Nona, Meghan’s loyal Catawitch, suddenly trotted into the shack, catching them off guard.
“About time!” scolded Ivan. “I was going to come searching for you soon.”
Nona ignored him. “Meghan asked me to come ahead of her. She didn’t want you to be surprised when she showed up with someone.”
“Showed up with someone,” repeated Ivan.
“Who?” asked Sebastien.
“And when are they coming?” asked Jae.
The young men looked at each other, not sure how to prepare themselves for this stranger’s arrival. Footsteps approached.
“Apparently it’s now,” mumbled Ivan crossly.
They waited, breathlessly, wondering why Meghan was not returning alone.
Upon arriving, Sebastien eyed Meghan, silently asking a question that she did not answer as in the next moment, both she and Jae were reaching out to stop Ivan from falling over.
They lost their grip and he sank to his knees.
Meghan shouted his name. But Ivan did not look at her; he didn’t even see her.
His empty gaze was frozen on the woman Meghan had brought with her. She stepped aside, allowing the woman closer, instantly questioning if this was a bad idea. After all, she did not really know Isabella. Yet once again, she had blindly trusted she was doing the right thing.
Ivan balanced on his knees, chest tightening so hard he could not breathe. This woman coming toward him could surely mean only one thing: somehow, he had suddenly and inexplicably died. Because she was dead.
He would only be seeing her if he was dead too. And yet with all the years that had passed, he knew without a doubt it was her.
He closed his eyes, unable to accept what he was seeing. This was some sort of trick… a most terrible trick, one that Meghan, as hot-tempered as she could get, would never play on him.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. He saw Meghan’s frightened face peering down at him. And if she were still here, then he was still alive. His mind started to wake up again and he remembered now he had been waiting for Meghan, and she’d just returned. His eyes darted between them. The woman. And Meghan. He’d seen it before but he hadn’t really believed it possible. Now, seeing them side by side...
The woman stepped closer, slowly, like she was giving him time to think it all through.
Ivan saw Sebastien and Jae approaching Meghan. “They’re here too, so I can’t be dead,” Ivan muttered aloud. “I know we can’t all be dead.”
“Dead?” questioned Meghan. “Ivan, what’s wrong with you? What’s happening?”
Ivan just stared blankly at the woman now standing in front of him. If they were not dead, then… his breath came out in ragged bursts. “This can’t be,” he choked out.
“It’s okay,” the woman spoke kindly, kneeling down to face him.
He continued staring, unable to formalize anything more than, “This isn’t real. This is some kind of spell.”
The woman reached out and caressed his face, lovingly. He crumpled underneath her touch.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him. “I have so much to explain.”
“This isn’t real,” Ivan said again. “You’re not real.” He tried to pull away but she drew him closer, cupping his face with her hands.
“I am real. I am alive.” Her voice broke up and tears fell down her cheeks as she spoke.
“It’s just…” he allowed her to embrace him, leaning his head on her shoulder.
“I’m here and I’m not leaving you, ever again,” she spoke clearly.
“Ivan,” started Meghan, “you’re really freaking me out. You know her?” she paused, her voice growing more frantic. “How? Please tell me how you know this woman?” She began shaking straight through to her core, a cold sweat breaking on her brow and making her dizzy.
Sebastien moved to Meghan’s side and she unconsciously grabbed hold of him, suddenly unable to let go, tears now stinging at her own eyes as she began shaking uncontrollably. He felt sure she somehow already knew the answer to her own question, but simply could not vocalize it, or needed to hear Ivan’s answer.
Meghan held on even tighter as the realization hit her: there was only one person she could think of that would make Ivan Crane fall to pieces… which meant… the thought crippled her. Sebastien was the only thing still keeping her on her feet.
“Oh my God! Ivan,” she squeaked out, disbelieving her own thoughts. She no longer felt numb. It was as if her emotions had been shut off and suddenly flipped back on, the floodgates opening. This was one thought that did not frighten her. It was not sad or foreboding. She found that she actually liked this thought.
Ivan sat back and scrunched his eyes, closing and opening them again and again, just to be absolutely certain that this wasn’t all just a sick dream. But the woman was still there each time.
He looked at Meghan, Jae, and Sebastien, then at the woman, and then back to his companions again, small pieces of an answer forming to a question he had never even known to ask. So many things made sense now.
He picked himself up off the ground, assisting the woman to stand up as well.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he stammered, his voice still tinged with shock. “I do know this woman. It’s... it’s true.”
His gaze left the woman and landed on Meghan. Ivan looked at her with new eyes, as if he had never seen her before.
“This is Isabella Crane. Meghan,” he choked up again. “You brought me my mother.”
Meghan tried to speak but it took a moment to get words to come out. “Him,” she pointed at Ivan but spoke to Isabella. “He is the family you left behind?”
Isabella nodded, confirming Meghan’s question.
Sebastien and Jae exchanged confused looks.
Meghan’s hand swung up to her chest. She felt the thorn-filled locket under her shirt. The one possession she had received from her mother. The one thing about her past that had actually been true.
