Lost (14 page)

The lights dimmed and soft music hummed around us. We finally dragged our lips apart, and Paul stood and bowed in front of Emma.

“I would like to dance with my girlfriend,” he said. She jumped up, ecstatic, and he escorted her to the dance floor. Other couples followed.

A bulky guy, maybe in his twenties, with muscles bulging out of his suit danced over to our table and tousled Nate’s hair like he was his younger brother.

“Knock it off,” Nate said. “Christine, this is one of our supervisors. Shane. And by supervisor … I mean he’s annoying but happens to have a little authority.”

Nate and Annabelle laughed, and I waved at Shane. “Nice to finally meet you,” he said, then shook Nate’s shoulder. “Dude,
Dev
just got shot down by Her Honor. He asked her to dance.” They cackled. “
Dev’s
cool and all, but what was he thinking? I’m sure he smells like a foot as usual. Or like he took a dip in that fish carnage they can’t seem to stop in Florida.”

Nate laughed so hard that no sound came out. I’d never seen him so amused. I hadn’t realized the disgusting fish massacre was still going on. It had been over a week and was still a problem? Odd.

“That’s actually disturbing when you put it that way,” Nate said. “Lydia would gag. I asked him if he planned to bathe on the trip and he said …
maybe
.” I faked a chuckle so I wouldn’t seem odd, sitting silently as they poked fun at their boss.

“See …
I
have a reason to smell,” Shane said. “I live in the woods most of the time.
Dev
has an apartment. It’s ridiculous.”

“You don’t smell, Shane,” Annabelle said, in her sweet drawl.

Nate cleared his throat like he disagreed. Shane trapped him in a playful chokehold with one arm and forced his face into his free armpit.

When they finished wrestling, Shane held his hand out to Annabelle. “How about a dance?” he asked. She took his hand and left Nate and I alone at the table.

Against my better judgment, knowing that I couldn’t stay in tune with music without a paintbrush in my hand, I said, “Let’s dance.”
 

“Really?” he said.

“It’s a ball. You’re leaving. It’s sort of mandatory.”

I trailed behind him to the dance floor. My eyes caught Lydia’s. She winked at me, and my heart squeezed, feeding my girl-crush. I watched her as she stood from her seat and excused herself. She put her phone to her ear when she neared the door.

She never stopped working, I guessed.

 
I hooked my arms around Nate’s neck and focused on our dance. He stepped back, then up, then back again, forcing my body to move with his. He danced, and I swayed in the air like a doll amidst the gold dust.

He pulled me to his chest and pressed his lips to my ear. “I love you, Chris,” he said.

“I love you more.”

It was a perfect moment. Beautiful, romantic, enough to keep me dreaming of him for the two months he would be gone … and interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream.

There was a pause after, like everyone had stood still to assess the sound. Then havoc broke out. Nate lifted me into his arms and ran through the crowd of magical beings, some running, screaming,
some
bracing for a fight.

Shane burst out of his suit and landed on four furry legs as a large gray wolf. Like they were following his lead, other men shed their skin and raced towards the ballroom doors.

There was a series of snaps and cracks and bursts of light, magic shooting all around us.

“Stay right here,” he said, sitting me in a chair in the corner of the ballroom.

“Nate!” I screamed.

“Don’t move!”

Through the chaotic jumble of well-dressed creatures, I saw what had them scrambling for their lives.

My kind.

Kamon’s triplet copies stormed through the crowd, snatching them, throwing them to the ground. And laughing. Shane, in wolf form, tackled the copy in the middle, and Nate, in his normal body, tackled the one to the right of him.

Were they crazy? They couldn’t fight them. With a thought, their lives could be over.

“Nate!” I screamed.

He was too busy punching a copy that wasn’t fighting him back. Not with his hands, anyway. Their brother that hadn’t been taken down walked calmly to Devin.
As I waited for their fight, someone’s arm wrapped around my neck.

“Hey, Leah,” Remi whispered in my ear. “I knew your friends would be here. I’m glad you decided to come. It’s been hell trying to catch up with you. I missed you, friend.”

I tried to wrestle her off of me, but I couldn’t. She was different. Crazy strong.

“I would tell you to stay away from Kamon, but you’re still living with the last boy I told you to stay away from.”

“I don’t want him!”

“And now he won’t want you.”

She punched me three times in the chest. It burned slightly before it numbed. Then I felt nothing. Not even her arm around my neck.

I spun around. She was gone. She’d started a fight and had abandoned it. I didn’t even get a chance to choose like Lydia said I would need to. I couldn’t see my protector through the commotion. I didn’t know if she’d left or not while Nate and I were dancing.

I couldn’t stay in my corner. I had to find him, and I hadn’t seen Paul and Em since the music stopped. I jumped over groaning bodies. None of them were dead but had bones twisting in the wrong direction. One of those bodies was naked. Shane. He’d shifted back, probably when the fight with the copy went sour.

