by S. L. Baum
I put my index finger up to the side of my chin and cocked my head to the right, pretending to give that question some deep thought. “Hmmm... my superman? Let me think... well, that would be Mr. Lincoln Knight, my soon to be husband. Because you see, it’s a nice day...”
She flipped the handle over to Summer, who sang, “for a...”
Next she extended her arm to where Lizabelle stood. “White Wedding!” she finished the line.
Then we all screamed along with the song. “Man, I loved the music back in the eighties,” I breathed, catching my breath.
“You mean from the eighties,” Summer corrected.
“Exactly,” I responded.
“Close your eyes,” Catherine commanded and then took hold of my shoulders and gently turned my body. “Now open.”
I opened my eyes to discover that she had turned me so I was facing the full-length mirror. I held my breath as I gazed at the person staring back at me. My hair had been swooped up into a loose bun. A thin white headband, that my veil was attached to, sat atop my head. It reminded me of a sixties up-do. The gown that Catherine had made for me was just lovely. It was sewn from the softest, creamiest silk and lace that I had ever felt. It was cut to hug my torso in the most becoming way and then poof out at the hips into a long billowy skirt. There was a delicate lace overlay and tiny little pearls dotted the gown. The train was very short, and would drag just a few inches behind me as I walked down the aisle.
“I almost can’t believe that it is me in that mirror.” I turned at her.
“It is you,” Catherine assured me. “And you look just lovely.”
“Thank you, so much. It is the most perfect wedding gown in the entire universe,” I whispered as I hugged her and tried not to cry.
When I let Catherine go, Eve came over to give me a hug as well. “We’ll headed down now,” she said.
“You look beautiful,” Lizabelle smiled.
“Thanks guys. I’ll see you in the chapel. I’ll be the poof, dressed in white, walking down the center aisle,” I tried to joke through my nerves.
“Well, you make a beautiful poof,” Eve said.
“Well, I thank you, once again. Now go!” I waved Eve and Lizabelle away so they could go meet up with Marcus and Cozmo.
Summer picked up her phone. “I’m going to go in the other room and call my mom real quick.”
As soon as there were all gone, Catherine placed the sapphire ring on my right hand. “Old, new, borrowed, and blue,” she said with a smile. “Hold on, that’s my phone.” She retrieved her phone from the desk and looked at the screen, puzzled. “Strange. Em... um Charity,” she started; it was awkward for us to be able to use my real name with Summer so near. We could hear around the corner, talking on the phone. “I just got a message from Elizabeth. She says that she needs to speak to me about something important, briefly, in private, before the ceremony starts. So, I’m going down to meet her. Are you and Summer going to be alright up here for a few minutes? Just come down in ten and meet me by the elevators. Your Uncle Jason and I will walk with you over to the Wedding Chapel.”
“I’ll be fine Aunt Rachel,” I assured her. “Link just texted a minute ago and said that he and the guys are going over there now. I can hardly believe I’ll be walking down the aisle in the next half hour. Are you sure I look okay?”
“You look lovely, dear girl. This is a such joyful day for me. There was a time that I wasn’t so sure I’d ever get to see you this happy again. I’m so glad that you and Link found each other.” She adjusted my skirt and then smiled.
“I love you,” I said, with a quiver in my voice. “Thank you, for all that you’ve done for me. I could never have made it this far without you.”
“I love you too, sweet girl,” she said and blew me a kiss. “See you in ten. Now don’t you cry and ruin that perfect make-up job,” she playfully scolded me and then she left the room.
“I can’t believe this. My mom is making me fly home tomorrow. Well, at least I was able to convince her to let me stay for the wedding,” Summer said as she came back to where I stood and flipped her phone case closed. “By the way, you make an absolutely gorgeous bride.” Summer squeezed my hand.
“Put anyone through what my aunt put me through today, and they’d be gorgeous too. I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time on my make-up in my entire life.” I shook my hands at my side, trying to shake off the nerves that had twisted my insides into braided knots. I grabbed onto her and gave my friend a fierce hug. “I love that I’m able to have a new friend here, along with my old friends. Something old and something new...”
