Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) (34 page)

“She killed Julian.”

“I want to see!” I yelled. I didn’t want to
be morbid, but I’d been afraid of this hunter since I read her
diary. I was happy that he was dead.

“She would kill me if I showed you that.
Literally,” Sophia said. “It was very terrible. Julian was a
senator, and she was caught that same day, sitting in the forest
about a mile away from his home.”

She didn’t look like the typical prisoner.
She was in a padded cell with guns on her. This part wasn’t in the
history books.

A door opened, but Lydia didn’t turn around.
She just stared, without blinking, at the wall. A tall man with red
hair stepped into the room. “Ms. Shaw, we’ve gotten word that you
were responsible for the fire that killed the Magical Council.”

“Good. Can I leave?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. I’m afraid not. The scene at
Senator Polk’s estate was gory to say the least, you were covered
in his blood, and we still have not found the murder weapon. I have
a feeling you could’ve left this room the moment we put you in.
What are you waiting for? Who else are you waiting to kill?”

“No one.”

“Who do you work for?”

“No one.”

“What are you?”

“Human.”

He offered her a lighter and a needle to
prove it. She stuck herself and let her non-magical blood drip over
the flame. The interrogator groaned, like he wanted her to have
magic. Like it would have explained things.

He left, nodding to the armed guards. Lydia
stretched out on the thin bed, staring at the camera on her.

“Does she escape?” I asked. Sophia shook her
head. “She could just leave. Why is she staying here?”

“She could run, but she’d be running
forever. Her escape would also expose humans with powers, make them
the new enemy,” she said. “The government is afraid of her, but
they also need her. They made her a deal and gave her a job.”

She snapped and Lydia changed into a suit
with her hair groomed neatly in a ponytail. We were in an office.
She wasn’t a prisoner anymore. She looked like
the
Lydia
Shaw now.

Someone knocked on her door. “Come in,”
Lydia said, leaning into her window with her back to the door.

“Your next case, Your Honor. Witch. Talent
level is lethal. The cameras are off.”

“Bring it to the chair, thank you,” she said
to the soldier.

The
it
was Sophia. The present one
kissed my hand and frowned. “I’m sorry about what I will say about
you. I didn’t know.”

“Okay,” I whispered, my head pounding from
crying so hard in the last few memories. The soldier closed the
door behind him and Lydia glanced down at her watch.

“You’ve been charged with conspiracy. How do
you plead?” she asked, like she’d asked it a million times that
day.

“Innocent, Lydia,” the past Sophia said.

She looked over her shoulder and smiled at
her former maid. “I’m going to enjoy this,” she said.

“You may want to reconsider that. I know who
you really are. What you can really do. The things you and people
like you have already done. You’re just like Julian. You even made
one of those things. She looks just like the boy you snuck into
Mona’s house. And she’s been screaming at the top of her lungs
nonstop since I’ve been watching. She’s disagreeable, just like
you. And they’ll kill you
and
your copy when I tell them,
unless
you stop this massacre of my people."

Anger flashed across Lydia’s face like it
had in Julian’s office. I looked at the Sophia I knew. Her eyes
apologized for her.

Sophia looked away as her past self started
to choke. Lydia turned back to the window as Sophia fell to her
knees. “Sophia, what is she doing to you?” I asked. She rubbed my
hand, it felt like she meant,
keep watching
.

Lydia laughed, the most haunting, insane
laugh I’d ever heard. “That’s
sweet
, Sophia. You didn't even
tell anyone what you found. You’re here to make empty threats so
your family won’t die.” Sophia wasn’t talking. She must have been
in her head. Lydia threw her arm back and opened her hand. Sophia
slid across the floor to her. She picked her up by her neck and
forced her to stand. “Look at me,” she demanded. Sophia opened her
frightened eyes. “You're an idiot, just like the rest of your
people who are starving because of a rumor that we can track
spells." Sophia pulled at Lydia’s jacket, her face turning blue.
Lydia’s eyes watered and spilled over in the next second. “Her name
is Christine, and with your last breath, you will apologize to my
daughter for calling her such a filthy name. And I will make every
member of your family do the same.”

