by M. Lathan
Chapter Thirteen
I opened my eyes in a heavily decorated kitchen. Pink roses were everywhere—the wallpaper, the curtains, in a vase on the table.
“Hi, love,” Sophia said. I spun around. She was leaning against the counter with her hands clasped in front of her.
“Where are we?”
“In your mother’s head.” She held her hand out, and I clicked across the kitchen to meet her, still in high heels. “If we’re going to go through her memories, we have to start with the first day she remembers.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and sighed. “I don’t want to see her life. I don’t care.”
Sophia grabbed my hand and kissed the back of it. “It will help you understand what led her to hide you at your school.” I rolled my eyes. I wouldn’t call abandoning a child to become famous, hiding. “You won’t have to see every day. Just highlights. Okay?” I shrugged. It wasn’t like I had a choice. I didn’t exactly know how to get out of her brain.
A little girl with blonde hair, maybe four years old, ran into the kitchen with us, leaving a mud trail behind her.
“Lydia, slow down,” a woman yelled, Cecilia, I guessed. She ran in after her in a white dress and pink heels. “Little girls do not play in mud!” A man who had to be her father appeared in the room, out of nowhere. She got her height from him and her looks from her mother.
He picked up his daughter and let her smear mud all over his face.
“Teach me that, Daddy.”
“Vincent, absolutely not! No daughter of mine will dabble in that powers foolishness. She will paint and cook and be normal. I mean it,” Cecilia said.
He winked at his daughter and whispered, “Later,” in her ear.
Sophia pulled me to their laundry room and shut the sliding doors behind us.
They swung open a second later. A bigger Lydia stormed in with a laundry basket in her hands. “I did it, so leave me the hell alone!”
“How old is she?” I asked Sophia. She sounded like an adult already.
“Ten.”
“You did not. I don’t hear the machine,” Cecilia said from somewhere else.
The detergent flew over my head and dumped itself in the wash. “Did the damn maid die?” she asked.
“Watch your mouth,” Vincent said, poking his head through the doors. “She’s alive, but your mother fired her. She almost walked in on you practicing teleporting. She got worried.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “She’s always worried. You married a twit,” she said. “Are you aware of that?” Vincent pointed a finger at her, and she shrugged her shoulders. “Dad, you’re nuts. You could actually be something right now.”
He laughed. “Most people would think being an FBI agent is something.”
“You carry a gun, Dad. There are things in this world who’d laugh at your gun.” He came into the laundry room and picked her up. “I hate that you quit,” she said.
“But then I wouldn’t have you, princess.”
Sophia snapped, startling me. As we watched, Lydia’s hair stretched longer down her back and her legs grew.
“Promise me you’ll mind your manners, Lydia,” Vincent said. He chuckled. “Well try to develop some manners first. Then mind them. When I trained, we couldn’t talk to people like you’re accustomed to.”
If the diary wasn’t a lie, Lydia was twelve and headed to live and train with Julian.
“Okay. Don’t tell her I cried,” she said.
“I won’t. You’ll be an agent in no time, and we’ll be there to visit every weekend,” Vincent said. “There’s nothing else I can teach you. I quit at this point. Promise me you won’t.”
She nodded and rested her head on his shoulder. She wiped her face and they went out into the kitchen. Cecilia was in hysterics, fixing a bow on a nicely decorated basket.
“Here, I made you cookies to take with you,” she cried. Vincent and Lydia looked like they were trying not to laugh. “Make sure you wash your hair. It gets all stringy and that’s not attractive, and you better not cut it.”
“Okay, Mom.” She hugged her mother, then she and Vincent disappeared.
Sophia snapped and we landed in an open field. Lydia ran by in black tights and a black tank top. She was leading the pack of boys behind her.
“Kamon,” a man said. He had neatly groomed, silver hair, but his skin wasn’t wrinkled. Julian, I guessed. He was dressed in a black suit. “You’d better catch up to her, or you’ll spend the night in a cell.”
“Yes, Master,” a handsome boy said. He broke from the pack, but he never caught Lydia. He shoved her when he crossed the finish line, and she jammed her right fist into his jaw.
“Good job, pet,” Julian said. Lydia turned and bowed to him. “She’s earned her dinner tonight. Will she be eating alone?”
The pack said, “No, sir.”
“Then go again. Ten miles this time, cut through the forest.” They took off running again, with Lydia still in front.
Sophia snapped, and we moved to a huge, cold home. Stern gray, like a medieval castle. “She lived here—”
“I know. From twelve to fifteen.” She nodded and Lydia passed us, dressed in the skimpy clothes she’d written about. We followed her into a small room. She was crying and started stuffing her clothes in a suitcase.
“They have just come from an auction. Everyone was sold except her and the boy she punched,” Sophia said. A door slammed and startled Lydia. Footsteps grew louder in the hall, coming closer to her door. She packed faster, in a teary panic, and closed her eyes.
Sophia and I moved with her. She was in her house again. We followed her up the stairs. She closed the door of her parents’ room behind her. We walked through it.
