*This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.*
*The following is an excerpt from an upcoming release, Genevieve and the Cursed Locket, available next year. You can check out other parts to this story here and here.*
Later, we all retreated to the dormitory. After spending just a few days there, the hallway of beds had become somewhat of a new home to us. I had left clothes all over the floor, which Mom hated for me to do. The twins had manifested posters of their favorites bands and plastered them to the walls, much to their parents’ dismay, whom had left on another operation right after dinner. Thomas, beside me, had changed the white coloring of the old bed sheets to an evergreen, while his sister opted for a light purple color. This was all fine and dandy, as Grandma had told us, as long as we reversed them before we returned home.
Sitting in my bed on my cell phone, I was texting Oliver, who had sent me a whole slew of articles, all of them outlining the latest in confusing mortal news:
Chicago suffers a dozen earthquakes, all increasing in size, overnight
New Yorkers complain of power outages, work and school cancelled indefinitely
Could it be global warming that is causing nationwide catastrophes? Experts weigh in
“Is it Oliver?” Thomas asked, turning his head to face me from the adjacent bed. I nodded, waving him over. He came and laid down right beside me, smelling like the musky shampoo from his earlier shower.
“It’s all over the news and he’s suspicious. He knows I am not sharing something with him,” I complained, handing Thomas my phone. He flipped through every news article, each time his eyes widening.
“Yeah, he’s been texting me. But I have no idea what to tell him. We can’t say anything, technically speaking,” Thomas told me, echoing my thoughts over the last couple of days. I shut my phone off and stared at the ceiling above my bed.
“I just wish I could tell him. That we could,” I trailed off. Thomas simply nodded in agreement. Neither of us spoke for a moment, just laying side by side with our eyes focused on the stone ceiling. It felt nice to just be there, next to him.
CRASH! Thomas and I sat up abruptly, finding the source of the noise across the room, where an invisible body had fallen from his makeshift canopy that he had made. Isaac reappeared, looking more frightened than I’d ever seen him, but still unscathed. Lulu glanced up from her copy of Mortal Madness, but quickly went back to reading when she realized it was only Isaac and Andie wreaking havoc.
Andie opened her mouth to say something, recovering from her laughing fit, when the dormitory door burst open and Aunt Elaine stood there, beet red from fury.
“Isaac Levesque, what on earth are you doing making so much noise? You do know this isn’t your house, right?” Aunt Elaine bellowed. Thomas and I exchanged a look, smirking, but removing that smile when Aunt Elaine motioned around the room. “You are disturbing everyone else!”
“Actually, I–”–Aunt Elaine waved away Thomas’ explanation that we were simply lying here talking, as she didn’t care. Isaac’s hand disappeared as he became even more nervous.
“Don’t worry, we can fix it,” Andie mumbled, waving her wand as blue sparks left the wand, circling around the broken makeshift canopy. Aunt Elaine watched, arms crossed and her glare deepening as the canopy repaired itself. Then, she pointed her wand at the twins.
“You better be careful, alright? It’s nearly bedtime, all of you. Please don’t make a mess,” she told us as her voice became calmer and she headed for the door, shutting it firmly behind her.
Thomas and I sank back to the mattress together with a soft plop, letting out long sighs. I turned to share the humor in what just happened with him, but he was frowning.
“What’s wrong? Is it your father?” Thomas shrugged, turning onto his belly and grabbing one of the pillows from the top of my bed. He laid his chin on it, staring at the headboard.
“It’s that, and other things,” he whispered as I followed him, grabbing a pillow and laying on my stomach. He eyed me. “I just wish I knew what my special power was. Everyone else seems to have one. Lulu can sense emotions and hear when people are coming a mile away, Isaac can disappear, Andie can teleport, you can become a cat, and then there’s me. Boring, little wizard Thomas,” he muttered hopelessly. I shook his shoulder, giving him a weak smile.
“Hey, didn’t you know boys mature slower than girls do? Isaac didn’t get his powers until he was our age,” I told Thomas, who brightened up a little bit. He sighed.
“I just hope my power is useful,” he admitted, letting out another sigh and burying his chin into the pillow. I stared at him for a moment, admiring him. He looked so much like his father, I hadn’t really noticed that before. Not after long, Thomas squinted at me. “That was random.”
“Huh?” I paused, utterly confused. Thomas turned to me, also puzzled why I wasn’t understanding what he was saying.
“You said I look like my father,” he told me. I didn’t say that. “Yes you did.” Thomas replied to my thoughts, but I just squinted at him. Did I say that out loud?
“It’s like you read my mind,” I whispered, turning over onto my back and taking out my cell phone. Five more messages awaited me from Oliver. And then the phone began to ring. Thomas raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, if you don’t answer it, he assumes you’re dead. If you do answer it, you may be dead anyways,” he told me. I sent him a playful glare and answered it, putting it on speaker.
“Hi, Oliver,” I told him, turning down the volume as not to disturb Lulu’s Mortal Madness binge session or the twins planning their next big prank once we got out of Merlin’s. “What’s up?”
“Um, aside from all the earthquakes and the fact that the entire town is like leaving, not much. How’s running away from your window cleaner father’s mafia gang?” Oliver asked. Thomas gawked at me, to which I shrugged. I hadn’t had a chance to really explain that one to him. Oops.
“It’s fine. You know, Thomas is here with me. You’re on speaker,” I announced. Oliver clapped on the other end of the phone.
