I was plummeting deeper and deeper into the murky water. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. So this is what drowning feels like, I thought numbly.
I kicked my legs, trying to fight my way back to the surface. I refused to drown. I could not drown.
“Gemma.” A feathery voice floated up from beneath my feet.
Huh? Was I hallucinating?
I kicked harder and paddled with my arms, giving a very lame attempt at doggy paddling.
“No, Gemma, down here,” the voice rippled up through the water.
And then I knew. The voice didn’t mean me any harm. I was supposed to listen to it.
I was supposed to go to it.
I let my legs and arms fall limp, allowing my dead weight to sink me downward to the sandy bottom of the lake.
“Good,” the voice purred. “Now keep coming. I need your help.”
What do you need my help for? I thought, because speaking would do anything but get me a mouth full of water.
To my shock, the voice responded inside my head. I need you to save me.
How?
Just trust me.
I don’t know why, but I did. I do trust you.
Good. Now whatever you do, don’t panic.
Why would I panic?
The voice didn’t answer, but I figured out why as fingers wrapped around my ankles and yanked me down. Despite what the voice said, I panicked and clawed at the water, frantically trying to get away, but it was useless. I tried to scream, but water flooded my lungs. If I didn’t get away, I was a goner. If I didn’t get away, I would end up a prisoner in The Underworld, at least until I went insane and they killed me.
I needed to get away…
Shaking...huh….someone…shaking…my shoulder. My eyelids shot open. Disoriented and groggy, I jerked away from whoever was touching me.
“Jeez, Gemma,” Alex said with his hands held up in front of him in an I-mean-you-no-harm kind of way. “Settle down.”
I did a quick scan of my surroundings and realized I was still in the back seat of the GTO, which was now parked in the garage. Laylen and Aislin were nowhere to be seen. It was just Alex and me…Why was it just Alex and me?
“Where are Aislin and Laylen?” I asked, rubbing my sleepy eyes.
“Their already inside.” He gave a nod in the direction of the garage door. “Getting things set up.”
Yawning, I stretched out my arms. “So why are we sitting out here?”
“Because you fell asleep and I couldn’t get you to wake up.” He paused, looking as though he was considering something. “Were you having a nightmare?”
A nightmare? That was putting it mildly. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you were getting all squirmy and making these moaning noises.”
Oh—my—word. I was absolutely mortified. “Oh.”
He waited for me to explain further.
I didn’t.
“Alright.” He sounded a bit irritated. “Let’s go inside.”
Oh, whatever. He could be irritated all he wanted. I was under no obligation to tell him about my dreams.
Inside, Alex immediately jumped into get a hold of Stephan mode, hitting redial on his phone over and over and over again.
Several failed attempts later, he started banging his phone against the table like he thought beating the crap out of it would somehow make Stephan miraculously answer the phone. Yeah, all that resulted from that was the back of his phone popping off and the battery shooting out across the table. After that, he gave up his redial mission and tucked his phone away in his pocket.
Feeling tired, I plopped down in one of the chairs at the table. The box Aislin had gotten from Adessa wasn’t too far off on the table in front of me. It looked so much like a jewelry box, with its tiny encrusted jewels and shimmering shade of gold, that I half expected it to be full of pearl necklaces and diamond earrings. But inside the box lay a glinting red crystal. I had the urge to reach out and touch it, let my fingers brush along the jagged edges and see what it felt like. But after getting sucked into the Foreseers’ crystal ball, I decided to resist the urge.
“So, this is it.” Alex came over with his hands stuffed inside his pockets and leaned over my shoulder to get a better look at the crystal. “That’s what’s going to get us to Afton and back?”
Aislin, who was sitting across the table from me, nodded enthusiastically. “Adessa said it would work better than any other crystal.”
“I sure hope so,” Alex uttered under his breath.
Aislin either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him. “So we should probably get going.”
Alex reached over my shoulder to collect the gold box. “Where do you want this?”
Aislin made grabbing gestures with her hands. “Here, give it to me.”
Alex handed it to her and she took out the crystal. She retrieved a lighter out of her pocket and lit the wick of a black candle. Then she set the candle, the lighter, and the empty gold box down on the table.
With her eyes fixed on the glittering red crystal, which she now had grasped in her hand, she asked Alex, “Are you ready?”
“Just a sec.” Alex pointed a finger at Laylen. “Before I go, you better be absolutely certain you can handle this.”
Laylen rolled his eyes. “I’m absolutely certain I can handle this. Now go.”
“You better be,” he told him, and whipped a finger in my direction. “And you need to promise that if something does happen, you’ll make sure to get away no matter what.”