“Dad, wake up,” she said. She touched him on the shoulder. “Dad.”
“Honey? What are you doing here? And in underwear?”
She crawled in bed with them like she’d written in the diary. Her back was to Cecilia, but she held on to Lydia as she bawled.
“I met her two weeks later,” Sophia said, pulling me away from the bed. I was staring at Lydia, trying not to feel sorry for her.
Cecilia and Vincent’s closet opened to a smaller house. The poor person’s home, as Lydia had called it.
Lydia and Sophia were in the kitchen. She knocked a glass off of the counter. It shattered and Sophia kneeled to clean it. Then she dropped another and laughed as Sophia snarled.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson one day, little girl,” Sophia said to her.
“I’d like to see you try, witch.”
Lydia was rude, bratty. Even worse than she’d been with her mother, like living with Julian had hardened her. This was the girl I’d met at the beginning of the diary, the one who hated everything.
We walked out of the back door of the house and into a coffee shop. My throat closed. I knew who she, who we, were about to meet. The soft strumming of a guitar stopped while she was reading a book alone in a booth. He knocked on the end of her table.
He was … so obviously my father. I looked just like him. His skin was a little darker than mine. Caramel and beautiful. He leaned his guitar against her table, waiting for her to notice him. She didn’t. Or didn’t care to show that she did.
“Can you get me another cup of coffee, please?” he asked.
She grunted, but her face softened when she looked up at him. “I don’t work here.”
“How about I get you one since I do? What’s your name?”
“Lydia Shaw.”
He smiled and shook her hand. They were both staring, deeply captivated already. “I’m Gavin. Well … Christopher Gavin, but everyone calls me just Gavin.”
Christopher Gavin? Not Raymond Grant? So I was Christine Cecilia Gavin. How many different names could one person have?
He came back with two cups and sat across from her. He had her laughing in under a minute. They were holding hands in five. She hadn’t lied in the diary. It was obvious she loved
him. It was instant and strong for them both. My eyes watered as I stared at the man I was the spitting image of. Then I forced my heart not to feel, not to buy into her story, because even though he was the love of her life, she’d given his child away. She didn’t love me like this.
“Come on, dear,” Sophia said, pulling me to the door.
“Wait,” I said. “I … uh … don’t think we should watch for a while. They get pretty out of hand.”
Sophia laughed and tugged at my arm. “I remember,” she said, cringing. “She brought him to Mona’s house once when she thought I wasn’t there.”
The thought of Lydia and Christopher going at it anywhere near Sophia was enough to make me gag.
I looked over my shoulder to my handsome father, thinking I’d look way better as a guy. The bell chimed over the coffee shop door as she opened it. Of course, it led to another memory.
Cecilia fluffed Lydia’s bangs and corrected her postured at a dinner table decorated exactly like the one in Paris. This room was bigger with a chandelier hanging from the ceiling and far too many paintings on the walls. Her father walked in with his hand on Christopher’s shoulder. My dad looked terrified.
“So, is Christopher a family name?” Cecilia asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered and sat next to Lydia. “Never met my family.”
“Oh, how awful that must be for you,” she said, like it wasn’t awful at all. Lydia narrowed her eyes at her mother. “You two are perfect for each other. Lydia also lives like a wayward orphan who doesn’t have to answer to anyone.”
“Mom!”
Cecilia smiled and lifted her fork to her mouth. “Elbows, Lydia.”
Lydia grunted and Christopher rubbed her back, calming her and stopping her from acting like her old self, it seemed. This was the in love version of the famous woman. The psychotic, overly sexual girl from the diary. Did Cecilia and Vincent not have the talk with her? Did she not know that all that fun they were having would lead to an accident like me?
“Mrs. Shaw, I’ve apologized to Mr. Shaw, but I also wanted to tell you that I’m deeply sorry,” Christopher said. “I wasn’t thinking about her family when I asked her to marry me. It all happened so fast. I regret not including you.”
Vincent swirled his wine around in his glass and took a sip.
“It’s not that you illegally married my daughter without telling us, Christopher. It’s not that she’s seventeen years old. I don’t even care that you serve coffee for a living and have absolutely nothing going for yourself.”
Cecilia huffed like she cared. I walked around their fancy dining table, moving closer to Lydia and Christopher. They were holding hands under the table.
“I can ignore those things,” Vincent said. “What I can’t ignore is the fact that my daughter is about to throw away everything she’s worked for since she was a little girl for some guy.”
“Dad, please stop. You’re being dramatic. I’m sorry I kept him from you until now, but he’s not just some guy. He’s worth it. He’s the most important person in my life.”
Vincent stormed away from the table and slammed a door somewhere. Lydia kissed her husband on the cheek and went after him. Sophia and I followed her into an office. Vincent was crying. She rested her head on his back and hugged him.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded. You’re still important to me. And if you got to know him, you’d love him.”
