77: So Emotionally Painful

*The halls of an extravagant home span out in front of me. That sense of familiarity is there on the tip of my tongue again. I know this place, but I’m positive that I’ve never been here before. Even so, I scan the halls and the empty rooms that I pass, searching for something to knock the feeling loose.

At first I thought I was aimlessly wandering the halls, but in actuality my feet guide the way, leading me somewhere or following something. The sound of voices that I hadn’t really heard until I reach a hall with an open door, the only open door that I’ve passed so far.

Curious and anxious, fearful and hopeful. I step into the doorway to face a massive room full of vampires. My anxiousness and fear double in size as all eyes turn to me. The chatter quickly stops and they shuffle apart to reveal Gabriel across the room, sitting in a throne like chair.

My heart clenches.

The vampire strangers’ eyes quickly leave me to gaze upon Gabriel. All eyes may be on him, but his eyes are on me. Or at least that’s how it feels. That weighted stare that nearly buckles my knees.

And on top of that, I develop a dull stabbing pain that buries deeply in between my ribs, it hitches my breath when my eyes flash to his right. Brooklyn. She stands next to the throne, her arm nearly draped over the top curve, her fingertips dangling right above Gabriel’s shoulder.

“Hazel.” Gabriel’s voice snaps my eyes back to him. He beckons me to come forward.

I can feel the eyes of all the vampire subjects stare at me as I make my way to him. It’s only on my way to the front of the room that I notice humans mixed in among them. Their blood slaves?

I don’t get a chance to question him before Brooklyn hisses, “kneel to your King.”

My limbs falter for a second expecting Gabriel to overturn it...but he doesn’t, so I kneel as I’m ordered to. I fall in line with the others, on our knees, heads down, nearly kissing the ground that the King walks on.

With Gabriel’s glossy shoes in my face, I try to stay low, but a scream erupts into the room. It’s deafening. I feel the others around me jolt upright, necks craning. I know those screams. Horrified, pain driven screams.

I tuck my heads tightly underneath my laced fingers. The kneeling people next to me slip away and I tuck myself in tighter until it all fades away. Everything goes quiet. For a fraction of a second, I think that I’m the only one left, that everyone disappeared.

I peek through the curtain of my hair, slowly, inch by inch. A gargled, inaudible mumble of words escape through my slack jaw and numb lips as I stare into the room. I fall off my knees right onto my ass, scrambling around like an idiot when I catch a glimpse of myself drenched in blood. How? Splatter? I had been tucked. There’s no explaining how the entire front of my body is covered in blood. Wet, still warm blood.

I slip in the growing puddles as I try to get to my feet. My heart thumps painfully against my chest. Escape. It wants to rip itself from my body and escape. I want to escape, but there’s nowhere to go. Bodies. So many bodies. So many dead, broken bodies. Vampires and humans.

The only ones that remain are Gabriel and Brooklyn, both covered in blood. Gabriel’s mouth moves, it sounds like he says, “for you,” but I can’t be hearing him right. Why would this be for me? He extends his hand to help me off the bloodied ground and I slowly take it.

Brooklyn’s menacing glare is on me the entire time. I go with the pull of Gabriel’s grasp, but Brooklyn’s rageful roar erupts into the cold room seconds before she leaps at me, a small dagger in hand. The sharp metal blade slides through my flesh like butter, her lips at my ear. “This is my second chance not yours.”*

A tremor so fierce stiffens my body so rigidly that I get a painful cramp in my neck. Gabriel’s words, for you, rattle in my head even after waking from the dream. The feel of Brooklyn’s blade buried into my stomach lingers. My dreamless nights finally came to an awful stop.

The sun is already past high noon and I can hear Gretchen now. ‘Where are you?’ Reluctantly, I slide out of bed and get ready for work, but there’s no pushing the dream out of my head. Monty’s King card finally spoke, but there’s only more questions.

When I arrive at the shop, I plaster a smile on my face to portray a happy demeanor, because it’s best to hide my terror. The less eyes on me the better. I take Monty’s tea when she offers it, I help as many customers as I can and I do inventory without being told to. Everything is going great. But great can only last so long.

“Have you...” Monty sneaks up behind me and I get my second jolt of the day. My shock startles even her for a second or two and she has to find her words again. “Have you seen Jemzin around? It’s Sunday and she’s always on a rampage on Sundays.”

“No...I haven’t.” I hadn’t noticed before, how peaceful it was, but now that Monty mentions it. It is odd. Where could she be?

“It's refreshing not to have to clean up after her though.” Monty jokes as she walks away leaving me in my mess of mineral bottles.

I continue with the daunting task of inventory until the chime of my name fills the shop. My feet shuffle against the worn floor as I follow where it came from. Gretchen’s office. There’s this pit in my stomach that tells me this isn’t going to be a good chat. I poke my head in as I give two soft knocks with my knuckle. “You wanted to speak to me?”

“Yes. Come. Sit.” She says with a little too much excitement. I know that tone, those words. Come. Sit.

I stall, “I still have tons of inventory to get to. What’s up?”

She lets out a deep breath frustrated with my polite rejection to her offer of sitting. “You’re a great witch, Hazel and you deserve to have the opportunity to grow.” Her kind words have a hidden meaning beside them. “I want you to start learning to read.”

