Nightwish (An Echoes of Eternity Novel Book 1) (20 page)

“Evil?” Alexis asked, snickering. “Far from it, sister. When it comes to magic, I’m the closest thing you have to a friend.” Her expression grew thoughtful, free of animosity. “Who else could teach you?” Now she appeared full of pity. “To know that I’m a twin, that there’s a replica of me in this world, even if she’s a flawed, goody-two-shoes…” She shrugged as a smile appeared. “It’s kinda cool.” She met my stare with an enthusiastic expression. “I could teach you…
so
much!”

Alexis had permitted some measure of sentimentality to enter her countenance, and I didn’t know how to take it. Had she resorted to that tactic as a scheme to disarm me, only to turn against me later? Rather than respond, because I didn’t know what to say, I rubbed my hands up and down Kendall’s chilled side to warm her up and pulled her body closer to mine to conserve heat.

Brandon set his eyes on mine. “You should go.” Irritation marked his expression. “You’ve done enough!”

I looked at him and felt betrayed, but after a couple seconds, I realized that Brandon not only spoke his mind, but I got the impression that he also expected me to learn more about my sister, to make certain that something of this magnitude wouldn’t happen again.

The man Alexis had danced with earlier appeared in the background, stopping at the outskirts of the light that hovered over the dance floor. He glanced around the club, puzzled as to why so many guests had vacated the area.

Even though darkness obstructed my view of this mystery man, I couldn’t help but imagine that it was Nolan. Not that his unexpected appearance would help the situation playing out before me. Like almost every other person in the country, he probably knew nothing about the paranormal powers that some people obtained. Even more likely, given his penchant for stoicism, he would be unaffected by what took place before him. I guessed that Nolan would examine the situation, determine the likely outcome, and head in the opposite direction, not in fear but in disinterest.

The mystery man stared at Alexis then placed his attention on me. He did another double take, as though doubting that two people could share nearly identical DNA. Then he headed toward the exit, determined not to look our way again as he left the building.

At that moment, my sixth sense told me that Nolan had indeed left the club, that he’d figured he’d spent time with me on dance floor…until he saw both me and Alexis on the dance floor. Although he hadn’t appeared shocked, he’d certainly left the club in a rush of confusion. And who could blame him?

I set my sights on Alexis. “I think it’s scary, having a twin sister, someone who looks exactly like me, except much better in so many ways.” I didn’t need to lie to pump up her ego: Alexis was much more beautiful and powerful than me. No one could dispute those facts. I didn’t want to acknowledge those positive attributes, mostly because of her earlier statements about wanting to kill me. But I hoped to touch on elements that she might not openly regard as important: a conscience. Of course, that idea seemed preposterous: how could she adjust her murderous intentions so swiftly?

But when I looked at Alexis with greater scrutiny, I couldn’t detect a singular bad intention. If anything, she appeared curious, even regretful. I wondered if she talked about murdering me to placate our mother, who couldn’t fulfill her intentions due to the restrictions magic placed on that possibility.

I could relate to wanting to make a maternal figure proud, but I speculated that Alexis had lived a much tougher life than I had, and I couldn’t tell if she’d acted out of earnestness or dishonesty. Because I wanted to know the truth, I heeded Brandon’s unspoken suggestion.

“I think you’ve gotten the wrong impression about me.”

Alexis stared at me hard and tried to ascertain if I’d set a trap for her. She spent a long time in silent mode, attempting to determine if she should trust me.

“We should talk.”

“I’m sure someone called the cops.” Alexis glanced around but, seeing no one, she shrugged. “All right, we have a few minutes. Let’s do it, sister.”

The emphasis on “sister” told me that she still doubted my motives, but that she was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. I took some time to analyze her features, but once again, I couldn’t identify a single negative intention. My sister was probably a pro at lying, and that knowledge obviously didn’t make me feel any more comfortable around her. A perfect example: I still suspected that she wanted to kill me.

“After you,” Alexis said, gesturing toward the exit.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ten minutes later, as we sat down across from each other at a circular table at the back of Starbucks, I couldn’t get over the idea that my sister said she had no qualms about killing me. I scrutinized her face, but no matter how hard I tried to infer whatever feelings she might convey, I failed.

Alexis stared at me with a blank expression. “Well, here we are. Twin sisters. With nothing to talk about.” She glanced at the six or seven people at the other end of the shop before turning her attention back to me.

“That’s not true. I don’t know anything about our family’s past. I’d say I deserve some answers. So why not start from the beginning.” Nerves that jutted to the surface, demanding that I keep talking, made it difficult for me to remain quiet. I told myself to shut up and let Alexis reveal whatever she felt like discussing.

“Zephora,” Alexis said, meeting my gaze with an impenetrable stare. “She was the first witch in our line. She must’ve been a fluke of evolution.” She sat back, relaxing in the contours of a plush, leather armchair. “Most aspects of her DNA got passed along to every female in our line who came after her.”

I wanted to say something to break the silence, but doing so would reveal my nervousness, so I just stared at her and waited.

