Marked

by Jasmine Derriman

  “You did a good job on Isaac’s arm.”

  I breathed in quickly as the sudden voice at the door scared me slightly. I turned my head only to see Felix and I felt myself breathe out slightly, glad it wasn’t Isaac instead.

  “I just cleaned it up,” I told him, putting my legs back down to the floor. “Isaac stitched it up. Beside, my uncle has taught me heaps of stuff like that.”

  “Well, his arm could’ve been a lot worse off,” Felix told me. “A lot actually.”

  “You don’t have to come in here and apologise for Isaac’s sudden change in behaviour,” I sighed.

  “Okay,” Felix shrugged, sitting down next to me on the bed. “I won’t.”

  I felt myself sigh again. “Did…did he tell you anything?”

  “Not much,” Felix admitted. “Just that he didn’t think the council could keep you safe…in fact I think he thinks no one can keep you safe.”

  “He doesn’t like the council much,” I told Isaac.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Felix agreed, “but that’s only because of the way he was treated when they found out that his mark was useless.”

  I sighed and nodded. “Henry told me about how hard it was for him in the council. That Odon didn’t want him to stay and complete his training.”

  “You know then?” Felix said with a nod. “Well, he hated more than anything that they treated him differently.”

  “Just like they treated me differently,” I mused

  Felix didn’t really respond and I realised he wasn’t looking at me anyway. He was looking at the books I had taken out of my bag and left on the bed.

  “Eve gave them to me, to help me study,” I told Felix.

  “You met Eve?” Felix said, raising his eye brows a little. “Well, she must’ve taken a liking to you to lend you some of these books.”

  “I like Eve,” I nodded at Felix. “She was nice to me…and she didn’t treat me…differently.”

  “She is smart that one,” Felix noted. “Wow, she did give you a lot.”

  “She thought it would help,” I shrugged as Felix looked at me, “but I don’t think anything can. I don’t even know if I’m this stupid…ah…I don’t know.”

  Felix was just looking at me and smiling at little. I narrowed my eyes a little and he let out a small laugh before he spoke again.

  “You don’t know the first time we really met, do you?” Felix told me.

  “Well, I guess I don’t, I was semi-unconscious,” I shrugged.

  Felix laughed again. “That wasn’t the first time. Do you remember the party? Do you remember staring out the window and then getting elbowed in the back?”

  “That was you?!” I yelled it in surprise.

  “It was,” Felix said proudly. “And while I must apologise for elbowing you in the back, it was necessary.”

  “Necessary?” I asked him.

  Felix nodded. “From the moment I saw you, I knew there was something about you, Lily, and so did Isaac. The moment he laid his eyes on you he knew there was…something. I merely did what I did to interrupt your little across the room stare and get Isaac focussed back on what we were there for. He won’t admit it, but I knew he sensed something when he looked at you, and he still does, which is why he is so intent on keeping you safe.”

  I didn’t know what to say to Felix, I mean how could I? I remembered the first time I laid my eyes on Isaac and it was so strange, maybe I finally understood why, but it wasn’t like I sensed anything in him. How does anybody sense anything anyway?

  “I need to learn all this stuff,” I told Felix, pointing to the books in his hand. “I need to learn to keep myself safe.”

  “You already know most of it,” Felix admitted. “Every time you fight a demon and natural fighting instinct kicks in, and from what I can tell, yours is strong. For you I would focus on the knowledge side of it all.”

  “That’s exactly what Eve said,” I said with a sigh.

  Felix smiled. “Eve is always right. We don’t want to throw you in combat anyway, Lily.”

  “But I need to work on my strength or something,” I suggest. “I mean, have you seem these arms, they do not have muscle.”

  That made Felix laugh and even me smile a little. “Okay, so maybe one of us can put you through some physical training if that’s what you want, but Lily, you can’t forget this is also a mental thing. We can’t all be like Isaac.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I frowned at Felix.

  Felix sighed a little as he looked at me. “Isaac has that rare case where his emotions don’t affect the way he fights, he can rely on just being physical. Sometimes those our emotions can completely control our actions, distract us. You have to be able to control yourself.”

  I find myself nodding at Felix as I understand what he meant. Every time I found myself fighting a demon my emotions wouldn’t let me think of a way out, well not straight away anyway, but when I let myself think clearly I always knew what to do.

  “What do you have to block out?” I asked Felix as lifted my head to look at him.

  “Mainly I have problems with thinking about someone getting hurt,” Felix shrugs. “I just want to help them. Hadley has it worse than me sometimes.”

  “Hadley?” I asked confused. “Why does Hadley get it worse?”

  “Because of how she feels about Isaac,” Felix shrugged like it was obvious.

  “Whoa, what? How she feels about Isaac?”

  “She’s in love with him,” Felix said quickly. “You haven’t noticed?”

  “No,” I shook my head, sitting up straight.

  “He doesn’t feel the same, doesn’t see her like that, don’t even think he knows actually,” Felix admitted, “so I guess I can’t blame you for not noticing it. She’s pretty coy about it now.”

