The Stories of Jasmine Fyre
A blond boy is sitting in the living room watching a t.v. show. Suddenly the t.v. flickers from the show to static. The boy picks up the remote and turns the t.v. off, he shifts the t.v. to make sure that everything is plugged in, everything is. He moves the t.v. back and walks into the kitchen to get a snack. The lights in the kitchen flicker, the boy looks up at the lights then back into the fridge as he mumbles "The lights are flickering again, Mom just got them looked at!" He pulls some ham and cheese from the fridge and puts it onto the counter. Turning around to grab a plate from the cupboard. A knife levitates up from the knife block on the other side of the kitchen but the boy doesn't notice. The knife floats towards the boy as he puts the plate down on the counter in front of the cupboard and reaches over to grab some bread from the other end of the counter. The knife lines itself up behind the boy, right where the boy's heart is. As the boy grabs the bread and turns around the knife rams through him, the tip sticking through the other side, the boy falls over onto the tile floor of the kitchen, blood slowly leaking out of the wound, forming a pool of blood around the boy.
September 2009
Friday
"Another death" Em says as I walk into the kitchen "Some kid named Roland Green."
"Roland? I know Roland!" I say in a panicked voice "How did he die!?"
"Apparently he was stabbed through the heart, there were no signs of a break in and the police haven't ruled out suicide." Em answers as I sit down to a breakfast of pancakes and eggs.
"He wouldn't commit sucide, if he was planning to he would have at least told me," I say defensively "or if not me, he would have told Philip."
"Philip?" Em questions, putting down the newspaper.
"Philip Massey" I respond, finishing my eggs "He is….. was, Roland's boyfriend."
"Oh," Em replies "I really need to get up to date with your friends."
"It's fine Em" I say, finishing my pancakes and picking my plate up from the table, "I get that you're busy, I mean the fact that you even find time to be with me is impressive."
"I still should be around more often," Em says as I put my plate into the sink and start walking towards the stairs to go up to my room and get dressed for school.
"Em," I say as I pause and turn around "You are an immortal being, you have responsibilities that you sacrificed most of while I was young, but now you can do them, It's fine if you're not around all the time."
"I don't have anything I have to do next Friday," Em says, popping up in front of me and looking into my eyes, "We can get Half-Blood Prince on dvd, it'll be fun."
"That sounds great Em!" I say giving her a quick hug, turn around and start up the stairs "I got to get ready for school, see you tonight!" I run up the stairs and into my room, I look through my closet for comfortable clothes to wear to school, I pick out a t-shirt and some pants. Then I walk over to my desk, grab my homework and stuff it into the backpack hanging off the back of the chair. I take a sweatshirt off my bed and slip it on, it's only going to get colder and even though I could easily keep myself as warm or cold as I want, I don't want to make anyone suspicious considering every time I do anything deemed magical or supernatural we have to move. I put my backpack onto my shoulders, then I pop down to the living room. I don't really understand the science behind what I call "popping" Em tried to explain it but really all I got was that I can get really, really, really small, like about the size of an atom small and move very, very fast, so fast that it seems like teleportation, even to me. There was more but at the point that it was explained to me I didn't really understand it and now I don't really care, I can teleport, that's all I need to know. I walk out the door and onto the sidewalk, if I wasn't trying to hide my abilities I would pop but whatever. I walk down the street towards the school, stopping to pet a cute dog along the way. I arrive at school and make my way over to the giant oak tree in the middle of the courtyard that my friends and I would sit under waiting for the bell to ring. Underneath the tree Philip is sitting head between his knees, Lia is kneeling next to him hand on his shoulder trying to comfort him.
"Hey Philip," I say quietly as I sit down next to him "I heard about Roland, how are you doing?"
"They wouldn't even let me see the body," Philip murmurs, head not moving from between his knees, now that I'm closer I can see that he is quietly crying "Because I'm not family, apparently I'm not allowed to see him until the funeral." I hug him trying my best to comfort him even though I know it won't do much good right now. Em still tears up when she talks about the first incarnation of me even though it was so many years ago that nobody alive has ever heard of her, even partially immortal beings like vampires or other things like that. Philip isn't going to get over this anytime soon. The bell rings and we go inside. The school day progresses like normal except with many more tears not just from Philip but me and Lia too. Many students came up to Philip with sympathy but the biggest difference was that Roland wasn't there and he wouldn't be there ever again. When the school day finally ended I was exhausted, I kept turning to the side to see if Roland was laughing at the jokes flying around the classroom or to ask what he thought about something I said and he wasn't there. If it was that bad for me I can't imagine what it was like for Philip. Dragging myself home I pass the playground that's on my way home when a man steps out from behind the monkey bars. I look around myself but there is no one else around.
