Disclaimer: I do not own any works credited to the names Rick Riordan, Uncle Rick, Cassandra Clare, or Cassie Clare. I am not that man, and I am not that woman. I am me, Writing Desk's Raven.
Previously on More Than A Girl:
Even though she did not see me, she smiled, then returned to the rags. She knew I was there after I told them about the anniversary.
"What's wrong with her?" Flint finally asked.
Andrea looked up at him. "It happens every year, she told us." She said no more than that.
"What do you mean, sugar?" Flint asked. Yeah, he liked pet names.
"The pain," Andrea explained, "appears every year just after noon, preceded by the nightmares at midnight, and it causes her not to black out, but to go into a sort of catatonic state."
"Will she be better soon?" Flint asked.
"She's better now. She doesn't feel it after she goes into this state." Andrea continued. She didn't say anything about me being there right now.
"When will it end?" Flint asked.
"Soon." Dustin told him. The time was never definite, so he didn't actually know. The only definite thing was that it always ended by midnight.
"Whit." A voice said behind me. Startled, I stood and turned around. Two spirits stood behind me.
"How are you here?" I asked. I didn't bother asking who they were.
"Blood contains a peculiar magic." The male said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Do you not recognize us? I didn't realize you could age in Elysium." The female said.
Then I recognized them, and a surprised gasp escaped my lips.
"Lyric? Kiernan?" I asked.
"In the flesh. Or, I should say, spirit." Kiernan said.
"We've come to give you a warning." Lyric started. "No one can observe us here. And we could only find you here because we are your direct blood, we are your parents."
"A warning?" I asked.
"Someone will come to you. You will not know him. He will ask you to join him, but you must never do that." Kiernan told me.
"Who?" I asked.
"We do not yet know, ourselves." Lyric said. "He tried to find our spirits, to use us, but we evade him. No matter what is said, no matter what you hear, no matter what you see, do not join him. You must be strong."
"We must go before we are noticed gone from the Underworld. The occasion is rare we are allowed to visit." Kiernan said.
"We love you. And we're proud of you. You've grown into a strong young adult." Lyric told me. They disappeared.
I had no time to ponder over their message, because I was back in my body, sitting up and gasping for air.
"Are you alright?" Dustin asked the moment my airway had cleared.
"I'm fine." I said, pulling myself into a standing position. They all stood as well. I looked over to Flint. "Sorry about your hands. I guess telling someone not to freak out doesn't really help. And I should have warned you. Clary can probably fix it."
"Don't worry about me, I'm fine. What about you, honey?" Flint asked.
"Never better. Didn't feel a thing for most of that." I said, waving a hand.
"Let's head to the living room. Everyone will want an explanation as to the scream and us running out." Andrea said. I nodded, and we followed her.
"Everything alright?" Clary asked when we entered.
"Just a little yearly thing. I'm fine. Flint's not, though. You may want to take a look at his hands. I failed to properly warn him." I said. Clary reached for her stele when Flint held his hands out to her.
"I've had worse, little miss fire." Flint told me. I smiled sheepishly.
I turned to Dustin and Andrea. "So, be ready by seven tomorrow?" I asked.
"Yeah, that'll give us plenty of time." Dustin confirmed.
"Works for me." Andrea added.
"You're going somewhere?" Aeric asked.
"Concert in Boston. I got a couple tickets from my aunt." I explained.
"What band?" Lizzy asked.
"Streetlight Manifesto." I said. "One of my absolute favorite, though Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly are high up there, as you can probably tell by this shirt."
"Alternatively, ska punk slash punk rock and punk Irish music bands?" Clary asked.
"You've heard of them?" I asked.
"I'm probably the only one who has. All these shadowhunters never spent any time in the mundane world, and usually don't. I think I'm the only one who really enjoys it." Clary explained, waving a hand. I just nodded.
"Well, I like the mundane world." Flint commented.
"You're more into folk music, though, rather than punk. Besides, the bands she mentioned are things that my generation would have begun to know, and your parents' generation would have grown up with." Clary explained. Flint shrugged.
"I'm going to go to Spruce Creek." I stated. "I haven't been in awhile. I'll be back later." With that, I was gone.
When I appeared in my room, I took off my combat boots and laid on the bed. I had moved some of the furniture to my own cabin at camp, things like the dressing screen and the armoire and the beanbag. I left the bed and the bookshelf and everything else, everything else furniture. I had brought most of my belongings, so I'd actually have them.
