Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) (39 page)

“Go home. Go to bed,” I said. “I’ll tell her
I’m fine, and if she’s still mad, you and I can team up against
her. She can’t take us both.” She laughed, and I pulled back to
kiss her on the cheek. “And you’ve taken great care of me. I can’t
imagine what I would be doing today if you hadn’t come to get me. I
wouldn’t have friends. And I wouldn’t have you.”

She wiped her eyes and kissed me a million
times, all over my face. “You’re nothing like her. Not even a
little bit,” she said.

When she left, I took a tour so I didn’t
have to see Nate all broken and mangled. Outside, I found a pool
that Sophia hadn’t filled.

“A pool house,” I said, walking closer to
it. I’d seen one in the cheer-off movie. The captain lived in one
instead of sleeping in the house with her parents. It was more
convenient for her boyfriend. I opened the door and peaked inside.
There was a little kitchen and open space where I guessed a bed or
a sofa would be. In the movie, it was a bed, with clothes scattered
all over the floor.

In the big house, there were six bedrooms,
none furnished but mine. I was meant to live here alone.

The living room was amazing. The light blue
sofa was long and a semi circle. It could probably seat ten. I
walked over to my new movie library that surrounded the TV,
impressed and excited. I wondered how Sophia knew that I’d love all
of these cheesy, predictable movies when it was a shock to me.
Maybe she knew that despite being the product of a seriously tragic
love story and growing up depressed and lonely, I was still a
teenager.

“Hi,” Lydia said. Her voice made my heart
twinge. I hadn’t noticed she had on all black like a hunter until
then – a black turtleneck, black pants, and long black boots. I
waved without speaking, still taking her in. She could pass for my
sister, well … half sister. She definitely looked too young to have
a seventeen-year-old daughter. “He’s fine. Knocked out, but
fine.”

“Thanks.”

I hadn’t noticed the clock on the wall until
then. It was quiet enough to hear the seconds pass.

“Can we talk about what happened?” she
asked.

“What part?” I whispered.

She chuckled and sat on the sofa. “Right …
you’ve had a rough couple of days.” I sat unnecessarily far away
from her. One more inch to the left, and I would’ve been on the
floor. “You saved their lives. Do you feel like a hero?”

“No,” I said. It came out dryer than I’d
meant it to.

I listened to the clock for a minute as she
drummed her fingers on her knees. She stretched her neck to both
sides, making the silence even more awkward.

“What was Kamon talking about?” I asked.
“What should you be afraid of?”

“Nothing. Kamon doesn’t scare me.”

That sounded like a lie, to keep me calm, it
seemed. I felt like she’d lost the right to lie to me, however. “It
sounded like he meant you couldn’t kill him.”

She sighed and ran her fingers through her
hair, a nervous fidget. “I can’t.” The tense silence asked
why
for me. “To me, he is Kamon, the man who could hurt my
child. To the world he is, Dr. Kamon Yates. After Julian, I wanted
to kill him, but he disappeared. He used to send letters to my
office to taunt and threaten me. He was a ghost for a decade,
constantly eluding me. About seven years ago, he immerged at a
benefit in
his
honor. Julian trained me to fight, and he had
Kamon in a lab most of the time. He’s very smart. His research has
cured quite a few diseases and caused many advances in medicine.
Specifically, a form of childhood cancer. So, while I have wanted
to kill him and remove that threat to you, it hasn’t been possible.
It still isn’t. And if I did, let’s say blow his home up like I did
with Dreco, he has people in place waiting to expose me and the
agents and the hunters for what we really do.”

I couldn’t do anything but shake my head.
Kamon was an evil genius, using science to appear as a good man to
the world. Like Julian used politics, I guessed. Of course the
Special Defensive Coordinator for the U.N. couldn’t kill someone
like that, someone who healed sick children. And Nate and I had met
him, possibly gotten on his radar. Wonderful.

“Don’t worry about him,” she whispered.
“He’ll never … ever touch you again. No one will hurt you.”

That sounded like a vow. One she’d made long
ago. The tremor in her voice darkened the mood. Our past rushed
into the room, fast, threatening to drown us both or force us to
float together. She leaned into her knees and wrapped her arms
around her stomach.

