The Lost Girl

by Lilian Carmine

  “Are you saying …” Harry began, stunned.

  “Yep,” I replied, wiggling my ringed finger.

  “You did not!” He gasped in awe.

  “We sure did,” Tristan said, sitting on my stool and putting me on his lap, wrapping his arms around me. Harry’s eyes wandered to Tristan’s ringed finger as he searched for confirmation. “We still need to sign the legal papers, but it’s official in our hearts. And we have the rings on already to prove we’re very serious about it.”

  “Wow, I can’t believe it. This is epic news!” Harry exclaimed. “From getting back together to getting married … You guys are fast!” he said, and then rushed over to us. “Ohmygod. Congratulations to the soon to be officially married couple, then,” he said, giving us both a big squeezing hug.

  “Thanks, Harry,” I said, grinning happily.

  “How did you trick her into doing this, man?” Harry asked, bewildered. He knew of my aversion to marriage and how I used to fight against it.

  “Actually, she was the one who asked me.” Tristan chuckled behind me.

  “Hey!” I scoffed, smiling, jabbing him lightly in the ribs. “You sold me the idea, mister. Don’t come complaining to me now!”

  “That’s true.” He smiled, leaning his chin on my shoulder. “It turns out she was really against the ceremony, but not marriage per se, so we skipped the festivities and got the vows and rings exchanged last night, just the two of us. Pretty swell, isn’t it?” Tristan tended to slip into his old-fashioned slang when he got too excited about something.

  I laughed and leaned against his broad chest. “So, Harry, you have to pack up and leave so we can start honeymooning in here,” I told him.

  Harry looked at us, startled. “What? Leave? But aren’t we telling people about your engagement? I wanna hear what you guys are going to say to everyone!” he whined.

  “Harry, we’ll tell people later … like, when we get back home. I don’t want to deal with people right now. In about five minutes I’ll be locking the front doors and will be jumping his bones. So you have five minutes to pack,” I warned him, as Tristan started laying light kisses on my neck, tightening his arms around me.

  Harry widened his eyes. “Oh, dear God! They are not kidding. I really have only five minutes. Gah!” he shouted, and ran out of the kitchen in a hurry to get his things from his room.

  Tristan stopped kissing my neck and watched as Harry ran, a chuckle rumbling in his throat.

  “Is it really okay for you to take Harry in for a couple days, Robin?” I asked.

  “It’s fine.” She shrugged. “You two can honeymoon freely, don’t worry. I’ll keep him busy.”

  “I’ll bet you will,” I teased, raising my eyebrows at her.

  She blushed vividly, clearly not meaning what I had implied. “Shut up, your mind is too full of naughty thoughts right now!” she admonished.

  Harry burst into the kitchen precisely seven minutes later, a little out of breath and holding a backpack over his shoulder. “Done! We can go now.” Robin giggled at his flustering and waved us goodbye before darting out with Harry tugging at her arm. Then we heard Harry’s muffled voice coming from the living room, asking if he could sleep in her room, followed by the sound of a smack, then Harry’s low voice piping, “I’ll take that as a maybe, then …” before they disappeared out of earshot.

  I laughed then hopped off Tristan’s lap. “So, hubby” – and I shamelessly giggled at that – “get back to the bedroom now. I was planning on bringing you this awesome breakfast in bed, and I’m sticking to my plan. It is romantic as hell,” I told him. “You’ll act all surprised and stare lovingly at me in appreciation when I get there, okay? Now, go.”

  “Such a bossy wife I have …” He shook his head, but looked pleased. “All right, wifey,” he said, and that made me giggle again. “You don’t know how amazing it is to be able to call you that.” A wide grin spread over his handsome face as he crossed the kitchen and leaned against the doorframe.

  “I know.” I grinned back. “It’s friggin’ swell!”

  He laughed at my teasing and wandered off to our room. “So I’ll wait for you to jump my bones after breakfast, then?” he shouted from the stairs.

  “Fine by me, hubby!” I shouted back.

  “I’ll be waiting, my darling wife!” came his distant reply.

  That made me giggle some more.

