Psychic

There were two weeks left until my birthday. Two weeks left until the equinox, the deadline Hawthorne had to find me.

I arrived at school on Tuesday with a renowned sense of hope. Magnus had explained mostly everything about what I was and my dream the night before had confirmed my stinking preposition about who I was.

If I was Hawthorne’s long lost daughter, it would explain to some extent why he was looking so furiously for me. I was, after all, his flesh and blood. He couldn’t hate me with all of his being. Some part of him might have been looking for me because I was his daughter. I was someone he cared about, right?

It seemed like the reason I had forgotten everything about my life from before CPS was because my mother made me forget. I looked up the word she had said to me in the dream, and it was Latin for forget. She erased my memories, of everything I might have experienced in that life. She made me forget all about my life so I wouldn’t be in danger, but look how that turned out.

I might not have remembered her until last night, but would keeping those memories a secret really have protected me more than I’m protected now? Having memories of a loving mother is not a thing most foster kids have.

But, at the same time, I could see why she had to do it. If I had memories of magic and strange creatures, I probably would’ve ventures out into the world early on in my life, trying to find the answers. If I had exposed myself like that, Hawthorne would probably have found me faster than he did.

Mind still stirring conspiracy theories, I walked up to the school from Amy’s car. It only took one look at the strange scene in front of me and knew I was in for more than expected. Police cars were surrounding the premises and students were crowded around the yellow police tape that blocked off the school doors. Detectives in suits were interviewing the faculty and reporters with news vans were already parking themselves on the street.

My first thought was that someone had been murdered, because the mind wanders to the extremes, but there was no Medical Examiner van like you’d see in the cop shows, so that was probably not the case. There was an ambulance though, which lead me to think someone might’ve been injured badly.

Though, police at the school could also mean they finally busted the drug ring that circulated the place, but that option was definitely not as exciting.

Bella found me within seconds of my standing on the school grounds.

“Liv! Do you know what happened? They kicked everyone out of dance practice early, which is a blessing since we were doing stunts and my arms hurt from trying to hold up Anna McCarthy, and they also cleared the students out of the library and the cafeteria too. What happened?”

I focused in on the nearest detective who wasn’t interviewing a teacher and read his thoughts. I can’t believe it. Now I’ll have to spend the whole night writing up the report because some perv of a teacher couldn’t keep his hands off of his students.

I gasped. There was no way . . .

“What? What is it?” Bella pushed, seeing my expression.

I looked down at her, “I think a teacher sexually assaulted a student.”

“You don’t think it was . . .”

The crowd’s volume suddenly rose as I saw two detectives walk out of the school with a well-dressed man standing between them, head down. I recognized the gelled back hair and slight beer belly before he even looked up.

Mr. Peterson.

I glanced down by the street and saw a separate ambulance from the one near the front doors drive quickly up the street from the school’s back entrance. I focused in on another detective who seemed older than the last and maybe more intelligent and got the cold hard truth that I had already figured out on my own. I wish they hadn’t taken that Mandy Dawson girl away from the scene so quickly, I still had a couple more questions for her. Maybe I should head over to the hospital to meet them there.

I turned to Bella, but seeing as she knew about Mr. Peterson’s dirty imagination from me and who was usually the star, she figured it out pretty quickly as well once she saw who the police were carting out of the school.

“He actually tried something.” I said, dumbfounded. “I never thought that he’d actually . . .” My voice caught. It was horrible enough to have to go through those visions, but they were just fantasies. They’d always been fantasies until today. It was like when you fantasied about killing that mean girl in class, or finally confessing your love for that really hot senior. It never actually happens.

Until now.

Bella put her hand on my shoulder, “There was nothing you could’ve done.”

I shrugged her off and crossed my arms angrily. “But I knew! I could’ve done something. I should’ve told someone – I should’ve-“

“You should’ve what?” She asked. “You couldn’t have done anything, Liv. What were you going to say to her? ‘Oh, I can read minds and all of my teacher’s thoughts were all about fucking this girl in my chemistry class. I swear to you, Officer, it’s the truth.’ No one would’ve believed you anyways. Besides, how could you have known he would actually act on his fantasies?”