“Okay, I will,” I promised with zero hesitation.
He looked surprised by my cooperation.
Hey, I may be a stubborn brat sometimes, but when it came to not getting killed I was more than willing to cooperate. Well, I did have to minus the whole trying-to-run-away incident back at Adessa’s. Oh yeah, and the time I tried to run away when I first found out about what I really was. But other than that…oh, fine. Most of the time, I was a brat. But at least I wasn’t being one now.
Alex still looked taken aback. “Well, good.”
“Now, are you ready?” Aislin asked, dipping the tip of the crystal into the flame.
Alex picked up the Sword of Immortality. “Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Without taking her eyes off the crystal, which had now started to smolder a rose tinted cloud of smoke, Aislin instructed Laylen and me to “Move back a ways unless you want to get taken with us.”
I followed Laylen over to the farthest corner.
As soon as we made it over there, Aislin started whispering, “Per is calx EGO lux lucis via.”
The smoke rising up from the candle slowly shifted to the shade of blood red.
Alex became more fidgety the further Aislin got with the whole transporting process. He kept throwing nervous glances at Laylen and me, along with a couple of strange looks I couldn’t quite decipher.
“Per is calx EGO lux lucis via.” Aislin’s voice grew louder.
Another strange look from Alex, this time directed solely at me. His bright green eyes held so much worry that, for an instant, I thought he might run over to me. The look made me feel edgy. It pushed worried thoughts into my mind, and had me questioning just how high of a chance the Death Walkers showing up was. High enough for him, Mr. Stoically Calm In Frightening Situations, to look uneasy.
He kept his eyes glued on me as Aislin screamed, “Per is calx EGO lux lucis via!”
A flash of red, a thunderous burst, and then, just like that, Ailsin and Alex were gone.
I stared at the spot they vanished from, the electricity fizzling out of my body and leaving a giant empty void in its place. Weird.
I shook my head, tried my best to tuck the feeling away, and turned to Laylen. He was watching me with an expression that could only be translated as curious.
“What?” I asked, curious as to what was up with his strange look.
“Oh, nothing.” He shrugged. “It’s just that you look so much like her.”
r /> I tilted my head to the side, perplexed. “Like who?”
“Like your mom.”
Whoa. That threw me for a loop—a big, giant, excited loop. I perked up. “I do? Really?”
He nodded. “Yeah—well, except for the color of your eyes.”
I frowned. Of course it would exclude the color of my eyes since no one else had violet eyes. I was really going to have to consider getting some colored contact lenses.
“What is it with you and your eye color?” Laylen asked, semi-amused. “You know, the color’s not that bad. In fact, it’s pretty awesome.”
“Awesome, huh? I would say more like different.” And freaky. I sighed. “When you’ve been as different as I have, the idea of being normal sounds nice. But you can’t be one hundred percent normal when you have freaky violet eyes.”
“Yeah, I can understand how you would want to be normal, considering everything you’ve been through,” he said as he started for the table. “But being normal is way overrated. Trust me.”
“Oh yeah.” I followed the Keeper/vampire over to the table and sat down.
He laughed, dropping down into a chair. “Yep, or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”
“So...” I began, wanting to go back to talking about my mom, “did you know my mom very well?”
He nodded, stretching out his legs in front of him. “I knew her pretty well.”
“What was she like?” I asked eagerly.
“Well, she was really nice. There was no bad in her at all, and she was also one of those people who you knew you could trust.”
I was soaking up every word he said like it was the oxygen that kept me alive.
His forehead creased over. “You know, I’m really surprised you don’t remember anything about her.”
“How could I?” I wondered. “I was only a year old when she died.”
He stared at me, dumbfounded. “No, you weren’t. You were four.”
I shook my head. “No, I was one.”
“No, you weren’t,” he insisted. “A few weeks after you turned four, you went to live with Marco and Sophia.” He paused. “Who told you you were one?”
“Everyone.” I was trying not to get riled up. “Marco, Sophia…Alex.”
“Why would they do that?” Laylen mumbled. “Why would it make a difference whether you were one or if you were four?”
I was thinking the exact same thing. And if I really had been four, why would I have no memories of my mom at all? Yeah, I know four is a little young and everything, but still…I should have been able to remember something about her.
Laylen remained quiet, fiddling with his lip ring. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.
“You don’t need to apologize,” I reassured him. “It’s not your fault all of this happened.”
“It’s partly my fault.” He rubbed his forehead and let out a stressed sigh. “I knew what Stephan was planning to do to you, and I didn’t do anything to stop it.”
