Brave (Healer)

by April Smyth

  ‘I...’ he starts and for a second I convince myself that he is capable of saying something nice to me.

  ‘You don’t owe me anything,’ I sigh.

  ‘I owe you everything, Cassie.’

  Wishing things were different is heartbreaking. Knowing that they never can be even more so and I thought my heart had healed from the agony of hoping that Gabe and I had gotten our chance to be together. I am happier with Oliver than I ever was torturing myself over Gabe but seeing him with this new haircut and a sparkle in his eyes makes me wish that my Healer blood could lend itself to mending my fractured heart.

  Mesmerised, still, by the way the moonlight dances and flirts with his face I wonder if I was really ever in love with him or the way he looked? His face gives me feelings I’ve never experienced before and I’m not sure I’ll get the chance to again. If somebody told me to create a picture of my perfect man then right on that piece of paper I would sketch Gabe’s intense dark eye brows, his distinct sharp nose, and his mouth. Would I draw those full lips in the grimace they can usually be found in? No, it is rare and fleeting but I would draw Gabe’s glittering smile.

  His face I love but there are elements of his personality that I can’t stand. He can be cold and cruel, he often was to me, and I think Claire deserves an award for being able to withstand his obnoxious sense of self-importance. Maybe he’s not like that with her. There must be some reason they work together and he and I didn’t and I wonder if, perhaps, he likes the person he is around her. Maybe she turns him into a gooey, loved up puppy dog. I sigh.

  ‘What you sighing for, Bullet?’ Hearing my old nickname come back to haunt me reminds me of all the nightmares that kept me awake for months. While Maurice and the surveillance room in Toulouse would sometimes be the reason I couldn’t sleep, mostly, whenever I closed my eyes at night it was Gabe I saw. It was our last kiss and our last goodbye that I needed Oliver to protect me from. They were far more frightening to me than Maurice or the long needles could be.

  My shoulders deflate, ‘I don’t know.’

  If this had been Oliver, I could put my arms around his shoulders and confess exactly how I feel about him but there is a huge brick wall between Gabe and I that seems to have gotten ever wider and taller since I last saw him Toulouse. Why couldn’t we just be honest with one another?

  For the first time since I accidentally bumped into him tonight, I let myself look into his eyes and feel what he is too insecure to say aloud. Gabe is not the sort of guy who finds it easy to say sorry. He’s not open like Oliver who can tell me almost anything. Gabe is scared and he shuts down but I know that, even though he’s not apologising with words, when I look into those eyes, that I have fallen for a thousand times over, I feel him asking for my forgiveness and at that moment I can’t fight back the tears.

  I start to cry because I miss him and he hurt me and I wish things were different. Some of the tears are shed are out of guilt knowing that I love Oliver too and knowing that he won’t have me if half of my heart is with someone else. Gabe’s body is uncomfortable beside my trembling frame. He can’t say sorry and he finds it impossible to comfort me. I bury my face in my hands and eventually my tears turn into laughter. I laugh because he’s here and in many ways things haven’t changed one bit since Toulouse. I laugh because it feels like there’s nothing else I can do.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ he asks and his eyes are wide with bemusement. ‘You are crazy, do you know that?’

  I’m still laughing as I wipe my tears out of my eyes. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do that for myself and I feel a pang of longing to be wrapped up in Oliver’s arms or having Rose brush my hair. They would know what to say or, more importantly, what not to say.

  ‘You are out of your mind,’ he says.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ I barely manage to speak through the delirium of my laughter but now he is laughing and in a few seconds we are both clutching our stomachs with laughter and looking at each other lovingly. Seeing him laugh heartily, seeing him so happy, seeing his skin glowing and his eyes sparkling. It kills me to know that it isn’t me that is making him that happy but at the same time I feel a small sun rise inside of me.

