It wasn't until I opened my eyes to see four faces staring down at me that I realized I'd fainted. My arms shook as I tried to push myself up, and Luke reached forward to help me.
"Are you okay?" Seth asked, handing me a glass of water.
"No," I answered honestly, taking a gulp and setting it down with trembling hands. "What are we going to do? He has my whole family."
I couldn't help but think about how terrified Mom and Connor must be. I wonder if they were put with Dad. I wonder if Pennington was using them to threaten Dad into doing what he wanted. I shivered, trying not to imagine scenarios that were much worse.
"You can't help him open a portal," Mara said sharply. "No matter what, you do that. There's nothing stopping him from killing your family after you give him what he wants."
"And it'll probably be easier with a flock of demons at his beck and call," Elijah added solemnly.
"But it's her family at stake," Luke said.
"Versus the rest of mankind?" Mara countered.
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like sandpaper. "They're right. It's too risky, even if it means that I'll never see..."
I couldn't bring myself to finish the sentence.
"We'll get them back, Rory. I promise you that we won't stop looking until we find them," Seth said, kneeling next to me and taking my hand in his. "He's not going to get away with this, okay?"
Slowly nodding, I looked at everyone else. "Wait, where's AJ? How long was I out?"
"He's on his way. And just a couple minutes. I turned around for one second, and the next thing I know, you're dropping to the ground like a sack of potatoes," Elijah said. "Luckily Luke caught you before you cracked your skull open on the ground."
Surprised, I turned to Luke. "You caught me?"
He glanced around awkwardly. "Well—"
"It was a valiant attempt," Mara said, snorting, "even though he went down too, crushed under your almighty weight." There was no malice behind her words, just good-humored teasing. But behind her jokes, there was a trace of distress, just like with everyone else, especially me.
"It's the thought that counts?" Luke said.
A knock on the front door caught everyone's attention.
"It's probably AJ," Seth said, going to answer it. He then stepped aside to let him in. "Were you followed?"
"I don't think so."
I gasped when I saw him.
AJ's face was covered in dried blood, and there was still a huge gash above his eyebrow that was glistening and oozing blood. His clothes were tattered and streaked with red and one of his eyes was swollen shut.
"I'll get the first aid," Mara said, running towards Seth's bedroom.
"Sit down," Seth commanded, leading AJ to the couch I was sitting on. "Elijah, grab another cup of water from the kitchen. What happened?"
And as Mara and Seth cleaned him up, the rest of us listened anxiously. I sat on the couch next to him, and Luke was seated on the arm rest next to me. Elijah was slumped against the wall on the other side of the room.
AJ had been in Mom's car with her, and they were waiting for Connor to get out of school. On their way over to Seth's apartment, they were attacked by another van full of Pennington's men. AJ had done his best to fight them off, but he was outnumbered, and eventually they had taken off with my mom and Connor.
Looking at me, he said, "I'm so sorry. It was my job to protect them and I failed."
"It's not your fault," I said, surprised to find that I didn't blame him one bit. "You're lucky they didn't try to kill you."
"They didn't think of me as a threat."
"There were too many of them," Elijah reasoned. "We're just glad you're safe. We'll just have to figure out a new plan to get them back and stop Pennington."
"How? It's easy to give a big picture idea of what we want to happen, but we don't actually have a plan or even an idea of how to start. We kill demons—that's it. That's all we've ever done," Mara said, indignantly slamming her fist on the old coffee table. "We've never dealt with anything more complicated than maybe three demons at once."
"We can—"
"We can pretend all we want that we're experienced, but the truth of the matter is that we have no idea what to do," she said.
"She's right," AJ said, shaking his head. "Pennington has money, and money is power. He has unlimited resources at his fingertips."
"We have money," Seth said.
"You have money," Elijah said.
"We have Rory."
"And he has a crazy powerful psycho daughter."
"But the one we have is more powerful and less crazy," Seth said. "Making her more valuable."
