Bloodstone (15 page)

Celestina, however, didn’t infer anything from the unsaid, only what I’d spoken aloud. She looked on either side of her, trying to make sense of what I’d just told her. “You’ve gotta be confused, Aunt Serena, because Mom wouldn’t—”

“I look in the mirror every day just like you,” I said. “I know what my identical twin looks like.” I turned to Nolan for some backup.

“She did everything your aunt said. Sorry, Celestina, but your mother…is a mean girl!”

I appreciated the pop culture reference, the attempt to lessen the blow might incur, and the sentiment behind it, even if it kind of didn’t fit in the context of the conversation. Still, I gave him points for trying. “She’s threatened,” I said. “She wants to make things difficult for me.”

“Mom doesn’t fight fair,” Celestina admitted and accepted the response without difficulty. “She told me…sometimes you have to do what it takes to win.”

My heart sank upon hearing my niece accept Alexis’s words without consternation. If that’s what her mother taught her while growing up, how could I convince Celestina to do otherwise as just a distant relative? What place did I have trying to refute her mother’s advice? A moment later, however, fury erupted inside me.

“She tried to kill me,” I said. “Again! Did I try to hurt her or steal from her or—”

“I get it, Aunt Serena. I do. But Mom, she’s—”

“A nutjob,” I said, for the first time verbally acknowledging the truth. Before now, I’d made excuses: her lack of a loving and rational upbringing, the sexual abuse she’d endured, that she’d raised a child…as a child. Those truths would mess up any person, but unfortunately, Alexis wasn’t the first person to experience those atrocities. Granted, I didn’t know anyone who’d suffered
all
of those horrible indignities, but with over seven billion people on the planet, Alexis couldn’t have been the only one…and even then, how many of those victims turned into murderers?

Celestina’s eyes once more turned vicious. “Mom is not a psycho!”

“You’re right,” I said, trying to control my temper. “Killing me once was a mistake. It could have happened to anyone. She even learned from her mistakes, right? She didn’t try it again. She just let four
werewolves
try to tear my arms and legs from my body.” I nodded with false modesty. “Much more humane.”

Celestina’s face trembled with anger. “I said, Mom wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh, so it was a shape shifter, pretending to be my sister, who was in turn, pretending to be me?” I found it difficult to keep my blood pressure from rising. “Sounds far-fetched, don’t you think?”

Pouting, Celestina crossed her arms across her chest and looked out the window, trying to contain her frustration. “Well, you keep hitting her in the face. What do you expect her to do?”

Finally! She had acknowledged the truth. This exchange felt like a dentist trying to remove a molar that refused to budge. Having spewed so much truth, only to have so much emotional turmoil sent my way, I decided to stay quiet for a while. Knowing Celestina, she would use the silence to make excuses for Alexis’s behavior.

“Did you ever think,” she said, “that maybe she’s jealous? You had a granny who loved you and…and…”

Catching her reflection in the mirror, I recognized the self-loathing that teenagers were so good at emoting, but I noticed something I hadn’t expected to see: Celestina hadn’t spoken about her mother…she’d spoken about herself. She acknowledged that Delphine and Alexis weren’t fit to be parents.

The tension in my shoulders subsided. I glanced at Nolan in search of a strategy to continue this conversation with Celestina, but with his eyes closed and his head lying against his right shoulder, he did a poor job at faking to have fallen asleep. But I understood why he did so. He wanted no part of this conversation, since he had nothing to contribute. Still, it would have been nice to have some moral support, but it brought up a topic I had little to no information about: his past. As much as I cared about him, I knew practically nothing about Nolan Hart.

“I had Grams and what?” I asked my niece, following up on her inability to finish her sentence.

“She loved you.” Celestina lowered her gaze, and she tensed her muscles so severely that her breath escaped her mouth in a hiss reminiscent of the steam that exited a teakettle.

“Your mother—”

“I know she loves me, but it’s not the same. Sometimes she looks at me like I’m a mistake, like I should’ve never been born.” She yawned. “I can see it in her eyes. She loves me, but she hates me too!”

I couldn’t refute that claim because Celestina had summed up what felt like the truth.

“Have you ever felt like a mistake?”

“Are you kidding me?” I almost shouted back at her. “My mother gave me up after taking one look at me. Believe me, Delphine was a horrible woman. I was lucky she gave me away.” For the first time, I recognized that I was no longer angry that she abandoned me as an infant. I’d always loved having Grams in my life, but maybe I appreciated her more now that she’d passed on. “You might not have been intended,” I admitted, since I knew that my niece wanted honesty, “but you are more than your mother could have ever hoped for in a daughter.”

A subtle smile appeared and disappeared on her face quicker than it took me to blink twice. She fought to keep her eyelids open, a battle she increasingly lost.

“But I don’t think she ever wanted to have children.” Celestina took in a heap of air, yawned, smacked her lips a couple times, and dug her back into the contours of the seat behind her to relax.

How could she feel tired after such an argument? And what could I say to that?

“I think,” she said, interrupted by another yawn as she let her eyelids close for good this time, “you’d be a better mother.”

I looked at her through the rearview, but soft, even breaths left her mouth as she slept. Nevertheless, the sentiment behind her comment sent tears rushing into my eyes. I’d often questioned whether I’d wanted kids, and although I always answered in the affirmative, I currently wanted to write music and perform across the world more than I wanted to have a child. But the moment Celestina said it, if I’d been given the option, I would have accepted her as my child without a second thought. If given the chance, even if my career as a musician was in full swing, I would have happily taken her away from Zephora and Alexis.

But it would have still left the threat of their existence behind. Still, Celestina’s sincerity rocked my heart.

“That was something,” Nolan said, finally opening his eyes and sitting up in his seat. “She really cares about you.”