  Tristan and I spent the next few days in my room. Sometimes we would slip downstairs to the kitchen to grab something quick to eat, but we mostly spent all of our time upstairs. Life had never been sweeter and I cherished every single minute of it. It almost felt like this was the happiest I would ever be in my whole life. But as I watched Tristan I knew that thought was just silly, because many more happy days would certainly come.

  I tried to memorize all the little details of those days, even the most insignificant parts, like the way the sun hit Tristan’s skin as he lay in bed, the beautiful ring of his laughter in my ears, or when his smile reached his gray eyes and made them shine for a fleeting second.

  I would always remember the smell of sand and salt that the sea breeze carried inside our room and onto our skin. Even after these times were long gone for us, I would always remember what it felt like to be with Tristan then, the intimacy and the love we had.

  I retold Tristan about my experience with Vigil’s powers, and everything I had learned from them. I told him what I had gone through: everything I’d felt, all the pain and anger, the heartache and the struggle to come out alive and sane. He held me in his arms and cradled me, wiping away my tears when I told him what had happened in that dark warehouse. It felt like it had been so long ago, almost in another lifetime. I shared everything I could with him and he did the same, telling me of moments when I hadn’t been there with him.

  Sometimes I felt content just watching him walk around the room; I was always in awe of his beauty and his strength. Other times I woke up in the middle of the night and just watched him sleeping peacefully in my arms. And I knew life couldn’t get any better than this.

  I kissed him endlessly, until my lips felt raw and swollen. I loved him with a passion bigger than myself and I let him love me back as strongly as I did him. Again and again.

  I have never been the type of person who believed in happy endings or the whole “lived happily ever after” deal. Life isn’t a fairy tale, and eventually things would go back to normal; this happiness I was feeling would gradually fade away and bad things would happen again.

  I also knew I had to fight for my marriage to work, because that’s how you keep the good things in life, through hard work and love. I knew Tristan and I would still argue and struggle in the future; things were bound to get rough some time or another, but we would work through any storms that came. Of that, I was certain.

  But for now we didn’t worry about the future; we focused on enjoying the happiness of the present while we were on this island. We talked for hours, sang together, laughed, loved, cheered and teased each other. Sometimes we would just lie in bed, wrapped only in the soft white sheets, and talk about life and dreams and things that made us happy and passionate.

  And then, as all good things in life must surely come to an end, our happy honeymoon was over.

  One very early morning, I had this most strange, eerie feeling, as if someone had been watching over me in my sleep, which made me jolt awake with a start.

  I peeked through half-open eyelids and saw a blurry face only a few inches from mine. As my eyes focused, my mind registered the scariest grin I had ever seen, and I jumped back, instantly wide awake in complete shock and horror.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Vows of Love

  “Oh God!” I gasped in fear. “M-mother? Is that really you?” I sat straight up and stared at her grinning face.

  “Of course, Joey dear. Who else did you think it was?” she said, still with that creepy grin fixed on her face. Then she retreated a few inches and sat calmly on the bed ne
xt to me.

  “Uh … what’s with the wake-up call from creeper’s land?” I asked, dragging the sheets protectively against my chest. The fact that I was kind of naked under there made the situation even more awkward.

  “Oh. You know.”

  I watched her smiling crazily and suddenly realized. I mentally cursed Harry and his big, fat, blabbering mouth. She knew about the engagement. “You’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?” I asked weakly.

  “Don’t be silly, Joey.” She tsked me. “I came to congratulate you and my dearest future son-in-law. Now come here and give your old mother a hug,” she ordered, opening her arms.

  I scooted closer to her and gave her an awkward pat, still holding the sheets firmly around me. Leaning back, I eyed her with suspicion, ready to flee in case she was about to scalp me for wanting to elope. But she just kept smiling like a lunatic, which, in all frankness, was starting to freak me the hell out.

  “So, how about you wake your fiancé so I can give him a hug, too?” she asked, and gave a pointed look beside me towards a still-sleeping Tristan. Maybe she was waiting for him to wake up so she could kill us both at the same time for getting engaged without telling anyone. That sounded like a plan she would make … I gulped hard, my throat suddenly very dry, then turned to poke Tristan in the ribs.

