“Magic?” I asked.
“Yeah. We’re in the Congo, in a stretch of land that is protected by it. The people who live around here never come here. They think it’s disrespectful to the land to walk on it.” I stopped walking. I didn’t want to be disrespectful. She chuckled. “You’re not doing anything. They have the legend wrong. Decades ago, a coven of witches cast several spells over this place so humans wouldn’t destroy it. It
is literally protected, not
to be
protected
like they think. Here, try to pick a flower.”
I yanked on the nearest blood red flower, brilliant against the green, too beautiful to pick. Apparently, it thought so too because it didn’t budge.
“Wow,” I said. “How’d you find this place?”
“Your grandfather used to bring me here when I was upset. Which was a lot since I was born a … something that rhymes with pitch.” I laughed and dropped her hand, walking ahead of her around the pond. “You’ve been here before,” she said.
I glanced back at her for a brief moment. If she hadn’t told me the powers she’d passed me expanded my memory, I would have thought I was fabricating the ones flittering through my head – the colors, the sounds, her rocking me and showing me the outside world.
“You said, ‘You’re always inside’, right?” I asked. She nodded. The memory was faint and blurry but still tucked away in my head. “You’re always inside, but not today. This is the sun. This is the world. And you’re the-”
“Best thing about it,” she finished with me.
I slowed my steps so she could catch up with me. I leaned my head to her shoulder, and she led us away from the pond and into a field of flowers that didn’t seem like they could grow together naturally, in the same place and climate.
“Did we live here?” I asked.
“No. It would have been nice because it’s so secluded. And there are many prophecies that this continent would be the last standing if something were to happen to the world. But it would’ve taken me years to finish a shelter sturdy enough for this weather. The magic throws it off. It can be storming one minute, perfect in the next, and snowing in the third. No place for a new baby.”
We ducked as she led me under low branches interlocking over our heads.
A stunning, flowery canopy.
She sat in the middle, and I followed her lead, plopping down at her side.
I stared at the yellow flowers dangling over our heads, remembering them too. But I remembered them being much bigger and closer to my face. She must have held me up to them.
“I was stabbed three times in the chest and didn’t feel a thing,” I said. “Are you going to tell me why?”
She tucked her head between her knees. It took a whole minute of suspenseful silence for her to continue.
“I know you saw that I was spoiled and awful in the memories I let Sophia show you.” I nodded. “I changed when I met your dad.”
The word closed my throat in a moment and rattled every piece of me. My dad, Christopher Gavin, was every bit as alive as she was. She’d met him when she was fifteen years old and had loved him every day since, even right now as she stared at my face,
his
face. I hadn’t thought about him until then.
“I went from being this bratty kid obsessed with mental powers to loving someone like a maniac.” She chuckled and shook her head. “It was overwhelming. I loved my parents, but not like that. Not in the way that makes you think you couldn’t live without a person. Gavin and I would tell each other that all the time.
If you die, I will die with you
.”
“Like the poems in your diary.”
“Yeah. And he was worse than me.” She sighed and leaned back to the wall of vines enclosing us. “But when I found out about you, I changed. I went from thinking love was dying without the one you love, to knowing that it’s about dying
for
them. In all of the futures I predicted, you died and that wasn’t fair. You were innocent and perfect. You deserved life.”
Our eyes met for a quick moment, then I looked away. The enchanted forest was easier to stare at.
“For six months of my pregnancy, I tried to convince myself that you would live despite every future I forecasted saying the opposite. Your dad’s future cleared up as soon as I left.
But not yours.
I never saw you older than a few weeks old. Julian always found us.”
She shrugged her shoulder across her cheek to catch a tear.
“I knew what I had to do, go to Julian before he came to me. I needed to do something to put my mind at ease about leaving you in New Haven, something that would protect you when I wasn’t around. You learn a lot of magic by hunting creatures, and humans can do some of their spells, especially the ones involving spirits. One night before I had you, I summoned my mother. I didn’t know if she would remember me, they’d died thinking they had no children, but I guess the truth came back in death. So … she pops in and the first thing she said was … ‘God, your hair is greasy!’ Never mind that my stomach was
huge
.”
“Of course, she did.”
We laughed, and I cleared my cheek when I felt the tears there.
“Like always, we didn’t talk much. She didn’t find it important to tell me she and Dad were trapped in the house. I didn’t find it important to tell her everything that had happened with me either. After I told her you were a girl and what I wanted to do, she helped me do a spell I’d seen a witch do with her son in Julian’s prison. He’d purged her, so she didn’t have magic. You just need a spirit. They serve as a guide for your soul … when you … transfer it.”
She peeked at me through the curtain of hair that had fallen over her face.
“Transfer your soul?” I asked. She nodded. “To me?”
“Yes. If you are fatally wounded, my soul will be taken before your own. You’ve had the ability to cheat death once for your entire life. The soul is yours whether I am alive or not, but if I
am
alive when it is taken, I will have to die in your place. I will feel the pain of it too, and your wounds will heal once my soul is taken. Tonight, I would’ve died if Sophia hadn't intervened.”
My breath caught and she cupped my face in her hands. “That’s why Kamon sees me killing you?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Kamon sees a connection between our lives and is assuming that it means that you will murder me. He’s assuming wrong. Our lives are connected but not in that way.” I made a sound that was part groan, part sigh, and part
Oh my God
. Kamon or anyone could hurt me and kill my mother. Remi had almost succeeded tonight.
“It’s going to happen on July 4
th
, isn’t it?” I said.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly, more of a nervous twitch than a response. “Kamon and I have seen the same vision, this five second clip of the future. It’s dark, you are upset, and somehow, I die. I know you’re not going to kill me, even though you may be justified in doing so.”
