by Kallysten
Second Vision of Destiny
Lydia
By Kallysten
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2009 Kallysten
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The right of Kallysten to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First Published October 2009
First Edition
All characters in this publication are purely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Edited by Mary S.
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Second Vision of Destiny – Lydia
A half moon was just rising over the northern coastline when Daisy left Sam Woods on the balcony. She glanced back as she passed the threshold of the French doors into the living room and almost tripped over her own feet when she realized he was looking at her.
There was something in his eyes, maybe hopeful, maybe wistful, and she had half a mind to turn back and talk with him a little longer. Surely, they could find other things to talk about than the future. What else did seers talk about? The TV show on which he regularly appeared? The book he had written about his experience? She hadn’t watched the show more than a couple of times and hadn’t read the book, so she wouldn’t have much to say there. And it wasn’t as though he didn’t know what she thought about what he did.
Feeling silly, she hurried back to her other guests.
She still thought it was ridiculous. Life was about making choices when confronted to unexpected situations. If a seer like Woods told you beforehand what you were supposed to do, where was your free will? She could have accepted it, maybe, if his visions, as he called them, showed people matters of life and death. Surely, they could all live without knowing in advance what man or woman they would end up with.
She should have found a way to refuse to host this party, she thought yet again, as she stepped into the dining room where her friends were gathered around the refreshment table. She could have given Woods’ contact number to one of them and let them arrange the séance. Then, she wouldn’t have needed to witness any of it, or see Woods again. There had been enough conflict between them when they had first met at her sister’s wedding without adding oil to the fire by organizing this whole thing.
Lydia was the first to notice her return. “Is he ready for the next person?”
“He is. Did you all decide who’s going?”
Lydia smoothed her hands down the sides of her dress. A tense smile lit up her pretty face but did not reach her voice when she said, “I’ll go.”
She glanced at Jack as she said it. Daisy followed her eyes. Jack’s expression was inscrutable, but it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think he didn’t like the idea of his girlfriend kissing another man. He and Lydia had been together for a few years already and they were happy—but Lydia had confided to Daisy that he tended to get jealous about little things, seeing any man she talked to as a potential threat despite he reassurances that she loved him. He closed himself off when that happened, giving Lydia the cold shoulder until he realized he was being an idiot and apologized for it. Daisy had often wondered how long Lydia would put up with it.
Lydia started toward the living room, taking only two steps before she turned back toward Jack, holding out her hand to him. “Will you come with me?”
A chill fell on the room when Jack didn’t respond immediately. Daisy held her breath, scrambling to find something to say, something to break the tension and reassure Jack. Before she could, however, he raised his hand to take Lydia's. His shoulders were stiff, his face still blank, but he did accompany her to the attached living room.
Small talk started again as they stepped away. Hands reached toward the amuse-bouche and wine. Daisy looked critically at the table. Maybe she ought to bring in the next tray.
Excusing herself to her guests, she walked into the kitchen. She paused at the threshold when she realized Alicia was sitting at the breakfast table. Her face was turned to the window on her right, and Daisy wondered how much she could see of the ocean down below.
“Alicia? You’re OK, honey?”
Her quiet words startled Alicia, who jumped in her seat and whipped her eyes to look at Daisy. The glass she was rolling back and forth between her fingers tipped over and hit the woven placemat with a muted thud. Thankfully, it had been empty.
“Please don’t ask me about it.” Her wide eyes begged Daisy as much as her words. “He said we’d forget faster if we tried to remember too much.”
With a calming gesture of her right hand, Daisy sat across from her. “I won’t, I promise. Just tell me if you’re OK. You look a little—”
“Ben.” Alicia covered her mouth with her fingers. She looked equally surprised and horrified to have blurted out their friend’s name. After the shock had registered, she hunched her shoulders and grinned. “I’ll end up with Ben.”
Daisy returned the smile earnestly and reached for Alicia’s fingers on the table. She squeezed them for an instant. “I told you he liked you a lot.”
Color rose in Alicia’s cheeks, and she chuckled. “I guess he does. Did you tell him I like him, too?”
Rolling her eyes, Daisy snorted. “Is this high school? Are you two going to start exchanging notes beneath your desks?”
Alicia’s chuckle turned into full out laughter. It was nice to hear her laugh again, and for the first time, Daisy was glad she had caved in and asked Woods to see for her friends.
“I think…” Alicia paused and looked through the window again, out into the night. Far in the distance, a single firework blossomed in the sky, the golden trails falling down to the ocean. “I think maybe I could…” She looked back at Daisy, her head tilted to one side, spots of color high on her cheeks. “You said Ben is at the hospital tonight?”
