The Fallen Star (Fallen Star Series)

by Jessica Sorensen

  Still grasping onto my arm, he snaked his free hand around my waist and pulled me back.

  “You’re hurting my stitches,” I whined, even though his hand was on the opposite side.

  He pulled me closer to him. “No, I’m not.”

  I put up quite a fight, but in the end, he still managed to pin me against him, my back pressing firmly against his chest. This was both good and bad. Bad because I was really pissed off at him, and the last thing I wanted was to be near him. But it was also good because…Well, because it felt good. Nice and warm and effervescent.

  Ugh.

  “This is so stupid.” I seethed. “You can’t have control over everything I do.”

  “Yeah, I can.” He held me so tight my skin warmed like melting butter, and I thought I might actually melt into him, “Especially when you’re trying to do something stupid. Do you think what happened back at the Black Dungeon was a game? Do you not realize how close you came to getting killed? Because, let me tell you, if I wouldn’t have shown up when I did, then you and I wouldn’t be sitting here having this argument.”

  I froze, slowly taking in his words. With every breath he took, I could feel his chest rising and falling against my back. My own breathing lifted and fell, rhythmically matching with his. The electricity seemed to be synchronizing with it, as if it were trying to create a harmonious song or something. It was weird and strangely comforting. Like, if I closed my eyes, I’d drift off into a peaceful, Death-Walker-free dream.

  “Gemma,” Alex whispered in my ear, sounding breathless. “I think that—”

  I never got to hear what he thought, because the passenger door swung open, and the interior lights clicked on.

  It was Aislin. She held a small, gold box in her hands, which I assumed held a crystal inside. She started to climb in, but stopped when she caught sight of us. “What are you two doing?”

  I can only imagine what this looked like to her; me practically sitting on Alex’s lap, his arms wrapped around me, obviously trapping me against him. Yeah, I’m pretty sure more than a few question marks were popping up in her head.

  A few question marks were popping up in my head.

  “Gemma was getting out of hand,” Alex replied coolly. “She needed to be dealt with.”

  “I wasn’t getting out of hand,” I said indignantly. I tried to jam my elbow into his side, but it didn’t go very far since I could barely move. “You are such a—”

  Alex threw his hand over my mouth. I thought about biting it, but then decided against it. I’m not sure why.

  “Alex!” Aislin exclaimed. “You can’t just do whatever you want with her.”

  Alex dropped his hand from my mouth. “Aislin, she was trying to jump out of the car and run away.”

  Aislin frowned as she slammed the door. The lights shut off, and I could barely make out the outline of her face. “You two really need to figure out a way to get along. This whole fighting-about-everything thing is not helping the stress level in this already way too stressful situation.”

  “Well, if she’d behave,” Alex started at the same time I said, “If he’d leave me alone—”

  Aislin lifted her eyebrows, giving us a see-what-I-mean look.

  “Fine,” Alex surrender. “I’ll stop.”

  “I’ll stop too,” I told her. “Just as long as he lets me go.”

  I guess to prove a point that he could still have some control over me, Alex waited about twenty more seconds before finally letting me go. And he refused to sit anywhere else but in the middle of the seat so he could be close enough to me in case I made an irrational decision to “jump out of the car while it was moving” as he so bluntly put it. Yeah, even I wasn’t that crazy. But whatever.

  By the time the seating arrangement was all settled, Laylen emerged from Adessa’s looking somewhat happy. Hmmm….I wonder what was up with that.

  He climbed in the car. “So what happened?” he asked me.

  I furrowed my eyebrows. “What? With the crystal ball?”

  He nodded. “Did you get sucked into a vision?”

  “What!” Aislin shouted. “She got sucked into a vision and no one told me.”

  I felt like I was getting strangled to death—that’s the effect just thinking about the vision had on me.

  “I’ll explain it on the way back to the house,” Alex said. If I wouldn’t have known better, I would have thought he said it because he’d sensed my lack of comfort with the subject. But I did know better so…

  “Okay.” Laylen started up the car, and the engine roared to life.

  Aislin was more reluctant to give up on the discussion. She remained turned around in her seat, continuously eyeballing Alex and I until Laylen merged the car back onto the busy main street of Vegas. Then the dancing lights and throngs of people distracted her attention away from us.

  After we’d made it back onto the highway, and the last of the lights had fizzled away, I rested my head against the window, and, without even meaning to, I fell asleep.

  Chapter 23

  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 paddle 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. I don’t know how I knew, just that I did. 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 nothing 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 very quickly 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 for sure. If I didn’t get away, I’d end up a prisoner in The Underworld, at least until I went insane and they killed me.

  I needed to get away…

  Shaing…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 a holy-crap-just-calm-down-I-didn’t-mean-you-any-harm kind of way. “Settle down.”

  I did a quick scan of my surroundings and realized I was still in the backseat 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 wai
ted 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. Giving him a recap of what I’d just dreamt about meant having to relive it, which is something I so didn’t want to do. Yeah, I knew it was just a nightmare and everything, but the feelings of fear that I’d felt during it still lingered inside me. And how could I not be afraid? I’d dreamt about the Death Walkers and look how well that had turned out for me. The term “it was just a dream” totally didn’t apply in my life. I knew there was an actual real-life possibility that I really could run into a…what had Alex called them? Water Faeries.

  Back 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 took up 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 sling-shooting out across the table. After that, he gave up his redial mission and tucked his phone away in his pocket.

  Feeling tired—my little catnap during the car ride home had done nothing for me—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 no, 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 the whole getting-sucked-away-after-touching-a-Foreseers-Crystal-Ball incident, 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 gets 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 the black candle she’d brought with her when she transported us from the bus. 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 cooperativeness.

  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-jump-out-of-the-car-and-run-away incident back at Adessa’s. Oh yeah, and the time I’d tried to run away when I’d first found out about what I really was. But other than that…Oh fine. Whatever. 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 scooped the Sword of Immortality up from the table. “Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  Without taking her eyes off of 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, 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 got 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 the meaning of.

  “Per is calx EGO lux lucis via,” Aislin 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. I wasn’t going to lie, the look made me feel kind of edgy. It pushed worried thoughts of my own through 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 that they’d 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.”

  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. Why wouldn’t it? 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’d say more like different.” And freaky. I sighed. “When you’ve been as different as I have the idea of being normal sounds really nice. But you can’t be one hundred percent normal when you have freaky violet eyes.”

  “Yeah, I can understand how you’d 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 again. “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, but if what Laylen was saying was true, how could I not get upset? “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. Why would it matter? 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…you’d think I’d be able to remember something about her. But nope. I couldn’t remember a single thing.

  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 you?”

  I gave him a quick recap of everything Alex had told me while he’d been stitching me up. I also told him about the things I’d pick up on myself; the list I’d found back at Marco and Sophia’s, and the bizarre vision thingy I’d been pulled into back at the fieldtrip. 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 to personal.