“Now you try.”
I leaned forward, fully expecting my forehead to hit the wall and stop. When it didn’t, I couldn’t help smiling at the thrill of excitement that ran through me. I kept leaning until my eyes and nose pushed through to the other side and I could clearly see Sophie, Caleb, and Aaron all waiting in the other room. Sophie had curled herself into a ball on the couch and was fighting the exhaustion pulling on her eyelids. Caleb sat with his head in his hands leaning over the small kitchen table. His expression was so worried and scared, I wanted to go to him and hold him in my arms. Impulsively, I started to move more of my body through the wall before realizing I didn’t have any physical arms to wrap around Caleb right now.
Pulling back, I wanted to get back to my body and back to my friends. Mohan was right, I now believed in the astral plane, believed it was possible to move out of your body and into it, but right now I needed to get back to my body.
Suddenly, Aaron moved. I stopped a moment and watched as he reached into his shirt and pulled out his cellphone and looked at the screen. He looked at both Caleb and Sophie, as if checking to see if they noticed—they hadn’t, his phone was on vibrate. When he stood up, Caleb lifted his head.
“I’m going to get some fresh air, the stink of this place is getting to me,” Aaron explained and walked out the door.
Caleb returned his stare to the grainy tabletop before him.
Aaron pushed through the thin front door and let it bang shut behind him. Something didn’t feel right. Who was calling him? My uncle? Before I realized exactly what I was doing, I pushed myself all the way through the wall and into the next room. I passed by Sophie and Caleb, completely unnoticed, and headed for the door.
Mohan’s voice filled my head, “Where are you going?”
I ignored him and kept going. At the door, I instinctively grabbed for the handle and was surprised when my hand passed right through it. I shook my head at myself and walked through the door.
Aaron stood in the middle of the dilapidated yard, his hand held his phone to his ear while the other crossed his chest. “Yes…I’m doing everything I can…Soon…” he looked frustrated.
“I don’t know how long,” he hissed.
I narrowed my eyes at him and tried to figure out who he could be having this conversation with. If it was my uncle, then why did he need to keep it from Caleb and Sophie?
“Charlotte?” Mohan was beside me now.
I turned to face him, the apology for leaving his side forming in my mind—until I saw him.
Behind Mohan, past the far corner of his house, crouching in the dirt with his elbows resting on his knees was a man. He held his head low, his black hair falling into his face, obscuring his eyes. He was far enough away that his exact features were difficult to make out, but it didn’t matter. I felt him, knew his presence entirely. His head rose, cocked to one side, questioning, his dark eyes locked with mine. When he stood up, I felt the rush of him, the pull. “Charlotte,” his voice was an electric wave down my spine.
Without thinking, I began moving towards him, he stepped towards me and opened his arms. “Come back to me Charlotte.”
I nodded my head, “Yes,” I breathed.
Suddenly, shockingly, I felt myself being pulled backwards. Like a stretched rubber band snapping back to form, I was at once back in Mohan’s temple room on the floor near my body.
When I looked up, Mohan was holding a shining silver cord in his hand. I had not seen the cord before although, somehow, I recognized the feel of it. It was tying me to my physical form.
Mohan’s expression was clouded. “Many apologies for taking such liberties.” He released my cord and it floated to the floor between me and my body. “But you have a very serious problem.”
I felt shaky, nauseous, and like all I wanted in this whole world was to run back outside and throw myself into his arms. “What is happening to me?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Everything
“That boy,” Mohan asked once we were both inside our physical bodies again. “You know him, in this existence?”
“Yes,” I whispered, now very aware of Caleb sitting in the next room.
“How do you know him? What is he to you…in this lifetime?”
I looked at him, tried to decipher his question. What did he mean, ‘this lifetime?’ “His name is Hayden, he is the son of the man we are running from, the man who is trying to hurt my family,” I shook my head because that wasn’t quite right. “The man trying to continue hurting my family. I was involved with him, briefly, last summer.” Mohan watched me closely, gauged my reactions.
After a moment, he sat back on his heels, “You do not know.”
“Know what?”
“You do not know who that boy truly is to you. You do not know why he is such a danger to you and what you are trying to accomplish.”
“Well I know he is probably working with his father, and his father wants to use me, like he did my mother.”
Mohan shook his head slowly. “That boy may be working for his father, but not to meet his father’s ends. His father wants your secrets, your talents, your gifts. The boy wants something altogether different. I felt it so strongly in the astral plane, there was no mistaking.”
“What? What does Hayden want?”
“He wants you. He would have taken you right there if I had not pulled you back. It was the clearest intention I have ever felt from another human being in the astral plane. He felt you the moment you entered the plane and then came here to get you. I suspect he has been watching for you to show up here, waiting for you. He seems to care little for what his father is after, although I don’t think he would care enough to not give him what he wanted—but the boy only wants you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” my voiced wavered. “Even if he had taken me, he wouldn’t have my body. How could he have taken my…what…my soul and just leave my body.”