  Coy? I haven’t even noticed, and usually I was good at noticing these things, almost an expert honestly.

  That’s how I was though, an observer. No one ever noticed me, so I noticed them instead. To most people at school I guess I was ‘the freak’. I mean my best friend and I barely spoke to anyone else and we had this obsession over comic books together, no one needed to talk to us.

  “If you want to talk about anything,” Felix said slowly, “I’ll listen, just so you know?”

  I felt myself smile as my eye’s meet Felix’s. He had been nothing but nice to me since the moment I meet him, but that’s the type of person he was. He was caring and friendly and I swear he didn’t have a bad bone in his body.

  “I think I’m okay for now, thanks,” I nodded. “I think I might just read.”

  “Okay, sure,” Felix nodded as he stood up from the bed. “You can use Isaac’s laptop too, if you’d like. The password is Pluto.”

  I frowned a little as I looked at the laptop Felix pointed on Isaac’s desk.

  “Pluto?” I questioned, raising my eyebrows slightly.

  “Childhood dog,” Felix shrugged as he walked do the door. “I’ll talk to Hadley about giving you some physical training, if you want? I think she’d be best to help you with that one.”

  I just found myself nodding at him, not sure whether or not I would enjoy training with Hadley, but I knew it was something I needed to do. Felix gave me a little smile before he left the room and felt myself sigh.

  I did as I said and started reading some of the books. I didn’t feel a real need to look over the one book about marks Eve had given me. I always saw the marks now, and when I say always, I mean they are always just swirling around in my head, constantly. I had no idea why, and I had no idea why I always understood what they meant, but ever since I had seen that door at the council, I couldn’t get the marks out of my head.

  I tried to focus on the history book I had been given. I figured it was one of the more important things I needed to get myself acquainted with. It was all pretty straight forward too, considering I already knew a rough version of the history. It talked about how the dagger was seen as a sacred object to all Insigne who
were believed to be good of heart, but those who were bad of heart were said to only see the dagger as a sign of power. I felt like the dagger was both if I was honest. I mean, it was power, just by being the one to hold it they would have the power to create whatever mark possible, and not just one mark, as many as they wanted, really giving them true power. It was however scary as well. Something that powerful should be, and it also had power that shouldn’t be abused.

  The longer I spent in this room reading, the more I found my mind floating off into space. I found myself thinking about Rhys and the moment I thought of him I felt like I had been stabbed in the chest. I missed him so much, more than I ever imagined considering it had only been a week, but it wasn’t an easy week, and it felt more like a year than a week. I had been through so much, learnt so many new things and I didn’t have Rhys here.

  I felt guilt when I thought about Rhys though. He did nothing but help me when this whole thing started and that ended with two demons destroying his house and then him passing out and getting his memory erased. He had been through so much as well and he didn’t even know it. There was nothing I wanted more than for him to remember and be here with me, but I also knew that it was safer this way for Rhys. A lot of people and demons want this dagger, and they would do anything to get it, including using Rhys to get to me.

  My uncle now however, I found myself questioning rather than missing. The more I thought about the fact that my parents had to be Insigne’s, meant I thought more and more about if my uncle was one also. If he had a mark I definitely hadn’t seen it, as far as I knew my uncle didn’t even have a tattoo, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t easy enough for him to hide it. My younger memories of my uncle involved a lot of phone calls and him stressing over paper work, especially when my parents died. When we moved here, to Brooklyn, things eased a lot, especially when he got the job at the hospital, even if did involve late hours. As I started school there was a time where my uncle and I distanced from each other, but it was around then when my night terrors started, the night terrors I know believed to be real.

  When I thought about how my uncle approached what I told him, I realised that he was never afraid of what I told him; in fact he barely reacted to it, other than putting me in therapy for a little, he never talked to me directly. Maybe that was his way of covering up the truth, hiding the truth from me. Maybe he was trying to hide the whole Insigne thing from me, and maybe he was one. It felt probable, but I wasn’t ever going to know unless I asked him, but just like Rhys, he had his memory erased too, he didn’t even know I was missing.

  I doubted anyone at school even knew I was missing, and I didn’t blame them. They had no need to notice me, and I didn’t exactly want to be noticed either. Last week all I wanted was to finish the school year with no drama, just get through it, get to the other side and finally be done with that place, but now part of me wishes I was there and that I would never leave the sanctuary of school, or at least a place a lot simpler than this.

  It became the afternoon before I was even aware of it, and I hadn’t left the comfort of Isaac’s room once, and the only moment I even thought about leaving, I ended up eavesdropping on the conversation outside.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me, Isaac!”

  I recognised Hadley’s voice even through the muffle of the door, and she didn’t sound happy.

  “No, I’m not kidding you, Hadley,” I heard Isaac reply in a sarcastic tone.

  “You haven’t even been back a day and you’re already leaving again,” Hadley said. “You can’t just go out there.”

  “I can and I will,” Isaac answered. It felt like a typical Isaac response, he didn’t need to explain himself.

  “You need to stay here,” Hadley said. “You can’t leave Lily.”

