Chapter 9
Bayla
Swept
Jay Varton
My head was full of questions. So many unanswered questions, from which I could now build a dusty collection.
Just barely, by a hair’s breadth, Julie Blair had saved me from this diabolical ritual and her cousin from her first murder... and had thrown the whole Circle into turmoil.
The red-haired Madame had brought us back, so we hadn’t noticed anything else. She and my mother had been silent the whole ride, forcing me to listen to Oliver Bexley forecasting more storms and a late winter for the next few weeks, before the Madam had turned off the radio.
This silence was clearly due to recent events in Moenia. And, for heaven’s sake, Julie’s skin was the last one I wanted to be in.
I stood in the kitchen at the countertop, where Mum had begun hastily clearing out the sink. A little too hastily. She was behaving strangely again, but this time that wouldn’t stop me from asking questions. I wanted to know what was going on.
“Mum...” She turned to me as if I’d told her I’d taken drugs. Something she’d written her dissertation on. Just bringing the subject up caused heated discussions, and I was sure it was one of the reasons why the relationship between her and my best – still missing, by the way – friend was so fraught with tension.
“Yes, my darling?” she said as if I had snapped her out of a daydream. Her face was as white as a sheet of paper.
“Julie’s powers... Are they special? I mean, you only told me about four elements...” Mum stared at me. “I mean, there might be exceptions. Mixtures...”
I fiddled with my blue crystal necklace, which I had put back on as soon as the Madame had disappeared. The pointed crystal of those witches had hurt, and so I had banished it to my brown leather backpack.
Mum’s gaze relaxed a little, and she folded the wipe in her shaky hands.
“Indeed. There are particularities. Just not like this.” She reached for the glasses on the worktop and put them in the dishwasher. “There are four elements, just as I explained to you, and no, there’s no mixing. That’s impossible.”
“But she has...”
“Julie has, for whatever reason, inherited her father’s magic. That can happen with strong bloodlines. But it’s rare, and since male Quatura don’t walk around everywhere, it’s very special.”
“How rare is Julie’s gift?” I asked.
“There was supposedly a Blair in 1880 who inherited her father’s gift, but that’s all I know about it. Anyway, it was a common element. Not like this one.”
“And the whole drama was only because Julie and the other woman, her mother, hid it?”
It seemed strange to me that you were apparently obliged to reveal something like that, even if you wanted nothing to do with the whole mess. But Julie also seemed to have a problem controlling this element, otherwise it wouldn’t have been revealed this way – at a ritual with so many crazy hooded satanists.
Even though my mother was one of them, I tried to mentally separate her from this sect, which I was becoming less and less successful at doing.
And even though I had scrubbed it directly off in Moenia, I could still feel the dirt on my forehead. And this time it had felt like real blood again.
“You have to understand that a hidden power, especially one like that, is a kind of betrayal against the Circle.” Mum turned her attention back to the pots. “These are potential gifts that benefit the sisterhood...” She paused and looked at me with a serious expression. “Or could drag it to its doom.”
I immediately thought of the things Julie’s mother had said about Julie’s father.
“That Alaister...”
Mum stopped clearing the sink and turned to me.
“You shouldn’t mention his name,” she said with a more than worried look.
Who was he? Voldemort?
“Why?” I asked suspiciously. “Whatever he did. There’s no one here right now who would arrest you for telling the truth.”
She seemed to hesitate, playing with her fingers.
“I just want you to know.” She finally sighed. “Please don’t ever mention him. Especially not in front of Gloria or any Circle members.”
This man must have done something. Something very bad. Bad enough that even his own mother wouldn’t talk about him. Maybe he really was something like Voldemort after all...
From everything I had heard about Gloria today, she seemed like an extremely principled woman. Someone you didn’t want to mess with unnecessarily. I had no plans to, either.
What did Mum think? I just wanted to get out of here and leave behind this Circle that just couldn’t let go of me. When would they finally realize that they were wrong about me?
