Shattered (26 page)

I moved faster than I’d ever
moved in my life, shifting my view from her office to her bedroom in a moment.

“Ms. Vaughn,” a deep voice
said. “She’ll wake up soon. What do you want us to do?” Ms. Vaughn? She’d
gained a little respect since I’d left her in that chapel on her knees. I ran
out of the room and peeked around the corner over the banister. Remi paced back
and forth in front of the stairs. She was wearing a leather leotard, giving me
a view of her butt that I could’ve gone my entire life without seeing.

“Master wants her alive so
she can see her daughter die,” Remi said. “If she wakes before he gets back,
put her down again.”

I left my hiding spot to get
a better view and spotted my mother in the middle of the living room floor,
face down on the floral rug. There was a needle still in her arm. For the
second time, she’d been captured. For the second time, she’d been drugged. I
remembered what Pop had said about her brain being as reliable as his knee. It
was obvious now that my mom was losing her strength.

Remi strutted over to her and
pressed her slutty boot into my mother’s face. She laughed and said, “The great
Lydia Shaw. You don’t seem so great to me. I could kill you right now, if I
wanted to.”

If there was a sound after
that moment, it didn’t register in my head.

I went deaf. I was too angry
to hear. I moved to Remi and pushed her off of my mother. There were more
hunters here than I’d seen from the stairs. They all rushed to me and started
tousling me around. Their faces were twisted like demons, but everything
sounded like the wind.

It was more than easy to get
them off of me. They were light, like feathers, and a simple thought kicked
them back several feet. They rushed to me again. Bad move. I’d taken down their
master. I was more than sure they didn’t want to fight with me, but there they
were, grabbing for me, tempting me. I gave in.

My hands grabbed whatever
came near them–arms, hair,
throats
. I ducked and
kicked and punched until hunters started falling at my feet. I watched their
chests rise and fall to make sure they were alive. I didn’t want my mother to
wake up and find out that I’d killed anyone, and I didn’t want to take any
steps back from how far I’d come.

I felt a hunter behind me. I
brought his throat to my hand and rammed his face into my knee. Then there was
one. Remi’s mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear her.

Remi. Remi. Remi.
She tempted me to act up more than any of the others, but the air
was whispering a warning. Kamon would be awake soon, and a useless fight with a
useless girl would ruin everything.

I kneeled down and lifted Mom
into my arms. Just as the hunters and Remi rushed to us, I teleported out of
the condo. We landed in my living room in Puerto Rico. It was the first place
I’d thought of.

Sophia wasn’t on the sofa
anymore, and the stack of towels had toppled over.

“Sophia!” I screamed.

I guided Mom down to the
sofa, and my dad darted out of the kitchen. “Christine!”

 
His thoughts were blasting in the air. I
was in too much of a panic to make sense of them. Everything jumbled together,
one big, confusing ball of words and emotions.

“What’s wrong with Lydia?” It
wasn’t the time to bring up that he’d said her name.

“She was drugged,” I said. “I
found her.”

Pop shuffled into the room
with his phone to his ear. “Sophia, she’s home,” he said. “With Lydia. Come
now.”

Dad kneeled next to Mom. He
brushed her hair out of her face and leaned in close. “Hey, Lyd, get up. Can
you hear me?”

“I doubt it, Dad.”

Pop wrapped his arms around
me and whispered, “Paul and Emma told your father that you missed a dose of the
potion tonight,” in my ear. I nodded. “Sophia said Kamon lured you.” I nodded
again. “You’re in one piece. Is he?”

He pulled away, a slight
smile playing on his lips. “Yes,” I said. He looked impressed. “
And
his sons.”

He nodded and hugged me
again. “That’s my girl. Tell me what happened,” he said, loud enough for my
father to hear.

I walked him through Kamon’s
trick and the things he’d said to me in the office. Dad didn’t move his eyes or
hands from Mom’s face the whole time. I didn’t even think he was listening
until he said, “It had to be an accident.”

“What?” I said.

“Your powers. When she left,
when she left me, she wasn’t okay. She was kind of in a fog most days. I can
understand why she wouldn’t be thinking about certain things and making
mistakes.”

