CHAPTER NINETEEN

“So. What happened?” Sister Al held a cup of hot tea in her hands.

“You were wrong!” I said hysterically. “The bond is bad. Like way bad. It’s gonna kill me!” I didn’t make much sense when I first got there. My hands were flying, my heart was ready to explode, and words were pouring out of my mouth in incoherent ramblings. Sister Al’s remedy was to shove a steaming drink in my shaking hands.

“Hmm,” she said. “I coulda been wrong. Cause you didn’t tell me everything. What’d ya leave out, Ivy? Anything—important?” She looked calm, and pursed her wrinkled lips to blow on her hot tea. I shifted in my seat, and made an argh noise as I pulled my hair a little. Sister Al kept talking, “Anything about, I don’t know, saying bad words? Lying? And stuff like that? I’ve heard dirty words before, ya know. Nuns got ears, girl.”

My heart hammered in my chest. I couldn’t stand it anymore. She beat me down. She won. I simply nodded and said, “Yup. Stuff like that.”

A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, and she put her cup down. “It’s about time. Do you know how hard it is to think of metaphors for being what you are? Pies. Bah. I was down to nothing with that one. So spill girl. I swore to protect you—I don’t lie. I will protect you no matter what words fly outa your mouth right now.”

I looked around the room. Only one thought kept me from spilling everything right then. “What about Julia?”

Al straightened in her chair. “Julia means well, but she ain’t here. And she ain’t my boss. My boss hasn’t been seen for over two hundred years. And no, I didn’t see that coming.” She laughed at her own joke. “I’m as high up as you can get in my branch of things. And no one is above me. So, what I say goes. And I say you have my protection. So you do.”

I paused, looking at my teacup. “Julia scares me. But I need help. I’ll be dead tomorrow if I don’t get it. Julia will kill me the next day if she finds out.” I paused. My face was pained, but I couldn’t hide it anymore. “I’m tainted. I was marked as a Martis. It was blue that first night.” I took a huge breath and blurted it out. “But now, it’s not. It turned purple.” I pulled my comb from my hair and pushed back my hacked off bangs, showing her the mark.

She lowered her cup to the table and said, “Oh my. I had no idea,” totally deadpan.

I tried not to roll my eyes. I suspected she knew, but I wasn’t sure until then. “You knew this whole time, didn’t you?”

“Of course I knew! I’m old, not stupid.” She smiled, taking a sip, and returning the smoldering drink to the table. “And when I saw you, I knew you were the girl in my visions. Dressed in solid black with a hole in her heart the size of… something really big. Of course it was you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you knew?” My thundering heart started to relax, since I wasn’t going to die right then. “I thought you’d want me dead. I heard Eric and Julia talking about the prophecy and that they had to kill the girl in the painting—me. Eric doesn’t know. I’ve been lying to him. I hate lying to him. And the bond. The bond!” I yelled as tears ran down my face. “It’s linked me to one of them.”

She snorted. “Well, he’s really not blue then, huh?”

“It’s not funny! How can you laugh? He wants to kill me.” I wiped the tears off of my face. “The bond keeps throwing us together, and it’s pushing us to do the one thing that will kill me. I don’t want to die, and he doesn’t want to kill me. The only reason I got away from him tonight was, because I gave the bond what it wanted—a kiss, but on his cheek. The cords that held me to him snapped, along with his self-control. So I ran. If I wasn’t just a little bit faster, he would have killed me! For all I know he’s waiting outside.” I rubbed my hands over my eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”

Al looked at me. She left her steaming cup on the table while I ranted. My grief and fear floated to the surface and spilled out of my mouth. She extracted bits of info from the muck. “So, you’re bonded—but not bound—to a demon kissed boy, who doesn’t want to kiss you?”

I nodded. “Yeah. But it doesn’t matter. His control is gone. I broke it tonight to get away from him.” We sat in silence for a while. The emotions that flared through him that night were intense. He wanted to protect me. And he tried so hard, but he knew he was failing. I was his undoing. His thoughts flooded into me, and I could feel it. My voice was a whisper, “When his eyes flashed, it reminded me of Jake attacking me. But I wasn’t afraid of this guy.”

“What’s your question, dear?” the nun asked.

I breathed in, trying to steady myself, “Eric told me that they can’t feel - that they don’t feel anything. Since I can sense his thoughts and emotions, I know he wanted to protect me. Is that possible?”

“Anything’s possible,” she sipped her tea. “It’s unusual, but not impossible.”

“What do I do?” I asked.

“Something is going to happen with the two of you. Do you have any idea what it is?”

I nodded. “I think so. But I don’t know how or why. He’s in the painting. The guy I’m pulling up—or the one who’s pulling me down. It’s him. I’m sure it is.”

She sipped her tea. “Then you have nothing to worry about. With him anyway.”

