Catalyst (Forevermore, Book Two) (3 page)

My aunt looked tired, which I knew wasn
’t literally possible — vampires didn’t sleep and never felt tired. Perhaps she was mentally exhausted, or, more likely than not, annoyed. “I don’t know why I never saw him. You have said yourself that I am more vampire than witch; maybe my gift has some restrictions that yours doesn’t. My visions have never been something I could control, not really, anyway.”

“
You technically did see Salem,” I said, “through me. How did you do that?”

She didn
’t look like she had an answer. “I don’t know. I’ve never been near a Clairvoyant before. Maybe there’s a connection between us, to where our visions can be shared without physical contact.”

I nodded and my eyes dreadfully landed on the house up the road. The Halloween decorations were still up even though it was now a week into November. The pumpkins had rotted and were now deformed orange lumps. Wind had blown the dangling paper skeleton away, aside from one bony arm that was left hanging from a piece of tape on the door. With a frown, I climbed out of the car once we
’d pulled into the driveway behind Mitch’s vehicle. Hannah stayed behind the driver’s seat and said she would wait for me.

“
No. It’s okay. I’m sure Uncle Mitchell can take me back to Haven, but thanks.”

“
You best not try to walk it.”

“
I won’t.”

“
Okay.” She didn’t look convinced, but waved and slammed the car into reverse.

I stood for a moment, watching as the car
squealed down the road. When I turned around, I saw that the front door to the house was now wide open and Jason was awaiting me with a smile, but I could tell there was something hidden underneath — obvious sadness.

Eila was
sitting in the blue denim chair, staring off into space and seemingly unaware of my presence. Mitch glanced at her with a concerned frown, then looked at me and gestured for me to go upstairs to my room. She barely seemed to even notice Jason or his brother; it was like she had completely shut her mind off and was somewhere else. As I walked down the hall, I heard Mitchell say something in Eila’s direction. I couldn’t understand what it was and heard no response.

My bed
room was just as I had left it — covers in a bundled up mess and halfway on the floor, pillows askew, and a few articles of clothing littering the otherwise clean floor. With a shock, I saw that the makeup Serena and I had left out from Halloween was still strewn across my mattress. It had barely crossed my mind that I hadn’t been home since that night — I’d been staying with Hannah and Ezra, and now at Haven. Willow was staring up at me from my bed with a look of disdain, and, to my surprise, she looked slightly thinner than when I had last seen her. Had Eila neglected to feed her? I ruffled her fur gently and reassured her that everything would be okay, and she seemed to glare at me, as if it was my fault she wasn’t being fed; I guessed it was. I rummaged through my closet until I came up with a dark green duffel bag. Without any forethought, I grabbed randomly at the clothes in my closet and stuffed them into the bag, followed by all of the penguins that had made my dresser their home for the majority of my life. Just like me and Willow, they had a new home awaiting them.

I gathered my laptop and put it in my book bag, along with my sketchbook and pencils. The last thing I grabbed before leaving my room was my makeup bag, the sparkling lavender eye
shadow was still resting on the top of the pile of cosmetics, reminding me ofthe time before I knew I had
a
gif
t
— it somehow felt much longer ago than it really was. I hastily shoved all of it into the bag, zipped it shut, and set it with my other luggage. Not once in the years prior had I thought I would be moving out at the age of sixteen, especially not into a motel run by a witch.

When I returned to the living room, with my hands full of bags, I saw that Eila hadn
’t moved an inch. Mitchell gathered the bags from me and went to take them out to his car. Jason was in the hall behind me, staring at the same thing I was — the woman with the honey-colored curls and round face that I was so used to seeing with a smile, not this blank, empty look. Cautiously, I knelt beside her. She didn’t move or seem to notice me, and I glanced back at Jason. His face was painted with sadness and guilt, but he wasn’t acknowledging my look — he was still focused on her.

“
Eila? It’s me, Madison ... if you can hear me ... please blink or nod your head or something,” I said, practically begging though it seemed sort of silly.

Nothing.

