Dark Shadows Darker Secrets

Chapter 14

After the test I joined the others who passed this magic test. The whole time I stare at the ground in complete shock and wonder to myself how in the world I passed this test. As more students slowly trickled into the room we were being held in, they would stare at me. I didn't use a portal like the rest of them. I don't know how I did it but I passed through the worlds with just the thought of wanting to do it.

When Draken finally came I was relieved to leave the whispering room and leave the gym all together. It had become suffocating to sit in a room full of people that you know are talking about you.

The walk back to the apartment is quick and the entire time Draken is silent. His green eyes stare at the side-walk as he studies the pavement, but I can tell he's thinking about something. "What aren't you telling me?" I ask him as we start to walk up the stairs to the apartment. He watches the ground carefully as we climb to the sixteenth floor.

He sighs before turning to me. "I already knew that you could travel without a spell." I stare at him confused.

"How?" I ask curiously.

He blinks his eyes as he tries to think of how to answer me. I watch his dark eye lashes flutter shut before his deep voice starts talking. "Every time I came to get you from the Human World you were in the in the Veil." He explains.

I think back to when I was Racheal that horrible night in the alley. I already figured out that I wasn't in the Human World at that time because there wasn't anyone around except for a few distant figures on the street. Then the second time Draken came to my apartment someone I transported myself again. I remember with a shiver the ghost of the girl in my kitchen with her bloody wrists. "I knew that I traveled to the other worlds, but I thought that you or the angels put me there." He shakes his head as we take a turn to the next flight of winding stairs.

"I can't travel with anyone without them wanting or agreeing to come. The angels have that kind of power, but they have to be touching you too make you travel with them."

"Wait, so that night with Racheal, I made her travel?" He doesn't answer but I know the answer. Somehow, without touching her, I had made both of us unknowingly travel to another world. "But I don't even know what I'm doing." I stare at the palms of my hands confused as I try to process this. I never mean to travel, but the one time during the test that I need to travel I can only travel half-way.

"I haven't figured that out yet. I have a theory that you use it as a defense mechanism. Both times you felt you were in danger and traveled, but I'm not sure." I look at him to see his eyebrows scrunched together in concentration. I imagine the gears turning in his head as he tries to figure me out. "But then again maybe you just can't control it."

When did my life become so confusing? It feels so surreal to be talking so calmly about traveling through dimensions. Two months ago I was normal. I knew nothing and my life was simple without any talk of traveling, murder, or the pain of death. I don't know which I prefer; to live forever as an unknowing human, or be forced to learn about the rest of the world.

We finally reach the door to the sixteenth floor, but Draken doesn't stop with me. Instead he continues his climb up the stares.

"Where are you going?" I ask him. My voice echos on the walls of the stairwell.

He stops walking and comes to a hault. I watch his back move up and down with his breathing and keep watching as he runs a hand through his ink black hair. He sighs. "I need to be alone." Then he starts to walk to were I presume the roof.