“But why? Why would he do this?”
“We know your cousin to be dangerous because his mind has been corrupted, and he fears nothing except the absence of power. The Opalescence, to him, represents the unique opportunity to never have his fears realized. With malevolence, that abundance of power can be destructive, but in his hands, it can be apocalyptic. The truth is clear here, with the Opalescence, he will self-destruct and destroy many things in his path when he does, yourself and your family included.”
In just a few seconds, everything in my world was colliding in the most unexpected ways. The man without a face was my boss. My boss was my cousin. My cousin was a killer. A killer was going to destroy everything around me.
The only thing that stood in his way was me, and I was almost dead.
“What do I do?” I asked after pondering for a while longer.
Aletheia said nothing but was looking right at me.
“Are you listening to me?” I asked, waving my hands at her. “I came here for answers.”
“No,” she snapped. “You came here for the truth, and that is what we have given. We find it bothersome that you continue to ask for things from us that you alone can see the answers to.”
“I don’t understand. The visions? I can’t control when they come or what they show me.”
“You too often seek to understand your visions so that you can accept what they are showing you, but in the world of magic, there are many things you must accept first or else you will never understand them. When you fought your visions the hardest, that is when they pulled you apart the most. Only after you started accepting them did the truth of what they were showing you make sense.” She plucked another flower roughly from our feet and handed it to me. “Ask and be shown the truth.”
“Show me,” I whispered to the flower. The soft words pushed against the petals, and one gently fell from the stem. It leisurely swayed back and forth to the floor and guided me to my place of serenity.
A short woman in a floral-patterned, old-fashioned dress sat at a simple table in a small room. She tossed her well-sculpted curls aside and scribbled in a tiny book. Then, she looked up and read:
“To give us strength, the Universe gave us family.
To test that strength, it gave us misfortune.
In that misfortune we found our path to peace.
In peace, we came together with our family.”
“It’s beautiful, mom” a young man in suit pants and suspenders sitting close to her said. “What is it for?”
“It’s a reminder,” she said flatly. She was absentmindedly fidgeting with the Opalescence around her neck. For her, the setting was heart-shaped, with whimsical detailing in the metal around the stone.
“A reminder of what?” the man asked.
“Someday this might be yours, and you’ll understand what I’m saying better then, but when you wear the Opalescence, you’re connected to it and to every other person who’s worn it.” She gracefully waved her fingers over the table and the book closed with the power of the Opalescence. “That’s how I can do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“This doesn’t come with instructions, but something about the way the Opalescence absorbs energy means that it keeps a part of us with it, even after we’re gone. When you connect with it, you can tap into those powers. The ability to move things with your mind like I just did, that was your grandmother’s power.”
The woman was calm, and steadfast, but through our connection to the Opalescence I could also feel her attempts to hide the worry that she may someday have to burden her son with it.
“If our family is going to have to protect this thing forever, we’re going to have to keep it a secret—even from each other. But I don’t want us to forget about that connection we have with it. We might need it someday.”
I floated from that vision effortlessly as the next petal pulled itself from the flower, fell quietly to the ground, and guided me into my next vision.
Gloria was pacing back and forth in front of my mother on her deck.
“Did you find out who has it?” my mother asked.
“Not yet,” Gloria said back to her.
“I don’t understand how someone who has the power to hear anything and everything that’s going on can’t find just one person.”
“I’m trying,” Gloria said, looking frustrated. “It’s not like tapping a phone line.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m just anxious to get this spell over with.”
“Shit, this hurts,” Gloria said, sitting down next to my mother and pointing to the cut on her hand.
“Let me see it.” My mother took Gloria’s hand in hers and examined the cut. “And this is why you shouldn’t put small razor blades in your junk drawer, Gloria.”
“Ouch,” Gloria yelled as my mother pinched her cut closed and cupped her hand around Gloria’s. My mother closed her eyes and a light smile washed over her lips. When she pulled her hand back, the cut was gone.
More petals fell from the flower’s stem and floated to the ground as my next vision started.
I was sitting at a kitchen table with Zoe in a house I didn’t recognize. She was five, maybe six years older than she was when she was kidnapped. Meticulously, she copied notes from my mother’s book into one of her own. She was safe, healthy, and even looked a little happy.
She passed the poem about the Opalescence, stopped, and looked up at me. “Do you think I’ll end up with that someday?” she asked.
I gently petted her head and smiled. “I hope not.”
“I do. My powers are boring. I want to be able to do all the stuff you can do with it.”
“Boring is underrated,” I said. “This one,” I pointed at a page in the book, “this one I want you to learn by heart.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it’s the only one you’ll ever need to keep yourself safe. It creates a sort of safety-net around you, and no one but you can use magic inside of it.”
“In this time, and in this place,” Zoe started to read the spell out loud.
