy ignored the moisture in her eyes, and shut the door. The man was going to die, death had marked him, and no doctor could help. She knew all of it with perfect clarity.
Numbly, she made her way out of the hospital. Diane made a fuss over her, mascara running and cheeks grey, but she just asked to go home.
Darcy decided that she knew enough. Mostly, she had found that some part of her always seemed to understand what to do, that this ability became as natural with use as walking or talking. She didn’t want to use it anymore, just wanted to enjoy the part of her life that was the teenager going off to college.
Her plan worked for the most part, until she woke up screaming one night her first semester of senior year.
Feeling the cold mist and knowing where she was did little to stop the terror at finding herself freezing in MSS wearing only her pajamas.
There was the familiar window and, beyond it, what was clearly a professor’s office with diplomas decorating the walls and a large clock reading 12:40, a woman was seated at the desk. When she looked up from her paperwork, Darcy recognized the pretty face of Dr. Betty Ross. The brilliant scientist’s image and reputation was heavily utilized by the university, so much so that Darcy knew her even though she hadn’t stepped foot in any of the science buildings on campus.
Dr. Ross’s eyes widened at something Darcy couldn’t see, and she scrambled out of her chair. She wasn’t quick enough because a man, made an indistinguishable blur with his speed, was on her in a second. The hand that wrapped around Dr. Ross’s throat gleamed silver in the moonlight.
Darcy closed her eyes and focused on her bed in her apartment, wanting the hell out of MSS and not wanting to see yet another death. When she peaked through her eyelashes, she saw the familiar wrought iron of her bed. A sob burst out of her in relief.
Out of the corner of her vision, the glow of her alarm clock caught her attention.
The red numbers spelled 11:30 PM, and Darcy stared at the clock, jaw clenched.
She wasn’t going to let someone else die tonight. This wasn’t the same as the others; it didn’t have the same cold air of inevitability.
Darcy could stop this one.