Daisy struggled not to grin. Getting to her feet, she went to the fridge and pulled out a large white box. She set it on the table in front of Alicia, who looked at her questioningly.
“He’s at the hospital, yes. What a way for the ER doctors and nurses to spend New Year’s Eve. I bet they could use some cheering up.”
Understanding dawning on her features and lighting them up brightly, Alicia slid the tip of her finger beneath the edge of the lid and pulled it up, revealing the large sheet cake, its white icing and the colorful fireworks drawn around the words “Happy New Year!”
“What about the party?” Alicia asked, a slight frown darkening her features. “I can’t just leave with your dessert!”
Daisy glanced back toward the living room, where laughter was rising like sparks of firecrackers. “We’ll be fine. There’s plenty in the fridge still. But before you leave…” She eyed the empty glass in front of Alicia. Was it the second glass she had had tonight, or the third? “Do me a favor and eat something, OK? And there’s juice in the fridge. I’m not letting you drive away and end up in the ER as pati
ent.”
With a slight shake of her head, Alicia stood and enfolded her in a hug. “You’re the best friend ever, do you know that?”
Daisy returned the hug and laughed. “If I were such a good friend, I’d have found a way to push you and Ben together long ago. Come on, help me bring more food to the dining room.”
Alicia took a tray of appetizers while Daisy carried a bottle of orange juice in each hand, and they returned to their friends. Everyone cheered at their arrival, having apparently munched their way through most of the food on the table already.
“Whose turn is it?” Alicia asked, looking around the group as though trying to see who was missing. “Jack’s? I didn’t think he’d do it.”
“Lydia’s,” Cathleen said. “Jack went for moral support. I doubt he’ll go through with it.”
There were a few nods around the group. Jack had only been second to Daisy in arguing that none of them needed Woods’ services.
“I don’t even think he wanted Lydia to do it,” Brad said. He raised a glass to his mouth but did little more than wet his lips. “He didn’t look happy at all when she said she’d do it.”
“He didn’t say anything, though,” his girlfriend Joan said with a slight frown at him. She seemed to be asking if he would keep quiet like Jack or ask her not to go through with it if he disagreed.
He shrugged. “Jack’s Jack.”
A murmur of assent rose through the group. They had all known Jack for years, but even now, he remained something of a mystery to most of them. Daisy turned toward the living room, and winced when, through the large archway that linked the two rooms, she saw Jack’s silhouette in front of the French windows. He had to be able to hear everything they were saying.
“So who’s next?” she asked, more to change the subject than because she really cared about the answer.
Joan quickly answered “Me,” but Mike said, a laugh just on the edge of his words, “if I don’t go soon, I’m not sure I’ll go at all.”
Leaving them to decide the order in which they’d go, Daisy walked back to the living room. Jack stood in front of the closed balcony windows, hands in his jeans’ pockets, his feet apart in a solid stance. His gaze remained on what was happening on the balcony except to flit quickly toward Daisy as she came to stand next to him.
“It shouldn’t take long,” she said in what she hoped was a soothing tone.
Jack shrugged his shoulders. For a long moment, they remained quiet, their friends’ voices drifting from the living room with an occasional burst of laughter. Daisy wished she could have reassured him, but she doubted anything she could say would help.
“It wouldn’t have changed anything if I had asked her not to do it,” he said out of the blue. “You know how she is.”
A pleading note in his last words and another quick glance at her made it clear that he needed an answer. Daisy patted his shoulder, feeling very awkward.
“I know, yes. She can be very stubborn.”
A faint smile tugged at Jack’s lips. “Stubborn? My darling Lydia? No, not at all.”
He glanced at Daisy and they both burst out laughing. Jack’s laughter faded very fast, however, and his gaze yet again returned to the balcony.
Behind the French doors, Lydia was sitting deep in a chair. Her hands were clasped and resting on her lap. As Daisy watched, she tilted her head back. With her eyes closed and her lips just parted, she almost looked asleep. What was she seeing, Daisy wondered as her eyes flitted back to Jack. His nervousness was thick enough to cut with a knife. This was only another one of the reasons why she hadn’t wanted to host this particular party. Nothing guaranteed that the two couples present that night would be shown a future in which they were still together. The last thing Daisy wanted was to see any of her friends hurt.
Holding in a sigh, she turned her eyes to the balcony again. She had avoided looking at Woods until now, but she found that she couldn’t anymore, her gaze drawn to him as surely as a moth to an open flame. She couldn’t see his face very well; turned down as it was, the light flowing out from the living room did little more than cast shadows over his features. She knew that he could see Lydia’s future as clearly as Lydia herself did, but he let nothing transpire of what the vision could be.
