TheFallenStarBookSeries1 (34 page)

“So this is it.” Alex came over with his hands stuffed inside his pockets and leaned over my shoulder to get a better look at the crystal. “That’s what’s going to gets us to Afton and back.”

Aislin, who was sitting across the table from me, nodded enthusiastically. “Adessa said it would work better than any other crystal.”

“I sure hope so,” Alex uttered under his breath.

Aislin either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him. “So we should probably get going.”

Alex reached over my shoulder to collect the gold box. “Where do you want this?”

Aislin made grabbing gestures with her hands. “Here, give it to me.”

Alex handed it to her and she took out the crystal. She retrieved a lighter out of her pocket and lit the wick of the black candle she’d brought with her when she transported us from the bus. Then she set the candle, the lighter, and the empty gold box down on the table.

With her eyes fixed on the glittering red crystal, which she now had grasped in her hand, she asked Alex, “Are you ready?”

“Just a sec.” Alex pointed a finger at Laylen. “Before I go, you better be absolutely certain you can handle this.”

Laylen rolled his eyes. “I’m
absolutely certain
I can handle this. Now go.”

.    “You better be,” he told him and whipped a finger in my direction. “And you need to promise that if something does happen, you’ll make sure to get away no matter what.”

“Okay, I will,” I promised with zero hesitation.

He looked surprised by my cooperativeness.

Hey, I may be a stubborn brat sometimes, but when it came to not getting killed, I was more than willing to cooperate. Well, I did have to minus the whole trying-to-jump-out-of-the-car-and-run-away incident back at Adessa’s. Oh yeah, and the time I’d tried to run away when I’d first found out about what I really was. But other than that…Oh fine. Whatever. Most of the time, I was a brat. But at least I wasn’t being one now.

Alex still looked taken aback. “Well good.”

“Now are you ready?” Aislin asked, dipping the tip of the crystal into the flame.

Alex scooped the Sword of Immortality up from the table. “Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Without taking her eyes off of the crystal, which had now started to smolder a rose tinted cloud of smoke, Aislin instructed Laylen and me to, “Move back a ways unless you want to get taken with us.”

I followed Laylen over to the farthest corner.

As soon as we made it over, Aislin started whispering, “Per is calx EGO lux lucis via.”

The smoke rising up from the candle slowly shifted to the shade of blood red.

Alex got more fidgety the further Aislin got with the whole transporting process. He kept throwing nervous glances at Laylen and me, along with a couple of strange looks I couldn’t quite decipher the meaning of.

“Per is calx EGO lux lucis via,” Aislin voice grew louder.

Another strange look from Alex, this time directed solely at me. His bright green eyes held so much worry that, for an instant, I thought he might run over to me.  I wasn’t going to lie, the look made me feel kind of edgy. It pushed worried thoughts of my own through my mind, and had me questioning just how high of a chance the Death Walkers showing up was. High enough for him, Mr. Stoically Calm In Frightening Situations, to look uneasy.

He kept his eyes glued on me as Aislin screamed, “Per is calx EGO lux lucis via.”

A flash of red. A thunderous burst. And then, just like that, Ailsin and Alex were gone.

I stared at the spot that they’d vanished from, the electricity fizzling out of my body and leaving a giant empty void in its place.
Weird
.

I shook my head, tried my best to tuck the feeling away, and turned to Laylen. He was watching me with an expression that could only be translated as curious.

“What?” I asked, curious as to what was up with his strange look.

“Oh, nothing.” He shrugged. “It’s just that you look so much like her.”

I tilted my head to the side, perplexed. “Like who?”

“Like your mom.”

Whoa. That threw me for a loop—a big, giant, excited loop. I perked up. “I do? Really?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Well, except for the color of your eyes.”

I frowned. Of course it would exclude the color of my eyes. Why wouldn’t it? No one else had violet eyes. I was really going to have to consider getting some colored contact lenses.

“What is it with you and your eye color?” Laylen asked, semi-amused. “You know the color’s not that bad. In fact, it’s pretty awesome.”

“Awesome huh? I’d say more like different.”
And freaky.
I sighed. “When you’ve been as different as I have the idea of being normal sounds really nice. But you can’t be one hundred percent normal when you have freaky violet eyes.”

“Yeah, I can understand how you’d want to be normal, considering everything you’ve been through,” he said as he started for the table. “But being normal is way overrated. Trust me.”

“Oh yeah.” I followed the Keeper/Vampire over to the table and sat down.

He laughed, dropping down into a chair. “Yep. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“So...” I began, wanting to go back to talking about my mom again. “Did you know my mom very well?”

He nodded, stretching out his legs in front of him. “I knew her pretty well.”

“What was she like?” I asked eagerly.

“Well, she was really nice. There was no bad in her at all, and she was also one of those people who you knew you could trust.”

I was soaking up every word he said like it was the oxygen that kept me alive.