I fought the urge to drop my
jaw. He understood? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was actually speaking
kindly of my mother like the last seventeen years hadn’t happened.

Sophia appeared in the room and
trapped me in a bone-shattering hug. I pulled away and pointed to Mom. Her
reaction, or lack thereof, shocked me. She didn’t gasp or scream. She simply
kneeled next to Dad and asked Pop for herbs and magical things I’d never heard
of.

Was this a normal thing for
them?

The answer was:
lately
. Lately, Mom losing was a normal
thing.

Pop snapped and whispered
short spells until Sophia had everything she needed to wake my mother up. She
mixed something that looked like honey but smelled like peas and dabbed it
under Mom’s nose. While we waited with baited breath for the concoction to work,
I heard Dad’s thoughts clearly:
Come on,
come on,
come
on. Lyd, wake up
.

Mom gasped like she’d emerged
from a pool of water. “Christine,” she said. “They are planning to take
Christine. With a witch. With my phone. I saw it.”

The warning was way too late.

None of us would’ve known
anything if Mr. Gavin hadn’t wanted to say one more goodbye.

It had taken him two minutes
to notice his daughter had left, another one for Emma and Paul to tell him where
she’d gone, and another for Sophia to inform everyone that Lydia had no reason
to be in New York tonight. It had taken five more minutes for Paul to call me
and get to my house, and one more to get both of us to Sophia’s. In total,
Christine had been missing for ten minutes. Ten minutes with hunters was a
lifetime.

We landed in Sophia’s living
room. I didn’t understand why we were here. If Christine had gone to New York,
that was where I needed to be. Their parents were huddled around Emma, trying
to calm her down. She was a tornado in zebra pajamas. She was calling out
spells over a crystal ball like a witch from a cheesy Halloween movie.

“Sophia and Gregory are out
there searching for her right now,” her father said. “Relax, honey.”

“I will not! We should all be
searching for her. I called you here to help, so help. Help me find my friend.”

“Am I the only one who’s
confused?” her mother asked. “Why would Kamon kidnap Christine? Of all the
witches in the world, why her?”

Emma’s hands were shaking
like she was about to explode. She gazed into the crystal ball that looked
about as useful as the coffee table it was sitting on. Thick tears fell from
her eyes and she dabbed her cheek with her zebra sleeve. She was completely out
of it.

“Because,” she whispered.
“She’s Lydia’s kid. Can you stop asking questions and do something?!”

Oh dear God. She was more
than out of it. She’d just spilled Christine’s secret to their parents who were
now looking like the house was on fire.

“Are you … um … saying that she’s
a copy?” her dad asked.

“Call her that again and I
will stop speaking to you for the rest of my life,” Emma said.

Paul and I ran to her. He
hugged her on one side and I took the other, until … she glared at me and snarled.

“Get off of me!” she
screamed. “Paul, I told you not to call him. How dare you ignore her for weeks
and come here now?”

“Emma, I’m sorry. I needed
time to myself,” I said. Paul stepped in front of Emma, and Paul’s mother
stepped in front of me.

“Friends don’t need time away
from friends,” Paul said. “If you’re going through something, you keep them
around. That’s why the hell you have them in the first place.”

An eerie silence followed.
Paul saying something profound usually had that effect, like the world needed
time to adjust to him being serious. I apologized again for shutting them out,
but if I had to do it all again, I’d do the same thing. Living in a quiet house
full of memories I couldn’t ignore had helped me tremendously.

Paul took Emma to the kitchen
to calm her down and left me alone with their parents.

All four of them gawked at me,
waiting for an explanation I guessed. All I could manage was, “Lydia Shaw has a
kid. It’s Christine. It’s … complicated.”

“And how do we know that?”
Mrs. Ewing asked. “I mean why was she … with you three? I mean …
how
was she with you three?”

“Sophia,” I said. “That’s
what I meant about it being complicated. She works for Lydia.”

I gave them a moment to
digest that. Before now, everyone thought Sophia was just a maid for some rich
family. She was way more than a maid. She helped keep the world in order.

“I’m going to check on them,”
I said. “We should be doing something to find Christine.”

Emma’s dad stood and pointed
one of his ringed fingers at me. He was wearing a long velvet coat over a black
sweater and pants, and for some reason, he was also wearing three long
necklaces. He looked like a stereotypical wizard, one who might try to take
over the world if he didn’t smell like caramel.