Coming out of the last vision, I finally understood with Aletheia was saying. As I accepted the visions for what they were, a deeper and more profound understanding of what they were showing me emerged.
“Did I just see the future?” I asked Aletheia. “That’s never happened before.”
“No one is born with the ability to only walk forward or backward; you must learn how to do both. You have always seen the past because it is easier to see, nothing in it will ever change. Seeing the future is harder, because every choice made shapes or changes that future. But the power to see outcomes, that we know is truly one of the more special gifts the Universe has to give someone like you.”
I looked up at the water again, this time seeing my dying body back at the lumberyard. The Opalescence’s power surged inside of me and I felt my mother close within it. My body lifted off the ground and spun slowly in front of the others. Tiny tremors of light swirled around the room and pooled above me before taking solace in my body.
“It’s time now,” Aletheia said. “We have given you everything the truth has to offer.”
I closed my eyes and felt the wound in my side finish healing from the powers brought into it by the Opalescence. When I opened them again, I was back in my body, looking at the ceiling. I was damp from laying in my own blood, and sore, but I was alive.
Zoe was attached to my hip and sobbing before I could stand. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” I said stroking her hair. “I thought you were going to stay with my family,” I said to Liv.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. But I was listening in . . . up here.” She pointed to her head and wiggled it back and forth. “We had to come when I saw what happened. How did you get back up just now?”
“It’s a long story,” I sa
id looking down at Zoe. “I’ll explain later; we need to bring her home.”
* * * * *
Liv drove and I watched over Zoe as she drifted into an exhausted sleep in the back seat. Sunrise was breaking with lustrous hues of pink and purple filling the sky. It poked through the trees around us and cast slivers of light against Zoe’s face.
“What are you gonna tell your sister?” Liv asked me.
“I have no idea. I’m not sure that she or anyone else is ready to hear me tell them the truth, or that they could believe me if I did. And what lie could I tell them that would explain all this?”
“From what you’ve told me about them, I don’t think they’ll take this lightly,” she said.
“No. If I tell them what I know, they’ll take up pitch forks and torches and rip this city apart until they find him. And it’s just not safe for them.”
I looked back at Zoe, her face smashed up against the SUV’s window as she slept. “And Zoe,” I said, “it’s not like she doesn’t already know what happened. She might not be able to process it yet, but you don’t live through something like that and then just forget about it. Ahhh,” I ran my fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp. “Maybe my mother wasn’t wrong for wanting to keep us out of this.”
“We still could keep them out of it,” Liv said. “I can make them all forget that this ever happened; I have a spell I’ve used before.”
“But is it okay for me to do something like that to them, though? Is it my right to make that decision for them?”
“Our lives get messy sometimes and we have to have a way to clean it up. I know how you feel about your family, and all the secrets, but something like this . . . it will change everything for them. There’s a plastic bag in my glove compartment, grab it,” she said, turning onto Sydney’s street. The bag was filled with stalks of blunt smelling sage, tied tightly together with frayed strings of hemp.
Zoe was slowly waking up as the car parked, her face still tear-stained and her eyes distantly searching for an understanding I worried would never come to her. I jumped out of the car and started fishing through the gym bag I kept in my trunk for clothes not soaked with blood.
“Am I doing this?” Liv asked as I changed behind her SUV.
I looked at Zoe again, rubbed my eyebrow with my finger and exhaled uncomfortably. Everyone has a right to their own memories, no matter how bad they are. For Zoe, more than anyone else, I didn’t want to rob her of that right, but I also couldn’t stomach the thought of letting her live the rest of her life in constant fear of it all being repeated.
“Yes,” I said.
Liv pulled a stalk of the sage from its bundle and handed it to me. “Here, hold onto to this so the spell doesn’t affect you. I’ll take care of the rest.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a small tablet computer in a bright red case. I gave her a puzzled looked and giggled.
“What?” she asked. “I can’t be carrying around massive books with me wherever I go.”
“Okay . . .”
“It’s called being a Caster in the digital age, Hat!” she called out after me as Zoe and I made our way toward the house.
“Zoe? Zoe!” Sydney screamed from the doorway. She dropped the phone, and whoever she was talking to on it, to the ground and ran toward us. She latched onto Zoe, and the two of them tumbled into the grass together. The hordes of family that had gathered there started making their way to the doorway to watch with relief as Zoe was reunited with her mother.
“Oh my god! How? Hat, how?” Sydney rocked Zoe in her arms and looked up at me.
In silence, I stood and waited, letting the questions and screams of joy bounce off me, until the smell of sage floated through the air around us. I tilted my head with sad eyes and silently apologized to them, and then to myself, for what I was doing.
The smell of the sage lingered for a minute, casting quiet upon everyone. A breeze followed, and blew it all away, taking with it the memories of everything that had just happened.
