The Psychic Legacy

Chapter 5: Loyalty

"No, honestly," I said. I threw up my hands. "But what choice do I have?"

"Exactly," Polly said with a smack of her lips. "You're gonna have to spit it out eventually. The sooner you start, the sooner it's over."

I sighed. "I don't even know where to start. What exactly do you know?"

Ethan shrugged. "All I know was what Polly told me while we were out doing the shopping. About that nutso ex-mentor... Matilda?"

"And that story," Polly continued, "was pretty rushed and incomplete 'cause we were in public. So, maybe you should start from the beginning."

I closed my eyes, trying my best to trace the events of the past few days. The pain sharpened.

"Well, it started after you dropped me off," I said, glancing at Ethan. "The next day. It all started out so nice. Luc was being good. He put off work, made me breakfast, bought me a SIM for my new phone..." I shook my head, my eyes already stinging with tears. It felt like there was an empty pit opened up inside me, threatening to swallow me up like black hole. "I should've known."

"Known what?" Ethan prodded, his voice soft with concern.

"That it was all too good to be true." I blinked, trying to banish the tears, but a few escaped and slid down my cheeks. "Then, late in the afternoon I-I went downstairs, and I found the whole place covered in that golden script of his. His barrier. Only it wasn't there to keep something out... It was to keep me in."

Both Ethan and Polly's mouths dropped open.

"What the fuck?" Polly whispered in disbelief. "Why?!"

I shrugged. "He didn't really explain himself, but he did say that there was something out there that was a danger to me. He must've been keeping it from me all this time..."

Polly's face tensed. "Are you sure?"

"Sure about what? That he'd been lying to me?"

"Yeah," she countered. "Because whenever he called me, he seemed like he honestly believed that you were okay. He'd been watching your cards and they had always come up clear."

"Well, then something must've changed," I snapped back, "because when he showed me my cards that afternoon, he said the cards told him I was in danger."

They had nothing to say to that. The room settled back into silence as we sat around the table, looking back and forth between each other. Polly's brow was folded in, while Ethan's face was blank and far away. He mouthed something, over and over, but I couldn't make out what.

Then something dawned across his face. His cheeks flared red and his eyes went wide. "Something must have changed," he echoed, finally saying the words aloud. "Oh my god... I fucking knew it!"

"What?" I asked.

"Something did change," he said, his eyes boring into mine. "Do you remember that shockwave? During the séance?" Then his face fell. "No, wait, you wouldn't remember. You had passed out."

"What shockwave?" Polly asked, raising an eyebrow. Something told me that Luc might have left out that particular detail when he relayed the story of the séance to her.

"After Rachel passed out, there was like this boom," Ethan threw his arms wide, mimicking an explosion. "It blew through the room, knocking us all back. Then it was like—snap—everything went back to normal. Tory was released from his trance. Of course, those two said it was nothing, just the 'door' to the other side closing, but I knew there was something more. There was something wrong about it all...."