I fell asleep, unsurprisingly, seeing as the pain took a lot out of me, as per usual.
When I woke and looked at the time, it was seven in the morning. Twelve hours until I needed to be ready. I shoved my feet into my boots and went down to the guest room. The room painted to look like nighttime in a grassy meadow was absolutely beautiful.
After spending about an hour in the guest room, I went downstairs to get something to eat. Seeing as how I hadn't eaten in a while, I was hungry.
I had just made myself a sandwich when Maddie walked in. She was surprised, and dropped the plastic cup in her hand. Luckily, it was empty. "What are you doing here, Whit?" She asked as she bent down to pick it back up and set it on the counter.
"I had a rough day yesterday, and I came here and fell asleep upstairs." I said.
"I think we all had a rough day." She said, looking out the window solemnly.
"Can you tell me anything about them?" I asked, sitting on one of the barstools. Maddie sat across from me.
"I didn't really know Kiernan, as our social groups were wildly different. Really, I didn't even hold a real conversation with him until after Lyric moved to town." Maddie started. "But your mother, we became good friends quickly. I met her at lunch on her first day of school, she was sitting with Lydia at our table. Lydia introduced us, Jay tried to get her to sit with him at the table full of the popular kids, and then she came back and we all talked."
"Jay was sitting with the popular kids?" I asked with a laugh.
"Yeah. Not that he was ever like them, but, as I'm told, he was always very likeable and it attracted those kinds of people." Maddie said.
"It attracted you, too." I teased. She blushed.
"Yeah. Anyways, I found out Lyric was in some of my dance classes, and we ended up partners for a couple things. She also made the team. So, me and her and Lydia just ended up great friends." Maddie continued.
"Didn't she also do taekwondo?" I asked. My aunt nodded.
"So, we all were great friends. Lyric also became friends with Kiernan through a couple projects they had to work on together. Then, the Friday after she moved up, I think it was, her father showed up. He tried to take Lyric with him, but she kept shouting at him in Greek. It only made him madder." Maddie said, shaking her head slowly.
"I've never heard this story before. Just the basics, and barely that." I said, frowning.
"I think you're old enough by now to hear it. Only a year younger than she was." Maddie said.
"So, what happened?" I asked.
"He ended up being restrained by Jay and Kiernan. She had told everyone to stay inside where they'd be safe, but they didn't listen. Neither did her mother, who her father threw into the side of the house. And Lyric, she saw before anyone else that he had a knife. So she shoved Kiernan out of the way, and ended up with the knife straight through her hand." Maddie said. My eyes widened. My mother took a knife for my father? I knew they loved each other a lot, but damn. "And then, she pulled the knife out of her hand right as the police showed up. Not a good image for her, but all she had to do was show off her new gaping wound. Freaked out the officer, especially when she seemed to have not even noticed it much. And Warren, he ended up getting away again. Brought out a gun, and he and Lyric were yelling at each other. He shot at her, but Kiernan, he tackled her out of the way. Instead of Lyric getting a bullet to the heart, Kiernan got a bullet to the side. He passed out on top of her." My eyes couldn't widen anymore. Damn, my parents were, like, the epic romance you'd find only in fiction.
"What happened to Warren?" I asked.
"Shot seventeen times in the head and chest. There were a ton of officers on the scene. Granted, I knew none of this until Lyric told me. I wasn't there." Maddie explained.
"I can't believe their lives were so weird." I said slowly.
"It only gets better from there." Maddie said. Her tone was half joking.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"The Friday after that was Halloween. Kiernan was throwing a Halloween party, like he did every year of high school. We all went. It was fun, and we all danced with each other. Now, Lyric was supposed to go home with me, because Whitney was up at the farm, but that didn't end up happening. She didn't want to cut short the fun Jay and I were having. So she ended up staying over there, her stuff was there already, anyway. Lydia had locked herself in her room to go to sleep awhile before, so Lyric stayed in Kiernan's room. You can likely imagine what happened." Maddie went on. "But when she woke in the middle of the night, she freaked. She ran away, managed to get back into her own house, and arrived at dance super early. When I got there, she wouldn't tell me much, but Jay had woken in the night and immediately knew something was up. So when I saw her through the studio window, I called him and Lydia. They came, as well as Kiernan. Now, none of us but Kiernan knew what was going on, and she told us to ask Kiernan before she ran away again, but he told us it wasn't his place. We looked around for her for awhile, but couldn't find her. Jay eventually concluded she'd gone to the farm, so we all got in his car and went for the two hour drive."
