Exaltation (Insight #11)(70)

When he pulled away from her and leaned his forehead against hers, he spoke tenderly. “Somehow, someway, I will find you, love.”

Right then the house began to rumble, a growl was heard all around them. He let Raven go and reached for his shirt. Raven panicked and hid behind the chair. She moved there so fast she didn’t even remember thinking to do so.

The boy made it to the door and then stopped himself. He looked back into the room, finding it empty. He lowered his head and sighed. “Please forgive me, Hartley.” And with that he left.

Raven pulled herself into a ball. She should have been terrified of the roar outside, the darkness she was sure was going to find her in that spot. But all she could do was think about that boy, and the feeling he gave her.

She squinted her eyes closed. Life was not this weird. It couldn’t be. Why did that ghost call me by my first name? Why did he act like he recognized me? Why did he kiss me? And I why did I let him? What was it with me and boys lately?

Raven was so lost in her personal mental rant it took her a second to realize she didn’t hear the rumbling anymore, that she couldn’t feel the fire anymore.

Right before she opened her eyes she felt someone touch her shoulder and moved back as fast as she could.

“It’s okay,” Jamison said to Raven, reaching his arms for her to come out of her hiding spot. She had crawled into one of the stoops on the storefronts. From the looks of it, one on Toulouse Street.

“How did I get here?”

“You ran home like I told you to,” Jamison said.

“No, no, no I didn’t. I was with the musician, the old man.”

Jamison had helped her stand by that point and as soon as she said she saw the old man his entire body tensed.

“What old man?”

“The one we saw at the rink—you remember, you and Aunt Saige looked at him like you knew him then he vanished.”

“You saw him?” Jamison said with a ghost of a whisper. That made no sense. The battle today was mild compared to the ones Raven and the others had fought as children.

“For a second, he said something about how the Veil leads you home but I wasn’t home. I was at that house, you remember the one that had the music coming from it when you took me in the Veil the first time?”

“I don’t remember a house,” Jamison said honestly, as his eyes rushed over hers as it all made sense at once. He had been looking for the soul that was to rise with her since she was an infant and couldn’t find him. He never thought to look in death. But the Creator himself led Raven there.

“Yes you do! We saw it before. Right when I asked you if Elvis was in the Veil and if I could go check out the dead musician.”

“There was no house.”

“Dad, there was a house. And two seconds ago I was in it.”

“What happened there?”

Raven looked away and blushed.

“Raven, did you see someone there?”

She nodded slightly.

“And?”

“Dad…don’t go there. I can’t deal with another boy convo between us. Too much weirdness without that embarrassment.”

She saw him, Jamison thought to himself as relief moved through him. It was short lived though. He had no idea how to get the boy out of death. He needed to talk to Saige. Hell, he needed to talk to Reveca. For all he knew Raven had just found a solution to all of this. That one boy.

“Listen to me,” he said calmly. “Everyone is safe at Emery’s. You need to go there.”

“Where are you going? Back to the Veil? Can I go?”

“Not yet. Soon,” Jamison said as he nodded for her to walk.

Raven hesitated but then she began to run, she needed answers, she needed her girls, Soren.





Chapter Twenty-One

Rydell really thought he had felt every kind of pain in existence, that it was nothing he couldn’t endure. But Revelin had proved him wrong.

One thought from Revelin slowly began to shred Rydell’s soul as if it were nothing more than paper. He tossed him into the pit Rydell was in just after Rydell blacked out.

Rydell assumed because he was still alive Revelin wanted him to die slowly, or beg for mercy. But Rydell was too stubborn to do either.

The howls of the damned souls around him were sickening; they knew Rydell was on the edge, that he would be one of them at any moment. Rydell even heard them laugh and beckon him to succumb to the agony.

More than once Rydell strained to grasp their energy, thinking that if he had just a little he could get out of this pit and plot his next move.

He had to figure out exactly where he was first…

For all he knew this was an illusion. His forevermore prison.

Right as Rydell grasped a cloud of malicious energy he heard someone say, “Tell me you are not thinking of digesting that?”

It was Britain.

He was standing at the top of the pit Rydell was trapped in. Rydell was covered in mud that smelled far too foul to be part of the earth. Britain was dressed to the nines in one of his classic suits.

“It’s about survival, is it not?” Rydell spat out. That second Rydell felt his body pulled forward.

He was now laying at Brittan’s feet.

Awesome. I’m out of the pit, goal one accomplished.

“Trouble in paradise?” Britain quipped.