“You were like, what, eight when all this was going on? And besides,” I said, trying not to let any bitterness sneak into my voice, “it had to be done to me, right? I mean, so that the world could be saved and all that.”
“I don’t know.” He looked lost in thought. “Maybe, I guess.”
I wondered what he meant. Was there another reason why my emotions had been shut down? Or had it never been necessary for them to be shut down in the first place?
He tapped his fingers on the table, thinking. “Gemma, what exactly have they told you about yourself?”
I gave him a quick recap of everything Alex had told me while he had been stitching me up. I also told him about the things I picked up on myself; the list I found back at Marco and Sophia’s, and the bizarre vision thingy I had been pulled into back at the field trip. I even told him about the prickly sensation. I poured my heart and soul out. It felt really good too, like an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. However, there was one thing I never mentioned. The electricity. That detail I just didn’t feel like explaining. It was too complicated…and too personal.
After I finished yammering Laylen’s ear off, he stayed silent for awhile, and I started to worry if I had bored him to death or something.
But finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he said, “I don’t even know what to say Gemma. I’m so sorry,”
That’s when I realized that he had just been being a good listener and taking in what I was telling him. I was so used to being the quiet one and never talking that when it came to being the one talking rather than listening, I was clueless.
“I didn’t realize how bad things were for you,” Laylen continued. “You know, what I find strange is that Stephan made this big plan to seclude you from everyone to keep you from feeling, but I never thought the plan would actually work. I mean, how can you force a person to become emotionally detached?”
“Alex told me it was because if you raised a person to never know what happiness and sadness and love are, then they wouldn’t know how to feel them. And it was working well, too. That is, until a couple of months ago when I suddenly snapped out of it.”
“But if Alex’s little theory is true, then why would you suddenly start to feel?” He paused. “And why would they lie to you about how old you were when you went to live with Marco and Sophia? It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe so I wouldn’t try to remember my mother,” I suggested. I mean, it made sense; them telling me I hadn’t been old enough to remember her so that I wouldn’t try to remember her. But still, they had created such a tangled maze of lies, who knew what was true and what wasn’t?
“I guess that could be why, but it still doesn’t explain why you suddenly started to feel.” He brushed his blue tipped bangs off his forehead and sighed. “Gemma, regardless of what Alex tells you, Stephan can’t be trusted.”
“How come?” But really, did I even have to ask? Stephan was, after all, Alex’s father.
“Well, there have been a lot of things Stephan’s done that are questionable. One of the worst, though, was when your mother disappeared.”
My heart thumped loudly in my chest. “What do you mean, she disappeared? I-I thought she died?”
“Well, that’s what Stephan told everyone.” He scooted his chair in closer so that we were huddled together. “Right after she went missing, I overheard my parents talking about how Jocelyn had this huge fight with Stephan over you. She didn’t want to give you up, and from what I understand, she was going to make a run for it. When she did, Stephan went looking for her, but when he came back, he only had you. He told everyone he couldn’t find Jocelyn anywhere. The Keepers searched for her and everything, but no one could ever figure out what happened to her. After awhile, they just assumed she died.”
Blood howled inside my ears. “They just assumed she died? How can anyone just assume someone died?”
“Mysterious deaths are very common in the Keeper’s world because we are constantly encountering so many dangerous things.”
“But do you think she died?”
He shook his head. “And neither did my parents. I only heard bits and pieces of their conversations, but from what I understood, my parents didn’t believe Jocelyn just up and died. And they had their suspicions that one of the Keepers might have played a part in her disappearance.”
“And you think it’s Stephan,” I said, feeling like I might throw up. My mom hadn’t just died in a car accident. My mom had disappeared. And someone might have made her disappear.
“I can’t say for sure because I don’t have any proof, but….” He twisted his lip ring back and forth. “Okay, this is what I know about Stephan. First, he is very power hungry, and he likes to be in control of things at all times. If anyone gets in the path of what he wants, he’ll do whatever it takes to get rid of them. And because he’s the leader of the Keepers, no one questions the decisions he makes.”
“So you think that he might have gotten rid of my m
om so he could have control over me and the star’s power?” My voice sounded strangely off pitch.
“I think that’s one possibility. But since I have no proof, I can’t say for sure.”
“Well, maybe you could ask your parents,” I suggested. “They might know more about it.”
His bright blue eyes saddened as he leaned back in the chair. “My parents are dead, Gemma. They died in a car accident a few months after this happened.”
“Oh.” I felt so bad for bringing it up. Nice one, Gemma. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.” He was acting like it wasn’t a big deal, but I knew it really was.
