Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) (22 page)

“I need to ask you something. What kind of
person were you?” I asked. “Am I evil?” Tears fell from my eyes as
I waited on her response. “Could I actually ever hurt someone? Am I
a killer? Would I ever hurt Nathan?”

She interrupted my questions by typing.

Relax and don’t listen to that silly
shifter. Of course you aren’t a killer. And while we are on the
subject of this boyfriend of yours, you could do better. A human
would be nice. Perhaps one with more than three outfits.

“Mom! That’s rude.”

CC
.

“Fine. CC, that’s rude.” It was amazing how
easily it came, being annoyed with a mother.

Just strange is all. I’ve been in his
closet. My closet, I should say, and it’s bare except for the rags
the witch made him. He told you he took food, so considering he’s a
thief, you would think he’d have more clothes.

“He’s not a thief! What do you even want?
I’m tired of you already.” I said.

Mind your tone, sweetie. And to help you
understand
. I crossed my arms over my chest.
And to help you
with that temper of yours. Runs in the … never mind.

“In the family? Or in you? If I’m your copy,
that means you had a temper too.”

I’ll show you something that will help.
Follow me to a door in your closet behind your pants. Trust me. I
showed you the ritual so you’d see you aren’t like them. I showed
you the pictures. He will allow one more thing.

I stood there for a moment. I knew she was
gone because the room felt normal again. She’d gone into the
closet. I went in, and sure enough, there was a small door behind
my jeans.

I wedged my fingers through the crack, and
the door creaked open.

It was cold, maybe because of her, and dark
inside of the opening. I pulled a candle to me from my nightstand
and lit it. I crawled behind the chill, behind my mother, and we
came to another little door. It led to another closet. I crawled
out of it and into the locked room.

She moved slowly through the dark, creepy
like a ghost would, and stopped in front of a light switch. I
clicked it on, freezing my hand in the process. More than fifty
easels were scattered around the room with stools and paint
supplies tossed around the floor. The paintings, some finished,
some not, were covered in several layers of dust.

“Are these yours?” She touched my shoulder.
“An artist? That’s not very hunter-like.” Catherine was the reason
I could draw and could since I was very young. The nuns had been
impressed by it. Art was a copied skill, an imprint she’d left on
me.

I crept around the room on my own, eyes on
the paint on the easels and the splatters on the floor. I stopped
at the door to unlock it. I doubted Nate could get through the
crawl space, and he really needed to see this. It would help my
case.

As I reached for the lock, a chill crept
over me. Not my mother. Something infinitely more terrifying.
Something I’d felt before.

I closed my eyes, remembering myself running
through the main hall at St. Catalina. Milk dripped from the ends
of my hair. I’d just bolted out of the cafeteria after one of
Sienna’s birds lost her grip on her carton. I didn’t cry. I refused
to. I was fourteen, not four, and cold milk was better than the hot
soup from the day before. Girls experimenting with cigarettes
occupied the bathroom closest to the cafeteria. I’d heard them
before I made it there. I kept walking, headed to the always
deserted bathroom tucked away in the corner of the hall. The
haunted one.

It was only a rumor. The nuns had told us a
million times that Sister Constantine had died peacefully in her
sleep a few years earlier. But the myth was that she’d had a heart
attack while cleaning toilets at the end of the school day and
wasn’t found until the beginning of the next. Everyone avoided it
to add intrigue to the story, the legacy of the late Sister
Constantine.
I
avoided it so I wouldn’t seem stranger by
being the only one to use the haunted bathroom.

But the day I needed to wring milk from my
hair, I had no choice. The door creaked, and I shuddered. Not from
a rumor. Not from childlike panic. My shoulders curled and my chest
caved in. My heart trembled like it wanted to stop. And worse when
I approached the last stall. I felt her there. I felt her dying.
The smell of bleach stung my nose. My throat hurt like I’d been
calling for help and I knew that no one would come for me.

And I felt that same feeling right now in
the locked room. Death. Like it had happened right where I stood.
It smelled like blood. Enough for the walls and floor to be covered
with it, but they weren’t. At least not now.

