by M. Lathan
Chapter Twelve
I stretched my dead arms and legs in the softest bed I’d ever been in. I opened my eyes in an unfamiliar room. Everything was pure white or crystal. Expensive and modern.
My head was pounding, so the crying and the breakup hadn’t been a nightmare. It least I wasn’t suicidal. Yet.
I would’ve burst into tears again if the pillows didn’t smell so wonderful. Like oranges. Like peace.
“Sophia?” I said, when I stopped sniffing, convinced I was imagining the scent because I needed it so badly.
The double doors of the bedroom opened, and Sophia poked her head in. “You’re finally awake?”
“Finally?”
She came in and pulled the covers back. “You've been out a while. It's Sunday, the 4th. It’s almost three in the evening.” That would explain why my body was so heavy.
“Where are we?” I asked. “California?”
“Paris, dear.”
She grabbed my hand and helped me out of the high bed. Once down, I ran to the window to see Paris. It didn’t disappoint. We must have been high up. My view was of rooftops and the heart of the city, like photos from World Geography of the tourist-y part of Paris. Or maybe all of Paris was picture perfect like this.
“Why are we here?” Sophia closed the curtain and took my hand. She led me to an all white bathroom and started the shower.
“We’ll talk about everything when you get out,” she said and smiled, relaxed and back to her normal self. Maybe because I wasn’t groping and getting groped by a shifter.
Ouch. It hurt to think of him. Like knife in my chest, hurt.
She walked out, leaving the door open. I undressed anyway. I had to adjust the water in the shower. It was way too hot. In the process, I wet my hair. I decided to wash it since I’d drenched half of it.
I grabbed the clear bottle on the ledge, guessing it was shampoo. It only took a drop for it to wrap me up completely. It was, hands down, the most wonderful thing I’d ever smelled. Better than Nathan. And it didn’t hurt to think of him anymore. Nothing was wrong now, and I had the strangest urge to curl up and sleep. It was ten times more potent than any orange I’d ever smelled. Like oranges only mimic this scent.
I forgot to rush so Sophia could explain everything. I took my time, lathering the shampoo everywhere—in my hair and all over.
“Sophia?”
“Yes?” she said, in the bathroom, closer than I expected her to be. But I didn’t jump. I was too calm to jump.
“Did you make this shampoo? Like with a spell?”
“No, love. But if you like it, I can get you some.”
“Please.”
She handed me a towel through the curtain. I reluctantly took it and shut the water off. She turned away from me, and I slipped on the black panties and bra she had waiting on the counter. She wrapped my hair in the towel and shook my head fast and in crazy directions. We laughed for a moment like my world hadn’t ended and she hadn’t been lying to me for days.
Sophia tapped the arm of a chair pushed up to the mirror. I smiled when I realized she was about to comb my hair. “I’m sorry about Nathan,” she said, parting down half and clipping up the other. “I found him a few miles away from the house. He’s with Emma and Paul at my place. Don’t worry.”
“He hates me.”
“He’s a boy. The male species reacts incorrectly ninety-nine percent of the time. He’ll realize it, and you’ll have to decide if you want to forgive him or not. Though … I think I know what you will choose.” She reached in the cabinet and pulled out hairspray. This apartment or hotel was very stocked. “I’m sorry about what I said about you not dating him. I’m partly to blame for his mood. I had no right saying that.”
“I get why you did. No Contact, right?”
She nodded as she very gently combed through my curls with more skill than I had.
“I wouldn’t worry about that either. I was just a little wound up at the time.” A little? That was the biggest understatement of the year. “I’m glad you called me about Remi. I know you could’ve handled it yourself, but it was very wise of you not to.” She chuckled unexpectedly. “You pack a lot of power in this little body of yours.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
Our eyes met in the mirror, and she looked away a moment later. She sprayed more of the hairspray that I wished smelled like the shampoo.
“I wanted to take things slowly. I didn’t want to take you from school, tell you about your inheritance, and reveal that you were wrong about your powers all in the same night. So, I lied and got the kids for you, but it wasn’t something they should know. And I didn’t want you to have to hide anything.”
It sounded very orchestrated when she put it like that. She’d made it seem like they’d needed a place to stay before. Now, it sounded like they were there to keep me company.
“You know … of all the humans like yourself I’ve known, you are by far the kindest,” she said. The comb snagged in my hair. She apologized with a kiss on my cheek. She pulled back to my ear and whispered, “Nothing like your mother at your age.”
I turned around in the chair, and she smiled. Immediately, I saw what I should’ve seen the moment I’d read it in the diary. Sophia was the maid Catherine hated. She turned my shoulders, making me face the mirror, and continued combing through my hair.
