Nevermore, the Complete Series (23 page)

Paul was relieved to hear my voice when I called him the following morning and explained what had happened. He was overjoyed throughout the rest of the conversation, commenting on how impressed he was that I was finally learning to control the gift, as he always called it. I ignored most of his comments, although I did feel a slight sense of pride at my new found skill. Thankfully Paul didn’t object when I ended the call early by falsely telling him I needed to eat breakfast.

Salem was somewhat surprised when I rejected his offer for food, but I had other things on my mind. His eyes followed me curiously as I passed through the kitchen and into the living room. I stood in front of the sectional sofa, held my arms out at my side and focused my thoughts on something I truly didn't want to. The image of Salem being attacked by the female vampire played through my mind repeatedly. I could feel the sadness and anger building inside my core and felt my body converting into the shape of the raven. I had found my source – Salem suffering, pain, anger, frustration--adrenaline. That would be enough to drive me into the wretched, deadly form.

My small, black head twisted backward to look at him. He was cautious, watching me flap my wings and rise into the air. If only I had discovered a way to speak in this form, it would make life much easier. I gave him a reassuring nod of my head and jumped through the window which was still open from the night before.

The wind whipped around me, threatening to blow me down with its force. I swam through the air, the breeze ruffling my elegant feathers. My reflection followed me as I hovered across the wide length of the dark water of the lake’s surface. I lowered my body toward the water, letting my talons skid across its surface before rising into the air. To think I had once been terrified at the idea of flying on an airplane made me want to laugh. My body shook and I could suddenly hear my voice screaming as I began to lose my focus. I was plummeting downward, my arms flailing at my sides.

I heard Salem's voice yelling from someplace unseen before I was immersed in the cold water. I was fortunate to have been flying over the lake; I didn't even want to contemplate what would have happened if I had been flying elsewhere. Before I had the opportunity to get my senses straight, the panic was settling in. I felt the water seeping in through my nostrils. My eyes were wide with fright, until I saw something faint in the water. It was blurry and coming straight for me. My first instinct was to swim away, until it became clear what I was seeing.

Salem enveloped me in his arms and pulled me to the surface. I gasped and coughed when my mouth was out of the water. He dropped me delicately on the grassy shore and stared in disbelief.

“What were you thinking, Alex? You could have gotten yourself killed!”

My eyes, throat and nostrils burned. I coughed and spat out a mouthful of water. “It’s not like I had planned to fall,” I muttered.

“What were you planning then?”

“I was practicing...and I was doing fine...” I paused in an outburst of coughs, “until I started to think of something funny. Happiness, relaxation…it seems to break my hold on the form.”

“Why didn't you warn me before you rushed out the window!?” His look of disappointment caused me to avert my eyes.

“I don't know, Salem. I was just thinking about how much Paul has been pressuring me to perfect this; I just want to be done already.” I sighed, and then smiled. “But, I have to admit it is exhilarating, and I’m starting to figure it out.”

“What exactly do you think about when you change?”

I grimaced and continued looking away. “Thoughts of you…thoughts of you in pain and suffering.”

His expression was unreadable as he lifted me from the grass and carried me into the house. Rather than summoning me a blanket, he brought one down from his bedroom and draped it around my shoulders. It wasn't until that point that I realized how cold I was. After I finally stopped shivering, I accepted Salem's offer of a bowl of soup.

“Thanks.” I smiled gratefully as he passed me a bowl of chicken noodle soup. He was pacing around the living room as I ate, which was awfully distracting. “What’s wrong, Salem?”

He shrugged, not stopping his movements. “Hannah, you,
hunting. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“You're going to drive yourself crazy if you don't relax, you know.” I frowned and attempted to finish eating my food.

“Relaxing is no easy task when you are out nearly getting  yourself killed on what seems to be a daily basis, whether it be to a vampire or water.” His expression grew dark and I sat my bowl aside. “As for Hannah, I cannot help but wonder if she is out there still. I know it is unlikely, and a large part of me sincerely hopes Raziel did not turn her. But I…I just don’t know…”

“Maybe it's for the best if you don't know, Salem.”

“I don't think so.” He stopped walking and slumped over on the couch, “I wish there was a way I could know for sure.”

“The world is a huge place; you know that even better than I do. Finding a single person is probably next to impossible.”

