Lost Seraphine (The Seraphine Trilogy #2) (7 page)

“What’s wrong? There’s something else, isn’t there?” Caleb lifts my chin and glances into my hazel eyes with his gray ones. I love the way his eyes contrast with his dark hair. He’s truly beautiful, both inside and out. He doesn’t realize how crazy he makes over half the female population act all wonky when he’s around and that makes me love him even more. I’m lucky to have found him.

“Talk to me, Gia. Don’t shut me out.”

Sighing deeply, I meet his gaze. “I think it’s time for you to meet some of my people.”

A grin spreads across his face, a mischievous one. I don’t know what I expected, but I really wasn’t thinking it was going to be this kind of reaction. “Yes! Finally. You know, I almost thought I was going to have to turn into a Jeremy Thompson.”

I screw my face up. “You mean that guy who stalks all of his girlfriends? Not cool.”

“Hey, I said
almost
.” He’s adorable and aggravating and everything that I ever thought I would never find in a boy.

The day I thought I was going to lose him was more than I could bear. Now I need to tell him everything about who I am, what I’ve lost, where we come from and what my people are capable of… a gazillion things. I’m afraid if I don’t, then Caleb will become something… he has no idea of how badly it could affect both our races.

I glance out across the water behind him, allowing the sight and sound of thrashing waves to ease my mind for a short moment. I wish I wouldn’t have looked out there. I knew it would happen.

Raze is floating over the waters, or at least it’s the ghost of Raze that haunts my mind. Frowning, I force myself to look away, ignoring the ghostly image and focusing instead on Caleb’s soothing voice.

Why do I keep beating myself up this way?

My laughter fades and try as I may, the things I’m feeling weigh on me like a brick. I feel Caleb’s eyes on my profile. He doesn’t miss a thing when it comes to the people he loves. Right away, he glances beside and in front of me, studying the part of the sea where I’ve just seen Raze’s ghost. Of course there’s nothing there now.

Then, the laughter starts, Raze’s laugh. It reminds me of the time we hid stingray babies inside one of Cori’s bathing rooms. She’s always been so anal about the way she looks so we decided to shake her off the pedestal a bit.

Later on, I found out my brother did those things because he had a huge crush on her. Hearing the roar of his laughter only serves to make my growing sense of becoming completely insane even more of a reality.

The ghost appears behind Caleb this time, a glow among the shadows cast by the darkening evening. Not even the voices of the sea work to calm my nerves now.

“What’s wrong, Gia?” Caleb asks, massaging my shoulders.

“Nothing, really.” My nerves make goose bumps across the exposed parts of my arms and legs.

I think I’m going insane. No worries.

Caleb glances back. The ghost disappears before he has the chance to be seen by Caleb, my boyfriend who has seen spirits his entire life, something my people have never been able to do. Turning back to me, he tightens his lips into a thin line. “Don’t give me that nothing line. I can see you’re not all right.”

The laughter echoing in my mind increases. The ghost of Raze multiplies around us. Now about twenty versions of Raze, laughing, pointing fingers and talking to himself, surround us.

Caleb swings his head around, examining the area around and behind us. He does so a fraction of a second too late. All versions of my brother’s ghost have vanished.

“I told you he’d think you’re crazy,” Raze’s voice speaks in my head, booming and scaring the crap out of me.

I wiggle out of Caleb’s arms and hop to my feet. “I told you, I’m sorry. What else do you want from me?” I scream at Raze, closing my eyes and slamming my hands over my ears. I hear Caleb shuffle to his feet and then he is grabbing my wrists, moving my hands away from my ears.

“What’s wrong, Gia? Talk to me. Don’t shut me out. What’s going on?”

I open my eyes and glance into Caleb’s face; his perfect features are twisted in confusion, his expressive, gray eyes storm with concern. Suddenly, Raze’s laughter fades, but the strange hitch in my chest doesn’t go away. I stretch my eyes wide, refusing to cry, tired of weeping. I hate that part of being a human girl. It’s weak. So not my style. I’ll soon become an ocean myself if I don’t stop all this emotional stuff.