“She was the reason the Witch Trials took place in Salem. The villagers suspected that a number of witches existed in Massachusetts. It’s the reason everyone in our line forsakes religion.” She notched an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“I believe in God, but I’m not necessarily religious.”

“Believing in God means you’re religious.”

I disregarded the statement. “God exists,” I said, leaving that statement to stand-alone.

Alexis snickered. “If you say so.” She leaned forward. “I’ve given it some thought. Actually, more than a little and this is what I’ve come up with: you and I can control molecular structure. Has God given that ability to others? No. Only we have that ability. So ask yourself: why?”

“What makes you think God gave us that ability?”

“Exactly. If He was so fair, why didn’t He allow everyone to have some type of supernatural ability?” Alexis sat back like a lawyer, resting her case.

“You’re saying God didn’t give us these powers. So who did?”

“Lucifer,” she said without hesitation.

“You’re serious? You think Satan gave you the power to freeze matter?”

“Of course.”

I noticed that no one paid us any attention, so I lifted a hand toward her, calling upon all of the energy that I spent so much effort trying to repel and sent a blast of heat her way.

Immediately, she raised her hand, sending a torrent of frost toward me.

The streams of divergence met in the middle. Our powers cancelled themselves out: my heat meeting her freezing capabilities, drawing crackling energy between us.

“It seems,” I said, lowering my palm to avoid drawing attention, “that we can use our powers to hurt each other.”

She retracted her hand as a cocky smile entered her expression. “I guess so. Makes it interesting, doesn’t it?”

Her arrogance made it difficult to meet Alexis on her own level. “What does that mean?”

Her grin widened. “That I can kill you. And you can kill me…if I allowed it.”

Once again, I couldn’t overlook her egotistical nature. But what made her rely on it to such a great degree? “What makes you think I couldn’t take you down?”

She picked up her latte and glanced around the mostly empty shop. “Because I have fifteen years of experience on you. Oh, don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault Mother Dearest gave up on you.”

I tried not to take offense. “And why do you think that was?”

Alexis smirked. “She sensed that I had more power than you.”

“In what way?”

“You were given more toward emotion. I’m not.”

“In other words, you’re more heartless.”

She laughed. “If that’s the way you need to see things…then go right ahead.”

“So you don’t agree?”

“Hell, no. Look, I have a daughter that I love, a mother that I’d do anything for, and a sister who I can’t relate to.”

“In other words, you don’t trust me.”

“That sums it up. I don’t trust you. But you feel the same way, so it doesn’t bother me.”

I found her honesty refreshing. “So you don’t want to kill me?”

That question gave her pause. “Mom sensed you last night, so I decided to have some fun with you. Why not? You weren’t invited in our house and you were trespassing.” She cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “An intruder? For a goody-two-shoes? My, my, not what I expected from our Little Miss University.”

I didn’t give any indication that her nickname got under my skin, even though it did. “It’s not like I planned for it to happen. I was sleeping and the next thing I knew, I was in your house.”

Surprise entered her expression. “So, you don’t know how to turn it on or off?”

“Nope. I’ve only done it once. I just think about a place and a second later, I end up there. If that’s all it takes, it shouldn’t be too hard to control it.”

“If that doesn’t work, you’re saying that you might drop in on us again?”

“It’s possible.”

Alexis nodded, accepting that statement with aplomb. “You see why I have a problem with that, right?”

“Of course.” I sipped my cappuccino. “I’d feel the same way.”

“Thanks for your honesty. I hate liars.”

“So, you don’t lie?”

Alexis eased forward, setting her gaze on mine with complete sincerity. “I will
never
lie to you.”

As much as I wanted to discount her statement as a fabrication, I couldn’t. I believed her. But that only applied to what she might
tell
me. It didn’t include what she might omit. It certainly didn’t include what she might
do
.

“I want to earn your trust,” she said.

Why? So she could break it later? Besides, who actually said they wanted to earn another person’s trust? It told me that people didn’t trust her and that she needed to work hard to get others to believe in her. Still, I would have loved to have a family, to be part of something bigger than myself. And having an identical twin, I might have found exactly that. I already regarded Celestina as family. So why couldn’t I duplicate that inclination with my sister?

“You don’t trust me,” Alexis said. The vulnerable look in her eyes vanished. “I get that. But I saw the connection you share with my daughter.” The word ‘daughter’ made her voice crack, and she looked down, disappointed to have allowed another to see how much she cared for another person. “And I’m willing to trust her belief in you.”

I analyzed her expression, scanning her for any sense of a lie or misgiving, but the deeper I looked the more I trusted her. It comforted me, settled some of my uneasiness. Alexis kept looking at me as though expecting another line of questioning, but she was unwilling to provide answers until I raised a question. More than that, she realized how awkward I felt about the topic, and she enjoyed watching me squirm.

“You asked me not to ask, but I’m asking. Celestina’s father?”

