Chapter Eight
I pulled the phone from my ear in the morning. It was off, but I didn’t remember hanging up.
I sighed when I smelled lemons. There was absolutely no chance that Sophia needed to clean anything after the job she’d done last night. I rolled out of bed and met her in the bathroom. She was seriously cleaning the door.
“Really?” I said. “Didn’t we talk about this?”
She chuckled. “I didn’t touch those socks by the toilet. Can I get a little credit?” Her hand closed tightly around something I couldn’t see. She slipped it in her pocket as she laughed. “And I didn’t make you breakfast.”
“I guess that’s a start,” I said, glancing at the door. It looked like she’d written something in oil at the top of it, shining against the cherry wood.
“I’m off to work. My boss is rude all day if I’m late.” She kissed me on my cheek and left, in a flash of light this time, not a snap. Maybe she needed more magic for some places. Or distances.
I stood on my toes and traced the oil on the door. I wasn’t sure until I did it again, but she’d written: May the spirits protect this child.
“From what?”
Sophia had promised I was safe here. I swung the door open, looking up at the top of the other side. Oily words dripped from it too.
May the spirits lift her heart and bring her joy.
That one obviously referenced my condition, as she’d put it. I sniffed the oil on my finger. Lemons. I’d thought that scent meant she was cleaning.
I stood on my toes in front of my closet door.
“How have I not seen this?” I said, finding oil there too. On both sides of my closet door she’d written, May the spirits give her peace. I went to my last door, the front one. I traced the oily words, and my heart stopped.
No enemy shall pass.
Someone knocked on the door as I stood there. I jumped and clutched my heart. “Either you’re really close to the door, or you’re actually baking a cake in there,” Nate said.
I opened the door for my boyfriend. He leaned in for a kiss, but I covered my mouth and ran to brush my teeth first.
He was faster. He caught me and lifted me up from behind, trying to embarrass me by sniffing my morning breath. He came in with no problem, but I already knew he wasn’t my enemy.
“You’re so weird,” I said, into my hand.
He carried me to the sink with one arm. “Fine. Go ahead,” he said. I watched him suspiciously as I brushed while trying to be neat. “Are you afraid to spit?” I shook my head, lying. I’d been brushing way longer than I would have if he weren’t standing there. “Don’t make me tickle it out of you.”
I turned away from him to empty my mouth in private. “I’m not ticklish,” I said.
He grabbed me, wiggling his fingers under my arms, down my back, and around to my stomach. I screamed and laughed and squealed. I was ticklish. I’d just never been tickled before.
He trapped me against the cabinets. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to move. I just had to stand there and like it.
“Can I get my kiss now?” he asked.
“No! I didn’t see you brush. I’m not sure if I want to,” I said. I laughed and pinched my nose.
“Oh really?” he asked, pressing closer, halting the laughter. His arms made a cage around my head as he braced them against the cabinet.
My stomach flipped, and a crazy buzzing radiated from there until it covered me completely. The thrill of him actually being mine overtook me, made me bold in a way I didn’t think I could be. I moved my hand to the back of his neck and pulled him closer. Our sweet rhythm was the same until our kiss sang way more than good morning.
Our lips separated an inch, intensity still present and accounted for, and he smiled.
“Tell me your favorite color. Emma just gave me a pop quiz on you on the stairs, and I missed that question. She said I couldn’t call myself a good boyfriend until I knew it.”
I didn’t really have a favorite color. Until now. “Green,” I said because of his eyes. “Yours?”
“Mustard.” He grinned and brought one of his hands to my side. “You looked great in that shirt. That’s typically what you wear in my head.” He cleared his throat and groaned. “Oh, God. That was weird. I’m the one without social skills.” He looked away like he was embarrassed, guilty almost. I noticed another side to him then. There was the sweet, goofy guy I always thought of him as, and then there was the one who’d notice a bra through a shirt like Paul, bite my lip during a kiss.
I chuckled, and he finally brought his eyes back to mine. He unpinned me from the cabinets, but we didn’t pull away from each other. That felt very impossible.
“You fell asleep while I was in the middle of a story,” he said. I tried to remember. He’d been talking about the games he played alone in his room as a child after I told him about the Sienna and Whitney saga, even how it ended and what I almost did. He didn’t care.
“Oh, the sock game! I’m sorry.” I kissed him to add to my apology.
“It’s okay. In your drunken state, you agreed to learn the game.” He pulled a long white sock from his pocket and led me to the sitting room. “Don’t make fun of this. It was my favorite thing to do … until last night.” He pecked my lips and pulled away.
I wondered if we were close to hitting a world record for the most kissing during the first hours of a relationship. I felt a familiar tingle, like the answer to that was complicated, a lot to sort through, like the buzzing at school.
“Hello?” he said, snapping his fingers in my face. “Yours or mine?” I hadn’t heard the rest of that question, so I just picked one.
“Yours,” I said, still raptured in the sudden energy pulsing through my body.
“Okay. So once the hand is in, you must name the sock person,” he said.
He smiled, and I forced my attention to him. I stared into his eyes, still buzzing. “Thomas,” I said. It was the first name that came to mind.
He cocked his head to the side and squinted his eyes. “My middle name? Did I mention that last night?”
