Exaltation (8 page)

“So, um, are you worried I might become like her?”

“No, not at all. I’m just worried some people may discover a part of your heritage and approach you about it.”

“My heritage? You mean the coven? Or the rumors you’re immortal and I’ll stop aging in the next decade or so?”

“The coven?” he said with a raised brow, wondering if Emery was right, if the girls were really aware.

Raven smiled. In her head she had already figured out her birth mother must be from some other dark coven. That had been a theory River ran by her before.

River liked to read the coven’s history, what she could find of it. She told Raven the coven wasn’t even from this dimension but another one, that it sounded like Jamison, Saige, and some woman named Reveca had moved not only a group of natural witches in the coven, but also an entire home here, forever ago. It sounded like fantasy when Raven heard it, but as mystical as her life was she was sure there was some haze of truth to it.

“Dad, seriously. I know you’re a witch. I know your ‘friends’ are, too. I bet Miss Emery even dabbles in it. I see the way people look at you, me, all of us. You lead them. I know you do.”

Jamison only vaguely smiled as he questioned how dormant her memories of her darkest days really were. “And you never thought to ask me about any of it?”

“A few times.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. When weird stuff happened. But for real it’s like the norm to me and the girls, Soren, too. Only Soren knows his parents are witches. They talk about it all the time. That’s how we figured out you were the boss man.”

Jamison playfully narrowed his stare on her. There was no doubt he had kept her around a small group of people her entire life, but he still assumed she would ask about the practice, the life he led.

“You don’t age either,” Raven said with a slight smile. “Am I going to be like you? Will I not age after I grow up?”

He nodded slightly.

The waitress delivered their food then, so the conversation halted for a few moments.

“Where were we?” Jamison asked, once they were alone again.

“I’m going to live forever and be awesome like you. My mom dug anger but she’s gone now.”

“Raven, I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you.”

“This is my serious. You’re making me think I should have asked more questions before.”

“Did I ever make you feel like you couldn’t?”

“No, but now I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to be like you—how you are like you are.”

His gaze shifted over hers. “It is a very long story, but the basic points are that I didn’t agree with the people I was raised with. I left and began another life. The Dominarum coven helped me have a normal life.”

“Normal,” she said under her breath with a sarcastic wink.  Now she was sure that River was right. Raven’s mother was a dark witch or something crazy like that. Her dad was a good one who protected all of them.

He did his best not to grin at her as he went on. “Some of my heritage stayed with me, my knowledge did as well. So I was more so connected with nature as a whole. When this was discovered they asked me to lead the coven. Aunt Saige was the daughter of our past leader. He wanted me to always look after her.”

Raven nearly choked. “Are you telling me my Aunt Saige is NOT my aunt?”

He held his hands up to calm her down. “Family isn’t always blood, Raven. When I was adapting to the coven, growing up within it, so was Aunt Saige. We considered ourselves brother and sister long before we played the role for the public. You knowing this changes nothing about our family. You still love her the same, and you know nothing could make her change the way she feels about you.”

“What decade?”

He shook his head.

“What does that mean?”

“It means time was not openly recorded where we were.”

“Time was not recorded then!” Raven said as she almost knocked over her food when she leaned forward. She was expecting him to say like nineteen hundred or something.

He moved his head side to side.

“And you had an entire other life somewhere else before then?”

His stare told her he did.

“Do I have siblings? Do you have another family there or one before ours?” She wanted him to say no. She could deal with the weirdness, but that might be too much.
Time was not recorded.
River was going to have a blast trying to understand that one when Raven told her.

“The coven and Saige were my family. Our family is my first and last.”

“Last, like something is going to happen to you?” Raven asked, not understanding why he seemed so worried.

“Last, like I know I can not improve on perfection.”

Raven playfully narrowed her eyes on him knowing he was trying to charm her the way he always did.

Jamison cleared his throat before he spoke. “Your mother was from the same place I was raised, a different part of it, but she was still from there.”

“Is my mom back in that place you came from?” Raven asked, fearing some dark coven was coming after her. That could be the only reason her father was worried. The man never worried, ever.

“No. She’s gone,” Jamison said, leaving it at that.

“Was it just you who left your old life?”

“Others did later in time. Some are still trying to understand the division they want to make.”

“Your old life is not going to come looking for you or anything? Right? Wait. Why are you telling me this now?”

His eyes, that peaceful fatherly stare, told her to calm down as he spoke. “I believe that on a large scale I’m forgotten by my old life. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be recognized by someone in your lifetime. Your energy is unique.”

“Why now though?” she pressed.

“Raven, we had a conversation close to this when you were twelve and again when you were sixteen.”

“You’ve told me about my mother before?” Raven knew most of what he said, not the mom part but the others, but that didn’t come from him. It came from her obsessive best friends who were always looking for a mystery to unravel.

“Not your mother but about where my first life was.”

“How–how come I don’t remember it?”

He swallowed. “Aunt Saige gave all of you a remedy to help you process your ordeal.”

“All of us?” Raven was racking her brain. Twelve and sixteen.
Holy crap! Hurricanes and car crashes.