Elijah touched his chin thoughtfully, then said, "I actually believe that being crazier is more effective because she's willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, whereas Rory has moral limits. Pennington's daughter would kill us all in a heartbeat if that's what her father wants, but we're held back by our duty towards right and wrong."
Mara chuckled darkly. "Oh please, duty my ass. Just let me at her and we'll see if I have any 'moral limits.'"
I've never been one to condone violence, but if it came down to it, I probably wasn't going to try very hard to hold Mara back.
"But my point is," Mara continued, "that we can't keep avoiding him for much longer. He's been closing in on us, and it's only a matter of time until we're backed into a corner. Either we think of a plan, or we run."
Elijah shook his head. "Pennington's daughter can find us if we do. She'll just follow our dreams and figure out where we are."
"Can't we block her?" I said, remembering something Seth had said. "Remember when you tried to go back for my dad, and you said she'd blocked her mind and you couldn't get in?"
"None of us know how to do that," he said. "And I'm sure she can breakdown anything we put up against her."
I wanted to tear my hair out in frustration. Everything about this was so unfair, I wanted to cry. He was a grown man toying with a bunch of teenagers. "Do you think it's time we call the cops?"
"Half the money that funds the police force comes from Pennington Corps. Lucy told me when we... before I knew about all this." Luke had been quiet this whole time, taking in everything we were talking about with wide eyes. It was all still new to him and he wasn't sure how he fit into our mess of personalities and powers and problems.
"That makes sense," Elijah said. "He wouldn't have resorted to such extreme measures like kidnapping if he didn't have the police eating out of his hand.
"So there's nothing we can do?" I asked, voice trembling. Trying hard not to sound desperate and hysterical, I took a deep breath. "So they're just gone?"
"They won't kill them. They've had your dad for months and he's still alive."
"But that's because my dad was useful to them before," I said, biting down on my quivering lip so I wouldn't start bawling in front of everyone.
"Don't worry. It's not over yet," Seth said with finality.
Elijah smiled at me. "Whenever Seth sets his mind to something, you know it'll happen. Even when you think there's no hope left, you can still count on him to come through."
Seth rolled his eyes, his cheeks tinging with pink. "Don't be ridiculous, Elijah."
Elijah continued, ignoring the protests. "Before all this, I lived on the other side of the country with my parents. My dad worked for NASA and my mom taught astrophysics and neurology at MIT. They were absolutely brilliant. I thought I had to be just as smart as them so they'd be proud of me. But regardless of what I accomplished, it always felt like I wasn't good enough. It was obvious I came second to their careers. They would choose research symposiums over spending time with me for my birthday."
"That's terrible," I said.
"I worked my ass off in school, but it was just never enough for them," he said sadly, staring at his hands. "And now, even though they think I'm at some advanced school for gifted students across the nation, they never care enough to check up on me. The other day I saw an article about my mother in a scientific journal. She'd been awarded the Nobel Prize, and she never even thought to let me know. I was always such an insignificant part of my parents' life.
"I met Seth in my nightmare. Actually, he saved me from a demon attack. He was able to sense that I had something special about me that I couldn't see. He promised me that I was special, in ways that my parents wouldn't understand. He helped me realize that the only validation I needed was from myself. He took me away from that abusive environment." Then he looked up and grinned. "And then not long after, I met Mara and I realized what saints my parents were."
At this, she scowled.
I looked over at Seth. "So you're everyone's knight in shining armor?"
"They're just being ludicrous," he said, getting up and disappearing into the kitchen.
"He gets embarrassed when we talk about how much he's changed our lives," Elijah said. "But I know Seth's glad that he's made such a difference. As someone who endured so much verbal abuse as a child, he knows the negative effects that adults can have in a child's life."
"Mara told me about his grandfather," I said. "I never realized Seth did so much for you guys."
"Who knows where we'd be now if Seth never found us? We're lucky to have gotten away from our previous lives. We're more than happy to follow him around the country, slaying demons or whatever. He's the best leader this little group of misfits can have," Elijah said, smiling.
Luke turned to Mara and said, "So what's your story?"
"Too bad, you missed it. You were too busy playing lover boy," Mara said curtly.