  “Tris, you need to wake up now. Like, right frigging now!” I whispered in a strangled voice.

  “Humph?” was his muffled reply in the pillow.

  “I’m serious, Tris. My mother’s here!” I said, poking him more urgently.

  “Hmm? She’s here in the house?” he asked in a sleepy voice, his eyes still closed as he gradually woke from his slumber.

  “No, she is right here, in this freaking room, sitting on our bed. In our room. Right at this moment.” I gave her a forced smile for appearance’s sake.

  “What?” he asked, suddenly very alert. He turned to us and when his eyes registered my mother he had almost the same reaction as me. First he gasped a little, frozen in shock, and then he pulled the sheets up to his chest protectively, gulping hard as if he was also waiting for a horrible death at the hands of a raging, disappointed mother.

  My mom stood up and calmly walked to his side of the bed, sitting down next to him and extending her arms wide open. “Tristan, dear! Come give me a hug!”

  He glanced quickly at me, asking for some reassurance that this wasn’t a trick, but I was as clueless as he was. I shrugged at him while he let my mother hug-smother him. The fact that he was also naked under the sheets made the whole thing as awkward as it could be. Number One on the Top Ten Awkward Moments of my life for sure.

  “I can’t believe this day has finally come!” she said, clasping both hands over his face, her eyes filling up with tears. Then she stood up and patted her clothes, getting very serious. “So, my lovelies …”

  Uh, oh. Here it comes. The part where she murders us. I knew it would come sooner or later. Well, at least we got to have an amazing honeymoon … I could die a happy woman.

  “You two have ten minutes to get dressed and head downstairs; there’s a lot to be discussed. And I am not joking about the ten minutes; you will regret it dearly if you don’t hurry up. I’ll be waiting,” she said, and walked out of the room.

  “Crap,” Tristan muttered after a minute of shocked silence. The fact that he was cursing meant we really were royally screwed; Tristan never swore.

  “Well, at least it was good while it lasted, right?” I asked, a little uncertainly.

  “The clock is ticking, dearies!” Mom shouted from the stairs, making us jump. We scrambled out of bed as fast as lightning, looking for our clothes in complete panic. In about two minutes we were running to the living room to face my mother – or, as I also liked to call her, the Head of the House of Executioners.

  We halted when we saw that the living room was crowded with disgruntled Lost Boys, who were shooting us angry death glares.

  Seth, Josh and Sammy were huddled together on the couch, arms crossed over their chests and frowns etched on their faces. Harry (the sneaky little squeaking traitor) was sitting on the arm of the couch, dangling his feet and smiling happily. But the most scary thing in the room was the Worthington the Third standing furiously in front of the boys, her eyes shooting bloody daggers at us.

  They all had one thing in common. They all looked very pissed.

  “Ugh. Heeey … guys … and Tiffany …” I squeaked lamely, stepping back and bumping into Tristan, who had already cleverly positioned himself behind me for cover. The coward! Using his own fiancée as a human shield.

  “Hello, there, Gray,” Tiffany greeted me coldly, making me cringe. She only called me Gray when she was really mad at me. She was so going to kill me today. I was genuinely scared, even more so than I had been with my mother, who, I noticed, wasn’t anywhere in the room. I guessed that had been her plan all along: to let my friends do the dirty work. She was diabolical, that woman … and a bit lazy, if I may say so.

  “So, I hear congratulations are in order.” Tiffany broke the cold silence in the room.

  “Erm … thanks?” I mumbled in a terrified voice. Yep. Definitely going to die today.

  “You know, I knew something was afoot the minute I called Harry, a few days ago. He had a very suspicious, shifty voice. You know the voice he uses when he’s trying hard to hide something very, very, important?” Tiffany said, her hands resting defiantly on her hips. “It didn’t take long to get him to spill the beans. And what lovely beans those were, let me tell you.”

  I glanced quickly at Harry, who was still smiling happily at no one in particular. I slumped my shoulders in defeat. I couldn’t even be mad at him. I knew how merciless Tiffany’s interrogatory tactics were; anyone would have folded to her.

