Wicked Fate (The Wicked Trilogy) (24 page)

My blue b
last i
s no match for his purpl
e fire.

I turn
my head in th
e sand towards the ocean and I see
the same wall of water
coming for me; for us. I close
my
eyes and the water washes me
away.

Leaping out of bed, I’m hyperventilating.  I grab
my bed frame to keep m
yself from falling. These aren’t nightmares, these are
night terrors
and I can’t help but feel like I’m looking at what’s
to come. I
grab
my c
omforter from my bed and I leave Sire there to sleep. It’
s time to star
t doing some research. I now kno
w these m
en, The Lords of the Night, are
most
definitely coming for me. I run downstairs and head straight
for the library.

Chapter
17

The Family Tree

The door to the library feels
heavier tonig
ht for some reason. Maybe it has
some
thing to do with how tired I am. I haven’t
slept pro
perly in weeks. Once the door is open, I stare
into the darkness of the big
,
musty
room.  I need light, and with that thought, the lights in the library co
me on.

I smile
to myself; this whole magic
al-powers
thing just keeps get
ting better and better. I walk
up
to the closest book shelf and ru
n my fingers across the bindings of the many different books. The ones I could reach at least.

“I’ll start here,” I say
out loud to myself.

I pick
out five random books then set them on top of th
e desk. Dust particles attack
me im
mediately after the books bang against the wood. I cough
and cho
ke while I flip
through a
few only to find they’re only books with short
stories and poems in them.

I put those five back and pull out the next set of five—m
ore short s
tories and poems. Finally, two hours later, I’ve
gone through all the books on that one
particular book shelf. There’
s nothing but r
egular books on that shelf.

I stop and look
around the huge ro
om at all the books that cover
the walls.

“This is g
oing to take me forever,” I say,
as I
put my hands on my hips and blow
a stray piece of hair out of my face.

“Oh come on
,
Darlin
’,
you can
’t give up now,” Thaddeus purrs
in my ear.

“Do you have any idea how much faster this would be if you just told me what it is I need to know. You can sta
rt with who you are or why you’re here. Maybe
tell
me why you never said anything about being like me.”

I flash
a
big,
fake
smile trying to get Thaddeus to save me
days of searching through all these books.

“No can do
,
sweetheart. It’s your search not mine. You need to know everything, not just what I can tell you. The only way to know it all and understand it all is to read it all.”

“Well can you at least point to the direction of the corr
ect
shelf? Tha
t would be most helpful,” I say
sarcastically.

Thaddeus looks
arou
nd the room and then back at me. He grins then shakes
his head.

“A
ll I know is the reason I’m here is to make sure that no one, except you
or people like you, touches any book on that wall,” h
e point
s
to
the
wall opposite of the wall I began my search with.
             

“Could have told me that—oh I don’t know—w
hen I started to read!” 

I sound angry, but the truth is I’m relieved. I would’
ve spent
days searching these
shelves only
to find that the last one is the one I needed to search.

I smile
wi
th my teeth showing before running over to the correct shelf
.

I look
up at the massi
ve amount of books, there’s so many. It’
s still going to take me days just to read through all of it, possibly weeks. Hopefully
, I
have eno
ugh time before the evil ones come for me.

I dive
head first into pil
es and piles of books. I decide to start at the
top left and work myself to the right and so on.

It doesn’t
take m
e long to realize that what I’m looking at i
sn’t book
s, but personal journals of
family members before me who had this gift of magic. I don’t know when these powers started for
the McPherson family, but I know that the books start with my grandfather’s great-
grandfather, Robert McPherson. The firs
t one in the stack is dated
twelfth
of January
,
eighteen forty-five. The older books are hardly legible and it takes
me forever just to understand most of it.

Apparently, Robert McPherson had the ability to do magic and had actually built this very house us
ing magic.  I think that’s
pretty interesting considering I had just revived
the house using magic. I smile to myself as I read
.

He talks
about his ability to see spirits and the things he lear
ned from them.
He wrote about how he met his wife, Emma McPherson. He went on about how beautiful she was and how he was so worried about her reaction when she found out about the things he could do with his hands. He was so afraid she would never have anything to do with him anymore once she found out about the blue fire that blasted from them.