I pouted and shook my head. She may have left me when I was two months old and stayed away from me for my entire life, but that wasn’t a reason to murder her, even if I were capable of it or remotely upset with her. And I wasn’t. I didn’t feel an ounce of anger or betrayal. Just love.
“Since it’s not murder, I’m assuming you will need my soul when someone hurts you. Then I’ll be gone and out of Kamon’s way. When I laughed at you in my office that day, it was more out of nervousness. You hit the nail right on the head. These attacks on magical kind are Kamon’s previews. He’s trying to show them that they should fear him even more than they already do. That’s all. He’s bragged to me about it a few times.” She sighed heavily and massaged her throat like it had closed. “I believe in his attempt to make you murder me, someone else will take your life on the 4
th
. It’s not Kamon. I’ve tried to figure out who it is and what they will do, but I can’t see them. Sophia has tried and failed as well.”
“It’s obviously Remi,” I said. She shook her head. “Then it’s one of the triplets.”
“No. Not them. They may be involved, but it won’t be them. It’s someone with a strong shield.”
My mind flittered through what I knew about shields. Emma and Paul could protect their thoughts from me unless I touched them, and Sophia was shielded from it all.
My boyfriend, too.
I’d had to use excessive force, during my seizure, and had only heard a name, one he didn’t recognize.
“I don’t want you to worry about anything. Even Remi. I saw her hurting you in a different setting. You two were alone and you were begging her to leave Kamon’s chapel. I highly doubt that will ever happen now. You’ll probably never see her again. Kamon knows you are the key to ending my life. To him, he almost lost that key. I can’t imagine the kind of punishment he’s giving her.” She grabbed my chin and lifted my face up, glaring into my eyes. “That’s not for you to run off and try to save her.”
I huffed. “That crazy bitch almost killed my mother. I think it’s safe to say I won’t be trying to help her anymore.”
I covered my mouth, realizing I’d just sworn without meaning to, in front of my mom. She chuckled.
“Your
mother
,” she said. “That’s like music to my ears.”
She stood and walked to the other end of the canopy, brushing the yellow flowers over her head.
I wanted to plead with her to take her soul back, but I knew it was pointless. I wouldn’t remember anything about her or her soul after this.
My heart throbbed, missing her already, and I jumped to my feet. I didn’t want to waste a second of my time with her. Tomorrow, we’d play chess and practice psychic powers. I wouldn’t know the reason why I felt so calm around her, and happy.
I rested my head on her shoulder and let our problems blow away for a minute – Remi, her soul, and July 4
th
.
We walked into a field of blue and purple flowers. I couldn’t deny the urge to run through them. She laughed, and I raced around in a circle, enjoying the magical world with my mother, ignoring the now throbbing wounds on my chest.
I ducked under low branches and hopped over streams that raced to larger water. I followed the sound, trying and failing to pick flowers on my way to a waterfall.
The sight of it literally took my breath away. This place was amazing, this woman was too, and it broke my heart that I wouldn’t remember either one.
Mom and I sat on the ledge of a cliff overlooking the waterfall. I chuckled as she tugged be back, looking a little worried about me falling.
“I love you,” I said, because I wouldn’t be able to say it soon.
“I don’t deserve your love.”
“But you have it.”
I spun on my butt and rested my head in her lap. She pressed her hand against both of my cheeks, like she was trying to memorize the feel and shape of them. I was torn between wanting to close my eyes to savor the moment and not wanting to even blink for too long, petrified of missing this.
She leaned down and kissed my forehead. A tear dropped from her chin and splashed on my cheek.
Waterfalls all around me.
“How the hell did you turn out so perfect?” she asked.
I chuckled. “I think Sophia would take credit for some of it.”
“Trust me, she does. She thinks you’re
her
daughter.”
“But I’m yours,” I whispered, mostly to myself, slow and quiet, like that statement was sacred. The waterfall roared as I fought with my chest, it was trembling and constricting under the weight of a cry I refused to let out. I didn’t want to say goodbye to her again.
“I’m sorry, you know?” she said. “About everything I allowed you to deal with.”
“It wasn’t just you. It was the girls. The nuns, especially.”
“The nuns loved you,” she said. I bucked my eyes. “They did. They called my office every five minutes during your disappearance.”
“They hated me. They named me after an unloved woman in the Bible.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sure there’s more to that story than that. I always thought the name meant that they saw you as strong and content, the same way I saw you.” I rolled my eyes; they were all wrong. I was anything but strong and content. Currently, I was hanging on by a thread, about to lose it and scream about not having a mother.
“Nate thinks I have a crush on you,” I said, reaching for something light and funny, the opposite of how I felt.
“Why?”
“Because I … love you as Lydia … in a totally appropriate way.” She laughed and I joined her, the shaking movement freed a few of my tears. Soon, I was full out crying and couldn’t stop. “I don’t want you to die,” I said. “It seems like you think you will.”
“Technically, your mother is already dead.”
“Technically, she’s sitting right here.” I tried to catch my breath, but my chest was heaving too hard. “Why is something always taking you away from me?”
She pulled me into her arms. I wanted to pull away, to sit next to her and talk about this like an adult, but I couldn’t. I was losing my mother all over again, while knowing I would lose the memory of her in a few minutes. It was too much to handle, too much being taken from me at once.
“You’re going to be fine,” she said, sniffing and rocking me. “I’m sorry that this is your life, honey. I wish things were different. It’s why I never wanted you to be a part of this world, magic and powers. It makes it impossible to live the life you want.”