I jerked out of my trance, seeing my mistake. He didn’t tell me his middle name last night. He didn’t need to tell me anything. I was psychic and … he didn’t know it. God, the hunters, Kelly and Oliver, couldn’t figure out his name, and I could. I was stronger than them, without training a day in my life.
“Yeah, I must’ve told you. Did I tell you that’s John’s middle name, too?” He rolled his eyes. “Like … like I’m really a part of their family, right?” He plastered a fake smile on his face, and I hugged him, glad for the distraction. I wasn’t ready to tell him, I was petrified to.
“Forget them. They’re stupid,” I whispered.
He chuckled. “Are you stalling because you think my game is stupid?” I shook my head against is chest. “Good. So, his name is Thomas. Let’s call him Tom.” I bit my lip to stop the smile that would inevitably lead to the laugh. He seemed very serious about this, and he’d asked me not to. “So Tom must travel around the room, finding things that start with the same letter as his name.”
In that moment, Nathan sounded five years old. His eyes were bright and happy too. I could see him pretending he had a friend, and nothing was funny anymore. This had to be the loneliest game I’d ever seen.
I gave Tom a peck on the mouth, Nate’s fingers, and I pulled the sock and my boyfriend to the TV, the table, and to the tissue in the bathroom. It was obvious he’d had more practice. He went to the clock and said, “Ticks and tocks.” He took Tom to my blanket and said, “Thread.”
I found the obvious ones, and he, the champ, sniffed out the abstract Ts all over the room. He made Tom lift my lip to find my teeth and laughed. While he was there, he found my tongue and ended the sock game.
How was I ever going to tell him he might prefer turning me in to kissing me if he knew what I really was?
Nate patted my stomach, hearing a rumble I’d only felt, and
stuffed Tom in his pocket. He threw me over his shoulder, grunting like a caveman, and carried me downstairs.
“Hold on,” I said on the second floor, their floor. “Sophia wrote something over my door. I want to see if she does it to you guys.”
He walked me to his door and pointed to the top. “Yep. Every morning she whispers, ‘May the spirits bless this boy.’ Isn’t that nice?” I sighed. It was nice. And a relief. She wasn’t just doing it for me.
He took me to Paul’s door. He held me close to the top, and I traced the lemony oil there. It was harder to see on their cream doors.
“May the spirits be his guide,” I said. With my hand on the door, I wondered why she would write this for him. I felt a jolt and dropped my hand, avoiding another psychic moment.
I felt different today. Happy, maybe the most energized I’d ever been in my life. I was one hundred percent sure that I was stronger because of it. Hopefully not more dangerous.
“This is Emma’s room,” he said, at the next door.
“May the spirits free her from dangerous ties,” I said. We both knew why Sophia would write that. Remi.
I wanted to skip the last door, sure something startling was there before we stood in front of it. I traced the oil and dropped my head.
“What?” he asked.
“Bound is this enemy until she is a friend,” I said.
I think I knew who Sophia didn’t want in my room.
He lowered me down on his chest so that our lips could meet. “Don’t worry about her. Sophia obviously has hope for her, or else she wouldn’t have her in your house.”
He pecked my lips and carried me to the kitchen.
Emma and Paul smirked when we walked in. Paul raised his hand to high-five Nathan. “Way to go, Sparky,” he said.
Nathan shook his head and put me down. “My name is not Sparky, and we did not spend the night together.”
Paul grunted like we were crazy. I guessed we did live in an unsupervised house, my unsupervised house, and could have talked all night in person, or could have not talked at all.
Remi banged on the kitchen door, and Emma let her in. She was paler than usual, and she didn’t stop to talk to anyone. She blew past Emma, bumping her shoulder, and I froze. My skin buzzed, electric and dangerous, as I stared at my prey. Oh, the things I could do to her. The lessons I was created to teach things like her.
Nate squeezed my shoulder, slid his hand to the small of my back, and pecked my cheek. Three bullets to Leah’s chest. Remi ran upstairs, unharmed.
“And not so much as a thank you for covering for her,” Emma said when Remi’s door slammed. “Sophia’s right. She’s a clone of my sister.”
“Ew! Edith made a copy!” Paul said. Their faces soured, reminding me of how disgusting I was to them. To him. “My dad said he saw one during the war. He said he almost wet his pants.”
“How did he know what it was?” I asked, nervous.
“How could he not? Bloody face. Evil glare,” he said, baring his teeth then laughing. Bloody? Why would our faces be bloody?
Nathan kissed me and pulled me away from my problems again. “Paul, could you not scare my girlfriend this early in the morning?” he said. “You okay, Chris?”
If I’d told him no in that moment, it would have been a lie. I was fine … right now. And I wanted to stay that way. I wanted more seconds with him. I wanted to hope for those seconds to become minutes and days and years of a long and happy life.
I gasped. “She’s … becoming just a panther, isn’t she?”
“You win the random award of the day, Chris,” Paul said.
“I was just thinking about a long life. She's down to three hours as herself. She isn’t going to be Remi for much longer, right?” Nate nodded. “That’s it. That’s why she acts like that.” I shuddered. “And when will you stop being you?”
He laughed. “I’m not a deranged panther who hates himself. That loose screw in her head is doing this. It’s not normal. I get to be whatever me I want to be until I die.” He pulled me closer. “Hopefully all old and gray with my bestie if she can put up with me that long.”
