Finding Insight

by Katherine Kim

  “And you?” He finally turned to Cassie.

  “I’m totally human,” she shrugged. “But my step dad is a sort of vampire. Not like Count Dracula, or anything though. But he still can’t deal with daylight very well, so you’ll meet him later.”

  “I have so many questions.” Gabe slumped over and buried his face in his hands. Cassie reached over to pat his back. Gabe just shuddered and leaned into her touch.

  “How… How are you doing that? How are you touching me and I’m not having an episode?” he whispered.

  “Well, I figured that since you already gave me your prophecy for today, I’m probably a safe person for now. I mean, when was the last time you let someone give you a hug?” Cassie asked, and Gabe sobbed and leaned over to bury his face in her shoulder. She actually looked a bit shocked for a moment, before wrapping her arms around him and patting his back while he cried.

  “Cassie, how did you get so clever for your age?” Kai smiled.

  “I had to grow up pretty fast,” she shrugged. Sebastian shared a glance with Kai then turned to the door and headed back to the kitchen. Sarah was there already, and when he looked out the window in the kitchen door, he saw Doc in the back scrubbing the grill.

  “Hey sweetheart. How’s Gabe? I’ll have some tea for him in a minute.” Sarah leaned into his hug.

  “I think he’s having a cathartic moment all over Cassie’s shoulder. We owe that kid big time, you know.” Sebastian sighed. “He’s a mess. I mean we knew that, but Sarah, it’s bad.” Sebastian’s heart felt too big in his chest, pressing on his lungs. The idea that Gabe had gone for so many years avoiding human contact for fear of accidentally seeing something and being beaten for it, or worse broke his heart. The idea that he’d been rejected by his own mother for something he couldn’t control, and denied his own childhood made Sebastian see red.

  “I heard a tiny bit of it when we got here, and when Cassie came out she said that he was sick again so I put the kettle on.” She grimaced. “I hate that he’s had such a tough time. Cassie said that you let him in on your secret?”

  “Yeah. After what he told us, it was only fair. What he’s gone through. I just can’t— Why are people so awful?”

  Sarah turned to wrap her arms around his back and shook her head into his shoulder.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. But he has you now,” she said. “And you supported me during my own crisis, helped me realize I was strong enough to live my own life the way I wanted, even if I am still figuring that out a bit. You helped Kai find himself again. Gabe is a damn lucky kid now that he’s got you in his corner.” Sarah leaned back to look him in the eye and smiled. “Now you take this tea in and make sure he drinks it. Whatever it is he’s got going on will be better with some nice hot tea.”

  “You mean witch’s brew,” Sebastian teased as he stepped back and picked up the mug.

  “Eh, same difference.” Sarah waved a hand at him. “Scoot. Go help Gabe. And close the door so we don’t interrupt, Doc and I have the grill covered. I even have matches to light it with, so don’t worry mister magical foxfire barbecue lighter.”

  “Ha. Ha.” Sebastian walked back into the bedroom. Gabe was still sitting on the bed, but was now clutching the blanket around him with one hand while the other mopped vaguely at his face with a tissue.

  “Hey, Sarah sends tea.” Sebastian handed it over.

  “Shocking everyone,” Gabe smiled. It was watery and small, but it was genuine and Sebastian felt his shoulders start to unclench.

  “So how about we trade stories, Gabe?” Kai asked. He leaned up against the dresser and Sebastian could tell that his brother was trying to look non-threatening. It was only sort of working. “I’d bet you have a ton of questions, and I know I’ve never met a seer before. Is that how you refer to yourself, or…”

  “I just called myself messed up. Mom either called me possessed by demons or monster, depending on her mood.” Gabe clutched the mug of tea in both hands and let the blanket start sliding down off his shoulders. Cassie leaned against him, letting him feel that she was there without being very pushy about it, just letting her shoulder press against his arm very gently.

  “When I was a kid, I’d say stuff sometimes. Nothing terrible, just random stuff once in a while, but it would sound so grown up that it made people nervous.” Gabe swallowed and actually slumped further. It would have been impressive if he hadn’t been so miserable in his memories. “Dad always laughed and said I was wise beyond my years. Mom didn’t like it, but she pretty much just went with whatever Dad said about it. It didn’t hurt anyone, just made people react funny, you know? And it wasn’t like it happened every day, just once in a while. Maybe a few times a year.”