Vincent turned around and kissed Lydia on her forehead. “It’s not him. He seems … fine. I’m worried about other things.” She wiped his face with her thumbs. “It’s nothing for you to be concerned with, but will you do your old man a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Wait to quit,” he said. He pushed a finger to her mouth to shush her. “Stay married if you want, pumpkin. You’ve managed to work him into your life this long. Just do what you’ve been doing. And no children. Please, not now. Let me work some things out first before we complicate things any further.”
“Complicate what, Dad?”
He smiled and kissed her again. “Don’t worry about it, baby. If this is the life you want, I will make it happen, but I’ll need some time.” Lydia agreed and he hugged her. He didn’t explain any further, but his expression echoed what he’d written in my hand. This was his fault. “Let’s go rescue your husband from your mother, shall we?”
In the dining room, my dad twirled Cecilia around the table and dipped her in the doorway.
“Why didn’t you teach Lydia to dance, CC? She doesn’t have an ounce of your grace.” Cecilia giggled and kissed him on the cheek when he pulled her up. He’d won her over in the short time Lydia had been gone.
“Unfortunately, grace is not hereditary. You either have it or you don’t, and you, my dear, you have it!” Cecilia said, swinging out of his arms and into her husband’s. “I love him,” she whispered.
Sophia held her hand out to me. I stalled, staring at Christopher, wishing I’d known him. Why would she ever want to leave someone like him? He seemed perfect.
“Let’s go, my love,” she said, pulling me away from dinner and dancing and into a quiet bedroom.
Lydia yawned and stretched under a light blue comforter, her blonde hair severely disheveled. She felt the empty space next to her before sitting up.
“Gavin?” she said. “Baby?” Lydia panicked in the bed when he didn’t answer. “Gavin!”
She jumped up and ran out of the room. She found him in the kitchen bobbing his head to the radio as he scrambled eggs. She caught her breath and dried her eyes. He’d cut his hair low, showing me how much better looking I’d be as a guy again.
“You look nice, baby,” she said. He turned around, still dancing, showing off his suit.
“So do you.” He ruffled her hair even more. “Are you really going to make me go?” He kissed her, and I looked away.
“Yes. I’m not taking no for an answer. It’s only four hours.”
“I don’t want to leave,” he said.
Sophia rolled her eyes as the two of them got entirely too comfortable against the fridge. Gross.
“You’ll teach some kids music and be back before you know it. I just want you to get out of the house for a while. Make a friend,” Lydia said.
“I have a friend,” he mumbled. “Wouldn’t you like to be friendly with me right now?”
“Sophia, please show me something else,” I said. “They are my parents, you know?”
“This day is important,” Sophia said.
Lydia squirmed out of his arms, and he chased her through the kitchen, trying to pin her against the cabinets.
“You know as well as I do that you want to do this. You want to play music for more than my ears, even if they’re kids. I can read your mind. You can’t hide this from me.”
“I don’t want to leave. It’s too soon after what happened to your parents, Lyd,” he said, serious now.
“Julian killed two people who didn’t know me. I lost my parents months ago. I’m done grieving. I can’t bring them back, and I’m not going to let fear drive you crazy in this house. I can’t do this to you anymore. Get out of here and live a real life, baby. Even if only for a few hours.”
He tried to protest, but she kissed him, and he gave up. They sat down for a quick breakfast then she helped him with his tie.
“Okay, just like we practiced,” Lydia said. “You can do this. You’re a natural.” They laughed like that was a joke. She must have taught him a power. Moving himself to his new job, it seemed. “And don’t strain, you’ll hurt yourself.” He threw his guitar strap over his chest. “Land exactly where we planned. They’ll get really freaked out if you just appear out of nowhere.”
“Baby, we’ve been over this, and you’ve made me practice this enough that there’s no way I’ll blackout again. I’ll see you in a few hours. Call the school if you need me.”
After a long kiss, he waved and disappeared.
Soph
ia and I followed her into their bedroom. She flipped on the TV and crawled in bed. “How old is she,” I asked.
“Almost nineteen.”
Lydia flipped over in bed and groaned. She stuck out her tongue … like she was nauseous. Two gags later, she ran to the bathroom and hurled. She wiped her mouth with a towel draped on the sink. “I’m never sick,” she whispered. Her eyes widened and she looked down at her stomach. “No way. Not possible.” She gasped. “Kinda possible.”
Her hands flew to her stomach, and she smiled. Actually smiled like she was happy about it. She ran to the phone on the nightstand and picked up the huge receiver.
She pressed two buttons and hung up. I peeked over her shoulder, the closest I’d let myself be to her in any of the memories. She grabbed a picture by the phone of Cecilia and Vincent.
“Shit,” she said. “No. No. No!”
“She’s upset about me,” I said. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, bracing myself for the fit she’d have about her accidental pregnancy. I was about to see exactly how much she didn’t want me. Why did she even bother having me? It was obvious I didn’t belong in this world. Not with her. Not with anyone.
Sophia motioned me to follow Lydia through the house. She went into another room, an empty one.
