Gloria flashed a goofy smile, something I hadn’t seen her do since my mother died. “I came to find you,” she said, sliding down the wall next to me and flopping out her short legs. “What are you doing sitting here on the dirty floor?”
“Thinking,” I said. There was so much I couldn’t tell her; there was no time for a lecture. Nothing she could say could change what had to happen next. “I came here for something and with Withers gone, I’m not sure where exactly to get it.”
“Ugh,” she brushed some of the dust off her shirt, “that windbag is only helpful when he wants to be. If this wasn’t the only place in town to get supplies, I doubt anyone would come in here at all. Is this where you got the sage from the other night?”
“How’d you . . .”
“Please,” she laughed, “I could smell that spell a mile away.”
“I’m still not sure that was the right thing to do, but it’s done now, so I’m trying not to overthink it.”
She nudged me. “I would have done the same thing.”
“Yeah, I know you would have,” I let out a little laugh.
She started to speak again, but I cut her off. “I love you, and everything, but I don’t have the time or the energy to argue with you about what I’m doing here.”
“I’m not here to argue,” Gloria said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small plastic bag with shiny blue powder in it. “I’m here to give you this.”
“Is this what I think it is? You . . . you know what I have to do with this, right?
“Yes.”
“Seriously? You’re going to help me now, after everything else you’ve said. Why?”
“Because you need it now. Look, our family is a unique bunch, you know? We have this stubbornness about us, and it tends to make us need to forge our own paths. I love that about us, but I also hate that about us. It means we’re not always great at taking guidance or advice when we should. So, you can’t always help in the way you’d like.”
“Meaning?”
“Sometimes you just have to, we’ll say, ‘rearrange’ the truth so the person hears what you think they need to hear in order to help them get to where they need to go. When you came to me after your mom died, I couldn’t just tell you everything that was happening and expect you to understand it. Keeping you in the dark about magic for so long meant that you didn’t have the advantage of growing up with your powers like we did, and this world got a lot more dangerous for you once you inherited the Opalescence. So, I told you what I thought you needed to hear in order to get you to prepare yourself for what was coming.”
“So you’ve been helping me by trying to stop me? That makes no sense.”
“I needed you to catch up, and fast, and I couldn’t carry you the entire way. I knew that if I tried to push you to get here, to embrace this destiny that has been dumped on you, well, you probably would have run away from it. So, I tried the opposite. I tried to push you away from all this, fully expecting that you’d do what your mother would have done in the same situation—the exact opposite of what I was asking you to do.”
“So you played me.”
“Eh,” she gritted her teeth and bobbed her head back and forth, “I like to think of it as nudged you in the right direction. I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not; it’s just what had to be done. I hope you’ll understand and forgive me for that one day, but for today that doesn’t matter. Today you have bigger things to worry about.
“So you’re like what? The Chess Master? And I’m just one of your pawns.”
“No, you’re not a pawn. If we’re using the chess analogy, then I’d say you’re the most important piece on the board . . . what is that, the king? Or the queen maybe. Look, I knew that discovering this world on your own was going to be an important step in understanding who you are and why you’d have to do this.”
I stood up and started pacing. “Damn it. You can hear everything and you couldn’t see how much I was struggling with this? How much I needed your help? I mean, it’s one thing to just not help me, but to manipulate me? How do you know I would have run away? You didn’t even try. Instead you force some empty promise down my throat about keeping it a secret, and for what?”
“I was . . . I am serious about keeping this a secret. This is a complicated world we live in, and for Casters secrets are like water—they keep us alive. But this secret, the Opalescence, it’s bigger than me, or you, or anyone else in our family. I’d love nothing more than for you to be able to walk away from it, but we both know you can’t do that.”
“Well, seeing you always seem to know so much about what’s going on, did you know that when I went to get Zoe back, I got stabbed and practically died? What if I had really died that night and the one thing that could have saved me was your fucking help? How would your plan have worked out then?”
“Hat . . .”
“Fuck,” I said to myself, closing my eyes. “Is telling someone the truth ever an option with this family?”
“Come on. Everything I’ve told you was true. But, our family is complicated, you know that. We decided to suppress your powers because we wanted you safe. The Opalescence should have never been your problem, either. Your mom never wanted that. We’ve been suffering through the responsibility of that damn thing for so long, and it’s brought us nothing but devastation and pain. She spent almost the entire time she had it trying to figure out a way to get rid of it for good so things like this didn’t happen. But then she died, and when your powers came back and you got the Opalescence, everything changed. I did what I thought was best to help you through it.”
“I know you think that, but it doesn’t excuse the endless secrets, and it doesn’t make me feel any better about being manipulated. Is this what our family is really about, and I just never knew it?”
“No,” she said firmly. “This is what magic does to our family, it brings shit into our lives that we have no control over. Believe me when I tell you that more than anything, we wanted our kids to live the normal lives we never got to have and not have to deal with all the secrets the Walkers keep.”
