Chapter 38
Julian
Thunder Distant Rumble V
Only Sleep
A storm was brewing. It was one of those November storms in Blairville where the wind chased like frost over your bare skin and the heavy rain gathered above town in the last giant storm clouds. These kinds of thunderstorms brought with them something electrically charged, something only Senseque could feel.
Emely was familiar with it as well, I knew. It was as if these storms were filled with magic. Something that Senseque were sensitive to.
The trees had already lost their leaves and rose into the air like bare skeletons, ready to be covered with the first snow, but that would take a few more weeks.
Next to me, Bay sat on the rocking bench of her porch, reading one of those many books she had to read in her literature classes. Such a little book bunny.
I had to smile because I would never have been able to bring myself to just pick up a book like that, willingly. I was far too impatient for that. Maybe I could try listening to audiobooks while I tinkered with my car...
“What?”
I had flustered her, because she put the book aside.
It was easy to make Bay nervous, even if she would never admit it.
“It’s just impressive that you can read all day.”
On campus, walking, in my passenger seat, and now here. This girl lived in a world of books.
“What else am I supposed to do?” she laughed, and when I didn’t answer because my gaze had lingered on the dried fall leaf in her hair, she continued. “No, honestly, I always wonder what you do when you’re not playing the piano. Don’t you get bored?”
I looked back down the street at the three ravens playing with an empty Coke can.
“I work on my car a lot, go running...”
“You should read,” she continued to laugh, and there was something exhilarating about it.
“Not my thing, I guess,” I just replied and for the first time I sincerely wished I had a hobby that I could take with me everywhere, like she did.
“You just need the right introduction.”
“Maybe...”
My thoughts trailed off as I stared back down the porch.
I wondered if Emely felt the same way. I wondered if she felt a storm coming right now.
When we were little, she had always been the first to sense it. Her senses were generally incredibly precise, even back then. She was something special. And it had taken me this long to realize it.
“Tell me, why are you so nervous?”
I turned around in surprise.
Bayla had stopped reading and was looking at me with interest.
It had taken me a while to get used to the fact that she no longer looked like a walking corpse. She was no longer so eerily pale that you got chills when you looked at her. The many little freckles around her snub nose made her look alive. What I never would get used to were the two differently colored eyes. The one on my left, turquoise green, like an exotic crystal, in which the light refracted unintentionally again and again, and the one on my right, sapphire blue like a deep foreign ocean.
“It’s a Senseque thing,” I replied slowly and looked at her eyes again.
They were supposed to create disharmony. Actually . Actually, she was supposed to be a Quatura too, and I wasn’t supposed to be here with her to carry out this insane mission, let alone here in Quatura territory.
“How does it work?” She seemed genuinely interested in the species, even if she didn’t really want anything to do with them.
“We can sense the weather, especially when storms are approaching, sometimes even days in advance. Especially during the storm season.”
Her eyes were troubled, as if they mirrored the storm I felt coming.
“Funny.” She looked down at the book with a drifting gaze. “I don’t feel it.”
That was the other part of Bay. When she wasn’t reading, she was pondering what she might be.
I was starting to care too, only I was still caught between leaving and never dealing with Blairville again or staying here. I hated this place, just because of the people, but it was also the people that kept me here. My dad needed me, my sister... And now Emely.
I took a deep breath.
Had it perhaps been a mistake to give her and me hope?
A loud humming sounded from the street, forcing me to stay in the present.
“Finally.” Bayla sounded frustrated, but her expression brightened as the noise grew louder, a pretty new and damn expensive-looking motorcycle came to a stop on the road and the rider – now familiar to me – took off her black helmet with the modern red patterns.
Larissa switched off the engine and I stared for a while at the thing, which had definitely looked different on my last visit.
“You seem to have deep pockets,” I laughed in amazement and Larissa immediately looked up at us on the veranda.
“The DeLoughreys have deep pockets,” she replied in a sharp voice, shouldering her black sporty backpack before pushing the black motorcycle into the driveway.
Bayla eyed her suspiciously... or rather the bike.
“What happened to Lara?” she finally asked.
“Lara?” I repeated, irritated and unable to hide my grin.
“That was the name of her old bike, which she never wanted to part with,” Bayla emphasized with quotation marks in the air, amusement in her expression.
“Times change. That thing was as good as dead anyway,” Larissa said with a dismissive wave of her hand and came rushing up to us on the veranda. Even a blind man noticed the ease with which she moved her body.
“You should be careful how you move. People might get suspicious.”
I looked at her insistently.
