“No dad, there isn’t anyone I sneak around with. You’re right, I don’t have any friends,” I pointed at the ground for emphasis, “here.” “Is that your fault? I don’t know. Maybe it’s mine, maybe it’s mom’s!”
His head snapped back in surprise. We never spoke of my mother and my flip comment shocked him.
“But I do have two friends dad, it’s just unfortunate that they happen to live five thousand miles away. So forgive me if I would rather spend my summer-break with them, with my friends, than following you around twenty-three cities.” I pushed past him and headed for my room.
“Charlotte.”
It was the sadness in his voice that stopped me.
“Okay,” he said. “Go to England, be with your friends. I know I’ve been a terrible father Charlotte. I know it every day. But I still want nothing more than for you to be happy. I just don’t know how to give you that happiness.”
I knew he was crying—I could hear it in his voice. But a small ember of anger still burned inside my chest and I didn’t turn around. “You can’t give me happiness dad.” I shook my head. “You couldn’t give it to mom either,” I whispered. “And that’s not your fault.”
I walked away and shut my door.
CHAPTER TWO
Haunted
He was coming. He was coming, and every fiber of my being vibrated, burned. The street was so crowded, people rushed, pushed. On my toes, I strained to see past them, over their heads.
His dark hair flashed in the sun and then disappeared.
The want. It was a tight cord that ran the length of my spine. It pulled and stretched—insisted that I find him, touch him.
The crowd grew thicker, bodies pressed and shoved. People fought. I pushed harder—I would lose him if I didn’t hurry.
My whole body vibrated. He was close.
A man’s shoulder roughly knocked me off balance. I turned and found Franzen’s face. “No Charlotte,” he shook his head.
He didn’t understand—I couldn’t stop this. Bodies pressed me from all sides, they writhed, pulsed. And the cord pulled.
Only a few feet away, I saw his hand reach through the throng. I only had to stretch.
“Charlotte,” my mother whispered. I stopped and scanned the crowd until I found her face. She stood perfectly still, as if protected by an invisible bubble while the crowd swarmed around her.
Her eyes, blue and intense, held me fixed. And as her gaze held me, I could feel him slip away, back into the commotion all around us. NO. We were so close this time, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off my mother to search for him. “Please,” I begged her.
She looked sad and shook her head. Suddenly, everyone stopped moving—bodies froze, heads turned. All their eyes trained on me, angry, staring.
My mother opened her mouth wide—“Wake up Charlotte.”
I sat bolt upright and gasped as the thread of the dream ripped away from me. I gripped the blankets at my side—my blankets, on my bed. The small nightlight was not good enough, my eyes had to grope through the dim blue light. My whole body shook, I reached for my lamp and twisted the toggle and heard the, click—click, before warm incandescent radiated from the small shade and altered the reality of my room. This was real.
Shock racked my body. It was as if my insides were torn and I only half existed.
I was in my own room but the feeling, the need from the dream still weighed on me. I was so close to him. My throat tightened and tears I couldn’t control rose up. I clutched my pillow to my stomach and hot tears rained down. The want of him felt all consuming, like an addiction. “Why?” I whispered to my room. The intensity of need that pulsed through my body and mind terrified me.
I wiped my face across my pillow and looked up at the clock. Three thirty-three. I reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, it tasted warm and stale as it passed over my tongue, but the reality of it settled me a little.
This wasn’t the first time I’d had this dream. It had come again and again over the last three months and every time I woke up, it felt like someone had thrown me into an icy lake.
I put the glass back and laid down, reality crept over me inch by inch and pushed the dream, and the need, further away but his words from last summer ran through my head. “My god Charlotte,” he whispered, his lips brushing my ear. “You’re mine. Now you’re mine.”
I closed my eyes and curled my knees up close to my chest—Hayden Wriothesley was haunting me.
CHAPTER THREE
Coming Home
The sound of the phone ringing on the other end was pulsed and electric. I wasn’t sure they would even answer.
“Hello, Spencer residence,” Ms. Steward chimed.
For a moment, my speech froze in my throat, my uncle’s instructions running though my mind, Zero contact.
“Hello?” she repeated.
“Ms. Steward,” I breathed. “It’s Charlotte. Charlotte Stevens.”
I heard her sharp inhale but then only silence radiate from her end.
I waited a moment longer, “Ms. Steward?”
She continued to not say anything.
“I shouldn’t have called,” I whispered about to hang up.
“Just a minute love,” she said suddenly. “I’ll fetch your uncle.”
I heard her place the phone on the counter and then the sound of her heels on the kitchen’s wooden floor. While I listened to the hum of the international connection, worry and fear crept in around my stomach and made me move from our own tiny kitchen into the family room. I curled up as tight as possible on our tattered couch and strained to hear anything from the other end.
Was someone listening, right now, maybe whomever it was that watched my every move from the condo across the alley? Or maybe the plain looking man from the library who had been following me for days. And they were only the people I knew about, the one’s who had been careless and obvious—how many had I not seen?
Over the international connection, I could hear something, it was faint but then the sound of footsteps grew louder and unmistakable. Someone picked the phone up off the counter.