  “So let’s get down to the business, shall we?” she snapped, making me glance back at her in dread. Tristan’s grip on my arms tightened ever so slightly. “This is how this negotiation is going to go. In exchange for all our forgiveness, you two are going to agree to do something. There won’t be any ‘it depends’ or ‘maybes’. You will agree fully to do what I tell you to,” she stated with a steely coldness.

  That sounded pretty much like making a deal with the devil – the type you sell your soul to – and there’s no turning back after that. I gulped.

  “It’s a fair request, Gray, to make us forgive you two for leaving us all out of this engagement deal. This is your chance to rectify things with your band-mates and best friends, who’ve stood by you for so long, and were there for you always,” she said, motioning to the boys sitting on the couch, who nodded righteously back at us. “Just this one small thing to set things right with them and with me, your faithful, loyal, best friend, and with your poor old mother, who had to hear the news that her only daughter had gotten engaged without telling her.”

  “All right, Tiff! Fine, we agree. You can quit the guilt trip!” I threw my hands in the air. “What is it? You want us to be your slaves, is that it? To go shopping with you every single time you call? I’ll do anything you want, okay?” I shivered at the thought of all the shopping I was doomed to do from now on. Oh, dear Lord, have mercy on my poor soul.

  Tiffany smiled triumphantly and turned to the boys, who were all grinning from ear to ear. “Told you I was going to make her do this,” she said smugly.

  They all cheered and high-fived each other, upset frowns all gone from their faces. Tiffany watched Tristan and me with a weird glint in her eyes.

  “What? What? What’s going on?” I asked, confused by all the cheer. I had turned my empathy-sight off since I had learned how to. Apparently I was quite clueless and stupid without it …

  “Okay! All right people, settle down. There’s a lot to be done before sundown, so I need you all to be at your best so we can pull this off,” Tiffany bellowed to the rumpus in the room.

  “Pull what off? What’s happening at sundown?” I asked in a strangled voice.

  “We are all going to be
celebrating your engagement at sunset, that’s what’s happening!” she explained with a grin. “I hear you will sign the legal papers when you get back home to make this marriage official without having a proper ceremony, so this can be your wedding celebration, too! I’m giving you a party today to commemorate the moment with your best friends and family, like a decent, civilized couple should do. That’s what I want. And you have agreed. Ta-da!” she finished with a theatrical flourish of hands.

  I gaped at her like a fish. I mean, seriously? Had she just guilt-tripped me into getting married here? I waved my hands frantically in the air. I didn’t want any priests and traditional, lame ceremonies. We had exchanged vows, rings, and as soon as we got back home, we were heading for the courthouse and that was it! “Oh, no! I’m sorry, Tiff, but I’m not doing this!”

  “I’m sorry, Joey, but it’s not up to you any more. You have agreed. It’s a done deal. You can quit your whining and just be there at sunset. You don’t even need to do anything; leave it all to me and your mother; we have it all covered,” she said matter-of-factly, already dialing on her phone.

  “What? My mother was in on this all along? And what do you mean you’ve got it all covered? How could you know I’d agree to all of this?” I asked, bewildered, as the boys bustled around Tristan to congratulate him.

  “Seriously, Joey, when don’t I ever have things the way I want? It’s like you don’t know me at all …” She tsked disapprovingly. “I have been planning your wedding since the day you brought Tristan back to life – the second time around, anyway – remember? I knew it was only a matter of time before you tied the knot … You took an awfully long time alas, but the time has finally come. You won’t leave me out of the most amazing moment of your life, you hear? And now I have a wedding to plan, so if you don’t mind, go help your mother with the luggage,” she ordered, at the same time as my mother entered through the front doors with a group of people trailing after her: Amanda, Robin, Jamie and Becca.

  Flabbergasted, I turned to Tristan, who raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t know about any of this! I’ll do anything you want me to, Buttons. It’s your decision,” he said, and turned to my mother. “Rose, let me help you with that.” He ran to help with the suitcases she was carrying.