“Oh, God. You’re a genius,” Paul said as I buried my head in Nate’s chest and accepted his vague proposal, probably taking it much more seriously than he’d meant it. “The best friend angle! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Shut up, Paul. Babe, you want cereal for breakfast since you fired Sophia?” Nate asked.
“Yeah. Sit. I’ll get it.”
After breakfast, neither of us could fathom separating. We stretched out on the feathery rug in my room, and he helped me with my schoolwork. He was smart, in a take twenty minutes to get one answer kind of way, but when he got there, it was always right. He knew History well and French, too. He was best at Calculus, the worst at understanding Shakespeare.
Three of the four hours were spent wisely. The last one was debatable. We flipped through my literature book and reenacted the kissing scenes in awful accents, finding the slightest reason to touch each other and adding kissing to scenes that had none.
“I’m late for Remi’s lesson,” he said and groaned. “Will you be my air freshener today?” I answered yes with a kiss. He picked me up and tossed me around to his back. I held on tight as he blurred down the stairs. He knocked on her door. No answer. “Want to hunt her down with me?”
“Okay.”
He sniffed the air, and I giggled. He’d meant that literally. “She’s not up here.” He dropped to his knees, jerking me down with him, and sniffed the stairs. I laughed and screamed when he jumped down them. “She’s this way.” He stood and opened the front door. I adjusted on his back, snaking my arms around to his abs. “Behave back there, Ms. Grant,” he said.
He carried me around the yard until we saw her. She was crouched on two legs by the gate … with a camera in her hands.
“What are you doing?” he asked. She stood and pointed the camera at us. The light flashed, and I ducked behind Nate’s back. “Stop.”
She chuckled. I peeked over his shoulder. She wiped her sweaty face with the ends of her shirt, flashing her bra at us. At him.
“You don’t like having your picture taken, hottie?” She raised the camera again and snapped another shot. I didn’t have time to duck again. “What about you, Leah? Don’t you want the world to have a better picture of you than the one they’re showing on the news?”
My muscles tensed. This girl could get under my skin faster than anyone I’d ever known, Sienna included. Nathan snatched her camera, and I jumped down from his back.
“Don’t be stupid, Remi,” he said.
She laughed and grabbed for her camera. He held it out of her reach. “I’m not going to do anything with the pictures, asshole. I’m just making memories. I’ll be out of here soon, and I doubt I’ll ever stay somewhere this nice. I want to remember this.” He turned her camera around, looking at the screen. “That’s personal. Give it back!”
She grunted, and I stepped back in case she was about to shift into a panther.
“I’m deleting the pictures of Chris. Just in case.”
“Give it to me now, Sparky! Or I’ll tell Sophia about the tongue wrestling you two were doing. I’m sure she’ll let your little girlfriend stay here since Lydia Shaw would kill her if she found Leah. But you’ll be out on your ass. You think Ms. Rich and Perfect is going to want you when you smell like a hobo again?”
My temper erupted in a second. My eyes flew to the fragile joints in her arm then to the veins in her neck. Nate had told me copies killed in savage and monstrous ways. I'd imagined horrible deaths for the girls at St. Catalina, but none of them had anything on what my wired brain wanted to do to Remi.
I shivered and saw myself hurling into the trashcan with Sophia, remembering how it felt to be evil. To be ashamed of myself. I wouldn't enjoy hurting her. Not for more than a moment. And even though I'd only had him for a short time, losing him that way, in the wake of killing a shifter, would be enti
rely too much to bear.
He flung the camera at her face, and she caught it. She ran into the house. The back of her gray shirt and pants were drenched. It wasn’t hot out here.
He pulled me into his arms and out of my rage. His calming effect was instant. I felt silly for letting her get to me. Nathan made me feel amazingly normal. The irrational reactions of a copy were laughable in his arms.
Would he believe that?
“Baby,” he said. “I can assure you that my hobo smell isn’t that bad.” We laughed, and I squeezed him, feeling like she’d hurt him more than he let on. “I deleted the pictures, but do you want to tell Sophia that she took some of you?”
“I don’t want to get her kicked out. That would only make her mad, and she knows too much to be my enemy.” As I said that, my chest filled with dread. I felt trapped by her, like she could do anything to me, and I couldn’t react. Or she’d expose me.
“Don’t worry about it. She’ll be gone soon. The house will certainly smell better.” I chuckled and pushed that worry aside, along with all the others, and enjoyed being in my boyfriend’s arms. “You think Emma will go with her?”
“I hope not,” I said.
He pulled out of our hug and grabbed my hand. We walked to a tree close to the gate where Remi had been. He sat down underneath it and opened his arms. I wanted to take a picture of that moment—him, gorgeous and mine, under a canopy of moss.
“I don’t think she will,” he said as I settled in his lap. “Remi wasn’t lying when she said Emma liked Paul. When he gets close to her, it smells like someone is tossing bags of powdered sugar into the air.”
“Really? You smell different when you’re around someone you like?” I felt him nod against my cheek. “Wow.”
