The saddest truth is realising you have fallen madly in love with what can never be.
- Michael Faudet
"This seems to be becoming a regular thing, Ms Summers."
I stared hard at Detective 1 but said nothing. Charlie had ducked his head into the back of the police cruiser where I had been sitting and told me that under no circumstances was I to say anything to police before my lawyer arrived. That was when I knew things were bad.
I was drenched in blood and sick to my stomach. There was no doubt in my mind now that something supernatural was happening in Forks. The only question was what was it? The wolves seemed to be just as lost as I was - there was no trace of a vampire having ever been in the kitchen but I could have told them that. Unless there was a vampire who could make themselves invisible that room was empty except for Bridgette and me. That thought made me shiver - had the Volturi collected another pawn for their game?
One thing was obvious to me, the wolves and the Cullens had to start working together. What was that saying? An enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I told Houghton as much when he stopped by to check in with me. I watched him chew it over, a muscle in his jaw working.
"I tried to get to you tonight." He said eventually.
"What?" I asked, lost.
"In the kitchen. I saw you talking to Jacob and you looked upset. You went into the kitchen and I thought you were sneaking out the back or something." He said, locking eyes with me. "But when I went to follow you I couldn't get in the door. It had shut in my face and was stuck. I could hear you in there, distressed, but the door wouldn't budge. It only come free once the screaming started."
"Oh," was all I could say, thinking about this new information. What could have held a door closed against the supernatural strength of a shapeshifter?
"I'll try to get Jacob to meet with your leeches. If they think they know something that could help us stop this." He said, though I think it pained him to say so. I respected Houghton in that moment. I knew that it would cost him to work with the Cullens but he could put it aside to try to protect the town.
#
"Okay, Ms Summers, you're free to go for tonight. But we'll be wanting to talk to you tomorrow."
I stared up at Detective 2 in shock. They were letting me go? They hadn't even spoken to me! Last time I had only found an already dead body and they had questioned me for days - now when I was the only person there when she died they were going to let me go? Something didn't add up.
I asked Charlie as he drove us back to his home. He looked tired.
"There was no murder weapon. If you had done it, you were found seconds afterwards, the knife would have to be close by - but its no where to be found. That, and you just don't have the strength to cut a neck like that. Deep all the way across." He was not in a good place. That mind of his was whirling, and I could tell he was thinking crazy things. Like maybe there was no knife or maybe somehow something happened in that room that couldn't be seen.
As if reading my mind he turned to me as we pulled up in the drive, grabbing my shoulders and looking me straight in the eye. "You would tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn't you."
I squirmed. I didn't want to lie to Charlie anymore.
"Leighton," he pressed when I didn't answer. "You can tell me anything, you know that, don't you?"
"I know that, Charlie." I told him, as convincingly as I could. If it was up to me, I would have spilled the beans to him right there and then. But it wasn't up to me. It was up to the girl who was sitting in the darkened SUV that just pulled up.
Charlie noticed it too.
"Is that Bella? What the hell is she doing here?" He barrelled out of the car and over to the SUV. I followed.
"Dad, please. I was on my way back anyway when I heard what happened. I had to come and see if Leighton was okay."
"She's not hurt," he said gruffly, not even letting Bella get fully out of the car. "You two should go back to New York for a while."
"We will leave in the morning," Bella said, not buying into her Dad's protectiveness. "We thought Leighton might like to stay with us tonight. You'll probably have to go back to work won't you. I didn't think she'd want to be at home alone."
Charlie must have agreed because he let out a groan of frustration.
#
"Please tell me you know what the hell is going on here?" I asked Edward as soon as the doors of the SUV were closed.
Bella and Edward exchanged a meaningful glance.
"We don't know," Edward said tightly, his golden eyes meeting mine in the rear vision mirror.
"What do you mean you don't know? You have to know!" I tried to keep the panic out of my voice but it was hard to hide it when people seemed to be dropping around me like flies.