  “She doesn’t need me here,” Isaac said immediately, “and I don’t need to be around her twenty four seven.”

  “Your job is to protect her,” Hadley reminded him.

  “My job is to kill demons, not babysit silly little teenagers,” Isaac replied sternly.

  Ouch, that made me feel like a silly little teenager.

  “You are so annoying, you know that, right?” Hadley groaned. “One minute it’s all about protecting her and the next you don’t even want to mention her name. What the hell happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” Isaac said. “Beside she doesn’t need me either.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hadley questioned.

  “Nothing, I’m going.” I heard his footsteps as he spoke and I felt myself sigh.

  I don’t need him? That didn’t feel right to me. I knew I needed him, and maybe I hadn’t exactly said that to him, but I thought it was pretty clear. I obviously wasn’t the only one surprised by Isaac’s sudden mood swing, but then again it shouldn’t surprise me. He was like this when I meet him and I think he was only nice to me out of sympathy for my situation, but really I wasn’t in that different a situation than any of them, we were all born to kill demons.

  That didn’t feel right, but then again none of it exactly felt right. I thought I was used to it, the thought of it all, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. My brain hurt, it felt like my whole head was swelling constantly from all of it, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be handle any of it, but I knew it could only get worse if things stayed the way they were.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I wasn’t sure what woke me up the next morning. Whether it was sunlight breaking through the window and reaching my eyes, or the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing, or even the sound of paper crumbling through someone’s fingers, either way, now I was awake.

  My eyes took a moment to adjust as I realised that I hadn’t exactly gone to bed properly. I was lying on top of the bed covers, still in yesterday’s clothes, curled in a not so comfortable position just so my feet wouldn’t hang off the bed. My neck hurt a little from the strain of the position I chose to sleep in, but as my eyes finally adjusted to see the figure in front of me. I frowned immediately.

  “What are you doing?”

  It was Isaac who stood in front of me near the bed. He had walked into the room and possibly woke me up, not only that though, he had decided to pick some of the loose paper I had completely scattered all over the bed.

  “What am I doing?” Isaac repeated in a bit of a mocking voice. “What the hell are you doing? Where you up all night drawing all these marks?”

  “If I was up all night I would never sleep,” I stated.

  Isaac gave me a stern look, he obviously wasn’t in the mood for my sarcastic comments right now.

  “Okay, so what? Yeah, I stayed up and I drew some marks,” I shrugged at me. “It helps considering they are always floating around in my head, driving me crazy. The more I draw them, the more I tend to see less of them.”

  “You’ve drawn a lot,” he noted, as he picked up some more paper, “wasted a lot of my paper too.”

  “I wouldn’t consider this wasting it,” I stated.

  Okay, Isaac really wasn’t in the mood for any sort of comment, as he just stood still, with a blank expression on his face. He was still staring at the paper though and after a moment of silence I started to fear something was wrong.

  “Did you only draw marks?” Isaac suddenly asked.

  I frowned a little. “Of course I did, you can see that.”

  “No, Lily, I can’t,” Isaac shook his head.

  “What are you talking ab- Oh.”

  Isaac held out the piece of paper he had been staring at to my eye level and I felt myself freeze up. It wasn’t a mark on this piece of paper, it wasn’t anything I even remembered drawing, but the moment I saw it, I knew what it is.

  “Is it…is that the dagger?”

  “Well, I’ve never seen it before, but I’m going to venture a guess at yes,” Isaac said, gripping to the piece of paper.

  “I… I don’t even remember drawing it,” I shook my head as at least try to remember something. I remembered dra
wing marks, but as I tried to picture it, it all sort of blurred together. “I didn’t even know that’s what it looked like.”

  Isaac’s hand grips even tighter to the piece of paper and I have no idea as to what was about to happen. If he was going to yell at me or what, but for some reason I felt like he was going to yell at me.

  “You have no memory of drawing this?” he asked, not looking at me directly.

  “No, none,” I answered quickly, shaking my head. “I don’t know how I did that, Isaac.”

  Isaac glanced at me, our eyes meeting for a brief moment before he pulls the paper from my view. Isaac just stared at the piece of paper for a moment before he screwed it up in his hand and his hand turned into a fist with the piece of paper inside it, and his jaw clenching.

  “You stay here and you don’t say anything,” he said suddenly.

  “Why?” I asked him softly.

  “You know why,” Isaac said immediately. “You know what this means.”

  “What difference does it make?” I asked him. “We already thought that I…that I was going to be able to find the dagger, the council already know about me, what difference does this make?”

  “You really don’t understand it, do you?” Isaac muttered, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to answer. “Just...don’t say anything.”

  “Isaac!”

  I yelled at him slightly as he started to walk out of the bedroom. By the time I managed to get to my feet Isaac had already slammed the door behind him. I rushed to get out of the room, but by the time I had opened the bedroom door and walked out of the hallway I heard the front door slam and I just felt myself sigh.

  I heard a sound next to me and when I turned my head I saw Hadley standing in the archway of the kitchen holding the kettle in her hand, staring back from me to the front door.