“Remembering?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I know I got this,” she said, pointing to the blonde streak in her dark auburn hair. “From my first quote, unquote, ‘date’ which was nothing more than a ride home that ended with me in the emergency room.”

He clenched his jaw as the room became colder.

“What happened?” Raven asked. She had always wondered where the boy went, how no one seemed to even notice he was gone.

“Bad people discovered who you were.”

Raven stared for a moment, remembering the emotions she felt when she thought back to those storms and that car wreck. How she couldn’t remember what happened, but only how she felt. She never wanted to feel that way again, so dark and scared. “You call them bad, but apparently they think I am too, if they’re trying to kill me for no reason.”

“That’s not it, Raven, as much as I hate to admit it, you’re more than likely a solution to a long standing issue that does not wish to be resolved.”

“You’re trying to tell me there is some war of dark and light and I’m the golden child or something?” She was only halfway joking. She had heard about epic battles the coven had fought over time. The girls would whisper them when they camped out in some room, and then try and connect the stories to the people they knew, ones they were sure were immortal like Jamison and Emery. Raven never put herself in the story before, would never want that.

“That’s one way to look at it,” Jamison admitted.

Raven’s eyes went wide.

“It only sounds scary now because you’re not ready for this fate, still young, too young. But one day no one will be able to hold you back when you engage your destiny.”

“Promise?” she asked with a ghost of a whisper.

He nodded once. “One of the reasons I brought it up today is because for the first time you spotted a foe before the girls did.”

“Berries?” Raven said with a lifted brow. She smirked. He was no foe; he was a creeper. “He’s evil? Like beyond the average creeper evil?”

“In his own miserable way, but not someone who could hurt you. I meant that you were able to distinguish his bad intentions. In the past you haven’t, the twins have.”

Every once in awhile Raven would wake up at night all rattled. She never remembered her dreams but she knew she didn’t want to either. River had bad dreams too, but she told Raven they were just about storms. Right now Raven was questioning
exactly
what she had suppressed.

“Was I hurt? In the past…did you have to save me?”

He took in a breath. “According to the twins and Soren something came over you and them. You weren’t children in those moments but warriors.” He looked a little deeper in her eyes. “Those bad people were trying to extinguish your soul, but when they started to pull your energy you pulled theirs. You used their power against them.”

No way
. “How did I do that?”

“We’re not sure. Aunt Saige feels it was a natural born instinct.”

Raven sat back in her seat and stared, wanting him to say “just joking” or something, but he wasn’t saying it and that made this real. It made Raven focus on the gut feeling she had diligently ignored when it surfaced—the one that told her nothing was as it seemed.

“We didn’t feel it until your battle was already in progress. When we arrived all of you were trembling as you recounted the event in a rush. You wanted to understand what happened, and I explained it as clearly as I could.”

“And I forgot,” Raven said, as she twirled her blonde hair around her finger and stared into space.

“You all did.”

“What did you give us?”

“An herb.”

“Is it going to scare me when I remember?” If it was, Raven was voting on
never
remembering.

“When it happened you were not scared of what you did, but because you thought you would be in trouble for the damage you’d caused.”

“Did I kill people, Dad?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Not people, and in some way those that hurt you still have an existence. They’re just not strong enough to hurt you any longer.”

“And this conversation was triggered by me not wanting to take Berries’ class?”

No, it was triggered because Jamison knew there were Escorts at her school. Ones he doubted would strike without warning, ones he knew Raven and the others could defend themselves against. He just wasn’t ready to tell her that, wasn’t ready to explain who the Escort was in his past. How he was trying to figure out how to save him and all those his death would impact.

“It was triggered because you spotted this foe first, and because just before every battle you have had, you and the girls, and usually Soren, turn inward. You plot, conspire, and manipulate circumstances that would normally take you away from trouble. But because of the conformity in the world we live in you didn’t get very far with it. All of you have apparently been doing it for the last four weeks and once again your plans to get away have landed you right where you don’t want to be.”

“You make it sound like a grand scheme. I
swear
it was as innocent as I told you.”

“I believe you, but I also trust your instinct. I need you to tell me if I should pull you from school.”

“Dad, this is like the last school we could go to.”

“The last school in our city. We can move.”

“No way.”

“I know you like our life here but you have to trust what your soul is telling you.”

“My soul is telling me the Quarter will be the only home I will ever have.”

“We could come back later.”

“I’m not leaving perfection. I don’t feel any bad mojo coming that I can’t handle.”

He was quiet for a long moment. “Well then we’re going to work on your strengths. Open up your mind and help you to see the energy you’re feeling. Help you gain power to move that energy—your vim.”

“Now?” Raven asked as she saw her night going up in flames, no dancing to be had.

“Tomorrow.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I want to go over this before you go back to school.”

“I get it. I really do. And I’m not cool with the idea I have no memory of facing bad people or might again. But right now I need to clear my head.”

Jamison tapered his stare on her, not sure that she’d taken any of this seriously. It was always hard to tell with Raven. She stayed too happy to really know. “And you want to do that by going out tonight,” Jamison assumed.

“I do have to kinda work, but besides that I have this routine I want to do.”