Nor, how quickly she could bring me to my knees.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
Nothing I said at this point would help my cause and I wasn’t at the point where I could declare something lasting to her. I had feelings, sure. But I didn’t know how deeply they ran and I knew I wasn’t in a place to ask her to find out with me.
That was playing with something neither of us could face yet.
So instead, I reached out and shoved her shoulder. “No more stalling,” I told her. “If this doesn’t work, we’ll just erase their memories and send them on a cruise.
“You can do that?” she gasped.
I waved my hand through the air, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
She raised one eyebrow and concluded dryly, “You’re joking.”
“That’s from Star Wars!”
She rolled her eyes and opened her door. A cold blast of January air assaulted the cab but I came prepared with Magic to fight against the ungodly Chicago winter temps. I honestly didn’t know how humanity suffered through these winters without Magic. It did not seem possible to me.
“All guys are the same,” she grunted and slipped down from the cab. “Cars,” she threw out with a careless hand, “Star Wars and sex. It’s honestly like you share one brain. You’re some kind of hive creatures or something. Where is the mother brain, Jericho? Underneath a football stadium? In the back room of a strip club? Tell me and I promise to keep your secret safe.”
“Hey!” I hurried after her. “We are not all the same.”
She hesitated with her finger poised over the doorbell. “Really? So you and Titus did not almost come to blows over which one of you would drive the Porsche and which one of you would get stuck with the BMW?”
“Titus got the Porsche last time,” I told her. “And it wasn’t a Cayenne, it was a 911. So… I mean, I’m still getting the short end of the stick here.” She ignored me and pressed in on the lighted doorbell. “Plus, I used Star Wars for your benefit, not mine.”
“My benefit?” she snorted.
“Well, you’re supposed to be human,” I pointed out. “But I’m starting to have my doubts.”
She laughed before she could stop herself or remember that she was depressed. The sound was natural and so happy that it actually reached inside of me to wrap around that empty glass. The sound was steadying, the sound was fortifying.
The sound was my new goal.
She would laugh like that again. And I would be the reason. I would bring it out of her, I would help her remember that bad things had happened to her but they didn’t define her. She was so much stronger than all this… so much stronger than me.
Her laughter died abruptly though when the red front door was pulled back and warmth rushed out of the house along with the perfect image of what Olivia would have looked like in another thirty years if she had been allowed to age naturally by human standards.
Short blonde hair, a cute button nose, flawlessly pale skin, big, bright blue eyes and a protective cynicism that swept over me quickly, calculatingly and conclusively greeted us.
“Mom!” Olivia breathed with forced enthusiasm.
“Livie?” Her mom gasped and for a moment true, undiluted happiness lit up the older Taylor’s face so that she looked so unbelievably full of joy that she could spread the emotion like an unstoppable plague. But then her eyes dimmed and her smile faded and with one simple question, Liv’s reality came crashing in around us and we remembered our task in coming here. “Where’s your sister?”
And then Mrs. Taylor fainted.
----
“Wait,” Liv’s dad, one Mr. Richard Taylor, held up his aristocratic hand and stopped the constant flow of words that had been falling out Olivia’s mouth since we were led into the kitchen where he had been grading papers with the TV playing some PBS historical special in the background. “I need you to start over, or at least explain this slower.”
Richard had light brown hair that was pushed up into wild, askew tufts from shoving his hands through it the more distressed he became. His gray eyes were hidden behind thickly framed glasses and his thick mustache rivaled Tom Selleck’s- truly a masterpiece.
He looked exactly like a high school English teacher, down to the cotton turtleneck shirt and dark brown corduroy pants.
Laura Taylor sat next to him, still shaking from her daughter showing up at her doorstep without any warning. She probably would have been icing her head too, if I hadn’t caught her with my Magic before she hit the ground. Trust me when I say that using my Magic before we’d even walked in the house, had not helped smooth things over in any way.
Still, Liv’s mom looked pretty hot in her trendy jeans that were distinctively not mom jeans and a fashionable top that seemed to fight against every societal norm set before her. I wondered if her daughters encouraged her closet and style or if it were the other way around. Maybe she was one of those moms that influenced their daughter’s style.
I realized then that I didn’t even know what Liv’s true style was. Maybe I could draw some conclusions from the way she wore her short hair, sometimes wavy and relaxed looking, sometimes straight but still bouncy. I could tell something from her makeup… but overall, she had been given all of her clothes and shoes. I’d never even seen her dress in something of her own. Well, besides that first outfit that was more rags than clothes that we’d burned it.
I wasn’t exactly proud that I didn’t know her better. I had all these feelings for her and I didn’t even know if she was a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl, or only wore dresses or what. Now that we sat in front of her parents and younger brother trying to gain their approval, everything I didn’t know about Liv started to pile up and point fingers at me.
Suddenly, it didn’t seem right that we’d kept her from her family. We made the decision to protect her in our way, but she had a way of her own and we hadn’t even taken that into consideration.
“Dad, everything you thought was not real, is definitely real,” Liv said finally.
Her family gaped at her, their three mouths dropping open in unison.