"Hello Jasmine," the man says, I look for places with other people that I could run to but there isn't anything "I have someone who wants to talk to you." His eyes flick to black then back to the body's dark brown. Shoot. I reach into the side pocket of my backpack and pull out a flask of holy water that Sam had given to me after the weird psychic children gladiator battle thing. There was about a quarter of it left, I don't know why but the number of demons coming after me has increased by A LOT recently. I asked Em about it but she said she really didn't want to talk about it so I didn't push.
"I have holy water." I say confidently, trying to hide my fear.
"You think I don't have backup? You're a very hard person to kidnap." The demon says coming closer to me, I unscrew the top of the flask and get ready to throw the remaining liquid at the demon. The demon takes another step forward and I throw the holy water at him, I turn to run as he screams in pain when suddenly a voice starts chanting in what sounds like Latin. I turn my head to look and its Lia. I stop moving and just watch her, I recognize a few words of what she's saying as an exorcism chant. The demon stops burning from the holy water and starts to turn on Lia.
"HEY!" I yell from behind the demon, I know it's a horrible idea but Lia is my friend, "DEMON! YOU WANT ME DON'T YOU!?" The demon turns to look at me and simply says
"You are of no use if I don't have a body." He turns back to Lia, who is still chanting and slams her against a slide. I know that Em would want me to run, after all I'm still human and therefore can be killed. However Lia is one of my best friends, I already lost one friend this week, I'm not losing another. I run up behind the demon and tackle him, I get tossed off almost immediately but being pushed to the ground is distracting enough that Lia was able to finish the chant. Black smoke rushed out of the man's mouth and zoomed into the ground leaving a very confused but alive man on the ground.
"Let's walk over to your house and talk," Lia says, picking herself off the mulch that she had fallen onto when the demon had been sent back to hell.
"That sounds like a great idea," I agree, picking up my backpack from where it had fallen when I tackled the demon, next to it was the empty flask that used to hold holy water. Lia and I walk down the street turning onto mine after we pass one of the many gas stations in our town. We walked down Verity Lane until we reached my house with its two storys and light orange wood walls. I take my key out of my backpack and unlock the door. Leading Lia into the living room I toss my backpack onto the coffee table and sit down on the couch, I invite Lia to do the same.
"So," Lia says glancing around my living room "talk, how did you know it was a demon?"
"How did you know?" I ask right back, holy water is one thing but a full on exorcism? She has to have faced a demon before. "That was a full on exorcism chant."
"I asked first," She replies
"So, I was eleven," I start hoping that she doesn't ask too many questions "and there was a complicated situation where demons were involved, these two hunters, Sam and Dean, rescued me and taught me some basic defense against demons." This is all true however I left out some very important details, nevermind the fact that they wouldn't have taught basic defense if it was a normal situation, most normal people would only face demons once in their entire lives if they face them at all. Of course nothing about me is normal. "What about you?" I ask after a few seconds.
"My cousin's family are hunters, our old house was haunted and Gale, that's my cousin, realized it but I found that he was a hunter when he was stopping the ghost, after that he taught me some basic things, like how to exorcise a demon and how to shoot a gun." Lia says, nervously fiddling with her necklace, "Also, Jaz," she pauses for a moment then continues, "I don't think Roland's death was…..normal"
"So you're saying that something supernatural killed Roland," I guess, I had considered it but I have no idea what to look for to confirm or deny my guess. "Do you know anyway to confirm whether it was?"
"Yea," Lia replies, "My cousin left me some stuff, but if we confirm that whatever killed Roland isn't human, what do we do? I don't have enough experience to deal with it."
"I know someone we could call," I say, I'd have to tell Sam and Dean not to mention anything that suggests that I'm not a completely normal human that happened to have a run in with a couple demons but it would probably be fine. "They could be here in a day at most depending where in the country they are."