“Yeah. So you can imagine how confused I was when you didn’t kiss me back the other night. Your scent was practically begging for it.” I turned around to see his face. He smiled, and I plucked his nose. Laughing, he sniffed my wrist. “My nose is going to make me the best boyfriend of all time. I know everything about you. I know what you like. I know what you hate. I know what frightens you. All from your scent.”
I leaned into him, my forehead against his cheek, ready to confess so he would know me like he thought he did.
“Let’s start with the likes.” He sniffed from my wrist up to the crease of my elbow. “When I kiss you while holding your face is a top one, but you’re simple. Kissing has nothing on just holding you.” He slid the tip of his nose up my arm to my neck. “You hate … Remi. You don’t show it, but you smell different when she’s around. I think you hate the way she talks to you. Since you told me about your bullies … I understand why.”
He kissed my neck and brought his hand to my heart. “Nate…”
“One more category. It’s the biggest one. I know what scares you. Obvious things like hunters and Lydia Shaw, but since Sophia’s meeting, I’ve smelled how terrified you get when you have to talk about yourself. Nothing scares you more than you.”
“Nate…”
“I don’t understand why. You’re so kind, so beautiful, so sweet. Last night, you told me you used to pray for your enemies every day, Chris.”
I regretted being so honest last night. I’d told him Leah’s story, everything that had been true before the blood test. I didn’t mean for him to view me as some kind of saint. I was far from it.
“I hate that you think being angry with people who encouraged you to kill yourself makes you a bad person. I’d want to use my magic to hurt them too, but you think that makes you the devil. I wish you could smell yourself.”
“It’s not that simple, Nate. There’s more to it than that, and I’m worried that our relationship could fall apart because of it. It could be over as fast as it started.”
He sighed and rested his head on the tree. “So I guess we’re about to talk about the ridiculously huge problem we have that neither of us has mentioned yet.” He closed his eyes and twisted his mouth.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. He couldn’t know what I was, or else he would’ve had a bigger reaction. He thought copies were too dangerous to exist, let alone cuddle with under trees.
“Oh … you know … the fact that one of us hates magic, ignores that she has it, is currently a famous human, is dating someone who can’t hide his magic as well and can’t live as a human with her unless he gets purged.”
“What? Purged?”
His eyes opened wide, huge green circles that were beautiful and shocked. “You don’t know?” I shook my head. “It’s some creepy way some hunters remove powers. It’s science I think. Makes you very sick, but if you survive it, you’d be human.”
My chest pounded. He heard it and rubbed my cheek to calm me. “There’s a way to be human?” I asked.
“Jesus, I’ve been worrying about it and you didn’t even know. Don’t get any ideas. I would never want you around the kind of hunters who do that, the horrible ones, ones who might have copies roaming around. And I can’t handle the idea of you not making it. I thought you’d want me to do it because you hate magic.”
My heart burned for two reasons: the mention of copies and the sadness in his voice. He’d been worried I would hate something about him. We had the same problem, and we needed the same solution—unconditional acceptance. He had mine.
“I would never ask you to change yourself for me. You’re perfect the way you are.”
He smiled, and I tightened my arms around him. My heart trembled, hoping he would feel the same way about me. He flipped me over to the grass and tickled me, changing the mood in an instant. I laughed, trying to get away … until he kissed me and I couldn’t get close enough.
“Any clue of what I like?” he asked. I shook my head. I didn’t have a nose like his, and besides his middle name, my powers hadn’t pulled anything from him. “When you kiss me first.”
We chuckled, and I kissed him, because he liked that. “And you hate?” I asked.
“Remi and anyone who hurts your feelings.”
“Fear?” I whispered.
“You going back to school or worse. Losing you. I’m sorry if that’s weird. I know you probably think I’m clingy. I’ve been smothering you since we met.”
“You’re not. I like you around.”
He smiled slightly, then his lips tightened. “Life sucked before you, Chris. I think I’m just afraid of anything that could … ruin this.” He rolled over to his back, pulling me with him. He clutched me like speaking his fear had made it too real. Like he didn’t want to let go.
Neither did I. And I didn’t want to sour this moment.
Later. There would be plenty of time for the truth later.
When we were finally able to pull away, I helped him with his chore—polishing the expensive trinkets around the house. They belonged to me since they had belonged to Catherine and Raymond.
“Mr. and Mrs. Grant had good taste,” he said as he lifted me up to the top of a bookshelf he couldn’t reach. I hadn’t thought of them as a Mr. and Mrs., a normal married couple. Odds were, they weren’t. Christine—no, I—wanted them to be.
I looked down at him and frowned as that thought crashed into me, and he raised his eyebrows. “Do you think … people who are married … do you think they … I don’t know … have to love each other? Or can you get married for other reasons?”
Like to breed killers.
“I suppose anyone can get married for whatever reason they wanted, but typically, I think it’s for love. Are you wondering about your parents?” I nodded. “It doesn’t matter, you know? The past is … the past. Whoever they were or if they loved each other or not doesn’t change who you are. I only saw John and Theresa sit in cold silence, and I think I’m a pretty good boyfriend so far.”
I wiggled down to his lips and kissed him. “You’re a great boyfriend. And I hope you’re right about the past not mattering because—”
Paul cleared his throat behind us. “Nana’s in the kitchen,” h
e whispered. Nate put me down just as Sophia called for him, Paul, and Emma to meet her in there. I tagged along with my boyfriend, dropping his hand just before walking in. Plastic bags were piled over her arms with hangers poking out of them.