“What did he do?” I asked hesitantly, as if I knew how my mother would react.
“Nobody talks about him.”
“But...”
“No one,” she emphasized, raising her eyebrows to show me that this discussion wasn’t going to happen.
But I protested. “I’m your daughter.”
Mum came rushing around the countertop and put both hands on my shoulders.
“And that’s why it’s best that you don’t always know everything.” I couldn’t help but look at her in disbelief. “There are wounds that shouldn’t be reopened. People want to forget, want to move on from something at some point, and you should respect that.”
Her voice was quiet, almost tinged with a kind of sadness, as if I had hurt her, even though I knew she was just trying to tell me that certain things weren’t talked about in order to respect other people’s boundaries.
I couldn’t help but feel that something about all this silence felt wrong, strange, and toxic. More like repressing something that would catch up with you sooner or later because you kept dwelling on it in your mind, giving it space in your life.
Ever since Mum’s old life seemed to catch up with her, there were problems between the two of us. Namely, whenever she tried with all her strength to hide something.
At that very moment, when Mum was standing in front of me, I had the chance to tell her, but something inside me said it was hopeless. She looked exhausted, and at the same time I didn’t want another conflict.
So, I just nodded and hugged her. Mum pulled me tightly against her. Her body was so unnaturally warm and then something caught my nose, something sweet…
“I’m so glad you survived. What would I do without my baby?”
She stroked my back with her warm hand. The smell rose stronger in my nose, literally fogging me up. I opened my mouth and tore myself away from my mother, stumbling back.
She looked at me worriedly. “Are you all right, Bayla?”
I stared at her. The smell was gone, and all that remained was confusion.
What had that been? What in God’s name had that been?
I heard my heart beating, very fast... and how... her heart was beating...
“Bayla?” Mum’s concern seemed to grow.
“You... you’re so warm,” I said quickly. “Are you sick?”
Mum started to laugh, “Sick? Actually, I’m physically fine at the moment.”
She looked at me in confusion.
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m feeling quite well.”
“You should lie down and...” I didn’t even let her finish her sentence, nodded quickly and hurriedly made my way upstairs. Mum called after me. “I can make you some tea!”
“It’s okay,” I replied quickly and when I had disappeared from her sight, I stormed upstairs to my room, where I closed the door not very gently and dropped onto the bed.
My hands had started to take on a life of their own and were shaking like crazy.
It didn’t matter how much I thought about what had just happened. It didn’t make any sense. I tried to block it out somehow. Maybe I should read something.
I jumped up and went to my bookshelf. No, not Jane Austen again, something new. I hastily skimmed the spines, but my gaze slid to the floor, where other books were already piled up, just like by my bed. And then I spotted the note peeking out from under my bed.
Camera Obscura
Angus MacRae
“The letter...” I whispered in realization, remembering how the wind had blown it away a few weeks ago. I had looked for it but had finally given up.
Full of euphoria, I crossed my room, bent down, and pulled the yellowed envelope, which had a coffee stain in the creased corner, out from under my bed.
For Alice.
Whoever that was.
I remembered finding the letter in one of the books on the bedside table. Then I also remembered how Mum had reacted to me snooping around her old room in the first place.
The temptation to read the letter after all this time, after all the things I’d already experienced, was intense. Maybe it was my only chance to learn something about Mum that she would never tell me otherwise. Maybe this was a letter to an old friend that she had never sent.
But when I turned the envelope over, I saw that the dark red sealing wax had already been opened. There was a crest on it that looked all too familiar. That of Vanderwood. However, it was the word Copeland in the sealing wax that made me wonder.
The rest was printed too small to decipher, but what I read was enough for me to know which family the sender came from.
Full of curiosity, I pulled out the classy-looking letter paper, a hard sheet, carefully folded.
Whatever the matter was, I would find out now.
October 02, 1997
Dear Alice,
I thought long and hard about whether to write these lines to you, because if I don’t share my words meant for you, what purpose do they serve?