“That word Nathan called you, copy, you are not one, love. I can guarantee it. She was nothing like you. She was rude and spoiled. She made sure I knew how rich she was in the first five minutes of knowing her. In the first five minutes of knowing you, you gave me ten thousand dollars.” She was smiling at my hair when I looked up. “And you let me kiss you and hug you. Your mother and I didn’t get along at all. She was fifteen going on sixty and … she was my boss. I couldn’t believe I had to answer to her, and that she got more respect from the agent I worked for than I ever would.”
She unclipped the top half of my hair and sectioned it off as well. She got to work on the left side, and I decided to let her talk without interrupting with questions.
“I’ve worked for agents for over forty years. Cleaning, assisting, whatever they ask of me. They pay extraordinarily well. Especially these days.”
I turned around, and she smiled again. The job she went to every day was with agents? Wow.
“For years, I loved my job, until I met your mother. She used to spill juice on the carpet while I watched her. Knock things over just to order me to pick it up.” She laughed again, and I chuckled. CC was still as annoying. “Anything to get a rise out of me.” She sighed, and the smile drained from her face. “But she grew up eventually and disappeared.”
“With my dad,” I said. She nodded. “Why did you say you didn’t know them?”
“I didn’t know your dad. I saw him once, but I never met him. But I did lie about knowing your mother, and I’m sorry. That first night, you were too fragile to hear that you weren’t a witch, and I couldn’t even begin to fathom how you’d take learning about copies and breeding. I lied to protect you. How did you even hear about it? The kids?”
“I tested my blood,” I whispered. “Nathan told me the rest.” She bent down and kissed the top of my head, shaking hers like she knew how much distress that had caused me.
She worked through the last section of my hair. She opened a drawer and pulled out a tin of hairpins. “Life is sometimes very complicated, Christine. And for some of us, it’s down right bizarre.” She pinned my hair back in a sophisticated bun. She’d missed some strands in the back, but it worked with the hairstyle. “I’m sorry I’ve told you so many lies. About your powers. Your parents.”
While I stared at her, her eyes watered. She went to the open door of the bathroom and pushed it closed. My heart sped. She was being incredibly creepy. A red dress hung from the hook on the back of the door. She unzipped it and held it open for me to step into. It came just above my knees and all the way up to my neck. It was sleeveless and sop
histicated and way too dressy to wear in a house. Then there were the shoes. Black pumps with red soles. She kneeled down and put each one on slowly.
She rose with a strand of pearls in her hand. She clasped them around my neck and kissed my cheek again.
“Sophia, what’s wrong? Where are we going? What are we doing in Paris?”
“You look beautiful,” she said, ignoring me.
She walked me out of the bathroom and through the room I’d been asleep in. I noticed the bed was made.
The rest of the, wherever we were, was just as nice. Fancier than my house, but smaller. An apartment for sure. I didn’t think they made hotel rooms this big. Or maybe they did in Paris. The sleek and modern design stretched into the living room with sparkly lamps, a thinner than air television, and a long white sofa.
We stopped at another set of double doors. She took my face in both of her hands and smiled.
“Just breathe,” she said. “You’ll get through this if you just breathe.”
“Sophia, you are freaking me out. What are we doing?”
She straightened the pearls on my neck and tinkered with my bun. “Meeting someone important.” She turned me to the door and opened it. She rubbed my back for a second, then her hand lifted. I looked behind me. She was gone.
I stepped into the dining room slowly. I wasn’t alone. A person, a woman, with long blonde hair was standing at a window with her back to me. She was thin and had on a sleeveless black dress. The backs of her arms were well defined. I was immediately afraid.
She turned around, and my heart stopped. I couldn’t run, or scream, or bow like I was supposed to. Lydia Shaw was even more frightening in person.
She smiled and waved, and tears fell from my eyes. “It’s okay. Don’t cry,” she said. “Can we make a deal? I won’t listen to your thoughts if you don’t listen to mine.”
I nodded, admitting to her that I wasn’t the innocent girl from the news. But she knew that already. Lydia Shaw knew things like I did. Maybe she’d known this whole time and had Sophia deliver me to her.
“Do you know Sophia?” I asked, my voice as weak as I felt.
“Yes.”
“Does she work for you?”
“Yes.”
My throat closed. My heart pumped so violently that I thought I’d pass out. “I can prove that I’m not dangerous. Too dangerous to exist.”
She stepped closer in fancy black pumps, like the ones on my feet. I closed my eyes. I wanted Nathan’s face to be the last thing I saw.
“I don’t think you’re dangerous,” she said. “I wanted to have a nice dinner with you. To meet you and ease your mind about my agents and hunters. Sophia told me you were very worried about me.”
