Page 85 of The Royal Street Witch
I clasp my hands over my mouth, my chest crushing, the hurt stealing my breath.
“And now,” he says, raising his hands, exasperated. “What have you done? My God.”
Something bubbles inside of me, something I’ve never felt before—not like this. It starts in my stomach, then rises up my chest and out of my mouth through a clenched jaw and poison tongue.
“I’m going to find him, Cassius. He’s going to pay for what he took from me. From us. From the world. He’s going to fucking pay.”
His head whips inches from mine, his breath blowing my hair from my face. “Stay the fuck away from Franklin, from all of us.”
And then he’s gone and I lie back on the brick, contemplating the words that just left my lips, startled at how easily they came out and how very much I mean them.
I AWAKEN, EYES FLYING OPEN, Winnie clutched tightly to my chest, so grateful Winnie was safe from the fire’s reach. My stomach flips as Bastian’s face enters my mind’s eye. Gone. Gone. He’s still gone. Bile rises to the back of my throat as I gag. I need to move, need to get to the bathroom.
My eyes flit around the room until they fall upon Chantal, asleep on the loveseat, and I slip to the floor because it’s coming, so I crawl.
Knees sliding across the hard floor—Bastian’s eyes, his mouth, his hands. Gone. His eyes never seeing me again, his hands never touching me. Head hanging over the toilet bowl, the liquid spewing out of me like magma, like the ash that became of him. I see his hand in mine, hear his wordsit was worth every second.Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. I’m empty.
There’s rustling around me, and it’s Chantal kneeling at my side, holding up my head. I’m on the bathroom floor now, the acoustics causing my sobs to boom through my ears.
“Aster, babe,” Chantal cries with me as if my pain is her own and I want to tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t speak, can only cry.
Steps pound down the hallway, the sound of stiletto boots, and when I open my eyes, it’s not only Chantal who looks at me with troubled eyes. It’s my mother. The wild witch is home.
She’s biting her lips as she drops to her knees; her black hair is shorter than ever, her eyes lined in a thick blue. Her breath—a mixture of mint and cigarettes—is warm against my ear as she whispers to me.
“We’ll fix it, my baby.”
Chantal holds my head in her lap, her ragged breath giving her nerves away. My mother is here because Bastian is dead and the vampires tried to kill me. There’s nothing she can fix, nothing at all and I hate her. I hate her so much I could vomit again.
“Aster?” Chantal says, worry in her voice, and my rib cage jolts from the sick in my stomach. My mother says something, but I can’t hear her. The vomit is coming and there’s no stopping it and I don’t even want to. Let all things misery and sick take me over. Let me feel it all and then nothing at once.
But just as I rise to the toilet, my mother chants in my ear, that low husky tone I know so well. “Unease be gone, illness take flight, sickness leave my child tonight.”
The nausea evaporates in my stomach and I breath out, tears filling my eyes. Sitting up, my head falls into my hands. “You shouldn’t be here.” I say, and I’ve never heard my voice so soft, but my mother has that effect on me. I don’t know who I am when she’s around. It’s been that long.
“There is no place else I should be.” She grabs my hand in hers and I can’t help that it feels good. I’m so fucked up on a bathroom floor.
“You’re too late, there’s nothing you can fix, nothing you can do.” I jerk my hand away. “So just go back to Paris or Prague or wherever the fuck else you go so men can fix you. I don’t want you here.”
I pull off the floor, holding on to the sink for support as her coal eyes sharpen into daggers. Her first instinct is to always get angry and then cruel, but something softens in her eyes and she reaches for me.
“Don’t touch me. I don’t want you to touch me.” I pull back from her, back from the lies. Because now I’m a liar. I start down the hallway, Chantal close behind me, arms outstretched around me like I’m a toddler just learning to walk.
And this scene, this whole scene makes everything in my body ignite. There’s a fire that burns, rages through the muscle and bone that barely hold me in human form. Why? Why does the sight of her feed this desire to let her know everything I’ve held in all this time? It’s anger, it’s resentment, and it just wants to spew out of me. Hands brace the wall for support as I make my way down the hallway, and it kind of seeps out of me, in a feeble way, voice shaking and cracking, head bowed to the floor.
“No wonder I fucked everything up—you left me. You left me shackled so you can be free, you left me because I was a burden you so desperately needed to unload. You left me because you couldn’t love me more than the life you wanted for yourself. You abandoned your only child.”
And my pride is disappointed in my mouth now, as I tell her the thing my pride never wanted her to know—that mommy, you hurt me. Mommy, I’m broken.
I turn to her once I make it to the living room, my throat burning from the vomit, my fingers digging into my palms. Chantal has tears in her eyes, but my mother, she just stares at me, as if she’s challenging me, as if she is ready for a fight. And I threw the first blow. I’ll keep throwing them and I find my voice and I yell.
“And then I finally, finally! I finally find someone that loved me, I mean really loved me, and he’s ripped from me. Gone. He’s fucking gone.” Knees crash to the floor as my head falls back. I scream as she falls with me, blood in my mouth and she’s calling me. Chantal’s on her knees too, crying into her hands, her pain for me so deep, it hurts me to hurt her. My mother shakes me as I clench my teeth, her shouting my name over the screeching that erupts from my throat. But my soul, it’s not even in my body anymore and this hurt is scorching my insides, cauterizing every vein, everything that once felt a shred of happiness, an ounce of joy.
“Aster!” my mother roars through the room, so loudly the frames on the walls rattle, so loudly, Chantal’s hair blows away from her face. I silence, taking a deep breathe in, my throat so raw, my chest spasming from trying to catch my breath.
And now she looks so undone, the wild witch that always had the perfect black bob, the Botoxed forehead, the full red lips. But now, she’s just my mother and she’s gathering me in her arms and I let her. Chantal’s cries are dying down, and the room silences as we all collect ourselves. And my mother whispers in my ear.
“If there was a vampire to fall in love with, Bastian Delacroix was the right one. He had a pure heart and I have no doubt that he loved you back.”