“You’re already talking like Adrian.” Larissa rolled her eyes and then moved closer to me to tap my chest with her index finger. “You should know that I don’t give a damn about all these rules. Especially when they come from a Senseque.”
“Larissa,” Bay hissed, looking at her friend in disbelief.
“What?” She looked back at me before grinning. “Little joke. I don’t care what you are. As long as you don’t smell like food or make me feel small for my new identity like the witches do, I have no problem with you hanging out with my best friend.”
She was actually trying to ignore the fact that our species were so extremely different. Maybe she didn’t know about the Senseque and Ruisangor’s past.
“Do I smell like food to you?” asked Bay, almost timidly.
Larissa turned to her in bewilderment and her eyes began to glow in a threatening way. Then she took a step toward Bayla, and I immediately sensed her fear as she also flinched.
Nervousness spread through me.
Suddenly Larissa burst out laughing and her eyes took on their original brown.
“What do you think? That I would bite you?”
Bayla’s expression remained unchanged.
“Of course not! Besides, you still smell like nothing. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you just smell different compared to everyone else here.”
Bayla looked at me briefly, and I immediately understood that I shouldn’t say a word. I sensed that she was uncomfortable talking about it. And I would probably feel the same way.
“Now get over here!” Larissa approached her very quickly and took Bay into her arms. She looked surprised and looked to me for help, but I just smiled in the hope that I could calm her down a little.
If Larissa was telling the truth and Bay didn’t smell like anything to her, as she did to me, then everything was fine. She wouldn’t hurt her, not even unintentionally.
Suddenly, the door opened and Diana appeared on the porch.
“You’re alive...”
Larissa let go of Bay, and we all turned to Diana, who was holding something I hadn’t expected.
“Ms. Adams. I...”
“Mum!” Bayla gasped and stepped in front of Larissa.
“Get out of the way, Bayla, now! And get inside the house!”
Click . Then she pointed the shotgun at Larissa.
Larissa reacted in shock and jumped back, landing on both feet three meters away in the garden. Her eyes turned reddish.
“Oh, yes. That’s the right direction,” Diana growled, and one of Larissa’s dark blonde strands fell into her face.
“Diana, there’s no danger from her,” I added reassuringly, but Bayla’s mother ignored me completely.
“Get out of here and stay away from my daughter! You’ve gotten her into enough trouble already!”
Larissa said nothing. Her look only became more hostile, which worried me. What if I had underestimated Larissa after all?
“Get out now!”
Larissa jumped on her bike and started the engine, gave us both a look that I couldn’t interpret, and finally drove off at an inhuman speed until she disappeared.
Swept
Jay Varton
“What the hell was that?!” Bayla was furious and looked at her mother as if she had lost her mind.
I had immediately recognized that it was my father’s old shotgun and remembered how he had given it to her that day when Bayla had been unconscious and badly wounded by the Ruisangor bite. It should be noted that this weapon was loaded with silver bullets.
“I have to protect you, even if you don’t see it that way and never will.”
Ms. Adams cleared out the sink and handed me the plates, which I wordlessly accepted and put away into the cupboards.
I didn’t know my way around, but helping helped me not to stand around feeling stupid and superfluous.
“I don’t understand it! You let Julian, a Senseque who isn’t even allowed to be here, come to visit, but you scare my childhood friend away with a goddamn gun?”
I looked up with a guilty face.
Diana continued to calmly empty the dishwasher. “Larissa is a Ruisangor. I don’t trust these people.”
There was something painful in her voice, and I immediately thought of that day when Bastien had turned up shortly after the bite. I wondered if it had disturbed her so much that she had asked my father for the weapon.
I understood Diana’s fear. Ruisangors might prefer human blood, but if there was one species that came closest to humans, it was Quatura. As far as I knew, they smelled almost as good to Ruisangors.
Bayla looked confused but also exhausted.
“Now that you remind me, Julian...” Diana looked kindly at me before handing me another load of plates. “You’re welcome to stay here tonight. Then you can take her straight to campus tomorrow and not have to drive all the way here.”
“What?!”
Bayla looked at her mother in disbelief and annoyance. She had never been happy to see me until recently. Ever since we found the diary, and the letter from Alarik.
“Why are you being so contradictory?” Bayla threw her arms into the air and kicked the kitchen furniture in front of her.
“Behave yourself!” Diana hissed.
The unpleasant feeling that I was witnessing a private argument was growing. My face grew warmer, and I bent down, mainly so that no one would notice, aside from continuing to unload the dishwasher.
“Come with me, Julian. You’re not our house slave.” I straightened up and saw Diana blush and look at me apologetically. I wanted to say something back, but Bayla wasn’t finished yet. “And you’re not her guest anyway, you’re mine, so I decide when you come and go.”
