"She reminded me a lot of Hope," Jed noted as they made their way through the French Quarter streets. Celia's prediction had been right, as it got later in the day the streets grew busier and busier. She and Jed were holding hands in order to not be separated from one another.
"How?" Celia asked as she lead them through the crowd. Freya had given her directions to where she could supposedly find the elder of the French Quarter Coven. Her one request was not to reveal where they had gotten the directions from. A request Celia happily obliged.
"You know," Jed replied with a shrug of his shoulders, "the brooding intensity accompanied by the desire to help everyone."
Celia arched an eyebrow in his direction. "I didn't know you were so observant."
He let out a huff behind her but didn't say anything. It looked like there would be no witty comebacks today. She smiled to herself and plowed forward.
It took them about half an hour in all to get to the end of Freya's directions, stopping in front of what appeared to be the gates of a cemetery. Large stone and marble mausoleums loomed overhead, causing a chill to run down Celia's spine. She never liked ghosts or graves.
"What the hell?" She murmured to herself, handing the directions back to Jed. "We followed these right, right?"
Jed read over the directions again, glancing back behind them and then again in front of them. "As far as I can tell."
Celia stepped forward. What was Freya thinking? She wouldn't lead them into a trap, would she?
Pushing down all of the negative thoughts, Celia walked into the gates of the cemetery. Where to go from there, she didn't know. At that point she was really just hoping fate would lead her in the right direction.
She was lucky that it actually did.
A young woman with long brown hair was kneeling in front of one of the many mausoleums. It was the first person they had seen in the cemetery. It looked like she was praying to some god and guilt swelled in Celia's chest that she was impeding on a personal moment, yet she couldn't bring herself look away. Something in the back of her mind was yelling at Celia that this was it. This was who they were looking for.
As Celia and Jed approached, the young woman looked up. Celia barely had time to grab Jed's arm before her legs fell weak beneath her.
"M-Maddie," Celia breathed as tears swelled in her eyes.
Celia hardly recognized the girl standing in front of her, she had grown so much. Maddie's hair was long and straight to the point where it fell halfway down her back. Her face was angular, it had lost most of its baby fat. And she was tall. Nearly as tall as Celia herself. But Maddie still had her bangs and her piercing blue eyes. Two traits Celia would recognize anywhere.
"Oh my god." Celia stepped forward regaining her strength. "I've been looking for you for years. I never stopped looking for you."
Maddie stood tense in front of Celia. Her brows furrowed as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing either. "Are you a ghost?" Maddie asked.
Hearing her voice made a sob erupt from Celia's throat. She knew she must have looked and sounded ridiculous but she couldn't help it. She shook her head vigorously no. "I-I had a friend perform a locator spell," Celia explained. Her hands fumbled for her backpack, pulling out one of Maddie's journals.
The girl's eyes widened and in one quick motion she stepped forward and snatched it out of Celia's hands.
"Where did you get this?" She hissed, flipping through the pages.
Celia felt herself shrinking back into Jed, but very lightly, he pushed her forward. She quickly glared back at him but stepped forward anyway. "At your old house. I used to go there to think. It fell out of your old mattress."
Tears started streaming down Maddie's face as she murmured a few words and lit the journal on fire. Celia's eyes widened, not quite believing what she was seeing.
"What are you doing here, Celia?" Maddie growled after the journal had been burnt to nothing but ash.
"I wanted to find you. I wanted to see you."
"But I don't want to see you did you ever consider that." Maddie's words felt like a slap across Celia's face. The truth was no, she hadn't. Jed has brought it up, but Celia had quickly dismissed it. Why wouldn't Maddie want to see her? That reasoning was starting to dawn on her now.
"You murdered my mom," Maddie's voice was so raw and full of rage. "You killed my only family. You're a monster. A murderer. Why would I want to see you?"
The world was crashing down around Celia and yet she couldn't bring herself to back away.
Celia reached out to touch Maddie's arm, but just as quickly as she moved before, Maddie flung her arm out, murmuring a spell that sent Celia flying backward. Every bone in her body ached as she slammed against one of the stone mausoleums. The breath whooshed out of her chest.
"Get away from me!" Maddie screamed. "I don't want to see you. You're selfish for coming here."
Then, an eerie calm settled over Maddie as a stranger took hold. This was the woman Maddie had become while Celia was gone. This was the woman Celia had made Maddie become. She tilted her head back, and gazed at Celia's crumpled body.
Celia tasted blood as she ran the back of her hand along her upper lip. Her nose was bleeding, and she sure that wasn't the only part of her that had been injured.
Maddie stepped forward. "I'm not surprised though," she said. Her hands balled at her waist. "You were always selfish and reckless. I came to find you after what happened."
Celia wanted to vanish, to plug her ears. She didn't want to hear whatever Maddie had to say next. She knew it would hurt worse than the pain she was already feeling.