Instead, I fall into Caleb’s arms, bypassing his question for now. He tightens his embrace and strokes my hair while I listen to his thudding heart. It’s a strong sound that assures me that, even though I might be weak and weepy and going insane, the boy I love is strong enough to handle all the things coming our way.

Gia

Back at the safe house, I shuffle up to my room, an ode to all things girlish with its lavender ceiling, white bedroom furniture and bare, light blue walls. My guess is that Mabry wanted to make sure I felt completely at home. Or, a little at home, anyway. He has always been a loyal ally to the Seraphine, so Mabry agreeing to let me stay in his safe house doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Normally, this place does its job, making me feel closer to my home. Today, though, after everything that has happened, not even the lava lamps I’ve collected and scattered around the room assist in soothing my nerves.

I drop my things onto my pink, Hello Kitty comforte
r—
one of the largest splashes of warmth in the roo
m—
and sit down, cradling my head. No ghostly voices, images or crazy laughter follow me into this place. Mabry’s veil protects the entire house from all things paranormal, the unwanted stuff anyway.

You can calm down now. Raze’s ghost won’t find you here.

When I was a little girl, Father used to sing to me with his surprisingly perfect voice and his untouchable approach. Nothing in any of the three worlds could touch me, hurt me or make me feel sad. He might be the king of the seas—a mighty force that’s the subject of many human tales and riddles—but the love he showed me has always been comforting.

I don’t have a song to handle my problems for me anymore, so I’m now facing the storms with my own voice. No, I don’t mean singing voice. I’m a poet. Words provide me with a comfort I no longer have without Father’s care.

Pulling out my journal, the one that has a black dragon printed on the cover, I close my eyes and envision Caleb’s face; the smoldering gray eyes highlighted by a mop of messy dark hair, the lips shaped like a heart, the eyelashes most girls would die to have. He’s almost too pretty to be a boy. My stomach clenches simply thinking about him. Rhythmic words come easily as I think of the boy I love.

We race against time and enemies unknown,

My fearless warrior and I.

My heart containing depths of which only he knows,

He lifts me up on a supernatural high.

Time holds beginnings and endings and woes,

A test of faith and love’s truths.

The darkness can wind and tumble us, like foes,

But in the end each other we’ll find.

I admire you. Adore you.

More than anything,

I love you.

Not my best work, but it’s enough to help me steal a bit of inner peace. Eventually, I drift off to sleep and dream of white birds flying over the sea. Doves. Representatives of the white mistress’s place on the throne, something I’ll never experience.

Hundreds of the sacred birds fly through a sky filled with black clouds. A cage floats in the middle of the melee; it’s one of the old fashioned kinds that remind me of a dome made of wires. A bird with feathers the color of midnight blue silk sits inside the cage, squawking at its tempters flying free while it’s trapped inside a cage.

So beautiful. The sight of the doves set against the smoke-kissed sky entrances me with a beauty both dark and light, inspiring and frightening. The bluebird anchors the emotions of the moment, pulling all things toward him with the boom of a massive voice that’s part squawk with a lot of hiss blending together.

A loud crash rips through the dream. The bluebird’s cage falls about the same time I get close enough to drink in his beauty. Out of all the doves, I am the largest one, yet I am still not able to keep the bluebird from falling. Another crash. Wails from the birds around me falling from the sky. Their wings tattered, bloody and broken.

The bluebird’s final cry somehow causes all this.

I know it. I can almost hear the accusations of the doves falling from the sky in the way they’re now screeching; an angry sound indicative of the life suddenly taken from them.

I wake up at once, a fistful of my bedcovers in each hand. My writing pad lies beside me and I’m not sure where I am at first.

“Crazy ass dream,” I whisper aloud, my voice a hiss echoing off the walls of my empty room.