She rushed over to me. “Now, come on.”
Determined, she pulled me around the kitchen island, away from an embarrassed Ms. Adams, up the stairs to her room. There, she slammed the door loudly.
I heard a couple of ravens take flight from the tree in front of the house.
Cellar
Jay Varton
Then I had to smile again. “You two always argue so loudly, don’t you?”
“Yes, and no!” She threw herself angrily onto her bed and crawled back to the wooden bedstead, where she leaned against it and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Only since we’ve been here. And it’s driving me up the wall.”
I noticed her trying to control herself as her eyes began to glow. Only not red, but yellowish, like a Senseque’s.
“I didn’t even know she had a fucking shotgun!”
The glow intensified as she stared at the large bookshelf across from the bed as if it were the source of all her anger. Then she looked at me.
“What?”
“Your eyes...”
She jumped up and rushed over to the mirror with a tense expression, where she looked closely at the yellow as if it were a pimple she was determined to squeeze out.
Then, out of nowhere, she said. “Nothing makes sense...”
“I know...” I said and came closer to the mirror, where I realized again that she was damn small, unlike me. And I wasn’t particularly tall.
“Yesterday, when I came home, I was in my mother’s room again...” she began and turned to me, her eyes still yellow. Her voice was softer, and it felt good somehow, because it was as if she was telling me a secret that was meant only for me. “She had done this experiment with another witch, Vivienna’s mother. It’s about the genetic inheritance of the three species. And somehow it confused me even more.”
“Wait, your mum is really still actively researching the species?”
“When I first found it, the protocol was right on her desk,” she said, walking over to the bed where she sat down and pulled her phone out of her pocket to show me a picture. “Here.”
I skimmed the document carefully, and with each insight I gained from it, I understood more and more why the species didn’t want to live together in peace.
“If my father had been a Senseque, as I secretly suspected from the beginning, then I would be a male Senseque now.”
I wasn’t stupid. Of course, I realized that she wasn’t, and I had been aware of this inheritance rule. I had just never met anyone whose parents came from two different species. That wasn’t possible. Politically. But I hadn’t been aware that there could be such devastating consequences from a connection between a few species, as shown here on the document.
“And if my father had been a Ruisangor, I wouldn’t even be alive. My mother, she would be... dead.”
She was right about that, too. Something was very wrong here. And Diana was doing research, together with another Quatura. What’s more, she worked at the DLSC. I had a strange feeling that there was something bigger behind this…
“There are no hybrids,” I thought aloud.
“No. Because one species is always dominant.”
And she was right about that, too. There really was such a thing as dominance. I read the information on the photo over and over again until my brain couldn’t take anything else from it, and then looked at Bay, who was looking at me in despair.
You
Keaton Henson
The light of the setting sun streamed into her room, and there was a strangely familiar gleam in her eyes. The one I always saw in the mirror after I got up and wondered when all this would end.
Bayla looked at me with exactly that look, as if she were my reflection, only this time the despair came from deep inside her . She had every reason to have a worry line appear on her forehead at that very moment.
“What am I?” she whispered softly. She was so close to tears. And I couldn’t help but follow my gut instinct and pull her into a painfully tight hug.
Was that the bond she had placed on me and Emely? Or was it my compassion?
Her body was petite and small, her body temperature human. There was nothing to suggest that she was a Senseque or even a Ruisangor. But she wasn’t human, either.
I would have liked to take some of the burden off her, especially when she pulled me closer, and I could feel how much she needed someone to be there for her. Unfortunately, that was all I could do. I had no answers to her questions, and I could help her even less...
“Let’s find the rest of the diary,” I whispered softly in her ear and listened to her quiet, troubled breathing.
I could have stayed in that embrace for a while longer when I heard Diana’s voice from downstairs and I knew immediately that it was for me.
“Please both come downstairs. Dinner is ready.”
She had communicated just as quietly with my father, because she knew we could hear well.
Bay slowly released herself from the embrace and looked at me questioningly.
“Did you hear her?”
I knew immediately who she meant.
“Did you?”
“Yes...” she just said and looked at me, exhausted.
Together we finally went downstairs and the three of us ate dinner.
I couldn’t help noticing that Bayla ate less than in the campus canteen, where she devoured as much as a full-grown Senseque. But here, she seemed to be lost in thought.
Diana and I talked about the move and the new cabin in the woods my father had found for us. Bay kept quiet and listened, even if she wasn’t really there. I helped her mother afterward before we both went back upstairs and at some point, began to devote ourselves to the mission, as she and Larissa always called it and for which I was here in the first place, while Diana hung over files from her work in the living room.