“I know,” he whispered into his palms as his head fell into his hands. “Make me a promise, Alex.”

“Sure…anything.”

He lifted his head and looked at me sternly. “The next time you decide to do that, please warn me ahead of time.”

“I will,” I whispered. How much shame was I going to be put through this week? “I'm going to take a quick shower.”

I pecked him gently on the cheek and retreated to the bathroom upstairs. The steaming hot water trickled down my back as I sat on the floor of the shower. There had to be some way to distract Salem from his thoughts of Hannah, some way to ease his worries, but I couldn't think of anything. There was no way I could call every Hannah Young or Hannah Winter in the country. And that was if she still went by that name. Not to mention that if she was still alive it meant that she was a vampire. Who was to say that she had not become one of the bad ones? I know I had told Salem there was no way she could have been, but who really knew. Experiences can change people, even the gentlest of creatures can turn into beasts if they are prodded enough. If all this wasn’t enough to mull over, there was the fact that the last time Salem had seen her, she was in England. I sat and thought for so long that the water began to get cold. I jumped up and shut off the water, draped myself in a towel, and dried off quickly. It was amazing how fresh, clean clothes felt after a couple of days of wearing the same outfit.

My feet hastily rushed down the spiral stairway and I found my laptop on the dining room table. I had scarcely used it since Jason, my best friend from high school, gave me it on my last birthday. I felt bad for not having had the time to play with it as much as he had hoped, but it would be put to work today.

Salem was still sitting on the sectional, seemingly unaware of my presence. However, I knew he had to know I was there. He could smell me, no doubt. I frowned as I turned my head away from him and flipped open the laptop. My finger led the cursor to the internet browser icon and I waited as it opened. After I typed in a search engine's address, I hovered my cursor over the search box and typed in “worldwide obituaries”. The screen was flooded with results, but I clicked the first one.

A white page came up on the screen with information on the website. I read down the page, letting the words sink in as my eyes slid passed them. There were empty text fields asking me specific questions such as first name, last name, birth, death, country, state of residency, and several other things.

I quickly typed “Hannah Young” into the name fields, followed by the year “1889” for birth and “1892” for death if she had died at the age of three. Once I hit enter, several listings came up – none of which appeared to be what I was searching for. There was one of a Hannah Young in Michigan, one in Canada, but nothing in Europe at all. I went back to the former page and put her name as “Hannah Winter” and came up with more unhelpful results. Next, I input both names with the date “1895”, both of which came up with no results at all. If Raziel had killed her though, maybe her death would have never been known to anyone. Who knew what he may have done with the body. I shuddered.

“Salem?” I said quietly, staring blankly at the web page.

“Yes?” he mumbled, barely audible.

“If your sister…” That got his attention, his eyes were now fixated on me, “if she had died in the fire, there would be an obituary, right?”

“Right. There are rarely obituaries made without a body, or some large amount of evidence.” He was obviously curious. “But I told you she was taken out the window by Raziel, I know that now thanks to the vision he shared with me.”

“I know. Do you think if Raziel did…if he,” I paused, not eager to say what I knew would send hurt into Salem’s heart at the spoken words, “if he had killed her. Would there be any chance of an obituary?”

“Doubtful. Raziel couldn’t have very well told anyone of it. Having a young girl in his possession that had supposedly either died or went missing during the fire would have aroused too much suspicion. No, vampires, for the most part, live a very cautious existence.” He stood up and in a matter of seconds was sitting in a chair beside me. “Why do you ask? What are you doing?”

“I was just thinking about what you said, about Hannah. I was doing some research and there are no obituaries for her anywhere,” I replied, then typed in “Arthur Young” and browsed through the listings. I immediately found his file listed on the site. “Your father is on here, and I am willing to bet Maggie is, too. Of course what you said makes sense. Even if Raziel had killed her she probably would not be listed. I’m sorry Salem, I tried.”

“As monstrous as he was, I know he loved her. Even if he had lost control and killed her, I have little doubt he would have buried her. Alex, I know there are records of graves in general. Those done by funeral services, but also those done by families on their own accord and that are eventually found. It was not uncommon in those days for a family to bury a loved one themselves; many places had their own small cemeteries. Would you be able to search for that, on this?” he gestured towards the laptop.

