Lost Seraphine (The Seraphine Trilogy #2) (5 page)

My people say the Dark Seraphine was created to fulfill a foretelling, an age old prophecy that says the Angel of Chaos will somehow bring about the end of the human and the Seraphine worlds as we know them to be. Our lovely blue waters, the place I’ll always consider my true home, will turn as black as oil.

Father will never let that happen. I won’t either. I know Caleb will do what he can to stop this prophecy as well. There’s only one thing that worries me. My father says there’s a part of the prophecy that somehow involves the son of the Wanderer. If that isn’t enough to jolt my sleeping power of light awake, he also says the Dark Seraphine takes up some space in that prophecy as well.

I think of Father’s words the entire day at school. I beat myself up for not telling Caleb the real reason I was allowed to come back. Sure, Father loves me; he’ll do anything for any of his people, but he has also lost three of his favorites—Lelo, Marisa and my beloved brother, Raze.

Where my bodyguards were bound to me by duty, Raze and I actually lived in the same house. Father treated him in the same way as he would do his true son. He even announced Raze as an heir to the White Thron
e—
a royal blood of the sea kin
g—
giving him just as much power as any of my other family.

No one understood his reasons for doing so. No one dared to question him, either. I suspect he did it because he never had a biological son. Growing up with Raze around was the same as having my very own blood brother.

My brother’s face still haunts me. I mean, I literally see images of him everywhere. This morning, I even experienced a vision of him standing among the trees in front of the school. It has gotten so common that I sometimes imagine him floating around whatever area I’m hanging out in. Pretty bad, right?

It’s hard enough trying to focus on class subjects that bore me to death. History classes just aren’t all that historical to me. I’m the daughter of the man historians wrote the stories of Greek mythology about. I know what’s real, fake, made up and everything in between. Although I must
admit it’s a little neat to sit through a class where the talk of the time period was all about my people.

I’ve managed to avoid riding home with Caleb each day. So far, he respects my need for privacy. He’s curious, though, and I don’t like keeping so many things from him. There’s another reason he can’t come to the house where others from the land beyond the veil are living. Although I’m the only Seraphine among them, each one of the kids living at the house has sacrificed a part of our magical selves so we can live among the humans, so we’re able to keep our identities secret. Caleb can’t know these kids are also magical entities.

During third period, one of the two classes I share with Caleb, I feel my cell phone vibrate. I’m a bit excited. No one besides Caleb or Mabry, the Alchemist who leads our safe house, ever texts me. I pull out the phone and glance at the screen. My joy fades like a rainstorm. It’s only Mabry. He’s saying something about a light signal he received earlier in the day and that I need to be careful on the way home.

“Yeah, so what else is new?” I think aloud.

After class ends, Caleb approaches me. “What was up with checking your phone? You seemed worried.”

I shrug, doing a suck job of trying to act blasé. “It was nothing really. Just Mabry reminding me about something I need to do on the way home.”

We stop at my locker and Caleb places an arm on the one beside mine while giving me an analytical look. I can tell he doesn’t believe me. Damn, he’s too smart for reality. I turn my body toward him. “What?”

“I can take you home.”

“Caleb, I—”

“I was thinking, I don’t know; tell me what you think about all this, okay? But I’m guessing it’s about time for our boy Mabry to accept some things. Maybe even starting with the fact that I’m your guy.”

“I know he will. I just have to help him understand how we feel about each other. That’s all.”

“And that’ll happen sometime during this decade, right?”

“Don’t do that sarcasm thing. Not to me.”

A short, awkward moment passes between us. He’s staring at me as he works the muscles in his jaw. “Sorry... again. Got some things to do after school, so I’ll be leaving early and won’t get the chance to see you before we leave for the day. Just wanted you to know.”

“Caleb...” Crap! He’s mad.

“I’ll call you later.” He turns and starts to walk away. I’m not letting him leave upset this way.

“Caleb!”

He stops walking and turns around. We stare at each other that way for a few seconds before I get a tiny version of the smile I was waiting to see. “We’ll talk more tonight,” he says in a softer, less aggravated voice this time.