Sydney stood up and looked around confused. “Hat?” she said. “Um . . . thanks for dropping Zoe off for me.”
“Sure, Syd,” I said. “Any time.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking up into my sad eyes and frowning.
“Just a long night, sis. I’ve gotta go, but I’ll come by soon. I promise.”
“Bye, Uncle,” Zoe yelled as she playfully ran past the family into the house.
They all looked just as confused as Sydney; like you do when you lose your train of thought and can’t remember for the life of you what you were talking about. I had to hope they’d understand and believe that they would have made the same choice I did.
“You did the right thing,” Liv said when I approached her SUV. She was wrapping up what was left of the burnt sage and putting it back in her glove compartment.
I looked back at my family as they started to part ways, still unsure of why they were all congregated at Sydney’s house in the first place. “You don’t know that,” I said.
Chapter 35
Liv was trashing yet another set of my bloody clothes when I stepped into the shower at her house. The hot water and pulsating shower head were magic in themselves as they washed the dirt, sweat, and dreadful memories of the night down the drain. I wished that I could have stayed in there forever.
“You were amazing today,” Liv said from the other side of the shower curtain.
“Hardly,” I said, using some of her shampoo to lather my sore head. “I almost died.”
She moved closer to the shower. “But you didn’t. You found her, and you got her back, just like you said you were going to. And then you went back to The Trials of Truth. I don’t think many people would have done that. I’m not even sure if I would have done that.”
The water continued to pour down my face, washing the last of the dried blood off my healed body. “Did I thank you for coming to save me?”
“Sort of. But I didn’t actually save you either, did I?” The shower curtain opened smoothly and quietly, and Liv leaned against the wall to watch me.
“Maybe from a life of mediocrity,” I said, splashing her with some water, and not worrying that she was seeing me naked again.
“I may not be able to see the future, but I can see a part of people that no one else can. I knew you were someone special the first time I met you, I just didn’t know when you’d figure that out for yourself.”
It may have been the vibrant feeling of having just beaten death, or the reinvigorating energy from feeling like things were starting to make sense around me, but when Liv slowly stripped off her clothes and joined me in the shower, I didn’t stop her.
We kissed gently, and I ran my hands into her magnificent blond hair as streams of water splashed around our faces. When she touched her lips to mine, it was like two souls joining hands and walking down a path of comfort and trust. We were both happy to be alive, and neither of us wanted anything more than that moment had to offer.
Our wet movements were sensual and spontaneous, and each time our bodies touched, I drifted further into a place of relaxation and joy. Sex with her was almost more spiritual than it was physical, a serenity constructed from the safety we felt in each other’s arms. Judgment, hesitation, and worry had no place in that shower, and no room to fit between our locked lips, as we owned the moment together.
It was already mid-morning by the time we collapsed into her bed together. We were both wrapped in large bath towels and she rested her head securely on my shoulder as I kissed her forehead.
“It’s okay, you know?” she said softly.
“What is?”
“That you don’t love me like that.”
“But I do love you.”
“I know you do, just not the way that could make us any more than this. I don’t need my powers to know that I’m not what you really
want.”
“You’re the most perfect woman I’ve ever met,” I said, lightly rubbing the backside of my fingers against her cheek, “and if it makes a difference, you’re exactly what I thought I always wanted.” I pushed her hair out of her face and kissed her calmly on the lips. “But I think I found someone who showed me that I had no idea what I really needed.”
“And where is he now?”
“This is going to shock you, but I may have fucked things up with him pretty good and we haven’t talked since.”
“Ha. Can’t imagine it.”
“But you should know that just now, with you, I definitely didn’t hate that,” I said with a smile, looking back to the shower through the open door from her bedroom to her bathroom.
“Mmmm. Me neither,” she said softly, closing her eyes.
Neither of us moved. We didn’t need to. I knew that if I couldn’t love her like that, then I would likely never love any woman like that, ever. It took sleeping with the perfect woman to remind me just how stupid I had been to let go of the perfect man.
* * * * *
For the first time since he came to live with me, Cat ignored the food I poured for him. Instead, he waited at my feet, watching every move I made. I was flipping through my mother’s book to find everything I’d need, including a way to take back the Opalescence when Graham was unaffected by its powers and able to shift himself between places at will. There was just one ingredient I’d need, and a short call with Liv told me the only place to get it.
Back on Wickenden Street, I looked through the dirty glass and broken blinds at Oddities before tapping my knuckle against the door. “Hello?” The knob was loose and the door opened with a rattle. “Withers?”
The store was nothing but empty shelves and dust. It looked so much bigger than before, with no clutter, no mean old man, and no hope of finding what I was looking for.
I slid down the wall and sat on the warped wooden floor, pushing back against the empty shelves and trying to figure out where to look next.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when the door swung open and an unexpected face came into the room.
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