Mind Games
The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book #6
J.A. Cipriano
Copyright © 2015 J.A. Cipriano
For my mom,
Thanks for our special days!
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Chapter 1
The world outside the car windows whooshed by in an ever changing mishmash of color and scenery so by the time we left the parking lot of the mental hospital, the seasons had changed from summer to winter and back again. It was almost like watching my life pass before my eyes in the space of a moment. I shivered, hugging myself in the back of my parents’ old tan station wagon even though it was so warm inside the car, I was sweating.
My father turned around in the front passenger seat and smiled at me, lips stretching the acne scars on his face wide. His eyes darted from me to the back window where Mercer & Mercer slowly faded into the distance so quickly I almost didn’t catch it. Almost.
“Are you excited to finally be heading home, Lillim?” he asked, and the joy in his voice made my heart ache. Why? Because this couldn’t be real. Something was going on, only I didn’t know what. For the better part of six months, I’d been locked up in that mental hospital, and only after forcing myself to pretend everything I’d known was a lie, they’d let my parents take me away from their too bright walls and patronizing voices. Provided, of course, I kept taking my medication and stopped claiming my friends were werewolves.
Yup, that’s right. I said parents plural because even though my mother had been stabbed to death, she was somehow in perfect health and driving our car over the bumpy road. It was unnerving because I could still remember what her face looked like in death, all slack-jawed and empty. A shudder ran through my body as my father stared at me like it’d never happened, like she’d never died and everything was perfectly normal. I almost wanted to believe it wasn’t true. It would be easier if I did.
But I couldn’t.
“Yeah.” I forced myself to smile, not sure if it reached my eyes or not. I hadn’t ever learned to lie very well with my eyes, so I turned my head to avoid further scrutiny and stared at the trees flashing by outside as we drove along. Their leaves were an assortment of yellows and orange, and in the bright light of the morning, the dew on them glittered, beckoning for me to believe they too were real. God, how I wished that was true. Why couldn’t it be true?
“Cupcake, is everything okay?” my father, Sabastin Callina asked. His gaze bored into me, searing into my flesh like a high intensity laser. I was reasonably sure he couldn’t read my thoughts, but it didn’t stop him from trying to see into the inner workings of my brain and suss them out.
“Of course! I’m going home.” I turned back in my seat, my hands twisting my beige seatbelt. “I’m just a little tired.”
“Did you not sleep well?” my mother, Diana Cortez asked, not taking her eyes from the road as she drove our little car. Her hands were locked at ten and two on the wheel. I’d remembered hearing you weren’t supposed to drive with your hands in those positions anymore, but old habits die hard, I guess. Then again, I’d never actually driven a car before…
“Not really,” I said because that at least was true. My dreams had kept me up all night. Every single time I closed my eyes a horrible feeling would crawl over my skin like an icy spider, chilling me to the core. When my eyes were shut, the darkness would overwhelm me. I’d start to see and hear things I couldn’t explain. I didn’t know what the dreams meant, but they didn’t seem good. “Had some bad dreams.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” my mother said, and the concern in her voice was so foreign to my ears, it made me shiver again. In life, my mom had been hard as nails and twice as tough. Hell, I remembered, actually remembered, her teaching me to swim in a lake filled with sea monsters. Who throws their young daughter into a lake with a leviathan in it? Diana Cortez. If there was one thing she didn’t do, it was empathize. “We can get you a dreamcatcher if you like. You know, to catch all the bad dreams before they enter your head?”
“S’okay,” I replied, swallowing hard. “I’m sure once we get home, everything will be fine.”
“About that…” my father said, still turned in his seat to look at me. His eyes traced over my face, taking in my every detail as though he was storing it for later. “Your mother and I thought,” he glanced at my mother who kept her eyes on the road like a good little driver, “well, we thought, maybe you’d want to go pick out some furniture for your room. Or some decorations.” I must have looked at him strangely because he got a sort of scared gleam in his eyes. “Or not, dear, whatever you want.”
He said those last words like he thought I was a china doll and would shatter at the slightest provocation. I wouldn’t, but they still thought I was crazy, still worried their little girl hadn’t actually woken up from the delusions that had held her captive for the last couple years. It wasn’t their fault really, since they were figments of my imagination, but the look on his face made me feel bad.
“That would be fun,” I said, dropping my hands into my lap so I wouldn’t keep fidgeting with the seatbelt. “I can barely even remember what my room looked like before anyway.”
“See, I told you she wouldn’t want those boy band posters anymore. We should have taken our chance to get rid of them,” my mother said with a laugh. “Now they’ll be up on the walls forever.”
My father frowned. “I just wanted everything to be like how it was when she left,” he muttered, turning back in his seat and huffed against the seat like a disgruntled toddler. “Is that so much to ask?”
“I know, sweetie,” she said, glancing up at the rearview mirror and winking at me. “I know.”