"Did she run away to the farm?" I asked.
"Yeah. We all slept over after Jay's and her shouting match in Greek. When Jay saw her in his shirt, the look on his face was priceless." Maddie laughed a little. "We brought her out to the car in the morning, but we let her sleep."
"What happened when you got home?" I asked.
"She avoided Kiernan for a week. And no one would tell Lydia and I what was going on, but we managed to figure it out. That was also the week we got another two new students." Maddie explained. "Cypress and Nikita."
"So that's how you guys met them?" I asked.
"Yeah. Now, on that Friday, things started getting more... Supernatural. Lyric met Tartarus, and then Cypress and Nikita brought her and Jay and Kiernan to camp, and a whole slew of other things happened. Basically, the camps went to war again monsters, Lyric went up to Olympus and found out she was pregnant, not to mention hallucinated both Jay and Kiernan dying. And then she had to live through that, but she offered herself for them. Tartarus took Nikita as well, saying he'd kill you if she didn't go. Nikita was the only one who knew. You were born down there, and he took you and wiped Lyric's memory of you. He also posed as Kiernan rescuing them, but Lyric figured it out when your father showed up at her house. More things happened, then the final standoff. Nikita managed to take you back, had Kiernan hold you, and then apparently protected the camp and everyone else while your mother destroyed Tartarus." Maddie summarized.
"Wow." I said.
"Yeah. And then they came back to the farm, and we spent every moment we could with them. You really weren't a happy baby when they died. It was like you knew what was going on." Maddie said.
"I did." I whispered. "I knew exactly what was going on."
Maddie gave me a sad smile. "You should probably be getting back, now." She told me. I glanced at the clock. It was only seven thirty.
"I don't really want to go back." I said with a sigh.
"What's wrong with camp?" My aunt asked curiously.
"Nothing." I said quickly. Our family in Ohio must not have even been aware of the prophecy.
"Whitney Warren Ashton. What's going on?" She asked.
I sighed. "A lot of things are going on. We... We got a prophecy. Me and Dustin. And we've brought Andrea along. But we basically have to sit around until the thirtieth, and maybe even after that." I explained slowly.
"The thirtieth?" She asked.
"That's when the ceremony is." I told her.
"Ceremony?" She was confused, I could tell.
"Too much too explain. But you're right, I should get back. I'll explain things at a later date. Don't worry for now. None of it's dangerous." I said. And with that, I was no longer there.
I appeared in my cabin. I set my battery powered alarm clock, laid down on the bed, and fell asleep again.
I woke to the alarm at six thirty in the evening. I shut the alarm off, got up, and went to the bathroom to take the shower.
After the shower woke me up, I wrapped a towel around myself, grabbed my boots, and appeared in my room in the manor.
I went over to the dresser to pick out an outfit. I ended up deciding on a light blue pair of jeans, a loose purple tank top over my bra, and my leather jacket. I slid my boots and a pair of socks on, and tossed my wallet and my iPod in my pockets, along with the tickets.
I opened the door to find Andrea, about to knock. Dustin was standing beside her. "You guys ready?" I asked.
"Yeah." Andrea said.
"We were just coming to get you." Dustin added.
"Obviously." I said. "Come on."
We made our way downstairs, to the front door. "We're headed out! We'll be back later, or maybe tomorrow!" I called as the door shut behind me. There was a muffled response from another room. I took Andrea and Dustin's hands, and we were just outside the venue in Boston.
The concert was wonderful. Andrea, Dustin, and I ended up watching from the balcony up above the back of the crowd, the balcony which also happened to hold a bar. We may or may not have manipulated the mist to get ourselves a couple drinks.
When we got back, we went upstairs, going separate ways when we reached our rooms. I went into mine and tossed down the bag that held the t-shirt and CD I'd bought. I took off my jacket after emptying the pockets, and tossed it over by the vanity. Then I took off my shoes, throwing them by the door.
I changed into pajamas, a loose camisole and soft and comfortable pants. Then I threw myself on my bed and fell asleep.
Random tip: At a loss for character names, or, especially, last names? The credits of a movie will give you hundreds of possibilities. Start a list that you can access at any time for any work of writing. You'll thank yourself, trust me. (I've got lists for unisex, male, female, last, and shadowhunter names. They're extremely helpful, and I have it partially alphabetized, where in I group A names together and so on and so forth.)
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