She reached in and lifted it out, pulling it over her head. She walked over to Ivan and opened her hand, showing it to him.
It was the final piece of the puzzle. He recognized it at once.
“This is what you’ve been searching for, Ivan. This is what your mother left for you. You couldn’t find it because you thought it was lost, but it wasn’t. The treasure your mother left behind...” she couldn’t say it.
Meghan could not stop smiling. It dumbfounded her that this revelation made her so happy. Giddy, almost. The realization that the blood pumping through her veins was not entirely evil, changed everything. She didn’t belong just to Jurekai Fazendiin.
She could not peel her eyes away from Ivan’s.
Jae still did not comprehend what was happening, but an understanding grin spread across Sebastien’s face. “All that time, he was looking for you. You’re his...”
“Sister,” finished a bewildered Ivan Crane. “The treasure my mother left me, was a sister.”
CHAPTER 23
Meghan Jacoby could not remember the last time she felt happiness.
Real happiness.
Yes, there were many terrible things happening in her life, as well as to people she cared about, deeply.
And yes, she was currently standing in a run down shack in the middle of nowhere, with no idea where her life was headed except that visions from her mother, and a prophecy explained by her uncle, seemed to be determining the direction for her.
Nevertheless, at this moment, all she could feel was giddy relief.
In the chaos of discovering that Jurekai Fazendiin, the original and most powerful of the immortal Grosvenor, was her father, she had forgotten one thing: she also had a mother.
A mother she had finally met. A mother who had, so far, fully lived up to Meghan’s expectations. She also gained an older half-brother in Ivan Crane. A young man who was possibly the most loyal, albeit a pain in the butt and irritating, friend, she’d ever had.
Without even realizing it, she had
come to think of him as a big brother and now, he really was her big brother. There was something comforting about this fact. Because he was good. His mother, their mother, Isabella Crane, was good. She had sacrificed everything to make the world a better place, to keep it from becoming a world no longer worth living in. Meghan had a strong idea that Ivan was out to do the same.
The blood pumping through Meghan’s veins did not belong purely to evil. She was not doomed to follow her father’s footsteps. She was not doomed to turn out like her brother, Colby. Although she was holding out hope she might be able to save him.
Ivan had still not spoken since announcing that she was his sister. He just stared. Bewildered. Confused. Petrified. His entire life thrown upside down.
Sebastien Jendaya, on the other hand, wore an ecstatic grin. Whether he had believed Ivan previously or not, in his claims that he had never liked Meghan like that, there was no argument now. Of course, this didn’t mean she would automatically forgive him, either; he still had a lot to make up for, including keeping a lot of secrets from her. Most especially the fate of Arnon Jacoby after they’d first come to live with the Sovda.
This dampened his grin a little.
There was also the fact that it was he who’d attacked Colin and stolen the Magicante while they were in Grimble. Or that he could transform into a bird and had been spying on them since they had first come to live with the Svoda. That he was charged with being their friend before he’d ever met them, by the now deceased, Amelia Cobb. Who’d planned on using Meghan and Colin in her crazy scheme to return magic to a world that had forgotten it ever existed.
He’d known about the existence of magic and never told them. And though charged with being friends, it had turned out to be an easy task. The friendship real. Something he missed terribly when they’d left. In the same way he’d been their only friend, they’d been his, too. He’d followed them, and spied. Helped when he could, all the while obeying Amelia’s orders. Each day, questioning those orders, more and more. Until he’d made the difficult choice to defect, even if it meant he’d not see his parents again. He had no regret over that choice, but he hated himself for many things he’d done, and not done, before that.
If he’d had the courage to do so, he could have sent them some sort of message, at the least, to allay their fears about Arnon. Offered them some comfort.
As his thoughts spiraled downward, the idea of Meghan ever forgiving him seemed like a distant, out of reach, possibility, that was falling further not getting closer. Yet he could not help but feel some measure of hope, knowing that Ivan was no longer his competition.
A gangly Jae Mochrie kept his distance, but watched everything unfolding through the strands of his stringy hair, trying to make sense of it all. He was too young to remember what Ivan’s mother had looked like. He was just an infant when she died. Although she hadn’t died at all, only left. The resemblance between Meghan and Isabella was striking, especially seeing them side by side with their ocean blue eyes and milk-white skin. Isabella’s hair was much darker than Meghan’s, but the red tones were apparent in both mother and daughter.
Meghan sighed, satisfied to relish this happy moment. She wished she could bath in it, soak it in, and somehow bottle and keep it.
She heard Ivan shudder.
He staggered backwards, swaying a little. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he stammered, sprinting out of the shack.
Meghan’s smile dropped and she moved to follow him.
Isabella stopped her. “Give him a moment.” There was a tremble in her voice. “I have shattered my son’s world. He is realizing that so many of the beliefs which forged his life, are not real.”
Meghan nodded, pretending she understood, and in part, she did. Ivan had always had plans, intentions, but nothing he had ever really shared with her. She had pieced together enough to know that at least some of this regarded bringing down Juliska Blackwell. To show the Svoda that she was evil. But to what extent beyond this, he had not shared.