It was difficult to rummage through the mysterious room because the drawers were all locked and I couldn’t see any way to force them open. Apart from that, the room was full of books, and only the bedside cabinet contained information about the mysterious Alice in the form of a student ID card that was a good twenty years old. There were also old notebooks, but they only contained information about the lectures.
At some point, time was running out, and we left the room, frustrated by the many unopened drawers where the remains of the diary could have been – if the burglar hadn’t taken them last week.
Diana came upstairs just five minutes after our risky action and wished us a good night before disappearing into her room.
Eventually it was so late that Bayla rolled out a mattress for me.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go back to campus?”
“Please don’t bother. If my mother wants you to come here tomorrow, I don’t want you to run out of gas unnecessarily.”
I didn’t say anything else, just nodded silently. I really couldn’t tell if she was just doing this for her mother or if it was really okay for her if I slept over.
“I can go down to the couch...”
“And leave me alone?” She laughed suddenly, and my stomach tingled strangely. Probably because she’d been worried all day today and hadn’t smiled once.
It suited her when she smiled. Of course, it did. Her skin stretched, little dimples appeared next to her lips, and the gleam in her eyes intensified.
“Forget it. You’re staying here. I’ve been wanting to throw another sleepover party for a long time,” she continued with such cheerful seriousness that I had to smile.
“So, you’re into kids’ stuff?”
“If by that you mean building a den and lying in it with fairy lights and flashlights and telling each other ghost stories?” She tried hard to put a new cover on the bed linen, but she was smaller than the blanket, and so I took it out of her hands to continue covering it, which she fortunately didn’t comment on. “Yep. I’m into kids’ stuff then.”
“Sounds like fun,” I laughed, and Bayla looked at me in alarm.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t do that as a child.”
“Yes, once, at the Copelands. We got into a lot of trouble.”
The memory was pleasant, but there was something melancholy about it. It was a long time ago, and it was just a flashback to a time when we had been young and stupid.
“You and Emely?”
Bayla looked at me as she covered the pillow.
“And Nash, and an old friend...”
Her eyes narrowed. “Sounds a bit bittersweet.”
“It was, to be honest.”
If I Lose Myself – Alesso vs OneRepublic
OneRepublic, Alesso
“Then it’s about time your experience gets an update.”
There it was again. That broad smile that felt as warm as if the sun was shining on my skin.
And she dropped the pillow, stormed out of the room, and returned with her arms full of pillows and blankets.
“I stole them from the living room. Don’t tell Mum,” she joked mischievously, as if I was actually planning to do that, and immediately began to stretch the blanket over the bed frame to the handles of her closet. She tossed me another one, and so it happened that Bayla Adams and Julian Bardot – two students with far too many problems in their lives – built a den.
We stretched the blankets up to the window, where we made the floor comfortable and slid my mattress in. When we were done, she came crawling over to me, still smiling, and lay down next to me.
“Close your eyes,” she whispered, and I felt a childlike anticipation rise up inside me. Then I heard the click. “And now open them again.”
It was no longer dark, as it had been before. There were lots of little stars around us, illuminating the inside of the den as if it were a magical place. It certainly was, for children . And at that moment, lying next to Bay on that mattress, I felt like a child, carefree and untroubled, somehow safe.
I looked at Bayla, who grinned at me so playfully, as if she had just fulfilled a dream herself. Then she reached into the shelf next to her and pulled out a book, before she began to read quietly.
Stormy Nights
Chō
I looked out of the open floor to ceiling window through which the cold November air was streaming in and listened to the rain and thunder above Blairville, which triggered the familiar feeling of awe in me. There was still something unsettling about it.
“I love thunderstorms,” Bay suddenly said and, without looking at her, I knew she was gazing out of the window too. “I feel so energized every time there’s a storm, when there’s lightning.”
“You could be an Air Quatura,” was all I said, even though Quatura had nothing to do with the weather. Bay boxed me, visibly displeased, and I raised my hands. “I’m just saying.”
“Stop assuming anything. It’s not helping me,” she grumbled in playful annoyance and continued reading.
After a good while, I sighed. “I’m sure the worlds in your books are more beautiful than this one.”
She put the book down, and I immediately felt bad because I was certainly keeping her from enjoying her time.
“I always had the same thought,” she began with a soft voice. “Until I realized that it’s in our hands how we shape this world.”
A beautiful thought that was certainly comforting when you were living a human life.
“And then you came to Blairville,” I said as I looked out of the window again.
Bayla lay down next to me and propped herself up on her elbows. And then we stared up at the sky together. At some point, she lay down on her back, still looking out.