That day when I showed you the room, you were so astonished by the view of the campus. I couldn’t help but look at you and suddenly, the moment the sun made your turquoise blue eyes shimmer like a clear lake in an enchanted landscape, I realized how captivating you actually are.
Your mind, full of clever ideas; your spirit, so alert and alive. I deeply admire that about you. Right from the start. But until now I’ve been incredibly blind, completely overlooking all the other facets. Those that also belong to you, but whose existence only becomes visible as soon as you open your eyes to the aesthetics.
Just take it as a compliment and let’s not make a big deal out of it, because more than once I shouldn’t write down my thoughts so directly, if you know what I mean... Even though I think my letters are safe with you.
Thinking of you,
Alarik
I read the letter over and over again. And over and over again I came to the sender’s name. Alarik. Without a doubt, it had to be Alarik Copeland, my literature professor.
I could hardly believe that I had just absorbed such intimate lines as if they were poetry. Indeed, Alarik could write. He must have felt something for Alice, whoever that person was.
All I could gather from the letter was the fact that he shouldn’t have written it to her. The worry that someone might find this piece of paper seemed to have been a big one.
Had I just read something that I should never have known? A forbidden love between two people, or even an unrequited one?
I had to grin because I couldn’t get over finding out such information about my professor. It made me curious, but at the same time, it felt like I had invaded his privacy, just as Larissa had invaded her ex-boyfriend’s second villa to steal his watch collection.
Come on, Bayla. It’s just a letter.
I went to the window, to my reading corner, and sat down to read it through again.
They had both been in a building somewhere, on campus, and he seemed like he had been seeing her for a while.
“Bay…” I looked up quickly and found myself staring directly into the eyes of an astonished Julian, who placed a box in front of him on the piano stool... and smiled at me the next moment. “You’re alive.”
“I’m alive, obviously.”
Then I had to laugh too, and he began to grin, just as I knew he would. His eyes shone with surprise, and I couldn’t help but remember the afternoon at the lighthouse.
“There aren’t many who survive something like that.” His grin widened. “Especially with such a frail body.”
Confused, I shook my head and suppressed the pleasant memory.
“Hey. What’s that supposed to mean, eh?”
He just grinned and looked down at his box.
“What are you doing?” I asked with interest but was tempted not to sound interested.
“Packing.”
“Packing...” I said, confused. “For what?”
Had I missed something?
“Your Circle wants my family to vacate the house.”
“First of all, this isn’t my Circle,” I clarified. God, Julian. He should have understood by now how little I wanted anything to do with any of this. “And secondly, what? They can’t just do that? You can live wherever you want.”
Right?
“It would be nice. But this is Blairville, not your relaxed California.” He spoke as if I had no idea about life. “Believe me, I wish I had your life, instead of this one...” Julian hesitated and looked back at the box in front of him. “Actually, it’s ridiculous, as if the Copelands planned this. As if they knew I had no chance and would be forced to join the pack sooner or later.”
I couldn’t quite follow his thoughts. He’d jumped from Blairville to the Copelands so quickly, a family that everyone here seemed to have something against.
“They even took Mia from us.”
“Mia? What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.
He laughed, pushed the chair and box aside, and sat down in the window frame. Whenever he did that, his muscles tensed so...
Bayla... stop. It was still Julian I was thinking about.
Memories flooded through my head again, like a river in search of the sea. The lighthouse. Julian had given me a glimpse of his hideaway, a generous gesture, a beautiful vantage point. Perhaps more than just a physical retreat.
“She’s young and about to undergo her first full moon transformation,” Julian began, his concern unmistakable. “My father sent her there to give her the best chance of transforming and, of course, because the pack put pressure on him. And since certain people don’t want to see us here anymore, my father felt cornered, didn’t talk to me and just took her there.”
“So that means she lives there alone, without her family?”
I didn’t like the idea of Mum sending me to the Blairs so that I could finally become the member they saw in me. And Mia was three years younger than me.