"We don't know," Edward repeated and I could tell he didn't like it anymore than I did. "We're going to a meeting right now. Jacob and Sam have agreed to be present and Selena, the witch who's been helping us, is going to be there too. We're hoping we'll be able to put together some kind of plan."
I nodded. This was better than nothing and a witch was going to be there. Maybe I could ask her about me, my dual life, at some stage. Maybe if I left this place right away things would get better for everyone.
We didn't go to the Cullen house, but instead made our way to the clearing where we used to meet with the wolves. Apparently this was forever to be the neutral meeting ground. Rosalie was waiting when we parked to piggyback me to the clearing. She looked at my blood stained body and wrinkled her nose.
"You didn't even let her shower?" She said to Edward, angry.
"There's no time, Rose. Who knows how long the wolves will be cooperative."
"It's alright Rosalie," I told her, shrugging. In truth, I was getting used to the feeling of dried blood on my skin. I wanted it there, a reminder just in case I looked at Jacob and felt myself going weak. All I would have to do was look at my hands to remind myself he was better off without me.
"I was thinking about my blouse," sniffed Rosalie, looking at me in distaste. "It's Givenchy."
#
The clearing was crowded, or it felt so for me. There were too many powerful beings all in one place. If a fight broke out, it would be chaos.
Jacob surprised me by being in human form, as was Sam. They stood besides three big wolves, Paul, Seth and Colin. I couldn't see the other pack members but I was confident they were no more than mere seconds away. I scanned the surrounding trees.
Rosalie dumped me unceremoniously beside them before zipping to the back of the crowd. She hated the wolves more than the others, and considered meeting with them beneath her. She would have denied it if I asked her, but I suspected her bad attitude towards the wolves was more of Rosalie's way of showing me support than any real feelings of hatred.
No matter her reasons, leaving me spinning and uneasy on my feet and disappearing did nothing to endear Rosalie to the pack, whose attitude was, unfortunately, due to real feelings of hatred.
"You okay?" Jacob asked, offering me a hand. I hadn't seen him since Bridgette had been killed. I looked for him afterwards, but he wasn't anywhere to be seen. As unjustified as it was, I was mad at him for not being there when I needed it. The world was falling to pieces around me and I was jealous that he left to protect Katie over me.
"Fine," I said, walking the ten meters to where the Cullens were standing, grouped around Bella and some other lady, whose back was to me.
Esme instantly took me under her arm, fussing over me.
"Leighton," Carlisle said, noticing my arrival.
"Leighton?" The witch beside him turned around. She looked at me for a long second and I looked at her, certain my eyes were playing tricks on me. She seemed... familiar. Though I couldn't say where I had seen her before. Her face seemed to pull at strings deep inside of me, causing something to stir.
"Oh my god, Leighton!" she was yelling now, and crying too. She launched herself at me, there her arms around my neck clung on, not minding one bit that I was covered in blood and gore.
"I - ah -" I stammered and tried to pry myself free.
When she realised her greeting wasn't being returned with the same enthusiasm she pulled away. Allowing me to get a better look at her, while she was getting a better look at me.
She was older than I first thought, probably pushing the back end of fifty, but one of those ladies who did everything in their power to not look as old as they were. Her clothes were modern, her hair was died a dark brown, her make-up was flawless. I was certain she'd had a little bit of work done to smooth out some wrinkles. But it was here eyes that caught my attention: big, round and bright blue. Not just bright blue, I thought, my shade of bright blue.
"Leighton?" She said, now a little uncertain. As if, maybe she had the wrong person.
I had no idea who this lady was.
I looked around for help, but the Cullens were looking from me to the witch with just as much surprise.
"Selena, do you know Leighton?" Carlisle asked carefully.
I looked behind me for Jacob, suddenly wanting him near me, but also wanting him to go away. I felt like something was happening that I desperately didn't want to happen. He gave me a questioning look as the wolves paced tight circles around him and Sam.