“But you don’t believe it? Why not?”

“You heard what she said.” Once more checking that she hadn’t reawakened, I found her in a deep sleep. “The way she looked at me earlier?” Goosebumps appeared on my flesh as emotion clogged my throat, forcing me to wait until I could speak clearly. “I really thought she wanted to hurt me.” I tried to shake off the glare that reminded me that Celestina was Alexis’s daughter. “She is capable of so much love…and so much destruction.”

Nolan pressed his back against his seat. “You make her sound like a vicious—”

“She can be,” I admitted. “I’m not exaggerating. She is incredibly powerful, and if she doesn’t learn to restrain her emotions—”

“Because every teenager excels at that,” he said with a grin. “I’m just saying, I think she’s confused. She knows who her mother is, and she knows what you’re all about. Give her a chance. She might surprise you.”

I couldn’t argue that. In fact, while my heart told me to embrace Celestina without reservation, her actions, both said and implied, told me to be wary of trusting her. My gut twisted at the double standard, and I wished I could shake off my reservations, but intuition told me to remain vigilant.

That reminded me of Nolan’s impressive ability to compel over one-hundred people simultaneously. “That was quite a performance earlier at the Home Bar.”

He looked over at me, confused.

The way he refused to admit the truth unless called upon to answer for his actions told me that he either didn’t like confrontation, which I doubted given that he’d called me out when I refused to face the truth, or he’d rather keep the truth in spirit mode. “I was invisible, but I saw what you did.”

After a long moment of looking out the window in silence, he said, “I don’t know how it happened. I was pissed off at you, I mean, your sister.” He cracked a half-grin. “I still have a hard time telling you two apart.”

That admission hurt me a little. My sister and I behaved differently, relied on separate facial cues, and our body language was as varied as light and dark. Besides, the lingering scent of alcohol didn’t constantly linger around me, nor did I have a persistent cynical outlook. Taken in that context, we couldn’t have been more dissimilar. It all led up to one question: did Nolan really know me?

“What?” he asked, examining my eyes, searching my face for clues as to how I felt.

“Look,” I said, preparing to say what needed to come next, “We’ve known each other for what…five days? Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” Admitting it hurt my soul. Still, I didn’t want to put myself out there if Nolan couldn’t take the time to get to know me.

He turned to me, equally irritated and worried. “Where is this coming from?”

“I’m just saying, we barely know each other. I’ll understand if things are getting too real for you to—”

“Too real?” Nolan asked. He sat up straight in his seat. “So, we’ve only known each other for less than a week. So what? Are you going somewhere? Are you trying to tell me something?”

“No,” I said, surprised by his intensity and his ability to get to the point. “I’m just saying—”

“This,” he said, gesturing to me and back to him, “is not normal. You’re a witch. I’m a…” He let out a long breath and pushed his hands through his hair. “I’m still trying to get over the fact that I’m a…”

“Half-demon?”

“See? I can’t even admit it. What does that say about me? That I’m in denial? I mean, where did I come from? Who were my parents?” He held out both hands as though looking for someone to answer these questions for him. “How can I be into someone else, if I don’t even know
what
I am?”

My heart sank. Nolan had summed things up for both of us. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be in a relationship, and I had too many ancestral issues to deal with before I could give thought to romance. Still, I slumped in my seat at the notion of playing in a band with someone I had a crush on, who actually reciprocated those feelings, but who wouldn’t act on them. I understood where Nolan came from, and I sympathized with his plight. After all, when it came to magic, I had nothing more to learn about my abilities, whereas Nolan had yet to test his abilities and level of power. Besides, based on the insecure expression with which he stared out the windshield, he still had yet to determine if his powers were meant for good or evil. Historical precedent considered the use of the word “demon” as negative in practically every connotation, but it didn’t take into account free will. Regardless, I’d never heard anyone use the term “demon” in a positive light, and it made me wonder if perhaps Nolan had a predilection, based on a etymological basis, to act in a manner most becoming of evildoers.

“What?” he asked. “You’re looking at me like—”

“You’re evil?” I admitted. “I’m not going to lie. Up until a moment ago, I thought of you as an incredible musician I had a crush on.” Seeing a smile spread across his face made my knees weak, but I kept things casual…or at least I tried to. “But I’ve gotta wonder if you’re something you’re not, or if you
want
to be something you’re not.”

“You think I want to throw in with Zephora?”

“I’ll admit, you’re making me think twice. You should know whether you want to use whatever abilities you have for good or evil.”

“I don’t want to hang with Zephora and Alexis, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Without intending to, Nolan had acknowledged my sister as the enemy, and as much as I wanted to consider her otherwise, I had to admit that she had gone over to the dark side. I feared that, if Celestina was awake, she might take exception to having her mother being referred to as evil, but when I glanced in the rearview mirror, she lay asleep across the backseat.

“That’s good to hear,” I said. “It looked like you had no idea how you manipulated an entire crowd to think our band played a full set.”

“I don’t. I just sensed it.” He looked at his empty hands as though expecting to find an explanation to give him the answers he sought. “But when I saw them nodding their heads, I just kept talking, and the next thing I knew, I was lying to them.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“Powerful. I was relieved. I mean, you flaked out on us.” He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.” He took a moment to collect his thoughts. “Alexis screwed us big time, and what could we do? We didn’t know it wasn’t you.”

If Kendall and Brandon had also mistaken Alexis for me, I’d obviously been too hard on Nolan. “I get it.” They knew me better than he did, so it seemed I’d been too judgmental. I dialed back my irritation. “After all, you are a—” I didn’t finish the statement to see how he’d respond. His reluctance to refer to himself as a demon went a long way with me. It gave me hope that he wouldn’t turn on me.