“
Mom
,” I said, hoping that the familiarity of the title would catch her attention, but still, she didn’t reply.

“
She’s in shock, Madison,” Jason said, having finally come down the hallway and stood beside me. “Let me see if I can get her attention ... ”

He knelt down in front of Eila, opened his mouth to speak, and before a single word could come out, her hand swept across his face. Jason recoiled and swore, putting a hand over the reddening mark on his cheek.
“I deserve that,” he muttered and straightened up.

Eila looked at me then, her eyes watering
, then turned back toward Jason. “Don’t let her leave me. Please, please, don’t let my daughter leave me.”

“
Maybe now you can understand a fragment of what Alex was going through,” Mitchell said, surprising all of us. I hadn’t even heard him come back in.

Eila looked as if she had been the one slapped across the face. She went to reply, but my uncle was already stalking down the hallway to retrieve Willow. He returned moments later, the white cat tucked under his arm, and strode out of the house in a furious stride. It was almost humorous, but I couldn
’t find it in me to laugh.

I stood up and put an arm around Eila, feeling the warmth of her tears against my shoulder as it brushed across her face.
“I don’t hate you, if that’s what you were thinking. I want you in my life, and I wish that things had turned out differently ... and maybe someday we’ll all get through this and things can go back to normal. Or at least as close to normal as they possibly can.”

“
It’s too late,” she said in a hoarse tone, “I screwed everything up, and now everything is over.”

Jason pulled me away gently and gave me a look that I took to mean
‘It’s time to go,’ and gave Eila one final glance before he picked up his own bag of stuff and headed to the front door. No one said anything, but I could hear the sound of Eila’s sobs even through the closed door as I walked down the familiar sidewalk. The sound seemed to trigger my own tears, regardless how hard I fought it. She had been my mom for sixteen years … she would always be my mom. I just hoped she understood that I had to do this. I had a purpose that was bigger than living out a nine-to-five life. Briefly, I was tempted to go back in and melt into her arms – to comfort one another, but I knew it wouldn’t be any use. She didn’t seem like she wanted to be comforted, and neither did I.

Mitchell dropped me off at Haven and helped me take everything to my room while Jason remained in the car. Something about the place made him uncomfortable, and I wasn’t going to force him into going in when he wasn’t ready to. Hopefully someday he would learn to accept me for what I was. Willow immediately crawled underneath my bed and hissed. She hadn’t enjoyed the car ride, which was no surprise. She hadn’t been in a vehicle since she was taken to the vet and spayed – not too long after Uncle Mitch had given her to me. I was lucky that I made it through the ordeal unscathed, having had Willow in my lap during the drive ‘home’. My uncle lugged a bag of cat food into the room and set it against the mini fridge. I plopped my book bag softly on top of my mattress and set the makeup bag on my dresser. The duffel bag was placed beside the edge of my bed, where I saw a small white paw whip out and swipe at the zipper.

“
Thanks for bringing me back,” I said with a subtle frown. “It wasn’t easy being there.”

Mitchell pulled me into a hug and squeezed tightly until I gasped for air.
“You’ll all make it through this, slowly but surely. I remember when your Gran and Grandpa divorced, it was really hard on Jason and me ... but after a while, it almost felt normal … like they were never really meant to be together like that.”

It didn
’t even feel like Gran and Grandpa weren’t my grandparents, though they technically had no blood relation to me at all; I wondered if they knew that. “It just seems so sudden ... and so unreal.”

“
I know exactly what you mean. With your Gran and Grandpa, it didn’t even seem possible. They acted like they were the happiest couple on the planet, but it turned out it was all just that — an act. They didn’t want Jason and me to realize how unhappy they really were. Somewhere along the way, they figured out that life wasn’t worth spending with someone you couldn’t be happy with, especially not for someone else’s sake. Your dad … Jason … I don’t think he was ever a hundred percent with being with Eila, and I think she knew that all along too … a little, at least.”

“
Yeah …” I said and pulled away from him. “It’s just weird. Why wait this long? Why wait until my real mom came into the picture?”