“This could work, right?” Lydia said to herself. “He won’t … he won’t find us. This will be his … no …” She rubbed her stomach and smiled again. “Her room. Right?”
She closed her eyes and I closed mine too as she forecasted the future. Her visions were misty and blurred at the edges like mine. She saw the hallway floor and bloody arms and hands clawing desperately, trying to reach something. I shivered as screams—a baby’s and Lydia’s—rang in my ears.
The blurry Lydia dragged herself into the empty room, now filled with frilly furniture and stuffed animals. Her legs were limp and she was bleeding like crazy. She screamed again, a painful howl, when she saw him, Christopher, lifeless on the floor. Julian stepped in her path and flipped her over. Her stomach had been cut open.
The handsome boy she’d punched, now a handsome man, gave me to Julian.
“Kamon, didn’t Lydia make a cute kid?” He shrugged his shoulders, and Julian laughed. “It is cute, but I don’t need cute. I need perfect,” he said. “I have a feeling you haven’t been training like you should. You probably haven’t killed anyone. She would be a copy of a lovey-dovey wimp.”
She squirmed and fought, but she couldn’t move her legs. The men left the room with me, and water turned on somewhere in the house. Lydia tried and failed to drag herself to the bathroom before I stopped screaming.
“My baby!” She yanked her limp body to the doorway of the bathroom. Julian and Kamon had turned away from the tub, without me.
“Kamon, close her up. I want her clean and ready for dinner. Welcome back, pet.”
She pulled out of the vision of our horrible future. She sobbed on the floor, still holding her flat stomach.
“I’m not going to let him hurt you or your dad. I’ll keep you safe. I swear,” she said, to me. “Julian wants me. Not you. Not Gavin. He didn’t want my mom and dad. I have to go back.” Her trembling hand carried a kiss from her lips to her stomach. “First, I’ll get far away from him. Then you, angel. And then he’ll stop hurting everyone I love. It will be over.”
Sophia came into the room that would’ve been my nursery and hugged me. I hadn’t realized I was shaking. “I don’t want to see anymore,” I whispered. I didn’t imagine her story going this way. I expected glory and fame. Not heartache. Not painful premonitions.
Sophia grabbed my hand and kissed the tips of my fingers. It made more sense for her to be so comfortable with me now. I’d only known her a week, but she’d known me forever. “We must continue, sweetheart.”
She pulled me into the hall. At the end of it, the carpet turned into grass. My father ran out of the school and to a black car. Lydia waved to him through the window, and she pushed over to the passenger side to let him in. Sophia and I joined them inside.
“What’s this?” he asked. “Why are you in a car?”
“It’s yours,” she said.
“First day of work present?” She nodded. “I love it, baby, but … we don’t need a car. Since you taught me how to move myself, I didn’t think we’d ever have one.”
She clicked her seatbelt. “Let’s take it for a spin.” He laughed and started the engine.
“How much did this cost? A fortune, I’d bet,” he said. She kept her eyes forward. Her hands were still on me. “So do you want me to park it close to the school and land inside? Drive to work like everyone else?”
“Yeah.” She caught a tear under her eye. He didn’t notice. “Turn here. Um … there’s something I want to see.” The car turned left onto an empty, unpaved road. “Pull over,” she said.
“Huh?” He chuckled. “Oh! Hell yes, I will.” He pulled the car onto the roadside and pushed his seat back. “Get over here.”
She joined him on his seat, and I covered my eyes. The sound of them making out was as sad as it was disgusting because I knew their love story hadn’t had a happy ending. “I love you,” she said, crying. “Say it back.”
“I love you.”
The ruffling stopped, and I uncovered my eyes. He was unconscious. Sobbing, she held his head firmly between her hands.
“What is she doing?” I asked.
“Erasing his memory,” Sophia said. “She’s already cleared the house of her things.”
She brought his limp hand to her stomach. “Say goodbye to Daddy. Wish him a happy life. A normal life.”
She opened a bag she’d had at her feet and pulled his wallet from his pocket. I moved closer so I could see. She stuffed it with money and new cards, even a license with his picture on it. She pushed him up to the steering wheel and buckled his seatbelt.
“Almost forgot,” she said, grabbing a chain around his neck that a wedding band dangled from. “Oh, God.” She kissed him again. “I have to do this. I love you. I’ll miss you, baby.”
She got out of the car, and with a flick of a finger, she rammed it into a tree. The windshield shattered, sending shards of glass soaring into the car, not harming me at all. She opened the door and inspected him. Besides a few scratches from the shattered glass, he was fine.
“She’s making it seem like he lost his memory in an accident?” I asked. Sophia nodded. “That’s stupid! Why not just hide with him? She’s not—”
“Thinking clearly?” I nodded. “She’s terrified. A month ago, she found her parents headless in their home.” Headless? Julian beheaded her parents. Oh, God. That was why I’d felt horrible pain in my neck in CC’s studio. “She wants to go back to Julian so you and your father won’t end up like them. She knows Christopher wouldn’t let her go, and she believes leaving is the only way to keep you two alive.”
