Devoted (Book Two, Caylin's Story)

by S. J. West

  Andre is standing with us now. He drapes his coat over my shoulders before I can even make a protest. His eyes are immediately drawn to the interior of the boathouse.

  “Oh, Caylin,” Andre says sympathetically, surveying the damage, “I am so sorry. I promise you that whoever did this will be made to pay.”

  I feel like I’m about to breakdown, and I don’t want either of them to witness it.

  “I’ll go get some stuff so we can start cleaning,” I tell them both as I phase into the house.

  I phase directly into the laundry room where we keep most of our cleaning supplies. I take the coat Andre gave me off and lay it on top of the washing machine. I grab a bucket from the supply closet, some bleach, a couple of spray bottles of cleaning solution and a stack of old rags. I look down at it all and realize it’s not going to be enough. The red paint completely covers every wall, even the floor and ceiling. There’s no way it can be removed no matter how much scrubbing we do.

  Years of work are gone in what probably only took minutes to destroy. But it wasn’t just the fact that it was all gone that was bothering me. It was the thought of someone going into what had been my safe zone and maliciously destroying what I held dear. The history of my family had been stored in those paintings and drawings. Now, it was gone. I could never replace what had been taken from me.

  I feel the tears come and am helpless to stop them. I detest the fact that I’m letting whomever did this to me win even this small victory.

  I feel a gentle hand rest on my shoulder and know whom it is without needing to turn around.

  “They destroyed everything, Aiden,” I say, closing my eyes and lowering my head, feeling the warm tears I shed land on my hands propped on top of the counter.

  Aiden squeezes my shoulder in sympathy.

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  I take in a deep breath and turn towards Aiden. He brings me into the shelter of his embrace providing me a safe place to unburden my sorrow. I let the anguish over my loss consume me and relinquish the physical evidence of my grief all over the front of Aiden’s shirt. He doesn’t seem to mind though.

  At one point, he picks me up into his arms as I continue to cry. I faintly feel him sit down and hold me against him as he rocks me back and forth in his arms. He begins to hum a tune, presumably to help calm my nerves. But, his humming has a strange effect on me. It makes me giggle.

  I raise my head from his shoulder and notice we’re in my room now sitting in a rocking chair I recognize, but I’m not sure how it got here.

  I look at Aiden and he stops humming.

  “What?” he asks as I just stare at him.

  “You were right,” I tell him. “You aren’t perfect. Are you tone deaf or something?”

  Aiden smiles, looking a little embarrassed.

  “That could very well be the problem,” Aiden admits. “I don’t think I was built to sing, just fight.”

  I look at the white rocking chair we’re sitting in.

  “I’ve seen this chair before,” I tell him. “When I was in the vessels’ inner realm, I saw myself rocking our baby girl in it. Where did it come from?”

  “The nursery.”

  “Nursery?”

  “In the home I built us in Colorado, there’s a nursery,” Aiden says, gently smoothing the wet strands of my hair away from my tear stained face. “I assumed we would need one at some point.”

  “Yes,” I agree, finding a reason to smile, “we will.”

  I rest my head back on Aiden’s shoulder, and he continues to rock me but thankfully refrains from trying to hum anymore.

  At some point, my physical and emotional exhaustion catches up with me, and I fall into a dreamless sleep in Aiden’s arms.

  When I wake up, the sun is shining through my bedroom window, and I’m lying in my bed safely tucked underneath my covers. I have to assume Aiden put me in bed after I fell asleep on him. I notice a folded piece of white paper sitting on top of my phone with “Open Me” written on the front.

  I pick the note up and read what’s written on the inside.

  Good morning, Beautiful,

  I hope you slept well and had sweet dreams. Text me when you are up and dressed for the day. We have something to show you.

  Love,

  Aiden

  I’ve concluded after yesterday that whenever Aiden mentions ‘we’ he’s referring to himself and my chosen. I get out of bed and shower quickly to get ready for my day. I silently pray it’s a better day than the day before.

  Once I’m dressed, I text Aiden. He immediately texts me back and asks me to come down to my studio.

  But come to the door and knock on it when you’re here.

  I assume Aiden and the others probably worked through the night to repair the damage that was done by my intruder. I phase down and knock on the door of the boathouse.

  I hear someone, who sounds like Brutus, say “She’s here!”

  There’s the faint sound of other voices in the room until finally the door is opened by Aiden. He’s still wearing the same clothes from the night before, black t-shirt and jeans, but they’re smeared with spots of purple and green paint. He steps out of the building quickly like he doesn’t want me to see what’s inside yet.

  He smiles and I feel like the Heavens themselves have opened up to bestow the light of pure joy on me.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” he says, leaning his head down to give me a kiss. He pulls back and asks, “Are you ready for a surprise this morning?”

  “Depends,” I say apprehensively. “Is it a good one? Because I don’t think I can take another bad one after yesterday.”

  Aiden’s grin widens. “I think so. But, I guess you’ll have to be the judge of that for yourself. Close your eyes and give me one of your hands. And no peeking until I tell you to open your eyes.”

  It seems like an odd request, but I trust Aiden.