  Once we stop laughing and I look at his bright smile I know that I have made the right decision in leaving Gabe in my past and making Oliver my future. I love Gabe. I always will. He is the leather clad, brooding bad boy that every epic love story needs but at the end of the day we could never make each other happy. We would want to and we would try but it doesn’t mean we could. I could never make him be the man I see sitting beside me right now and somehow Claire managed it. If I ever meet her, I will shake her hand.

  Not only could I never put that dazzling smile on his face but Gabe could never be good for me either. He would drive me wild, yes, but could he kiss my fingertips so softly it feels like butterflies are landing on my skin and could he lie in bed with me all day playing stupid games and be content? He could never offer me the affection and the security that Oliver can, that I want. In theory, Gabe is my perfect man but, in reality, it would never work.

  ‘We should get you back,’ Gabe says.

  I sigh. I’m glad I saw him like this. I needed the chance to be alone with him and know for sure that I was making the right decision. I needed to know he was really happy with Claire before I could let myself be really happy with Oliver.

  Gabe surprises me by holding out his hand to me. I hesitate but eventually I take it. It feels foreign to my fingers and I can hear my skin yell out for Oliver’s familiar touch but it’s nice anyway. We walk in a comfortable silence with our hands intertwined and we take in the sound of the city buzzing around us. I feel like a tiny spec on this big, old planet and I feel like Gabe and I are going to make it through this mess as friends.

  When we get to the apartment, Gabe drops my hands but takes me in for a hug instead. I love Oliver and Gabe loves Claire but that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other too. It doesn’t feel wrong to look up at his face with wonder and lean in to kiss him. It’s as friendly as a kiss can get but it is laced with hidden desires and unfinished business. He returns the kiss and for a minute we are lost in a bittersweet moment. We are both given glimpses into a universe where he and I get the chance to be together. There is hunger in our kiss that only comes with knowing that at any moment the bubble will burst and we will be thrown back into reality, knowing that we will never get the chance to hold each other and kiss each other’s lips like this again because we belong to other people.

  We pull away at the same time and we give each other small smiles. ‘Goodnight Bullet,’ he ruffles my hair and I feel elevated.

  One last inhale of his familiar scent and I pull off his coat and hand it back to him. ‘Night Gabe,’ and then I turn away and run back up the stairs to Arrow’s apartment.

  I sneak back into the bedroom where Oliver is still fast asleep and breathing heavily. The bedsheets are crumpled and lie just above his waist. Seeing Gabe was confirmation that Oliver is the one I want to be with and looking at him peacefully asleep I could not be more sure. I curl up beside him and stretch my arm out over his body. The touch of my skin wakes him and he groggily opens his eyes to look at me, ‘Hey, where were you?’

  ‘Oh, I just went to get some fresh air,’ I say. There’s no reason for Oliver to know about what happened between Gabe and I. Oliver would be too upset, he would be too angry after seeing me suffer for weeks at the hands of Gabe and he could never understand how I could the past behind me and be friends with Gabe.

  He closes his eyes again but pulls me into him so I curve around his body. He lets out a deep breath of satisfaction, kisses my head and falls back to sleep. This time I have no trouble sleeping.

  EIGHTEEN

  The next day Arrow makes it her mission to teach me as much as she can about her supernatural heritage and what she and her fellow witches have been doing for me for the past seven months. Oliver wants to stay with me but Arrow insists she wants t
o spend the day with only me so he and Rose go shopping together for Christmas decorations and presents. Rose, being her usual bubbly self, is determined that we will have a lovely, festive Christmas despite all the depressing events that have occurred this year.

  ‘Come with me,’ Arrow instructs after we’ve had breakfast. It turns out Arrow doesn’t have much in the way of cooking, or grocery shopping, skills so we end up eating stale microwave Pop Tarts.

  Arrow introduces me to some of the witches in the two apartments on the ninth floor. They’re all as bohemian and quirky as her whilst maintaining an earthly, humane quality about them. Witches aren’t like vampires in that way. They can never be viewed as human.