"Know her? Of course I know her! I was there when she was born, and every day after that. Leighton?" She turned to me now, panic written across her face. She was clearly, absolutely mad. She was familiar to me, that was for sure, but it was more in a way of were you in a movie I once saw as a kid or did you serve me at the supermarket last month, and definitely not in a you were in my life since I was born kind of way. Besides, I didn't have a life here since I was born. I arrived here once night nine years ago and had been coming here every night since. I had no memories of this place before then because it didn't exist.
"I'm sorry." I said, being very careful to position myself near Esme in a way that didn't draw attention. "I've never seen you before."
Selena's eyes narrowed, piercing me in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable. I could feel the air around us thrumming and I couldn't be totally sure that she wasn't using magic at that very moment.
"You have no memory of me?" she asked, her voice commanding. I had no doubt that she was a powerful woman, use to having people listen to her.
"No. I've never seen you before." I croaked.
Selena was thoughtful for a moment, then nodded to herself.
"I must speak with you alone," she said, suddenly grabbing my hand. I gasped as we touched. It felt like a current of electricity pulsed down my arm. I was certain now that she was wielding some kind of magic.
"I don't think so, witch." Jacob was suddenly at my side, yanking my arm free. Wolves growled behind him. I felt the Cullens tense, unsure of what to do. Would they break a century old treaty over one witch?
"Stay out of this shapeshifter," Selena spat back, suddenly vicious. She was not afraid of him, and I wondered how powerful she was to not fear giant wolves. "Keep out of things you know nothing about."
"Jacob, it's fine." I said, trying to calm him though my own heart was racing. It was strange, but I could feel it coming. I'd had these moments before, when I could feel a change coming, like rain on the wind. A moment was just about here that would change my life forever. Was this the moment I had been counting down to? I would walk with Selena and she would tell me how she could set my life straight. If this was a dream, than she could be the piece of myself that could turn off this dual personality I had happening. "I will talk to her."
"Leighton, I don't like this - something feels off," Jake whispered into my hair. I gave him a small smile. Could this be the last time I speak to him, look at him? If I talk to Selena will all this magically dissolve away?
"Jake, I'll be OK." I told him. His eyes narrowed. I hadn't called him Jake in a very long time.
"Walk with me," Selena said, looking like the cat that got the cream. She linked her arm with mine and I noticed how similar our skin tone was. The crowd parted to let us through, their perfect faces an image of confusion. Bella gave me a what the hell? Look as I passed her. I shrugged, I don't know.
"Where were you before you came to Forks?" Selena asked. She was leading me a leisurely pace, as if we were just two friends taking a stroll through the woods. We were not far enough away from the group to talk about this. They all, except for Bella, would be able to hear us clearly. I cast a glance over my shoulder and sure enough, all eyes were on us.
Selena followed my gaze, "Don't worry, I worked a little something so they cannot hear us," she gave me a wink.
I looked at her, eyes wide. Magic was being used around me at that very moment. I don't know why this surprised me, and intrigued me - I was living a dual life in a fictional universe after all - but it did. Selena looked amused at my reaction.
"You really do not remember me?" she asked again.
"No," I replied carefully. "Should I?"
"Yes, you should. I'm your aunt."
I digested this information slowly. "Why haven't I seen you before now?" I asked, as if I expected everything in this place to make sense.
"You and your mother left us nine years ago."
"Us?" I asked. My stomach was in knots and I didn't understand why.
"Yes, us, the coven. Your cousins and aunties and friends."
I frowned, "But, if we left the coven..."
"Then you and your mother were like us, gifted, yes."
I recoiled, "You mean we were witches?" I gasped.
Selena looked amused, and something else too, annoyed maybe. I didn't know her well enough to decipher the meaning, and before I could think about it too much the look was gone.
"I can't tell you much more, until you tell me what you remember about your life before Forks."
I looked back at the group as we wandered further away. Carlisle, Edward and Jasper were talking in a tight group. Rosalie looked more annoyed than usual as Bella cast stricken glances in our direction. Jake and Sam looked like they might have been arguing, but Jacob never took his eyes off me.
