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“Ma’am, we’ve already explained it to you. As unbelievable as it sounds, it’s real. Your daughter was never supposed to live in this world.”

“Wait, what?”

“You are a Dream Caster, Chastity. Your mother has no recollection of any of this. So we believe that your biological father was one of us. It sometimes happens – more than our kind likes – but you are technically part of our world and need to come with us.”

“What, are you insane? I’m not going anywhere with you guys.”

“It is not safe here.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“We aren’t speaking about you. We are referring to the normal people. It is not safe for them to have a Dream Caster that has no idea what she can do, running free in this world.” The dark-haired grouch said.

Mom still kept quiet. She just stared at me.

“I’m not going to leave my mother. I…”

“You have no choice. We would take care of your mother, it would be as if you never existed.”

“What?” Both mom and I said.

“It is for the best.”

“You can do that?” I asked, sounding shocked.

“We already did, with your opponents of yesterday. It wasn’t easy, because we couldn’t erase everything. So we just erased a little,” Kale explained.

So that was why Clare and the others were acting so strange. None of them remembered what had happened the past four weeks.

“Is it true, Chastity?”

I looked at my Mom. The fact that I’d lied to her was making me feel like a dog. “I didn’t know, mom. How was I supposed to tell you that sand appeared in my hands when they wanted to attack me? I didn’t even know if it was real or not.”

“Oh, it’s real,” Kale said with admiration in his eyes, on his entire freak’n face. Mom shot him a glare.

“Sorry,” he spoke softly with both hands behind his back.

“I’m your mother, you could’ve tried.”

“Then what, mom? Would you seriously have believed me? I knew what it sounded like.”

My mom just shook her head with her eyes closed. Yeah, it sounded crazy and she already struggled with believing it as we spoke, even with these two men that looked like they’d stepped out of the Matrix movie, standing right here in the middle of our lounge. It was hard to believe.

“Where is it you want to take her?”

“To where dreams exist. Revera. You can’t follow, which is why she has to come with us. Nomadic minds don’t see any of it, and it would be as if you are stuck in darkness. It’s not a place for normal humans, like yourself, ma’am.”

“I told you my name is Vinique,” Mom sounded angry. “Can she come back if she doesn’t like this River-place?”

“Revera, and no. It’s a one way ticket I’m afraid.” The dark head spoke again.

“No,” Mom said. She was adamant as she got up and started to pace.

“Ma’am,” Kale said. Mom shot him another look. “I mean, Vinique. I’m afraid that no is not an option here.”

Mom started to laugh. “You’re just going to take my daughter against my will?”

I didn’t like that.

“It’s law.”

“It’s not the law, we live here. Here it is called kidnapping. If you don’t know what that term means, I have plenty of dictionaries that can break them up for you.”

“Your law doesn’t matter. The child belongs to Revera, to her father. She doesn’t belong in your world.”

“I don’t care, she is my child. I carried her for nine months.” Mom started telling them about everything. How she’d sat with me when I was sick, when I broke my leg falling off the sleigh when I was five. She told them everything, and they listened.

“We understand that you have a connection…”

“Connection. Listen to the way you speak. I love my child. She is not going with you. That’s it.”

“Then you give us no choice.”

Golden sand appeared out of the dark heads palm. I knew what he was going to do. He was going to erase me from my mother’s memory.

“Wait!” I jumped between my mom and the dark head’s sand. “I’ll come with you, just don’t use that on my mom, please. I’ll speak with her. Just give me a couple of minutes, please.”

Both of them are looking at me through narrow eyes. “Please, just let me say goodbye.”

“Chastity,” Mom started.

“Not now, okay? Please, Mom. I don’t want these men to make you forget me. Do as they say,” I whispered.

“I would never forget you, no matter what they say they will do.”

“They can, mom. Clare and Ty, all of them forgot about the past four weeks. It was wonderful,” I spoke. “They will make you forget that you even had a daughter. Please.”

My mom finally nodded with tears in her eyes. “Can I at least help my daughter pack?”

“Of course,” Kale spoke and the other one wanted to say something. “Not now, Duke. Let them say goodbye.”

Duke grunt, and stormed out of the house.

“Sorry, my partner isn’t used to human conversation. He still has plenty to learn. Take all the time you need, but know that running away…” he smiled. “I’m sure you get what it is I’m trying to say.”

I nodded and watched him walk out the door too.

I led mom up the stairs. She looked defeated and I hated the silence. I hoped that she wasn’t afraid of me.

When we entered my room I gasped as I found another Mom on pilot-mode sitting on my bed. I wanted to yell but the Mom behind me covered my mouth with her palm.

My eyes were huge when I stared at her.

“It’s okay, Chas. Don’t scream otherwise they will know. I’m going to take my hand off your mouth. Not a peep.”

Her entire demeanor changed and she scared me a bit. I nodded. When she drew her hand back I ran to my mom sitting on my bed. She didn’t even look at me.

“Mom,” I spoke softly and shook her gently. She didn’t move.

“What did you do with her, who are you?”

The fake rolled her eyes. “Chas, it’s me. The dummy is not real, she will take my place for a few hours, giving us plenty time to get away.”

“Take your place? I don’t understand.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about last night’s dream?” She didn’t look heartbroken anymore, she looked pissed off.

Then it hit me. I never told her or anybody about last night’s dream except Clare, sort of. “How do you know about last night?”

“If you’d told me, we would’ve been miles away from here now, Chas. I wouldn’t have had to use your father’s sand to conjure her.” She pointed at second Mom’s figure who was still sitting on the bed. My father’s sand….nothing made any sense.

