Spectral

by Duffy, Shannon

  Pftt, it can’t be that good of a radar. He’d lost me in the crowd at the airport. But then again, he did find me here—in Venice at a freaking carnival.

  “What if I don’t believe you?” I asked, forcing myself to sit straight up and look him in the eye.

  He bent down in front of me, reached into his pocket, and started to pull something out.

  I jumped as I caught a glance of something black in his hand. Assuming it was a gun, I batted his hand away with a shriek. The item skidded across the ground.

  He flattened his palms in the air and backed away. “Relax, Jewel, I mean you no harm. It’s just a small video device. It has a message to you from your mother.” He walked over, picked the item up and held it into the air for me to see. “You see? Nothing to fear.”

  I released a long breath. Clearly it was a small video camera. I hoped when it hit the ground, it didn’t break. Then I realized it meant there really could be a video from my mother. The idea of seeing her speaking to me was overwhelming. A million thoughts rushed through my throbbing head, wondering what she’d possibly say. I stifled a cough, and again blood trickled from my nose onto my hand. What the heck?

  Aldo or Uncle Aldo, I still wasn’t sure, walked over and kneeled down in front of me. He reached into his pocket, slowly withdrew a tissue, and handed it to me. I pressed it against my nose.

  “It’s almost your seventeenth birthday, Bella. We must get you home before it’s too late. You’re getting sick, no?” He reached out to touch my forehead, but I jerked away.

  Sighing, he asked, “Do you have the dagger?” He eyed my backpack beside me.

  My pulse quickened, but I kept my face neutral. I wasn’t giving up any info until I was totally convinced he was for real. “Dagger? What’s that?”

  He looked pale, but gave a slow nod. “I understand.” After glancing around the area, he then held up the camera gradually toward me and pressed play.

  “Amore mio,” my real mother’s voice came ringing out. Her long hair, the color of a raven’s wings, surrounded the soft features of her face. I stared into her blue-gray eyes that mirrored my own, and noticed they were teary and strained at the edges. Goosebumps raised across my skin.

  She sat in a chair facing the camera. A man stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder as if to comfort her. I wondered if it was my father.

  “First of all, let me tell you that I love you. Ti amo, ti amo. If you are watching this now, I know your Uncle Aldo has finally found you. I pray this is the case.”

  I looked to Aldo, eyes wide, and then back at the camera.

  My mother reached to her shoulder and patted the man’s hand that stood behind her. “Juliano, please,” she said.

  It was my father. I placed a hand over my mouth.

  With that, he pulled something out from his pocket and handed it to my mother.

  My mother smiled and held up the item in front of the camera. It was a picture of Pirate Man. She tapped the photo in her hand. “This is a picture of your Uncle Aldo, Jewel. I don’t want you to be scared to go with him,” she said. “Or have any doubt. You can trust him, il mio dolce.” She smiled. “My sweet. Forgive my Italian; I forget that you can’t speak it yet.”

  She shifted in her seat, leaning in. “I’m afraid you won’t even know that I’m your mother, but I will tell you that you were born on the full moon of the summer solstice, you have a red crescent moon shaped birthmark, and it is on your right shoulder. Only very few people would know exactly where it is.”

  Aldo stopped the video and I shook my head no. She hadn’t finished speaking and I wanted to hear everything she had to say. Not just wanted to, needed to. I was a part of her and her voice soothed me.

  “You look just like your mother,” he said. “You must know that you are her daughter, no?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I know it’s her.” I realized my mother would have had no idea what I looked like when she’d made that video. She’d last seen me when I was only an infant. And she didn’t know I’d found the photo of her holding me. It made sense that she doubted that I would believe her. “Play more please, Uncle Aldo,” I said nodding to the camera.

  He smiled, looking satisfied, and then pressed play again. “Wherever your uncle has found you on this earth, go with him and he will bring you to us,” my mother said. “You aren’t safe, amore mio. I will explain everything when you get here.” She kissed her fingertips and then outstretched her arm.