The day moves on a lot faster than I thought it would. The fifth period bell rings and I rush out the door, my body tingling as anxiety rolls through every nerve cell. The message that popped up on my cell phone earlier this afternoon has bothered me all day long. I have the feeling that this mysterious light Mabry spotted has something to do with Erica’s sudden disappearance.

I take the long way back to the house through a path in the woods beside the school. The spot reminds me of the place where Caleb dashed through the forest with me in his arms. It was the first time he’d seen me in mermaid form and he still accepted me. After all my fears, the secrets and the surprise visits from some of the not-so-nice inhabitants of my world, he still forgave me.

I’m the luckiest girl alive to have found such a boy.

There’s no other explanation.

As a young girl, I used to play a game similar to the one humans call hide and seek. My playmates could never understand how I was able to find everyone with so little effort. The other kids thought that it was because of my father’s status or, more specifically, his ability to use starlight, and I had cheated. Raze fought my battles more so than anybody else back then.

It’s while I’m thinking back on these memories of the family I left behind, of the brother whose face still clouds my vision—killing me with sadness—that I don’t realize when my feet take on a mission of their own.

I turn in the direction of the place where Caleb took me a few months ago, the spot where he jumped into the ocean and sacrificed himself to save me. The abandoned pier is one of the oldest ones in New Bern. The wooden planks have rotted and soon the entire thing will more than likely fall into the sea. What probably looks like a lost cause to the humans hides a concealed passage into my home. One that I can no longer use, though the temptation calls to me, making me want to jump in the water and see what might actually happen.

The sky already promises to make well on an early evening as I approach the shores where I last saw my brother. The wind blows a whispering melody across the waters. The salt even affects me differently. Before, I used the salt in the water to cleanse my lungs, a simple thing to me, but a deadly mistake for a human. Inhaling deeply through my newly formed human nostrils, I flinch. The smell stings me now. I do things like this more often than not, this snapping out of some self-induced trance and winding up in a place that reminds me of Raze.

A pain shoots through my chest. The needle like prick happens in the same place where the sea witch’s apprentice, Bryce, jabbed a lightning rod through my brother’s chest. I massage the area and stare out across the ocean. The water calls to me, a hypnotic drug. Far in the distance, I can hear music. The Undines, the singers of the sea. A stab of emotion hits my chest and I stagger on my feet. Tears pool behind my eyes. I don’t understand this agony, the painful feelings filling my body at this moment. I knew that sooner or later this might happen, yet the longing threatens to kill me.

Why did Father not tell me how living as a human was going to be?

I double over and drop to my knees beside the water. Visions of Raze and my sisters flash before me.

“Gia, my lovely sister.” Raze stands before me, his lithe form floating over the water. Only this boy isn’t really my dead brother. It’s some kind of hallucination, a projection of the guilt I can’t seem to shake. “I’m in pain, dear sister.”

I swallow through the lump in my throat, yet another nuisance that comes along with being human. “Why are you hurting, Raze?”

He floats over to where I’m now crouched on the ground, rocking back and forth with my arms held tight around my body, shielding me. The ghost stares deeply into my eyes with his dark ones. This Raze, this imaginary version I’ve created inside my mind, frightens me in a sense. I’m not sure why, but I think it has something to do with the way he looks, kind of like a combined version of a human boy and an ethereal being and nothing like the brother I left behind the night Caleb saved me.

Long, dark hair, slick and shiny and black as ink, travels down his back and ends at his waist, replacing the way he used to wear his hair in a tapered style. He has always had regal features, the characteristics of a king; chiseled jawline, tanned skin, broad shoulders, a tapered waist, expressive dark eyes. All of that seems magnified in this ghostly version; added to that, a faint glow surrounds his body. Each motion he makes with his hands, the way he walks, even the smooth way he turns his head to look at me, reminds me of something graceful and ghostly and yes, even dangerous. He’s stunning in death, changed in some way I don’t understand. Expressive.