“You’re not going to kill me?” I opened my eyes slowly. She smiled and shook her head. Her stare sent a chill up my spine. She looked fascinated by me. Looking down at my nice dress, I broke. I remembered my mother’s story of being auctioned off by Julian. I wasn’t in skimpy clothes, but Sophia primped and groomed me for her. I was her prized possession. A thing. And things can be sold.
Sophia’s betrayal burned. So did the thought of being treated like an animal and being forced to sleep with someone I wouldn’t know. If I were to sleep with anyone, it would be Nathan Reece, even though the idea of that would make him vomit now. Regardless, he would be my choice, and like my mother before me, I would choose. I’d make sure I got the chance to.
I opened my hands and pulled two knives from her fancy place settings into them.
“Christine, give me those. Everything is okay,” she said.
“I’m not for sale. I won’t be bred!”
“Bred?” she asked, looking confused. “No one is selling you.” Her face was concerned now. It was hard, even in my terror, not to notice how pretty she was. “Did someone threaten to buy you?”
She came closer, and I raised the knives. Then I noticed how incredibly nonthreatening they must’ve seemed to her.
“I don’t care who you are. My mother didn’t let it happen and neither will I.”
I felt weak and defeated as she pulled the knives from my hand. “How do you know about that?” she whispered.
“My mother, CC, told me. She showed me her diary.”
She looked shocked and scared. Not like she wanted to buy me or hurt me at all. Her honey colored eyes filled with tears. I shivered. There was something familiar about her eyes this way, watery, but certainly she’d never cried on the news or anything I’d seen.
“You’ve been talking to a woman named CC?” Her voice cracked, and I nodded.
“Okay … honey,” she said. Honey? “We need to talk about her.”
“You knew her?” I asked.
She wiped her eyes and whispered, “Yes.” I hadn’t thought about my mother having friends. It didn’t seem like she would. Lydia could be an acquaintance of hers from her training days, but most acquaintances probably don’t tear up at the mention of a name.
“The woman you’ve been talking to is not your mother,” she whispered. I had to strain to hear her, and it took me a moment to register what she’d said. I didn’t know if I believed her or not. I didn’t know if I wanted it to be true or not either.
“She … is. She … has to be,” I said, hanging on to CC for some unknown reason. She wasn’t very nice. She didn’t say she loved me. But it was terrifying to think I’d been talking to a ghost that had been lying to me. Even more terrifying to think none of that had really happened and was a part of a psychotic break. “She has to be,” I said, hanging on to my sanity now.
“Sophia,” she said. A moment later, our maid popped into the room. Her eyes were red and frightened. I didn’t know whether to hug her or punch her in the face. “Conjure my mother. Now.”
Why the hell would we need to talk to her mother right now?
Without hesitation, Sophia made a circle on the floor with red candles as they appeared in her hand. She crept around her circle, whispering something that wasn’t even close to English or any other language I’d ever heard.
Sophia’s candles flickered then died out completely. From the smoke, a figure formed. A woman with shoulder length blonde hair, older than forty, hovered inside the circle of candles. I could see through her to the other side, to Lydia Shaw. The ghost had on heels and ankle length white pants. Her jacket was pink and blue, paisley pattern.
“This is a nice house. It could use a little color on the walls,” the ghost said. She looked over her shoulder to me and smiled. “Christine, dear, I’m sorry about the shifter. I’m not one to say I told you so.” She looked around the room, scrunched her face up at Sophia, then relaxed it when she faced Lydia, who was weeping now. “Liddy! What a nice dress. It would look better in a brighter color. Black is for funerals, you know?”
Lydia came closer and held my face in her hands. She pressed her forehead against mine. I was frozen. Confused. Not breathing at all.
“She’s not your mother,” she whispered. “CC is short for Cecilia. Her name is Cecilia Shaw.” She stared at me, looking like she wanted me to put something together. But my brain was disconnected. Offline. Completely missing from whatever was happening around me. Even my body was confused. I felt both hot and cold. My heart was both pounding and had stopped all together.
Sophia wrapped an arm around my waist, joining our huddle. I turned my face to her. She mouthed, Just breathe.
I looked at Lydia, then back to Sophia, then at Lydia’s hands on my face. The ghost was Cecilia Shaw. Cecilia, like my middle name, like my fake name—Cecilia Neal. Sophia had said it was my mother’s family’s name. My mother’s family. My mother. I gasped and looked at her.
My legs gave out.
I wasn’t listening to Sophia’s advice. I wasn’t breathing. This couldn’t be real. Lydia Shaw couldn’t be the girl from the diary. The girl from Sophia’s story.
