Chapter 775: Alison's Gift
Maybe I should have feared her. What she might have become. The last time I saw Alison, she'd attacked me, tried to steal my crystal from Demetrius.
Was blown apart by the power.
Instead, the boiling hate woke in full force as I grasped her by the front of her shirt-part of me remembering she was corporeal at the last minute-and shook her.
And shook her.
And shook her.
Until my arms ached. Until I was sobbing for air, pouring all of my rage and bile over her, dumping the shreds of my guilt and fury and shattered remains of my heart.
Alison simply sat there.
And took it.
Which made it worse. I jerked her toward me, pressed my nose into hers as I screamed at her my final shred of need in this world.
"Show me my baby!"
Alison finally reacted, twitched.
"You gather echoes. Where is he?" I pushed away from her, stood, spun to face her, power crackling as the girls woke. Finally, something to do, to focus on. Someone to punish.
Someone else.
Her tears, her sadness, cracked me down the middle. Broke me open like no one else had been able to. A monster didn't look back at me.
Alison Morgan did. My old bestie. The girl who just wanted to be loved.
"I sent my echoes across," she said, voice soft, edged with tragedy. "They are where they were meant to be."
Hope, cold and sharp, but hope nonetheless, drove a gasp of air into my lungs.
"You have him?" I almost fell at her feet, hands outstretched. "Did you help him cross?"
My Gabriel.
Alison shook her head. "The power shift changed me," she said, as though I wasn't desperate to know. As if she didn't hear me at all. "When Demetrius touched me with the crystal's power, it devoured me. And the taint. And healed me." She looked up, met my eyes. Smiled despite the tears still trickling down her cheeks. Alison wiped at them, magic sparking.
Maji magic.
It was only then I understood. She felt like Sebastian.
And I cared, why?
Didn't. And yet.
"I finally remembered who I was, Syd." Alison stayed seated, hands tucked between her knees, blonde hair in a ponytail. Just like always. My anger receded, hope fading as I sank down next to her on the bench and sagged into my grief all over again.
Too hard to sustain the temper, it seemed.
"I went looking for my parents, did you know?" Alison seemed thoughtful despite her sadness. "I hated how they seemed happier without me, like I was the reason they didn't live together." She shrugged, shook her head. "Until I was healed. And realized they came together because of me." Alison turned to look at me, managed a little smile. "Mom stopped drinking. Dad's not a workaholic anymore." She took my hand and I didn't fight her, though I also didn't offer any comfort as she squeezed. "So much has happened to me since I died," she said. "I've hurt you, Syd. Please, forgive me."
A weak shrug. Why did this matter? And yet, it did, as she went on. I found myself listening, my egos, too.
"You didn't use magic on me to change me," she said. "I'm sorry I lied." Right. She'd told me I'd used my power on her, that someone like her would never be friends with someone like me. "The truth was, if you hadn't been my friend, I think I would have self-destructed long before I did."
"Now what?" She was healed, kind of real, whatever. Good for her.
Alison turned, held my hand between hers. So warm. "I can't cross over," she said. "I've tried. I'm too real now. Alive again." She tapped her chest over her heart before returning her hand to mine. "I'm part a lot of things." Laughter. Foreign, that sound. "But I don't know where to go from here."
Was she really asking for my help? When I could barely help myself? When my son was dead and I killed him?
"I know someone you should talk to." The words were out, my sense of duty roused before I could suppress it. And in that moment, as I looked at Alison, really looked at her, light dawned again inside me.
She'd done what no one else succeeded in doing.
She made me care.
Alison hugged me, her chin over my shoulder. "I'm here for you," she whispered. "Your sadness drew me to you, drove me to complete my healing. I was there, Syd." I flinched and she leaned back. She was there, when... "I've been trying to reach you, but I knew if I showed up your mother would have me taken by the Enforcers."
True that.
"I've been watching, waiting. This was the first chance I had to see you alone." Her eyes lifted to Max. "Mostly alone. But I had to take the chance."
The big drach nodded. "Fate, Sydlynn Hayle," he said in his gravel voice, making me shiver from it as his magic reached for me, surrounded me. I wanted to shrug it off. I still blamed him for Liam's death. But Alison was talking again and I found myself focused on her.
"I so hoped you'd listen." Alison's tears ran again. "I had to do this in person or I knew you'd block me out."
"Do what?" Some giant disaster waiting to be solved? Screw that. Max's comment about Fate could bite my ass.
"Syd," Alison said. "I went looking, when he died. For Gabriel's echo."
At first, I shivered, rejected what she said. Gabriel died. My son. Dead.
And then.
The world.
Stood.
Still.
"I searched for him," she said. "But I couldn't find him."
Gasp.
Choke.
"What?" She was lucky I managed that one word. Especially while my egos all sat up, hyper focused. Waited.
His echo-
No. Why allow any thread of hope? Gabriel was dead. Mom wouldn't lie to me.
"That just means he moved on already." Sidhe didn't have echoes anyway, did they? I knew that much.
But Alison was shaking her head.
"I know what you're thinking," she said. "And I thought maybe, too, he'd gone on. Or, like other Sidhe, he wouldn't have an echo at all. But he was as much your son as he was Liam's." Don't take me there, I beg you. "And even Sidhe bones have traces left of their power."
"You." Air, Syd. No passing out. "You checked his"-gasp-"bones?"
She nodded, firm, up and down. That was a yes.
A yes.
Hope?
No, I couldn't.
And yet.
Hope.
"I'm sorry for doing it," Alison said, leaning away, wringing her hands. "For intruding on his remains like that. I didn't know what else to do. I felt so terrible for you, and I wanted to be sure he made it across okay, if he did have an echo."
"What does it mean?" What could it possibly mean?
Hope.
Shut up.
Alison stiffened. Paused. Then spoke the words that cemented my heart back together.
"It means," she said, "whoever was on that funeral pyre, it wasn't your son."
***