Of course you wouldn’t understand because you’re seeing things and going nuts!

“I tried to save you. I—I never wanted to see you hurt,” I plead.

He sighs deeply. “But I did get hurt, little sister. And then, I died. I don’t think it bothers you all that much. You found your happy ending, didn’t you?”

I jerk my face up toward him, tears clouding my eyes, another aspect of being human I can’t control and don’t understand. “Don’t say things like that. Please.”

“But it’s true and you know it. That’s why you’ve come here,” he says in a calm voice, a honey-smooth tone that penetrates to my core even more so than if he would’ve yelled at me. He stands and shoves a finger at me, pointing. “I’ve decided you wanted me to die. Now, all you care about is making sure your human lives just so you can sit back and enjoy watching him destroy the rest of us. And he will.”

“No!” I cry out. “It breaks my heart to see you this way.”

“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!” His voice bellows over the beaches like the true son of a god. Echoes of his words pound inside my head as his image begins to fade. “You wanted me to die!”

“That’s not true! Please believe me.”

I close my eyes, squeezing them shut while hoping the memory will go away. I will myself to block out Raze’s echoing voice, focusing on anything besides the terrible things he’s saying. I keep them closed for the longest time, opening them only because I can feel the ghost has gone. Only the dull hollowness of heartache lingers inside me now.

The incredible ache in my chest grows stronger each day. I hide it for Caleb’s sake. The last thing I want is to make him feel responsible for my choices to leave the sea. Keeping things buried deep inside me this way only means there’s that much more guilt for me to bear, though; that there will be many more chances for Raze’s ghost to manifest inside my head.

I miss Father, the sea, our silly games, yet I couldn’t merely escape punishment. By interacting with the humans when I saved Caleb, I violated so many treaties that even Father’s influence was
overruled by the Council. The peace between the Seraphine and Melusine has always been shaky, a fragile moment in time, waiting to be stolen at the slightest whisper of a misdeed. I had to go and be the one to jump start the trouble.

“What have I done?” I whisper, the wind snatching my words away, carrying them far across the distance to be lost in the same way as my siblings. A ruffle in the bushes on the far side of the pier startles me. Every nerve cell in my body ignites as I jump to my feet.

“Who’s there?” I say to the foliage behind me. Only the wind answers me, at first, but then a girl covered in dirt shuffles out of the bushes. I inhale sharply, my mouth hanging open. There’s something very familiar about her.

Could it be? No. Impossible.

How long has it been since I’ve seen another person from Aquardia, my home that’s hidden by the sea? Too long.

“Princess Gia,” my best friend, Cori, mumbles just before she collapses. I rush to her side, supporting her before she hits the ground. I laugh and cry and then grin some more. In return, Cori gives me a weak grin back, her light brown eyes filled with both happiness and sadness. I throw my arms around her, not caring one bit about the state of her blood covered body. The thin, but ripped up tee shirt and skimpy shorts she’s wearing do little to keep her body warm, I’m sure. My luck streak hasn’t run out. This strange turn in events tells me it has gotten stronger.

Cori is one of my closest friends back home in Aquardia. She’s also one of the main reasons Lelo chose to accompany Raze and me here to the human lands. She wanted to find her sister, this girl who disappeared long ago. Now, Cori has found a way to reach me, even though the Seraphine have recently been prohibited from using the veil.

“How?” I ask after we both gain control of our breathing. I smooth her matted hair that’s secured in a mess of a braid away from her face and glance into a pair of eager eyes. “No, wait. Don’t answer that just yet. Sit right here, okay?” I remove my jacket and drape it over her shoulders. She’s so thin. The vibrant girl I remember was slightly muscular and healthy looking. This girl makes a skeleton look fat. Her blood soaked hair and filthy clothes tell me she has worked hard to get through the veil. I untie my scarf, pull it away from my neck and trot over to the water. Dipping it into the waves, I feel a strange type of energy. Cold air slaps my skin under the thin tee shirt I’m wearing, but I don’t feel a thing. I’m too excited about seeing another Seraphine for the first time in six months.