Sophia reached her trembling hands to
Lydia’s face, rubbing her cheeks. In a hoarse whisper she managed
to say, “Please. I’m sorry. Let me help.”

Lydia freed Sophia, and they stared at each
other for a moment, hate still there, both sizing up the other.
“She wanted to come get you, but she couldn’t,” my Sophia said to
me. “We knew it wouldn’t work out because I’d check the future, she
would too. In most of the predictions, you were either killed or
abducted by Kamon. In the others, you were miserable, living in
hiding with her."

That sounded like a mess of excuses. To me,
it looked like Lydia had given up on her marriage and her
child.

She snapped again, and we moved to Lydia’s
living room in Paris. Her sofa was black then, and a landscape
painting was on the wall where her TV currently hung. Sophia
brushed past herself with her hands on her hips.

“Lydia, it’s two in the morning my time, and
my house is packed with people who need to know your decision about
the treaty.”

“People? That’s a stretch. And did you tell
them you’re in my living room bothering me about it? Or do they
think you have an
in
with the janitors in my office? That
would certainly be more believable.” Lydia didn’t look up from the
papers on the coffee table in front of her as she spoke,
aggravating Sophia even more it seemed.

“What difference does it make? Can you
hurry?!”

“You want me to sign it or piss on it? I can
go either way at this point.”

Sophia sighed and mumbled something under
her breath as she disappeared into the hall.

The present Sophia rubbed my back. It felt
like she was preparing me for something, telling me to brace
myself. What could be worse than what I’d already seen? Lydia
shivered and closed her eyes. A child’s giggles filled the air. She
lay back on the sofa, with me suddenly in her arms. My wild curls
sprawled across her chest. I looked around three years old. Lydia
smiled at me as a light strumming of a guitar joined my laughter.
She brought her eyes up, and my father was sitting on the other end
of the sofa with her feet in his lap.

“Hi,” she whispered. He dropped his guitar
and smiled. He reached his hand to my back to tickle me. I laughed
as tears streamed down her face.

“Hey, baby,” he replied.

“Because of her powers,” Sophia said,
rubbing my back as I stared at the family I didn’t get to have.
“…her fantasies would become disturbingly real. She could see you
two, even if she hadn’t intended to.”

I refused to cry again. I wanted to be
pissed, but it was hard to hate someone so fragile.

Sophia sighed in the doorway of the living
room. She came closer, kneeled next to Lydia, and snapped her
fingers. A glass of bubbling water appeared in her hand.

“What’s that, Sophia?” I asked.

“A potion. For a clear mind,” she said.

Lydia rolled over with me on the sofa, as if
to shield me from Sophia. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I know it’s
not real.”

“We can’t let you have these, Lydia. If you
chase her around your office again, I think they’ll have you
committed.”

“Don’t drink it,” my father whispered.
“We’ll leave you.” Lydia crawled to his lap, hauling me with her.
Sophia grabbed her hand and forced the glass inside of it. Lydia
kissed my imaginary father, then my imaginary lips. As she downed
the glass, Christopher and I blew away like a gust of wind hit us,
fading us into nothing.

Sophia picked up the papers from the coffee
table – the treaty that saved magical kind, apparently. “Trade,”
she said. “Sign this, and I’ll give you the mirror.”

Lydia wiped her face and sat up on the sofa,
pulling herself together. “How long can I use it this time?”

“Sign it, and it’s yours to have.”

Lydia scribbled her signature on the treaty
and exchanged it for a sterling silver hand mirror. “Christine
Cecilia Gavin,” she whispered into it. I moved closer as a smile
stretched across her face, like more than her reflection was
there.

It was way more than her reflection.

I was in it, stretched out in a bed with the
covers hanging off of me. I could see Whitney in the next bed and
hear her snoring too. She would have been Abigail then.

“She watched me through that?” I asked.

“Still does.”

I sighed, shaking my head, unsure of how I
felt about that – happy that I mattered to her, betrayed because
she’d let this happen, or amazed because I’d been right about
someone watching me all these years.

“Swear that you won’t take her … take
it
back,” she whispered, tears falling into her mouth as she
spoke.

“I swear.” Sophia stood and tugged on
Lydia’s arm. We followed them into her bedroom. Sophia tucked her
in as she continued to stare into the mirror.

