10. Gemma

10 GEMMA

Once I get to my room, I wander into the attached bathroom to clean up my forehead then lie down on the bed and go into full emo mode, a phase that I believed I’d outgrown, but apparently not.

I lie there for a while before I hear a soft knock at my door.

“Are you okay?” Aislin asks after she lets herself into my room.

Staring up at the ceiling where a few ice patches remain, I tell her, “No, I’m self-loathing.”

“For kissing Alex?”

“Do I even have to answer that?” I drape my arm over my forehead. “I should’ve pushed him away when he kissed me, but no, I had to kiss him back.”

“He kissed first?” She sounds way too upbeat about that.

I lift my arm up enough to throw her a dirty look. “Why do you sound so happy about that?”

She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Because I knew he liked you.”

“He doesn’t like me,” I scoff, returning my arm back over my eyes. “You heard him. He kissed me to get us out of the vision.”

“He was lying. I know my brother well enough that I can tell.” She sits on the bed beside me, the mattress concaving beneath her. “Alex’s defense mechanism is to act indifferent when he’s hurt. He learned that from our father.”

I peer at her again. Her jaw is set tight, and she’s staring at the wall across from her with utter loathing in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I say as I sit up, scoot beside her, and lower my feet to the floor. “I know your dad’s hard on you guys.” I’ve seen firsthand how he speaks to them with such coldness and how he has too high of expectations for them.

“You don’t even know the half of it,” she confesses in a hushed voice. “I think he might be going crazy.”

“Alex or your father?”

“My father.” She looks at me then, and fear is evident on her face. “I think he’s planning something bad. And he keeps something locked in our basement.”

Confusion webs through me. “Like a creature?”

She shakes her head as she stares down at her hands. “No, nothing like that. I think maybe it’s a machine. I’ve gotten a glimpse of it. It was metal and emitted light.”

I tread cautiously. “How do you know it’s bad?”

“A feeling I have.” She places her hand over her heart. “I felt a dark coldness in here when I saw it. My dad caught me and kicked me out of the basement. When he came upstairs again, he flipped out on me.” She absentmindedly touches her cheek.

“He didn’t …?” I shift positions. “He didn’t hit you, did he?”

She swallows audibly. “He did. And it’s not the first time he’s done that.” Her cheeks puff as she exhales. “I’ve never admitted that to anyone before.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” I wrap an arm around her shoulders and give her a hug. She hugs me back, tension coiled in her muscles. “I think you should tell Alex. I … While I have issues with him, I know he’d protect you if he knew.”

“He does protect me, most of the time,” she whispers. “He’s the one who takes most of the punishments. I don’t want him to know he’s missed a few of them because it shouldn’t even be his burden to bear. But that’s how he is, and I think, deep down, he believes he deserves it.”

My chest constricts in an unnerving way, mostly because of what they’ve been through, but also because I feel this connection to what she’s describing, this hurting sensation of being broken by someone I believed cared about me. I’m unsure why I feel this way. I haven’t experienced anything like that.

In this life, anyway …

“Do you want to stay with me for a while?” I move back to look at her. “My parents won’t care. They’re not supposed to be here much, anyway. Plus, we have this mystery to solve.” I force a smile to lighten the mood. It’s so pathetic, but I have to try something.

This doom and gloom bull crap is wearing on all of us. And I have a feeling it’s merely the start of some giant abyss of secrets about to swallow us whole.

“I don’t know.” She considers it as she ravels a strand of hair around her finger. “Your parents really wouldn’t care?”

“They won’t even be here. But they wouldn’t care, anyway. They like you, dude.”

She smiles, and it appears marginally genuine.

One point for me for being a good BFF.

“All right, yeah, let’s do it.” Tension visibly erases from her shoulders, but then it instantly returns. “What will you do about the disarray of your house, though?”

Right. I almost forgot about that.

“Board up the window and clean the water mess.” I flit a glance at the ceiling where water spots are forming. “I need to call my parents and let them know what’s up.”

“Alex already boarded up the window, and I can take care of the water mess for you.” She rolls up the sleeves of her jacket and rises to her feet. “Those kinds of spells are easy-peasy.”

I push up, disregarding the dizziness in my brain. “Awesome. I’ll go call my parents while you work your magic, then.”

She wiggles her fingers at me as I exit the bedroom. I make my way back into the kitchen to get a look at the mess, seeing the window is, in fact, boarded up. The rest of the mess is pretty bad so, hopefully, Aislin can magic it to normalcy.

I head to the living room next. While I’m not a huge fan of seeing Alex again, I need to let them know Aislin is about to magically maid this house up. But he’s not in the living room. Neither is Laylen.

