Page 31 of Chasing Luna

“How she spoke to me was very different from earlier today. It was like she was your grandmother. Cold, calculative, and detached.” He grabs me by the shoulders gently. “Isabela, I know that your family is important to you. But remember, in this life,” he gives me a gentle shake, “in our life, there are not a lot of people we can’t trust. Everyone is out there, following his or her own self-serving ambitions. I’m not telling you to do anything now, but I just wanted to let you know that your sister managed to trick your grandmother into… bending the rules a little bit. And this came after you were told to kill me on your birthday.”

I stay frozen in place, unable to process the information given to me. “So? What do you want me to do? Stay away from her?” I take deep, consecutive breaths. The image of Katarina turning evil, turning into my grandmother is nightmare fuel. But now that I think about it, it’s not impossible.

“No. But be careful about the information you share with her. She absolutely cannot know that we know each other, that we work together. We don’t know if we can trust her, at least not yet. Her act of saving me from getting tortured seemed innocent enough, but I didn’t think it was for free. I’m going to pay for that, one way or another,” Gregory says with a low voice.

“Okay, I got it.” I nod in agreement.He’s right. I can’t just trust anyone. Not now, and not in this household. “So, what are you going to do now?” He steps a little bit away, and I feel myself start to breathe normally again.

“Just like what your grandmother said earlier,” he speaks at a low volume. “I’ll do whatever she asks, make myself available at her every beck and call. She may be useful in the future, we never know.”

“You’ll make her trust you?” I ask after a moment of silence.

He grins, opening the door. “Yes. I’ll use her, too.”

Chapter Thirty-One

“Take what should have been yours,” I hear my grandmother say to someone as I pass by her study on the way back to my room.

I stop for a moment, waiting to hear who she is talking to, but Eliza appears at the end of the hallway beckoning me to come to her. “Yes?” I ask, smiling at my friend.

“Last night, Mistress Katarina—” I cut her off with a wave of my hand.

“I know.” She nods. Eliza follows me inside my bedroom, and immediately gets to work on replacing my curtains.

“How did you know? Did she tell you?” she queries, struggling to reach for my tapestries next.

“Gregory told me. He warned me,” I mention, stepping closer to her, “not to trusther.”

Eliza stops all movement. “What? Why?” I sigh, leaning against my small bookcase.

“After you left, she started saying all these weird things to him. Like, she’ll save him from getting hurt, asked him to trust her. And get this,” I take the tapestries from her and drop them in her basket, “he told me that him becoming Kat’s personal assistant was all part of her plan.”

“Do you believe him?” Eliza asks after a while.

“Yes. No. Well, I don’t want to but I kind of believe him…” I trail off, taking my things off the shelf so Eliza can dust them.

“Which is it?” She turns to look at me, raising an eyebrow.

“The look on Katarina’s face when my grandmother proposed the assistant part looked so real. But Gregory went out of his way to come here and help me.”

“Let me ask you again, which one do you believe?” Eliza smiles at me.

“Gregory,” I utter with a shaky voice. “I love my sisters. But he’s right. There are not a lot of people I can trust right now. Not even Katarina.” I sigh. Eliza gets to my wardrobe and notices the hole from when I was practicing my new abilities. She stares at me and points at it. “Um, I can explain.”

Eliza taps her foot against the floor repeatedly. “This is an antique. You ruined it.”

I put my hands up in an attempt to pacify her. “Yeah, I know. But I have a very good explanation for that.”

“Then explain,” she states. Concentrating hard, I try to remember Katarina’s advice about focusing more on the area around my target. I try to imagine containing the power around my hands instead of letting it out into the open. I lift a finger up in the air, and invoke the spell that tumbles a little too freely from my lips. My finger starts to feel warm, and heat pools behind my eyes. “I-Isabela?” Eliza calls out to me cautiously, looking directly at my eyes. “What’s happening?” I ignore her and focus hard on containing my power. The sudden appearance of electric bursts from my finger shocks me, but surprisingly doesn’t hurt. Eliza backs away almost immediately.

I think of it spreading around my finger and all over my hand. The currents dance around from my fingertips, around my palms, and settle just above my wrists. “This is my explanation,” I whisper.

“What the hell… is that?” Eliza takes a small step toward me.

“It’s my power, I guess. Well, technically I learned it from my grandmother’s book of spells.”

“What?! You took it?” she almost yells.

“Yeah, but she found out that I took it.” I try to concentrate on my other hand, reciting the other spell I’ve memorized. “But before she could confiscate the book from me, I managed to learn these tricks.” A sudden chill appears in the air, and I concentrate on keeping the frost around my palms. “Pretty cool, huh?” I grin.

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