Mohan narrowed his eyes, considered his words. “If that boy had but a minute alone with you on the astral plane, a moment of pure influence, I believe he wouldn’t need to take your physical body. When you reentered yourself, you would have moved heaven and earth just to get back to him.”
A strangled breath escaped my throat. “You don’t know that.” My words sounded defensive, like I didn’t believe them myself. “You don’t know me at all. I would never leave my friends, my family. They’re counting on me.”
“It is you who do not know yourself…or that boy. If you did, you would realize what I say is the truth and you would guard yourself against him. You would not like leaving your friends behind, and yet you would. You wouldn’t be able to help yourself…your bond with that boy is beyond your control, beyond his.”
“What we had was nothing.”
“What you have is everything.”
I stopped my protest, my throat felt tight, close to tears. My breath was strained, out of sync. “Why? What is Hayden Wriothesley to me?”
Mohan lowered his chin, looked at me intently so I would know he meant business. “He is your other half.”
Slowly, my head began to shake back and forth. His words hung in the air between us, I could almost see them, observe them, weigh and measure the validity of them. My mouth moved to make a sound then forgot how.
Caleb.
My eyes darted to the door leading into the adjoining room. “It’s not true,” I whispered. “It’s not possible.”
Mohan didn’t argue with me; the long lines around his face and mouth only expressed his deepest sympathy. “This is a disappointment to you,” he too glanced at the door, acknowledged that the boy who sat on the other side of it would be greatly distressed to hear this news. “But it is the reality of your being…and his. It is why you feel so drawn to him and yet I sense you are also afraid.”
My mind felt like an icy pool, shocked and slow, unable to swim to the other side of this information, to make sense of it beyond the growing awareness that Mohan was right. “He…” I hesi
tated—how to say it, how to describe who Hayden was and how he made me feel? I didn’t understand it myself. “Hayden frightens me. He is intense, unpredictable…possessive. Violent even. Like a darkness—”
“To your light,” Mohan interrupted.
I closed my eyes. My whole body was shaky and weak. The obscure dreams of Hayden always left me feeling this way, made me wish in those moments just after waking that I could go back to sleep, back to him. But this was so much more intense. It was like Hayden’s presence in the astral plane had been a part of me, and then that part was ripped out—I was broken.
“He is the other half of your soul,” Mohan said plainly. Making sure there could be no mistaking, no pretending.
“Not him,” I whispered. “I don’t want it to be him,” my voice broke on the words. What did it mean to be tied to him? “He’s not a good person.” Tears spilled down my cheek. I choked back a sob, quietly, afraid Caleb would hear and come rushing to find out what had happened, what was wrong. The memory of Hayden violently beating Caleb with bare, vicious hate in his eyes. He wouldn’t have stopped, even when Caleb fell, broken and bleeding, even when he couldn’t fight back—Hayden kept attacking.
“He’s cruel,” I cried as panic filled my chest. Mohan’s words felt like a death sentence. Was I shackled to Hayden, without the choice? What about the boy I wanted? The smart and gentle one, the one sitting in the next room making himself sick with worry and exhaustion. The one who had loved me since I was seven. The one who would move the earth for me if he could.
Did I not get to choose to be with the person I loved?
“I love Caleb,” I breathed. Suddenly aware of the truth I no longer felt I had the right to.
Mohan sighed, “It is a tricky business, when you find your other half. There are many, many lives to live before you reunite. And when you do…well, sometimes it can be too much for our physical lives to manage. For you and yours, it is especially difficult…you did not split evenly for this life.”
“What do you mean?”
“All souls, when whole, have the capacity for great good, and great evil. Mostly, there is balance between the two. When the soul splits, it splits evenly…some good, some not so good for both. But you and that boy have no balance. For you to be the Ascendant, you needed the capacity for greater good than most. You have more, so he got less. He is so powerfully drawn to you because to live in such darkness would be a soul’s torment. Only when he is with you does he touch the divine within himself, and so he longs for you, wants to possess you again. With you, he experiences the balance he has never had on his own.”
Eve knew. That day, back at her shop, she had questioned me about my relationship with Caleb. “It’s not every day a person meets their twin flame.” Only, she hadn’t meant Caleb. She knew I was connected to my twin flame even if she didn’t know who exactly he was—but she knew it wasn’t Caleb. She knew and didn’t say anything.
“You will tell your friends?”
My focus zeroed in on Mohan. “No,” I gasped and shook my head. “No, I don’t want them to ever know.”
Mohan raised his eyebrows, “It is not something that will keep itself secret. That boy has a very strong intention of taking you back. He will make himself known.”
“I will deal with Hayden. But I won’t hurt my friends…I won’t hurt Caleb.”
Again.
“There is something else you must know how to do when inside the astral plane.”
My eyes met Mohan’s worried expression.
“The astral plane has darkness and negative energies that live within it. That boy, he is plagued by that darkness—you need to know how to protect yourself.”
“How?”
“The astral is energy, and what you put out you draw to you. The darkness is drawn to fear. Your fear is a powerful fuel. When you feed them your fear, you give away your strength and make them ravenous for more.”