“What? I am quite literate already.”

“I want you to learn to read palms.”

My head shakes from side to side, “I don’t-”

“I already have some clients lined up.” Gretchen says, cutting my refusal short. Apparently, there is no saying no to her. “It’s quite easy, you have all the intuition needed already. All you have to learn is letting it flow in a different direction. Sit.” This time the word ‘sit’ is stern.

I do as she says and keep my words trapped, bubbling up inside me. There is no getting out of this. There’s a slight shake to my legs and hands as I sit across from her. She lays her hands, palm side up on the table and quickly wiggles her fingers.

“Hands.” She says. After my indecision, she continues with a humorous edge, “it doesn’t hurt, Hazel.”

“Not physically, but mentally...emotionally. Soooooo emotionally painful.” I make it sound like a joke, but I recall the dream I had earlier today. That wasn’t painful to my physical body, but it still eats at me, in my head, in my chest.

Her eyes flash up to me, a soft smile on her face. “We won’t know until we take a look.” She pulls my hands closer to her and I have to scoot closer to the table as she stretches my arms across the wooden top.

She stares at my palms, quick to point out the most commonest of lines without really looking at my hands. After so many years doing this, I’m sure she could do it blindfolded. I ignore her as she rattles off the meaning of each line and how reading people helps determine what the lines are saying. Then her face gets incredibly stern as she takes a closer, more concentrated look at my palm, left one, right one and back again. Something’s wrong. She kneads my hand right hand by digging her thumbs in, flattening it, smoothing it out. I take it back. It is physically painful. She gets perfectly still, scary still, as she truly thinks about what she’s seeing.

“What? What is it?” My nervousness distorts my voice. She remains silent, but I know she knows something. “Just say it, Gretchen.” Her silence isn’t making it better. Her not telling me isn’t going to make it go away.

“Your lines...they’re...fractured, all of them, broken several times and some are...mirrored. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She can’t take her eyes away from my limp hand.

“And?” More silence. “I mean I’ve gone how many years already with broken lines, so...what’s the big deal?”

“Maybe they weren’t always broken.” Her eyes finally meet mine. “Have you been tampering with any old magic, dark magic?”

“No.” I snap. “I might’ve done some stupid things over the years,” and in the present, “but I’m not that stupid,” intentionally.

“What if...what if someone used it against you, without you knowing.” Her words are kind and skirt around what she’s really asking.

“Do I have an enemy? Is that what you want to know? I don’t know.” I suck in fast deep breaths. I can feel the tightening of my chest, the rush of my head. “I mean Marcus loathes me, not to mention the vampire King that just showed up outta nowhere and some evolution that I’m supposedly neck deep in.” I keep my dream of getting stabbed to myself.

Just because this Brooklyn tried to kill me in a dream doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll try to kill me in real life. It’s all to be interpreted. She hates me is what it comes down to.

Gretchen takes my hands back in hers, but not to read them, just to hold them. “We’ll figure it out.”

Will we? As I look her in the eyes, I’m not sure we will.

I leave her office in a haze and stumble right up to a waiting Monty. “So, did you get a raise?” She asks.

“No, just more work.” I don’t hang out by the counter, instead I walk straight into my tiny room and start gathering whatever books I have on palm reading, which isn’t much. Apparently, I have actual clients that I’ll be expected to read next week. I should at least appear to know what I’m doing.

Monty follows. She eyeballs the books I lay out on the table. “Palm reading? She’s having you learn to read?”

“Yeah.” I don’t even try to fake any enthusiasm. There’s too much weighing down on me. Palm reading, potential clients, broken lines.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Monty says. She finally continues after a quick shrug of my shoulders. “It means she’s going to have you take over and she’s moving onto something else.”

This perks my attention. “What? What else would she do?” Gretchen is the best and her client list is never ending.

“She’s been wanting to focus on healing instead of feeling.” Monty doesn’t sound too impressed by it.

“An energy healer?” There aren’t many of those. I’m not sure if there’s one close by or at least not yet.

“Something new to bring into the shop.” Monty aimlessly flips through the top book of the closest stack. “Lucky you.” She teases before an inpatient customer rings the service bell several times, full force. Monty flashes me a smile before she dashes away.

Seconds later I hear her voice, “oh, it’s you. She’s in her room.”

I try to pretend that I’m hard at work for when my visitor enters, but they see right through me.

“Hard at work, I see.” Caleb says right behind me. “Or hardly working,” he jokes.“Either way is perfect because I’m taking you out.”

What? The word gets stuck in my throat and it takes a couple of times for my voicecords to work. “Why exactly?”

“Why? Why not?” He says in a sly tone.

But I see right through him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you being jealous of a vampire, does it?”

He steps incredibly close, so close that I can feel an inviting warmth roll off his body, his breath puffs into my hair. “I thought he was just a customer.”

It feels like eternity since Caleb got my blood racing, my bones jittery. There’s no denying that I miss him. I don’t reject or confirm my previous lie. “And where are you taking me to?”

“The Den.” He says it so confidently that I’m taken off guard. He can't be serious.

I mean what is he thinking? It can’t possibly be a good idea to bring a witch to a werewolf bar?