by Celia Crown
It’s a start, but I got her to see that I’m not a threat to her, her brother, or their home.
We finish dinner with light talks and Jesse offers to do the dishes, but I knew that man is planning something. He always tells me how much he hates doing dishes because of the wet food swimming between his fingers, and now he’s voluntarily doing it.
He says this to let us spend more time together, with her still having Jesse as an escape if she wants to.
Charlotte is her name. I have to remind herself that she isn’t ‘the girl’ or ‘the kid.’ It’s rude of me to call her by anything that isn’t her name. I want to establish a good rapport with her.
She toys with her fingers; they are tiny and thin. My protective side glimmers at the need to make sure she eats her meals properly.
Given the history that I know about this family through Jesse’s reluctance to speak about it, anyone can come to the conclusion that they aren’t as close as they were before. Charlotte is young, and I think that she doesn’t have guidance to be a proper adult.
Some part of me thinks she is unaware that eating irregularly isn’t healthy.
“Um,” she murmurs as she twists her fingers.
“What is it?” I lower my voice. I try to make it as gentle and smooth as possible.
She swallows, “Thank you for lunch.”
I nod, smiling with no hostility to counter the permanent mean glare, “You’re welcome.”
Charlotte ducks her head. Her black hair covers her face, and she fidgets in her seat. She peers at me through her lashes and stills her nervous squirming to smile back briefly. It’s the same small and shaky smile, but it’s better than the glare and defensive posture from hours ago.
Then, she gets up from her seat and speedily walks out of the kitchen with a goodnight tossed over her shoulder to Jesse and me.
At least, she didn’t run.
Chapter Three
Charlotte
My eyes snap open, sweat pouring down my temple with my heart slamming against my chest. Blood pounds in my ears as my eyes search through the dark ceiling; the only source of light is the moon shining through my window.
The curtains are drawn for privacy, but the light still comes through.
I couldn’t get up from bed for a solid ten minutes. I just lay there with my eyes wide and breathing heavy. It’s only when I try to think back to what jerked me away in the first place to find that my hands can move.
Remembering back would be useless since I can’t find anything. The closest thing that I can get from this familiar déjà vu is the aftermath of nightmares. It’s the same feeling when I wake up from nightmares, but I would never remember them even if they just happened.
Maybe the initial shock wiped away any memories of it?
I blink the tiredness from my eyes, and my throat is dry with my cotton tongue scraping the roof of my mouth. I’m having some trouble breathing; it’s like something is sitting on the top of me, and the air is too thick in my room.
I step off the bed. The carpet fills in the space between my toes while the night air cools down my heated body.
A violent shiver runs down my spine. I tremble while rubbing my arms to get rid of the raised bumps on my skin. I run to the closet to yank out a sweater; it warms my upper body while my shorts leave my legs cold.
I ignore it. The only thing I need is a cup of water to soothe the soreness in my throat. Making less noise is impossible when I have two super soldiers sleeping right next door and in front of my room, I feel like I breathe loud when I sleep.
I hope I don’t wake them up with my heaving. It would be embarrassing for me to meet eyes with Alexander in the morning.
It’s an odd change for me. Yesterday’s dinner reduced the hostility in me about him. Jesse had asked me for dinner and advised me to be civil with Alexander, and I did what he asked with so much reluctance because I didn’t want to be anywhere near the man.
He may look scary, but he’s moving up on my list. He’s okay now, just above the line of antagonism.
How he moves up my list depends on how he acts; anything he does that I don’t like will automatically throw him down to the dislike section again.
His attractiveness has nothing to do with his advancing on my list.
I wave away those thoughts. My mouth has more pressing needs as I fill up a glass of water from the purifier tap. A tremor wrecks through my left hand, and I almost fell forward into the sink. Black dots persistently color my sight as I shake my head.
I knock the tap to shut off the water while I focus on keeping the black dots at bay; they’re spreading more and more as if they are trying to connect with each other.
It’s best that I get back to my room so I can lay down. This could be some physiological problem with my body. This experience feels similar to being standing up too quickly and the blood rushing up to make me dizzy. However, this persists for a while until it fades away.
I probably need to exercise. This is my body telling me to stop being so lazy and run a couple of laps around the house.
Gulping down the water, I leave no drop at the bottom of the glass. There is still a small amount of dryness in my throat, but it’s better than before, so I just leave it. I rather not have to run to the bathroom five times in one night for the bathroom. My footsteps must sound like construction drilling to my brother and Alexander.
What can I say? I’m a graceless girl.
When I look up from the glass, there is a figure by the living room curtains.
My body didn’t react; there is no fight or flight response. My heart isn’t trying to break through bones, and my magic isn’t coiling around me in a defensive mode. I’m not scared, and I’m not safe.
I feel nothing.
The figure giggles and I immediately know, it’s the voice from my head. The same annoying voice that makes me so utterly frightened of myself, scared of what I can do if I give into the voice with temptations that aren’t morally right.