“Christine.” She sniffed, crying already,
drowning already. “How about I start with the truth Sophia and I
should’ve told you days ago?” She took a loud breath and closed her
eyes. “You are my baby who I’ve always wanted to protect but
somehow manage to hurt instead.”

Her breath caught, and she covered her
face.

“First, by leaving you. Second, by giving
you powers and making you deal with them on your own. I had my eye
out for obvious things. I never saw you do anything, and your
grades were average … not like you could know things without
studying. I thought it meant you were normal.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way. She
would’ve seen what I wanted everyone to see – my performance of a
shy, human girl. One who never cried. “I hid it well, I guess.”

“There aren’t many things that can be hidden
from me, so it’s not an excuse. I should’ve known more about this …
when I was carrying you and hurting you with my powers, when you
were transporting all over your dorm on accident. I let myself be
clueless.”

“Why?” I asked.

She leaned back on the sofa, wiping her
eyes. “I think I’m … delusional. I was, anyway. You were safe from
the dozens of horrible futures I’d seen about you, so in my mind,
nothing else could be wrong. And I mostly watch you when you’re
sleeping. Especially the last few years.” She huffed and paused for
a minute, sniffing and whimpering. “I knew Whitney had left, but I
didn’t see it. I didn’t see why. I figured you’d had enough of her.
I found her to be terribly annoying. I assumed the other girls were
annoying too and you preferred to be alone. I assumed … too
much.”

I refused the tears building in my eyes. I
thought if I closed them, the tears would be trapped there, and I
wouldn’t have to cry for the millionth time.

“You didn’t think I was lonely? You didn’t
think I was hurting from being picked on?”

I wanted to say,
you didn’t think I
needed you?

“I didn’t see it. It’s not an excuse. I
know. But I saw … my baby. I saw what I wanted to see. You sleeping
every night. Growing. Alive.”

“You ignored me,” I countered. “And you
would have ignored me forever. Let me be alone forever.” I was
winning the battle with the tears, but the rest of me was crumbling
under the weight of this. I heard her move right next to me on the
sofa. I felt safe, like she wouldn’t let me drown, so I jumped into
what we were really talking about. “You gave up after you killed
Julian. You sat in that forest and you
let
them take you.
You
let
them take my mother from me.”

In the moments it took for me to catch my
breath, the obvious truth nipped at me, impossible to ignore. I
imagined her sitting in that forest, covered in blood, and I knew
why she’d sat there. How do you put one foot in front of the other
when you dismember someone without the help of a weapon? She didn’t
move because she couldn’t move.

“Well … after … after you should’ve come to
get me,” I said, clinging to my point. “No matter what. You should
have fought whoever could have hurt me, tried harder to find Kamon.
You put so much energy into making the world safe and you left
enough threats behind that I still needed to stay buried. That’s
stupid. It’s ridiculous. It’s like you let the
Lydia
who was
my mother die.”

It became eerily quiet again as I stumbled
on another truth. That Lydia Gavin, the girl she became in the
diary,
had
died. Whether it was from leaving us or
dismembering the man who beheaded her parents, she was gone.

“I know. I’m sorry, and I don’t deserve your
forgiveness. I’m not even asking for it. I just can’t live with you
thinking you were in any way unwanted. I love you more than
anything in this world. Nothing has come close from the moment I
knew you were living inside of me.”

The tears seeped under my closed lids,
begging me to see her side. However rash and delusional her
decision was, she’d done it out of fear and love.

Like I was speaking for the baby who’d woken
up without her mother, and the lonely little girl who’d missed her
so much she formed a habit of sniffing oranges, I whispered, “How
could you think I would get over you leaving? I missed you so
much.”

Just as I broke, she pulled me to her lap. I
folded instantly. Surrendering to that scent. To her. It was a
strange feeling, getting my strongest need met without ever knowing
I needed it. To be held by my mother. The woman who smelled like
oranges and left me with nuns who didn’t smell like this. I didn’t
want to cry anymore. My brain was wired to feel calm here. And
satisfied. And safe.