  I close my eyes and hold out my right hand for him to take.

  I feel him take my hand into one of his and hear him open the door to the boathouse.

  He leads me into the building, and I instantly smell the scent of fresh paint.

  We don’t walk into the room too far, just a couple of steps, before Aiden tells me to stop.

  “Ok, open your eyes,” he tells me.

  As soon as I open my eyes, my heart becomes overwhelmed with emotion by what I see. I feel like I’m having a moment of sensory overload and decide to concentrate on one thing at a time. I look at the floor first.

  It’s painted as a 3D image of a field of lavender that stretches on and on in an illusion that it goes on forever.

  “I did that,” Aiden tells me. “But I’m going to have to wait for the paint to dry before I can finish it.”

  It’s then I notice we are standing on the only patch of floor that isn’t painted.

  I look around the room and notice almost all of my chosen Watchers are standing on plank wood platforms about a foot off the floor and twice as wide in front of their respective walls. Presumably, this gave Aiden free reign to paint the floor beneath them.

  To the left of me stands Brutus. The wall behind him is painted with a vivid depiction of the blue-green Mediterranean Sea where his home is. The water meets a rocky shoreline in a layer of white sea foam.

  On the long wall opposite me is Daniel’s mural of a river flowing through an array of lush, green rolling hills with steep cliffs. A fisherman wearing a pointed bamboo hat sits on a wooden platform where he’s fishing with trained cormorant birds.

  On the short wall to the right of Daniel is Desmond. His painting is of a loch in between twin mountain ranges covered by vibrant green trees. A mysterious white mist weaves its way between the two peaks like a serpent.

  I have to strain to see Andre’s painting which is on the same wall as the door. It’s a painting of a Venetian canal replete with gondolas and having the same depth of field as the rest of the paintings in the room making me feel like I could actually step inside a
ny of them and get lost within the terrain being depicted.

  I see Jered standing beside Andre on the same platform. He points up towards the ceiling and smiles. I look up and smile too.

  On the ceiling is a mural of puffy clouds on a bright sunny day. It’s one of those days where everything seems right and perfect in the world even if it isn’t. And just like real clouds, you can just make out shapes from some of them. Two in particular catch my attention. If you look really hard, you can see me and Aiden kissing.

  I lift a shaky hand to my lips and feel the threat of tears as I take in all of their hard work.

  “There wasn’t any way we could get rid of the red paint completely,” Aiden tells me. “So we decided to cover it up with something from each of us so you wouldn’t be reminded of what they did.”

  I pull myself together enough to ask, “Where’s Slade?”

  Aiden lets out a half laugh. “His contribution was the priming.”

  “Slade couldn’t paint a stick man straight if his life depended on it,” Desmond tells me. “Feel lucky he knows his limitations.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I tell them all. “This is…so much more than I ever would have expected you to do for me. Thank you so much for making this a happy place again. I will treasure this gift for as long as I live.”

  “And we plan to make sure that’s a long time,” Andre tells me.

  “Yes,” Aiden agrees, wrapping his arms around me from behind and resting his chin on my shoulder to whisper in my ear, “a very long long time, beautiful.”

  I sigh, feeling content and happy again.

  I pray that the feeling lasts…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I invite everyone into the house for breakfast. I feel sure my dad won’t mind the extra company. Slade must see us going in because he phases over right before we reach the back door.

  “Is it eating time?” Slade asks. “I’m starving.”

  “Are Lavern and Shirley hungry?” Desmond asks.

  “Lavern and Shirley?” I ask in return, completely clueless to who Desmond is talking about.

  Slade raises his arms and pops up his biceps.

  “Lavern,” he says kissing the right bicep, “and Shirley,” he finishes, kissing the left one.

  “Not conceited at all,” Daniel says with a roll of his eyes at Slade.

  When we walk inside the house, I get one extra Watcher for breakfast that I wasn’t expecting.

  Uncle Malcolm is sitting at the dining table holding Mae in his lap as she feeds him a forkful of omelet.

  “Well, look what the cat drug in,” Desmond says good-naturedly to Uncle Malcolm.

  “I didn’t want you boys to think I was down for the count,” Uncle Malcolm tells them.

  “We never thought that, Malcolm,” Andre says, walking up to Uncle Malcolm and shaking his hand. “We’re just glad to see you back on your feet.”

  “How are you even walking and talking?” Slade asks, for once truly amazed by someone other than himself. “Isn’t the pain driving you crazy?”

  “It’s manageable,” Uncle Malcolm answers, glancing in my direction because he knows I’m the only one who truly understands the pain he’s suffering.

  He’s not lying though. To him the pain is ‘manageable’, but to a lesser person it would be unbearable.

  I let go of Aiden’s hand to go to him. I hug him around the back of the neck and kiss his cheek.

  “It’s good to have you here,” I tell him.

  He pats my overlapped hands on his chest.

  “Stop worrying about me,” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

  I kiss him on the cheek one more time, which earns me a smile.

  My mom walks down the stairs. Her hair is still wet from a shower and she has no make-up on, but somehow she still manages to be the most beautiful woman I know.