My heart clenched in my chest as I looked away from them before I could cry. Even though I knew they weren’t real, I still felt bad for what I’d put them through. It was crazy because I knew they were just hallucinations. I wasn’t just some normal girl after all. I was Lillim Callina, Hyas Tyee of the Dioscuri, scourge of the underworld, slayer of dragons, killer of gods. I was not some crazy girl trapped in a mental hospital. At least, I really hoped I wasn’t.
If I was, well, I didn’t think I’d be able to forgive myself for what I’d put them through. That said, it was getting harder to hang onto the truth by the moment. Every day stretched into an impossible infinity of time that made me wary and skeptical of everything in my past.
What if the doctors were right? What if I’d just had a mental breakdown when the company running the obscure online video game I’d been playing shut down their servers? I liked to think I was beyond losing my mind over something like that, but the facts just kept piling up. Like the picture my mother had shown me when my guild had claimed the world’s first kill of a dragon named Valen. It wasn’t that impressive really because apparently only five hundred or so people even played the damned game.
I closed my eyes, picturing the screenshot in my mind. My avatar stood in the center, next to the corpse of a giant lobster-esque dragon, with her name plate clearly displayed over her head. Dirge Meilan.
I opened my eyes and stared at the back of my father’s head. What if I was wrong? What if that was why, despite having secretly stopped taking my medication, I still hadn’t regained my magic? What if I really was crazy? What if this was real?
I swallowed.
What if I wasn’t special?
At all.
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nbsp; “Who’s ready for lunch?” my mother said, snapping me out of my reverie as she pulled our car in front of a yellow liquor store with a line stretched out the front door. Black wrought-iron tables stood in the parking lot, some empty, others filled with people munching on chips and salsa.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” I mumbled as my father opened his door and came around to let me out.
“Fish tacos are still your favorite, right?” he asked after pulling the door open and offering me his hand.
“Yes,” I replied as my mother stretched next to the driver’s side of the car before grinning at me.
“Good. I’m starved,” she said, glancing at my father as she moved towards an empty table. “Come sit with me while your father gets our food.” She patted the chair next to her. “I know the doctors told me not to say this, but I’m glad you’re back, Lillim. I missed you.”
Tears filled my eyes as my father led me toward her by the hand. “I missed you too, Mom.” And the sad thing was, even though she was a figment of my imagination and I was caught up in an imaginary dream world, I sort of hoped everyone was right, and I was insane. Otherwise… otherwise she was dead. I really didn’t want that to be true. If it came down to a choice between having my mother back and losing my magic, well, my magic could just stay gone.
She reached out, took my hands in hers, and squeezed as I sat down. Her warmth made my flesh tingle as she stared into my eyes, her own glistening with unshed tears. Then she wrapped me in a hug, pulling me against her body. “I love you, Lillim. Please don’t leave me ever again.”
“Okay, Mom,” I replied because in that moment, I really didn’t want her to be fake. No matter how I remembered her raising me, in that moment, in that stupid, traitorous moment, everything in me hoped she was real.
Chapter 2
“We could go get ice cream,” my father said, glancing at me over his shoulder from the driver’s seat even though he was supposed to be watching the road. My heart hammered in my chest as I saw him, but before I could scold him, my mother glared at him hard enough to melt steel.
“Sabastin, watch the damned road!” she snapped, her fingers grabbing the little strap on the ceiling of the car like she was worried about him driving off the road or crashing into a concrete embankment.
My father harrumphed and turned his attention back toward the road. He patted the steering wheel nervously with his hands, eliciting a little drum beat to the tune of Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water. At least, it sort of sounded like that. “Sorry, I just want to make everything special.”
“I know, dear, but I’m sure Lillim is tired. We went to lunch, shopping, and a movie. I think we should go home and let her relax.” She smiled at me as I clutched my industrial sized tub of popcorn to my chest to keep my father from grabbing anymore handfuls. It was already a third gone, and we’d just refilled it. For the second time.
“I just want to… I don’t know.” He took one hand off the steering wheel and gestured.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to figure out how to say what I wanted to say in the best way possible. I knew what he was trying to do. Make up for lost time. “You can keep spoiling me tomorrow. I won’t mind.”
“I agree with our daughter, dear. Buying her the horse can wait until tomorrow.” My mother smirked and put a hand on his shoulder.
My father let out a sigh as he put on his blinker and turned into a little subdivision I didn’t recognize at all. “Well, when do we get her the car then?” he asked, and I’ll be honest, I suddenly got very excited. I knew he was probably joking, but still, a car? I could be down with a car. A horse, not so much. I remembered taking care of them before, and between all the brushing and the feeding, they were way more work than they were worth.
“No car,” my mother said with a shake of her head. “She still needs to take driver’s education and get her permit. Why don’t we just slow things down a touch?”
“A girl does need a car,” I piped up from the backseat, but she shot me a look that told me to stay out of the grownups’ conversation. At least that was what I remembered it meaning.
“Fine…” my father sighed as he pulled into the driveway. “I suppose we should pay off our credit cards from today’s extravaganza before we buy you anymore stuff.” He shot a glance at my mother. “Always being so responsible.”
