Wicked Fate (The Wicked Trilogy) (34 page)

Adam holds
my hand the whole time.

There’
s a little old la
dy manning the front desk. She’s at least seventy-years-old with a hairy mole on her chin.

“What can I do for you?” she asks.

Her thick Jersey accent mak
e
s me smile.
She
’ll probably think I’m
some old country bumpkin with southern twang.

“Yes ma’am
,
I’m looking for a Rose McPherson.”

Her eyes get large, her shock evident. She flips
through the big book
in front of her.

“She
hasn’t had a visitor in many years. M
ay I ask who you are?”

My heart stutters—she’s still alive!

“I’m her daughter.”

Again the old lady’s eyes ge
t big.

“I can’t believe it. You were just a precious little baby the last time I saw you.  You’ve grown. What am I saying
? That’s what babies do,” she gets up and comes from around the desk.
“Follow me.”

We follow her to
the elevator of the old building. She presse
s
the num
ber five and the elevator jerks and screeches as it moves
up and closer to my mother.

I swallow hard in an attempt to
mov
e the lump in my throat. This is really happening! We get
off o
f the elevator and slowly walk
down a long dark colored hallway.

The lady stops
in front
of room five-eleven. She knocks then swings the door open. I squeeze Adam’s hand as I stand just outside the door. The old lady walks in like she owns the place.

“What is it?” a
female voice call
s
from inside the room.

“You have a visi
tor, Rose,” the old woman replies
.

“That’s impossi
ble,” the unseen lady says
.

Her voice is soft and musical—motherly.

The old woman turns to me and waves
me into the room.

“Come on in
,
hon.”

My feet feel as if they’ve grown to
the floo
r. No matter how badly I want them to move, they won’t. Adam
tug
s on my hand and I allow him to
pull me into my mother’s room.

The room smells like a closed up attic. There’
s a simple bed with a blue blanket strung across it and a dresser with random pictures of my grandparents a
nd a small infant that I assume is me. There’
s also a picture of
me from when I was three-years-
old.
I have black pig-tails and a baby-blue dress on. Cute lacey socks and glossy, black shoes cover my tiny feet. It was my grandmother’s favorite picture of me.

My eyes water with tears. Just seeing the picture there and knowing that she’s possibly thought about me over the years does me in.

I turn
ar
ound the small room until I’m face-to-
face wi
th my mother. She looks
like me
,
only ol
der.  Long, black hair is tied in a messy bun at her neck. Her comfy blue t-shirt and jeans aren’t the crazy-woman-hospital-gown I expected to see. But her eyes, they’re the reason I know I’m a part of her. Blue on blue, she stares back in shock.

I’ve played this moment in my head many times over the years. I’ve imagined what it would be like to meet her. In my imaginings, she’d throw her arms around me and tell me that she wished she could’ve been there with me.

That’s not what’s happening. Instead, she just stares at me. At least in reality her eyes aren’t gray. In reality her eyes are the same ice blue as mine—icy and strange.

I can’t speak, instead I give her what I know is an awkward smile. I feel
Adam squeeze my h
and. The little old lady excuses
herself and shut
s
the door behind her on th
e way out. The small room is too quite, pin drop quiet. I open
my m
outh to speak, but before I can say anything my mother speaks
first.

“You shouldn’t have come here!”
she says between her teeth.

She’s angry? She’s mad
because I c
ame to see her? In all the years that I’ve imagined
meeting my mot
her for the first time, not once in any of my dreams did she ever say
anything so rude to me.

I feel like I’ve been
punched in the stomach
and all the oxygen has been knocked from my lungs. This isn’t
right at all. This isn’t what I imagined. I imagined her hugging me and smoothing down my hair. I imagined happy tears not an angry woman yelling at
me
.

“What?” my eyes sting with tears
.

“It’s not safe, Mage! You
shouldn’t have come here.”

“Not safe?” I choke
.
My anger and embarrassment grows
. “You have no
idea what I’ve been through
the last couple mon
ths of my life!” I finally find my voice.

I can
feel my fury building. All t
hese years! After all that I’ve
been through! And all she can worry about is
her
safety?

A rumble of thunder sounds
in the
far away distance. A tear rolls
dow
n my cheek and lightning flashes
through the window.

“Calm down, Mage. Come on, let’s go,” Adam whispers.

“No! I came here for answers a
nd I will get them,” thunder rin
g
s
out again.

A sudden
smile spread
s
across my mother’s face.

“Impressive, Mage—c
an you do more than effect the weather?”

“I can do whatever I want!”
I sound like an angry child.

I’m already too pissed off
to calm down quickly.

