I burn a hole into the side of his head as he presses his lips together with guilt written all over his face. He crosses his arms and shifts his weight while his eyes quickly sweep across the four of us.
“Alex,” my mom says and I’m a little shocked at the warmness in her tone. “I understand your initial reaction is to keep things a bottled up. It’s what you’ve been taught to do, but I need to know what you know—it’s important.”
He tugs on the bottom of his shirt, staring at the floor. “Where do you want me to start?”
“How about from the beginning,” she says.
“But where is the beginning?” Alex mumbles, his gaze flicking to mine.
I can tell that even after everything, he still has secrets. Maybe he always will. Perhaps I’ll never know him. The raw thought clenches at my heart. I want to know him. Every part of him. Inside and out… what does that mean exactly? About me? About us?
“Why don’t you start with the day that Gemma’s soul was detached,” my mom patiently suggests. “Do you remember what happened that day?”
He glances at me and I raise my eyebrows at him as I lean back in the chair, thrumming my fingers against the armrests, implying to go ahead because I’m dying to hear what he has to say about this.
He shuts his eyes, his chest expanding as he breathes in the ocean air. “She and I were hiding out in that little fort in the side of the hill,” he says, his eyelids fluttering open. “Because earlier my father told us that Gemma had to go away and I didn’t want her to. So I ran away with her, very stupidly thinking that if we did, he wouldn’t make her go when he found us.”
I touch the palm of my hand and outline the faint scar, remembering the vision I saw. He’d cut my hand and his, saying the words forem as we pressed our palms together. What does the damn word mean?
Alex balls up his own hand as if he’s trying to hide his scar. “He ended up taking her away from me and I never saw her again... Well, until my dad made me enroll in college so I could try to get to the bottom of why her emotions were surfacing again.”
“And what happened during all those years when you didn’t see Gemma?” my mother asks.
His jaw goes taught and he clenches his hands even tighter, yet his expression is surprisingly stoic. “Basically, my father beat the shit out of me so I’d learn to feel pain over emotion. He said it was an important part of being a Keeper or whatever.” He slumps back in the chair and flexes out his fingers. “Who the fuck cares?”
Laylen and I trade an astonished look, seeming equally as surprised, though my mom and Aislin appear rationally calm, like they expected it.
“What about you Aislin?” she asks. “What was your life like?”
Aislin scrapes at her nail polish and tucks a leg underneath her. “I was taught to be a very confident Witch. I didn’t go to Wicca school, though. I was trained at home by a Witch named Estella.”
“Estella Evernandy?” my mom says sullenly. “Of the Evernandy Clan.”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Aislin replies, coiling a strand of her hair around her finger. “But why do you sound so upset?”
“Do you know anything about the Evernandy Clan?” my mom asks, her voice attentive.
Aislin shrugs, putting her foot back onto the floor as she unwinds the hair from her finger. “Yeah, that they come from a very powerful bloodline.” She gathers her golden blonde hair and secures it in a messy bun with a rubber band that’s on her wrist.
“A black magic bloodline,” my mom explains. “Aislin, your father had you taught to learn black magic.”
Aislin shakes her head in denial. “No, he wouldn’t do that,” she insists. “I know it.”
“Yes, he would,” Alex mutters, staring at his lap with his brows furrowed. “Don’t deny things that are clearly possible.”
“Shut up.” Aislin slumps back in the chair and stomps her foot on the deck. “We don’t know her. She might be lying.”
“I doubt it.” Alex frowns at my mom. “But I really don’t get what any of this has to do with the star’s power and the end of the world, which is what we should be focusing on; not Aislin and mine's fucked up pasts.”
“This stuff has everything to do with it—you two have just as much to do with it as Gemma does,” my mother tells him. She rolls up the sleeves of her shirt and crosses her legs, fanning the front of her face with her hand as the heat overwhelms her. “I have one more question and then I’ll get to the point.” She pauses. “Were you near Gemma the day her emotions first came back to her.”#p#分页标题#e#