“I don’t regret hiding you, baby, because I
know you would’ve been hurt because of me. Either by Kamon or being
stuck in solitude with me. I wanted you to have a normal life.
That’s why I brought you there. That’s why I kept you there. But I
do
regret how you’ve felt about yourself. The magic. The
devil. I could die knowing you had to deal with that.”

She lifted my face up and kissed my nose.
God, this felt so natural, so right. Tears fell from her eyes onto
my cheek. She was shaking and I was calm. Maybe too calm.

“Wednesday,” she whispered. “Your future
shifted away from what it had been for years – leaving St. Catalina
at graduation. I got worried, and I left work to check on you
through the mirror. You were eating in the courtyard by yourself.
Normally, I’d see that you were alive and go back to work. But I
waited to see what could possibly be changing your life so
drastically that I’d felt it in Paris. Then I saw them picking on
you. I saw everything I should have seen. Everything I missed. I’m
so sorry.”

I sighed, adjusting in her lap, finding an
even more comfortable spot. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I
went with nothing. She was right, she should’ve known. She
should’ve made sure I wasn’t dying there. But in her arms, as calm
as I was, I didn’t want her to feel worse about it.

“I thought I could fix things and Sophia
thought she could too. And tonight … God … you ended up exactly
where I never wanted you to be. Again, because I wasn’t watching.”
She squeezed me, shaking and crying, unraveling more.

“But you came. I’m safe now,” I whispered,
breathing in her scent. Absently, I reached for her hair. I dropped
it because she was Lydia Shaw, and that was weird. And I was pretty
sure I was supposed to be yelling at her right now. She kissed my
cheek. I smiled and reached for her hair again. With my eyes
closed, I could feel myself floating to a different time. Where I
was completely content. Where I loved and felt loved. “I remember
you so vividly. How weird is that?” I asked.

“Not weird for you. Your memory is advanced.
I knew that was a characteristic of copies, but I don’t think of
you like that, so I’ve never considered it. I never thought about
you missing me because … you remembered me. I didn’t think about a
lot.” I didn’t bother trying to fill the silence. I was busy
twirling her hair around my fingers, loving the feel of it,
remembering the feel of it. “And once and for all, let me just say,
you are
not
evil.”

She shook me a little for emphasis. I
chuckled. “Okay. Somehow, you saying it makes it real,” I said.

“Good. You have powers, but you were not
bred. You have your own personality. You don’t act like me at all.
You’re actually nice.”

I chuckled again. “You let magical kind
live. That was nice.”

“That was Sophia’s doing. I couldn’t care
less. They actually give me more work to do. Life would be easier
if they were extinct.” She laughed. “See? You would never say that.
Totally not my copy.”

“But … the anger. I flash out so easily. My
nose bleeds, too.”

“Everyone gets angry. It doesn’t mean you’re
a copy.”

I pulled my knees in tighter, feeling two
days old. “But what about the nosebleeds? And I think I had a
seizure in the shower the other day.”

“Seizure! Doing what?” She lifted my head,
inspecting my eyes. I smiled. I loved how rattled she got over
me.

“Trying to find out something about Remi.
She wasn’t in the house, but I found her and I could hear and-”

“See her?” I nodded. “Being in someone’s
mind that way is dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Please don’t do that anymore.” Her reprimand burned even though her
tone was sweet. I frowned and tucked my head under her chin, and
she sighed. “I’m sorry, baby. I just want you to be careful. People
with natural powers often hurt themselves because they push
themselves too far. They don’t know when to stop because they feel
too confident and capable. That’s where the nosebleeds come from.
Straining. Just be careful. You just have to concentrate and take
your time and listen to your body when it says to stop.”

She rocked me a little, and I nuzzled my
forehead against her neck like I’d done it a thousand times.

“Okay. Oh, I remember your song. I sing it
all the time.”

“I know,” she said, crying harder. “I hadn’t
watched you take a bath since the nuns stopped bathing you. Sophia
tried to pull me away from a memory because you were in the shower,
but you were singing that. I think my heart stopped.”

I smiled, wishing I could have seen her and
Sophia jumping around in my head now. Their weird relationship
would have been funny to watch.