“Dad’s moving to our old house.”
“You lived there?” I asked. Something had been there, but I had forgotten it. I felt as if Julian didn’t want to talk about it either because he said, “Yes... but that was a while ago...” and ran his fingers through his tousled brown hair in embarrassment.
“Why did you move away in the first place?”
It was worth a try.
“You always ask so many questions,” he replied after a short pause in silence, as if I were an annoying little child.
“Because I’m interested in why things are the way they are.” Why didn’t anyone understand that? “Everyone wants me to be part of this... mess and at the same time, no one ever tells me anything.”
I vented my frustration at my mother without naming her. I didn’t want her to be awake and listening to us. It was already eleven pm.
“Maybe there’s a reason for that, nosy girl from California,” he joked, earning a deadly glare from me.
“What are you reading?” he asked, and I remembered the letter from my professor that was resting in my hands.
“Um... something I really shouldn’t have read.”
I folded up the paper and slipped it back into the envelope.
“Ouh, ouh, have you been snooping on your mother?” he teased, proud of himself for having caught me.
“I don’t do that.”
“You may be able to lie to her, but you can’t lie to me, young lady.”
“What did you just call me?”
I looked at him indignantly. He just laughed as if he had intended to, and at that moment, his shiny green eyes reminded me of those of a small, cheeky boy. As if we were just children meeting somewhere secretly in the night and getting up to mischief.
His dimples reminded me of those of the woman in Mum’s picture. Cheeky and cute.
“Come on.” He pointed to the object in my hand. “Now you’ve made me curious.”
He blinked mischievously at me.
I actually toyed with the idea of showing him the letter. On the one hand, I didn’t want to be alone with such a secret, but on the other hand, there was the professor. He probably wouldn’t even want me to get my hands on it. No one, apart from his mysterious lover, should know about his feelings.
In the end, an intuitive impulse made me decide to give the letter to Julian. Something about him made me trust him. A mistake?
“Can you catch?”
“The question is whether you can throw,” he said with a grin, and I gave him my challenge-accepted look. I threw the envelope. Julian was about to lean forward to meet me, but my envelope flew at breakneck speed straight into the moving box behind him.
He looked at me for two seconds, then turned around and reached into the box. “Bayla, how...”
“Come on, don’t make a big deal out of a toss.”
He looked at me for a moment, as if he wanted to say something, but then turned his attention to the letter.
“Who’s Alice?” was his first question, which I could only answer with a shrug. I hadn’t thought about that name before, but now that he’d mentioned it...
Julian turned the envelope and his look became more serious.
“Why on earth...”
“I have absolutely no idea, but read the letter first. Maybe you’ll understand it better than I do.”
Julian opened the letter and read. His gaze remained unchanged until he read the last line aloud. “Thinking of you... Alarik?” He looked at me with widened eyes. “Wait, are we talking about the Alarik Copeland here?”
“Do you know another one?” I teased him.
His expression didn’t change. I could see that he had at least as many questions as I did. He didn’t say anything but kept reading the letter, so I simply spoke the question that was burning on my tongue.
“Do you think she was his student?”
Julian’s head went up. My theory seemed to be bothering him too... and something else.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, it’s just... weird.” Julian looked thoughtfully at the piece of paper in his hands, and I noticed a lot of little scratches on them. Oddly, many that could never have been made while gardening. “I’ve known him for so long. He used to be friends with my father and is the director of the university. It makes no sense. He would never date a student…”
He took a closer look at the letter. “1997... that was twenty years ago. If I’m not mistaken, he was just about the same age as we are now.”
“That’s when my mother was studying here,” I interjected thoughtfully.
“Alice,” Julian whispered thoughtfully. “Where did you find the letter again?”
“In Mum’s... book room.”
“You guys have a book room?”
I raised my hands defensively. “Don’t look so surprised at me. I didn’t know my mother was such a book nerd myself.”
