Finding Obscurity (18 page)

“Who was after her?” Ashton asked.

“I’m not really sure, but I met her husband, Thomas, the next week
when we went on a double date. I knew something was off about him. It’s the
same feeling I get around you,” she said, giving a pointed look at Ashton.
“Anyway, they told us that their family didn’t want them to have the baby and
they were terrified. They asked us to promise that if anything ever happened to
them, that we would take you in, and of course we agreed. We never saw them
after that, but a few months later you were delivered to our doorstep just a
few weeks old, with a letter explaining everything.”

“Do you still have the letter?” I was on the edge of my seat now.

She nodded, biting her top lip, and started shaking her leg with
nervousness. “Would you like to read it?”

“Of course!”

Ashton put a hand on my arm, stopping me from jumping up. “Who
delivered Liliana to your doorstep?”

“I don’t know his name, but I’d never forget his eyes because I’ve
never seen anything like it until now. I should’ve noticed the resemblance.”
Susie shook her head with a sigh. “They were a spitting image of yours,
Ashton.”

It was so quiet in the house you could have heard crickets
chirping and I glanced at Ashton to see he was frozen in shock. Did it mean
that his brother, Alistair, delivered me? His hand was squeezing my arm a
little too tightly and I looked up at him. “How long ago did you say he
disappeared?”

When Ashton only gazed off into space, his body still as a statue,
Blake answered for him with shock plastered on his own face. “Fifty years ago.”

Chapter Twenty

I guess that answered the question of whether Alistair had died,
but what had he been involved with that he would know who and what I was and
that he needed to
disappear?
Did the person or people
who killed my parents have something to do with his sudden vanishing act fifty
years ago? It didn’t make any sense that he would just flee, only to reappear a
little over twenty years later to bring me to the Cantons’ home and never be
heard from again. Was he still alive? That was the question I think Blake, Ashton,
and myself were wondering, but Sam just sat there looking back and forth
between us all like he was watching a tennis match. I owed him an explanation
sometime in the near future.

Ashton cleared his throat. “Are you sure?”

Susie nodded. “I’ve never been so sure in my life. Although, it
took until this moment to piece together that you must have been related. What
do you mean he disappeared fifty years ago?”

“If my brother is the man you saw drop off Lily, then I thought he
may have died. Now I’m thinking he has to be alive, but I’m more confused that
he knew about everything when I didn’t.”

“Maybe he was afraid of putting you all in danger because of what
he knew.” She shrugged. “If I let you read the letter it may make more sense.
Let me get it out of the safe.”

After my adoptive mother left the room, Dad gave me a sad
expression. “Lily Pad, whatever you read in that letter… please know I loved
you, even though Susie may have reservations about your lineage.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me? You knew I was developing powers
that I knew nothing about controlling.”

He looked resigned when he exhaled through his nose. “Because I
thought it would keep you safe if you didn’t know. Maybe if I’d told you so
long ago, then we wouldn’t be in this position now and you wouldn’t have run
away after Sarah died. I don’t blame you for thinking you weren’t wanted and
leaving. I was so lost in the sorrow of losing her that I forgot you were
hurting too.”

“I forgive you, Dad,” I said, and meant every word of it. His eyes
started to go misty so he cleared his throat and nodded.

Susie came back into the room with an envelope yellowed with age.
She handed it to me before sitting back beside Dad, grabbing his hand. Being as
gentle as I could, I gingerly opened open it with shaking hands, even though I
wanted to tear right into it. My stomach clenched from nerves. The letter was
written in elegant scrawled script in thick black ink. The letters blurred as
my eyes moistened with unshed tears because I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it.
It would mean this was all too real. It was my mother’s handwriting, and this
was as close as I would ever get to her.

Dearest Susie,

I know if you’re reading this letter then my life has
passed before I had the chance to explain everything. It wasn’t my intention to
keep this a secret from you but there are things that sometimes are left better
unsaid. I am a Conjurer, or a witch if you must, and am one of the strongest
ones who ever lived. My powers were so strong and cumbersome that I just wanted
live a normal life by going to college, meeting friends like you and Dale,
graduating with a degree, and just pretending for a little while that I could
be just like everyone else with a normal life. But I hadn’t made good choices
in the past, and
I’m afraid the choices I made in the war
against evil would eventually catch up to me.