Scratching my head, I dig my phone out of my pocket and dial Laylen’s number—there’s no way I’m about to call Alex. He answers after three rings.

“Hey, I was just about to text you,” he tells me over the sound of a loud car engine.

“Where did you guys go?” I ask as I sink onto the armrest of the sofa.

“We’re paying Professor G. a little visit,” Laylen replies. “We want to see if he knows anything about what’s going on with this vision mess.”

“You think he’d know something?”

“Alex said he was acting a little suspicious when you guys came out of that first vision.”

“He’s right,” I agree then rub my lips together. They’re dry, and I realize how dehydrated I am. “You guys aren’t going to beat him up, are you?”

Laylen chokes on a laugh. “Nah, but maybe scare him a bit.”

“Well, be careful. You don’t want to get expelled.”

“We will,” he promises. Then Alex says something in the background. “Alex wants to know if you guys are okay?”

“Yeah. Aislin’s using a spell to clean up the mess, and I’m going to call my parents and let them know what’s up. I’m hoping my dad will talk to me about stuff.”

“I think, since you’ve been seeing visions, he has to, right?”

“You would think so.” But I have this twisting sensation in my stomach that it won’t be that easy.

I’d believe I was being paranoid, but with this foreseer ability looming over my head, I’m worried the feeling might have some truth to it.

No. There’s no way.

This has to be something bigger than me having foreseer powers.

“Where are you guys going after you talk to the professor?” I ask as I stand up and return to the kitchen.

The floor sparkles with a polished glow, the aftereffects of Aislin’s spell. A wave of colorful light wafts over the cabinets as her spell reaches farther into the house.

“Let’s meet up at the hideout,” Laylen tells me, “so we can go over what we all find out.”

“What’s with the secrecy?” I wonder, because the hideout is a place we only go to when we’re trying to keep secrets or keep hidden.

“It’s better to be safe,” Alex calls out. “We don’t know what all of this is about.”

“Fine,” I grimace, but the reality is, I’m being overdramatic.

The hideout doesn’t bother me. In fact, every time we go to the little wooden shelter that we built by the river located in the shadows of the mountains, I get nostalgic. The four of us built it when we were kids. I have a lot of good memories there. Alex once gave me a bouquet of lavender flowers when we were hanging out there. It was sweet, and I could feel a crush forming on him. Then, the next day, I overheard him call my eyes freaky and ruined it.

Now Alex is saying that never happened, and with all of these visions and time mayhem, I’m questioning everything that’s happened to me.

“There we go.” Aislin strolls out of the hallway, dusting off her hands. “One clean house for you, bestie.”

“Thanks.” I smile at her, but it’s a bit forced. Then, to Laylen, I say, “Call me when you guys are done.” He agrees, we hang up, and then I call my father. He doesn’t answer, so I try my mother. “Dammit, neither of them are answering their phones.” Again, I feel a stir of uneasiness, but I shove it down and send them a text.

Mom and Dad: Hey, can one of you call me ASAP? I have something super important to talk to you about.

“What do we do while we wait for them to get back to you?” Aislin asks as she wanders around the living room, collecting her candles.

“We can go get your stuff?” I suggest with a shrug. “And then wait for Laylen and Alex to get a hold of us. Or we can go through with that original spell we were supposed to do today.”

She pauses, a frown forming on her lips. “I can’t. I used all of my supplies to get you out of that vision. Or, well, we thought it was a chill of death coma, but still.”

“No worries.” But I start to fidget. “I wish I could get a hold of my parents. I think it’d help me relax a bit.”

“We can sneak some wine when we get to my house,” she suggests as she stuffs the candles into her backpack.

I chuckle at that. “Do you remember the last time we snuck wine from your father’s cellar? Then we found out it was faerie wine.”

Laughter eases from her lips. “How can I forget? You thought you were the goddess of the stars.”

“Well, you thought you were the goddess of the toilet.”

“Only because I was throwing up.”

“That was so gross.” I go to collect my bag from my room, calling out, “I had to hold your hair back, too.”

When I return, she says, “I know. You’re such a good friend.” She dazzles me with a grin, but it fades as she collects the box of stardust. “This stuff unnerves me. I can feel the power flowing off of it, even now when there’s only residue left.”

“It’s stardust—it should be powerful.” I extend my hand toward it, feeling a whisper of a pull toward it.

Touch it.

Feel the power.

She steps back. “What’re you doing?”

“I … I honestly don’t know. I zoned out and …” I shake my head then shrug. “I think I can feel the power coming off it, too.”

“That’s strange,” she murmurs, glancing from the box to me.

The living room light above us flickers on and off like some ominous warning.

Yeah, strange indeed.