I typed “Grave Records” into the search. Plenty of results came up, but nothing looked like exactly what we needed. One of the link names did give me an idea for another search though, and I quickly punched in “Find a grave”. I went to the first result. The site was exactly what I needed; similar to the obituary you could enter information and get details on where a grave was located. Many of them even had pictures. I once again entered Hannah’s name, leaving all else aside from the birth date blank. No results aside from the now somewhat familiar Michigan and Canada graves. I tried again with the alternate last name, the loading bar felt as though it would never finish. Finally the results page popped up – it was blank. There were no gravestones recorded that matched Hannah’s information.

“So, she might still be out there...” he whispered thoughtfully, “or, it may just be that her grave was never discovered.”

“But it does give us some hope, right? She could still be alive, somewhere. The odds of no one finding and reporting her body or grave in over a hundred years seems pretty slim to me. Doesn’t it to you? If she is still out there though, I have no idea how in the world we could find her,” I scowled. Even though I had used the word ‘hope’ for Salem’s sake, I had truly wished I would have solved the problem by discovering she was indeed dead – as terrible as that sounds, it would have at least put Salem’s mind back at
ease. That is what he had always believed until recently anyway. Instead I opened up a whole new can of worms. I half expected Salem to jump up, ready to go on a hunt to find her at any moment.

Salem smiled at me, which was not the demeanor I had expected at all. “Knowing that she might still be out there is enough for me.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, bewildered. Did he really not intend to search for her after all this worrying?

“Of course.
I know that there is little chance that I will ever see her again, but knowing that she might still exist...that at least makes me feel somewhat at peace.”

“Wait,” I mumbled as a thought popped into my head. “If he turned her, would that make her a blood-thirsty three year old for all eternity?”

Salem arched a brow and laughed. “No. Humans that young are physically incapable of being turned, which means he would have to have kept her alive somewhere until she was at least pubescent.”

“Does that make you upset?” I asked cautiously.

“No...It is relieving that the vision he shared with me about Hannah’s death could have been false. Only created and shown to make me suffer. It means that he did not want me to know the truth, for some reason. It makes me more curious than anything else.”

My mouth opened to ask him what he thought about the possibility of her having turned out like Raziel. What if he had kept her around much longer than Salem had even imagined? What if he had raised her to be as he was? But I stopped myself. “I’m just glad to know you are fine with all this now and we can put it behind us again.”

“Right,” he said. Something in his voice made me feel as if that was far from the whole truth.

“You have a voice mail, by the way,” he said, thankfully changing the subject. “It's from Karen.”

After listening to the message from Karen I gave her a call back and unintentionally made arrangements to meet her the following afternoon for lunch with her and her cousin. I was seriously dreading it. Thinking about it, I couldn't even recall the last time I spent time around someone that didn't know my secret. It wasn't going to be easy to be around them, but once Karen brought up the idea of going out for lunch the words were out of my mouth before I had the chance to think it through, “I’d love to.”

“Do you want me to join you?” Salem asked after I hung up the phone.

“Karen wants it to just be us girls,” I sighed, “I think I’d rather be out fighting vampires than being a ‘normal girl’.”

Salem laughed and hugged me comfortingly. “It will be just like before all of this happened. You will ease back into the routine.”

“I doubt it. What will I even talk about now? I spend all of my time either with a vampire or hunting one!”

“Make something up,” he suggested.

“Sure,” I grumbled. “I'll tell her I’ve been on vacation or something.” I hated having to lie to my friend once again, but I didn’t know what else to do.

“They will probably believe it,” he smiled reassuringly, “just try not to think of me suffering. I wouldn't want for you to spontaneously turn into a bird during your meal.”

My eyes widened in horror. I hadn't even thought about that possibility. Salem had said it in jest, but the reality of it was that it could happen.

Salem saw the look on my face and knew what I was thinking before I even spoke. “As I said, avoid those thoughts and you will be fine,” he kissed my forehead and hugged me tightly. “Everything will be great. You will have fun.”

“I hope so...” I said, still shocked at the prospect of accidentally transforming before my human friend. “I think I’m going to go ahead and go to bed.”

“I will be there shortly,” Salem smiled as I released myself from his embrace and wandered upstairs.