“You … died here,” I said. I brought my
hands to my throat. It burned like something sliced through it.
“God, you … died right here. You were killed in the house. You’re …
trapped here. Your spirits.”

I didn’t know if I should cry or not. I
didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know my parents. They were
probably terrible people who deserved to die, but so much of me
wanted that to be false.

She touched my hand, pulling faintly, and I
moved away from the door. My neck stopped throbbing, and she moved
a box in the corner a few inches. Maybe it was all the strength she
could muster. I leaned over the box. Among the bottles of dried
paint and unwashed brushes, I saw a book with a black leather
cover.

I opened it. On the first page, written in
neat feminine handwriting was:
Diaries are lame, yet here I am
writing in one
.

The room heated up. My mother was gone. I
guessed I’d found what she wanted me to see. And since this was her
house, I assumed it was her diary.

I crawled back to my room. The computer
screen was mostly blank. She’d deleted our conversation, and typed:
Goodnight, honey. Happy reading. Consider what I said about your
boyfriend.

“I will not,” I said, then deleted her rude
message. I knew Nate.
She
was the stranger, the former
hunter, I needed to be cautious of.

I crashed on the sofa, upset with both CC
and Raymond. Something wasn’t right about this. If she could type,
why not tell it all? How they lived. How they died. Why listen to
her husband, as she called him, not my father?

If I had a baby and was communicating with
her years later from beyond the grave, I wouldn’t nag her about her
boyfriend. I would want her to know how much I loved her. I’d want
to tell her everything about her father, Nathan obviously, and tell
her not to worry about a thing. I’d want her to know she wasn’t a
copy, I’d say it out right. I’d type,
honey I love you, you are
my child
. And she’d know. But I would be a mother, not a
breeder who happened to paint.

I dried my face with my shirt, pissed to the
point of tears now. If she could talk to me, why was this the first
time? It made sense for a detached hunter to ignore their copy. She
didn’t even want me to call her
Mom
. Just like Theresa,
Nate’s mother who ignores him.

“It doesn’t matter who you were, Catherine
and Raymond. I’ve never cared about you and I’m not about to
start,” I cried. The diary flipped open on my stomach. “Leave me
alone.”

Her icy fingers touched my tears. She kissed
me again before the chill left the room.

It was easier to be upset with her than
admit I needed her help. Without her, I’d only wonder what kind of
person she was, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t a mold of
her. But that wasn’t true because I had her powers. Reading the
diary was the only way I could be sure that I wasn’t forcing Nate
to be with a horrible person, that I was as sweet as I smelled, and
the spice he picked up on wasn’t my propensity to hunt and kill his
kind.

It would prove that I wasn’t going to
finally snap one day. I’d have evidence to show Nate that I
wouldn’t. Or that I would … and I’d force myself to do the right
thing and let him go.

After reading the first sentence again, I
could hear her voice behind it. She sounded irritated and sullen.
Like the kind of person who’d tell her daughter to dump her
boyfriend during their first conversation ever.

After lamenting her hate for writing, she
wrote:

I hate being a girl. I hate every single
thing about it. I hate my hair. I hate my shape. I hate these
stupid breasts. I just hate life. There’s nothing good about it. No
reason to smile or laugh. I hate the sound of laughter, which is
why I never do it.

“Jesus, you sound like me. Like Leah,” I
said. It wasn’t looking too good for me.

Every day of my fifteen years of life have
been a waste. Because I’m a girl. I’ve trained so hard, only to be
sitting here with nothing. Dad is disappointed, I’m sure, and my
mother is loving this.

I slammed the diary shut, pissed.

“Grandparents!” I said. Orphans don’t have
grandparents. “Where are they?” The word, dead, echoed in my head.
I jumped. I really needed someone to teach me how this psychic
thing worked. I had a better chance of controlling it if I knew
what questions led to answers like that.

With her parents successfully killed off in
my mind, I opened the diary to continue.