Sophia snapped her fingers and brought us to a freezing cold house. Lydia was bundled up in front of a fireplace, crying. In the dim lighting of the room, I could see easels lining the walls. She painted like her mother.
I painted like mine.
She watched the fire fizzle out and got up to light it again. Her stomach was huge, but she was still skinny otherwise.
“One … match,” she said and chuckled. No other lights were on in the house; I assumed the power was out. She struck the final match against the box, but it died before it caught on. She erupted in a fit of screaming and swearing.
I sighed. I’d inherited the same explosive anger.
“Relax, Lydia,” she said. “Sorry, baby.” She created her own fire when she calmed down, the same way I could. “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you. No one will train you. You’ll be normal.”
That didn’t happen. While she crooned, swearing I wouldn’t be affected, she created another blanket and a little white dress.
“You’re going to look like an angel. Two more weeks,” she said, crying again.
Someone knocked on
her door and she jumped. I shook, too. A knife appeared in her hand and she walked to the door, cloaked in the blanket. She twirled it through her fingers like I’d done with Remi.
“Karen?” a man said in an accent, Russian maybe. “Ms. Karen? Is there something wrong?”
She sighed. “No, Gerald. I’m fine.”
“Can I come in? I’ve been meaning to talk to you, but I never see you since you paid the rent up so far in advance. You never come out of there. It’s strange.”
She peeked out of the window on the door, and he smiled at her. “You see me every day, Gerald. Don’t you?” His eyes dulled, and he nodded. “I have dark hair and dark eyes and I work at the market. Don’t I?”
“Yes,” he whispered, clearly in a trance, believing what she wanted him to.
“Has anyone asked you to look for a blonde woman?” she asked.
“Yes. A blonde woman that will be with a man. Men are searching for her. The bounty is two million dollars.”
Lydia’s eyes watered, then she smiled at him again. “I’ll see you tomorrow like I do every day, Gerald. Where do I work again?”
“The market,” he droned and walked away from her door.
Sophia snapped, and we moved to a different house. It had rough wooden walls, like a cabin. Like the cabin built for one.
I was there, screaming.
I crept down the hall, toward the sound of running water, my heart close to giving out. I didn’t know what I’d do if I saw someone dangling me over a tub again.
A shower cranked off and Lydia ran into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel.
“Shhh,” she said. “I’m back, angel.” She picked me up out of a crib. I had a head full of curly hair already. I stopped crying immediately. “I left you for two minutes. Two little bitty minutes.” She bounced me as she walked around the room. “If I can’t leave to take a shower, how am I going to leave you forever?”
I was nestled against her chest with her wet hair in my face. I must have learned to think that smell meant to calm down.
“How old am I?” I asked, because it felt impossible for me to remember this moment. But I did, in a way that I could almost feel her skin on mine, and I shivered from the memory of that scent—oranges wafting from her hair.
I looked back at Sophia who hadn’t answered. She was smiling, her eyes watering. “She never lets me see her like this.” She sighed. “And I believe you are almost a month old. She was supposed to bring you to school right after you were born, but leaving is more complicated than she imagined it would be.”
Lydia pulled me away from her chest. She smiled at me and laughed. “Can Mama get dressed now?” I swatted my little hand in the air, and Lydia’s towel loosened at the top.
Sophia giggled. “I think you’re hungry,” she said, as I tried to take off Lydia’s towel without touching it.
I had powers before I was twelve. I had them as an infant. I guessed that was what complicated her leaving me.
“Christine! No!” Lydia yelled. “What did I say? Do not move things!” I screamed again, and she rocked me, cooing, until I stopped. “Oh, God. I am the worst mother in the history of mothers. Good thing I’ll be dead soon.”
I moved closer to the bed as she positioned me to eat. I sat next to her, looking at us in the most nurturing position a mother and daughter could ever be in outside of the womb. The icy shell covering my heart shattered, and I let myself remember her completely. This room. This cabin. How she was always crying, even when she laughed.
“Why does she think she’ll be dead soon?” I asked, instead of the words my heart pushed to my lips—bring me to my mother.
“She made it so she couldn’t have any more children. She believes Julian will kill her when he finds that out.” I was crying as hard as Lydia was now. “Let’s go, love.”
I shook my head, I didn’t want to leave. I reached out my hand to touch Lydia, but it went through her. “I get it. She loved me. I believe you.”
“Still does. And there’s more to see,” Sophia said.
She snapped and took me from the memory I wanted to stay in, to one I really didn’t want to see. I broke down immediately when I saw the St. Catalina crest in the wrought iron fence.
We were in a car in front of it. Lydia had me in her arms in the backseat. There was no one in the front. Her hair was jet-black, her eyes green. A disguise, I guessed. She opened a briefcase with her free hand, checking over the contents. A birth certificate, my prints, and loads of money were inside. St. Catalina had lied about not knowing who we were. Maybe the bible names were a decoy, a cover for only taking rich kids.
