I gave him a duhlook and gestured between us, at the invisible electricity flowing between us. “Well, obviously.” He smiled amusedly, getting what I meant. “But that’s not what I’m talking about.” He shifted in his seat, his knee bumping into mine for a split second, but it was enough to send a shockwave of heat through my body. “I mean, we’re the same in the sense of how we think.”
“I don’t…” I furrowed my eyebrows. Was I…like Alex?
He continued to struggle to put his feelings into words, I could tell because it was something I often did. Okay, so maybe we were kind of the same.
“I mean, we’re the same in the way we think,” he finally said, letting out a loud breath. “Like for instance, how neither one of us thinks about the future.” He paused, waiting for me to tell him if he was correct or not—if I thought about my future.
And this sad and unsettling feeling passed over me as I realized I hadn’t—not really anyway. I had never pictured what I would be, where I would go, or what I would do.
“I don’t,” I said, shocked by this sudden revelation. “I don’t think about my future.”
“Neither have I, really.” Alex flopped back in the sofa, his face twisted with confusion. “All my life I’ve focused on one thing…and that was being the Keeper my father wanted me to be.”
I slowly leaned back against the sofa, my brain running a million-miles-a-second. What would I do when this was all over? What would I do if I saved the world? What would I do with my life?
“We could go somewhere,” he said, meeting my eyes.
“You and I.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Just you and me?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Why so doubting? Think about it. You put the vision back to what it was, and we no longer have to worry about my father playing out his crazy world-ending plan and you and I can actually do whatever we want for once.”
“Whatever we want.” The words felt funny rolling off my tongue, but in a good way. “Where would we go?” He shrugged, his eyes twinkling in the pale pink light that was flowing through the living room window. “Where do you want to go?”
God, the possibilities were endless, yet I couldn’t choose one. “I don’t know…someplace warm, I guess.” He laughed softly and it was a genuine laugh; the kind of laugh that lit up his bright green eyes; the kind of laugh that made my heart skip a beat. “And we’ll fly there, like how normal people travel because we’ll have all the time in the world…” he trailed off, his face growing serious. “We’ll have all the time in the world to spend together….forever, like we promised.”
I would have said something, but I was choking on the rapid thudding of my heart. I looked away at the floor. It sounded like such a nice plan…and what if it actually ended up happening—could it actually happen?
I felt his fingers graze across the back of my neck—
across my Foreseer’s mark—moving downward until they were touching my shoulder blade where my Keeper’s mark was tattooed.
My eyelids fluttered. Oh my God.
“Gemma,” he whispered with so much want.
And suddenly I knew what I wanted. A life I had never pictured before—a life I never thought I could picture. I jumped up and left Alex sitting on the couch with his mouth hanging open. I barreled up the stairs and burst into my bedroom. I ran over to my dresser and grabbed the mapping ball from out of the top drawer.
Yes, I knew what I wanted more than anything.
I wanted to fix it all, so I could live a normal life with the boy waiting for me downstairs.
Chapter 25
“Should we wake everyone up?” Alex asked when I returned to the living room with the mapping ball glittering in my hand.
I shook my head, my smile way to inappropriate for the situation I was about to put myself into. I knew what I was doing was dangerous, for the clear fact that I didn’t know what I was doing. All I could hope was that I would be able to find the vision and change it back to what it was. All I had to do was erase my dad, before he ruined everything.
It sounded so simple, yet it wasn’t. I mean, first off, just how many memories was I going to have to sort through before I made it to the right one? Nicholas had said the answer was in my mind, but what did that even mean? And then, there was always the concern that Nicholas had been feeding me a line when he told me all I had to do was erase my father before he recreated the vision.
Here’s the thing, though. I had a mom upstairs, branded by the mark of evil; a beautiful vampire friend, who was so sad it made my heart break every time I looked at him; a witch friend who was afraid to show who she really was; and a gorgeous guy sitting next to me who I wanted to lean over and press my lips to his, yet I couldn’t.
All this…well, it was enough for me to want to go in there and risk whatever I needed to, so I could fix it. So I could take the pain away from everyone and give them a future without death, loneliness, and despair.
So, I stood in the middle of the living room, opened my hand, and let the Purple Flame ignite. And I had to admit, it made me feel kind of powerful.
The purple glow lit up the worry in Alex’s bright eyes, but he didn’t say anything. He was letting me go be the Gemma I was supposed to be.
“Don’t worry,” I told him with a small smile. “This is what I was made to do.”
And with those last words, I set the mapping ball in my hand, right into the Purple Flame.
Then, I was gone.
Chapter 26
Actually, no I wasn’t. I thought I was, but when I opened my eyes, I was still in the living room, the Purple Flame burning as the glittering mapping ball sparkled in my hand.
“It didn’t work.” Alex’s mouth slipped into a frown.
I frowned too, glowering at the mapping ball. “But, why didn’t it work?”
Alex came over and examined the mapping ball without touching it. “I don’t know…maybe the Purple Flame wasn’t what we needed. I mean, you did get the idea from a note left on your bed.” He leaned away. “We don’t even know who left the note.”
Someone who smelt an awful lot like Nicholas, I thought, remembering the smell of flowers that had lingered outside my window after I found the note. But I didn’t say anything about this out loud, not wanting to look like a nut job and all.
“Yeah, but, I mean, the Purple Flame existed.” I glanced at the flame burning brightly in my hand. “It’s got to be used for something.”
We stood silently, staring at the flame, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. But the only answer we got was the tick of the clock.
I sighed, removed the mapping ball from my hand, and smothered out the Purple Flame. “Dammit, I thought I had it.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.” Alex dragged his finger across my lip and I found myself growing more frustrated because I was supposed to be fixing everything so I could kiss his lips. “Maybe it’s because you’re trying too hard…
sometimes your power doesn’t work when you drain yourself dry.”
“Yeah, I guess that could be it.”
He quickly brushed his finger across my cheek, the touch was enough to make me shiver…and want more.
“Maybe you should go lie down and try to sleep for a bit, and then try again when you wake up.” His voice cracked and I wondered if he felt it too—the want.
“Okay, I will.” And then I practically ran upstairs, figuring the sooner I got to sleep, the sooner I could wake up and fix all this. And the sooner Alex and I could have our future.
Okay, so the sleeping thing wasn’t working. I was too restless to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about Alex. The prickle was also going wild, pouring all these weird feelings through me. So, instead of sleeping, I ended up lying in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, trying to decipher the meaning behind these feelings. But it was ending up being as difficult as getting into the mapping ball.
And that’s when I heard it. The voice—that’s what I was calling it.