Lost (22 page)

She leaned away, and I stared at her like she’d lost her mind until my heart quaked, thinking of my mother on the ground by the pool.

I didn’t have time to figure out why she was being so creepy.

I yanked myself from Sophia’s house to my old one in New Orleans. They’d left the needle in Mom’s neck. I yanked it out and checked her pulse. Her heart was still beating. I finally took a breath.

“Leah,” Kamon said. “So nice of you to join us.”

His voice sent a shiver up my spine. He and his triplets walked out of my old house, dressed in black, like I’d seen in my vision.

Only Remi was missing.

The knife in my hand suddenly felt vulnerable. Like one of them could take it and use it against me. I slipped it into the side of one of my boots.

Just as the handle thumped against my ankle, Devin appeared in a puff of smoke, without my friends. He reached in his pocket and tossed a handful of blue powder into the pool. It sounded like grains of sand as it scattered across the surface, and it made the water sparkle and churn.

It was the place where magic dwelled.

“You got her!” he said, to Kamon, smiling and pointing at me, not Mom. “I’m glad. I tried, but her boyfriend and friends couldn’t get her to come with me, and your hunter ruined your chance at the ball.”

Oh my God. Devin had recruited my friends to help Kamon capture me. And he’d invited me to the ball to trap me, the same ball I was stabbed at.

“Now are you finally going to tell me what you want with this witch?” he asked.

Witch? He didn’t know I was human?

Kamon laughed hard and sighed after. “C – 13,” he said. “Please get rid of this fool for me. Thanks for doing so much of the work, Devin, but I’m afraid our partnership has reached its end.”

“I knew you’d try to pull something like this,” Devin said. He raised his palms to the sky and closed his eyes. Before he could do whatever dramatic spell he was attempting, he started choking.

One of the copies approached him, and he begged for freedom in squeals and coughs.

“I plead for mercy, Master,” the copy killing Devin said. “I’ve seen that his life is needed.”

“Kill him,” Kamon said, like he was bored with the conversation. “Life is beginning again in a few short minutes.”

“I’ve seen it too,” one of the brothers said.

Kamon sighed loudly and waved his hand, allowing them to spare Devin. “Fine. Let him go, but if he messes something up, you will pay.”

The copy released Devin. He panted for a moment,
then
vanished with a snap.

Kamon grinned at me as he walked closer. The copies trailed a few inches behind him, pressing in.

Mom squirmed on the ground. Her eyes were open and panicking inside of her lifeless body. In her state, she wouldn’t be able to fight.

Luckily, she’d passed me her powers. I could fight on her behalf.

I threw the first blow, not interested in waiting for them to finish their dramatically slow walk.

I imagined one copy flying to the other end of the yard, and his body obeyed me, darting through the darkening air as the sun left us.
That started and all out brawl.
The four of them against me.

I blocked fists, dodged legs, and tossed more
bodies
as they got too close to Mom and me. They kept coming, reappearing in my face within the blink of an eye. And I kept fighting, tossing with my mind and eventually my hands when they dared to come closer.

The triplets distracted me from Kamon. He grabbed Mom and rammed his fist into her face, spewing blood from her mouth.

The boys laughed like they were having a good time watching me fight and watching her squirm.

I’d show them a good time.

I knew what power would end this. I was one hundred percent sure.

I remembered the first time I’d seen fire shoot seemingly out of nowhere. I was afraid then and every day after that for years. I remembered when Mom showed me how to control the flame, how small it could be. How it could fly if I wanted it to.

Or slither.

I commanded fire in the form of a snake to wrap around one of the triplets.

“No,” Mom said, just like she had in my vision.

The unlit copies rushed to their brother’s aid, fanning him and trying to control the fire I’d created. It wouldn’t obey them. I uncoiled the snake and made it strike in their direction. They stumbled back.

“You cowards,” Kamon spat. “Go home! Now!”

The trembling boys vanished, and I turned the snake on Kamon.

“Leave,” Mom whimpered. “Right now.”

I didn’t listen. I wasn’t a copy; she’d made sure I didn’t think of myself as one. She was my mother, not my master, and daughters disobey mothers all the time.

Kamon reached his hand to the snake, just over the fire, and pretended to pet it. He grinned, completely unafraid. Luckily, fire was not my only power.

With the lightest wave of my hand, he flew backwards into the side of the house. He crashed into the white bricks and slid to the ground. He struggled to get up, trying to look calm, and brushed dirt from his arms.

I slammed him again, drove his beautiful face into the home my grandparents would still live in if not for the man he was trying to save.

“Go home,” Mom whispered, weak,
desperate
. “Go home, right now.”

Kamon chuckled and stood. “This is perfect, Leah. It’s happening just like I saw it.” He tucked one hand in the pocket of his perfectly tailored pants and flung the other in the air. Mom flew back like a single feather in howling wind and crashed into the pool. The blood from her lip stretched across the water, multiplying in a moment into thousands of bloody vines.

A red burst of light crackled across the sky. Kamon smiled. White fireworks followed, the sounds seemed to linger longer than necessary as a gust of wind caught his hair. My heart was pounding too loudly to hear the blue firework burst into the sky.

“You are the one,” Kamon said.

“And you are an idiot,” I said.

He threw his head back and laughed. I raised my hand, ready to slam him again. “I’m not as dumb as you think, Christine,” he said. He smiled and blew me a kiss. “See you soon.”

He vanished, and I ran to the pool, ignoring what he’d said. My mother was sinking inside of a magical portal. I didn’t have time to decode the cryptic message of an evil hunter.