“Charlotte?” Sophie whispered excitedly. “Is it really you? Mum’s going to kill me but I had to talk to you. I miss you so much and Caleb’s lost his mind with worrying over you but you should see him he’s a beast…”
“Sophie,” I laughed through tears. The sound of her voice was the best thing I’d heard in months but the sharp reality of just how lonely I was twisted around my heart and took my breath. “I miss you so much,” I cried.
“Are you coming? Please say you’re coming. I hear mum, I have to go. Please say you’re coming, we love and miss you so much Charlotte.”
“Sophie!” I heard Ms. Steward.
“Please come,” Sophie pleaded and then I could hear the phone jostling as Ms. Steward pried it out of Sophie’s hands.
“Go,” Ms. Steward hissed at her daughter. “Right now! If Mr. Spencer finds out…” I could hear Sophie stomp off and then Ms. Steward’s frustrated sigh. “Charlotte,” for some reason she was whispering. “Your uncle can not come to the phone right now,” she sounded like she was reading a script. “He is presently otherwise engaged with important business.”
“But…”
“He’s not sure when, or even if, he will be able to return your call. He’s asked me to remind you that he has laid his sister to rest and does not wish to be reminded of her absence.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. After the infectious warm wave Sophie had surrounded me in, Ms. Steward’s words knocked me down and pulled me under. I felt like stone.
She cleared her throat. “He realizes this may be upsetting for you to hear. He suggests you take a walk on the beach. He’s sorry he can do nothing for you,” she whispered. “But he thinks a walk, on the beach, will fix you right up.”
She hung up.
I continued to clutch the cordless phone to my ear and listen as the line went dead. Her words ran though my head
and I tried to make sense of what I had heard but all I felt was the enormity of the empty space around me. It was like a cord of connection, the only real one I had, was just clipped. I placed the phone on the cushion next to me and hugged my knees to my chest. All this time I had believed my uncle cut off communication with me for my safety, for the safety of my mother, for Franzen, and Grace.
It never, not even once, occurred to me that maybe he was done with the whole mess. That my mother’s choices were her own and he would no longer play guardian to them. My head fell against the cushion and I squeezed my legs closer. The rush of the silence all around me filled my ears. If that was true, then I had no one. There was no way of finding my mother and Franzen. And Sophie and Caleb couldn’t reach beyond my uncle’s control. For the first time in almost a year, I considered telling my father everything. I considered tearing down the walls of his reality because the thought of living with our secrets all alone was unbearable. I didn’t want to float through my life alone. Wondering, watching for Emerick’s people. Worrying for the mother I no longer knew—the sister I had never met.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my brows and closed my eyes. My problem was that I didn’t understand my part. I was supposed to be doing something, learning and trying to solve the puzzle box. But I didn’t have any idea what I was looking at—or looking for.
For the hundredth time I questioned my decision to leave Gaersum Aern last summer. Franzen had told me I needed to stay. He had things he needed to teach me, things about our family, the past, alchemy. But I couldn’t do it to my father, I couldn’t abandon him and completely destroy his reality. For him, his wife was gone but I was still his daughter and all he had left in this world.
Last summer, when I had insisted on leaving, I thought I would be able to figure out what I needed to know on my own. I would read everything I could find on alchemy, Francis Bacon, the Bilderbergs. I watched Emerick win his election to the Shadow Cabinet in England and his political maneuverings ever since. I researched Sir Isaac Newton, studied symbols, delved into Masonic beliefs and even pulled out my eighth grade American history book to refresh what I knew about our founding fathers.
But I couldn’t find the connection. And I had no idea how I was supposed to be involved in any of it. What was I supposed to do?
Mrs. Steward’s dismissal replayed in my mind. He realizes this may be upsetting for you to hear. Upsetting? How about terrifying? How about feeling completely abandoned? How could my uncle possibly think a walk could fix anything?
Unless. I lifted my head off the cushion—Ms. Steward’s tone of voice suddenly struck me, her scripted whisper. My legs uncurled and I shoved myself up and off the couch. In a rush I pushed through our front door and let the screen door bang loudly behind me.
After only a few steps, the hot pavement started to burn the bottoms of my feet. My sandals were tossed under the bench near the front door and I considered heading back to grab them but if my suspicions were right about what Ms. Steward had been saying, I didn’t want to waste any time. I hopped onto the thin strip of light colored asphalt that guttered the length of the garages and ran up our alley towards the beach and the sound of the rushing surf ahead.
When I reached the end of the ally, the sand moved beneath my weight and slowed me down. I pushed through the deep and shifting sand to the flat surface the night ocean had scraped and smoothed into a perfect, crusted plane. The roar of the ocean pushing and pulling against the beach filled the air around me. My heart thundered from running and I stooped over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
It was still early, only a few families had erected umbrellas and arranged their coolers of food. Two little girls in ruffled bikinis ran away from their beach blanket towards the ocean edge. The smell of coconut lotion drifted towards me as a woman a few feet away sprayed the oily mist onto her already tanned limbs. My heart had slowed it’s frantic beat and I stood upright. My eyes scanned the beach, past the evenly spaced lifeguard towers in both directions.