If I were one of the Seraphine’s seers, then I could easily make sense out of what I have just experienced. I’m not, though. I don’t need the power of sight to know that the white doves represented my people and I suspect the bluebird, the beautiful one with the strange squawk, is meant to be Caleb.

It has taken about an hour of sleep to clear my head, drowning out images of the hurt I’ve seen in Caleb’s eyes when I suddenly cut our ocean date short.

You have got to get it together or you’re going to lose both your mind and relationship, sweetie.

I need to tell Caleb about Raze’s ghost. He thinks I don’t believe in him, in us. It’s not that I don’t trust him. A part of me doesn’t trust that silent part of myself; the darkness I know without a doubt Bernael is using to link the Dark Seraphine’s power to mine.

Peace won’t be paying me a visit today. Downstairs, I hear people arguing. I release a long sigh, stand up and head out of my room, taking my time going down each step so I can get a clue about the identities of my hidden debaters.

“No one here likes me,” I hear Cori’s voice telling someone. “Maybe I should’ve just stayed where I was. At least Bernael’s people didn’t treat me like a pariah.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Coriana,” I hear Mabry saying. “All the Light’s children are welcome here.”

Principal
Armstrong scoffs. “He doesn’t think so,” Cori responds.

“Human opinions on matters of celestial affairs do not concern those who have come to me for assistance inside this house,” Mabry says, his voice rising the tiniest bit, emphasizing his last few words.

Mabry is one of those people who’s always unnaturally calm; as in, he never raises his voice or loses control. I have no doubt all our lives are safe with someone like him around, but I’m still trying to get over Mabry agreeing to allow the Principal of my school and his small band of rebels he calls the Tribunal—a group of thirty or so humans who are well versed in the principles of alchemy and who’ve aligned with Mabry’s order of supernatural mystics—to learn the location of the safe house.

It doesn’t make me feel any better that Principal
Armstrong is the only one in the Tribunal allowed to come inside the house. None of this is fair. If Caleb isn’t allowed to set foot in my new home, then it’s not somewhere I care to stay for a long time, either.

“Don’t make those words come back to haunt you, magician,” the principal retorts. A brief silence filled with tension follows. I’ve now made my way to the outside of the door to the living room, afraid to make too much noise for fear of being seen during such a heated moment.

Sure, the Alchemists of Bardonia are known as a peaceable, loving group—mystics who belong to a dying breed—but I’ve heard the stories of how those who cross these descendants of the Archangel Michael tend to either disappear or don’t live to tell about their experience. I could definitely see Mabry zapping someone who ticks him off, yet then apologizing as he stands over his victim’s dust heap. I don’t want to find myself falling into either of those categories.

I peek into the room. The two men face each other, their backs remain turned to me, although Cori spots me right away. She passes a knowing smile in my direction.

Cori and I have faced all kinds of resistance since she came here a couple days ago. No one trusts the girl I’ve brought home with me. We’re all the same in this house, the Seraphines and other young people from Bardonia, the land of the celestials on the other side of the veil. However most of these kids are here to train in the demon slayer arts. Cori is the only one of us that has lived to fight her way back out of Bernael’s hidden kingdom, an incident she has no memory of experiencing.

This makes her a mystery and a heroine, dangerous in the eyes of some fledglings living in the house.

I walk into the living room, feeling the strain of three sets of eyes studying me. Principal Armstrong gets that funny look on his face again, the same one he always gives me each time we pass each other in the hallways at school. I don’t get it. I don’t think I want to, either.

“How do we know this girl hasn’t been turned in some way? No one spends that kind of time with the fallen and then walks off into the sunset,” Principal
Armstrong says as he turns back to Cori. She has made herself comfortable by sitting on my favorite, ugly, brown lounging couch.

“We have my years of experience in the Inquisition to rely on. One should think serving the Silver Order for an equivalent of five hundred human years would be enough, do you not agree?” Mabry says in a way to imply he doesn’t like to have his judgment questioned, especially by a
human. He’s wearing all black today, a custom among the Alchemists during certain hours of the morning.