I should feel offended and outrageous, but everything the voice says has a promise that it’s the right thing to do. The moral conflict in me gets more aggressive each day, and I struggle to differentiate what is right and what’s wrong.
Books I have read as a child described the hero saving the world as a good character and those who want to destroy it as bad. It’s all white and black; there is no grey in this scenario. It’s either one way or the other. Someone always ends up getting hurt, so no one truly wins.
“Hello,” the voice hums as its shadow swirls in a dance.
“Who are you?” I hiss, the iciness of my fingers frosts up the glass.
“Me?” It comes out of the shadows, “I’m you, silly.”
The exact replica of me stands face to face with me; my throat clamps up in confusion and hysteria. Every little detail about her is the same as the one I see in my reflections, even down to the color of my sapphire eyes.
The only difference is that the voice has no presence.
She doesn’t exist. My replica isn’t a real human being.
“Of course, I exist,” the voice snorts, fanning her hand and cupping my cheek with a bone-chilling hand.
“Do you feel that? I am as real as you can see it.”
The glass is ready to crack under my grip, “Who are you, and what do you want?”
She gushes. Her smile is alarmingly terrifying, “I’m waiting.”
“For what?” I narrow my eyes at her, taking a step back from her cold hand.
I think this is a dream and I need to wake up immediately, or I will be stuck here. This is too real to be a harmless dream, but I haven’t had those in a long time. It’s always a nightmare after a nightmare; I can never catch a break.
“Don’t you feel it?” She asks me that as if it’s her hand that we’re talking about right now. “The water escaping through your fingers, fading back to the receding ocean when it comes colliding into your feet again?”
I look down on my hands and my f
eet; they are coated in slime and sticky redness. My stomach drops, twisting as my hands tremble, and I search the ground to see where the blood is coming from. My ears are ringing.
There’s so much blood, just brushing on my bare feet in slow and hot floods. Bile rapidly circles in my throat and I attempt to keep it down by swallowing, but the metallic scent of copper is nauseating as I stumble back.
“Wouldn’t it be a nice welcome-home present for our dear brother with his last heartbeat?”
No. No, no, no.
I look around. The living room is the same as the kitchen. Nothing is alternated, so it means that I’m not in a dream or a hallucination because I’m aware of what I’m doing. This can’t be magic either since I would feel it.
“Charlotte!”
As if I am punched in my stomach, my eyes blur as my evil replica is be replaced with a wide chest. I gasp for air, struggling to stay on my feet as my knees threaten to buckle underneath me.
I blink the haziness around me, seeking for something familiar to ground me. The hands on my face are warm, almost a touch too hot for me to mistake them as ice coldness.
“Look at me,” a man’s deep voice orders, and I’m compelled to listen.
It’s not Jesse, but it’s Alexander.
He’s so close to me that I can see the brown specs in his eyes. I can feel the scent of his natural smell and the protectiveness that seeps from his muscles.
“What…” I stammer, my eyes darting to find the girl again, but she isn’t in the vicinity anymore.
There is no trace of her anywhere.
“Look at me,” Alexander said more firmly.
I obey him and shake uncontrollably. What I felt was not a dream; it’s something that truly scared me, and I haven’t felt this frightened since the first nightmare I had. I was young, alone, and unable to do anything to break away from the dream that kept me in the bed for days.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, turning my head side to side to search for injuries.
Where did that girl go? What kind of magic can replicate me with no presence or a trace of magic to indicate that it is anything but a fragment of my imagination?
“What happened?” He asks again.
I don’t know how to answer him, so I don’t. I simply stand there with his hands on my face, and I don’t feel the need to pull away. My body tells me he’s safe; he’s not going to hurt me, and I can’t walk away from him even if I wanted to. I need to be near him, or I won’t be able to breathe again. Being surrounded by his heat allows me to let my guard down just for a second.
Something about him makes me feel safe and protected.
I can’t remember the last time I felt anything remotely like this.
“Charlotte,” I hear Jesse on my side and his hand gripping my arm. “Everything’s okay, you’re fine. Don’t be scared.”
There are so many questions swimming in my head, and I want answers for all of them. Starting with why are they here? And, what makes them so concerned about me when I’m pretty sure I’m sort of calm considering what I just went through.
I’m not screaming bloody murder.
“You weren’t responding,” Alexander said, he tightens his grip on my face and my pulse jumps at our closeness.
I try to wiggle out of my grip, and he lets go. I silently thank him for not trying to suffocate me with another set of hands. Without another person breathing down my neck, I can feel many more things than I did before.
The coldness on my feet is the first thing I notice. It’s not the typical cool watery sensation if I dropped my glass; it’s a type of cold that makes dread settle deep in my guts. This had happened before when my magic got out of hand. It’s difficult to control it during nighttime.
I often wake up with a room covered in a layer of ice; cleaning up in the morning is a pain in the butt. The fire wouldn’t work because it would burn down the house, and steam won’t work either. My ice magic doesn’t thaw ice, so I found the only solution that works is to let my mind wander to happier times.