“This is it, baby. You’re all set. Mama loves you. More than loves you. You’ll be safe and happy here. I’ve seen you all grown up. You will be absolutely stunning. Perfection, like your father. I’m sorry I won’t be here to hold you and watch you grow. But don’t worry. I’m not worrying. You haven’t moved anything in two weeks, and you won’t ever be trained, so the powers are gone for good. I’m sure of it. Everything will go right in your life. You’ll be normal with normal friends and you’ll find someone normal to love. That’s what your father and grandmother should’ve done. But you have to. You’re the only piece of me that will live, and you have to be happy.”
She wiped her face with the collar of her shirt, and I yanked her wig. “You have to fall asleep, angel. I’ll never be able to leave if you scream.” She rocked me for a minute, still crying, but I still wouldn’t close my eyes. “Okay … you’re going to make me pull out the big guns. You know you can’t resist it.” She chuckled and cleared her throat.
In a sweet soprano voice, one I remembered so clearly, she sang the song I’d thought I made up, my shower song. My little eyes fluttered. She sang the verse I’d sung to Nathan after I’d fallen asleep in her arms. I’d bet I rarely heard that part, and it had gotten buried deeper in my mind. I fell to more pieces as I watched and listened and remembered and wanted.
She kissed me and covered her mouth, her face and body tensed with a scream she couldn’t release. She opened the door, and Sophia pulled me closer. I bawled into her hair until the car disappeared.
Sophia and I now stood under a huge tree with moss hanging over our heads. Lydia looked like what I imagined a hunter would look like, dressed in an all black, clingy outfit. She did not look like she’d just had a baby.
“So … obviously he didn’t kill her like she’d thought,” I said, recovering from seeing her leave me. Ready to be upset again.
“She changed her plan. While hiding with you, she hadn’t seen how bad things had gotten with the war. She doesn’t think you’re safe because of the people trying to take over the world,” Sophia said, pointing to a house in the distance. “Fredrick Dreco is inside with all the major leaders of the war. They are the most powerful witches, wizards, and beasts alive. They are about to figure out that they’ve been lured there, but it’s too late.”
Lydia stretched her arms in front of her and closed her eyes. A gentle breeze shook the leaves and the moss above us. Then the house exploded. A cloud of fire and multicolored smoke flared so high that no one could’ve escaped it. This was the Lydia I’d learned about. The fierce assassin. The woman who saved the world.
She sat under the tree between Sophia and me as sirens wailed in the background.
“Last moments as me,” she said. “Maybe I should pray.” She laughed then looked up to the sky. “You’d like that huh, Mom? And Dad, you’d love that I just took out all those creatures. Maybe I’ll get to see you two and get to watch her from up there.” She chuckled again, sadder this time. “Yeah right. I don’t even have a chance.”
She wiped her eyes as she stood and breathed a defeated sigh.
We moved with Lydia to a door. She knocked twice before it opened. Julian smiled at his desk. Kamon rushed to the door. "Hold on, my boy," Julian said. "Let me speak with her first. Dreco killed all of the agents, all hunters now answer to me, and I didn't issue and order to kill him. Y
ou've had a big night. Haven't you, pet?" Lydia didn't answer. She shivered and Julian laughed. "Kamon, make sure Lydia's room is ready. We don't have time to waste. I've waited long enough. Go ahead and give her credit for Dreco. It's the least we can do."
Julian laughed. “Yes, Master," Kamon said and vanished.
Alone, Julian stood and walked slowly to Lydia. She shivered, and he chuckled.
Lydia closed her eyes. “Julian …”
“Don’t you mean Master?”
“Julian,” she strained. “You won’t be getting any copies from me. This is over.” Her breaths sped, and he reached his hand to her head. She jerked away from him.
"Over?” He laughed. "You wouldn't kill me. You don't have it in you. You're as soft as your father was. I'm surprised you didn't run off and start a family with your mystery guy." He gasped and laughed. "Is that what you've been up to? I'm going to enjoy finding—"
Lydia screamed and grabbed his neck. Sophia turned me away. Julian screeched as we flew out of that room and into another. One with padding covering the floor, walls, and ceiling.
Lydia was staring at the wall while four heavily armed soldiers stood in each corner of the room.
“What happened? Go back!” I said.
“She killed Julian.”
“I want to see!” I yelled. I didn’t want to be morbid, but I’d been afraid of this hunter since I read her diary. I was happy that he was dead.
“She would kill me if I showed you that. Literally,” Sophia said. “It was very terrible. Julian was a senator, and she was caught that same day, sitting in the forest about a mile away from his home.”
She didn’t look like the typical prisoner. She was in a padded cell with guns on her. This part wasn’t in the history books.
A door opened, but Lydia didn’t turn around. She just stared, without blinking, at the wall. A tall man with red hair stepped into the room. “Ms. Shaw, we’ve gotten word that you were responsible for the fire that killed the Magical Council.”