“Does Alex know about any of this?” I asked, shifting the subject away from his parents.
He seemed hesitant to answer. “The thing about Alex is that he’s kind of been brainwashed. Like how you were with your emotions. He’s got it in his head that Stephan can do no wrong. But yeah, I have mentioned it to him, and he didn’t believe me.”
Everything was so confusing; a bunch of questions with no answers—cliffhangers without endings. I sighed, my mind spinning.
“Hey, I have an idea.” Laylen scooted his chair away from table and got to his feet. “Why don’t we take a break from all of this deep talk and go into the kitchen and get you something to eat?”
Hmmm…I was kind of hungry. “That actually sounds like a good idea.” I yawned. Apparently I was kind of tired too.
He laughed. “And then maybe you should get some sleep.”
I glanced at the window. The sun’s pale pink glow spilled through the glass. Sunrise had arrived and I really did feel tired, but I didn’t want to stop our conversation. I wanted to figure out as much as I could before Alex returned. “Yeah, I guess I could sleep.”
Hearing the reluctance in my voice, Laylen said, “Don’t worry. We’ll finish talking about this. I promise.”
I sure hoped so.
We went into the kitchen and Laylen began cooking me some eggs. Yes, a vampire/Keeper was making me eggs. Crazy, right? I was sitting on one of the barstools that encircled the midnight blue countertop island, waiting patiently. I would have been helping him cook, but he refused to let me when I offered.
The pan sizzled as Laylen dragged the spatula through the eggs. It had been quiet for awhile now, so when he spoke, it startled me.
“Gemma, do you still have that list of dates you told me about?”
Instinctively, I reached for my pocket, but quickly realized I was wearing Aislin’s skirt. The piece of paper with the list of dates was tucked away in the pocket of my jeans, which Aislin had thrown into the washing machine. “Ah, crap.”
Laylen turned, spatula in hand. “What’s the matter?”
“The list is in the pocket of my jeans,” I explained. “The ones Aislin threw in the washing machine.”
He cursed under his breath. “Well, I think it’s probably a goner.”
“Crap!” I said again. “Now what am I supposed to do?”
The pan hissed, and he swiftly turned the stove temperature down. “Do you remember any of the dates on it?”
“Just one of them.” I sighed, frustrated that the list of dates was gone forever. “February 8th. And I only remember that one because it was the first day I felt the prickle and started to experience emotion.”
He moved the pan off the burner. “Okay, that’s weird. Was there anything that seemed significant about any of the other dates?”
I shook my head. “Nope. They all seemed random except for the February 8th one.”
Shaking his head, he took a plate out of the cupboard. “It just doesn’t make sense; the list of dates; the prickling sensation. If Alex’s theory about how you lost your emotions is true, then how would a prickly feeling be able to jump-start your feelings?” He scooped some eggs onto the plate. “You know what it sounds like, right?”
“No.”
“Like magic.”
“Magic,” I said slowly. “Like witch magic.” Like Aislin’s witch magic?
He slid the plate of eggs across the counter. “Maybe, but it could be something else. In our world there are a ton of things that would be able to wipe out a person’s ability to feel.”
I was just about to take a bite of my eggs, but his words made me drop my fork. “You think they wiped out my emotions?”
“It’s possible, but like I said, there are tons of possibilities. With what you’ve told me, though, I’m starting to think that some kind of magic was involved.”
I wasn’t hungry anymore. With all the stomach aches I was getting lately, I wondered if I was getting an ulcer.
“Gemma, are you okay? You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “My stomach just feels a little queasy.”
“Food looks that bad, huh?” he joked, trying to lighten the mood.
I summoned a small smile. “No, it looks really good.” I took a bite. It did taste good.
Laylen scrapped the leftover bits and pieces of egg out of the pan and into the garbage, and then rinsed the pan off in the sink.
“You’re not eating?” I asked, scooping up another forkful of eggs.
He shut off the faucet. “No. I don’t eat.”
“Oh.” I felt so stupid. Of course he didn’t eat. He was a vampire, after all. “Gotcha.”
I ate my eggs and watched him with curiosity as he wiped down the countertops and stove. If someone would have asked me a day ago whether I would’ve ever thought that I would be sitting in the kitchen with a vampire, eating eggs, all while trying to unravel the secrets that belonged to a group of people whose mission it was to save the world, I would have told them no. Then I would have run for my life because I would have thought they were a total psychopath.
“Laylen.” I dragged my fork through my eggs. “Can I ask you a question?”