"I was distraught. I wanted to hug you. To hug my sister," she spit the word out. "But then I saw you amongst your new classmates at that school. You were laughing and playing games after you murdered someone. That's when I realized. You were never good for me." She crouched down in front of Celia, and reached out, wiping the blood from Celia's cheek. "I loved you once. But not anymore." Maddie stood and backed away. "You ever come to my home again and I'll kill you." Then she turned and ran.
The moment Maddie had her back turned, Jed was by Celia's side.
"Are you okay?" He asked, his eyes darting all over Celia's body as he searched for injuries.
Celia took a deep breath. She wanted to be okay, she did, but she wasn't. Not emotionally at least. Maddie may not have killed her, but it felt like she just stabbed her in the heart.
"How could I have been so stupid?" She sobbed, collapsing into Jed's chest. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a tight hug as she cried into his shoulder. "How could I ever have expected her to forgive me? How could I have forgiven myself?"
Jed ran his hand up and down her back in an attempt to comfort her, and it did. But not enough. She knew nothing would fill the gaping hole that was now in her chest.
"I remember that day," she said, leaning back from him so she could look at his face. It hurt her more to see her sadness mirrored in his eyes. He did believe in her. He got his hopes up like she had. And she let him get hurt now too. Celia closed her eyes. "It was my first day at the Salvatore School. You and Noah had greeted me with a couple of the other pack members. We were playing Octopus tag." She sighed opening her eyes and meeting his gaze. "You remember the one where you link arms after you tag someone?" He nodded. His eyes were distant as if he was recalling the memory himself. "You had tagged me," she continued. "And we were chasing after one of the older wolves and we tripped. You blamed it on me," she let out a bitter laugh. "Always the competitor. And I laughed at you because it was your shoelace that was untied. It was the first time I had smiled in weeks. You had done that for me."
Her lashes fluttered as she looked downward at her hands. "That was the moment I started to feel like everything was going to be okay. That was the moment I forgot. I forgot that my actions have an impact on other people. I forgot the pain I caused." Fresh tears began to fall down her cheeks.
"C," Jed said sadly. He took her chin and wiped her more of her tears away. "C, look at me please." She forced herself to look up. When their eyes met, he smiled. It wasn't his usual full-blown arrogant smile, but it was soft and kind. A smile that only hurt her more.
He ran his finger along her cheek again, and she didn't pull away. She just sat there quietly waiting for what he had to say.
"We've all caused pain, Celia," he said. "It comes with the curse. But we have to move on. If we spend every waking moment thinking about all of our mistakes we'd be stuck in a trench." Despite the situation he laughed. "Crap, think of all of the mistakes I've made just this year. And you've forgiven me for all of them." He helped her up, but as she put pressure on her leg, a pain shot from her knee. Noticing her pain, Jed scooped her into his arms, but he didn't move quite yet.
There was a ferocity in his dark gaze that she had never seen before. A ferocity that scared her.
"Look, six years ago, you did something awful. But you have spent every day since trying to make up for it, even when you didn't realize that's what you were doing." He studied her face, from her jaw to her bloody nose to the scar just above her eyebrow. "You got to apologize to the one person who has haunted you all these years. Now you need to let it go and move on. It's up to Maddie now on if she wants to forgive you or not."
Celia stared at the boy who was holding her. Jed was her best friend. The boy she would have done anything for the past six years. And yet the person standing above her, holding her in his arms, was different. He still had his shaggy black hair and dark eyes. And his smile that more often than not came out like a smirk, but yet he wasn't acting reckless or immature. He was giving her some of the best advice she had received in years.
Without thinking she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "Thank you," she murmured in his ear.
When she pulled away it was like the intensity had deepened. They were so close that she noticed how his pupils were dilated. The next thing she knew he lowered his head and kissed her. It took a moment for Celia to realize what was happening before she managed to jerk her head back, an act hard to do when someone is literally holding you.
"Jed," she whispered, her eyes wide as she tried to process what had just happened.
His jaw went lack as reality seemed to dawn on him as well. Whatever intensity that had just been in the air was now very much gone.
"I-I'm so sorry," he stammered. Celia had never seen him so pale. "This was an awful time and I don't know what I was thinking."
She shook her head, reaching up for his cheek. "It's fine. You're fine. I forgive you."
"No that was stupid."
"Jed," she said with more certainty. "You're fine. I should tell you something though."
He knitted his brows and she noticed him biting the inside of his cheek. It was a nervous quirk she had never seen him do before. Suddenly she felt so much worse for not telling him sooner.
"Me and Raf, I think we're going to date."
Jed's eyes widened with that realization. "Oh."
"I'm sorry," she sighed, searching his face for comfort. "I meant to tell you sooner, I just got caught up in the day and now..." she trailed off.
She had never not been able to read Jed, but at that moment something incomprehensible crossed over his features. But just as quickly as it was there it was gone and that classic arrogant smile was back on his face.
"Now look who's apologizing, the girl who probably just had the worst day of her life." He shook his head. "There's no need to apologize C. I understand." He surveyed her face once more. "If you're happy, I'm happy. I just hope you know that I'll always be there for you C, no matter what. At the end of the day, I'll always be there for you."