“Good. Can I leave?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid not. The scene at Senator Polk’s estate was gory to say the least, you were covered in his blood, and we still have not found the murder weapon. I have a feeling you could’ve left this room the moment we put you in. What are you waiting for? Who else are you waiting to kill?”
“No one.”
“Who do you work for?”
“No one.”
“What are you?”
“Human.”
He offered her a lighter and a needle to prove it. She stuck herself and let her non-magical blood drip over the flame. The interrogator groaned, like he wanted her to have magic. Like it would have explained things.
He left, nodding to the armed guards. Lydia stretched out on the thin bed, staring at the camera on her.
“Does she escape?” I asked. Sophia shook her head. “She could just leave. Why is she staying here?”
“She could run, but she’d be running forever. Her escape would also expose humans with powers, make them the new enemy,” she said. “The government is afraid of her, but they also need her. They made her a deal and gave her a job.”
She snapped and Lydia changed into a suit with her hair groomed neatly in a ponytail. We were in an office. She wasn’t a prisoner anymore. She looked like the Lydia Shaw now.
Someone knocked on her door. “Come in,” Lydia said, leaning into her window with her back to the door.
“Your next case, Your Honor. Witch. Talent level is lethal. The cameras are off.”
“Bring it to the chair, thank you,” she said to the soldier.
The it was Sophia. The present one kissed my hand and frowned. “I’m sorry about what I will say about you. I didn’t know.”
“Okay,” I whispered, my head pounding from crying so hard in the last few memories. The soldier closed the door behind him and Lydia glanced down at her watch.
“You’ve been charged with conspiracy. How do you plead?” she asked, like she’d asked it a million times that day.
“Innocent, Lydia,” the past Sophia said.
She looked over her shoulder and smiled at her former maid. “I’m going to enjoy this,” she said.
“You may want to reconsider that. I know who you really are. What you can really do. The things you and people like you have already done. You’re just like Julian. You even made one of those things. She looks just like the boy you snuck into Mona’s house. And she’s been screaming at the top of her lungs nonstop since I’ve been watching. She’s disagreeable, just like you. And they’ll kill you and your copy when I tell them, unless you stop this massacre of my people."
Anger flashed across Lydia’s face like it had in Julian’s office. I looked at the Sophia I knew. Her eyes apologized for her.
Sophia looked away as her past self started to choke. Lydia turned back to the window as Sophia fell to her knees. “Sophia, what is she doing to you?” I asked. She rubbed my hand, it felt like she meant, keep watching.
Lydia laughed, the most haunting, insane laugh I’d ever heard. “That’s sweet, Sophia. You didn't even tell anyone what you found. You’re here to make empty threats so your family won’t die.” Sophia wasn’t talking. She must have been in her head. Lydia threw her arm back and opened her hand. Sophia slid across the floor to her. She picked her up by her neck and forced her to stand. “Look at me,” she demanded. Sophia opened her frightened eyes. “You're an idiot, just like the rest of your people who are starving because of a rumor that we can track spells." Sophia pulled at Lydia’s jacket, her face turning blue. Lydia’s eyes watered and spilled over in the next second. “Her name is Christine, and with your last breath, you will apologize to my daughter for calling her such a filthy name. And I will make every member of your family do the same.”
Sophia reached her trembling hands to Lydia’s face, rubbing her cheeks. In a hoarse whisper she managed to say, “Please. I’m sorry. Let me help.”
Lydia freed Sophia, and they stared at each other for a moment, hate still there, both sizing up the other. “She wanted to come get you, but she couldn’t,” my Sophia said to me. “We knew it wouldn’t work out because I’d check the future, she would too. In most of the predictions, you were either killed or abducted by Kamon. In the others, you were miserable, living in hiding with her."
That sounded like a mess of excuses. To me, it looked like Lydia had given up on her marriage and her child.
She snapped again, and we moved to Lydia’s living room in Paris. Her sofa was black then, and a landscape painting was on the wall where her TV currently hung. Sophia brushed past herself with her hands on her hips.
“Lydia, it’s two in the morning my time, and my house is packed with people who need to know your decision about the treaty.”
“People? That’s a stretch. And did you tell them you’re in my living room bothering me about it? Or do they think you have an in with the janitors in my office? That would certainly be more believable.” Lydia didn’t look up from the papers on the coffee table in front of her as she spoke, aggravating Sophia even more it seemed.
“What difference does it make? Can you hurry?”
“You want me to sign it or piss on it? I can go either way at this point.”
Sophia sighed and mumbled something under her breath as she disappeared into the hall.
The present Sophia rubbed my back. It felt like she was preparing me for something, telling me to brace myself. What could be worse than what I’d already seen? Lydia shivered and closed her eyes. A child’s giggles filled the air. She lay back on the sofa, with me suddenly in her arms. My wild curls sprawled across her chest. I looked around three years old. Lydia smiled at me as a light strumming of a guitar joined my laughter. She brought her eyes up, and my father was sitting on the other end of the sofa with her feet in his lap.