"Jacob help me," I whispered, testing a theory. I spoke so quietly that not even Selena, who was less than a foot away could have heard me. But I knew that Jacob, who was now across the clearing from me, should have been able to hear and he would have been at my side in a second. He didn't move. Maybe they really couldn't hear us.
I don't know why I was so afraid to tell Jacob the truth about myself, that I was an imposter in this world of my own making. There was something shameful about it, admitting firstly that I didn't believe he was real, and secondly that I knew quite a lot about him before I even met him. Even that while he always shared all of himself with me, there was a part of myself that I always kept from him. And I just didn't think that I could bare to be looked at by him like I was crazy. Every person I had ever told looked at me like I was crazy.
"You're going to think I'm crazy," I told Selena.
She looked amused, "Try me."
So, I told her everything.
#
Selena did not look at me like I was crazy. Instead, she looked thoughtful as I finished telling her the story of how I came to be here.
"This is unexpected," she said after a long moment. "I guess, that's what happens when you mess around with things you have no business messing with."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
She looked at me for a long moment, her blue eyes unblinking, her face still and unnerving. "I think I should tell you. Though I'm not sure what the repercussions would be. Would you like to know about yourself?"
The question took me so off guard that for a moment I didn't move. Was this the moment I was waiting for? I could leave this place if I listened to Selena's story? I did not know what this place was, an illness, craziness, a dream or true magic but I always thought saying goodbye to it would involve more fanfare than sitting on a decaying log with a stranger.
I looked to Jacob again. He was still watching us, his expression a question. Was it time for me to go? If I didn't do it now, I wasn't sure I ever could.
"Tell me," I said to Selena.
And she did. Sitting on that rotting log she weaved me a fantastical tale of a teenage girl who gifted with strong magic of precognition.
"You could not touch another person skin to skin without having a vision of their future. You couldn't control it. It was pure magic, old magic. We hadn't seen its kind manifest in one of us in a thousand years.
It worried your mother because it effected your life so much. You were withdrawn, you didn't leave your room. By this stage your mother was our matriarch, the strongest of us, beside you. She came to me and your Aunt Kate and told us that she found a ritual that would suppress your powers. We debated it for a long time. It was old magic, more complicated and dangerous than anything we had used before. I didn't want to attempt it. Your mother did. Kate was the decider, and, after she thought about it for a year, she agreed to try it."
As she spoke, her eyes glazed over and I could tell she was somewhere else at that moment. And it was strange, because I could see what she was talking about. I didn't know if it was something she was doing, or I was truely finding a memory. I had a vision of my mother and my two aunts in a furious debate over a game of scrabble. I was watching from the top of the stairs.
"The intention was to bind your magic and take away any memory of you every having it. You wanted to be normal. This was supposed to give you vague memories of a happy, normal childhood with no magic, no coven and no pain. You obviously couldn't be normal with us around anymore, so your mother renounced as our matriarch, giving the position over to Kate and left with you. She contacted us from time to time to tell us that the it seemed to have worked. She couldn't ask you about it. We were afraid that any kind of stimulation might bring forward your memories. Every month we did a small ritual to keep the binding in place.
"When we heard that she had died Kate and I waited to hear from you. We were certain that losing her magic from the spell would weaken it to the point of collapse. But you never came and we kept doing the ritual, knowing it was what your mother would have wanted us to do. It's been terrible for us, not being able to comfort you, knowing you were out here, thinking you were alone when you had a family who loved you.
"It's such an interesting side effect. As if you couldn't wipe away the memory of one life and replace it with another, so instead you have fractured into two lives. You said that these people are characters in a book, a book about Ms Swan?"
I nodded numbly, my mind reeling and waiting, waiting for this all to dissolve around me.
"I wonder if you might have met her before we were able to complete the spell. If you touched her, your gift would have given you a vision of how her life was about to unfold at that particular moment. Maybe when we boxed up your memories the only place that would fit in your new world was in a book."