She stood up, crossed her arms, and looked out the window. With a deep frown she pointed at my pocket just before it started vibrating. “You should read that.”
“What?” I didn’t realize she meant my phone.
A text message from Cooper was flashing across the screen when I pulled it out of my pocket.
“911. COME TO THE HOSPITAL NOW. IT’S LIV.”
Chapter 36
“What’s happened?” I asked when Cooper met me at the hospital’s entrance.
“She was attacked earlier,” he said, his hands visibly shaking.
“What? What do you mean attacked? By who? Is she alright?”
“We don’t know much,” he said, “but I was able to persuade a contact of mine from the police department to tell me what they do know. Whoever attacked her was gone before the police got there, but the witness who called them in the first place said the man that did it didn’t have a face. Obviously, the police don’t believe that, but that doesn’t matter. She was unconscious when they found her and they don’t think she’s all that badly hurt, but she still hasn’t woken up.”
When we got to Liv’s room, the floor nurse was explaining to Cooper why we couldn’t see her. “Sir,” she said, “like I told you earlier, only family can go in.”
We were forced to watch over her bruised and bandaged body through a window to her room. Her wrist was in a cast, and the opposite arm was in a sling supporting a dislocated shoulder. What’s worse, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t connect with the powers in the Opalescence to try to heal her.
“There is really nothing I can do,” the nurse said before walking away.
“Really? Let’s see about that,” Cooper said, taking a deep breath and fixing his eyes on the back of the nurse’s head. She t
urned and locked eyes with his stare as he started walking toward her.
“What are you doing?” I asked, walking after him and grabbing his shoulder.
“Shut up,” Cooper said, shrugging off my hand and moving directly in front of the nurse. She wasn’t blinking and her eyes slowly rolled from side-to-side to watch his every move. “So then, how about now? Care to let us in then?”
“I . . . can’t,” she stammered.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said, tears starting to fall down her cheeks.
“Cooper . . .” I said.
“Fine,” Cooper said, shaking his head. The nurse blinked feverishly before regaining control of her senses and racing off to another room.
“What was that?” I asked. “Mind control?”
“Not really,” Cooper said, his body sagging slowly into a chair in the waiting area outside of Liv’s room. “I can’t force someone to do something, particularly if they don’t want to, but I do usually happen to have a bit of influence over them. Clearly not with her.” He got up again and pressed his face against the window to Liv’s room.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said to Cooper as he passed in front of me again. “We’ll figure out a way in.”
“No. We’ll make our way in there now,” Cooper said, reaching for the door.
“It’s locked, Coop. And,” I nervously looked around us and whispered, “I don’t think forcing it open is going to get us very far with these people. Let’s just go get a cup of coffee.”
Hospitals must be able to get away with epically bad coffee because everyone who is in there is already in so much pain that no one has the strength to care. Everything smelled like industrial cleaner and death, morbidly sterile, including our cups. On the way back, we passed the steadfast nurse, standing safely behind her shiny and tidy station, talking to a doctor in bright blue scrubs.
“Is this her doctor?” Cooper asked the nurse, leaning over her station.
“Yes. Doctor, these are the gentlemen I was telling you about,” the nurse said.
The doctor started to speak, but Cooper got within inches of his face and without blinking, said, “We are as close to Liv as family, and you will let us in to see her.”
The doctor didn’t fight Cooper’s powers. He was either weaker than the nurse, or he honestly wanted to let us in. Either way, Cooper’s influence worked and the doctor told the nurse to let us through.
“The door’s already open,” the nurse said. “Her brother just came back from the cafeteria and I let him in.”
We sped down the hallway and when Liv’s open door came into view, I could see another set of hands holding hers from the bedside chair.
“Hat?” Max looked up at me in surprise.
“Max? What are you doing here?”
Without letting go of Liv’s hands, he gave me an angry scowl. “What are you doing here?”
I deserved his aggression and he knew it. “Sorry. She’s a friend of mine from work. You’re her . . .”
“Brother? Yes.” Max didn’t look away from Liv as he spoke, as if he was signaling me to leave without saying anything.
“How is she?”
“How does she look, Hat?” he said in a shaky voice. “They can’t figure out why she’s unconscious. She broke her wrist and . . . ,” He stopped talking and started to sniffle.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Max let go of Liv’s hand, shot up and hit the wall. “Fuck!”
The nurse scurried into the room in a panic. “Is everything alright?” she asked, looking at me as if I was the one who had hit the wall. I could almost hear her think, “I knew this guy was trouble.”
She pulled at the stethoscope around her neck like a ninja would pull at her nunchakus, getting ready to release swirling terror on anyone who crossed her. Max didn’t say anything else, he just turned and faced the window, looking out into the cloudy day.
“Sorry ma’am,” I said, “everything’s fine.”
The nurse left and sensing the tension that coursed through the room, Cooper followed, closing the door behind him.