  My father leaned down and pressed his face close to the camera. His soft green eyes, the color of olives, stared into the lens as if right at me. “Giulia, please forgive us for not protecting you better.” He bowed his head a moment, clearing his throat, and then looked back up. “Come home where you belong. We miss you.”

  The screen blurred into black and white, the crackle of static sounding out.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  By the time we reached my parents, I had weakened even more. After stumbling along with Uncle Aldo for a while, he finally had to carry me for what seemed like an hour.

  Feverish and shivering from bone wracking chills to raging hot flashes, I clung to him while he took the last few steps over a cobblestone walkway. His hard soled shoes clacked into the silence of the night at a fast pace. Reaching an arched doorway, he kicked it until the man I recognized through hazy eyes as my father, flung the door open. Uncle Aldo first handed me over to him, and then slipped my backpack with my dagger over my father’s shoulder.

  My mother lunged from behind my father, popping into view from around his shoulder. With a squeal, she gripped my father’s wrist. She gazed at me with tear filled eyes and a beaming smile.

  “I can’t believe it! You’re finally home, amore mio.” She clapped her hands together and then leaned down to kiss my forehead. She stared at me, and then crinkled her brow. “Amore, you are sick?”

  I nodded.

  “Dio mio.” She looked to my father. “Thank God he found her before it’s too late. Let’s get her upstairs.”

  I fought to keep my eyes open, a sinking feeling creeping over me. I didn’t know what was happening to me and the words ‘before it’s too late,’ made a lump grow in my throat that I couldn’t swallow back.

  A sea of unfamiliar faces looked over my father’s shoulder. I leaned into Juliano’s chest inhaling his woodsy scent. I’d only just met him, but I already felt safe in his arms.

  “Who are all these people?” I asked, my voice just above a whisper.

  “Our family,” he said, looking down at me with a smile. “Tomorrow’s your birthday, but don’t worry about that right now. You need to rest.”

  Angelina brushed the damp hair back from my face. “They are here for you, Jewel. I’m sure it’s overwhelming, but they all wanted to be here. This is the last night before your birthday…and we could only hope and pray you would come home safely. Tonight was our last hope, so we—all of us—gathered to pray.” She turned to hug my uncle. “Your return is an answer to our prayers.”

  Juliano carried me through the swarming crowd and my mother shooed them back, parting the group for us to pass. Heads popped up, one behind the next, seeming eager to steal a better look at me. My head spun, the large room turned blurry. I wished I could stay and meet my new family, but my body trembled in revolt.

  Carrying me up two flights of stairs followed closely by Angelina, Juliano brought me into a bedroom and placed me down on a soft bed. “Welcome home, my baby.” He squeezed my hand with a smile, and bent over to kiss my forehead. “I’ll leave you to talk with your mother, but we will chat in the morning. You have been missed more than you know,” he said, and then turned, leaving Angelina and me alone. Although I felt nauseous, it felt good to hear those words; to know for sure I was wanted by them.

  The bed was covered in a white duvet with cushions the color of a summer meadow. I sank into it with a sigh, completely wiped, the scent of lilacs surrounding me. I kept replaying Angelina’s words in my head…before it’s too late. I started
to shake, a mix of fear and sickness overwhelming me. Tears sprung to my eyes, and rolled down my cheeks.

  She placed a cool cloth across my forehead, and then grasped my arm gently. “You’re safe now. I’m not going to leave you.” The lines between her brows deepened.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  Another wave of nausea washed over me. I knew it wasn’t just an ordinary flu, I knew something serious was happening to me. It hit me that maybe it was too late and that maybe I wouldn’t even make it until morning. I tried to calm down. Angelina said you’re safe.

  Cradling my chin in her hand, Angelina sighed, “Things are happening to you that are hard to explain, but after tomorrow it’ll all make sense.” She reached over me, tugged the edge of the duvet from the far side of the bed, and wrapped it around me.

  I groaned, pinching my eyes shut, overwhelmed with the fear of what was happening to me. Opening my eyes, I dragged in a deep, shaky breath. “You can tell me. I already know about the whole Spectral thing.” A part of me didn’t want to know the details, afraid I’d pass out and die from fear itself.