I met Thomas when he came to take my life for killing
beings such as him, but neither of us could because we fell madly in love at
first sight. You see, we were never supposed to be together due to the fact
that it’s been ingrained in us to hate each other, but sometimes your heart
gets in the way of what you’re supposed to do. Soon after, we went on the run
to hide from our actual lives. I enrolled in school and I’m so thankful we met.
When I learned I was pregnant it came as quite a shock because Thomas wasn’t
supposed to be able to have
children.
He is
otherworldly, like myself, because he is a vampire. In their entire history of
existence there has never been knowledge of any of his kind having children.
You could imagine this was a very dangerous situation for the unborn child.

We named our little girl Liliana and she is special like
no other person on this Earth. She will be a mix of both of our heritages. We
hope that one day she will be able to bring both races as one and stop the war
against each other. Of course, there will be people from both sides that will
want to end her life. If she reached you safely, then we were successful in
getting her out of harm’s way. I’m sure you will have many questions about who
and what she will become, and I can’t apologize enough for not being there to
see her beautiful face grow into a young woman. Unfortunately, we don’t know
what her powers will be, or if she will lean one way or another in our natures,
but we hope that she will be a beautiful mixture of both of us. All I can ask
is that you take her under your wing and trust in my faith that she will be the
greatest thing that has ever been born in our world.

Please heed my warning that nobody can know that she
lived or what she is. I fear somebody is getting closer to our secret family
and intends to kill us to keep it buried. One day, when she comes back for
answers, tell her that even though we can’t be there for
her,
that
we loved her before she was even born.

Evangeline

I handed the letter to Blake so he could read that our estimations
were correct. Ashton had been reading over my shoulder the entire time, even
though the paper was shaking in my hands. So I was a mix of both vampire and
Conjurer – but somehow I was supposed to stop the war between the races?
Talk about pressure.

“You can see why we were so nervous with you in the house,” Susie
said.

“Why didn’t you tell me? You even sent me to a damned shrink! I
thought I was crazy!”

“Lily, you read the letter and the warning. I wasn’t going to put
our entire family in danger when somebody found out what you were.”

“Is that why you hated me?”

She let out a breath, running her hand through her short hair. “I
just didn’t trust who or what you would become. Even your mother didn’t know
what would happen.”

“But you blamed me for Sarah’s death.”

“How could I not?”

“Why? It wasn’t who or what I was that caused that accident,
Susie. It was because an inexperienced driver was behind the wheel and lost
control. I was barely eighteen.” It was the truth and couldn’t believe it took
me over ten years to realize that. Staring back at the woman who raised me, I
realized she would never change her mind about the car accident, and who I was.
It all made sense now. I thought about the times we spent together as a family,
and how she never made feel like I fit in, always holding me at arm’s length.
She never trusted anything about what I could do and I got the picture of what
prejudice really felt when it was aimed in my direction. It didn’t matter if I
was a saint, had a good heart, or was the perfect daughter, because in her
eyes, I would never be good enough since I was different. Obscurity had plagued
me for most of my life.

“Do you really blame her for that?” Sam huffed.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if I blame her. It doesn’t change
anything. Sarah is gone and I’ll never get her back.”

“No, you won’t, but I know that Lily has lived with the pain and
suffering for ten long years. You weren’t the only one who lost somebody you
loved. She blamed herself, and living with that sort of guilt for so long can
damage a person’s soul. How dare you hold that over her head! What about the
fact that her sister snuck out of the house and was at the party to begin with?
Whose fault is that?” Sam was now standing with his hands on his hips.

I watched Dad shake his head in defeat because Sam made a great
point. He didn’t blame me, and that made me realize I should have came around
before now. Maybe I would’ve healed from this pain long ago if I’d had. Ashton
was gripping my hand, rubbing his thumb against my skin, calming my nerves and
the pressure of electricity humming through my body.

Susie gaped like a fish and blanched. “Don’t you point fingers at
something you don’t
understand.
”

“Let’s calm down. We’re getting away from the reason for Lily’s
visit,” Dad said, patting her hand. Sam opened his mouth to argue back, but Dad
continued, “Did you find out what you may have been before coming here?”

I nodded and gave a small smile at Sam to let him know it was okay
before looking back at Dad. “Yeah, I went to Tennessee and spoke to the police
there. I didn’t realize what my parents were until it was confirmed by Ashton
and Blake. I was threatened shortly before coming here. Somebody knows about
me, even though I have no clue how they could have.”