“It seems to run in the family,” he laughed, easing the tension that the letter had created in our minds.
“Back when I was little, Alarik used to let me into his apartment at the Copeland estate. There were so many books there, God. I wonder when he read them all,” he continued, a smile spreading across his lips.
Julian’s description made me a little envious. Oh, how much I would love to see these rooms. But the thought that the name Alice could be a pseudonym for my mother kept growing in my mind. Because if that were the case...
“Do you think they had a secret relationship?” I asked Julian, who shrugged his shoulders in response.
My thoughts drifted further and further away. Alarik Copeland and my mother...
“Anyway, that would explain why he wanted it to stay a secret, and then the wrong name, too.” He looked at me again. “Maybe he wanted to protect her?”
It confused me to be faced with so many pieces of the puzzle at once. Mum clearly had too many secrets, but something didn’t fit here at all. She wasn’t the type for risky things like this, or was I wrong? Maybe Mum had been someone completely different back then. After all, she had read a lot, unlike now. Would I have recognized her if we had met on campus?
Also, Mum’s eyes were a grayish blue. And I would be surprised if Alarik was color-blind. Or maybe he was just a typical man when it came to colors?
“Were there any more letters?” Julian’s question only led to more questions in my already overwhelmed head.
“I honestly don’t know,” I confessed and looked up, straight into his eyes. “Do you think there could be more?”
“Quite possibly,” Julian replied.
“But this letter alone seems to be a breach of the rules. Why would my mother...” I sighed. “She doesn’t normally break rules. I don’t understand.”
“Our parents were young once, too,” Julian said, as if that was justification for my mother’s behavior. “But you’re right, something rings a bell. Maybe the fact that Alarik is the son of the former Alpha and should never have written such a letter, especially not to a Quatura. Besides, he was very good friends with my father.”
“What are you trying to say?” I asked in confusion.
Was he implying that his dad and my mum used to...
“You should have seen them, the night you were bitten and everyone thought you were dead.
“The way they stood there, all around you. And then there was your mother, really distraught. Dad had taken her in his arms, trying to calm her down, as if they’d known each other for half an eternity. Alarik barely paid any attention to her.”
“Alarik had been there?”
Julian laughed. “Emely called him.”
“Emely?”
“We’d been at the party, and then you were in our heads.”
“But that can’t be…”
The more I thought about it, the more Julian’s words made sense.
“But you were…”
“I promise you, I didn’t do anything,” I tried to reassure him. Whatever connection there was between us, I hadn’t made it.
“I don’t know, Bay. Anyway, you were in our heads, and when we got here, you were lying there.” He paused for a moment and stared off into space, toward the road. “God, there... there was so much blood.”
He looked up and our eyes met.
It seemed as if he was associating it with negative emotions, almost as if the memory was painful. But why?
I tried not to break away from his gaze. Something I found hard to do, because he had these beautiful, olive-green eyes, and his gaze began to touch me, to do something to me until he finally looked away.
“Anyway, Alarik showed up then and Amara a little later. And as if that wasn’t enough of a clash between Quatura and Senseque, one of those DeLoughreys had suddenly appeared and wanted to take you away.”
I widened my eyes. “Which DeLoughrey?”
“One of the men who used to come to campus with Adrian and the other guys. The dark blond one, probably in his late thirties.”
“Why did he want to take me with him?”
“I didn’t understand, either.”
I just realized that I must have caused a huge mess. For a reason, the Quatura had sent Julian’s family away, even if it remained a mystery to me what exactly they had done wrong. After all, Ruisangors, or whatever those people were called, had attacked us. Larissa...
“Did he take Larissa with him?” I was hopeful that maybe Julian and Emely had been there in time. Maybe they’d noticed something.
Julian’s expression darkened.
“Your memories. I saw what you saw, and... Bayla, Adrian had been there before us.”
“Adrian...”
“Was it him? Did he attack you?”