“Remi said she’d come down in a minute,” Emma said. Sophia rolled her eyes and gave a bag to each of them, two to Emma. There wasn’t one for me.
“I have wonderful news,” Sophia said. Emma unzipped her bag and pulled out a pale pink gown. It sparkled at the top. Nate and Paul unzipped their bags. Fancy tuxedoes. I assumed the other bag on Emma’s arm was for Remi. “I have pulled some strings to get you into the Magical Council’s ball tonight. Think of the connections you could make. Think of the jobs. Think of you not embarrassing me!”
Emma twirled around, making her dress sway and dance. “A ball! This is wonderful, Sophie. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And Christine, don’t feel left out. Missing people can’t attend balls. Especially people who pretend to be little Catholic schoolgirls. You and I are going to have fun here all on our own,” she said, winking at me.
“Sophie, you have to come with us!” Emma said. “I won’t know what to say or who to talk to. Please.”
“I’ll stay here with her,” Nathan said. “I don’t have to go.”
“Good. It’s settled,” Emma said. “Sophie, do you have a gown? I can try to whip one up.”
“No, Nathan you have to go, and Emma, I have to stay,” Sophia said.
Nathan, Sophia, and Emma went back and forth for a while. I finally interjected. “I don’t need a baby sitter,” I said. “I’ll be fine here.”
Sophia must have really wanted to go. Her face lit up and she asked, “Are you sure, my love?” I told her yes, once then, and the three times she asked after. Then she sent them all to get dressed and disappeared to do the same.
I refused to get upset about spending the evening alone. I just needed to plan it out. One hour at a time. I could do work. I could watch TV. If all else failed, I had the sock game.
“Christine,” Emma said, at my door. She looked beautiful in her pink gown, except for her tousled hair. “I asked Remi to pin my hair back, and she told me no. Would you mind?”
I let her in. I dragged the chair from my closet to the bathroom, and she sat in front of the mirror.
“Sorry we’re leaving you. Are you mad?” she asked.
“No, I’ll be fine here. A magical ball is the last place I need to be,” I said, telling more of the truth than necessary.
I pulled the comb, with ease, through her silky hair. When I touched her head with my other hand, I could feel and hear what I couldn’t before. I didn’t understand much of what she was thinking today because I wasn’t fluent in French, but I could feel how nervous she was, so nervous that my own hands shook.
“Are you excited?” I asked. I knew the answer before she said anything. She was terrified.
“No, these people are so important. I’m afraid they’ll see me and see my sister. Maybe scream at me to get out.”
I wondered what her sister did to be so infamous, and in that moment, I knew, like I’d always known. Her sister was heavily into dark magic, and she was afraid to admit to herself how many people Edith killed before she was sentenced to death by the Council she’d meet tonight.
She chuckled and I smiled at her, but nothing was funny. I could feel what she felt about her sister—an awful concoction of guilt and grief. I had to start the bun over, my shaking hands had made it messy. She closed her eyes as a memory, that I could see as clearly as she could, swept both of us up.
A teenaged girl, who had to be Edith, came into a room with a smaller Emma. Edith kneeled in front of her and pulled a doll from behind her back. Emma didn’t smile. It was a creepy looking doll with stringy hair and holes for eyes. She didn’t say anything to her sister. Everything was implied. Edith kissed her forehead and left the room. Emma pulled a black candle and matches from the bottom of her toy chest. She lit the candle, crying.
“Christine! Your nose!” Emma yelled. I snapped out of the memory and saw the blood leaking to my lip. A bloody face. Like copies. I struggled to breathe.
Emma bundled tissue into a wad and handed it to me. I pressed it against my nose, pinching, thinking how incredibly ironic it was that I was still afraid of the sight of my own blood.
“Allergies?” she asked.
“Must be,” I lied.
She giggled. “Pet dander, perhaps?” I surprised myself by laughing, bypassing Leah’s reaction to her making fun of Nathan.
I cleaned my face, washed my hands, and finished her bun, ignoring her thoughts this time.
“Thanks. At least my hair is pretty,” Emma said. She frowned at herself in the mirror. I frowned, too. Girls like Emma, beautiful with awesome personalities, shouldn't be allowed to frown.
In Nathan's eyes, and Sophia's, too, I was a girl like that.
I smiled at my other impossible friend. “Are you nuts? You’re like … really pretty. And those people are going to love you.”
Looking at me with sad and watery eyes, she said, “And if they don’t?”
“Then you won’t get a job, you’ll have to stay here, and I’ll do a better job with your hair for the next ball,” I said. She chuckled and hugged me. I ignored the tug to listen to her thoughts again and walked her to the door.
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep the tramps off of your man,” she said.
I snickered. Who says tramps? “Thanks. Yours too, I bet.” She squinted her eyes and sighed, wordlessly admitting that she liked Paul. “Have fun.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, like she was making a wish in the moment.
My boyfriend was at the door when she walked out. My knees quaked when I saw him. He was handsome. Dazzling. All dressed up in a tux. He’d even combed his hair. It wasn’t tossed about, naturally falling in perfect places, like it usually was.
