Celestial Heartbeat (Book One) COMPLETE

Chapter Twenty Four - When It Rains It Pours (REN)

~Ren~

Marcy thought I was insane. But to be fair, so did I.

Something about admitting it out loud made it real. I wasn't so sure if I wanted it to be real yet, though. To tell you the truth, I wasn't even sure if I really, truly loved Evie like that, or if I was just trying to get a reaction out of Marcy.

If it was the latter, it certainly worked. She stared at me wide-eyed, her mouth gaping open.

"Wait, wait, wait." Cosmo shook his head, confusion painting his face. "That girl that's been coming here is a Delaney?"

"Yeah?" I stretched out the word in a long, sarcastic tone that let Cosmo know that the point of his comment was nowhere for me to find.

"That's bad." He said.

I felt annoyed that Evie was being judged because of her family. I'd been guilty of that in the past, and seeing other people follow suit was just infuriating.

"She's not like the other Delaney's." I argued quickly. "She wouldn't do anything to anyone."

It turned out I had the wrong end of the stick.

"I wasn't worried about what she'd do to others..." Cosmo trailed off

"You're worried what others would do to her..." I finished in a small tone, full of realization.

"Exactly. A girl like that walks in here, with casters like some of these guys." He gestured around the misty bar. "I don't know whether they'd want to befriend, hurt, or manipulate a Delaney."

Marcy nodded eagerly and my stomach twisted into knots,

"Delaney's, while they are one of the most distrusted and hated of the Caster families... They're also one of the strongest, most infamous ones. People would give an arm and a leg for that kind of power."

That explained the power snatching.

"What if someone just took her powers? Then she'd be safe right? They'd have no more need to go after her."

Cosmo nodded his head along with me, agreeing with my logic.

But when I turned to Marcy, she just shook her head solemnly.

"Not exactly. You can't just take someone's powers. They're attached to you. You can harness some of their power, and leave them powerless but the magic would fade over time."

"I don't understand" I grumbled.

"We're talking about your friend right? Think of her magic like a cellphone connected to a charger. The charger being her body"

"Okay."

"While it's on the charger it works perfectly. If someone takes away the phone from the charger, it still works perfectly. For a while. And then the battery runs out - it needs to be reconnected with the charger to work again."

"So they'd give back Evie's powers and snatch them again? So they have a chance to power up again?"

"I wish it was that easy."

Of course it wasn't that easy.

"You see, there's a way to have the powers not die out. If the powers recognize you as their host then metaphorically speaking, the snatcher becomes the charger."

"And how would that happen?"

"If they kill the original host. The original charger. The girl that you're talking about."

In other words Evie Delaney had to die. Now where had I heard that before?

But Evie's powers had been snatched and as far as I could tell, they hadn't attempted to kill her... So what was it?