“Isn’t she beautiful? I love it when they
put her in the white pajamas. She looks like an angel.” Sophia
um-hummed like she didn’t really care as she dimmed the lights in
Lydia’s room.

Her bedroom doors opened into my New Orleans
sitting room. I thought it was over, but I saw myself asleep on the
sofa with the news blasting in the background.

Sophia opened my door and whispered, “You
can come in now.”

Lydia stepped through the door slowly, her
face wet and red. “I’ve called you a million times, and you haven’t
answered. You promised you’d answer.”

“You were harassing me. I told you to let me
handle it.” So those phone calls had been from Lydia. Wow.

“That lie was awful, by the way. How long do
you think she’ll believe that? A witch hunting money that belongs
to people she doesn’t know? Really, Sophia?” Her lie
was
ridiculous, now that I thought about it. I should’ve seen through
Sophia. “And … this mess about her being a witch. I don’t
understand that.”

“Yes, you do,” Sophia said. “You just don’t
want to admit it.”

“She doesn’t have powers, and I dare you to
call her a copy.”

“I didn’t say that, but I saw her create
fire. That’s why I went there.” Lydia covered her mouth, shaking
her head like she didn’t believe it. “I had to purposefully shield
my mind around her. I could feel it. She’s powerful.”

I shifted on the sofa, panting in my sleep.
Lydia sat next to me and rubbed my cheek.

“I could make this nice for her,” Sophia
said. “What if I went and got a friend to stay here with her? I
have one in mind. You freed her parents for me. Emma,
remember?”

Lydia inched closer, ignoring her. She
pulled me to her arms and cradled me like a baby. I sighed, my
chest relaxing, breathing more calmly now.

“Mom,” I whispered, like I remembered doing
in the dream. The peaceful hell that smelled like her.

She gasped. “Baby!” She kissed me on my
forehead, then both of my cheeks. “I’m sorry about everything. I
didn’t know about those girls. I didn’t know about your powers. I
should have. I’m so sorry.”

Didn’t know? The most powerful psychic woman
in the world was claiming not to know how my life was at St.
Catalina? Her memories had softened me, but that turned my heart to
stone again. I was over it. Over her. The excuses, the lies, the
breakdowns.

“I need you to get me into her mind. She’s
as blocked as I am, without even trying. I need to see what went
wrong. How the powers came back.”

Sophia blew the powder into Lydia’s face. I
was dead inside, so I couldn’t laugh when she let her hit the
floor. She stepped over Lydia and kneeled in front of me. “Sweet
dreams, my love,” she said. She turned off the TV and snapped,
probably meeting Lydia in my head.

I was done, I’d been done, but now I refused
to let her drag me through any more pitiful memories. Especially
not ones I’d lived. Before I could make my demand, Sophia blew the
powder in my face again and caught me before I hit the floor.

I woke up in Paris. My suitcase was on the
floor by the bed, my cell phone on top of it. I rolled over and
found a note on the pillow. I knew it was from Lydia. Her
handwriting hadn’t changed.

Christine, what you’ve seen today, I never
imagined I’d have to show you. My life has been one horrible
decision after another. The worst of them all apply to you. I know
I’m probably the worst thing you could’ve imagined for a mother.
That’s why I wanted you to believe in Catherine and Raymond. I
wanted there to be these normal people who could only be separated
from you by death. Not the truth – that your mother is an awful
person who took you from your father and hid you in that horrible
place. I’ll never forgive myself for hurting you today and every
day I let you sit at that school. I love you more than life, and I
am sorry I have never shown you that. I know you are upset, but
please stay in my apartment until I find the hunter who came to
your house. I’m so sorry, baby. For everything. I love you.

I crumpled the letter and threw it on the
floor. Her life was tragic, more awful than expected, but there
were seventeen whole years that she let bad predictions and that
Kamon guy keep her away from me. I was alone and out of place
because of the powers she’d passed to me. And she’d been so
dramatic in leaving my dad. She didn’t fight for him either. Or why
couldn’t she just take off and leave me with him? I would’ve at
least had one parent. And how could she not have known how
miserable I was all these years? She just didn’t want to know. She
didn’t want to see how awful her decision turned out to be.