“
They did it to protect you, just like your Gran and Grandpa did for us. They were more concerned over your happiness than their own. Now maybe they’ll go their own ways and find out what — and who — makes them happy. Who knows, they might just find that they were in the right place all along .. in their own time.”

“
I already know what makes Eila happy. Her bakery.”

Mitchell nodded.
“And I know what makes Jason happy,” he said with a grimace.

“
My mom,” I said knowingly.

Once more, he nodded.
“That’s always been the case ... I just don’t want him to get hurt over it again. I don’t think those two were ever meant to be, either.”

“
Yeah …”

But nor do I want him to try to get with her, now th
at I know my real dad is alive.

I wasn
’t sure what else to say; it was weird having my uncle speak to me so bluntly about all these things. I was so used to him treating me like his little baby niece, even though I was way past that stage.

He patted me on the shoulder and kissed me lightly on the cheek.
“Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“
Yeah, sure,” I said and walked with him to the door. “Have fun with Jason.”

“
Oh, definitely,” he said with an amused grin. “It’ll be like when we were around your age and lived together.”

“
You lived together when you were my age?”

“
Yep. After your Gran and Grandpa divorced, we lived together in your mom’s old house that’d been left to her by her mom while she was living with Salem.”

“
Wow ...” I said blankly, trying to imagine what that must have been like — two teenage boys living alone together under one roof. “I never knew.”

“
Now you do. I’ll see you later.”

“
Bye,” I said and locked the door behind him.

After I had everything unpacked and in its place, I filled the cat’s dishes and tried to lure her to the litter box, then crawled into bed. Willow eventually eased out of her hiding place and joined me on the mattress after noisily crunching on her food. It was nice having her warm fluffy body beside me again. My mom came into the room two hours later, trying to be quiet and not wake me, but she failed when she knocked over the water dish and yelped.

“
M-mom?” I said quietly, sitting upright and blinking into the darkness.

She flipped on the light switch and looked apologetically in my direction.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered. “Let me clean this up and you can go back to sleep.”

With a groggy nod, I fell back against my pillow and drew my covers up over my head. The sound of my mom opening the bathroom door to get a towel, wiping up the mess, and refilling the water dish kept me awake for the next
five minutes. Once silence had settled in the room again, I managed to fall back asleep. My dreams were filled with dark shadows that whispered in screeching voices in languages that I couldn’t understand. Bright red eyes sparked into existence, illuminating the faces of each shadowy figure and one clearly said my name.

I sat up in a startled jolt, my heart pounding in my chest. Daylight streamed through the windows and Willow was nowhere to be seen. I heard scraping coming from the bathroom and assumed that
’s where the cat had gone off to. Mom was curled up on her bed, facing the wall. With a strangled gasp of surprise, I saw that the framed picture was no longer hanging up and instead was lying face down on her nightstand. Quietly, I stepped down from my bed, went over to the nightstand and picked it up. There were crumpled up tissues beside it, and I imagined my mom sitting up in the darkness last night, crying relentlessly ... if only she knew the truth.

Temptation overwhelmed me then. It would have been so easy to wake her up and tell her that Salem was alive and that we could save him, just her and me. Hannah wouldn
’t have to know. Then again, what could we possibly do? A mortal and an untrained witch against hordes of vampires was suicide. I frowned, placed the frame back on the nightstand, and stepped away from her bed. It hurt knowing that my aunt was right and that keeping this information from my mom was the best for now. She could go to Romania, she could go to whatever fortress Cassius and Silas lived in, and she could demand to see her husband, but in the end they would only wind up killing her or holding her prisoner with him.

When Willow came padding silently from the bathroom, I collected
some clean clothes from my dresser and went to take a shower. I’d hoped the warm water would help clear my thoughts, but if anything, it only caused my mind to wander more and intensify them. The red-eyed creatures from my dream appeared more than once when I shut my eyes to rinse out the shampoo, and I wondered if there was more behind it than just a dream as Hannah seemed to have hinted at.