Because my old foster parent never did, I thought. He sure thought about it in detail, but he’d never tried anything with me at least. He never actually touched me that way. But Bella didn’t know about that part of my life, and I didn’t want her to. She knew next to nothing about my foster homes, and I didn’t want her to. My childhood wasn’t as picture perfect as hers.

“Hey, girls.” Bryce said suddenly, placing his arm casually around Bella. I wondered for a moment if he had been close enough to hear Bella’s ramble, but dismissed it when I saw his friendly expression. If you just heard your girlfriend say that, you’d probably think she’s being sarcastic.

Bella smiled and leaned in towards him. I mentally gagged.

Geez, what’s Olivia’s problem? He thought. I wasn’t surprised at his hidden rude comment.

Magnus walked up from behind me almost as fluidly as Bryce had only moments before. “I need to talk to you, Liv.”

I tilted my head, “Right now? Did you even see what’s going on at the school? They just arrested our Chemistry teacher for . . .” I trailed off as I remembered Bryce was here, and he didn’t know about what Mr. Peterson did. It would seem weird if I knew and I had no way to explain it. I was assuming the students were clueless in the matter, and since I just arrived, it would make sense that I knew nothing as well. “. . . something.”

He looked over at Bryce and Bella with a wary expression and then turned back to me. “It’s kind of a bit more important than that. It’s about the stuff we were talking about yesterday.”

I looked over at Bryce and Bella like he did, but Bella and he were already deep in conversation. I nodded at Magnus and followed him until we were away from most of the crowd. If it was about yesterday, it was about things normal people couldn’t hear.

“Something major just happened, and it might make Hawthorne even more eager to find you.” He whispered quickly, looking nervously around him. I suddenly remembered that Magnus was not the only person around here that knew about me, there was also the ‘source.’ Whoever had tipped Hawthorne off. Not to mention that Magnus’s brother was also hunting for me.

“What is it?” I asked hurriedly. Any situation where Hawthorne was forced to put even more resources into finding me was not a good one.

He sighed and looked me in the eyes, “Liv, Victoria escaped. She broke out of the Hawthorne’s compound sometime last night. We don’t know how, but she’s just gone.”

I stood there in shock. Victoria, the only other living psychic and the woman who murdered the mythical royal family, was loose. The same woman who convinced Hawthorne that I was going to destroy the entirety of the magical community by the time I turned sixteen in two weeks.

The same woman who made my mother feel obligated to hide away her own daughter from her father and her culture.

“Are you sure?” I asked tentatively.

“Yes,” he urged, “and I’m pretty sure we know the first place she’ll want to go.”

I nodded, understanding almost immediately. “She’ll want to find me.”

There was no school that day. After the fiasco with Mr. Peterson, the administration knew that it would be useless to try and get us to learn. We were all still gossiping about what he did anyways.

Well, everyone else was gossiping about what they thought he’d done. No one knew for sure yet, and no one really connected his arrest to Mandy Dawson missing from the crowd. Not yet anyways. People were sick all the time. There was a freshman though whose father was the sheriff. Word would get around by tomorrow evening, I was sure of it.

But, for now, we were all instructed to go home. Many kids were excited about the conclusion, but I was one of the few who weren’t besides the mathletes and the kids who actually liked school.

At school I would be better protected from Victoria. Brick walls and hundreds of students and faculty in between me and her made me feel much safer than two foster parents and some flimsy wooden planks to keep her away.

Magnus, of course, suggested to come with me. But I told him that there was no use. If Hawthorne just lost his only psychic in custody, then he would want all the men he could get to find her. He would especially want the one warlock who could approach Victoria without giving away the plan. If Magnus stayed back to protect me, then Hawthorne would definitely know for sure that I was the other psychic. The one who just might be his daughter.