She met me on the floor and pulled me to her chest. “I’m sorry, baby. Breathe.” I tried to speak, bu
t before I opened my mouth, I smelled her. We were in her home because that was her shampoo, and that scent on her was perfection. Like I’d been sniffing oranges, hoping it would smell like her. She watched me as I brought strands of her hair to my nose. “You remember me, baby?”
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. Fight her, but I couldn’t. What pissed me off the most was that I wanted to crawl to her lap and sleep. I wanted her to hold me. Like I’d wanted it forever.
But I hadn’t. Had I? I didn’t know Lydia Shaw outside of being the scary woman from my history books. She couldn’t have a child. A copy.
“Where was the diary?” Lydia asked her mother.
“You stashed it with some of my things that you’ve never cared enough to go through. I bet you would’ve found it if it were in your dad’s things,” CC said, in her snooty voice.
Shattering in Lydia’s arms, I remembered everything CC had told me. She’d said Julian killed my grandparents. She never said she was my mother, she was actually very adamant that I didn’t call her that.
“I’m sorry, baby. I never meant to hurt you like this,” Lydia said. She pulled me tighter, and I started to give in, to let her rock me to sleep and make this better, but she kissed my forehead and yanked me back to Earth.
Lydia Shaw was my mother. She wasn’t dead. She threw me away. And when I almost got into trouble, she sent her maid to fetch me. She had Sophia stash me in a house and occupy me with people. She was controlling this unbelievable situation. Not God. Nothing in my life hurt more than knowing my mother didn’t want me. Not bullying. Not Nate hating me.
She’d thrown me in hell, St. Catalina, because she wanted to be a hero and have chapters in history books and be bowed to like a saint.
My heart picked up and drowned out every sound in the room. I pushed her as hard as I could and crawled out of her arms. I stood and stumbled in my stupid high heels.
Where could I go? Back to school, the dumpster she left her copy in? New Orleans? Florida? It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t fit in anywhere. I wouldn’t be wanted anywhere. By anyone.
I closed my eyes and opened them in my closet.
I unzipped the suitcase Sophia had left for me. I threw my clothes inside, the clothes with tags I should’ve questioned more, from the maid I should’ve questioned more.
The cracks in my heart made me cough and choke on tears as I fell to my knees. My breaths lingered in the frosty air, and the other ghost touched my hand.
“You’re Cecilia’s husband. Lydia’s father,” I whispered. My teeth chattered as he wrapped his arms around me. “Is my father alive, too?” Faintly, his head ruffled the top of mine. It was a nod. I fell back on my butt, completely destroyed, and he rocked me—as good as a ghost could rock. “Why does no one want me?” I asked, because it was obvious that no one did. Not friends, not boyfriends, not parents.
He grazed my palm, and I held it open for him. Slowly, his icy finger wrote My fault in my hand.
I turned to where I thought his face would be. I didn’t really know what to say or ask. I just sat there in his arms, freezing and confused. I felt low, like the nothing I always was and would always be.
“Christine,” Lydia whispered at the door of my closet. “Is … is there someone in here with you?”
I pushed up to my knees and threw the rest of my clothes in the suitcase. “Your father.”
She kneeled next to me, looking around the closet. I rolled my eyes and pointed to where he was. I thought I’d use this distraction to get away from her. Slip out of here while she wept for her father.
“Don’t pack. Please let me explain,” she said.
“Explain what? Why I don’t have parents?” She didn’t say anything. What could she say? “Why you two didn’t want me?”
“He has no idea,” she said. “I left him before you were born.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper, like someone was strangling her. “Let’s sit and talk. There’s so much you don’t know.” Her father rubbed my back, and I shivered, from cold and from anger.
I opened the secret door in the closet and pulled out her diary. She gasped, and I flung it at her. “I know more than enough about you. You’re rude. A good liar. Obscene, to put it mildly. Completely psychotic. And I know more than that about you. I’ve had to study you for years. Congratulations on ending the war, by the way. I assume you had me sometime before that. Was I a bad copy? Wasn’t perfect enough for you? Should I thank you for not drowning me?”
“You are not a copy, and I would never hurt you,” she said. I rolled my eyes at Sophia when she walked in.
“Whatever. I … just want to go away. You don’t have to talk to me. You can still pretend I don’t exist.”
“Lydia, we need to let her see the truth,” Sophia said.
“No, it’s too much for her. She can’t handle that.”
Sophia pulled the suitcase out of my reach. “She’s stronger than you think.”
After a moment, Lydia nodded to her, and I stood, ready to run again, away from whatever they were about to do to me.
“Relax, sweetheart,” Sophia said. She cupped her hands and brought them to her mouth. “It will not hurt. Trust me.” She smiled and blew into her hands, sending a gust of powder into my face.
It tickled my nose, made my head spin, and I collapsed into her arms.