His forehead creased over. “You know I’m really surprised you don’t remember anything about her.”

“How could I?” I wondered. “I was only a year old when she died.”

He stared at me, dumbfounded.  “No you weren’t. You were four.”

I shook my head. “No, I was one.”

“No, you weren’t,” he insisted. “A few weeks after you turned four, you went to live with Marco and Sophia.” He paused. “Who told you you were one?”

“Everyone.” I was trying not to get riled up, but if what Laylen was saying was true, how could I not get upset? “Marco, Sophia…Alex.”

“Why would they do that,” Laylen mumbled. “Why would it make a difference whether you were one or if you were four?”

I was thinking the exact same thing. Why would it matter? And if I really had been four, why would I have no memories of my mom at all? Yeah, I know four is a little young and everything, but still…you’d think I’d be able to remember something about her. But nope. I couldn’t remember a single thing.

Laylen remained quiet, fiddling with his lip ring. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

“You don’t need to apologize,” I reassured him. “It’s not your fault all of this happened.”

“It’s partly my fault.” He rubbed his forehead and let out a stressed sigh. “I knew what Stephan was planning to do to you, and I didn’t do anything to stop it.”

“You were like, what, eight when all this was going on. And besides,” I said, trying not to let any bitterness sneak into my voice, “it had to be done to me, right? I mean, so that the world could be saved and all that.”

“I don’t know.” He looked lost in thought. “Maybe, I guess.”

I wondered what he meant. Was there another reason why my emotions had been shut down? Or had it never been necessary for them to be shut down in the first place?

He tapped his fingers on the table, thinking. “Gemma, what exactly have they told you about you?”

I gave him a quick recap of everything Alex had told me while he’d been stitching me up. I also told him about the things I’d pick up on myself; the list I’d found back at Marco and Sophia’s, and the bizarre vision thingy I’d been pulled into back at the fieldtrip. I even told him about the prickly sensation. I poured my heart and soul out. It felt really good too, like an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. However, there was one thing I never mentioned. The electricity. That detail I just didn’t feel like explaining. It was too complicated…and to personal.

After I’d finished yammering Laylen’s ear off, he stayed silent for awhile, and I started to worry that maybe I’d bored him to death or something.

But finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he said, “I don’t even know what to say Gemma. I’m so sorry,”

That’s when I realized I hadn’t been boring him to death at all. He’d just been being a good listener and taking in what I was telling him. I was so use to being the quiet one and never talking, that when it came to being the one getting listened to, I was completely clueless.

“I didn’t realize how bad things were for you,” Laylen continued. “You know what I find strange is that Stephan made this big plan to seclude you from everyone to keep you from feeling, but I never thought the plan would actually work. I mean, how can you force a person to become emotionally detached?”

“Alex told me it was because if you raised a person to never know what things like happiness and sadness and love are, then they wouldn’t know
how
to feel them. And it was working well too. That is, until a couple of months ago when I suddenly snapped out of it.”

“But if Alex’s little theory is true, then why would you all of a sudden start to feel?” He paused. “And why would they lie to you about how old you were when you went to live with Marco and Sophia? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe so I wouldn’t try to remember my mother.” I suggested. I mean, it made sense; them telling me I hadn’t been old enough to remember her so that I wouldn’t try to. Still, I wasn’t entirely convinced. They’d created such a tangled maze of lies, who the heck knew what was true and what wasn’t. I did know one thing, though. Getting the truth out of Alex seemed impossible. The guy could lie like no other.

“I guess that could be why, but it still doesn’t explain why you suddenly started to feel.” He brushed his blue tipped bangs off of his forehead and sighed. “Gemma, regardless of what Alex tells you, Stephan can’t be trusted.”

“How come?”     But really, did I even have to ask. Stephan was, after all, Alex’s father.

“Well, there’s been a lot of things Stephan’s done that are questionable. One of the worst, though, was when you’re mother disappeared.”

My heart thumped loudly in my chest. “What do you mean, she disappeared. I-I thought she died?”

“Well, that’s what Stephan told everyone.” He scooted his chair in closer so that we were practically huddled together. “Right after she went missing, I overheard my parents talking about how Jocelyn had this huge fight with Stephan over you. She didn’t want to give you up, and from what I understand, she was going to make a run for it. When she did, Stephan went looking for her, but when he came back, he only had you. He told everyone he couldn’t find Jocelyn anywhere. The Keepers searched for her and everything, but no one ever found a single clue as to what could have happened to her. After awhile, they just assumed she died.”

Blood howled inside my ears. “They just
assumed
she died? How can anyone just
assume
someone died?”

“Mysterious deaths are very common in the Keepers world because we are constantly encountering so many dangerous things.”

“But do you think she died?”

He shook his head. “And neither did my parents. I only heard bits and pieces of their conversations, but from what I understood, my parents didn’t believe Jocelyn just up and died. And they had their suspicions that one of the Keepers might have played a part in her disappearance.”