“Unless it was the killer and he found out by accident that you
had lived. We have protection here at home. Evangeline made sure of that, and
anyone who means us harm won’t be able to cross the property line. You could
always stay here until it blows over.”

“Dad, are you sure you’re safe here?” There was no way I would be
staying under the same roof as Susie again.

 
“Very sure.”

“I didn’t feel the protection on the property when we drove up the
driveway.” Blake frowned.

“And you wouldn’t unless you meant us harm.” Dad shrugged. “I only
knew something was up when mean dogs would chase you girls on your bikes, then
suddenly turn away like nothing happened. Even when everyone else was robbed in
the area, we weren’t. The weird symbols on a few trees gave it away. I did some
research and put two and two together. She never even hinted at doing anything
around the property, but she loved to come here and hike the area.”

“Well, it seems her rumored abilities were true among our kind.
Mr. Canton, if you would have known somebody who would’ve been able to help
Lily, would you have done it?”

“Blake, there was no way I would’ve put her neck on the line,
because we didn’t know who we could trust. When she started to develop her
gift, I thought about it, but I couldn’t put her life in danger. It wasn’t
worth it. Would any of you put her life on the line if you thought for a second
it may help her?”

“No. I couldn’t risk losing her.” Ashton shook his head.

Blake huffed. “No.”

“Lily is a lot smarter than you would ever realize, but I still
would say no.” Sam puckered his brow in thought. “How would they find somebody
who would help her anyway? She stayed off the supernatural radar up until the
last month or so.”

“But that’s where you may be wrong. Although we know about it now,
I think somebody has been watching her from afar for a very long time. I just
don’t know whom. The secret came out, even though I think it was in error. I
plan on finding out how it slipped,” Ashton rumbled.

“Do you think it could be Alistair?” I had been wondering this
once we found out who delivered me to the doorstep.

“Liliana, I don’t know. It would be very likely, but I would have
known he was here watching over you, or somebody would have seen him. Plus, I
don’t know what his intentions for your safety are at this point.”

“Don’t be so sure about that, Ashton.” Blake held up a hand. “If
Evangeline was strong enough to create a barrier around this property without
either of us feeling it, then maybe she could cloak your brother so he couldn’t
be easily spotted.”

“Was he the one who attacked me?” I blanched at the thought.

“I’m not really sure because we didn’t get a good look at him.
Right now, I just want to know if he’s still alive, and if he is, I will pummel
him for making me worry. But if he is after the person I love, then I’ll kill
him.”

Ashton was watching me with those hypnotizing eyes, making sure I
understood what he was saying. He wanted to make sure Blake knew how he felt
and that he would stop at nothing to protect me. My heart flip-flopped in my
chest at his announcement that he loved me, but I wasn’t sure what to do with
that knowledge. I mean, I knew he felt strongly for me but he never really put
it out there like that. Making that statement in front of my adoptive parents,
along with the rest of group, means he was staking claim on me.

Susie grunted. “History is repeating itself with you two. Don’t
you see that?”

Blake sighed. “Ashton, she’s right. I just have a bad feeling
about all of this, and somebody knowing what she is. The vampires will want her
for power, and the Conjurers will want to either kill her or use her against
vampires if they got their grubby little paws on her. One question I have about
the whole thing is – who will want to be in charge of what she is? Will it be
the vampires, or the people over me wanting to make sure she doesn’t break the
rules?”

He was right, and it made me even more scared now than I have ever
been. What would I do if I were confronted by either race, wanting me to be
swayed one way or the other? What if they threatened my life? I wasn’t sure at
this point what I would choose, but I couldn’t give up Ashton or Blake. I was
sure that if I had to make a decision with my life in the balance, I might
choose to die instead. I just hope it never comes to that.

“Jesus, guys. You’re scaring the shit out of her.” Sam grabbed my
shaking hand, pulling me up from the recliner. “Let’s you and I take a walk,
okay?”

I nodded as he led me towards the back of the house. We walked out
the back door and sat on a porch swing which faced the overgrown field and the
woods in the distance. Robins were pecking at the ground, birds chirped from
the budding trees, and a slight breeze was blowing through the field, making
the tall grass sway back and forth.