“Get back here, young man,”
he said. “Sit down. We’re not done with you.”

“But Christine…” I started.

“But nothing,” Emma’s mother said.
“Sophia is handling it. Just like we told Paul and Emma, you’re not going
anywhere Kamon could be.”

“But I…”

“But
you’re
asking for it if you don’t sit down,” Paul’s father said.
“If you would’ve answered your phone for Paul last week, one of those times you
would’ve heard my voice. Now that you’re here, we need to talk to you. Sit.”

They made a space for me on
the couch, not a very large one. My right thigh was pressed against Mrs.
Arnaud’s and my left was against Mr. Ewing’s.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone
you were in trouble, Nathan?” Mr. Arnaud asked.

I groaned. They couldn’t have
picked a worse time to chastise me. We were approaching thirteen minutes of
Chris being missing. I couldn’t even bear to think of the things a hunter could
do to her in thirteen long minutes.

I apologized again. It felt
like I’d apologized a million times but never to the right person. I still had
yet to tell Christine I was sorry. My heart squeezed and sent a nervous energy
throughout my body. What if I never got the chance to do that? What if I never
spoke to her again?

Breaking up should’ve killed
all notions of the future in my mind, but it wasn’t until now that I felt
it–how final this could be, how she could die and really be out of my
life for good, how there could possibly never be a Noah and Naomi Reece.

“If I lose control again,” I
said. “…I won’t keep it to myself.”

“Damn right you won’t,” Mr.
Ewing said. “Or else.”

Paul and Emma walked back
into the room hand in hand. Emma sniffed and said, “Paul wants me to apologize
to you.” He rolled his eyes. I assumed she wasn’t supposed to say that part.
“I’m sorry I blew up on you. I just can’t lose another sister. I know you care
about her. I’m just…” She shrugged her shoulders to suffice for the rest of her
statement.

“I know,” I said. “
I’m
sorry, and you won’t lose her. We’ll
find her.”

She nodded and begged her
parents to let her try a few spells. After a few well-placed pouts, they
motioned her over to the crystal ball. Her mother kneeled at her right side,
and Paul’s mother kneeled at her left.

“You can do this, Emma,” Mrs.
Arnaud said. “Just relax. You’re strong enough. What do you want to see?”

“Inside of Lydia’s office,” I
suggested.

Their parents shot worried
glances at each other. Finally, Mr. Arnaud sighed and said, “I’ve seen it done.
She can sense it, and it’s a crime worth jail time, but under the
circumstances…”

“She won’t care,” I cut in.
“Trust me. She loves her daughter more than anything.”

Mr. Arnaud nodded and met
them on the floor. Paul and I kneeled on the other side of the coffee table.
Emma started to cry again as everyone linked hands. I moved out of the way so
Paul could reach his dad, and both of them pulled me back into the magical
circle.

Mr. Arnaud whispered a spell
in French. In his accent, with the mood as solemn as it was, the words sent
trimmers up and down my spine. The years my mother had spent teaching me the
language allowed me to understand most of what he’d said.

Through this window, let us see what is not seen, hear what is not
heard.

In English, he added, “Lydia
Shaw’s office. New York, New York.” Smoke swirled inside of the glass orb, and
Mr. Arnaud guided Emma’s hand to the top of it. “
Vous
pouvez
le faire, ma
chérie
.
Trouver
votre
ami
.”

You can do it, darling. Find your friend.

Emma took a deep breath,
tears still streaming, and peered into the crystal ball.

“That’s it,” Mrs. Ewing said.
“Guide it there. The image is almost clear.”

Emma braced one hand on the
coffee table and the other on the crystal ball. A smile spread across her face
as the smoke cleared, leaving an image of Lydia’s office in its place.

I brought my eyes to the
glass, like a kid in front of a television. The view was slightly distorted
from the circular glass, but I saw Lydia’s desk, two empty chairs in front of
it, and …

“Oh my God,” I said, as my eyes
rolled across Kamon’s lifeless body on the floor. There was a needle in his
neck. Everyone took turns gasping. I groaned loudly when I saw the triplets.
They were unconscious like their father.