  Sebastian felt the silence wrap around them, not uncomfortable, just waiting. Gabe needed time to sort through the fact that he was not a cursed monster after all, at least not in their eyes, and that was such a departure from his whole previous life that it would take him a while to really accept that. From the corner of his eye he saw that Kai was likewise waiting through the silence, and Cassie just leaned a little harder into Gabe’s arm for a moment.

  “So, one day when I was eleven…” Gabe swallowed. “Sometimes it feels like it just happened you know? Anyway, Dad called and let Mom know that he was on his way home, and it would take a little longer than normal because he was biking. It was summer, so I was in the living room playing video games. Just wasting some time cause what else did I have to do, you know?“ Gabe’s smile was a quicksilver flash. “It’s funny what sticks out, you know? I remember thinking that I should move because Mom turned the fan on and it was blowing right on me, but I was doing really well in the game and I didn’t want to mess it up. She turned the water on to boil the spaghetti and told me to start wrapping up my game so I could set the table because Dad would be home soon, but I got sucked back into it and kept playing. Next thing I knew Mom was pissed off that Dad wasn’t home yet. She snatched the controller out of my hand and was grumbling about what could possibly be keeping him, and I remember saying ‘it’s a blonde in a dark dress.’ And Mom just went nuts. Yelling and stomping around, and she sent me to my room until she could decide what to do about me.”

  Gabe wasn’t looking at anything in the room anymore. His whole attention was in his memory, replaying the scene for his own private viewing, and Sebastian wondered if Gabe was even aware of how much he was saying now.

  “I remember the doorbell ringing, maybe half an hour later. It was the police. There’d been an accident. Some lady had lost control of her car when her tire blew, and she’d careened off the road. Right into my dad who’d been pinned between the car and a tree. He died on the scene, and the driver was in a coma. She died later, too. She’d been on her way home from a funeral, which is probably the most tragic part.” Gabe put his unfinished tea down on the bedside table and clasped his hands together between his knees.

  “The blonde in the dark dress. It was black,” Kai murmured. Gabe nodded.

  “Mom fell apart. I had to take over basically everything, though my grandparents came to stay with us for a while. Mom basically just got up and went to work and then came home and went to bed. I cooked and cleaned and made sure Mom ate and all that stuff. In a way it was good, because that’s basically how I managed to keep it together myself. After a while, Mom started going to church again. That was like dropping a shot of vinegar into a box of baking soda. Suddenly church was everything. All the time.” Gabe screwed his face up again. That grimace was getting far too familiar to Sebastian.

  “I didn’t mind it too much. I had school and track team and my art. I used to draw.” Gabe shrugged. “As long as I didn’t actually show Mom what I was drawing she didn’t say anything. She’d have flipped if she’d ever found out I was looking up nudes to practice figure drawing.” He chuckled.

  “Anyway. I started saying more weird shit, and it was way more frequent. Maybe once or twice a month. About half the time I didn’t even remember sa
ying it. I’d just be sitting there and then I’d blink, and then everyone was staring at me funny. Most of my friends got freaked out and I ended up spending a lot of time alone for independent study so I wouldn’t distract the whole class or whatever, but it wasn’t so bad. I had a few friends who didn’t seem to care much, but mostly it was just me and my mom, and she got progressively more upset every time I said anything. After a while, I was maybe twelve, I guess? No, it was right after the birthday where she made me go to a special prayer service instead of out for cake, so I was thirteen.” Gabe glanced up at Cassie who’d made a completely outraged noise. He shrugged again, but there was another small smile there, too.

  “So, that night I did it again so she started making me go to these counseling sessions at the church. It was me and a goth girl and a couple other of us ‘weird’ kids.” Gabe made air quotes on the word weird and drew it out for extra emphasis.

