Liar.
Putting her hands back on my head, Sophia muttered something under her breath, and her hands started to glow a bright gold. I gasped at the same time Little Gemma gasped, and I actually saw…I actually saw the life slip from her violet eyes, like a light switch had been flipped off.
Sophia pulled her hands away, the golden light fading from her hands. “There, it’s done.” She turned to Stephan. “Now what do we do.”
“Now you and Marco will take her to Afton, just like we talked about,” Stephan said, seeming pleased.
Umm…How could they not be suspicious of him?
“And you’ll make sure she stays this way.
Understood?”
Sophia nodded. “Okay, then.”
As they all gathered to leave, I watched Little Gemma move robotically as Sophia guided her out of the room. I did not follow because I didn’t want to follow. I wanted to go back and forget this ever happened. But deep down I knew only one of these things was possible.
I closed my eyes and willed myself to leave this place. And before I knew it, I was being yanked back.
Chapter 12
My eyes shot open and the first thing I saw was a dark blue ceiling. Then Laylen’s worried faced appeared above me.
What just…happened?” He spoke slowly as if he was too terrified to speak.
I started to sit up, but he put his hand on my shoulder, pinning me down. “Don’t sit up until we figure out why you passed out.”
“I didn’t pass out,” I told him. “I went into a vision.” Laylen’s eyes widened just like I knew they would.
“That’s what happens when you go into vision without a crystal—you just black out.”
I nodded, and then came the voice.
The most annoying voice ever.
“So you went into a vision?” Nicholas asked.
“Without a crystal.”
“Ah, crap.” I didn’t even bother to say it in my head. I lifted Laylen’s hand off of my shoulder and sat up, dizzy and getting a total head rush. I blinked a few times while I waited for the room to stop spinning.
“Did I hit my head?” I asked Laylen. “When I blacked out?”
Laylen shook his head. “No, I caught you before you did. You scared the crap out me, though. One minute you were talking, and then next you were falling out of the chair.”
“Nice,” I muttered.
“Nice for you,” Laylen teased. “But do you know how difficult it is to catch falling dead weight.” I shook my head and got to my feet.
“So you can go into visions without a crystal ball?” Nicholas asked with intrigued.
Nicholas knowing about this was probably not a good thing. “No, I used a crystal ball,” I lied.
“No you didn’t—I’d have known if you had,” he said with a smirk. “But nice try.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
“So,” Nicholas said, marveling at me as though I was the most fascinating thing he had ever laid eyes on. “You can go into a vision without the help of a crystal…fascinating.”
Even though Alex wasn’t here, I could picture him giving me a twenty minute lecture about my stupid mistake of letting Nicholas know about my uncommon Foreseer ability.
“I guess,” I said, acting like it wasn’t a big deal, when really it was since a Foreseer traveling into visions minus the crystal is a very unheard of—if not completely unheard—thing.
“How long have you known you could do it?” Nicholas asked with way too much interest.
I shrugged. “Not too long.”
Nicholas’s golden-eyed gaze practically burned into me, not in a bad way, but in a good way. Or should I say a bad/good way, because the guy had already shown way too much interest in me, and with the way he was staring at me, I had a feeling that his interest way going to increase. A lot.
“Do you know how rare that is?” Nicholas awed at me.
I gave a shrug “I guess. I mean, Alex said there might be one other guy that could do it.” Nicholas’s eyes devoured me. “That other guy is Dyvinius’s younger brother, who’s been a Foreseer for a really long time, and comes from a line of many, many powerful Foreseers. He isn’t some girl who just got her Foreseer’s mark only a couple of days ago.
Do you know how unlikely it is for anyone to be able to do that…you would have to be…” He trailed off.
“Have to be what?” I asked, dying to hear what came at the end of that. What if Nicholas knew something about my little gift?
“Very powerful,” he finished.
Well, crap. Powerful I was. Or at least I had a lot of power flowing around inside me. But Nicholas was not supposed to know this.
Play it cool, Gemma.“Yeah, well, if I am, then that’s news to me.”
“Really,” he said, and I could tell he wasn’t buying it.
“Yeah, really.” Was all I could think of to say.
“So weren’t you supposed to be bringing back that Ira crystal ball with you?” Laylen interrupted, in an effort to sidetrack Nicholas.
“Yeah,” Nicholas said, his eyes still fixed on me as he patted the pocket of his jeans “I have it.”
“Well, shouldn’t you get to work, then.” Laylen was trying really hard to direct Nicholas’s attention away from me and my power, but Nicholas wasn’t having any part of it. “I mean, I’m sure it’s going to take awhile to train Gemma, or whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Maybe…” The way Nicholas was looking at me made me want to crawl under the table and hide.
“Maybe not.”
“Regardless of how long it’ll take, I think we should get started now,” I told Nicholas. The sooner the better, at least for my mom’s sake.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s get started.”
I was quickly catching on that Nicholas had the attention span of a child. We sat down on the living room floor, all Séance-style, sitting cross-legged, facing one another, a regular, violet ribbon crystal ball placed between us as he taught me how to become a
“better Foreseer” and control my seeing ability. But it was going to take forever because he kept asking me questions. Questions that I wasn’t sure how to answer.
“Why do you need to go to The Underworld?” he asked, before we’d really gotten anywhere with my training.
“Um…” I hesitated, not sure what to do. Lie.
Probably not, since he was going to end up finding out when he went down to The Underworld with me.
“To get my mother.”
He nodded. “I met her once. Didn’t she disappear quite a few years ago?”
“Fourteen years ago,” I said absentmindedly, my hands hovering over the crystal ball.
“And that’s where she ended up?” Nicholas asked interestedly. “In The Underworld?”
“Yeah…” I stared down at the violet ribbons, swirling inside the crystal. “That’s where she ended up.”
“How?”
Crap. “I…a…I don’t know.”
I worried he would ask more questions, but instead he picked up the Ira that was sitting on the floor to the side of us, the moss colored glass sparkling beautifully when it hit the light.
“Well, this should get us there,” Nicholas said, twisting the Ira in his hands. “Just as long as we can get you to control your Foreseer power a little bit better, which shouldn’t be too difficult, considering you can enter visions without a crystal ball.” I didn’t say anything.
Nicholas tossed the crystal ball in the air like it was a baseball. “So who’s your father?”
Good Question. “I’m not sure exactly.” He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “You’re not sure? How’s that possible?”
“When your mother refuses to tell anyone before she gets trapped in The Underworld,” I replied, with a small amount of bitterness because I wished she’d have told someone. I mean, why did it have to be a secret? Who was he?
“So for all you know,” Nicholas tossed the crystal ball in the air again, and it spun so quickly that when the light kissed it, it looked like a mere reflection.