I’m sure she’s getting me fitted for an
apron already. Waiting for me to give up on my powers and run home.
Not now. Not again. I’ll just have to make it work this time. At
least my new trainer is a woman. Certain things shouldn’t be a
problem. She promised Dad they wouldn’t. He has paid her well, I’m
sure. So hopefully she won’t try to auction me off like Julian did.
That was the worst day of my life. I was dressed in skimpy clothes
while greasy old men shouted out prices. The boys went for no
higher than 100,000 dollars. My highest bid was three million.
Three million! Because I’m a girl. Because I can make more of me.
Even though I wouldn’t have to be their mother, I’d still have to
carry them. That’s gross!

Then Julian closed the bidding. He didn’t
accept any offers. He said I was worth more, the world, to quote
him, and he intended to keep me now. I’d never been afraid of him
in that way before. I’ve lived with him since I was twelve. I knew
he was mean. He killed the creatures before they could explain.
Even if they begged. I’d seen him hit the boys, especially Kamon,
so I knew that could happen one day. Never did I think I’d be too
afraid to fall asleep. Too afraid that my bedroom door would open
in the middle of the night and it would be time to make copies.
There was never any mention of injections, so I assumed the
pregnancy would happen the old fashioned way. And with him. So I
left. I went home, crawled in bed with Mom and Dad, and cried like
a baby.

I thought for sure Dad would make me go
back, but he didn’t. He held me and told me not to worry. Now he’s
trying to salvage my career as an agent by sending me to Mona, an
old training buddy of his before he quit for Mom. Too bad I hate
it. Too bad I’m better than she could ever be and she can’t teach
me anything. She knows more than Dad, and she’s faster than him
too, but I’ve already gotten every mental power there is. But at
least she’s not Julian and at least I don’t have to ever worry
about being bred.

I closed the diary and sighed. “Are you
still here?” The chill came back in an instant. “What happened? How
did you end up with me? How did you die?” The pages fanned back and
forth. It felt like she was telling me to read and hunt for the
answers myself.

The next entry read:

I can’t take it anymore. I’ve been sitting
in this little poor person’s house for a month. Mom came here to
decorate my room. Pink! The color of female puke. And now I’m
dying.

She scribbled all over the page like she’d
lost it. I ran my fingers along the puncture wounds where she’d
gone nuts with her pen.

“And this is why I’m a psychopath. Thanks,
Catherine.” At least having a boyfriend for one day was nice. It
was more than I’d thought I’d have.

The next page read:
I snuck out today.
Thank God I did. I may have burned the house to the ground if I was
trapped in there another minute. Chicago isn’t as hideous as I
thought. I walked around when Mona went for yet another meeting.
Agents are never home like hunters are. Then her stupid maid left.
I hate her. Who needs a maid for such a little house? Four rooms.
My mother would have it clean in a minute and she’s just a normal
human woman.

Catherine was a good artist. She’d sketched
a big-city skyline on the back of that page. I wanted to check out
more of her art in her studio, but I didn’t want to feel their
deaths again.

I think I like coffee now. I spent the day
at a coffee shop. But that’s not why I like it. It’s what he asked
me for, the guy with the guitar, like I worked there. The nerve of
him. He was lucky he was cute. Cute like I’d never seen.

“Babe, we’re back,” Nathan said, at the
door. I jumped up, looking for a place to stash the book. Then I
saw the camera sitting on the sofa by my feet and the picture of us
I shouldn’t have next to my laptop. I wasn’t ready to explain why
I’d gone in Remi’s room and that a feeling and a ghost had led me
to her pictures. I snatched the camera and the picture and brought
myself directly to my closet. I hid them in the crawl space and
moved myself to the door to let him in.

My head spun. I had to grab the doorknob to
stand up straight.

He planted a sweet kiss on my lips, and I
pulled him inside. I hoped my mother was watching so she’d know she
couldn’t tell me who to date.

The diary nagged me, distracting me from
Nathan. It sounded like she’d met someone she liked, and not
someone at training.

He picked me up, finally pulling me away
from CC.

“Missed you,” he said.

“Missed you more. Was it fun?” I giggled as
he nibbled on my earlobe.