Uh, probably should jump in. “Ok,” I said pleasantly with a charming smile. “Not exactly everything. This isn’t one of those moments that just because one thing is real, everything is real. Actually, mostly the things you are imagining right now are still not real. There’re only a few exceptions to the rule.”
“Such as?” Richard pressed. He didn’t seem to like me yet.
I needed to work on that.
“Trolls,” I began randomly. “Trolls are not real.”
“Also, vampires,” Liv added. “Vampires are also not real.”
“So, to be clear,” Richard started and then paused dramatically. “You do not drink blood to sustain your immortality?”
“Dad, be real.” Liv looked around the room and steeled her courage for the hundredth time. “I’m telling you the truth. I know it’s hard to believe, but I can prove it to you. Although, I don’t want to have to prove it. I want you to believe me just because it’s me. And I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”
A heavy, weighted silence fell over Liv’s family and we sat there in pained stillness until Orion- the seventeen-year-old six foot three green bean that was Liv’s “little” brother- spoke up. “I believe you, Livie.”
Liv’s bottom lip trembled and she could only nod. I squeezed the hand that I was already holding and tugged her just a bit closer to me on the couch.
Olivia hadn’t been lying about living in the center of “normal.” Her house, family and life reflected quintessential middle-class America, if not maybe a little eccentric and a lot lonely, save for her family. She fit exactly in the center of this living room, sprawled out on the couch with her family surrounding her. Her feet were tucked beneath her and she held a throw pillow comfortably against her chest. One hand played with the frayed tassels and the other with my fingers.
Was I crazy to think that being here, with her,
with her family… felt right?
Probably.
Definitely.
Laura looked me over again and I could see her shoulders stiffen even straighter. “So, Livie, if we believe you about this whole… Magic thing. Then your sister really is in a coma?” Her voice broke on the word “coma” and the same shoulders that seemed to freeze when her attention was on me now shook with fear and anxiety for a daughter she couldn’t see or help.
“She’s safe though, Mom,” Liv answered quickly. “She has the best medical care that she could possibly have. Anywhere. And she was showing signs of improvement before I left.”
“Why did you leave her, Olivia? Why aren’t you there with her now?” This time it was her dad who gave me the evil eye.
Sheesh, I wasn’t the one who caused all this mess!
No, my mind whispered, just the one who made sure it stayed a mess.
“I had to, Daddy,” she mumbled. “Watching O in that state was killing me. And I thought maybe there was a chance to reverse this. Jericho is currently hunting the man that did this to O and me, and I hoped I could help him bring the asshole down.”
“Olivia,” her father reproached. “Language.”
She didn’t apologize.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” her mom groaned. “Your sister in a coma or you trying to hunt bad guys?”
“I’m not like you remember me, alright? I’m a lot stronger now. I mean it, a lot stronger. And I have all these powers. I’m not some weak female at risk of getting mugged in a dark alleyway. I’m a capable fighter that can kick serious ass when provoked. You shouldn’t be concerned about me, you should be proud of me.”
Her parents looked like that was the craziest thing they’d ever heard. And I didn’t really blame them. While Liv’s speech was excellent, well thought-out and made with several strong points, they weren’t exactly vessels of laid-back enlightenment.
“Will O be alright?” Orion asked from across the room. His elbows rested on the kitchen table and he stared at us intently from underneath a low hanging, decorative light fixture. It was the only light on in that room and the surrounding rooms, kitchen, hallway, entryway, so it seemed to put him under a spotlight and give him greater attention than anyone else.
“Yes,” Liv promised with another tight squeeze of my fingers. “She’ll be fine.”
Orion didn’t look convinced, although her parents seemed to take her at her word.
“And now you think that this guy, this Russian guy, is going to come after me and put me through what you went through?”
“I don’t think he is, Ry. I know he is.”
“What could he possibly want with me? I’m just… average. Human or whatever.”
“Not exactly,” I spoke up, thinking this needed to be a kind of man-to-man talk. “You might seem average now, but I’m guessing he wants your blood more than anything else. He was surprised at Liv, surprised that her blood adapted and accepted the transfer of Magic. He was very interested in O, but seemed to think she might be too weak. Although we know that she’s not. We know she’ll be fine. He’s sick, completely deranged. He’s… building an army of sorts. Super soldiers or something along those lines. And he thinks you’ll be able to survive the transformation.”
Orion flinched and his face grew white with fear. He was young, so young. And despite his mature frame and build, he acted his age.
I took a moment to reflect on how old he was. He was the same age as Avalon when he ran the Rebellion… yet the two of them couldn’t be further apart in maturity. Of course, Orion was allowed to act his age probably his whole life where Avalon was raised to be a leader, to be a king. Avalon didn’t get a childhood, and he wasn’t allowed to be afraid.
I tempered my patience with those thoughts because as much as I wanted to dismiss Orion’s fears and weaknesses, I had to remember that he deserved to be worried and he had reason to dread what was coming.
“He won’t get to you, Ry,” Liv assured him. “We have people on the way. We’re going to protect you.”