I expected my heart to race as I worried about Nate, but I didn’t feel anything. I was numb.
Numb and lost in the crowd of panicking creatures.

I dodged a wolf as it leapt over the bodies, still no sight of Nate or my friends.

“Calm down!” Devin yelled. “They’re gone.”

Time stood still as the magic settled and everyone froze. Groans of the injured replaced the sounds of terror and panic.
The dance floor where couples had been laughing just minutes before was covered in broken creatures.
Considering what the copies could have done, they were barely injured. I didn’t know if this was another attack on magical kind or if it was about finding me. Either way, Lydia obviously hadn’t stopped them yet.

“Chris,” Paul said as he yanked my hand. “Nate is look…” His voice trailed off as his eyes moved to my chest. “Nate! Nate!”

Emma ran to us and gasped, and I looked down to see what was shocking them. I couldn’t see anything but blood.
Slimy, fresh, warm blood flowing out of me.
I rubbed my hand across my chest. I felt one opening. Then another.
Then a third.

Emma pulled out her phone and screamed to Sophia just as Nate sped to us.

“Oh, God!” he screamed. He yanked off his jacket and pressed it against the wounds I couldn’t feel. I wasn’t in pain. I felt nothing.

Remi had obviously hit me with more than her fist, but a slight punch was all I’d felt. I looked back to the corner where the quick fight had transpired.

Lydia was leaning against the wall next to the chair Nate had sat me in, falling slowly to her knees. Her coughs were suddenly the only sounds in the room. Nate’s mouth was moving like he was yelling. I didn’t hear it.

Sophia popped in. Her face was contorted like she was screaming. I couldn’t hear that either. She pressed her hand against my chest. In the corner, Lydia groaned like Sophia had pressed a wound on her.

“I can’t feel it,” I said.

I rubbed my finger across one of the slits near my heart. I pressed my nail into the opening. Lydia squirmed on the wall, chasing after a breath she couldn’t seem to catch.

And she wasn’t bleeding.

She wasn’t injured.

I was.

I wondered how I could be standing here without pain as she kneeled in agony, and my skin buzzed as my powers reached for an answer.
A buried answer, deep in the shadows of my mind.

A sweet soprano voice whispered in my ear, a memory of my mother singing:
My heart is yours. My life is too
.

I remembered the first time I’d heard her name.

“
Turn your books to page ten
,” Sister Constantine had said. My little fingers picked at the edge of the smooth page of the new
big girl
history book we’d gotten that year. “
Today we’re learning about Lydia Shaw
.”

I used my whole hand to move from page nine to ten, being careful with the book full of words that were hard to sound out. Her picture was there. Her lips were in a straight and unfriendly line. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun.

I remembered feeling strange, somewhere between fearful and sad.

“
Give me your attention, girls
,” Sister Constantine had said. “
We have to show some respect. This is the woman who killed the monsters
.”

That was before I thought I was one of them. Long before I knew I was her child.

I remembered it all –
who
she was, why she’d left me, and that she loved me more than life itself.

“We need to get her home!” Nate screamed.

“No. I have to, I mean, it has to be here,” Sophia said. “We shouldn’t move her. Nathan, I need you to hold her. Sit and hold her.” He pulled me down to the floor. I stretched my neck over the broken bodies to see my mom. Sophia chanted something I couldn’t even hope to understand, her tears falling onto my bloody chest.

Nate gasped and reached his hand to my cuts. Sophia smacked it away before he touched me.

She started chanting again, low and fast, drawing breaths in shallow gasps and releasing them in sobs.

She froze, panting like she’d been running for hours, and swept her hand back and forth over my chest.

I looked back at my mother. She braced her hands against the wall, panting like Sophia.

“Honey, breathe,” Nate said. “It’s going to be okay.”

I
was
breathing. I
was
okay. But my mother wasn’t. She’d pressed her face against the wall, gritting her teeth painfully. For a while her agony was all I could watch or hear, until the pool of blood on my chest changed direction and flowed back into the cuts.

“Sophie, how can I help?” Emma asked.

Sophia dried her eyes and shook her head. “It’s done,” she whispered.

Slowly, my mother stood and straightened her dress, declining help from the first person that had bothered or dared to go to her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Something knocked the wind out of me. That’s all.”

If I hadn’t remembered
who
she was and that Sophia kept her secrets, I wouldn’t have noticed her nod slightly in our direction.

Then she vanished.

Nate, Paul, and Em didn’t notice. They were all still gawking at my chest.

“Bring your bags and meet us at the main shelter,” Devin announced. “Our kind needs us now more than ever. The hunters will not ruin this trip. If anything, they have affirmed every reason we have to provide the help we do. I know it’s just a few hours, but I can’t wait. We are leaving now.”