"Great," Lia says excitedly, "Let's go check the house out and then we can call them." She jumps off the couch and grabs her bag from the coffee table.
"I have to leave a note for my…. Mom," I say stopping her in her tracks, Em isn't actually my Mom of course but a kid living with a random woman who doesn't have any relation to the kid? Suspicious, in reality Em is my soulmate, and once I reach 21 I'll become immortal, just like her, "Let me grab a piece of paper and a pen real quick then we can go." I stand up from the couch and walk quickly into the kitchen, I rifle through the writing draw and pull out a pen and some paper, I quickly pen down a note that says:
Hey Em, I'm with Lia, we're looking into something
if I'm not back by 4:30 something went wrong and I'm probably in trouble.
Love you,
-Jasmine
I put it onto the kitchen counter, put the pen back into the draw then walk back into the living room. "Alright, I'm ready to go." I say to Lia who is waiting by the door.
"Alright, we have to stop by my house to pick up some supplies then we can go to Roland's," Lia says, opening the door and motioning for me to go through, I exit my house, making sure that my key is in the pocket of my sweatshirt and wait on the doorstep for Lia to exit the house, she does and I lock the door. She starts walking down the sidewalk and I follow close behind. After a few minutes we turn onto her street and into her house. She leads me up the stairs and into her room, I had been in her room plenty of times and I immediately sat down on the fluffy rug in the middle of her room. She went over to her bookshelf which she never let any of us touch, I figured that it was probably because she didn't want us to mess up the order of her books. She pulled out a couple books and took a box out from the space between the bookshelf and the wall. Lia placed the box onto the rug and sat down behind it. She pulled the lid off the box and inside was a plastic baggie full of salt, a metal object with little lightbulbs on one side of it next to what looked like an antenna. It looked familiar but I couldn't place where I had seen it before. Lia pulled the metal contraption out and underneath was a piece of paper written in what looked like Latin. I knew bits and pieces of Latin because according to Em it was an important language to know. Of course, Em also thinks that a ton of languages are important to know.
"This is an EMF detector," Lia says, seeing my confused look, hearing the name I remember where I saw something similar, Dean was fiddling with one when we were staying in that weird run-down house after the whole gladiator battle thing. I would have left right after Sam died but I didn't have the energy to even summon a spark and Em seemed to be ignoring normal fire. Of course Sam didn't stay dead and then we had to close the hell gates so I had completely forgotten about it. "It'll tell us whether or not a ghost was in Roland's house," Lia continues, pulling me out of my thoughts, "We don't even need to perform any crazy stunts to get inside the house, we can just say we wanted to offer our condolences."
"Yea," I reply, as useful as it is that Roland died and not someone else, I wish it was anyone else, "At least one good thing came out of Roland's death."
"We should start going now before my Dad gets home," Lia says placing the EMF detector on the carpet and putting the lid back on the box before putting it back where she pulled it from and replacing the books, "My Dad doesn't exactly like Roland." She grabs the EMF detector from where she set it and puts it into the pocket of her jeans, then she stands up and starts walking towards her bedroom door, I follow a second later, carefully shutting the door behind me. I follow her down the stairs and out onto her porch. Roland's house is on the other side of the school so to get there from here we would have to go past school and down to Yew Drive.
"You can borrow Carol's bike," Lia says walking over to where her family keeps their bikes, Carol is Lia's older sister, she's at college right now so she isn't here to complain if I use her bike. I pull Carol's bike out from where it's sitting, I walk it down the steps and park it on the sidewalk. I take the helmet off the handlebar that it's hanging from and put it on my head, buckling the strap. Em wouldn't let me ride a bike for a year if I hurt myself in a stupid accident because I wasn't wearing a helmet. I can do all the dangerous, risky stuff I want once I'm immortal, not before. I already have a list put together of what I want to do once I can't die. Lia pulls her bike down the stairs and places it next to the one I'm using, her helmet already on.
