The Beginning Of The End

Chapter 16

I awoke the next morning to someone tracing patterns on my back and smiled against my pillow.

"Jaylon," I mumbled, my voice muffled. "What are you doing?"

There was no response, the fingertips stilled, and I had a sudden sense of deja vu. What if this whole thing, this past month, had all been a dream, and I woke up back on that tiny apartment with Adam?

I rolled over, my eyes wide with alarm, and as I say up quickly I almost smashed my head into Jaylons.

"Jaylon," I gasped out before I threw my arms around his neck and clung to him like he might disappear at any moment.

"What's gotten into you?" he chuckled, though there was a little part of his voice that sounded genuinely concerned.

"I thought I might have dreamed everything," I answered, looking down in embarrassment. "And that I was waking up with Adam again."

"That won't happen, I'll always be here," Jaylon promised, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "Besides," he added, "Your imagination isn't good enough to dream all that up."

"Rude!" I slapped his arm lightly and laughed, pushing him to the side so I could slide out of bed. Jaylon must have taken my shoes off and pulled a blanket over us last night, but I was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

"You were in an awfully good mood when you and Thalia got back last night," I noted as I crossed the room to the chest of drawers. "Did you find out anything about your brother? Your family?"

"Well," he said, swinging his legs out of the bed and stretching. He was bare-chested, as usual, and my eyes were drawn to his muscular abdomen. "All this time, I haven't even known if my family is alive, or why they left me, or anything. I guess I always kind of thought they just abandoned me, you know?"

"Like my dad did," I murmured. Jaylon nodded.

"Lucas never told Thalia that much about his past, but he did tell her that when he was eight, he and the rest of my family were taken right out of there home. Kidnapped, I guess. Oh yeah," he frowned, "You should probably know that there's this bad witch out there. She's been taking witches and warlocks for decades, trying to turn them over to get side and train them up. Lucas must have got away somehow, I don't know, but I know he's okay, and I wasn't, you know, abandoned."

"Of course you weren't," I said. "Why would they have taken the others and left you? But this witch, she's taking heaps of people with magic?"

"That's right." Jaylon nodded

"So... maybe my dad?" Could I dare to hope? For most of my life, I had hated my father for how he destroyed our family. My mother was never the same after he left, she went so downhill that it cost her her unborn babies life. Or not, according to the family tree on the wall upstairs, but we hadn't known that.

"Yes!" Jaylon exclaimed, up on his feet and crossing the room to me. "Yes, she's been taking people for decades. And maybe... maybe she took your little sister too, but used magic to make it seem like she was stillborn."

"That's what I was thinking," I breathed.

"So," Jaylon said, losing his grin, "we're gonna need to get everyone out."

"Is that safe?" I asked nervously.

"Louisa," Jaylon said gently, "When there's a bad witch involved, I don't think it's ever going to be safe."

"True." I nodded slowly. "Okay, I'm gonna get changed. Can you go get Charlie and the others and I'll meet you all down in the kitchen?"

"Sure." He smiled and pecked my nose lightly, then turned and left the room.

After I dressed, I crossed the hall and brushed my teeth, splashing some water on my face and pulling my hair into a ponytail. I headed back to my room and eyed a book sitting on my nightstand that I was sure I hadn't out there. Striding across the room, I picked it up and flipped it open to a random page.

As I read the scrawled, handwritten script across the old, crinkled pages, my eyes widened.

"Jaylon!" I yelled, running out of the room with the book clutched to my chest. "Jaylon!"

I was halfway down the stairs to the kitchen when I collided with him on his way up to me.

"What is it?" He asked urgently, grabbing me by my shoulders to stop me calling down the stairs. "What's wrong?"

"I found it!" I managed to gasp out between breaths. "I found a way to find everyone."