“Wow,” I said. He raised one eyebrow. “Just … wow.”
“I’ll stay if you want me to. I’ll just tell Sophia she isn’t the boss of me.”
“Go. Make your connections or whatever.” His hands were in his pockets. I wove my arms around to his back and leaned on his chest.
“Call me if you get scared. I’ll make them bring me … home.” I didn’t risk a glance into his eyes. The moment was too intense for eye contact. He’d never felt at home with John and Theresa. He’d just called this place home, with me, a bloody-faced copy. Before the tears broke through he said, “Why does it feel like I’m going off to ‘Nam?” I laughed instead of breaking down.
“Shut up, Nate.”
“Draw me something while I’m gone.” I shook my head. “Stop being shy. I want to see what you can do.”
“Maybe,” I whispered.
We kissed, two sweet pecks, and he left. I didn’t walk him downstairs. I didn’t want to see them dolled up while I was in sweats. Paul would clean up nicely, and Remi would look sexy and grown up. Her tattoos would be showing, and she’d be around my boyfriend, being the exact opposite of me—hot and the right kind of creature for him.
Sophia startled me by popping into my room in a flash of light. If she’d come a few seconds earlier, she would have caught Nate and I kissing.
Her dress matched her eyes. It shimmered like them, too, flowing to the ground in a wave of ruffles. “You look beautiful,” I said.
She took my face in her hands and frowned. “I only wanted them to go to the ball because it is extremely unfair that I have them living here for free, dear. They need jobs, and this is the way.”
“They don’t have to pay me, Sophia.”
“I don’t want to take advantage of you anymore than I already have.” I sighed, and she smiled before I could fight with her about it. “And I would never leave if you wanted me to stay. It’s just that it’s going to be a hard night for Emma, and I promised her parents I’d look after her,” she said.
“Sophia, really, I’m
okay. I’ll call you if a hunter comes.”
She frowned and pulled me closer.
“There’s so much magic around this house, a fly couldn’t get through the door. Nothing will happen to you. I promise on my life,” she said, far too seriously to say that I was supposedly safe here. She kissed my forehead and stepped away. “Three hours tops, dear. Your dinner is in the kitchen.”
She waved, and then I was alone. Technically the most alone I’d ever been. I’d had a private room at school, but there were always girls all around me, giggling in the halls, having slumber parties in the common room.
I ate dinner slowly, trying to shave away time. It was 7:14. They’d be gone until 10. I rinsed my plate and turned off the lights in the kitchen. I shivered and watched my breath make circles in the air.
“Not happening,” I said. With my eyes closed, I moved slowly up the stairs, ignoring the chill in front of me. It touched my hand on the second floor, and Remi’s door cracked open. “Oh, God. I’m psychotic.”
Red light spilled into the hall from her door. Curious, I peeked in. She’d taken the shades off of her lamps. The light bulbs were red. Her bed was covered with clothes and tissues. The chill grazed my hand again. It felt like an invitation to go inside. I didn’t want to intrude, but … it was my house.
I crept into the room, not sure what I was looking for. Well, I wasn’t completely clueless. I had a feeling. I rolled my eyes and followed the stupid, probably psychic, pull to her bed. Under the mess, I saw what was drawing me there.
Her camera, photographs scattered over newspaper clippings, and a huge cell phone with a touch-screen. Much newer than the one she’d had in the kitchen. The clippings were of me. All of them—my face, my robot, Sister Margret’s plea for my kidnapper to return me. The high-tech phone turned on with a sweep of my thumb across the screen. I toggled around for a minute and found no numbers saved in her contacts and only one used in her call log and messages. I read them in case they were about me too.
I hope you know what you’re doing.
Of course I do. I’m not the silly little girl you think I am. I’ve wanted this forever. I’ve followed this witch around until I found him. I’m so close. Nothing will stop me.
It sounded like she’d had her eyes set on Nathan for a while. I dropped the phone on her bed, worried she was getting even closer to him at the ball, hoping Emma had her eyes out for tramps like she said she would.
I gagged as my hand accidentally grazed a tissue. It was soggy and full of green goo. The chill returned. I had to be imagining it, but it felt like it moved my hand to her camera.
I snatched it and the stack of pictures, shivering so hard that my teeth chattered. Then I ran and slammed her door like someone was suddenly after me. It felt like it.
I locked my door, glad it wasn’t as cold in here. Without the creepy chill, I wasn’t as afraid. I sat on my sofa and turned her camera on. All of the pictures were deleted. Maybe she’d done it after she had them developed.
I flipped through the stack. The first few were of Emma and Paul. They didn’t seem to be aware of Remi’s camera. They were sitting in a circle of candles in the living room, laughing. I almost called her out of her name when I found one of Nate with his abs exposed and sweaty. He was carrying two thick branches over one of his arms. The next was of him as a dog. He was outside by the pool, the setting sun casting glints of orange on his fur.
The next was of the house. No. I held the picture closer. I was in it. I was the little figure against the open window on the roof. She’d taken it the other day when I was out there.
“Creepy.”
The next one was worse. Through a window, she’d taken a picture of Nate and I making out … the night she left, well, pretended to leave. She’d taken several of the gate, the purple flowers braided around the entrance, specifically. Maybe that was the magic surrounding the house. They were placed too perfectly not to be there on purpose. The last one stalled my heart. It was of my door, the top of it, the oil glistening and fresh.