"What about you?" he asked AJ.
"That's a story for another time," was the only response he got.
"Friendly bunch of misfits," he said, eyeing them all.
"I'm going to go check on Seth," I said, getting off the couch. The last thing I heard was Mara firmly rejecting Luke's proposal to enlighten them with his life story.
In the kitchen, Seth was standing in front of the sink, rinsing off a dish that seemed spotless.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Dishes," he replied nonchalantly.
"Right now? It looks clean enough."
He sighed and set it on the dish rack to dry. "I just don't know what to say whenever Elijah gets like that. Usually Mara just tells him to shut up, but there was no stopping him tonight with such a captive audience."
"I think it's nice that they look up to you so much, even Mara."
He chuckled softly while still staring down into the empty sink. "Even Mara."
"What is it?"
"It's a lot of pressure sometimes," he admitted, looking at me, "to know that they all depend on you. They always turn to me whenever we're at a dead end, and sometimes I just don't know what to do next. Sometimes I think they forget that I'm a teenager just like them, and I'm not some mystical Heaven-sent being with the answers to everything."
"You should tell them how you feel. I'm think they'll understand." Then I added, "Hell, I'm pretty sure Elijah already knows. He has that creepy psychic thing he does."
Seth laughed again, and it was a nice sound. It was light and honest and genuine. Then his face became serious again. "And it makes me feel guilty whenever they tell me how much I've done for them, cause sometimes I wish I didn't have this ability."
"What do you mean?" I asked, touching his shoulder gently.
"I was given this ability to help people, so I feel obligated to use it. I could just easily turn a blind eye whenever I sense a demon attack, but I don't. Instead, I rounded up a bunch of other kids and formed some insane group of urban vigilantes."
"They love it though."
Seth clutched the counter top tightly. "They should all be in school and getting an education. The only things they should worry about is which colleges they'll apply to and who they should take to prom, and not all this demon crap."
It was hard, finding the right words to say. I wasn't going to say that this wasn't true, because what teenager wants to spend all their time fighting demons and never staying in one place long enough to make friends?
Even though they hated school, I could tell that Elijah was enjoying being around other people his age. And AJ and Sheila had been getting pretty close at school. Even Mara, who hated everyone, complained less and less about being re-enslaved into public school.
So instead of fully disagreeing with him, I said, "Do you know what I think? Even if they can't have all the normal experiences of a teenager, their lives are much better now than before you found them. It's a fair tradeoff, if you ask me. And plus, they're able to experience so many other cool things and worlds and powers that other people can't even wrap their heads around."
"You're really something, Rory Wade," he said softly. "Sometimes, I feel guilty you're involved in this mess. It makes me feel even worse cause my selfish side is glad that I get your company with all this."
My cheeks felt warm. "Well it wasn't you, remember? It was the thugs in the construction site."
"Ah yes, the day we officially met in person. Just as loud and talkative as the girl from your dreams," he said jokingly. He opened his mouth to say something else, but after a moment of reconsideration, he shut it.
"What?"
"Nothing. It's dumb, especially now," he said.
The pleasant mood in the kitchen suddenly shifted to awkwardness as his eyes avoided mine and he drummed his fingers on the countertop.
"I want to know," I insisted.
"No, it's really inappropriate, especially after what happened today," he said.
"What? My family? Is what you were about to say related to them?"
"No, it was about you. But I don't think I should do it now that things didn't go as planned," he admitted.
I wasn't exactly sure what he meant, but his words gave me a swooping sensation in my stomach. Butterflies crashed against my rib cage as I told him, "No, you can tell me."
And finally he looked at me, with those stormy blue eyes, and asked, "Are you sure?"
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
"I already warned you, it might be kind of stupid...."
"Oh just get it over with," I said.
He sighed, exasperated. "Fine, fine..."
We walked by the living room towards his bedroom, and everyone watched curiously as we passed through.
"Where are they going?" someone whispered, and it sounded like Elijah.
And then I heard Luke's voice clearly, "Elijah, can you hand me that sword next to you? I'll need that if I hear any suspicious sounds coming from the bedroom."