“Them?”
“The negative energies can take on form in the astral. But try to remember, you are always stronger than any horror within the astral. When you encounter them, control your fear and remember your power. It is in you always. You need only call it forth and it will shine through the darkness of fear forever.”
“But how do I call forth my power?”
“Often, it is helpful to produce a physical expression of your will. It helps the mind believe there is a tangible tool that serves your purpose. When I am in the presence of darkness, I envision my power as a long silver staff and it materializes from my finger tips when I need it. But your tool can be anything that helps remind you of your power.”
Mohan stood and, when I did the same, I found that my legs still hurt a little, but I could put weight on them again. I could walk with slow and careful steps.
“Thank you,” I said to Mohan, more for showing me how to heal my legs, less for opening my eyes to what Hayden was.
He reached behind his neck and lifted the gold chain over his head. “It is time,” he said. “For me to pass on my family’s responsibility to the one who will use its power out in the world.” He lifted my hand into his then placed the Aum in my palm, allowing the chain to pool on top of it. He sighed deeply, “So, we are done.” He curled my fingers over the key and released my hand. “Keep it safe.”
“I will,” I promised.
“But there is one more thing,” he raised his hand in the air near his head, as if just remembering. “There is the matter of where you must travel next.”
I had almost forgotten, Mohan would be the only person to know where the next key holder could be found. “Where?” I asked. “Which key is next?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Never Letting Go
The luxury of the private plane was a guilty pleasure after the roughness and grime of our trek through India. The cream leather seats felt softer, the plush brown carpet looked richer, the hot meal of roasted chicken, rice, and green beans tasted more decadent when held up in stark relief to the dilapidated conditions and snack foods we’d been living in and on since we had arrived three days ago. I allowed my shoulders to relax, my hands to rest quietly in my lap, and my eyes to drift closed while the plane slipped through the dark night skies, high above India.
High above that little boy in clothes dirty and torn, who had begged me for change.
High above that old woman with bent legs sleeping on the street.
I opened my eyes but their images remained. They were burned into my memory. There would be no private jets, ever, to sweep those people off to a more comfortable place. No easy meal or reclining leather seats. The injustice of it kindled a fire in my heart.
In the dim cabin, a frustrated sigh escaped me and I pushed the button to raise my seatback up.
“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked from his seat next to mine.
“Sorry,” I whispered and gave him a weak smile. “I thought you were sleeping. It’s nothing,” I waved my hand. “Just can’t sleep. I think I’ll work on the box for a while. I’ll move to another row so my light doesn’t bother you.”
“No,” he sat his seat up as well. “I’ll help you.”
Caleb got up and opened the overhead bin above where Aaron reclined, his rolling hill of a belly rose and fell with each of his labored snores. Sophie slept with her headphones on in the very first row.
When he placed the puzzle on the table in front of us, I reached into my shirt and pulled both keys from around my neck, the blue sapphire cross my mother had given me when I was twelve, and the emerald encrusted Aum from Mohan.
I reached for the box and moved quickly through the initial steps, steps my fingers had performed at least a hundred different times since finding the box last year. In the secret compartment, behind the ouroboros dial, I removed the pentagram necklace and my mother’s handwritten note and laid them on the table. The jewels in the two keys sparkled, catching and reflecting the glow from overhead light.
“Pretty soon,” Caleb said taking my hand in his.
“You’ll have half the keys. Maybe even by tomorrow.”
I squeezed his hand gently. His words made me feel better, lighter somehow. “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I confessed. “I’ve been so overwhelmed that we still had so many to find, so many places left to go.”
And scared—I didn’t say. I’ve been feeling scared Caleb because Hayden is my twin flame and I don’t ever want you to find out.
“Are you okay?” he asked
I nodded my head, worried he could somehow sense what I was thinking.
Caleb scoffed at himself, “I mean, of course you’re not okay. Not with everything that’s happened. The fire, your legs…” he swallowed. “I know that,” he breathed. “But, ever since we left Mohan’s house,” he shook his head. “I’ve just had this feeling that something was different. That something about you had changed…I don’t know. I’m probably being stupid.”
Frozen, terrified by his dancing around the edge of a conversation cliff we would never survive if we slipped into it, I said nothing. I released his hand when I realized I was squeezing it very hard.
“Did something happen when you were with Mohan? Something in that, what’s it called? Astral plane?”
Reflexively, my lungs filled with air, as if they were trying to buy me a moment to collect my thoughts. I didn’t want to lie to him. I also didn’t want to tell him the truth.
His brow bunched as he waited for my reply.
“Do you believe,” I started. “Do you believe we get to choose our life?” I walked the line between truth and lie of omission. “That we get to decide what and who we want to be, who we want to love? Or is it all predetermined? And if it is predetermined, can we choose something else anyway?” I bit my lip and watched as he processed my question, his brow relaxed.
Midheaven (Ascendant Trilogy Book 2) Page 14