Watching a funny movie helps; my room is usually back to normal by the time I go in.
I thought I could keep this a secret; Jesse is going to be disappointed in me. He probably thinks I’m a mess because when I look up at him, his face is twisted into something horrible and I don’t have the heart to see it anymore.
The entire kitchen and living room are covered in a sheet of ice, glistening in the moon through the window and clouds of white puffing from every breath.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Jesse hugs me to his chest. I’m just too shocked to understand what is happening and how did it go from drinking water to me freezing the entire house.
I squirm out of his arms and bite the inside of my cheek, “I-I can fix it—”
Jesse picks me up to let my legs wrap around his waist as he holds me up. He pats my back in a comforting gesture, and it does nothing to calm the fear and guilt eating at me.
I hear him say, “Alex, thank you.”
Alexander doesn’t answer back, and I don’t see him with my head buried in Jesse’s shoulder, but his steps are right behind us as Jesse carries me back to my room.
I shiver and grip his shirt tighter. The common misconception about ice magic is that the users don’t feel any coldness, but they are wrong. Or I could be the one special case that feels the cold more than the people who are normal and witches.
I look up from Jesse’s shoulder and meet Alex’s eyes. He’s not angry, and he isn’t disgusted that I am what he fights when he is in battle. I know this because the news and journalists glorify the defeat of black magic witches, and it makes it harder for me to accept my identity as a witch knowing that my brother kills them.
He’s going to kill you, the voice sings, we have to kill him first.
“Go away,” I mutter, I’m exhausted, and I don’t have any patience to deal with the voice.
“Are you hearing voices?” Alexander questions; his tone sparks the obedient side of me.
I strongly ignore him, but Jesse doesn’t.
“Are you?” Jesse presses.
“No,” it’s a lie that easily comes out.
Alexander can tell, and Jesse can tell too, but they don’t force me to spill the truth, and I can't afford to tell them anything. I can deal with it. This whole thing started with my greedy desires. It’s a price that only I can pay; Jesse and Alexander shouldn’t be roped into this mess.
“Charlotte?” Jesse stops at the door of my room as I stare at the ground.
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
Jesse takes my answer, and I feel him nod at the side of my head, “Alright—”
“You are not fine,” Alexander snaps, stomping up to me, and I’m forced to look up at him.
It’s here again. The anxiety is back, and I feel the daunting pull of his animalistic prowess. I’m once again reminded of just how dangerous this man is and that my first instinct is right, he should not be anywhere near me.
I’ll die.
“I know that magic,” he grips my chin with his big hand, and Jesse doesn’t turn around.
I pray silently for him to not say it. I don’t want Jesse to be disappointed and leave again. Alexander is going to take him away from me.
See what I mean, the voice breathes, this foolish man has to go, and you’ll feel better after it’s done.
“It’s well above the level you should be at. You are treading on dangerous territory.” Alexander’s grip turns painful.
He doesn’t know, that’s a good thing for me. Alexander doesn’t know what I did, and it’s going to stay that way. I have to be careful around him. This man is too smart for his own good. There are things that should be kept a secret, and I would love for him to stop digging up the flowers that I planted as a façade above the disgusting blackness underneath it.
“Commander, stop.” Jesse turns around, and I’m faced with my bed.
It calls for me, and I can’t wait to bury my fac
e into my pillow and wake up from this dream. It’s never my intention to let Alexander know that I am a witch, and I had no intention of letting Jesse know what’s going on with me. This is not the normal behavior of a young girl. Some girls are too young to fully control their magic, but I’m old enough to do it.
I don’t have excuses to cloak it over his eyes.
Not alexander’s and not Jesse’s.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter again to both of them.
Jesse pats my back, “It’s okay. I’m not mad.”
“Goodnight, Alex.”
The door shuts softly, and Jesse walks me to the bed; the yielding mattress under my shoulder dips with the weight of my brother’s knees. He drops down on the bed and sighs, throwing the cover over us while running his hand through my hair.
I don’t remember if there was ever a memory of us being in the same bed. It’s odd but welcoming since his warmth brings a sense of familiarly and security.
We don’t say anything. We lay there waiting for sleep to take us as the night goes on. My eyes start to close at this incredible feeling of having someone playing with my hair and just being close to me. I never thought having human contact would be this wonderful.
“You can talk to me. You know that, right?” Jesse kisses my forehead.
I can’t. I can’t talk to him about what I have done. I don’t know how he would react if he found out his little sister is one of those witches that he kills.
Would he kill me too?
What a stupid question, the voice crackles, he won’t even hesitate. He’s not your brother anymore; he’s just a disposable human flesh for us to dig our hands into his intestines.
I squeeze my eyes shut, curling further into his body to block out the ringing noise in my head. The image of Jesse’s prone body on the ground with my hands ripping his heart out is devastatingly real. I keep my eyes shut to stop the tears from flowing.
This entire night has been too exhausting. I’m beat, and my control over what I’m feeling is waning.