“Someone has to be,” she replied as we slid to a stop in front of a small blue house with white trim. It didn’t seem that big, or very new, but something about it seemed familiar although I was reasonably sure I’d never seen it before. A basketball hoop with peeling paint stood off to the side of the driveway. It was the kind with a giant adjustable pole so you could lower or raise the height of the basket. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a few years. Still, it was odd. I didn’t remember playing basketball, or really any other sport… ever. Then again, the only thing I remembered doing for the last several years was monster hunting.
“Your old hoop broke, and we moved it out of the way,” my father said when he caught me staring at it. “I hadn’t thought about it, but we can get you a new one if you like.” He raised his eyebrows at me.
“I’m good,” I said, slowly getting out of the car and testing the concrete driveway with my feet. It felt real enough. So why was everything so weird seeming? I mean, come on, basketball? I was barely five feet tall. Why would I have been into a sport based on being absurdly tall? If this was the best my hallucinations could do, they were going to have to try a lot harder.
I smirked to myself as my mother came over and walked me toward the front door. My father was searching in his pockets for his keys, and after what felt like forever, he tugged out a single key and pressed it into the door lock.
“How many times have I told you to just put all your keys on a ring?” My mother asked as he twisted the lock and pushed the door open.
“About as many as I’ve told you I don’t like bulky things in my pockets,” he replied, stepping inside and moving toward a strange beeping device beyond the doorway. There were a few more beeps in a different frequency before the sounds died away completely.
“Well, don’t come asking me to find your keys the next time you lose them because you’ve strewn them about the house.” She pulled me through the door and pushed it shut behind us. “It’s why I bought you that catchall.”
My father shrugged sheepishly. “I like the catchall, but it’s not where I empty my pockets.” He said more, but I wasn’t listening anymore. Instead, I was staring around the room. The walls were painted mango and had black and white photographs of scenic cliffs covered by clouds that reminded me of exactly what the cliffs at the edge of the floating city of Lot had looked like.
A shiver racked my body as I turned away and stared at the ugliest brown couch I had ever seen. It sort of wrapped around the entire room like a snake, surrounding a coffee table with a bunch of childish art laminated into the surface. They were all crayon drawings of a purple-haired girl doing all sorts of random things like swimming with the Loch Ness Monster or escaping from a shadowy figure in a castle.
Each one brought back a memory of a time my mother had trained me to be a demon hunter, only these were the drawings of a five year old. How could they depict all my memories, and oh my god, I was actually insane. The thought hit me like a sledgehammer to the face, and I stumbled backward until my shoulders pressed against the wooden door.
“Lillim!” my mother cried, whirling around to grab me before I could fall. Her hands fixed on my arms, keeping me from sliding down the wall. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Those pictures…” I murmured, nodding toward the table.
They both looked at the table, and the entire room held its breath. “What about them?” my mother asked, eyes very serious as she studied my face.
“I thought…” I said before I realized what I had been about to say. So instead of saying, “I thought they were real,” I finished with, “I thought you threw all my art away.”
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She let out a sigh of relief as a smile crossed her lips. “As crazy as it sounds, Lillim, I couldn’t bear to get rid of the table. I sat with you as a little girl while we picked out the pictures from your art collection.” Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, her breath warm on my neck. “I should have known it’d be confusing.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” I replied, knowing she would blame herself now if I did anything crazy. Even now I could see the wheels spinning inside her brain, constructing all sorts of scenarios about how the damned table was going to make her lose me. But she wouldn’t lose me, not like that anyway.
My mouth twisted into a hard line. Unless… unless this was just my hallucinations trying to make me feel like I was insane when I wasn’t. Well played, hallucinations. Well played. You almost got me.
“Can I see my room now?” I asked, extricating myself from her hug. She stood there looking at me for a long time before nodding slowly, and I got the distinct impression I’d hurt her feelings. I reminded myself that her feelings didn’t matter because she wasn’t real, even though I felt like the world’s worst daughter anyway.
She gripped my hand, squeezing my fingers and leading me down a narrow corridor before turning into a room on the left. The door was already open, spilling sunlight into the hallway, and as she pulled me inside, I gasped.
Drawings covered every square inch of the space. It looked like someone had actually painted scenes depicting a purple-haired girl with two swords as she rampaged through the underworld, slaughtering all sorts of supernatural bad guys, all over the walls. On my left, a person who looked remarkably like my mother stood back to back with the purple-haired girl as demons surrounded them. Lightning flashed from the clouds above them, casting their faces in shadow.
I took a step forward into the room, my brand new black tennis shoes sinking into the plush gray carpet as I turned in a slow circle. “Who did all this?” I muttered, staring at the floating island of Lot drawn in the corner of the room. The girl stood atop its walls, her hand clutching a boy’s as they stared out at an army of demons. The sky above them was torn asunder with flashes of light as a masked man flew toward them, jet black katana in hand.
Mind Games: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 6) Page 1