"Alright let's go," she says lifting her leg over to the other side of the bike and sitting down onto the seat, I do the same. "To Roland's!" She shouts, quietly enough that she doesn't annoy the neighbors. We take off down the street, turning onto the street the school's on once we can. We follow Bear street until it turns into Deer Lane, then we turn onto Roland street and make our way over to his house. We carefully park our bikes in the driveway and take off our helmets, leaving them hanging from the bikes. I comb through my hair with my fingers, trying to give it less of a windswept look. It looks slightly better afterwards but I would need a brush or at least a comb for it to look like it did this morning. I lead the way up the steps and ring the doorbell. We wait for a few seconds, just long enough that it feels awkward but not long enough that we contemplate leaving. The door is then opened revealing Roland's Mom who based on her still red eyes had been crying recently. Understandable really, if I hadn't had to rush to get ready for school right after I heard I would be a mess right now, and probably dead considering I was attacked by a demon on the way home.
"Hello girls," Mrs. Green says in one of the saddest voices that I've ever heard, "Do you want to come in?"
"That would be great," Lia answers for the both of us, "we came by to say how sorry we are."
"Of course," Mrs. Green says, opening the door wider so that we could come in, "I'll get you girls some lemonade." We follow her into the living room, the kitchen is still covered in police tape but Mrs. Green goes under it and opens the fridge, pulling out a pitcher of lemonade and grabbing two glasses out of the cupboard. Then she comes back into the living room and hands us each a glass, filling them to the brim with lemonade. She then sits on the armchair, putting the pitcher down onto the coffee table. "They think that he might have committed sucicide," Mrs. Green murmurs, "because he left a will about what to do with his stuff if he died, we didn't know about it until last night."
"He left a will and you didn't know?" I ask confused, writing a will requires a ton of legal work, I should know, I have one, after all, I'm either going to die young or live forever, how would Roland write a will without his parents knowing?
"It isn't an official will," Mrs. Green replies "But he wrote down what to do with his stuff if he died, he left stuff for you two actually. Most of his stuff went to Philip though."
"May we see what he left us?" Lia asks "If it's not too much trouble."
"Of course," Mrs. Green says, already standing up, "I'll go get the stuff right now, we sorted into different boxes according to who he asked for it to go to." She walks down the hallway towards where I know Philip's room is. After Mrs. Green leaves our sight, Lia quickly stands up and walks over to the kitchen, ducking under the police tape and pulling the EMF detector out of her pocket. She pulls the antenna out of where it's encased by the device and walks over to where Roland was killed, the floor still stained by his blood. She stands next to the stain waving the EMF detector around. The used-to-be-Roland stain. Oh God, Roland is dead, never coming back, never see him again dead. I feel tears coming but I hold them back, this isn't the time to cry, we have a job to do. Suddenly the EMF meter starts going off, the bulbs on the top lighting up in an angry red.
"Well," Lia starts, pushing the antenna back into the device, "There was definitely a ghost here." I hear Mrs. Green coming back down the hall and I assume that Lia hears it too as she stuffs the detector back into her pocket and quickly runs back into the living room, sitting down just as Mrs. Green comes back into the living room, carrying two medium sized boxes.
"Here's the boxes," Mrs. Green says, placing them on the coffee table on either side of the pitcher of lemonade, one of the boxes has Lia's name written on it in green marker, the other has my name written on it with the same marker. "He must have been really good friends with you girls." She starts crying lightly, I stand up and hug her. It must be so hard to lose her only child, especially since normal people don't get reincarnated, she won't get to see him again while she's still alive. After she dies? Well who knows.
"You girls are so sweet," She chokes out through her tears, "I see why Roland was such good friends with you two."
"Call us if you need anything Mrs. Green," Lia says standing up and grabbing her box off the table, "Anytime, anyday."
"Thank you girls," Mrs. Green replies as I let go of her and pick up my box too, "Let me show you two out." She walks over to the door and opens it, Lia and I follow closely behind, we say our thanks for the lemonade then step out onto the driveway as we hear her close the door behind us.
"We should hurry over to your house, my Dad comes home in 15 minutes." Lia says once we're standing by our bikes and have strapped the boxes of stuff to the back of our bikes.
"Why?" I ask, confused "I thought we were going to ride the bikes to your house then you were going to go home and I would leave Carol's bike there then walk the rest of the way home."
"But we have to call those hunters you mentioned, Sam and Dean." Lia answers
"I can do that by myself, you should get home." I respond, Lia is one of my best friends but I need to tell Sam and Dean not to mention anything that would make me seem anything but a normal human and once they get here it will be a whirlwind of activity, if they let something slip I would have to move again.