  Angelina’s eyes glistened with tears, and then she shook her head. “This was not supposed to happen like this.” She sat on the bed next me and picked my hand up into hers. “Have you been exposed to anyone using powers against you?”

  I nodded.

  Angelina’s eyes swelled. “And did you try to use those powers?”

  I looked at her a moment and then nodded again, slowly this time.

  She inhaled a sharp breath, and then clasped her hand over her mouth. Her reaction sent my stomach into a nosedive. Maybe it’s too late after all.

  Sighing, she patted my hand. “All of this is new to us, too. But from what I’ve read, you shouldn’t be exposed to powers until after you’ve been through your quickening. Because it—” She paused and gave me a sympathetic smile. “Makes things happen too fast. That, coupled with the changes you’re already going through, will make it too hard for you to handle.”

  Oh, God I am dying. I pulled my lower lip between my teeth and closed my eyes. I couldn’t die. I had to save Roman, and I’d just met my real family. I had too much to live for.

  She smoothed my damp hair back with her hand and looked at me, a mixture of sadness and fear in her eyes. “I thought you were sick because your body is going through changes now, but it must also be because you’ve been exposed to powers too early, and then…using them…it’s just way too much for a regular girl.”

  A regular girl? Regular was what I’d dreamed of being my whole life. It sounded like the perfect fantasy. I was anything but regular.

  She lifted the cloth away from my head, and then pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. Her eyebrows creased together. “You’re burning up. Let me run you a cool bath.”

  I slowly brought my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them as she walked to the adjoining bathroom and started to run the bath water. Angelina waited for me outside the door, hovering like I was a newborn until I got out of the tub and put on the fresh clothes she’d laid out for me. I was surprised to see white Abercrombie sweats with a matching hoodie. At least Angelina seemed to have some clue about fashion…and at least it wasn’t pink.

  It took everything in me to get dressed and hobble back to bed. My teeth chattered wildly after the cool bath, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I was burning up again.

  A huge bowl of pasta with tomato sauce waited on the nightstand for me, but I shook my head, my appetite totally gone. Groaning, I crawled back into bed. I hated to waste one minute on sleep. There were a million things I wanted to tell Angelina, and a zillion more questions I wanted to ask her, but my throat went dry, my body limp.

  “Go to sleep, honey,” she said while she ran a soft brush through my wet hair. “You’ll need all the rest you can get, because we aren’t able to wait until morning for your accelerazione.”

  I half opened my eyes, and raised a surprised eyebrow. “Huh?”

  She took my hand in hers and squeezed. “Your quickening, amore mio. With the way you’re feeling, we can’t wait that long. We must start at the very moment it turns to your birthday. At midnight.”

  ***

  My brief sleep was tormented by crazy nightmares. Flashes of light raced across the horizon until everything moved like a movie on fast-forward. Gray clouds scuttled quickly across a crimson sky, faces leered at me through the crowd—shifting, changing—from happy squeals to menacing laughs.

  Next, I saw myself as a child, spinning carelessly around on a carousel at the fair. I laughed while holding the golden metal reins of the white horse. The laughter and cheers of the other children saturated the air around me, the taste of cotton candy still fresh in my mouth. The carny worker suddenly shrieked and then the carousel sped up at a steady pace until it whipped around uncontrollably, wind rushing in my ears. I gripped the metal reigns, searching for my real parents in the sea of swift moving faces.

  My parents held their hands out to me, alarm in their eyes, but oddly, as the carousel spun; other faces loomed up around me, encircling the carousel. Aunt Eva’s red painted nails reached out to grab me.

  “True!” Karina called out to me. She was the only mother I’d ever known, but it wasn’t her face that I wanted to see.

  And then I saw Massimo glaring at me, his raspberry birthmark standing out through the disarray. I spun and spun, their faces a whipping, mesmerizing blur until I saw Grandma Raine. She reached out her hand, the one steady visual intertwined within the chaos. Her hand moved toward me through the distortion of color, until she touched my horse, causing it to come to life and rear up with a screaming whinny. The carousel suddenly stopped.