“But,” his voice cracked a little and he swallowed to try to bring it under control. “But if you can’t… protect me, I mean. If this guy gets me, will I survive?”
Liv nodded. “Yes.” She looked around the room and met her parents’ eyes before returning bravely to face her brother. “You’ll just be different. But you will survive. You’re strong enough to live.”
“Olivia, I don’t like this,” Laura snapped, clearly worried for all of her children.
“I don’t either, Mom.” She sat up straighter and leaned forward. “I don’t like being different, I don’t like what happened to me or what’s happening to O and I really don’t like knowing that my life is forever changed. Forever, do you get that? Because I don’t think I can. It’s too much… it’s too long.” She shook her head out as if to make herself get back to the point. “But this is my life now. They’re not all bad people. I’ve met… I’ve met some really great people actually. And they make my transformation much easier. They make this whole thing seem possible. I don’t like what happened, but I have to face that it did happen and now I have to make the best of it. Besides, some of it is kind of cool.” Her mouth lifted in a shy grin and it was the first time I’d seen her smile since we walked into the house. I wanted to freeze time like this, with her looking relaxed and at peace. I couldn’t remember her ever looking peaceful, not in the entire time I’d known her. To emphasize her point, she used her Magic to lift an apple out of the fruit bowl on the center of the kitchen table and float it over to Orion as if offering it to him. He stared at the red fruit in cartoonish shock but eventually smiled back and took the fruit from the air.
Her parents both gasped at the sight and I couldn’t tell if they were just astonished, or if they were appalled by how different their daughter really was now.
“You sound resolved to this, Livie.” Richard removed his glasses with one hand and rubbed at his eyes with the other. “Is there really nothing you can do to reverse the… transformation?”
Liv’s smile immediately disappeared. “I don’t know, Daddy. I think… I think that this is permanent.”
“This isn’t a cult, is it?” her mother snapped. “Are you being brainwashed? Did they put something in your drink?”
“Mom,” she groaned. “You just watched an apple float through the air. I don’t think there’s a drug in the world that can make that possible. I’m not part of a cult. I’m not part of anything. I’ve just changed a little bit. And I’m staying with people I trust until O’s alright and I find out for sure, without a shadow of a doubt that there’s no going back. When this… danger is over, I’m coming home. And whether I’m permanently stuck like this or not I’m going back to my old life. I’m going to finish school; I’m going to get a job. I’m not saying goodbye to you guys and I’m not giving up on my goals.”
Richard’s body both snapped to attention and relaxed at the same time. “There’s my girl,” he said. “And you know we’ll support you in anything you do. You can finish school or wear tights with the underwear on the outside and fight crime for all we care. We just want to know that you’re safe and you’re going to be alright.”
“I am,” she whispered in an emotional voice. “And I will be.”
“So,” Laura’s voice dipped to that practical tone that all mothers were able to manage. “Will you be staying here for a while?”
“Yes,” Liv agreed immediately. “At least until we know that Orion is safe. But we’re also hoping this will lead us to Terletov, the, er, bad guy. We would like to catch him if he shows up here.”
“You don’t mean to… fight him, do you?” Richard’s face paled at the thought.
“Daddy, you just told me that I could be a super hero if I wanted to be! Fighting bad guys is kind of part of the job description… Besides, I know for a fact that this bad guy can’t kill me.”
“How do you know that?” Laura asked as if she couldn’t help herself.
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“Because he told me. He told me nothing can kill me.”
If possible their eyes grew even bigger, but they tried to hide their outrageous disbelief. I hid a smile and admired Liv in a way I hadn’t yet. She was strong and brave, but she was also generous and compassionate. She was patient and gentle with her parents. She bulldozed palace Guards right and left when we were back at the Citadel, but here she treated her family as if they were made of delicate glass.
She seemed to read situations with a deeply innate discernment and then handle them appropriately.
I wondered if she did the same thing with me.
Was I just a problem for her to solve? Or didn’t the rules apply when it came to what was between us?
That was true for me.
But it felt like too much to hope for if that was true for her.
“You’ll stay here, won’t you?” Laura’s hands twisted in her lap, revealing the motherly instinct that even revelations like tonight couldn’t squash.
Liv shot me a sideways glance, and I nodded to reassure her.
“Of course,” she replied sounding infinitely more relieved.
“And your… friend?” Richard asked with shrewd eyes directed at me.
“No, I can…”
“Of course, you’ll stay with us,” Laura interrupted.
“I don’t want to be an inconvenience,” I told her.
“Well, I don’t want my son kidnapped in the middle of the night and dragged off to who-knows-where. You’ll stay with us. You’ve protected my daughters this long; I won’t hesitate to ask you to protect my son, as well.”
My chest swelled at Laura’s words. I didn’t think a middle-aged mom had the ability to make me feel like Superman, but I was wrong. Her trust and acceptance of who I was made me feel like I could save the world from whatever dangers lurked out there. I felt invincible.
I felt respected and valued.
And it wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had been missing those feelings in my life. Not that I didn’t get them from my peers or the people I served, because I did. But from adults I truly esteemed, those valued opinions had been missing from my life for a long time.