  “Who isn’t weird at thirteen?” Sebastian finally ventured a comment, and Gabe flashed him a sad smile, but at least he made eye contact for a second. The longer he listened the angrier Sebastian got at Gabe’s mother, and he knew that Kai was having a similar reaction. Grief is something that can drive people to very strange things sometimes, but it seemed that Gabe’s mother was holding herself back from acting on her awful opinions while her husband was alive, and that was a terrible thing to think about.

  “Yeah, well. I was the youngest one in the group. Basically we didn’t fit into the perfect church kid mold that our parents wanted us to. Honestly, looking back, it wasn’t a very Christian a place really. It was one of those narrow-minded, super conservative evangelical churches, you know? Where you have to follow a very specific lifestyle to be considered normal or right?”

  Gabe glanced around at his audience. Sebastian guessed he was trying to gauge how receptive they were to discussing religion. Kai was shaking his head and scrubbing his hand through his hair, and when Gabe met his own gaze he tried to put as much support and sympathy into it as he could.

  “Anyway,” Gabe continued after a moment. “We were all there to learn ways to combat the influence of Satan and stuff like that. Mom made me go once a week, on top of the regular Sunday service. Then twice a week. Every time I said something that made her nervous she called Father Gary. Pretty soon I had to go every day, and about half the time it was just me and Father Gary praying and me reciting Bible passages and whatever else he thought would help me cast out the devils that were clearly trying to rip me from the path of the righteous.” Gabe rolled his eyes at that, and Sebastian was glad that he was at least resisting that message.

  “That’s gross,” Cassie said. “I hate people like that.” Sebastian had the feeling that she was thinking of the hunters who had murdered her mother simply because she fell in love with Marcus.

  “I’ve had a few years to come to terms with how completely insane it all was, but at the time… I mean it’s not like I could control it really. When I felt like I wanted to say something and I knew it was one of the weird things, I kept my mouth shut if I could, but sometimes I just blanked out. Being possessed made as much sense as anything else. How else would I know—” Gabe shook his head, clearing it.

  “Anyway. After a while Mom took me out of school so I could spend more time at the church, and when I was at home she started hitting me when I’d say something she deemed sinful or demonically-inspired. Then one day I came out of my room to get some water and heard her talking to Father Gary in the living room. He’d come to offer to take me to some camp or other where they would kill the demons that were trying to corrupt me and consume my immortal soul. He told her that I would return an innocent lamb of God and whatever. It just felt wrong, does that make sense?” Gabe glanced around to see everyone nodding their agreement.

  “I turned around and shut my bedroom door as quietly as I could, and I was out of the house and halfway to the bus stop inside of half an hour. Two hours later I was on a bus to San Diego with the last thirty-seven dollars of the money I’d been hoarding for a few years and no plan at all.” Gabe took a deep breath and it was like he was breathing out his story on the heavy exhale, but he sat up straighter and when he met Sebastian’s eyes this time, he was almost defiant.

  “That was four years ago.”

  14

  Sebastian stared at the boy in front of him. Gabe looked like he was awaiting judgement for something. The supposed sin of running away, maybe? The audacity of defying his psychotic mother?

  “Damn,” Sebastian said at last. “That’s—” He shook his head trying to find the words.

  “That’s insane. Why San Diego? Where did you grow up?” Kai asked, and Sebastian heard the same horror in his brother’s voice that he felt.

  Gabe blinked and jerked back, surprised.

  “I mean, you’re what, eighteen now, right? You don’t have to worry about us calling your crazy mother and telling her where you are or anything, not that we would anyway, god.”

  Gabe shrugged now, and settled back into the wary, quiet kid that Sebastian was used to. He’d been broken while he told his story, looking at scenes from his past rather than the room around him or the man he spoke to, then he’d been defiant while waiting for their reaction. Now that he’d unburdened himself and hadn’t been condemned for any part of his story, he was retreating back into his safe and comfortable behaviors.

  “I guess,” Gabe said, taking a sip of cold tea. “I dunno why San Diego. It was one of the options at the bus station and it seemed as good a place as anywhere. I mostly grew up in Arizona till then. A place called Surprise, near Phoenix. I was born in Ohio though and we were there till I was three.”

  “So…” Sebastian frowned and tried to sort out what he wanted to know now. There was something in that story that was absolutely crucial, but he couldn’t think what it was past the boggling issue of Gabe’s mother turning on her own son.