I dove into the pool and pulled her to the surface.

She coughed water out of her lungs and smiled at me slightly. “I told you to stay out of this,” she said.

“I’m here to save you. They opened a portal. They were trying to change your past.”

The magic tingled my skin and swept the hair up on my arms.

“What?” she said.

“This is a portal to the past. It’s what they’ve been up to. They needed a memory. And blood. They were going to go back and save Julian and Dreco. I stopped them.”

She looked around at the churning water, like she’d just seen it for the first time.

“Let’s get out of here. I don’t have a good feeling … right now. Let’s go.”

Her tone was like Sophia’s had been when she’d mentioned poisonous fruit.

 
It took me a moment to see the temptation in all of this. I was in a magical portal, with a host who had a past I wanted to change.

And I knew several of her memories, one from the exact day I believed she’d changed our lives for the worse. The day she’d left dad.

I tried to force myself to think of the last time I’d been in this pool, with Nate, someone I could lose if I let temptation take me.

But … there were countless things that had to come together in order for Nate and I to meet. St. Catalina, Sophia, him being in the right place to be captured by the same hunter that captured Emma. It was too intricate to be coincidental. He was my soul mate. I was sure of it. And in any life, under any circumstances, soul mates should be able to find each other. We shouldn’t be bound by time.
By anything.

If I used the portal, I would get what I was always supposed to have, two parents who adored me and wanted me. A family. There would be no need to pray for my mother’s life. No guessing if I’d get to keep her forever. No awkward silence between her and the man she loved.

I was supposed to grow up with sickeningly happy parents. That was ruined, and now it could be fixed. Rewritten.

“Sweetie, get us out of here. Come on.”

She looked worried. She must’ve figured out what had just dawned on me – that Kamon had been right about my destiny. I was meant to kill Lydia Shaw on July 4
^th
, end the need for her to pretend to be that woman and be away from her husband and child.

More fireworks bombed in the air and the neighbors I’d never met cranked on their speakers, making me completely sure.

The Star-Spangled Banner hummed in the air, and Mom began to cry.

“Honey, please. Let’s go.”

“If you could have one thing, what would it be?” I asked.

“Don’t do this,” she said. “I can’t move. Take us home.” Her mouth ducked under the water, and I pulled her up again. “Let’s just go home. We can make this life work. I’ll talk to your friends and Nathan. I’ll deal with Kamon. Just trust me.”

I pulled her rigid body closer.

“You’ve been dealing with him for years. Maybe I should try.”

“Sweetie, hang on to
yourself
. You are smart. You are logical. Please see what you are doing,” she begged. “Take us home. My place.
Your place.
Anywhere.”

“I don’t want to go home.
Or to Paris.
I want to go to your house in Miami,” I said, thinking of the memory that would serve as my window. “The one Dad was making eggs in that morning. He had on a suit and he was dancing.” She pleaded with me, begging with tears and moans. “We need this portal. All of these years, you have been miserable. So has Dad. So have I.”

“You have to stop. Right now.”

I ignored her. I wanted this, I needed this, and it felt like I didn’t have a choice now.

I touched her stomach.

“I was there with you two in the house that day. I think this is the day you fell in love with me. The day I made you ruin your life.” I pressed my forehead against hers as she cried harder.

“Baby, please. It won’t work. It won’t work!”

“If it doesn’t, we’ll go home. But why not try, Mom? You don’t try enough! You give up too easily.
On Dad.
On our family.
Please, think about it with me. He was going to work. You were in the kitchen. So was I.”

She fought it, but I saw exactly when the memory of him chasing her around overtook her. The pool roared as the water defied gravity and leapt into the air, glowing with red streams of light. Then it crashed down on us, sending us whirling underwater together.

I held my breath and felt myself floating, moving somewhere else.

To their kitchen.

I squinted my eyes against the bright yellow light streaming through the curtains. Mom raced past the window, her hair messy from sleep. Dad laughed and pinned her against the cabinets, but she wedged herself out and raced right through me.

“Mom,” I yelled. She didn’t respond. Right, I was a bundle of almost nothing inside of her. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do anything … except make her sick. If she vomited before he left, she’d notice she was pregnant and would have to tell him.

“I am powerful and unstoppable. I am powerful and unstoppable,” I chanted. “Sick. Sick. Nauseous.
Gag, Mom.
Gag! Please!”

“You okay?” Dad asked. My eyes flew open. Mom had covered her mouth.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

She gagged again and ran to the sink. She hurled, and he held her hair. “I have never seen you puke without being wasted,” Dad said, laughing.

“I’m fine. Go to work, baby.”

He wiped her mouth with a napkin and shook his head. He picked her up and carried her to their bedroom. “I can’t leave my sick wife. I’ll start tomorrow.” She begged him to leave, but he crawled in bed next to her with his suit on. “We ate the same thing last night. What could have made you sick?”

“I’m not sick. I’m never sick,” she said. He adjusted a pillow behind her head. Her eyes slid from his to open space. “Gavin, how long ago did my parents … you know?”

“Four weeks ago, I guess.”

“No way. That long?” she asked. He nodded and kicked off his shoes. Her hands moved to her stomach. I’d done it. She’d have no choice but to tell him now. He was home. “
Gav
, I haven’t had my period since before that.”

“So what?” She glared at him. “Oh! No way. It’s not possible. We’re careful.”

She hummed, her eyes moving around like she was counting. “Not always,” she whispered. “Not that time when …” She gasped. “That was almost six weeks ago.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Dad smiled first. She squealed and looked down like she expected to see me there. He raised her shirt and kissed her stomach.