These could be memories she wanted to save, or her obsession with my boyfriend, but it looked like more. Evidence, almost.
With a thought, I raised the pictures in the air, all but the one of me kissing Nate. Fire took them slowly, curling the edges until all of her memories were ash. Inside of me, Leah squirmed, excited by the flame and how strongly she wanted to do this to Remi.
I stared at Nate to silence her.
I swept what was left of the pictures under the feathery rug. I curled up on the sofa, exhausted and worried.
“Nothing’s wrong. You’re not in any danger. You’ll get to keep him forever,” I said, lying to myself.
I cranked up the volume on the television to drown out silence and doubt. I let the news play for ten minutes and didn’t see my horrible picture or robot. They were talking about money and the economy. Finally moved on from me.
One drop of good news in the sea of bad.
My phone chimed on my bed as I stepped out of the tub.
It was a text from Nathan.
Sorry, babe. I meant to keep in touch. Sophia is being insane about phone usage right now. He didn’t reply to my asking how everything was going. I assumed he’d been caught and made to put his phone away again.
I got into my pajamas and sat at my desk. I propped the picture of me kissing my boyfriend against the screen of my laptop. “How do I explain something I know nothing about?” I whispered. My past and my powers were a mystery. And mysteries are inherently more terrifying, wrapped in the suspense of what could be.
Since my past wasn’t on the internet, I typed dangerous psychic powers in the search bar. Then I deleted dangerous, seeing how it would influence the results like I had when searching witches and Satan.
I clicked the site called Psychic Powers. It seemed like a good one to start with.
They’d compiled a list of mental powers that some humans, according to myth, possess. Since I was twelve, I’d done nearly everything on the list. It all started with what they were calling psychic teleportation. The next day, the scariest one of all, pyrokinesis, made its debut.
I remembered it being freezing in my dorm that day. Whitney had gone downstairs to see if the girls would let her join their hot chocolate night. I’d thought about fire, and a ball of it flared in front of my face.
I had a story for each of the Claires—knowing, feeling, hearing, and seeing. Hearing was the worst. I’d heard the buzzing for weeks and I finally let it draw me in. Too bad I was in class and screamed when their thoughts overwhelmed me. Sienna had a great time with that one.
I bookmarked the site. I thought I could show Nate and tell him about the first time I’d noticed each of the powers. It didn’t have anything to do with killing sometimes, and the times it had, I’d felt awful to the point of making myself sick over it.
I put my head down on the desk, worried about his reaction, and the chill I wanted to believe was all in my head grazed my cheek. I jumped up from the chair. The eerie feeling of fingers pressed against my face, making me slap myself. Then it rubbed the stinging spot, as if to sooth me. I stood there, both sides of my face enclosed in icy hands.
I flailed my arms in front of me. It was like sticking them into a freezer. I didn’t know what was more frightening—being insane or the possibility of a ghost being in the room with me.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” I said. The fingers moved from my face. Then I heard tapping, like keys being pressed.
Watch your language, dear, appeared on the address bar.
I screamed and scrambled away from the desk. I didn’t get far. I tripped over my feet, and the tapping started again. I crawled back to the screen slowly, staying on the floor.
Don’t fear me, sweetie. You said you wanted to know your past. I’ve been trying to help.
“Sweetie?” I asked, half to myself, half to the ghost.
Would you rather pumpkin? Darling? Babe seems to be taken.
<
br /> The words shuffled out of view as it typed. I was curious now, so I moved closer with caution, growing colder by the inch, and opened a blank document for it to type on.
“Who are you?” I asked.
I have rules to follow, so I can’t say, but you can call me CC, honey.
“Honey? Um … do you, did you, live here?” I asked.
Yes, dear.
My breaths became visible in the air when CC came closer and held my face again. I trembled. “Are you Catherine? Are you my mother?”
She left my face. To answer, I guessed.
Against the rules to say, she typed. Call me CC.
“What rules?”
My husband’s. He doesn’t want me to talk to you. He wants you to find your way without my help.
I gasped. “Husband? Is he a ghost, too?”
Yes.
“Is he my dad?”
Remember the rules, honey.
“Mom, just tell me.”
Call me CC.
I sighed. She was close enough again for me to see that sigh float away. It got even colder as she pressed her ghost lips to my cheek. I could feel them faintly push into a kiss. She was definitely Catherine.
“I need to ask you something. What kind of person were you?” I asked. “Am I evil?” Tears fell from my eyes as I waited on her response. “Could I actually ever hurt someone? Am I a killer? Would I ever hurt Nathan?”
She interrupted my questions by typing.
Relax and don’t listen to that silly shifter. Of course you aren’t a killer. And while we are on the subject of this boyfriend of yours, you could do better. A human would be nice. Perhaps one with more than three outfits.
“Mom! That’s rude.”
CC.
“Fine. CC, that’s rude.” It was amazing how easily it came, being annoyed with a mother.
Just strange is all. I’ve been in his closet. My closet, I should say, and it’s bare except for the rags the witch made him. He told you he took food, so considering he’s a thief, you would think he’d have more clothes.