“Where’s your borrowed and blue?” she asked.
I held out my hand to show Summer the ring that Catherine/Rachel had presented to me, back in Telluride, and slipped on my finger while she’d been talking to her mother. “Isn’t it lovely? It’s a very old family heirloom. It is actually my old, new, borrowed, and blue. My aunt is letting me wear it.”
Summer grabbed my hand and held it up to the light, letting the brilliant blue stone twinkle. “Wow! It is so cool! I love that you guys have all this old family stuff.”
“I’ll grant you that. If there is one thing my family has, it is old stuff.” I smiled and then went to the mirror one last time to make sure that my hair was still holding up and then applied a last minute coat of lip gloss.
“Where did your aunt go?” Summer asked.
“Elizabeth wanted to tell her something. I’m supposed to meet her and my uncle downstairs in ten.”
“You ready?” Summer asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I sighed. “I don’t know if it has been a full ten minutes yet but I’ll go crazy if we stay up here much longer. Let’s head down.”
“Sounds good to me,” Summer said, and then fluffed my skirts before we vacated the room. We walked down the hall to the elevators, and got in for our ride down to the ground floor.
When the elevator door started to slide open I blinked in surprise. Elizabeth stood directly on the other side of the door.
“Are you looking for my aunt? She came down here a little while ago to meet you,” I told her.
“Actually I was looking for you. She is right outside, in my limo. She has something she wants to tell you before you get married. Would you come with me?”
“Oh, okay?” I said in confusion. I couldn’t think of what she needed to tell me, or why she would have to tell me outside. But I followed Elizabeth out to her limo with Summer at my side.
“Slide on in,” Elizabeth motioned to the door that was being opened by her driver.
I gingerly lifted the skirt of my gown and maneuvered myself into the seat. I heard someone say, “So this is the one,” and then everything went pitch black.
As soon as I would start to come out of the fuzz, Elizabeth would wave her hand at me and put me back to sleep. My self-repair mechanism kept kicking in. I would begin to awaken and register the faint, blurry outline of her form, and then she would zap me once more. She couldn’t keep this up all night. I was guessing that my black outs only lasted about a minute or so each. I was pretty sure of this because I could still slightly follow the conversation she was having with the fuzzy male figure sitting next to her in the limousine. I wasn’t able to catch a good look at him before she put me out the first time, but I had heard his voice... a raspy, deep baritone.
I heard something about Elizabeth’s “other house” and someone mentioned a blaster, I think. There was talk of my being an Immortal One with traits never seen before. Elizabeth said that I was more “valuable” than Lincoln because he still carried a portion of mortal blood within his veins. The man agreed with her and said that he would consult “the book” when we arrived. It wasn’t making enough sense to me. I needed to stop blacking out.
I kept my eyes closed the next time I started to come to. I could still feel Summer pressed up against my side. She was out cold and would probably not awaken until Elizabeth decided to end her slumber. I co
uld feel her body moving with each breath that she took. At least, for now, Summer was still alive. But I had this dreadful feeling that Elizabeth wouldn’t keep her alive for long. She had little use for a mortal teen. I still couldn’t figure out what she planned to do with me.
I breathed in and put my sense of smell to work. I smelled the exhaust fumes from cars, but there was a definite absence of human scent. We were no longer on The Strip. Actually, we were nowhere near the heart of Las Vegas. I couldn’t sense the city at all. Judging the rate of speed at which we seemed to be driving, I’d say we were on a freeway. They were taking us out of town somewhere. I panicked, my heart rate soared and my eyes opened wide.
“Charity, I am so tired of trying to keep you out. What else can I do?”
“You could stop!” I spat back at her.
The man next to Elizabeth gave a short laugh. “She has a point, Elizabeth. Why do you keep trying to send her to sleep? It is obviously not working. You hate that don’t you? Poor Elizabeth, used to getting your way all the time, and now this one can fight the effects of your powers.”