“Y
ou probably hate me,” she says
apologetically.

“Not once in my life have I ever hated you, until just now. I come all the way here after just finding out that you’re still alive and this is what I get? You’re worried that something might happen to you because I’m here!”

“What? I’m not worried about me
,
Mage. I worry for you. Why do you think I did any of the things I did? Why do you think I made my own mother and father suffer? Their only daughter’s death must have been hell for them. I
did it all for you—a
ll of it!”

“Why? Tell me what’s
happening
,
please
.”

“You go first. Start by telling me exactly who told you that I was still alive.”

I ramble on for an hour. By the time I’m done she knows
every detail of my life, sta
rting with Nicholas on the play
ground in second grade to this ver
y moment in her room.  She cries when I tell
her about my
grandparent’s death. She smiles when I tell
her abou
t being able to see them. She’s happy to know that they’re safe and happy. I tell
her about Eris taking my eye away and the
whole fight with her. I notice
right away how stiff she becomes when I mention
Craven’s name. When I
’ve
finally finished my life
story she reaches out and grabs
my hand.

“I’m so sorry this i
s all so hard on you. I had to do what I did. Not only was I not able to care for you, but I knew what you were and I knew that people would want what you have.”

“What am I? What do I have? Please
, tell me,” I’m frantic.

“Mage
,
you can do more than any other witch. Have you noticed that you don’t need
spells? You can just do things without them—most witches need spells. You started doing things way earlier than the normal witch. Witches usually don’t get their powers until their sixteenth birthday; you got yours when you were a child. You’re
more
powerful than any other, ex
cept
the ones like you. I just don’t know if there are any others
like
you.
”

“Like me
?
Why am I so different?” I ask
.

“Mage, the McPherson family are what
we like to call white magic—good magic. But t
here are others out there, like the ones
you mentioned earlier, who are black magic—bad
magic. Have you noticed that you have blue fire while the bad ones have red? That’s why.”

“Mine’s not blue anymore, n
ow it’s purple. Jus
t like the man in my nightmares,
”
I say confused.

“I’
ve done things in my life that I’m not pr
oud of. Yet the worst thing I’
ve ever done
,
I can’t bring myself to regret. I can’t regret it bec
ause it gave me you.
I wasn’t there while you grew
up, but I always loved you. You’re
the only good thing I’v
e done in my life,” tears form
in her eyes.

“I don’t understand.”

“It
’s unheard of for the two magic
’s, good and bad, to come together. It’s just something that’s not done, but I fell in love
,
Mage. I loved your father very
much, but he
didn’t love me. He used me
,
Mage. He used me to get you.”

“Are you saying that my father used black
magic? You’re saying he was a bad guy? So, what happened?” I ask
.

My mother
tells
me the story
of her and my father. She tells
me how she met him and fell in love with him only to find out that he was purposely trying to get her pregnant. After she found out she was pregnant with me, she realized he was using her. She didn’t know why, but she knew that he meant me harm for some reason. She said he went away and was never heard from again and that’s when she put the blocking spell on my grandfather and sent me away.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my
entire life, b
ut I knew you’
d never be safe with me. I knew that as soon as you were born he would come
back and steal you away
. There’s no telling what he would have done to you or w
hy?
My only guess is that he knew wha
t kind of magic the two
combined would make. I think he was going to try and somehow steal your magic and then use it to make his own powers more powerful.”

“This is crazy, like something-from-a-movie crazy,” I say to no one.

“Believe it, you can do it all
,
honey
,
and that’s a val
uable thing.  You can bend, seek
, heal, see, and shape shift. Not to me
ntion your ability to enchant…I think,” she looks
over at Adam with qu
estion in her eyes when she says the last part.

A blush covers his cheeks
and put
s
his head down.

“What? What does all that mean?”

She laughs a little to herself. It warms
my heart to hear her laughter.

“Okay—Flexures
dominate the minds of others and
bend them to their will. Seekers
can find anyone or
anything, Eris is probably a seeker. Menders
fix the hurts of others or themselves, which you told me you
rself you’ve already done. Augurs
can see things that aren’t t
here or things others can’t see. Y
ou s
ee spirits. Changelings can shift
from one form to another
.”

She smiles awkwardly and clears her throat, “I’m a Flexure and your father’s a Changeling, which is why he’s
so d
angerous. You never know if he’s there or not. And then there’s Doyens. They
can do it all, but sometimes it takes years for them to be able to m
aster each thing.”

She stops and looks at me as if she’s afraid of what she’s about to say next. “Mage, I think you’re a doyen. You’re just inexperienced. One day you’ll be very powerful.
”