To Be Found ♧ Legacies

41 | not everything is easy in the big easy

"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.