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It was as if we all wanted this to be over. We were pretending that what happened hadn’t. Even with the pressure of my mother coming back for vengeance or Deidamia coming to hunt down my mother, I felt lighter to be home.
This felt like home.
Kellan and I were new, but it felt right.
Ernest and Fern took the fold-out couch, leaving Kellan and I the bedroom. It felt nice to slip underneath his covers, with his dog sleeping underneath the bed and the moon shining through his window.
He snaked his arm around me and pulled me back against his body.
Silence greeted us. “What’s going to happen?” I asked him. “Even if my mother doesn’t come back for vengeance, it’ll never be the same. What if she leaves and never comes back? I’ll be motherless.”
Kellan stroked his fingertips against my skin. “Let’s not think about it tonight. We all need a good night’s sleep.”
I nodded, though it was hard not to think about it. It hung over me like an umbrella or an untimely death.
Minutes ticked by, and I fell to sleep in Kellan’s arms. It wasn’t until I heard the pecking on the glass that I sat up in bed.
Kellan groaned beside me but didn’t move. My gaze shifted around his room, adjusting to the light while trying to see the cause of the noise.
George would have heard something, wouldn’t he?
I swallowed the dryness from my throat and swung my feet toward the floor. George’s growl startled me. I gasped loudly as he emerged and walked toward the window.
That’s when I saw my mother staring back at me. She looked like Deidamia. She wasn’t the blonde that baked cookies. She was Deidamia’s sister. The woman I didn’t know.
She curled her finger at me, making my heart thump loudly against my ribcage. Kellan’s callused palm wrapped around my upper arm, and he sat up behind me.
“She’s here,” I whispered.
Kellan stood on the other side of the bed in his underwear. His gaze settled on my mother through the glass. “Let’s go see her, then.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Kellan
Josephine stood quietly between the bed and the window, watching her mother. Her familiar green eyes made my skin crawl. I slipped into my jeans and t-shirt, while Josephine continued to glare.
“Josephine,” I whispered.
She turned toward me with an ashen face. “I don’t want to go out there.”
I walked over and cupped my hands around her face. There was so much fear in her eyes that it wrecked me inside. I couldn’t imagine waking up and realizing that your mother is evil and not who she says she was.
“If we don’t, she’ll just come inside, Josephine. She’s not going to go away. We’ll go out together and figure this out.”
She closed her eyes, and a tear slipped down her cheek.
“Don’t cry,” I whispered. “I won’t let her take you.”
I had no idea how I would stop her. If she was Deidamia’s sister, then her powers and her origins could be limitless. There was no way to figure it out without confronting her.
Josephine wiped her cheek and took a deep breath. “Okay,” she whispered.
I looked down at her long T-shirt and grabbed a pair of my sweats from a nearby chest of drawers. “Put these on.”
She slid into my sweats and tied the band tightly to keep them up. “Are you ready?” I asked.
Josephine nodded swiftly and followed me down the hallway. Fern and Ernest were both asleep on the couch, the moonlight brightening the room enough to see their sleeping faces.