“I think Alice was further along than we are...”
“In what way?”
“She couldn’t really trust anyone, but that didn’t stop her from questioning the system, even if it had been forbidden.”
“It probably cost her her head,” I replied.
“Don’t be so pessimistic.” Bay looked at me reprovingly.
“I’m being realistic.”
“It’s your reality.” Her eyes remained focused on me. “And everyone has their own. That speaks to the fact that our realities are relative and that there isn’t just one truth. Theoretically, we are able to change something in this system.”
Lost in thought, I looked out of the window again.
Even if I could change something, what would the consequences be? And could I live with it? Especially without further destroying my family?
“I think it was Alice’s room, and I’m sure the rest of the diary is still there somewhere,” Bayla sighed.
I realized that this little action with the den had only taken her mind off things for a short time.
“The stranger could have taken it,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. It was plausible, after all, we had found the diary on the floor that very day.
“The thought that someone was in there scares me, Julian.”
Shit. That had never been my intention. The idea that someone else was up to mischief here, spying on the Adams for reasons unknown to me, didn’t appeal to me at all.
Before I could reply anything, Bay had already jumped to the next thought.
“You know, it’s weird… That room over there looks like Alice never moved out of there. Like she just...”
“Disappeared,” I finished her sentence, and our eyes met.
“What if my mother knows something about it?”
I didn’t doubt that. Diana seemed to keep a lot of secrets from her daughter. However, I also remembered her request that I should keep an eye on Bay. She would never want to hide anything from her daughter for selfish reasons. What if she had her reasons?
“Your witch friend could also be right, and she just left, maybe even got sent away.”
Bayla remained silent, thoughtful.
“There’s this feeling,” she murmured.
“That you can’t let go because it feels like there’s more to it?”
“Yes, exactly that...” Bayla yawned softly and turned to the side, where she drew her legs up a little and closed her eyes. “She was friends with a dangerous warlock.”
“A dangerous warlock?”
I tried to remember the diary entries, and I was aware that Bay wasn’t talking about Alarik. There was this other guy, a supposed son of Gloria. A rare male Quatura.
“Julie’s father...” she murmured even more quietly.
Then she fell asleep, and it was the sweetest thing I had ever seen in my life. I would have loved to take a picture and tease her with it in the morning, but then I would probably be thrown out of the house in a heap. Instead, I pulled the blanket over her body, and somehow, she grabbed it in her sleep and pulled it up to the tip of her nose.
My tummy tingled a little again, and I smiled one last time before taking off my Vanderwood hoodie and lying down on my back to fall asleep surrounded by Bayla’s little world of blankets and books.
Mechanical Failure
Tony Morales
“I’m so proud of you, my boy.”
Mum smiled at me.
We were on the road toward Blairville, and I was the one driving.
I had made it. Now I could drive wherever I wanted.
“Do you at least like the car?”
Mum and Dad had given me a slightly older VW pick-up truck for my sixteenth birthday. I knew that they didn’t have the money for a better car. Nevertheless, I had expected a better model. There was something wrong with the gearbox and the brakes were making strange noises.
“Well...” I grumbled discontentedly, and Mum suddenly looked worried.
It started to rain.
I concentrated more on the road, especially as I hadn’t driven in the rain that often. My vision suddenly blurred, and I struggled to see anything.
“Are you all right, sweetheart? We can stop if you have any problems...”
“No Mum, it doesn’t matter, it’s fine!” I huffed, suddenly feeling such intense anger inside me without knowing where it was coming from.
Mum also seemed to realize that something was wrong and put an arm on my shoulder.
The anger was getting more and more extreme and made it hard for me to really concentrate on the road, but we had to get home before this storm broke out completely and forced us to stop.
So I stepped on the gas, which caused my mother to get even more scared.
“Julian, I want you to pull over. Now. Please.”
“No, damn it!” I yelled at her unintentionally and noticed how she flinched in her seat, then even backed away.
“Your eyes...” she whispered, and the anger I was already feeling multiplied itself with the anger I was feeling toward myself.
Why was I yelling at her? What the hell was wrong with me? And why didn’t she realize that we needed to get home and I needed to focus on the stupid road?
More anger, my vision finally clouded. Suddenly, my neck cracked, and I arched my back, letting go of the steering wheel.
Mum shouted something unclear, but my thoughts and mind were already elsewhere. My body had taken on a life of its own and in the next moment the entire road blurred, the steering wheel slipped away from me as I tried to grab it and I felt a violent jolt pull me out of the car. Then my mother’s scream.
“Damn it, Julian! What’s wrong with you?!”