“I’d like to put you to sleep too,” Elizabeth scowled. “When they are asleep, I can pretend they are not there. That is how I’ve dealt with all the others.”
“Well apparently, this one is not the same as the others, and you would never dare to try any of your tricks on me,” he laughed again.
“Why do you find me so amusing, Nikola?” Elizabeth pouted.
She actually pouted!
“Because with all your acquired powers, you still need me, and that kills you. Doesn’t it?”
“I have wished for another solution to our arrangement,” Elizabeth answered.
“You’ll never find another like me and we both know it.” Nikola gave her a smug smile and then leaned back in the seat.
Elizabeth waved her hand at me again, and everything went black.
As I blinked, trying to work away the fuzz again, I saw their lips moving. But this time, I could hear no sound. I mean, NO sound. The road sound was gone. Their voices were nonexistent, but they were clearly still arguing. Elizabeth’s hands were in full animation as she continued her conversation with Nikola. She pointed toward his chest, then she pointed at me, and finally she pointed at herself. Her lips were moving rapidly, and I sensed she was trying to prove a point. But Nikola still leaned back in the leather seat with the same smile in place, uncaring. He shook his head from time to time and nodded once. I think she might have dragged a few one or two word answers out of him, but I couldn’t be sure.
Summer shifted at my side and she let out a sigh. I was almost shocked to find that I could still hear her. My concentration on Elizabeth and Nikola had been so intense that I had barely noticed my friend. Elizabeth had more than likely put the two of us in one of her sound bubbles. It was slightly different than the one the Witch Thomas had put me in, during my first trip to Las Vegas. That one had let sound in, but wouldn’t let sound out. This bubble blocked sound from either entering or leaving its invisible barrier. It was exasperating.
I watched as Elizabeth finally gave up her attempt to speak to Nikola. She waved a dismissive hand at him and leaned back in the leather seat as well. Then she closed her eyes. The moment she did, I glanced at Nikola. I found him sitting up a little straighter in his seat and staring intently at me. I stared right back.
His hair was straight, all one length, slicked back, and almost came to his shoulders. The color of it seemed to be both black and blue at the same time. He dressed, like Elizabeth, in all black. His jeans were black, his boots were black, and he wore a black button-down long sleeve shirt. The boots looked sinister on their own, with silver pointed toes that looked like they could do some serious damage to the person (or being) on the receiving end of a swift kick. His crooked smile sealed the sinister gig. It was a smile of someone who knew the outcome of impending events - that I could only imagine did not end well for me. He wore dark sunglasses, even though the windows in the back of the limo were blacked out.
As I stared at his face, he lowered his chin and pulled the glasses down to peer at me over the top of the frame. Nikola had the strangest eyes I had ever seen. They consisted of exactly two colors, white and black. It was almost as if he had no iris, just one large pupil. The eyes were eerie and unnatural, but then I was unnatural too. He winked, and I gasped.
Nikola laughed at my open mouth and startled expression. Neither of us could hear anything on the other side of Elizabeth’s sound bubble, but we each knew what sound the other had just made. Elizabeth’s eyes sprung open as Nikola leaned back in his seat again. She glared at me from across the limousine and I avoided her gaze by moving my eyes to my friend’s sleeping form.
This was Summer’s fourth induced sleep in less than twenty-four hours and I worried about the effects it might have on her. I noticed she wasn’t snoring this time and wondered if it meant that Elizabeth had not put her under as deeply as she had before. Summer was going to be a mess when Elizabeth finally allowed her to awaken, IF Elizabeth allowed her to awaken. I didn’t even want to think about that right now.
It dawned on me that I hadn’t received any messages from Marcus and I wondered why. They all had to know that Summer and I were missing by now. We’d been driving for at least forty-five minutes, maybe more. I was usually so good about time, but with Elizabeth constantly forcing me into these tiny little catnaps, I was actually guessing at the passage of time. I can’t remember when I last had to do that. I was pretty darned sure that it hadn’t been more than an hour. But that could put us almost anywhere, and I had no idea if the driver had traveled in circles or had driven straight out somewhere. Put a dot on a map and draw a straight line that would equal roughly an hour’s worth of travel. If I used that line as the radius of a circle, it would make one heck of a search area.