“He’s not a thief! What do you even want? I’m tired of you already.” I said.
Mind your tone, sweetie. And to help you understand. I crossed my arms over my chest. And to help you with that temper of yours. Runs in the … never mind.
“In the family? Or in you? If I’m your copy, that means you had a temper, too.”
I’ll show you something that will help. Follow me to a door in your closet behind your pants. Trust me. I showed you the ritual so you’d see you aren’t like them. I showed you the pictures. He will allow one more thing.
I stood there for a moment. I knew she was gone because the room felt normal again. She’d gone into the closet. I went in, and sure enough, there was a small door behind my jeans.
I wedged my fingers through the crack, and the door creaked open.
It was cold, maybe because of her, and dark inside of the opening. I pulled a candle to me from my nightstand and lit it. I crawled behind the chill, behind my mother, and we came to another little door. It led to another closet. I crawled out of it and into the locked room.
She moved slowly through the dark, creepy like a ghost would, and stopped in front of a light switch. I clicked it on, freezing my hand in the process. More than fifty easels were scattered around the room with stools and paint supplies tossed around the floor. The paintings, some finished, some not, were covered in several layers of dust.
“Are these yours?” She touched my shoulder. “An artist? That’s not very hunter-like.” Catherine was the reason I could draw and could since I was very young. The nuns had been impressed by it. Art was a copied skill, an imprint she’d left on me.
I crept around the room on my own, eyes on the paint on the easels and the splatters on the floor. I stopped at the door to unlock it. I doubted Nate could get through the crawl space, and he really needed to see this. It would help my case.
As I reached for the lock, a chill crept over me. Not my mother. Something infinitely more terrifying. Something I’d felt before.
I closed my eyes, remembering myself running through the main hall at St. Catalina. Milk dripped from the ends of my hair. I’d just bolted out of the cafeteria after one of Sienna’s birds lost her grip on her carton. I didn’t cry. I refused to. I was fourteen, not four, and cold milk was better than the hot soup from the day before. Girls experimenting with cigarettes occupied the bathroom closest to the cafeteria. I’d heard them before I made it there. I kept walking, headed to the always deserted bathroom tucked away in the corner of the hall. The haunted one.
It was only a rumor. The nuns had told us a million times that Sister Constantine had died peacefully in her sleep a few years earlier. But the myth was that she’d had a heart attack while cleaning toilets at the end of the school day and wasn’t found until the beginning of the next. Everyone avoided it to add intrigue to the story, the legacy of the late Sister Constantine. I avoided it so I wouldn’t seem stranger by being the only one to use the haunted bathroom.
But the day I needed to wring milk from my hair, I had no choice. The door creaked, and I shuddered. Not from a rumor. Not from childlike panic. My shoulders curled and my chest caved in. My heart trembled like it wanted to stop. And worse when I approached the last stall. I felt her there. I felt her dying. The smell of bleach stung my nose. My throat hurt like I’d been calling for help and I knew that no one would come for me.
And I felt that same feeling right now in the locked room. Death. Like it had happened right where I stood. It smelled like blood. Enough for the walls and floor to be covered with it, but they weren’t. At least not now.
“You … died here,” I said. I brought my hands to my throat. It burned like something sliced through it. “God, you … died right here. You were killed in the house. You’re … trapped here. Your spirits.”
I didn’t know if I should cry or not. I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know my parents. They were probably terrible people who deserved to die, but so much of me wanted that to be false.
She touched my hand, pulling faintly, and I moved away from the door. My neck stopped throbbing, and she moved a box in the corner a few inches. Maybe it was all the strength she could muster. I leaned over the box. Among the bottles of dried paint and unwashed brushes, I saw a book with a black leather cover.
I opened it. On the first page, written in neat feminine handwriting was: Diaries are lame, yet here I am writing in one.
The room heated up. My mother was gone. I guessed I’d found what she wanted me to see. And since this was her house, I assumed it was her diary.
I crawled back to my room. The computer screen was mostly blank. She’d deleted our conversation, and typed: Goodnight, honey. Happy reading. Consider what I said about your boyfriend.
“I will not,” I said, then deleted her rude message. I knew Nate. She was the stranger, the former hunter, I needed to be cautious of.
I crashed on the sofa, upset with both CC and Raymond. Something wasn’t right about this. If she could type, why not tell it all? How they lived. How they died. Why listen to her husband, as she called him, not my father?
If I had a baby and was communicating with her years later from beyond the grave, I wouldn’t nag her about her boyfriend. I would want her to know how much I loved her. I’d want to tell her everything about her father, Nathan, obviously, and tell her not to worry about a thing. I’d want her to know she wasn’t a copy, I’d say it out right. I’d type, honey I love you, you are my child. And she’d know. But I would be a mother, not a breeder who happened to paint.
I dried my face with my shirt, pissed to the point of tears now. If she could talk to me, why was this the first time? It made sense for a detached hunter to ignore their copy. She didn’t even want me to call her Mom. Just like Theresa, Nate’s mother who ignores him.
“It doesn’t matter who you were, Catherine and Raymond. I’ve never cared about you and I’m not about t
o start,” I cried. The diary flipped open on my stomach. “Leave me alone.”
Her icy fingers touched my tears. She kissed me again before the chill left the room.