That fact still weirded me out. More than the mind reading. More than the knowledge that warlocks and other magical creatures existed. In fact, it weirded me out more than the fact that these creatures had existed for so long without the rest of the world knowing. I was the daughter to a notorious psychopath, as far as I could see.

For years I had created this false façade of who I thought my real parents would be, and Hawthorne was definitely not what I imagined. No one wants an evil mastermind who is hunting you down as a father.

I mean – how could you despise your own flesh and blood? How could you absolutely hate your own daughter?

It just didn’t make any sense to me.

At home Amy and Rick were hovering over me. They might not have been my real parents, but they sure did care a lot for me. They had heard that there was an incident at school and wanted to make sure that I was okay. In all reality, they didn’t know just how un-okay I was.

I had a homicidal psychic after me – most likely to murder me or something. Hawthorne was also out to kill me, and he might even be my real father. My teacher most likely tried to assault my fellow classmate and I might’ve had the power to stop it. And, in case you have forgotten, I just got catapulted into a world of magical beings and I had no idea how to handle with those facts.

In other words, I was most definitely not okay.

I was finally able to escape the clutches of Amy and Rick with the excuse that I had a headache and wanted to go lie down in my room. They gladly let me go, giving me a sandwich and some Advil like the concerned foster parents they were.

I spent the afternoon watching reruns on Netflix, trying to pretend that I was just another normal teenager spending another normal afternoon in her room, while periodically checking my window for any strange activity. Those dreams Victoria sent me were proof that she knew who I was, or at least how to contact me. Finding one girl in this small town wouldn’t be too hard.

Then I started to get to thinking about the memories that had surfaced after my talk with Magnus. There was only one way to find out if they were really real. I had to do some research.

For some reason, CPS never told me the exact reason why I had come into their care – they only told me that my mom died when we went through a tragic accident. I was always too young to know. But I did know what city I was living in before, a small town called Ottawa less than an hour from Chesnutt Falls. And now that I knew it had been a fire from my dream, I could look up the facts.

After thirty minutes of research, I came up with a news article from around the time I came to CPS, and it was strangely familiar.

It talked about a raging fire in an apartment complex in the middle of downtown. It took two hours for firefighters to calm it down before it took more of the building with it. Everyone was able to make it out of the building except for a woman and a man. The man I recognized as one of Hawthorne’s guards from the memory – he was listed as a John Doe. The woman was my mother. She was listed as Andrea Chase, though I would bet anything that it was a fake name, or at least the last name was.

It talked about a little girl found buried under the rubble. It said that she was unresponsive and most likely traumatized for life with no memory of the accident. Bonked her head on a falling piece of wood the article said. It listed that the woman was her mother and that she had no family to go to.

It was talking about me.

I read and reread through the article multiple times, trying to make sure I was reading it right. It said that there was no origin for the fire and that the firefighters and detectives couldn’t find any ignition points. They had no explanation for why the fire even started or why it raged so much.

But I knew better. The fire had been an attempt to kill me. To kill an innocent little girl right after you killed her mother in front of her.

There was no longer any doubt in my mind that Hawthorne was my father. The news article proved that the memories were real. My mother was scared of him, and even had to run away with me to protect me from him. He was an evil human being who ordered the death of his daughter because of the actions of another psychic years ago.

He blamed the actions of one psychic on all future psychics.

He was no better than any politicians today.

Suddenly I didn’t find it hard to believe the prophecy Victoria claimed to have heard about me. The fact that I would have a choice to destroy all that Hawthorne stood for was promising. I wouldn’t mind changing everything that he stood for in this moment. I wouldn’t mind destroying his life like he destroyed mine.

I looked out the window, as I had been doing periodically for the last couple of hours, but this time it was different. I saw a figure on the opposite side of the street. A flash of light from a passing car revealed fiery red hair underneath a black hood.

I backed away from the window immediately. I knew exactly who was under that hood. It was no coincidence.

Victoria had found me.