Feeble attempts to shelter me from rain didn’t work. I stepped out from under the third umbrella placed above me and stared blankly at the rubble before me. The tears didn’t help but it didn’t matter whether they rolled down my cheeks or not: the rain hid it all.
The loud sirens blared in the background, the emptiness of my mind muffling the sounds. A heavy jacket was draped over my shoulders before I had shrugged them back to let it fall at my feet.
These people held no remorse for me. They were only glad it was my family, not theirs. What they didn’t know was that it was inevitable this would happen to my family and mine alone.
“Miss Griffin?” I ignored the voice and stared, the rain stamping down the remains of what used to be flames engulfing my house. “Miss Griffin, we need to know about any relatives that you can live with.”
“Godmother; she lives in a small town,” I spoke softly. This time I didn’t shy away from the black umbrella placed over my head. Already my fingers had gone numb, I couldn’t feel my toes and I could feel my lips turning blue. I was secretly grateful for the momentary shelter. “Rosemarie Weston.”
“Thank you – and I’m very sorry for your loss.”
I pushed down any emotions bottled up inside of me and stepped out from under the umbrella, heading towards the yellow police tape hanging limply around the borders of my house.
No. This wasn’t my house anymore. These were the remains of what I could have saved if I had come home earlier, if I had come home faster by an hour. One hour made that whole difference and I’d missed it.
This was my fault. The last thing I should have done was to dip under the tape and hear the soft crunch of rubble beneath my shoes. The last thing I should have done was stare emptily at the vast space which was once my house, then look to the sky, asking for more rain.
And more rain came.
The weather mirrored my expression: cold, blank and unwelcome. Thunder rumbled ahead as I heard shouts from the officers behind me, beckoning for me to come back out of the ‘arson’ site.
I couldn’t. My soaking shoes remained rooted to where I was. My teeth were chattering, my clothes were drenched in fresh rain and my hair could have produced enough water to fill a bucket.
Bending down, I placed a hand in the blackened ashes, feeling them dissolve delicately between my fingers. Each raindrop produced a numb prick against my skin as the black ash stained my fingers.
“Alexi, you’re gonna catch a cold.”
I ran my tongue along my lower lip and slowly got to my feet, hanging my head almost in defeat. In a way, I was defeated: if I hadn’t stormed out of the house, I could have been here to stop it. My family didn’t know what I was capable of but I did. I could have prevented their death, the furious flames which were now put out by the rain.
“Tucker,” I said quietly, knowing he could hear me over the rain. “I want to leave.” My head tilted back, water splashing across my eyelids. I didn’t want to see his face after telling him what I meant next.
“Alexi, you can come live with me.” I could imagine his face printed on the back of my eyelids: pleading blue eyes, blonde-gone-brown hair plastered to his forehead and the corners of his lips dropping into a frown. “You don’t have to see this place ever again. We’ll take the other route to school.”
I opened my eyes and met his dark blue ones. “I want to leave, Tucker. I want to leave Lexington Cove. I never want to see this town again.”
YOU ARE READING
Blood of A Seeker
FantasyWhen she loses her adoptive family, Alexi changes her name and moves in with her godmother all the way across the country. All she wants to do is forget her tragic loss. In the town of Fairwyn, she finds that despite being surrounded by her own kind...