I looked through the window where the SUV was parked. Duke was standing against the SUV with his arms folded. Kale was speaking to him softly.

“I don’t understand. It was just a dream, Mom.”

“It was far from a dream honey.”

I froze.

“Why do you think I kept asking what you dreamt about all the time?”

I shook my head. Staring at the floor.
It wasn’t a dream?

“Chastity?” Mom shook me softly.

“I don’t know. I thought you were some spiritual freak.”

My mother’s posture slumped. She sighed and closed her eyes. “A spiritual freak.”

“Yeah, you know someone that think they can detect your future out of your dreams,” I yelled at her softly so that our two guests couldn’t hear. “Mom what is going on, please?”

“Later, we’ve got to get out of here, now.”

“Didn’t you hear what Beavis and Butthead said? We can’t leave. They’ll find me.”

“No, they won’t. Just trust me.”

“What about the dream?”

“I’ll tell you later. Now go pack light. One backpack, Chas. We don’t have time for anything else.”

I nodded and my mother left. I shoved in a lot of underwear, a pair of jeans, track suit pants, stepped out of my pumps and into my sneakers. I grabbed two black t-shirts and a hoody.

I stared at the mom on my bed. She looked just like the one that’d left my room a couple of seconds ago.

This was so weird.

I couldn’t shake the feeling of last night’s dream from my mind and how the hell my mom knew about all of this. Was she just pretending downstairs not knowing, and if so, why? Why didn’t she tell me any of this?

I found my real mom running up the stairs, not making a sound, but she looked everything except my mom now. My mouth gaped as I just stared at this woman in front of me. She changed her skirt, with her camisole and knitted top and pumps for something that resembled Beavis and Butthead outside, but completely black.

Her red hair was taken up into a bun.

She had a black backpack over her shoulder. Crazy scenarios filled my mind as mom walked past me and she smiled slightly as she closed my gaping mouth.

“Let’s go,” she said, and as she walked past my room she spoke softly – I couldn’t hear what she’d said – and closed the door. We walked all the way to the back to the hall, toward her and Tim’s room. I just stared at her.

Mom turned around. “Chastity! Come.”

I did what she said as she pulled down the string that hung from the roof. The attic’s ladder pulled down and she helped me climb up it.

It was dusty and dark and I had an urge to cough but I knew if I did, Beavis and Butthead would hear us and all our plans would be ruined, so I breathed into my arm and hope that my scent would take away the old dusty smell.

When my mother’s body emerged, she pulled up the ladder. It was pitch dark, and I couldn’t see a thing in front of me. A couple of seconds later the light went on. I jumped because I hadn’t even heard my mom walking past me. How the hell had she become so quiet? Who was she?

“Mom, you’re scaring me. What are we doing up in the attic.”

“You’ll see. Trust me.”

I nodded. Even though I had no idea about this side of my mother. One thing I knew was that I could trust her, she was my mom, even though she resembled a modern day Sarah Connor.

“Mom, is it true what they said, about my father? Does this have anything to do with him?”

“Yes, and no,” Mom spoke fast and soft as she opened the lid of an old black chest.

My eyes grew as she took out a bow similar to the one Leigh had carried with him last night, just very modern. I found myself at once in front of the chest. “Where did you get this?” I touched the bow softly. It was missing the string.

“It was your father’s,” she said as she took out a couple of other items. An old green coin bag with golden symbols on them.
A knife with a black hilt and a whip that was looped up. She added it to a sheath she was carrying around her waist and hid it with her leather jacket.

I just stared at her. I couldn’t believe that was my mother.

“Don’t look at me like that. I had to do what I had to do. Giving you a normal life, meant letting go of mine.” She touched my cheek softly. “I’m still your mother.”

“Yes, a mother who has a kickass side to her,” I said.

She laughed softly. “That’s my girl.”

“So I take it we’re not leaving with Beavis and Butthead?”

“No.”

“Mom, how do you expect to get past them? Unless you know Kung Fu or something.”

“We are not going past them.” My mother had a glint in her eye, something I’d rarely seen when she played with me as a child. She smiled and took three small oval devices out of the chest. They were a soft grey with a mushy gel substance in the middle.

“What’s that?”

She pulled out a side lever of the chest and ten guns lay in their matching sockets.

I gasped softly. I only saw Tim’s gun once, but it wasn’t as beautiful as these. Mom took all of them out and placed it into a big black bag. There weren’t any bullets but something told me that she didn’t need any bullets. Her golden dust would make them appear out of nowhere.

“Vinique,” one of the guys from the SUV, called and Mom’s head shot to the entrance of the attic. I pictured them finding the other mom, sitting frozen on my bed. I didn’t know if she was still in a trance or not but when she started to yell at them and I heard Duke’s voice cussing, followed by hollow sounds of footsteps, I knew that they bought whatever fake-mom said to them.

“We’ve got to go. Now.”

I followed my mother’s gaze to the door that led to the attic. “How the hell—”

A buzzing noise came from the wall of the attic and my head shot back. My mother stood right in front of it.

It was the same light from yesterday, the one Leigh told me to go to if I wanted to get back to my world. The light formed a vortex. I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was so beautiful.

It got bigger and bigger. My mother reached out her hand to me. “Trust me.”

I hesitated for a few short seconds and then took my mother’s hand and nodded.

She smiled.

The following words that left her mouth didn’t make any sense. The only thing I got was the word Montana before she jumped into the vortex with my hand firmly inside of hers, and the last thing I remembered was a huge bright flash.