He tossed the towel aside and turned to face me. “Sure. What’s up?”
I hoped I wasn’t crossing a line. “How exactly did you get turned in to a vampire?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, muscles flexing, and leaned back against the counter, looking confused. “I don’t….I can’t remember.”
“Is that how it normally works?” I shoved another forkful of eggs into my mouth.
He shook his head. “Memory loss isn’t a side effect from getting bitten. Something else had to have happened to me. The only thing I can remember about that night is coming out of a club alone and thinking I heard a noise from behind me. When I turned around, everything went black. I’m not sure if I blacked out or what, but when I did come to, I was sprawled out in an alley with a bite mark on my neck.” He pointed at the immortality mark on his forearm. “And of course, this lovely little thing was on my arm. It took me a few days before I figured out I had been bitten by a vampire. I started getting all of these weird…cravings. But luckily, because I was a Keeper to begin with, the cravings were fairly easy to control.” He made his way around the island and took a seat on a barstool next to mine. “What’s really strange is that I’ve been told by other vampires that the change is supposed to be this big, memorable experience, yet I can’t remember a single thing about it.”
I had a flashback to when Alex had opened up one of shoji doors back at the Black Dungeon and I witnessed the vampire about to bite the seemingly willing man. My gut instinct told me not to ask, but curiosity got the best of me. “Do humans let vampires bite them?”
His eyes widened. “Wha—why would you ask that?”
They say curiosity killed the cat. “Because when we were in the Black Dungeon, and Alex and I were running from the Death Walkers, he opened a door and there was a woman vampire getting ready to bite a man. And the man seemed…well, he seemed really relaxed for someone who was just about to get bitten.”
I was making him uncomfortable. “Yeah…some people do,” he said.
“Why?” I scraped the last of my eggs off my plate
. “Wouldn’t that mean they would turn into a vampire themselves?”
He shook his head. “That’s not how it works. They have to bite you, and then you have to drink their blood. Really, it’s this whole big ordeal. See, and there’s another problem with me turning into a vampire. I know I wouldn’t voluntarily drink a vampire’s blood.”
“That does seem strange...” About as strange as me not being able to remember the details of my life. “So when you turned into a vampire, did you have to die or anything?” The reason I asked was because in a few of the vampire-themed books I’ve read, the humans who would drink the vampires’ blood would have to die right after in order to turn into one.
“Yeah, I had to die,” he said charily.
I choked on my eggs, bits and pieces spewing from my mouth and nose. Eww…so gross. “You died?” I coughed.
“Yeah, but I don’t remember that part either. I just know that I had to die in order to be what I am now,” he said with a matter-of-fact attitude.
I eyed him over, taking note of his pale skin, his extremely red lips, and his abnormally bright blue eyes. As bad as this was going to sound, I had to admit, for a dead guy, he looked pretty good.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “So, I still don’t get it. Why would someone let a vampire bite them?”
He gave a quiet laugh. “You really ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“Sorry,” I said, feeling stupid.
“No, it’s okay.” He took a deep breath, which puzzled me. I mean, if he was dead, then why was he breathing? “Humans let vampires bite them for a few different reasons. There’s the whole thrill of the danger that being bitten brings. Sometimes it’s out of sheer curiosity. But most of the time, people do it to stimulate their…desires”
Okay, so I’ve felt embarrassed before, but never absolutely mortified. Wow. It had been awhile since I felt the prickle. I could feel my face heating up, so I let pieces of my hair drift across my face.
“Yeah. So, anyways,” Laylen said, in an attempt to change the subject and remove the awkward silence that had gripped the air. “Going back to that prickle sensation thing you were talking about. Do you feel it every time you experience an emotion? Or does it just happen every once in awhile?”
“It only happens when I experience a new emotion,” I told him, and then shivered, suddenly feeling cold.
He considered this. “Hmm…I don’t think I’ve heard of anything like that. But seeing as there are hundreds of different forms of magic out there, there are a lot of things I haven’t heard of yet.”
“So how can we find out?” I shivered again.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you cold?”
I rubbed my hands up and down my arms. “I’m freezing. Aren’t you?”
“I always run cold.” He glanced around the kitchen, and then he jumped up from the stool and sprinted over to the window.
“What are you looking at?” I stood up and walked over beside him. “Is there something out there?”
“What the—” He jumped back, curse words flying. “How the hell did they find us?”
“What are you…Oh!” I panicked. “The Death Walkers are here!”
He looked at me, his beautiful bright blue eyes flooding with a sea of fear. “Yeah, they’re right outside.”
Chapter 24