“
Dev
,” a pale man said, standing to his feet and pulling a woman up with him. “We’re sanctioned to leave tomorrow.”

“I know. I’ll talk to Her Honor. She can
be understanding
at times. She’ll probably just fine us. I’ll pay whatever it is. I just can’t wait. Hunters have destroyed too many of our homes. They barge in, take parents,
take
incomes. Our people need us, and we are leaving right now.”

Nate jumped up and sprinted to Devin. He held his bloody hands to his boss’ face,
then
pointed at me. “I’m sorry, Dev. I can’t go. Not tonight.”

Devin frowned and rested his hand on Nate’s shoulder. He shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, man, but you have to go. I don’t want to be this strict, but in this situation I have to be. You’re not just any worker. You’ve changed our entire atmosphere by working with those kids while we help their parents. We can’t do this without you. She’s fine, right?” Nate nodded. I wanted to run over there and smack Devin. I wasn’t fine enough for him to still leave. “Go with the option I told you about yesterday, or we’ll talk compensation on the bus. Okay?”

He nodded and slunk back to us, head low and defeated. “You don’t look like you’re staying,” I said.

“I – I can’t, babe. I’ve signed a contract, and I’ve taken their money for training. I have to go. And … this is important to me. The trip is
important
, babe.”

“Then what am I?” Silly me for thinking
I
was important to him.

“The reason why I have to work. You’re my future.” I wished I were also his present. He rubbed his hand over my chest, as if to check if the cuts were healed. “The future I want for us is not one where I have to depend on you for everything. It’s one where I take care of you, keep you safe and happy.”

“How are you going to do that when you’re not even here?” He looked away; he didn’t have an answer, I guessed. I grabbed Sophia’s hand to beg her to stop this. “Please. Make them stay.”

“Honey, I can’t do that. It’s their decision.”

Apparently, everyone had the right to decide things but me. I grabbed a handful of Nate’s shirt and forced him to look at me. “I was just stabbed! By Remi! You would leave me for months after that? What if I’m not here when you get back?”

A tear dropped from his eye like he feared that too.

“S-s-
sophia
,” he stuttered. “
Dev
offered her a spot on the trip yesterday. I didn’t mention it because I knew you wouldn’t say yes. But please. I’ll watch her. I won’t let her out of my sight. And
Dev
said we’re not going to the attack zones on the trip. The stops were planned before all this happened. She’ll be safe with me. Please.”

She shook her head slowly, like she regretted crushing him. And me.
Em and Paul too.
We were all crying now. “Nathan, she doesn’t belong there. I’m sorry.” Disregarding the bloody mess on my dress, Emma threw herself on top of me and kissed my cheek.

“I love you,” she said. “I have to go. My parents would be upset if I quit. I’m sorry.”

Paul had to pull her off of me. “Bye, Chris,” he said. “We’ll be back before you know it.” My throat was too thick to speak. “I’ll take care of her. And him. And you don’t leave Nana’s side. Swear it.”

“Swear,” I croaked. Nate was a blubbering mess. I’d never seen him so unraveled. He only got worse when I said, “Please.”

He didn’t bother saying he couldn’t. He didn’t bother saying anything, just clutched me and rocked and cried until Sophia took us from the ballroom to our house. There, our goodbye continued, tears, kisses, and finally words when we were able to speak.

I stood outside of the bathroom as he showered my blood off of his skin. He had to change his shirt twice after; he couldn’t stop grabbing me. My hand was still in his as he held Emma’s with his other. He kissed my palm and said, “I love you.”

He dropped my hand, and they left me, really left me … after all of that.

I sat on his bed in silence for an eternity while Sophia hovered at the door of the pool house.

“He picked his job over me,” I finally said.

“You didn’t give him an ultimatum.”

“It was unspoken.”

She walked to the bed and tugged at my arm to get me to stand. “The unspoken usually goes unnoticed. He isn’t psychic like you, dear.”

She mentioned my powers, and the mind-numbing fog Nate’s departure had caused lifted. I remembered how I’d gotten them. Who I’d gotten them from. I remembered the night in her dining room when her secret spilled from her lips. I remembered crying and hurting. And I remembered healing after she’d rescued me from Kamon.

Sophia and I took the long way to my room. I told her about Remi, but left out the part about my memories coming back. I knew I’d have to tell her eventually, but I wanted to talk to my mother first. I didn’t want to risk powder being blown into my face, knocking me out, and waking up with my memory erased.

She hummed as she ran my bathwater. She snapped and a lavender bottle appeared in her hand. “What’s more relaxing than bubbles?” she said.

“Not getting stabbed and having the people who are supposed to love you leave you,” I said.

Her eyes fixed on my chest
,
then she smiled and started humming again.