  “Jewel!”

  I bolted upright in bed at the sound of my mother’s voice screaming my name. She stood beside the bed, her eyes full of panic. I reminded myself it had only been a bad dream. I rubbed my eyes, still weak and shaking. I actually felt worse than before I’d dozed off, if that were possible.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, in between a fit of coughing.

  “The building has been breached. We have to go!” My father stood under the door frame, hair rumpled and face serious. I nodded and got out of bed, but stumbled forward, my head pounded and seemed to have a pulse of its own. He leapt forward and caught me by the elbow. “Easy, honey.” His words were soft, gentle, but the expression in his eyes was anything but. He handed me back to my mother, turned back around, and stared out the bedroom door, eyes darting from side to side.

  “What’s going on? Breached by who?”

  “The Russian coven,” he said, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “They want you back. I’m not sure how they’re tracking you. But there’s no time. We just have to go.”

  I shuddered as Angelina draped my arm around her shoulder and we headed down the stairs behind my father. The panicked voices from the room below and the muted screams seeping in from outside grew louder, looming around us. We somehow surged through the panicked crowd that was rushing around checking windows and nodding to us as we passed.

  “We’ve fought off the ones who made it into the hall downstairs, but there are others outside,” Juliano said with a growl over his shoulder. “It’s only a matter of time before they’ll get through, too. We can’t chance it. Keep your head down.” He ran his hand through his auburn hair as we walked. “Our covens are at war. This isn’t good—it’s bound to alert the Augusti Forza.”

  The sound of those two words made my legs crumble, and I stumbled forward again, my weight pulling Angelina with me. Juliano dashed back to help. He steadied us, and slung my other arm over his shoulder. We headed outside and around to the back of the house toward the water. Except this time the night wasn’t silent like when I’d arrived. Snapping and sizzling sounds mixed in with screams all around; so many screams that it sounded connected into one long stream that made me shudder. I wondered if it were Dmitri and others like him, killing people in our coven to get to me
.

  A man and a woman flanked us as we pushed through, squeezing forward, trying to go unnoticed.

  “They’re with us,” Angelina told me, nodding to the couple.

  Another man leapt through the air to my right as though he were flying, and then landed on somebody with a sickening growl. Debris swirled at the feet of a woman in the distance. Raising her hands with a squeal, she propelled the dirt out in a surge toward a man charging at her. He yelled out as he flew backward off his feet.

  Through the confusion, a wave of guilt rushed over me knowing that everything was my fault. People were wounded, probably dying—fighting over me because of what I could offer them. Still, a fierce sense of survival rushed through me and I straightened my shoulders through my relentless shivers, finding the strength to push through.

  A speedboat floated in the water at the end of the yard, motor running. Uncle Aldo stood behind the wheel, while several men stood guard in front of the boat.

  “Just a few more steps, amore mio,” my mother said, pointing to the boat with her free hand.

  A woman fell behind us, and stumbled forward. She reached toward us as I heard a loud crackling sound. She shuddered violently as though having a seizure, and then collapsed on the ground.

  I gasped but my parents urged me forward, Angelina looking satisfied. “They think they are better than us, but our coven has many powers, too,” she said. “Don’t look back anymore.”

  “You’ve seen enough already,” Juliano added. He lifted me over the edge of the boat, placing me inside. A wave of déjà vu washed over me—the running, the hiding—it was all too familiar. I was tired of it all.

  With a sigh, I crawled across the hard back seat, and collapsed. I didn’t recognize anyone that belonged to the Russian coven in the blur of faces that were fighting as we’d walked through. I figured they were the ones Aunt Eva had said would show up for my quickening.

  Angelina and Juliano jumped in and surrounded me like bookends. I couldn’t help but wonder what their power was. I was sure they were purposely not using it in front of me because of my condition. Uncle Aldo pulled the lever straight down until the boat lurched, speeding off to another location. The wind whipped across my face as the motor roared into high gear. Along the way, I watched my mother make a phone call from her cell. I didn’t understand a word since she spoke in Italian, but her words were frantic, the lines between her brows deep.