“At long last, I get to hear your voice. Our entire grade is calling you two the middle school dropouts,” Oliver informed us with a chuckle. I smirked. We were pretty close to that. Next to me, Thomas looked puzzled, but I didn’t bother to ask him why.
“Well, it sounds like we are,” Thomas told Oliver, grabbing the phone out of my hands and sitting up properly, while I remained lying down. “Is your family leaving, too?”
“Dude, you know my mother,” Oliver groaned. “Of course not. We are staying here and the entire street is deserted.”
“How bad are the earthquakes?” I asked, preparing for the worst. I’d seen the news. Dad had told me. Oliver had sent me photos. We never got them before in Chicago and none of the houses were prepared for something like that. If ours was still standing, it would’ve also been looped in with the others as far as earthquake risk went.
“We only got to a five something this morning,” Oliver said, checking some papers on his end of the phone call. “Yeah, five something. But they think with the rate they are going, we are going to get to seven something by the end of the week.”
“By the end of the week?” Thomas and I both gasped as we spoke at the same time, staring at each other. Whatever the Perdita and the Liberita were doing down below in the Congress hall, it was pretty bad. If they kept it up, the mortal world was in severe danger.
“You have to get out of there,” I demanded, but Oliver scoffed.
“That’s easy for you to say. My mother tells me every time I mention leaving that her grandmother stayed through the Great Depression, her great-grandmother lasted through the big Chicago Fire, and we aren’t sissies. Apparently, we’d be sissies if we got up and left, but you know I disagree. I can’t argue with her though. My mom is scary when she’s mad,” Oliver explained.
The hole of worry in my stomach opened up again and I wanted nothing more than to be there to take him out of there myself. He couldn’t stay there, not without being injured or worse, the Perdita interrogating him, as they knew by now that we were friends.
“Thomas, I do have to know. Is your father also a window cleaner? Is that why your house was damaged, too?” Oliver’s question made Thomas let out a chuckle that earned us some weird looks from the other side of the room, where Lulu and the twins took an unusual glance away from their own tasks to check on us.
“No, he’s not a window cleaner. He’s a spy,” Thomas told Oliver, who hummed happily. I rolled my eyes. I knew what was coming next.
“At least, Thomas tells me the truth,” Oliver jabbed, making me curl my fists. Thomas noticed this and patted my shoulder, still holding the cell phone in his hand so we could both be on the call.
“Fine, my dad is a spy. But the fact that you know about our fathers now puts you at great risk,” I admitted, hearing Oliver’s sigh of satisfaction. Thomas smirked down at me and I couldn’t help but also grin.
“I won’t say a word. But you are my best friends, so naturally your secrets are my secrets, right?” Thomas and I stared at each other. Not all our secrets. I don’t share everything with you, Oliver. Not the conversations Thomas and I have. Or the “m” word or the “w” word, two most forbidden words to share with anyone outside of our world. Thomas blushed a little bit and held the cell phone up to his mouth.
“You’re right. We share everything with each other. What are friends for?”
“Exactly,” Oliver agreed. Thomas grinned to me. I gave him a weak smile, sitting up and holding my knees to my chest. “What are friends for?”
“Everything,” I whispered into the phone, resting my chin on my arms. Oh, I wish I could be there with you, Oliver. Mostly, I just wanted everything to go back to normal. I wanted everyone to be safe, happy, and unharmed.
The door to our dormitories pushed open again and Mom appeared, finding me first. Snatching my phone out of Thomas’ hand, I pressed it to my ear. It was bedtime and if I didn’t obey this time, we’d be watched and we wouldn’t be able to escape to find the locket.
“I got to go. I’ll text you, okay?” I didn’t wait for Oliver’s reply as Mom entered the room, glancing at the twins and Lulu first. She told them all it was bedtime and Lulu levitated her magazine to the foot of her bed and curled under the covers, tucking her wand under her pillow. The twins hurried under the covers too, abandoning their notebooks full of plans and strategies for the upcoming prank.
Thomas scurried over to his bed and for a brief moment, my bed felt empty. I wasn’t really tired, not at all. Putting my phone onto the nightstand beside me, I crawled to the top of my bed as Mom came over, sitting next to me.
“Goodnight, darling. It’ll all be over soon, don’t worry,” she mused and pressed her lips to my forehead, about to stand up to say goodnight to Thomas when I grabbed her wrist, pulling her back to me.
“What do you mean it’ll all be over soon?” I questioned. Mom blinked at me, pushing some hair out of her face before she sat back down, giving me a forced smile.
“The Perdita have fallen, at the Congress building. But now they are on the lookout for your father, and us. But if we can hide out long enough, gather our numbers, we’ll be fine,” she explained, pressing another kiss to my forehead. “Please get some rest.”
Laying back down reluctantly, I watched as Thomas gave Mom a smile and muttered goodnight. Mom headed for the door, shutting it behind her. The lights turned off, as they did every night when ten o’clock hit. I could hear the soft snores of the twins and Lulu shuffling about to find her Mortal Madness magazine, which she was nearly finished with.
Turning onto my side, I half expected to see Thomas lying there, waiting for me to chat with him, but he was turned away, probably asleep already. Part of me was happy the Perdita had fallen at the Congress building, but where was Mr. Nigari? My dad? Would they even be after them at this point, or were they more interested in ending the war and then locating them?
Twisting to my other side, I shut my eyes. But I couldn’t find it in myself to sleep. Not when all we had to do was wait about another hour, and then we’d be off to the library, wand in hand, to finally get the locket.