I’d had a lot of practice being naked around Sophia. She would practically clean a shower with me in it, but this time, it was weird. My healed wounds had spilled enough blood to cover my chest and stream down my legs. She wiped me off before I got into the water, spending a lot of time on my back that must have been covered too.

And she was singing softly, creepily, under her breath … the whole time. It was a lullaby, but not in English. I didn’t need to understand the words to know she was doing a spell, just in song, to calm me.

“Get in, love. Let me know if it’s too hot.”

She busied herself in the bathroom as I soaked in lavender bubbles, remembering the woman who loved me and had to leave me, the woman living with the pain of giving away the impossible thing her heart wanted.

I wrung the towel over my red and swollen wounds. I was probably going to be scarred for life, but I had a feeling something far worse was supposed to happen.

Out of the tub, after fighting for the right to hook my own damn bra strap, Sophia slathered a minty cream over my heart. It tingled on the stab wounds. She held the collar of a t-shirt open for me. She was seriously about to pull it over my head.

“I’m seventeen, Sophia. I think I can handle putting on a shirt.” Silently, she handed it to me. Somehow, pulling it over my own head felt liberating, like I’d made a step to stop coasting in the life she and my mother made for me after St. Catalina.

Most of what Sophia said to me was a lie. Lydia Shaw was not just concerned with taming my powers. My mother was not this vague memory of a person in her mind. She was alive and still bossing her around.

The former ghost I’d wanted to contact poked her head through my bedroom door. Until then, I wasn’t sure what I’d say to her or if I’d have an attitude about the way she allowed my life to be. But when I saw her, my heart melted. I was goo, even more thrilled by her presence than I had been when she was just Lydia.

She’d changed into an all black outfit, like she’d done hunter business since the ball. I stood from the chair and walked to her slowly, trying to plan what I’d say on the way there.

The words never came, so I just wrapped my arms around her and dared her to move. She didn’t, and eventually participated in the hug with me.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I was more than okay.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see what was going to happen until it was too late. Remi was not supposed to hurt you. Kamon is livid.”

Her words weren’t registering.
Maybe because I couldn’t care about anything other than my mother being alive.
Or maybe it was because the most wonderful scent in the world was wafting from her hair – her orange scented shampoo that had been burned into my memory.

“Hi,” I said. I pulled away and smiled. She looked confused. “Maybe I should say … hi, Mom.”

She gasped and glared at Sophia.

“I didn’t,” Sophia said.

“I saw you in the ballroom. You two can’t cover that up. You were hurting, exactly where I pressed my nail. How is that?”

She bowed her head, like I’d touched on a bit of truth she couldn’t bear to discuss, and tears poured out of her eyes.

“Don’t worry about that. Let me fix this.”

She brought her hands to the back of my head, and I jerked away. “Wait. Please,” I said. “What if … what if I want to remember you?”

She cried without speaking for a while. Sophia sniffled behind us, crying too. I closed my eyes, waiting for her to remind me of all the reasons she couldn’t be my mother.

She had several. She’d hidden me to protect me from hunters, and Kamon already wanted to capture me, so badly that his pet was jealous enough to stab me three times in the chest. He’d probably crave my head if he knew I was her daughter.

But I’d been longing for my mother since Sophia had helped my grandparents pass on, believing I’d suddenly fallen in love with ghosts.

But I loved
her
. She’d held me and kissed me and showed me how deep love could go.

Impressions like that were probably impossible to erase.

She cupped my chin in her hand. “That would be a dream come true. But … honey, it’s not possible. My life is too dangerous for you, and I can’t promise that I’ll ever be what you need. I can never quit my job. I know too much to leave without any issues. And if anyone finds out who you are to me, I …”

She broke as I kissed her cheek. I cried too, because I just wanted her to hug me and kiss me and
be
my mom, but our lives weren’t that simple.

“Then can I just have some time with you as … you?” I asked.

She raised my hands to her lips and held them there. Very softly she said, “I don’t deserve to be treated like this. You should hate me.” I shook my head and leaned into her. “Look at the things I’ve done to you. You have years of reasons to hate my guts. Three deep reasons from tonight alone.”

She pulled my collar down to spy on the cuts. It looked like I’d been in a knife fight last week. It was still swollen and had formed crust since Sophia had applied the cream.

“Gross,” I said.

“It won’t scar, baby. Right, Sophia?”

“Right. I’ll pack her things. After you two say goodbye, I’ll bring her to my place.”

Mom laced her fingers through mine and snatched us out of the room.

We landed in high grass beside a sparkling pond. I spun around in the most beautiful place I’d ever been – trees as far as my eyes could see, impossibly green, with flowers of every kind shooting up out of the grass.

I stared at the sky while I waited for her to say something. Streaks of purple and orange circled above us, too beautiful to be natural.