“Everything is not fine,” Max yelled at me. “I’m such a fucking jerk. I can’t even remember the last time I talked to her. I didn’t even know she worked with you. What kind of brother does that make me when I don’t know where my own sister works? If she dies thinking I didn’t care about her, I’ll . . .”
With open arms I walked over to him, but he shrugged me off. “Just leave, Hat. I know you know how.”
Screams of silence shot through the air and the awkward moment threw me from the room without saying anything more to him.
Cooper was still transfixed on Liv and was unable to look at me when I came out. “I’ll be back,” I said to him before walking away and past the deathly stares of our favorite nurse.
I went home long enough to shower, change, and feed Cat again. Max hadn’t paused when showing me he wasn’t interested in me being at the hospital, but I grabbed some clothes for him anyway. Then I stopped along the way back and picked up a few hospital-living essentials, like a toothbrush and toothpaste, a razor, and some of the deodorant that I knew he wore . . . the kind that made him smell sexy even when he was sweating.
Cooper had fallen asleep in the waiting room by the time I got back, and Liv still hadn’t woken up. Max was in the same place I left him, crumpled up in the chair next to Liv’s bed, holding her hand. His face was stubbly, tired-looking and drained of color, and the baseball hat he had on was pulled down so far over his forehead that I couldn’t tell if he was awake or not.
“Hey,” I said quietly.
“Hi,” he grunted in a brittle voice. I handed him a hot cup of non-hospital coffee and the bag filled with everything I had picked up for him.
“What’s that?” he snarled, pointing at the bag and taking a slow sip of the coffee. “I’m sorry, I mean thank you for the coffee, and what is that?”
I pulled up a chair next to his and opened the bag, handing him all of the magically non-magical items to make him feel less miserable while he waited for his sister to wake up.
“This is really nice,” he said, putting his hand on my knee and looking at me in the eyes for the first time since he stormed out of my apartment. “You didn’t have to.”
“Yes, I did. You smell,” I said, glad I was able to finally pull a little laughter out of him.
He locked himself in the bathroom with my gifts, and I quietly leaned over Liv in her bed. The familiar cold from the Opalescence drifted easily throughout my body. The air went still as I touched her, and tremors of light formed around us. I was awestruck as the light pushed itself into Liv’s body, but when the powers subsided, she still didn’t wake up.
I fell back into my chair, left with nothing but the hope that the Universe wasn’t going to let her die, not after letting me live.
“Better?” Max asked when he emerged from the bathroom a half hour later. He was clean, shaven, and no longer looked like someone who had just pulled themselves out of their own grave. He was so much taller and fitter than I was that the t-shirt I brought him was a little snug, but I didn’t mind. He spun around a little, giving me a mock fashion show of my own clothes, and we both laughed again. Then he sat down next to me and leaned in close.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I said, shrugging.
“How is it that you can be such a complete asshole one minute, and then so nice the next?” He reached over me to grab his coffee, and I took in his smell. Fresh cranberries and leather, somehow.
“Practice,” I said.
“I’m serious, Hat.” He took a big sip of his coffee and sighed. We were sitting so close that I could smell the liquid of the fresh brewed beans as it poured out into his mouth.
“So am I,” I said. “I’m sorry abo
ut the other day. I had a lot going on and I should have told you about it. Maybe I’ve started to think about things differently now. Maybe I’m different now. I can’t tell you that I’ve figured everything out, because I haven’t, but I do know that I was just being stupid before. I didn’t understand what I had done until you were already gone.”
“No,” he grumbled, “you didn’t. And yes, you should have talked to me.” He dragged his chair to face mine and lifted his feet into my lap.
By then, the hospital was nearly still and the road outside the window was lifeless. We sat for a long while, watching Liv like a broken television, hoping and waiting for any twitch in her eye that might mean she was waking up.
Despite Liv’s situation, or my own, I couldn’t help but stare at Max whenever I thought I could get away with it. Our time apart hadn’t changed the way I felt about him, and my attraction for him was doing nothing except getting stronger. I gently rubbed my hand up and down his leg, trying to brush away his worry and offer up any strength I had to give.
“What?” Max asked me when I stood up over him and looked deeply into his eyes—the same way I did before our first time together in his office. His sexy gray saucers looked back at me inquisitively, but I put two of my fingers over his lips before he could say anything more.
Leaning in, I pulled my fingers away and replaced them quickly with my lips, carrying us both into a kiss of such great heights that nothing, not time nor trouble, could touch us.
It was a kiss that spoke for itself. Slow, to let him know I was never letting him go again. Forceful, to remind him of the passion we had whenever we were together. And grateful, to thank him for so many things, not least of all the way he daringly loved me, even when I was too naïve to understand what that kind of love was worth.
“I love you,” I said with conviction, pulling him into another kiss that seemed to lift into the air with the intensity of my feelings. “I’m sorry I didn’t say that to you before.”
“Wait,” he said before I could kiss him again.
Secrets The Walkers Keep: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Casters of Magic Series Book 1) Page 29