My incredulous eyes flicked to her face. “Yeah, right. Al, he was ready to rip me apart tonight.”

“But he didn’t,” she shrugged. “And his self-control is remarkable. It almost as if… ” her voice trailed off. The rest of the thought passed through her brain and she left me out.

“As if, what?”

“Demon kissed are selfish and self-serving. But you can feel his desire to keep you alive. You need to know why. The only way you’ll find out is to use the bond.”

I shrunk away from her. The thought frightened me. I felt my jaw tighten. “No. I can’t see him again. I can’t.”

Her head snapped toward mine. “What do you mean, you can’t? You aren’t weak. I’ve seen you with Eric. And you have been resisting and breaking the bond with the Valefar boy. Unless one of us knows what caused it and what it wants, you’re stuck with it. And if he’s trying to protect you, there is something else at stake here. Maybe it’s the prophecy. But maybe it’s not.”

“What else could it possibly be?” I slumped back in my chair.

“It might be the prophecy, but there is only one way to be sure,” she said.

A yawn escaped me. I hadn’t yawned in weeks. Suddenly my eyelids felt heavy. “Sis-er..,” I said weakly reaching out to steady myself. Then the room spun, and I passed out.

My first vision filled me with horror. At first, I was surrounded by blackness. It crept in like fog before a storm. Coldness pressed into me. My body felt dreamlike, but I wasn’t in my own body. I was watching me. When the black fog cleared, I saw myself sitting a few feet away. I watched myself. A cool breeze lifted stringy curls off my face. The moon hung low on the horizon. As I watched the vision, I looked around to take in my surroundings. There were shadows that looked like people looming beyond me in the distance. The ground was glistening red. I held a limp body across my lap. Buildings were in the distance, but I only sensed they were there. I couldn’t see anything clearly that I wasn’t focused on in the vision.

I watched as my sobs grew softer, as I was speaking to the guy in my lap. I cradled his head in my arms. I was unable to see his face, only a crown of dark hair. That could be anyone. But from the way I was reacting, I knew it wasn’t just anyone. It was someone important to me. Desperate to know who it was, I called out to her, um, me, “What’s wrong?”

But she didn’t respond. None of them did. It was like I wasn’t even there. I walked closer trying to see the young man in her arms. He was covered in his own blood, streaming from a large gash below his neck. It leaked out of his dying body in a steady stream, too fast to fix. As I neared, I could see that my hands were covered in scarlet, and there was a wound across my palm. The vision flickered as I watched my hand press to his head.

A scream, “Nooooo!” came from one of the shadows. It moved forward quickly.

I tried to see the boy’s face. I had to know who lay dying in my arms, but I couldn’t. Then, the darkness swirled and I was back at the old church. The musty smell of stale air filled my lungs.

Sister Al loomed over me, watching me lying on the floor. “Well, that was weird. You fell asleep.” I rubbed my head, and found a dishtowel rolled up under my neck. I pulled it out and sat up slowly. Al grabbed it. “I didn’t know how long you’d be out. The rest of us go into a trace when we see. None of us sleep.” She put the towel in the sink and turned back to me. “Have you been sleeping?”

I shook my head and immediately wished I hadn’t. The throbbing made me deaf. I held up a finger to let her know I needed a minute. Images from the dream were spinning in my head and fading fast. She spoke urgently, “Ivy, we don’t have a minute. When you come out of a vision, you need to immediately write down everything you remember. Since you can’t see straight, you gotta tell me. Talk girl, before it fades!”

I began to collect the scenes from the vision, but they were slippery like soap. When I tried to grasp tightly on one, it would slip out of my grip. I decided to just talk and see if that worked better. I told her what I saw, leaving nothing out.

When I finished, she said, “That’s odd. No faces.”

I noticed her tea wasn’t on the table anymore and the kitchen was cleaned. “How long was I out?” I asked.

“About an hour,” she replied.

“Really? It felt like a few minutes. That’s not good.” My brow furrowed.

“I’m glad you see the problem. The visions should become shorter, as you mature and learn to use this power. But, they may not. Since you are tied to the Underworld, because of the demon blood, I suspect it may be different for you. Especially since we already know that your visions result in sleep. The problem is that we can’t do anything to control you falling asleep, to protect you. If a vision came on while you were in danger, there would be no way for you to escape. But, there was a warning before it came to you. Before you fell asleep. You yawned. As soon as you feel sleep pull at you, get somewhere safe. Force your body out of the vision until you are. You won’t be able to do it at first, but as your powers get stronger, you will.” I climbed off the floor and back up to the table. I rested my head in my hands, leaning heavily. She said, “Ivy, I doubt you’re going to be anything like the rest of us. Don’t mention what happened here to anyone. They will know you are different. And Ivy?”

“Hmm. Yes?” I said.

“You have to tell Eric, before he finds out another way.”