  Then Arrow takes me to the library on the eighth floor. The entire two apartments have been knocked down to create one giant store for all their books on spells and witch heritage. I am astounded by the sheer volume of books. I’ve never seen so many in one place. ‘This is pretty much where every spell book in the world is kept,’ Arrow says proudly. ‘This is the hive for every witch. He or she can come here and research a spell as they please. It’s helpful to have a place where everything can be collaborated.’

  She lets me finger through some of the books for a while. Most of them are covered in a thick layer of grey dust and the pages are yellowing and flimsy but the illustrations and unreadable writing are awe striking. ‘Amazing,’ I say with my mouth hanging open.

  Arrow stands over me with a pleased smile on her face. Clearly, she is more proud of her powers than Rose and I wonder if Arrow has ever experienced the catastrophic effects these spells can have. I wonder if she would give up her power if something bad were to happen to Garrett or Cecilia. ‘There’s thousands of years of literature in here,’ she says. ‘It was my great, great grandmother who founded this place, who decided it was important for there to be a centre for witches all over the world.’

  That explains Arrow having such a high position here. When I saw her talking to the other witches, they spoke to her with such respect and admiration that it is undoubtable that she is an incredibly important figure here and it must be a family thing. Rose is apart of this family too, could she be like Arrow if she didn’t turn her back on her powers?

  ‘I want to show you something really cool now,’ Arrow says.

  ‘This isn’t really cool?’ I reply looking around me at the high bookcases packed with hundreds of years of spells and stories about witches.

  Arrow was right though. What she had to show me next was much more interesting than a stack of books. On the fifth floor, the witches had created a School of Spells where the younger witches like Cecilia could learn to harness their powers and use them wisely. It’s also where mature witches perfect their skills and research new spells. Arrow is a respected scholar who spends most of her time, when not fighting vampires, discovering new ways to use their gift.

  I am allowed to stay and watch the afternoon class. There are six teenagers, only a few years younger than me, gathered around a stove. It looks similar to Home Economics classes back at Ayrin High School but it’s not pizza or apple crumble that these students are learning to make. The grey haired teacher is showing them which ingredients to use to make a lotion of honesty. It’s fascinating to hear how the right ingredients, the right method and a few words in a strange language can be put together to make a concoction that stops whoever uses it from lying.

  ‘Now that you have an idea of what we do here, I’d like to talk to you about what we’ve been doing to help you, Cassie,’ Arrow says calmly and we go back to her apartment for some peace to have a discussion that I’m not looking forward to having.

  I have to relive the days where Gabe and Rose first found Arrow and begged for help. ‘At first I had no idea how I could stop Gabe from turning into a vampire. I didn’t think I could but Rose is family and she was desperate for me to help,’ Arrow explains. ‘So I didn’t sleep. I stayed up all night for days raking through the library to find something and eventually I did. There’s a book of extraction spells that told me exactly how I could remove the traces of vampire blood in Gabe’s system.’

  I wince. I may have come to terms with how things have ended between Gabe and I but it doesn’t lessen the pain of remembering that awful time. I had nothing to do but wait to hear if he would die or become a vampire.

  ‘It was a fairly simple vocal spell but I knew the repercussions could be severe. We all knew the risks... that he could lose his memories, he might even have lost his ability to speak and walk but it was a risk that Gabe was willing to take. He didn’t take it lightly and we did try to persuade him to consider other options but ultimately it was his decision.’

  I don’t need to hear this. I’ve gone over it enough times and I get all the friendly reassurance from Rose that I was not an insignificant factor in Gabe’s life.

  ‘So I did it. He was unconscious for a while and I was terrified that I’d messed up the spell. I know Rose has very little faith in what we do here so I didn’t want to give her yet another reason to mistrust us. Thankfully it worked. He woke up. He could walk, he could speak and he wasn’t a vampire. It was miraculous really.’

  I nod and let the pieces of the puzzle fit together. While all this had been happening I was left in the dark, I had to move on with my life but it had been a near impossible task.