In Mabry’s homeland of Bardonia, the sun is setting and the night is considered to be the time of the mythicals; creatures you don’t want to meet while you’re strolling along on a nightly walk. Only silver magic controlled by the Alchemists can stop the beasts—a race of half bull, half men we call minotaurs, the same name used by the humans. The Alchemists believe wearing these special black suits enhances the part of their magic they use against the minotaurs. I guess habit has carried over into this land since there aren’t any minotaurs hanging around at night.

“I do believe there’s a reason the Council chose wisdom over muscle to run this place.” Mabry moves his arms behind his back, cupping his hands.

“You humans don’t care about us. Just look at how you mistreat our seas,” Cori points out. I ease into the room and move to a position where I can see everyone’s expressions.

A dark look crosses the Principal’s face. His movie star handsome looks—the classic kind that remind me of Christian Bale—harden. I do believe I need to get my friend out of here before things get really ugly.

Turning to Mabry and ignoring Cori, the Principal says, “Humans need to be warned. It’s not every day we hear news of an apocalypse looming.” His gaze cuts toward me one again. He then adjusts his shirt collar for what seems to be the hundredth time. I wonder why he even bothers with ties because his discomfort when wearing them is painfully obvious. “If you don’t warn people, the blame for any human blood shed will be yours. We must tell the others about the Fallen’s plans.”

Mabry releases a long sigh. “Exactly what the chaotic one wants. Panic. Do not hand it to him so easily. Make him work for his prize.”

“This isn’t the time for philosophy; we need a plan of action.” The Principal’s voice rises as he slams a fist into his palm.

“And values provide a solid ground for a successful strategy to take place,” Mabry answers, his voice remaining calm. The Principal scoffs and turns away. His hot-headedness when it comes to matters of war makes me think of my father. He wouldn’t stand here debating with Mabry. He’d simply charge into battle and handle matters in his own way, the god-like way.

Political discussions, especially the kind where Mabry exercises his mind muscle over someone, make my head spin. I focus on Cori instead. She’s wearing blue jeans and one of Lelo’s old P-Rod tee shirts, smiling as she winks in my direction. Just like her sister, she thrives in conditions where she’s the object of controversy.

Now that Cori’s all cleaned up, I can see the resemblance between Lelo and her older sister; the tightly curled, brown hair that reminds me of chocolate, the cocoa colored skin that’s too perfect, even for a Seraphine, the kick ass attitude and the loyalty to her family as well as her friends.

Like me, she didn’t take the news of Lelo’s death well at first. She disappeared somewhere in the forest out back and it took us the entire day and most of the night to find her.

She told us during her captivity she had felt the tear of life; the thing that hitches inside a Seraphine’s chest when we lose someone close to us. Cori said she was expecting to hear the worst after she fought her way out of Bernael’s hidden compound; a place she doesn’t hold any memories of or details about what happened.

Bernael and his cronies did one heck of a mind job on her. I suspect she was mistreated as well, but there are some things best left blowing in the winds of the past.

Cori has an amazing strength. I wish I could be more like her. Right now, I think she’s about to twist her wrists off. Being analyzed to death by two strong personalities like Principal Armstrong and Mabry Tonzik can be traumatic enough.

I ease over to her side while the adults are in a heated debate over where the fallen will strike first. The two men’s dark heads are huddled together over a map they’ve spread across the table. The perfect time to sneak away.

Nudging Cori’s arm, I lean over toward her ear. “The escape route’s open. Take advantage while you can.”

When we sneak out into the hallway, I can almost feel the relief pouring off Cori. “Talk about intense. I am so glad you’re here.”

“You need a distraction, so do I. How about some Starlight practice? You up for it?”

A devious grin crosses her lips. I’m in trouble. “I’m not the one who needs to worry.”

“Cool. Put your words to your lightning bolt skills,” I challenge, knowing I’m going to regret it, but oh well. At least I’ll be able to get my mind on something besides thinking about Caleb and Raze.