I look
down at my ha
nds and for a minute I wonder
about the significance of t
he color of the fire. My fire i
s blue and apparently the ones in my family before
me had blue fire as well. It mak
e
s me wonder why Eris’ fire i
s red, and wha
t about the man in my nightmare
who used purple fire?

Soon a soft pink light i
s peeking through the slits of the long
,
heavy drapes in
the library. I stand up and stretch
hard trying to
wake myself a bit. Somehow I’ve
managed t
o stay up all night long. Coffee—I need coffee. If I’m
going to stay awake in clas
s today I most definitely need
a pick me up.

I
sit
at the kitchen table talking
to my grandpar
ents a bit before school. I tell them about what I’ve
read so
far. My grandfather’s pretty happy that I’m
becoming interested in the hist
ory of the McPherson clan. He’
s relieved to find out that it wasn’t just me and my mother that were witches in the family.

After getting dressed, I stand
i
n front of my dresser and stare
into the mi
rror. I look awful with
dar
k circles under my eyes. It’s
ob
vious that I haven’t
had a decent night
of sleep in over a week. I’ve
been averaging about two hours of sleep every night since my bir
thday. Sitting up all night reading through old journals probably doesn’t help. My jeans are beginning to feel loose too, which means I should probably start eating more.

I splash cold water onto my face to help wake me up a bit.

Thankfully, the weather’s mild and I don’t
ha
ve to wear my big thick jacket, a long sleeve shirt is enough this morning. It would be nice if the day warmed
up and turn
ed out to be sunny
.

The day is a blur. In every class I find
myself almost falling asleep.
At one point in English, I think I did sleep. I just know when I opened my eyes people were looking at me with smirks and I was wiping wetness from the corner of my mouth. Yeah, it wasn’t attractive.

By t
he time my lunch period is here, it takes everything I have
in me to make it to the courtyard.
At this point, all I want is sleep. I consider skipping the rest of the day, but I don’t
want to
miss a chance to see Adam. He’s the only reason I’m even in school. I’m
still mak
ing good grades and I still pay
atten
tion in class, but mostly I go for the
opportunity to see his fac
e. Him and the fact that I don’t want to draw attention to my lack of guardian.

When I finally mak
e it
to the lunch bench I stand
next to Bernie and Kale instead of sitting. I know that if I sit down I’m going to fall asleep.  Adam’s nowhere to be found and I’m seriously considering
just leaving.

After
ten minutes of standing th
ere I
start
to feel dizzy
and I feel like the ground is moving.

I shift my feet and rapidly blink a few times in an attempt to
get r
id of the strange feeling that’
s taking
over me.  My brain literally feels like it’
s swimming around in my head.

“Are you ok
ay,
Mage?
”
Bernie echo
es
.

“I’m fine, just tired,” I hear the slur in my speech.

“Are yo
u sure? You look really bad
. Maybe you should eat something or at least sit down.”

The last thing I hear i
s
Bernie screaming my name. The dizziness takes over and I feel
myself beginning
to drop. Kale’s arms go around me before the world goes black.

When I wake up I’m
in my bed snu
ggled up next to Sire. I roll over and look
at the
alarm clock. It’s already after six in the afternoon. I’m confused by what happened and I don’t know how I got here.

I slowly sit up and shake
my head a bit. I
have
the
worse headache ever! Flipping the covers off me, I turn
to sit on the side of
the bed. And then I see him, Adam’s
sitting on the floor
in front of my dresser. H
is knees
are
pulled up to his chest with his forearms draped across them. He’s glaring back at me. He looks irritated. Slowly he stands and leans against my dresser.

“What happened?” I choke.

My voice sounds like someone’s
rubbed the inside of my throat with sand paper.

“You passed out during lunch.”

“How did I get here?”

“I brought you here.”

“But you weren’t at lunch. H
ow did you…”

“Bernie says you haven’t been eating much lately,” he cut
s
me off angrily.

Grabbing the night
st
and next to my bed for leverage, I stand. I regret it when the room starts to spin.

I refuse
to sit here and listen
to
him yell at me about not eating.
It’s my business when and what I eat, not his!

He’s really starting to piss me off! I hate him for pretending like he cares. I can’t even look at him I’m so upset and angry.

Straightening my clothes, I start
to walk t
owards my bedroom door. He mak
e
s
it there before me
,
blocking the
exit
out of my room.