Emma tapped the glass and
squealed. There was a person standing in the far corner of the room in
rainbow-colored pajamas.

“Chris,” Emma said. She was
staring into open space with four bodies around her. No, five. I’d just noticed
another body, a woman with dark hair.

A laugh that was equal parts
nerves and sheer confusion leapt from my mouth. It seemed safe to assume
Christine had defeated her captors, including Kamon, and had left them weak and
seemingly drugged on the floor.

“Am I seeing what I think I’m
seeing?” Mrs. Arnaud asked.

“If you’re seeing that Chris
kicked some major ass,” Paul said. “…then you’d be right.”

“Language, Paully,” his
mother said.

“Sorry, Mom.”

While we tried to wrap our
heads around what the crystal ball had shown us, Chris vanished.

“Where did she go?” Paul
said. “Did you see that?”

“My God,” his dad said.
“She’s fast.”

“Ask it to follow her,” Mr.
Arnaud said.

As the symphony of hearts in
my ears intensified, Emma whispered, “Follow Christine. Christine Cecilia
Gavin.”

 
The image shifted to a foggy view of Lydia’s
condo. We were looking down at Remi pacing and giving orders to hunters. She
was wearing a ridiculous leather onesie. I caught a glimpse of the floor and
lost my breath.

Lydia. They had Lydia. She
looked sedated.

Christine moved herself from
a hiding spot at the top of the stairs and landed smack in the middle of
trouble. “Babe!” I yelled, like she could hear me. She was surrounded, severely
outnumbered, and impossibly small compared to the rest of them. “Someone take me
there now!”

I jumped to my feet, yanking
Paul up with me. His father tried to calm me down, but it didn’t work. I would
run to L. A. right now before I stood here and watched her fight them.

“Uh, dude?” Paul said,
pointing to the crystal ball. We both lowered to our knees as Christine went
nuts. Her curls blew around her like she was in a wind tunnel. She could fight.
Not just a little, but like she’d fought every day of her life. I guessed that
was a perk of being the accidental copy of Lydia Shaw–the woman who’d
killed Frederick Dreco and many of his followers with a thought.

If anyone in this room didn’t
believe whose child she was before, they had to see it now as Chris laid out
hunter after hunter, saving Remi for last. Until this moment, the moment where her
eyes locked with her enemy, I hadn’t comprehended what her bloodline really
meant. The girl I loved possessed all of the powers that made the world fear
and revere Lydia freaking Shaw.

She was Christine freaking
Gavin.

“Get her, Chris!” Emma
rooted. “Get her!”

“Take. Her. Down. Take. Her.
Down,” Paul chanted.

Is that what you did to Hottie after he pushed you?
Remi asked. Chris didn’t
respond. She didn’t even blink. I wanted to jump through the crystal ball and
take Remi out myself.
Or maybe you let him
hit you. Maybe you liked it?

Christine’s face was still
and calm, like her words had no effect on her. Or maybe she hadn’t heard her at
all. While she stared Remi down, the hunters around them stood. But before I
could even panic, Chris grabbed her mother and left the room without doing
anything to Remi.

“Follow her!” Emma yelled.

Smoke filled the crystal
ball, and I waited impatiently for it to clear. I drummed my hands on the table
and grunted, then again when it still didn’t show us Christine.

“Please fix it,” I said, and
flicked the glass.

“It’s not a television,
Nathan,” Mr. Arnaud said. “She could’ve gone somewhere more protected. By
magic, I would say.”

“She’s home,” Emma said. “I’m
going there!”

Her father told her to give
Christine time to breathe after all we’d seen her do. I called Sophia, but her
phone went straight to voicemail, that time and the three after it.

Paul’s phone rang in his
pocket, and we all jumped. “It’s Pop,” he said, and answered it.

I heard him say:
She’s fine. She’s with us. I’ll call you
when things calm down here.

Those words turned our
Pay-Per-View fight party into a calm and tearful hug fest. Paul saved me for
last.

“When Em and I went into the
kitchen earlier,” he said. “…I took a change of clothes from your house.” He still
hadn’t let go. “They’re in an empty room upstairs. I hope you’ll consider
staying. Either that or continue being a douche. Your choice.”