Daisy almost—just almost—wished she could have seen, too.
* * * *
Lydia’s last sunset was a vision of radiant beauty.
Her bare toes digging into the sand, where the sun hadn’t warmed it and pieces of broken shells were sometimes a little too sharp, she watched, with an eerie sense of finality, as the sun played with the ocean, progressively dropping closer and daring the waves to catch it—until they finally did, and pulled it down into their embrace, turning light and warmth to the coolness of dark. She hoped the waves held it tight and close so it wasn’t too scared.
She hoped Owen would hold her tight, too, when he killed her and gave her life again.
Renee, her boss, had waved her off when she had asked to leave work early that afternoon. Business was always slow on Halloween.
She had been sitting in the sand for hours, her arms wrapped around her legs, facing the ocean. There had been surfers in the waves when she first arrived, and a few teenagers playing Frisbee down the beach, far enough that their shouts and laughter had only come to her with the help of the wind, and even then the sound of the rolling waves had all but drowned them out.
As the evening had passed, the teenagers left first. She imagined they had gone home, complaining to each other that Halloween was for kids and they were too old for this crap—only to put on elaborate costumes and find each other again at one of their houses for a party. She had done as much when she had been a teen. She had dressed as a princess, a pirate, a cat—the year she had been mad at her parents for six months, she had dressed as a whore—but she didn’t think she had ever dressed as a vampire. She had always thought the fake fangs were tacky.
Only when the last crown of washed-out orange disappeared beyond the blue did she stand again, and brushed the cooling sand from her pants. Shoes in hand, she returned to her car, following the wet trails left by the surfers. She drove back to the city, trying not to think about what she was doing as she drove to Owen’s place
As she parked in the driveway, her hands were clenched tight on the wheel. She had to make a conscious effort to let go, shift the gear into park, and shut off the engine. Even then, she found that she couldn’t move, and she closed her eyes to get a grip on herself. This was the right decision. She knew it was. She had known even before Owen had ever asked. It seemed crazy when she thought about it, but she felt like she had always known that, one day, she would say yes to him. One day, she would leave everything she had ever been behind, and become someone new at his side. One day, she would go to him, and he would make her a vampire.
This day had come. She knew she was making the right decision. Just the same, she was scared. So much was going to change. She kept thinking of more ways her life would be different the next time she’d wake, more things she would lose and never be able to experience again. It would be worth it, though. She knew it would.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her door. Before she could step out, however, Owen was there, offering her his hand. She jumped, startled by his sudden appearance, but took his hand nonetheless. Cool fingers gently closed over her own and helped her out. Her hand looked like that of a child in his. It always did, and it always made her smile.
“You scared me!” she chided him. “How long have you been there?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders, and as usual his size made the gesture appear larger, somehow. At a few inches over six feet tall, he towered over her. He looked down at her with a lopsided grin.
“I heard the car,” he said by way of explanation, and Lydia knew him enough to hear what he wasn’t saying. He had been expecting her and hadn’t wanted to wait a minute longer than necessary.
Apprehension filled her all of a sudden, and she had t
o look away from him. Her gaze slid to the house behind him. Carved pumpkins stood at the end of each step leading to the front porch, glowing from the candles inside them.
“I didn’t think you’d celebrate Halloween,” she said without thinking.
Chuckling lightly, Owen brought the hand he still held to his lips for a quick kiss. “Because I’m a vamp?”
He led the way out of the driveway, and she linked her arm with his.
“No, not that. Because it’s not like you.”
They had reached the wooden fence that enclosed the backyard, giving it complete privacy. It must have been six-feet high, and while Owen could probably see over it, Lydia could not. She had never been through the gate Owen was now unlocking, and in truth she had never really wanted to. Owen’s studio and his art were inside the house, and those were what had attracted her to him.
“Not like me,” he mused aloud. With a gesture, he invited Lydia to go through the gate and followed after her, closing it behind them. “I guess it’s not, at that. I never cared much for Halloween, to tell the truth.”
“Then what’s with the pumpkins?”
He offered her his arm again, and she took it at once. Gravel crunched softly beneath their steps as they stepped forward on the path.
“There aren’t many houses down this street,” he said, “but a good half of them have kids. They get a kick out of knocking on my door even if I don’t open it. I leave a jar on the porch. I’m sure they brag at school that they got candy from a vampire.”
The path was lined with small solar lamps that cast pools of light on the white gravel, but it was the moon that allowed Lydia to make out his expression when she looked up at him. His green eyes were bright with amusement, and his smile was gentle. He truly was enjoying pleasing those kids, she realized, even if he would probably never talk to them.