She was quiet for a moment, thoughtful.
"I can fix this, if you'd like."
I looked up at her after a moment of quiet and I realised that she was asking me a question.
I hesitated.
"You don't believe me."
This wasn't a question. It was true, and it was not true. I didn't think she was lying, but I knew that it wasn't the words that were false so much as the person speaking them didn't really exist. My head hurt and my soul ached.
"You couldn't possibly understand what it is like to live in place that feels so real, but you know it is all in your head. You have no idea the pain and madness of loving people you know are nothing more than a vision you've created. I think that you can fix this, I want you to fix this. Make me a whole person again."
"You think that it will dissolve this world and leave you in the other?" she croaked, her voice laced with disbelief.
"Yes,"
"No," she snapped. Then she seemed to reign in whatever anger was simmering under the surface because when she spoke again it was softer this time. "You are not mad, Leighton. There would be signs, I'm sure of it. Your mind couldn't possibly sustain two complete lives. Your other life must be brief, monochromatic, cliche and general. Are there many people? Do you have relationships? Do you have memories?"
I shook my head, "Of course I have memories. My life isn't general. I have a family, a sister and a mother."
"Eleanor is there?" Selena whispered quietly, her eyes wide and suddenly filled with tears.
"How do you know her name?" Panic suddenly seized me.
"Oh Leighton,"
"What is it?" I wished she would stop looking at me like that. What did this mean?
"You have a sister in this life, here. Had a sister."
Had a sister.
"What happened to her?"
"She was killed in an accident. It was very traumatic for you, you blamed yourself."
"Was I driving?" I whispered. I had a sudden vision, not clear, but like looking at a reflection in a pool of shallow water. It was Eleanor, lying still and pale on a trolley in the morgue.
"No, but you didn't see it. You always wore gloves, because your visions were so inconvenient for you. If you had touched her with bare skin you would have seen and she might still be alive."
A strange feeling was uncurling in my chest, it was an old feeling, but I recognised it for what it was, guilt.
I felt like my head was about to spin and fall off. What Selena was saying was making sense, but wouldn't something from my own mind make sense to me?
Selena was studying me. "I'll show you. Tomorrow I would be due to perform the ritual. Your Aunt Kate will be doing the same thing. I'm not sure exactly what would happen if I miss it, but I'm sure it will show you what is real."
I sighed, so this was it. Tomorrow night I would know what was real, and although I longed for what Selena was saying to be true, I knew in my heart that it was not.
I looked back over at the group, they were looking back at us with expressions of pure shock. A panicked lump rose in my chest as I looked at Jacob. I could hear him growling from here, his eyes dark, his body shaking.
"Selena..." I said warily, "Can they hear us?"
"Oh Leighton, shit, I'm so sorry. I let the block drop when I was talking to you, I was too immersed in what we were saying. I lost concentration, I'm so sorry."
She looked at me with her eyes wide.
My eyes darted back to the group, who now knew that I thought they were all a figment of my imagination. My chest constricted. I couldn't get a breath in. They all knew. They all knew that I lied to them, had deceived them this entire time. Jacob knew, Jacob knew.
I turned and ran into the woods, not thinking. Selena shouted after me but I had been running for years and I lost her after a few minutes. I had to get out of this place. I wanted a reason to leave and here it was.
Jacob burst from the trees and was in front of me in a second. Even in his wolf form I could sense his anger. His shaking body caused a sprinkle of saliva to cover me as he lashed his teeth, growling and snapping as he paced in front of me.
I looked at my feet. I had just spilt my deepest secret to them all and didn't even know I was doing it. I was ashamed because I didn't have a plan for this, I had never meant to tell them. I didn't think I could bare the sympathy.
"Jake..." I tried, looking at him, searching for the words that could explain this to him.
It didn't help. He lunged at me, snapping, and, just as I thought he was about to rip my throat out and my heart began to pound, he pulled away and disappeared into the woods, howling as he left.