What was I looking for?
I started walking along the Pacific’s edge and my feet created tiny pools where they disturbed the hard, wet sand. A walk, on the beach, will fix you right up. I glanced back over my shoulder, was I walking the right way?
My eyes scanned the beach while I tried to look casual, like any other early morning beach goer taking a stroll along the surf’s edge. I passed the closest lifeguard tower and searched its platform and under the stairs, nothing looked unusual. When I passed people I looked at their faces and hoped for some hint, some inclination that they needed me to come closer, that they needed to give me a message. But hardly anyone even made eye contact with me and when someone did, they only gave a brief smile then looked away.
I stopped walking and looked over my shoulder. There was nothing. Nothing unusual. Nothing except me. A hole of doubt opened up in my chest and the fear that I had pushed down crept over me.
I was wrong.
The rushing sound of the waves filled my ears while the realization crashed over me.
There wasn’t anything unusual in Ms. Steward’s voice. No hint of what I should do, no hidden meaning in her tone or direction implied in her words. He’s asked me to remind you that he has laid his sister to rest and does not wish to be reminded of her absence.
My Uncle did not wish to speak with me. He would not be sending for me or helping me or getting me in contact with my mother.
My jaw tightened painfully and words rolled through my mind over and over. I don’t have anyone, there isn’t anyone now. The tears rose up and I couldn’t control them. The hope I’d been clinging to all these months swept away from me with one stark realization. I was all alone.
I turned towards the ocean and felt the bite from the salt air across my wet eyes and cheeks. The wave rolling towards the shore broke into a white crest and a small boy who had been digging in the wet sand shrieked with excitement and ran towards his mother sitting on a nearby blanket. When he reached her he launched his wet and sandy body into her open arms and together they crashed onto their blanket in laughter.
I imagined my mother and baby Grace here on this beach.
I remembered myself skipping through waves, my mother calling out warnings to “Stay closer Charlotte! That’s too far now!”
The sun was a bit higher. More people dragged coolers through sand looking for perfect spots and pairs of people tossed frisbees and footballs. I realized how far down the beach I had actually traveled, the lifeguard tower at the end of my street was at least half a mile away now. I began the long trudge back to the condo, all I wanted was to crawl between the cool sheets of my own bed.
Stupid, stupid and childish was how I felt. For the hundredth time since last summer I wished I had stayed at Gaersum Aern like Franzen has asked. I imagined being there now with Caleb and Sophie. Maybe, if I had stayed, my mother and Franzen could have figured out a way for us to all be together, a way to keep safe within the walls of the manor. Maybe, had I listened last summer, I could have gotten to know my sister, Grace.
A family.
But the man I had always known as my father, the man who was only now beginning to move past the grief of losing the only woman he had ever loved, what about him? How did he fit? How devastating would the truth have been for him?
In the distance, a person slogged towards me and caught my attention. It was a very heavy man dressed in shorts and a tight tank top struggling to keep up a slow paced jog. He stood out from all the other sleek exercisers who effortlessly streamed up and down the beach. People sitting on blankets and playing in the surf stopped and stared as he huffed past them. As he got closer, I could see his face was bright red, sweat poured from his head and soaked his shirt.
When he was still twenty feet away, I froze. My brain tried to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. “Aaron?” I called.
He heard my voice and his head snapped up. It was Aaron, the guy I worked with at the Venice Beach Library. A broad sm
ile spread across his candy apple face. “Charlotte,” he said sounding relieved as he came to a stop in front of me. He doubled over and propped himself up on his knees, he looked like he might die.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He began violently nodding his head from his still slumped position. “Yes, but Jesus,” he breathed. “I’ve been running up and down this beach for half an hour.”
“Why?”
He stood up and looked me in the eye. “I have something for you.” He grabbed my hand and placed something in my palm.
Surprised and confused, I looked down at what I was holding. “A phone?”
Aaron was scanning the beach around us. “Keep moving. When you’re at least two towers away, hit send. When you’re finished, throw it in the ocean.”
“What?”
He looked at me like I was stupid. “The phone,” he pointed. “Throw it in the ocean.” He looked around some more. “Okay, I gotta keep moving.”
“But…” I started to protest except he was already lumbering away. I looked at the phone in my hand and then at Aaron. I had no idea what was going on but I would do what he said. When I turned to keep going, I saw a man on the boardwalk with a high-powered lens stop and take a series of photos in my direction before being enveloped back into the crowd of rollerbladers and bikers coursing up and down the concrete strip.
I looked behind me to the pulsing ocean scene. Was he photographing the surf, or me? He seemed so quick to move on once I spotted him. I scanned the crowd to see if I could see his giant lens taking photos anywhere else but he had disappeared.
I clutched the phone and quickly headed towards the condo. When I got to the second lifeguard tower, I flipped open the phone and hit send like Aaron had instructed.
“Charlotte,” a man’s voice immediately answered.
“Yes?” I looked around the beach while I continued my swift stride.
“Charlotte, it’s your uncle Nigel.”
“Nigel?” I breathed. He hadn’t abandoned me.
Midheaven (Ascendant Trilogy Book 2) Page 2