“Hi,” she whispered. He dropped his guitar and smiled. He tickled my back. Tears streamed down her face as my dad and I laughed.
>
“Hey, baby,” he replied.
“Because of her powers,” Sophia said, rubbing my back as I stared at the family I didn’t get to have. “…her fantasies would become disturbingly real. She could see you two, even if she hadn’t intended to.”
I refused to cry again. I wanted to be pissed, but it was hard to hate someone so fragile.
Sophia sighed in the doorway of the living room. She came closer, kneeled next to Lydia, and snapped her fingers. A glass of bubbling water appeared in her hand.
“What’s that, Sophia?” I asked.
“A potion. For a clear mind,” she said.
Lydia rolled over with me on the sofa, as if to shield me from Sophia. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I know it’s not real.”
“We can’t let you have these, Lydia. If you chase her around your office again, I think they’ll have you committed.”
“Don’t drink it,” my father whispered. “We’ll leave you.” Lydia crawled to his lap, hauling me with her. Sophia grabbed her hand and forced the glass inside of it. Lydia kissed my imaginary father, then my imaginary lips. As she downed the glass, Christopher and I blew away like a gust of wind hit us, fading us into nothing.
Sophia picked up the papers from the coffee table—the treaty that saved magical kind, apparently. “Trade,” she said. “Sign this, and I’ll give you the mirror.”
Lydia wiped her face and sat up on the sofa, pulling herself together. “How long can I use it this time?”
“Sign it, and it’s yours to have.”
Lydia scribbled her signature on the treaty and exchanged it for a sterling silver hand mirror. “Christine Cecilia Gavin,” she whispered into it. I moved closer as a smile stretched across her face, like more than her reflection was there.
It was way more than her reflection.
I was in it, stretched out in a bed with the covers hanging off of me. I could see Whitney in the next bed and hear her snoring, too. She would have been Abigail then.
“She watched me through that?” I asked.
“Still does.”
I sighed, shaking my head, unsure of how I felt about that—happy that I mattered to her, betrayed because she’d let this happen, or amazed because I’d been right about someone watching me all these years.
“Swear that you won’t take her … take it back,” she whispered, tears falling into her mouth as she spoke.
“I swear.” Sophia stood and tugged on Lydia’s arm. We followed them into her bedroom. Sophia tucked her in as she continued to stare into the mirror.
“Isn’t she beautiful? I love it when they put her in the white pajamas. She looks like an angel.” Sophia um-hummed like she didn’t really care as she dimmed the lights in Lydia’s room.
Her bedroom doors opened into my New Orleans sitting room. I thought it was over, but I saw myself asleep on the sofa with the news blasting in the background.
Sophia opened my door and whispered, “You can come in now.”
Lydia stepped through the door slowly, her face wet and red. “I’ve called you a million times, and you haven’t answered. You promised you’d answer.”
“You were harassing me. I told you to let me handle it.” So those phone calls had been from Lydia. Wow.
“That lie was awful, by the way. How long do you think she’ll believe that? A witch hunting money that belongs to people she doesn’t know? Really, Sophia?” Her lie was ridiculous, now that I thought about it. I should’ve seen through Sophia. “And … this mess about her being a witch. I don’t understand that.”
“Yes, you do,” Sophia said. “You just don’t want to admit it.”
“She doesn’t have powers, and I dare you to call her a copy.”
“I didn’t say that, but I saw her create fire. That’s why I went there.” Lydia covered her mouth, shaking her head like she didn’t believe it. “I had to purposefully shield my mind around her. I could feel it. She’s powerful.”
I shifted on the sofa, panting in my sleep. Lydia sat next to me and rubbed my cheek.
“I could make this nice for her,” Sophia said. “What if I went and got a friend to stay here with her? I have one in mind. You freed her parents for me. Emma, remember?”
Lydia inched closer, ignoring her. She pulled me to her arms and cradled me like a baby. I sighed, my chest relaxing, breathing more calmly now.
“Mom,” I whispered, like I remembered doing in the dream. The peaceful hell that smelled like her.
She gasped. “Baby!” She kissed me on my forehead, then both of my cheeks. “I’m sorry about everything. I didn’t know about those girls. I didn’t know about your powers. I should have. I’m so sorry.”
Didn’t know? The most powerful psychic woman in the world was claiming not to know how my life was at St. Catalina? Her memories had softened me, but that turned my heart to stone again. I was over it. Over her. The excuses, the lies, the breakdowns.
“I need you to get me into her mind. She’s as blocked as I am, without even trying. I need to see what went wrong. How the powers came back.”
Sophia blew the powder into Lydia’s face. I was dead inside, so I couldn’t laugh when she let her hit the floor. She stepped over Lydia and kneeled in front of me. “Sweet dreams, my love,” she said. She turned off the TV and snapped, probably meeting Lydia in my head.
I was done, I’d been done, but now I refused to let her drag me through any more pitiful memories. Especially not ones I’d lived. Before I could make my demand, Sophia blew the powder in my face again and caught me before I hit the floor.