“A man who dated Mother…one time. He arrived for their second date, but Mother hadn’t gotten home from work yet.” She paused, swallowed, and it took her a moment to regain her composure. “He raped me.” Her dispassionate voice revealed that she distanced herself emotionally from the incident. While not one muscle on her face budged, which lent the impression that she spoke without feeling, Alexis’s glistening eyes disclosed that no matter how hard she tried, she’d never be able to discuss the subject without feeling…something.

Hearing that shocking revelation, I forgot about my comfort level and wanted to reach out and comfort her. But instinct told me that Alexis would brush off any compassion. Even more so, she would consider me weak for giving in to sentimentality. Heat turned my cheeks red in shame for making her recall such a painful experience. At the same time, I couldn’t help but want to say that no one deserved such agony, much less a living embodiment of the memory, but thankfully, Celestina turned out to be virtuous.

“I wanted to get an abortion,” Alexis continued, “but Mother…” she trailed off, biting her lip in distaste. “Mother wouldn’t let me. She didn’t explain why at the time, and I hated her for it. But the moment I gave birth, I was glad that I kept my daughter.” A beautiful smile touched her lips. “I knew she was special. Celestina is my everything.” She shook her head as tears shimmered in her eyes. “She gives my life meaning. I’d be lost without her.” She looked down and cleared her throat as if something had been lodged in her throat, and she’d tried to clear it.

Given my sister’s powers, however, I doubted that she allowed the rapist to go free without punishment. “How did you deal with…”

“The man who raped me?” she asked, holding her head high, unwilling to let the memory overshadow her mind.

“I didn’t do a thing. But when I told Mother, I’d never seen her so furious. I didn’t see what happened, but…I heard the screams.” She looked off to the side. “I can still hear his shrill voice now. Begging. Pleading. But Mother showed him no mercy.” A malevolent smile appeared on her face. “I imagined that she’d frozen him, then before he died from hypothermia, she’d melt the ice with heat that scorched his skin. His screams were so savage. I
loved
listening to them. It felt like he
finally
understood what he’d put me through, what he made me endure. I only wish Mother spent a few more hours making him…uncomfortable.”

I stared at her, startled by everything I’d heard, mostly because as Alexis said…she hadn’t seen the torture take place, she had only heard it. And I couldn’t lie; a miniscule part of me approved of the measures our mother had taken to seek justice.

“Because you and my daughter have a special relationship,” Alexis said in a bitter tone that made it obvious that she divulged more than a bit of jealousy, “I’ll trust that you won’t hurt her in any way…even if you haven’t mastered your abilities.” Her eyes bore into mine.

“I’d never hurt her.”

“I believe that.” She looked down as though ashamed to admit that. “And that’s the only reason I feel that your grandmother did a decent job of parenting...you, at least.”

Since Alexis hadn’t any experience with Grams, she must have picked up that same devotion to familial bonds from her mother, despite alluding to the poor job our mother did in guiding her throughout childhood and adolescence. I couldn’t speak to that, of course, but since Alexis obviously knew more about our mother’s upbringing that than I did, I said, “Maybe Grams tried to raise me the way she would have preferred to raise Delphine.”

“Maybe, but from what I’ve heard, I did a better job parenting as an eight-year-old than Lorraine did at four times my age. How could I respect that?”

“No one’s perfect. Not you. Not me. But we learn from our experiences. I think we have that in common, but I can’t say the same about our mother.”

Alexis’s upper lip curled with distaste for a fraction of a second before settling into a frown. “I can’t blame you. I’d feel the same way about her if she abandoned me. So you can astral project and create fire. What’s your final ability?”

“I don’t know.”

“Astral projection: that’s supposed to be a big deal. In my opinion? Totally overrated. You can’t touch or move things. No one can hear you or see you.” She grinned, looking pleased to have me at a disadvantage. “Who cares if your spirit can travel around? Hopefully, your last gift isn’t so lame. Take my ability to read minds. At first, all these voices kept bombarding me, and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. But I learned how to control which voices I let in. Once I got that down, there’s nothing better.” She leaned closer. “Because when you think about it, your mind is the ultimate prize: you store all your memories there, all your hopes and fears.” She smirked. “It only takes me thirty seconds to know everything about anyone.”

“I doubt that,” I said.

Alexis’s face went slack, unemotional.

Ping! I felt my sister examining my mind the way a person paged through a book, skipping forward, disregarding uninteresting aspects before slowing down upon spotting something of interest.

“You’re scared about your future,” Alexis said. “You’re the bandleader, but you’re afraid of letting your friends down. You think your new guitarist is
totally
hot…” Alexis produced a genuine smile. “Ooh, I’m already looking forward to meeting him.”

I tried to clear my mind, but images kept popping up, no matter how hard I’d tried to clear them from my thoughts. “You won’t,” I said, pushing my chest against the table quickly enough to stop her from talking.

“Ooh,” Alexis said. “You’ve got my interest.” She grinned. “Who’s this guitarist?”

“None of your business.”

“People are rotten,” my sister said. “They have disgusting thoughts.”

The curious tickle in my brain vanished. I presumed she ended her analysis so quickly to show me how easily she could enter and exit my mind.