“No,” I said hesitantly as images of the disgusting psycho who’d chased after us like we were his playthings popped into my head. He had attacked us, had hurt Larissa too, I was sure of it. But then he had disappeared down the street.
I realized that my memories were too sketchy, and in half of them I didn’t even know if I’d been dreaming. After all, I had been unconscious for three days.
“If anything had happened to you...” I looked at Julian in surprise. “The town wouldn’t have been the same,” he finished the sentence quickly, and I didn’t know why I wished he would have said something else. I had apparently taken plenty of damage from the bite.
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“You would have been happy about all the mess... could have taken your chance to leave without anyone noticing.”
He looked at me like I’d just punched him in the face.
“What?” I laughed. “Isn’t that what you want? I’m sure you would have been free if the Quatura had shooed you guys out of here.”
“You would have died,” he said tonelessly, almost coldly. His voice sounded so serious that I had to swallow, embarrassed.
“I would have killed you with that decision. You know that...” I seemed to have confused him a lot. And now he was confusing me.
“Would that have been a loss?” I continued to laugh, but he didn’t seem to like it at all.
“What do you think of me? That I’m so selfish?”
“No, just...”
“Ever since the first day, when all I did was help you, you’ve acted like I’m the worst person you’ve ever met.”
I looked at him, caught off guard, because he was right about everything. I hadn’t thought about how much it might hurt him, even though it had probably just been a defense mechanism because of my stupid ex-boyfriend.
“Maybe I deserved it, I don’t know.”
“No,” I said quickly.
He looked at me so piercingly again. “What else do I have to do to at least make you stop seeing me as your enemy? Tell me?”
My surprise at this request from him was greater than my surprise that he had saved me. His question overwhelmed me. Because there was really no reason to distrust him anymore, except for the fact that, like Emely, he could turn into an oversized, dangerous dog and just eat me if he wanted to. Surely...
“Tell me, what makes me so unlikeable?”
“Nothing. You’re just so... incredibly annoying,” I finished the sentence hesitantly.
“Annoying. You’re telling me I am annoying?” He started laughing as if I’d made a joke.
“I don’t see you as my enemy,” I clarified.
He shook his head and looked off into the distance, diagonally past our house.
“You’re right,” I sighed. This time, I meant it. It was time to set a few things straight. Once and for all. “I still treat you like I did a few months ago. But a lot has changed, and I don’t know how to behave toward you. I don’t know how to behave toward anyone here, not even Julie or Grace. It’s best not to talk about Emely at all.” I had made him grin again. But only for a split second. “To be honest, I need you, because you seem to be the most reasonable person in this town.”
He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Stop doing that. Every time someone does that, I’m jealous.”
“Looks like someone can’t?” he started to tease me and I knew I’d chosen the right words, even if they were hard to get out.
I rolled my eyes and continued. “Trust me, if you were anything like my enemy, I would have managed to stay out of your way, but that didn’t happen because without you, I’d be screwed on this campus.”
He looked at me thoughtfully until his smile came back.
“Don’t get too excited. You’re still the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” I added quickly, whereupon he threw the letter at me, which I just managed to catch.
“Oh my God, Julian, I almost dropped it!” I shouted and stood up.
Julian rolled his eyes and made a duck with his hands, opening and closing its beak.
“You should go to sleep now before mommy finds out you’re still awake and secretly read her love letters.”
“Very funny,” I replied with fake annoyance, and watched as he jumped up and picked up the box. “Don’t overdo it with the boxes.”
He raised both eyebrows, and I didn’t know if his reaction was genuine. Then I drew the curtain closed and couldn’t help but grin a little. In situations like this, I liked to have the last word.
I looked down at the letter, wondering what to do with it. For now, I put it back in the book box. I couldn’t deny that a certain curiosity was growing inside me. I wanted to find out more, I wanted to squeeze my mother, but she would squeeze me if she found out that I had taken something from that room, or even that I had opened that letter. There was no turning back. Now, I shared this little secret with Julian.