I wanted to go back out there and smack him.
Seth made me wait outside as he edged his way into his room. "Remember," he said again, "I already told you this might be stupid."
I rolled my eyes. "Just hurry."
"Wait here."
He shut the door and I impatiently waited for a few minutes before it creaked open an inch.
"Can I come in now?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said, sounding unsure.
When I walked in, I felt my breath catch in my throat.
"Oh my—" I whispered, covering my mouth with my hands.
The lights were off so it was dark in the room, except for the row of glowing candles lined up on his window sill. Small glow-in-the-dark stars were taped onto the window pane spelling out PROM? in tall, slanted letters. And then clutched in his hand was a small bouquet of pink and white daisies.
Seth scratched his head awkwardly with one arm while holding out the flowers to me with the other. "Luke said you liked these things, so..."
Taking the flowers, I said, "I love daisies."
"Yeah, I heard. I'm sorry if this isn't what you were expecting since I didn't spend much time in high school, so I don't know how guys usually do these sort of things," he said, grimacing. "And I've never really talked to many girls besides Mara..."
"Why didn't you and Mara ever get together?" I asked.
He raised his eyebrows. "Okay, not the sort of thing I was expecting to talk about, but Mara is too obsessed with Elijah to care about me."
"Elijah?" A bunch of questions sprung to mind. Wasn't he younger than her? Why Elijah? He was so innocent and friendly while she was snarky and harsh.
"Yeah, isn't it obvious?"
"No—"
"But don't say anything. It's probably the only thing that brainiac hasn't figured out," Seth said, chuckling.
"Wow, I wouldn't have guessed. Wait, when did you even have time to do this?" I asked. Everything was beautiful and romantic, and a million times sweeter than all those times Luke had asked me.
"I kind of lied when I said I left school early to find your mom," he said. "I was already planning this when she called me. That's why I had AJ pick her up instead because I was picking up the stars. You don't know how freaking hard they were to fin—"
I ran over and wrapped my arms around him. "Thank you. This is great. I don't even know what to say, Seth."
"I'm glad you like it. After everything that happened today, I didn't think it was appropriate to ask, since the dance is probably the last thing on your mind," he said, simultaneously smoothing down my hair and pulling my head against his chest. "I hope you don't think I'm not taking the situation with your family seriously by doing this."
"I don't. Honestly. I needed a distraction, and this was beyond perfect."
It was kind of nice, how we were leaving so much unsaid. It was like we didn't need words to communicate how we felt. I knew from the way he rushed to my house after we left Lucy's dream that he cared about me.
And even though I never admitted it out loud, I knew that my feelings towards Seth were more than that of friends. I secretly revelled in the feeling of his hands on mine and the rush I felt whenever he was close to me. I was glad I was able to find something positive in all this wreckage that has been thrown our way since the moment we met.
"I just didn't want you to miss out because of everything happening, and your two friends are always talking about it," he said.
I smiled. "Mary will be so happy knowing she was right about... our date arrangements."
"It's still two weeks away," Seth said. "We'll figure all this out by then, so you don't have to worry about Pennington and his goons anymore. I promise." Slowly, he bent to place a kiss on the top of my head, sending electricity coursing through my body.
I closed my eyes and let myself forget everything bad that was happening in my life, so I could enjoy this small moment. I wanted to remember everything; the smell of the daisies and the candle wax; the sound of his heart beating against his chest; and how safe I felt knowing that Seth was going to do whatever he could to make sure I got my family back.
As if reading my mind, he said, "Everything is going to be okay."
---
A/N: Hi my loves <3
I hope you enjoyed this chapter! There wasn't much plot, but there is some character development. Lol so this is my first stab at writing romance so I hope it wasn't too awks. XD I love reading gushy love stories, but am so bad when it comes to writing it haha.
As usual, please vote and comment if you enjoyed it. I really love getting feedback and hearing back from you guys.Thank you so much for reading and have a wonderful day/night wherever you are!
Dedicated to ITryEverything for all the sweet comments and support for the story :)