  “I think trying to take care of you has become a full time job for the women in this family,” my mom tells Uncle Malcolm as Mae tries to feed him another forkful of omelet from his plate.

  “Well, I could think of worse ways to live out the remaining days of my life,” Uncle Malcolm replies before opening his mouth to accept Mae’s offering of food.

  My mother and I exchange brief glances because we both know Uncle Malcolm’s life will be far longer than he knows.

  My mother comes to me and hugs me.

  “I heard what happened,” she says as she pulls away. “Are you ok?”

  I nod. “Yes.” I look at my Watchers and smile. “I’m a lot better now.”

  “Good,” my dad says from the kitchen as he flips an omelet in the frying pan on the stove. “Then you and Aiden can come in here and cut up some more vegetables for the rest of the omelets.”

  Aiden and I do as my father requests, and eventually we get everyone a plate filled with food in front of them.

  I notice Will missing from breakfast and ask my dad about it.

  “I think yesterday is the first day he’s had to deal with being different from everyone else,” my dad says.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I guess everyone knows we’re not your typical family now.”

  “No,” Uncle Malcolm says from the table, “they don’t.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “A lot of them saw us phase and fight at the school.”

  “Apparently, you haven’t seen the latest news on the tragedy,” Uncle Malcolm says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a methane gas leak at the school, at least that’s what the media is reporting. It caused some of the students to hallucinate and see things that didn’t actually happen,” my Uncle Malcolm says. “It even caused some of them to run into a burning building instead of out of it.”

  “But what about the girls from Leah’s swim team that I phased to Mama Lynn’s house?”

  “Oh, Chandler took care of those lovelies,” Desmond informs me.

  “Took care of them?” I ask apprehensively. “How?”

  “He played them a sweet tune that made them forget the last 24 hours of their lives,” Daniel tells me. “We took them home and now they just think the memory loss is a by-product of methane poisoning.”

  “So, no one knows about us?” I ask in amazement.

  “No,” Uncle Malcolm assures me. “No one knows anything. And any evidence …student cellphones, surveillance cameras…was wiped clean by Joshua.”

  I’m relieved that our true identities haven’t been revealed to the general population, but I still feel a sense of guilt over the lives that were lost.

  “I’m going to go talk to Will,” I tell everyone.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Aiden asks.

  I shake my head. “No. I think he needs his big sister right now.”

  I phase up to Will’s room and knock on his door.

  “Come in,” I hear him say.

  When I go into his room, I find Will sitting on his bed with his phone in his hands just staring down at it. I close his door behind me and go sit on the bed with him.

  “What’s up, little bro? Why have you been cooped up in your room since yesterday?”

  “I think she’s dead.”

  It takes me a minute, but I soon realize whom Will is talking about.

  “Katie Ann? Why do you think that?”

  Will holds up his phone. “Because she hasn’t replied to any of the texts I’ve sent her. She would have replied back by now if she was alive, KK.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not proof, Will. Have you tried to call her?”

  “I’ve called her number, but I just get sent straight to her voice mail.”

  “Have you tried to call her parents?”

  “I don’t know their number.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell him before I phase to my room to grab the student directory from the desk. When I phase back to Will’s room, I’ve already found Katie Ann’s mom’s phone number.

  “Here, hand me your phone,” I tell him.

  Wil
l hands it to me, and I call Katie Ann’s mom.

  After a few rings, she finally answers.

  “Hi, Mrs. Parish. This is Caylin Cole. I’m Will Cole’s sister…”

  I go on to ask about Katie Ann’s welfare and learn that she is alive and has been in the hospital under observation all night. Apparently, she was knocked unconscious in a fall during the student mass exodus from the school, but someone found her and brought her to the hospital.

  I quickly tell Will this information, and he falls back on his bed breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Please tell Katie Ann that she’s in our prayers, Mrs. Parish,” I say. “And if she can, I think my brother would appreciate a call from her when she’s well enough.”

  Mrs. Parish assures me that either Katie Ann or she will give my brother a call to let him know when she’s well enough to have visitors.

  After I end the call, Will does something he almost never does. He gives me a hug.

  “Thank you, KK,” Will says squeezing me tightly. “Thank you for calling.”

  I hug him back because I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to again.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Will lets me go and sits back to look at me.

  “Can I ask you for one more favor?”

  “What?” I ask hesitantly.

  “Could you drive me into town today? I still need to get mom’s birthday present.”

  I suddenly realize I need to get mom something too. My gift was unceremoniously destroyed.

  “Sure, I can do that. But why don’t we go down to breakfast first? Then I’ll take you. Did you want to go somewhere in particular?”

  “Yeah, Clive Jewelers.”

  “Just how much money did you win the other night?” I ask, knowing anything at Clive’s will be expensive.

  “Enough,” Will says vaguely as he stands from the bed. “Come on. Let’s go eat. I haven’t had any food since lunch yesterday.”

  As Will and I are heading out of his room, we see Tristan sitting at the head of the stairs. He seems to be listening to the others talking as they have breakfast but doesn’t seem to have any plans to join them.