  ‘But at first it appeared he had none of his memories. Only some as a child. And he refused to come out of his room. It was horrible. For months, Rose and I tried to get him to move on, to remember things. I spent a lot of time researching a spell for memory reattachment but eventually we probed him long enough to figure out all of his memories were indeed still in tact.’

  ‘Look, Arrow... I don’t want to hear this right now,’ I say. I’ve relived Gabe’s rejection a thousand times by this point. My whole life has revolved around that rejection.

  ‘You might not want to hear it but I think it’s good for you, Cassie, I’ve heard a lot about you and I think it’s an important part of your healing process to understand what happened during those months that Gabe and Rose were staying with me.’

  She’s right. That’s infuriating. It makes me feel uneasy how much Arrow knows about me. Rose must have no problem telling her second cousin about my woes then I wonder how much of Arrow’s knowledge of me came from her months of probing a reclusive Gabe.

  ‘Once we realised that he had all his memories, we had to work on getting him to be functional again. It wasn’t easy but all he needed was time and support. Rose is a magnificent friend to him. When it came to pass that Maurice was after Claire, Gabe knew what he had to do. He loved you but Claire was too important to him and he knew that he was toxic for you.’

  ‘I know all of this, Arrow,’ I whisper. Rose is a magnificent friend. Gabe and I don’t deserve such a giving and warm person in our lives, I know that much, but somehow she has been here for us through possibly the hardest year of both of our lives. I know that. I also know that Gabe made up his mind about me while he was staying here. He made up his mind while I was under the impression that he had no mind to make up. I thought he was a shadow of his former self but he was living a totally different life in New York City.

  Arrow continues while I chew my lip, ‘I had spent so long working on a memory spell which we thought we would have to use on Gabe so by the time we went to protect Claire I had come up with one that I could use on her.’

  The spell was supposed to be used to give Gabe back his memories and bring him back to me instead it was used to bring Claire back to him. I must be giving away my thoughts because Arrow says, ‘I’m sorry if you feel Rose and I betrayed you by agreeing to restore Claire’s memories and help Gabe get her back but it wasn’t really our choice to make.’

  Betrayed? No. I don’t think that. Yes, at one point I was hurt that Rose hadn’t tried harder to make Gabe and I work but I was given the time to realise that it was for the best. It wasn’t fair to force something that wasn’t meant to happen and findin
g out that Gabe had chosen to go to Claire gave me the push I needed to fall into Oliver’s arms.

  ‘So Rose came to find you because she knew that you needed her more than Gabe did anymore. Gabe and I went to find Claire before Maurice could then I used a potion to restore her memories and it took less than a minute for them to fall in love again...’

  Envy courses through me for a few seconds until I remind myself that I have Oliver and that I am happy for Gabe. I am happy that he is happy. She has made him into the good person I always knew he could be. I want to meet her and thank her for that. Maybe not today, I might not even be ready in a few years to face the woman that took my first love but eventually I will embrace her and express my gratitude for saving a boy I care for very deeply.

  Thankfully, the discussion of Gabe dies down and Arrow goes on to tell me that two of her sisters were tracking Maurice and some were working on remedies to build their strength so they could take him down. I get the impression that it was very brave, and extremely reckless, for Rose to go up against three immortals. Guilt hits me again as I am reminded once more of how much I owe Rose and how much she could have lost by saving my life.

  ‘You see it’s all a case of nature, Cassie. You may consider us to unnatural or supernatural or whatever but witches, shape shifters and vampires were created as part of the earthly balance and there would be an imbalance if vampires were truly immortal. The only thing that should be able to kill a vampire is wood but, typically, witches figured out a way to go against nature and a way to kill vampires...’

  ‘But you’re going against nature so it hurts you?’

  ‘Yes, we’re not supposed to be able to use our magic to take life so nature punishes us by depleting our power source. Luckily, Rose hadn’t used her energy for years so she had built up a bank before she went up against those vampires in your hometown.’