  “So, wait. How’d you end up here? We’re nowhere near San Diego.” Cassie asked. “And why are you sleeping in a cave?”

  Gabe stilled for a moment. His eyes flicked up to study Sebastian in silence while he chewed slowly.

  “I’ve been on my own for four years. I had to keep moving to stay safe, you know? When I got the feeling that it was time to head out, I did. I’ve been all over California now. A bit into Nevada, a little in Oregon. I’ve pretty much hitchhiked or taken the bus all over. I do odd jobs and get by okay.” Gabe frowned now. “Why were you watching me? That was you, wasn’t it? The fox at my camp?”

  “Yeah.” It was Sebastian’s turn to feel uncomfortable. He speared his fingers through his hair again, scrubbing his nails over his scalp and ducking his head. “Sorry if it seems that I was spying on you. That wasn’t my intention.”

  “We’ve had some trouble lately,” Kai cut in. “That cave was used to stage attacks on our apartment complex not very long ago. We go by and check on it every so often, and then one day we saw you camped out there. Once we realized you weren’t a threat to us, we just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “They try to take care of the community at large, not just the people who live at the apartment. With great power and all that stuff.” Cassie grinned at Kai who rolled his eyes and smiled. Clearly a conversation they had frequently. “That whole story we told you earlier? We left a lot out. It was basically all about them not being human, the whole stupid thing.” She frowned and huffed back into silence.

  “I’m crazy impressed by you, though,” Sebastian said. Gabe’s eyes snapped back to Sebastian’s.

  “What? Why?”

  “Well, I mean, you were a kid. You were in a place that was dangerous to you, and were pretty much being threatened by people who should have been looking after you and keeping you safe. Instead of staying there and taking it, you did what you had to do to protect yourself,” Sebastian said.

  “I ran away,” Gabe said.

  “You escaped,” Kai corrected him. “You didn’t run away. There is nothing wrong with takin
g care of yourself, even if that meant you had to head off alone.”

  “I guess,” Gabe said.

  “And you’re not alone anymore. You’ve got us. Doc doesn’t hire just anyone. And Sarah thinks you’re the best thing to hit here since she showed up herself,” Sebastian pointed out.

  “I don’t want to be a charity case.” Gabe’s defiance reared again.

  “Stop,” Sebastian’s voice snapped out, surprising himself even. “There is nothing wrong with taking care of yourself, like Kai said, but sometimes that means remembering to lean on others when they’re there. Take my brother as an example.” Sebastian pointed at Kai who had the good grace to look guilty. “

  That dumbass over there had a huge problem. He was hurt during that fight in the cave, and the injury was making him sick. And instead of asking for help from me or any of our friends, he tried to tough it out so we wouldn’t be bothered by him.” Sebastian scowled now, remembering the sight that Kai’s father had revealed to him of the tendrils of darkness growing out of the wound on Kai’s back. The poison left behind by the wight that attacked him and the stress he was putting on himself had started to turn him into a wight himself. Sebastian glared at Kai, still feeling sick about the whole mess, even though it ended months ago.

  “Kai ended up pushing everyone away and trying to isolate himself to ‘protect’ us before trying to self-medicate at a bar up in San Jose. I’ll always be grateful to his dad for finding him and bringing him home. Still took some major drama and an eleven year old kid to snap him out of it. He’s doing okay now, but we still have to check in with him to make sure he’s not hiding behind his self-imposed responsibilities again.”

  “I just told him to stop being such an idiot, that’s all.” Cassie grinned at Kai and shrugged. Gabe just looked back and forth between them.

  “I have so many questions,” Gabe muttered again.

  “Well, you can ask, but it might be faster if we just tell you the whole story. Remember when we were talking about how Sarah was harassed by a vandal?” Kai asked. Gabe nodded and Kai launched into the more detailed explanation of the warlock being hired to drive Sarah away from her birthright as a witch, and how in the end she not only embraced that power but told her mother to buzz off. Then about how the warlock ran away with his tail between his legs thanks to the combined efforts of the Villagers who destroyed the wight army and how that warlock came back to join forces with the hunters who were after Cassie and her step-dad.