"Well, if you insist," Lia says, a small frown on her face, "We should get going, don't want to keep my Dad waiting." We climb onto our bikes and pedal down the street, back up Deer Lane and Bear Street until we get to Lia's street. We turn into her driveway and unstrap the boxes from the backs of the bikes. Then we put the bikes away, say goodbye and Lia heads inside leaving me on the sidewalk. I start walking down the street but not towards my house, I'm heading to the small river near here. Nobody ever goes down there so it's a safe place to pop from. When I get to the river I make sure that I have a tight hold on the box then pop into the living room right behind the couch. Em is lounging on the couch reading a book in a language that I don't know. I put the box down onto the floor then climb onto the back of the couch and roll down the other side. I intended to land on the cushions of the couch and maybe partially on Em but instead I rolled straight off the couch cushions and onto the floor. I hear Em slip a bookmark into her book and placed it onto the arm of the couch.
"Such grace," She says chuckling, "You want some help?"
"Yes…" I mumble, I swear I rolled onto the couch without falling off yesterday. Em pulls me up onto the couch and makes sure I'm comfortable.
"So," Em starts in a questioning tone, "What were you doing that if you weren't back by 4:30 you were in trouble?"
"Checking to see if Roland's death was normal," I answer truthfully, "It wasn't, a ghost killed him."
"What have I told you about putting yourself in dangerous situations?" Em asks, slight frown on her face, most people would think from her expression that she was mad at me but I know better. Em is just worried, she's just so tired of losing me, not that I remember any of my previous incarnations but apparently that's normal.
"We were just investigating the place where he was….murdered," I say, even the thought of Roland dying makes me want to cry, I choke slightly on my next words, trying to hold back the tears that will make their appearance one day, "We aren't going to hunt the ghost, I'm going to call Sam and Dean, they'll take care of it."
"Hey," Em asks in a quiet voice, "How are you holding up? Roland was your friend."
"I'll be fine, it's just hard," I reply, snuggling into Em.
"Come to me if you need to talk ok?" Em says, hugging me.
"I will," I say, we just sit there for a minute, enjoying each other's company, but after a little bit her expression changes to one of confusion.
"Wait," She questions "Why did you say 'we'?"
"Oh!" I shout, "I completely forgot! So I was walking home from school and I got attacked by a demon pretty standard stuff, I planned just to throw some holy water and run, but Lia exorcised it and she saw me throw holy water at it so she knew, I knew that it was a demon so we talked and I told her that I met Sam and Dean when I had accidentally had a run in with a couple demons. I didn't tell her about the whole demon blood thing."
"I wish that I had known about the demon blood, I could have tried to fix it." Em cuts in, combing her fingers through my hair. "Anyway, you can continue."
"So after I told her the altered version of the truth she told me that apparently her cousin's family are hunters and she found out about all of this stuff because her old house was haunted." I continue, as Em keeps combing her fingers through my hair.
"You should go call Sam and Dean then," Em says once I've finished my story, "If it's a ghost we should let them deal with it."
"Alright," I say, pulling myself off of the couch so I can go to my room and get my phone, "I'll be right back,"
"After you call them you are doing your homework!" Em yells after me as I climb the stairs.
"I know Em!" I yell back, reaching my room. I open the door and enter, walking over to my desk where my phone is charging. I unplug it and unlock it, navigating to my contacts and call Sam. He had promised to keep the phone no matter what but I know for a fact that he hasn't given the number of that phone to anyone but Dean and me. It rings for a few seconds then Sam picks up.
"Hey Sam," I start, "It's Jasmine,"
"Sam is in the shower," the voice on the other end replies, "This is Dean,"
"Oh, cool," I respond, "I have a case for you two,"
"Since when do you find cases for us?" Dean asks.
"Since there's a ghost in my town," I reply, "So are you going to come help or no?"
"Yea, we'll come help, where are you living?" Dean asks and I hear the shower that has been in the background of the entire phone call turn off.
"Newcastle Oklahoma," I reply "554, Verity Lane."
"Alright, We're near there, we'll be there by morning, bye." Dean says."
"Bye" I say back, I hang up and plug my phone back in then head back downstairs, homework to do and all that.