I wished for a weapon of some sort but wasn’t sure if having one would be of any advantage to me right now. What kind of damage could one of my throwing stars or push daggers do? If only I had stashed one somewhere on me. But no, I was wearing my wedding gown for heaven’s sake. I looked down at myself and ran my fingers across the creamy silk, delicate lace, and tiny pearls that Catherine had painstakingly sewn together.
My eyes began to sting as the tears built up behind them. A few salty drops of water managed to escape from the corners of my eyes and drift down my cheeks before I leaned my head back and blinked repeatedly, determined to rid myself of them. I ran the back of my hands across my cheeks and under my eyes. A smudge of black mascara and the rosy tint of blush stained my skin. Eve and Lizabelle had worked so hard on my make-up and now it was ruined. Everything was ruined!
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I said aloud. “Snap out of it!”
I refused to look at Elizabeth again, even though I could feel her staring at me. I needed to clear my head and think. What could I do? Did I have any options? But most of all... what in the world did Elizabeth want to do with me?
The limousine started to slow. With the blacked out windows, I wasn’t able to tell where we were or what was outside. I just knew that the vehicle was coming to a stop. I couldn’t make a break for it and leave Summer with them. So when they got out of the limo and motioned for me to do likewise, I complied. As I slid across the seat, Elizabeth turned and blew in my direction. I felt the bubble pop. I could hear again. I stepped out into the night air and listened for any sound that I could identify. But all I heard were crickets. I stood in silence and took note of my surroundings.
We had pulled up in front of a compound of sorts. The property consisted of around twenty acres and was surrounded by a block wall. It was so high that I couldn’t see what was on the other side. A large stone house with a high-pitched roof sat in the middle of the property, with a smaller house off to the side. Elizabeth was barking orders and had her back to me, facing the smaller house. I watched as a young man and a teenage girl ran out to see what Elizabeth wanted.
“Damn-it, Drew! I di
dn’t sense your shield at all when we pulled up. I let you live here, and learn from me, under the condition that you protect my property. You are supposed to keep the shield up at all times when I am away,” Elizabeth scolded the disheveled young man.
“I swear, they’ve been up all day,” Drew cried out as he neared. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his messy black hair and with his other hand he tried to hide a yawn.
Drew then dug his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans while Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed and a look of pure annoyance came across her face. “You fell asleep again, didn’t you? Why is it, do you think, that your pea sized brain lacks the ability to understand the importance of my terms?”
“You were gone for over twenty-four hours,” Drew complained. “You keep telling me that I’ll get to be your apprentice. But instead you have me sit at the house, with my shields up, for days on end, babysitting Barbie here.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and pointed to the teen at his side.
The girl named Barbie (I didn’t know if that was her real name or just an aptly appointed nickname) stood with her hands on her hips and her eyes open wide, sporting a worried expression. Her hair was thick, wavy, and bleached blonde, just like the doll’s.
“I kept talking to him to try to keep him awake, but I’m afraid it had the opposite effect on him. I tried to wake him up Elizabeth,” she spoke with a high-pitched voice and chewed on her bottom lip when she finished talking.
“Why do you keep this little one around?” Nikola asked.
“Barbie has some very important talents that will develop over the next few years. I want to keep her safe while she grows into her powers.” Elizabeth put her arms around Barbie’s shoulders, gave her a little squeeze of a hug, and plastered a fake, almost painful, smile on her face.
Barbie’s bright pink lips widened as her face lit up and those big, naive eyes opened even further. “Thank you, Elizabeth. You’ve been so wonderful to me.”
“Yes, dear.” Elizabeth patted Barbie on her pink, fuzzy sweatered shoulder and then turned toward Drew, rolling her eyes. “Andrew, darling, I need you to get that sleeping person, from the back of the car, and leave her in the red room. Now!”