“I should speak to him alone,” Isabella said.
“Okay,” replied Meghan. She was not ready to let her mother out of her sight but realized that Isabella and Ivan would need some time alone. As Meghan thought about it, she could not fathom what Ivan was feeling. She had only recently discovered her mother was still alive, and her mother had believed Meghan dead for almost thirteen years.
Isabella Crane had voluntarily abandoned Ivan. And even though this was to potentially save the world, she had knowingly and willingly left him and his father behind, to do so. And his father had died not soon after, leaving him an orphan at just five years old.
Ivan had not ventured far. He stood just outside the shack, staring blankly into the woods, its many barren tree limbs indicating the onset of winter. Pine trees dotted the countryside, their needles still intact, giving some cover from the frigid chill; a chill that seeped inside Ivan’s bones, sending another shudder down his spine.
The shack wasn’t much of a buffer zone between the group inside and the two outside, or the November chill. The cracks and gaps in the walls, along with the missing front door, made it easy to overhear Ivan and Isabella speaking.
Nona rubbed up against Meghan’s leg, purring. Meghan reached down and picked up her Catawitch, nuzzling her as they listened in a humbling sort of sympathetic silence to the conversation outside.
Ivan didn’t turn to look at his mother but he heard her approach behind him. “I didn’t even know you were a Firemancer,” he whispered.
“It skipped a few generations and I hid the fact that I was. I think everyone started to believe the Firemancer gift had died out of my family line.”
He spun around, teary eyed, and cleared his throat.
“Why hide it?”
“Many reasons, which I will explain.”
“I’m sorry,” he said unexpectedly, bowing his head.
“For what?”
“I don’t know how to feel. What to ask you. I...” he stopped, sucking in a shaky breath. “I haven’t seen you since I was a child, barely old enough to remember what you looked like.”
“Ivan,” she said, lifting up his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I am the only one that needs to apologize. Although I cannot imagine a thousand apologies will ever be enough to make up for what I’ve done to you.”
Ivan stepped back, unable to keep eye contact with his mother.
“I’m not mad,” he told her. “I don’t hate you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just...”
“Don’t understand,” she finished. Isabella took in a deep, determined breath. “If you’ll let me, I would like to explain.”
He nodded, his throat feeling too tight to vocalize his reply.
She began by explaining the same things she had shared with Meghan. The visions she’d had of the future, how the Grosvenors’ immortal children brought with them uncontrolled chaos and destruction, which she felt certain could be contained by bearing those children herself, instilling as much love and compassion into their lives as she could. She told him about bringing Colby and Meghan into the world, giving up Colby when he was just five to his father and how she had hidden Meghan in the orphanage, where she was then found alongside Colin.
What a terrible thing, Meghan thought from inside the shack. She’d given up both of her sons at five years of age.
“When I left you, I faked my death, obviously,” Isabella told Ivan.
“How did you do it?”
“A spell.”
“You weren’t afraid they’d do something with your body? Ivan asked her.
“It wasn’t my body they found,” she explained. “I used magic on someone recently deceased... I won’t go into specifics. The details are not important.” And would also explain things none of these youngsters were prepared to hear, yet. “I used magic to make everyone believe it was my body they had found.”
“Including me and Dad,” Ivan added somberly.
“Including you and your fat
her. My biggest regret is that I didn’t see what would happen next. That I didn’t see your father would die so suddenly, and so soon after I left you. I left you alone. With no one. With nothing.”
“I was taken in, taken care of. My grandfather.” His father’s, father.
“The empty shell he became after watching his son die,” Isabella spoke mournfully.
“There was the Mochries after he died,” Ivan told her. “The young man you don’t know inside the shack, he’s their son, Jae. They took good care of me.”
“But they are not family. Not blood. And after I learned what you saw, about how your father died, I feared what would become of you. I didn’t want you to be alone. I didn’t want you to feel alone.”
“I... I started to believe that you’d been killed too,” Ivan admitted after a moment. “Murdered. After I was old enough to understand what had really happened to my father, I started to doubt whether you’d actually died of an illness. It just seemed so hard to believe. I started to think that both of you had seen something, or learned something you shouldn’t have,” said Ivan. “Everything in my life after that was to prove what had really happened to you. And to show everyone what Juliska Blackwell really was. It didn’t matter that I was,” he broke off, looking for the right words.
“That you were alone,” guessed his mother. “Being alone, made it easier. Having nothing to care about made it easier.”
For being absent nearly his entire life, she seemed to know her son well. He could not respond.
“I never stopped looking in on you,” she continued. “I never stopped thinking about you. Worrying about you. Questioning, sometimes by the minute and the second, if I had done the right thing.”
Ivan, the boy who had always been about doing the right thing, had no response. He didn’t know what to say. He glanced past her, seeing Meghan’s silhouette just inside the doorway.
The Spell, The Stones, and The Treasure (Fated Chronicles Book 3) Page 17