Sleep wasn't coming easily. Even now that Salem was beside me, I simply couldn't fall asleep. I pretended to be unconscious, however, because I didn't want him to be concerned. I tried to count sheep, to count backwards from one hundred to one, but the main thing that dwelt in the back of my mind was the possibility of phasing in front of Karen and her cousin. Why had he had to bring that up? Living a “normal life” again seemed impossible. Maybe it was a mistake to have told Karen I would go. Then again, maybe the mistake had been choosing to live this secret life. I was thrust into it, but I still made the final decision.

Before I knew it, the sun was up, barely visible behind the black curtains framing the wide window across the room. I grumbled and rubbed my eyes. At some point I had finally dozed off, but my body felt as though it had never slept. Salem was still beside me, his eyes shut although he wasn't asleep. Slowly, quietly I raised my head over his and stared at his peaceful face. Strands of ebony hair fell across his pale forehead. I brushed them away gently with my fingertip before kissing him delicately on the lips. I gasped as he opened his eyes and a smirk played across his face. He pulled me tight against his body and pressed his lips hard against mine. When our mouths parted, all I could manage to do was smile.

“Good morning,” he mused and kissed me once more.

“It's off to a good start,” I commented, taking his cold hand in mine. “I’m not so sure the rest of the day will be as great. Ugh. Promise me everything will be all right at lunch with Karen?”

“I promise, but it's not something that I have control over,” he replied and tightened his grip on my hand. “You will be fine, Alex.”

“Thanks…” I half-smiled and reluctantly climbed out of bed. I retreated into the shower, hoping to wash away the feeling of exhaustion. It helped somewhat, but I knew the relief wouldn't last. I dressed in a loose-fitting light blue blouse and a black knee-high skirt.

Salem stared at me as I came downstairs. “I take it you like my outfit,” I laughed when I entered the living room, sashaying about mockingly.

“You look lovely,” he replied. “You will fit in perfectly amongst a group of regular girls.”

“That's the plan.” I smiled and was distracted immediately by the small bowl of strawberry yogurt sprinkled with granola on the dining room table. “Is that breakfast?”

“I figured something light would be best, so you have plenty of room for lunch.”

“How thoughtful,” I replied genuinely and began eating. The sweet, creamy texture of the yogurt went perfectly with the crunch of the granola. “I don’t know why but this is so good!”

“I'm glad,” he said from across the table. “If you don't mind, while you are away, I think I would like to test out your laptop.”

“Of course I don't mind.” It was somehow odd picturing Salem using a computer. He wasn't entirely thrilled with the idea of technology, for whatever reason. “What did you want to do on it?”

He shrugged. “I haven't quite decided yet. There are so many things that device can do, it is amazing.”

“I guess you’re right,” I replied, took my bowl to the sink and rinsed it out. I suspected it had more to do with Hannah, but I didn’t want to stir anything up for now.

My thoughts were preoccupied with the view laid out before me. I was resting with my head against my crossed arms as I leaned over the back of the sofa. My eyes were admiring the landscape outside Salem's house – something I had never quite taken
the time to fully enjoy. With how the white paned windows framed the magnificent view, it was almost a surprise that I wasn't staring at a painting.

Tall, dark mountains arched upward in the distance, clouds casting shadows upon the rocky surfaces. Trees surrounded the area from every direction. Most of them were covered in lush, brilliant green leaves. Where there weren't trees, there were berry-speckled bushes, boulders ranging in various sizes, and a wide field of green grass that danced in the breeze. Although I had nearly drowned in its depths twice now, the most captivating piece of this scene was the vast lake.

I could barely make out the trail that led through the dense forest and toward the clearing. I mostly focused on the rippling of the dark blue waters as my eyes slowly fell shut and sleep washed over me.

“Alexis?” Salem said, nudging my shoulder gently, “you're going to be late.”

The temptation to ignore him was difficult to resist, but I raised my head and rubbed my eyes. “Thanks,” I replied groggily, “I guess I didn’t sleep too well. I should probably finish getting ready…”

I ran upstairs, brushed my hair, put on some light make up and tugged on some socks and shoes. As I was leaving, I hugged Salem close and kissed him gently. “I'll miss you.”

“Not nearly as much as I will miss you,” he replied with a simple smile, “call me if anything happens.”

“I will,” I replied and headed out the door.

Karen called me not two minutes after I got into the car and refreshed me on the directions to the place we were meeting at.