Page 5 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

Dragging down both my sleeves to hide my bite mark, I crossed the hallway and met Morgan in the foyer before having her follow me into the kitchen where we could talk in private. I tried to read her face for any clues as to what this late-night meeting was about, but the auburn-haired, expressionless beauty gave nothing away.

“Do you want something to drink?”

I offered as I made my way to the fridge and pulled out a jug of orange juice. As knotted as my stomach was, I hoped it would help take the edge off of my still spinning head. Though at this point, I wasn’t sure if the dizziness was from the bloodsharing or from my anxiety about what she was going to tell me.

“I’m fine,”

she said and then pulled out a bar stool from the island before plopping herself down on it. Her curly locks were pulled into a messy ponytail that looked as though she’d been tossing and turning on them all night. It definitely bore no resemblance to her usual put-together appearance.

I looked up at her expectantly as I set a glass on the kitchen island and unscrewed the cap from the juice.

“So, are you going to tell me about this vision?”

I asked as I poured myself a glass of OJ and watched her fidget uncomfortably. “Or do we need to do the whole awkward chit-chat thing first?”

“I told you, it’s not really a vision. It was more of a message,”

she answered as she flattened her palms against the counter and blew out a breath.

I crooked an eyebrow at her. “A message from who exactly?”

She looked at me like I was the Lord of the Idiots. “From my Guides in the Spirit Realm.”

“Right. Okay.”

I cleared my throat. “Great.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Frankly, I didn’t know much about Seer’s or where their power came from. All I knew was that they could communicate with the dead and see the future. Where or how that ability manifested itself, I had no actual idea, but apparently, it had something to do with ghosts on the other side—also known as the Spirit Realm.

“Please tell me this is about Nikki,”

I blurted out, not even bothering to hide my desperation. “About what she’s planning to do?” I couldn’t lie, the idea of getting an edge over her sounded great right about now especially since we had no idea what she was up to or what her endgame was.

She shook her head somberly, her eyes turning regretful.

“So, it’s about me then,”

I surmised.

“Yes and no,”

she answered cryptically which was zero percent helpful. “It’s actually about Trace.”

My stomach curdled like spoiled milk and at the mere mention of his name before sinking all the way down to the earth’s core. This was exactly what I had been afraid of. Morgan’s visions about Trace had never been good in the past and I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear yet another one. For one, she predicated his death in my arms months ago and while that vision hadn’t been perfectly translated, it certainly didn’t stop the prediction from coming true. Because that was exactly what ended up happening.

“If you’re here to tell me you saw him dying again—”

“No, it’s nothing like that,”

she cut in, eyeing me as I breathed a sigh of relief. “This was different. I think it was a message about what we need to do to help him with his memories. I think this might be the key to saving him.”

My heart stalled in my chest. I couldn’t have heard her right. “Explain. Now.”

She glanced over her shoulder as though making sure we were alone and then leaned in like she was going to tell me a secret. “So, basically, after I got home from visiting Trace earlier tonight, I got into bed and started sketching like I usually do. It’s something I do to calm my mind at night,”

she explained, as though she needed to justify her hobbies to me. “Anyway, so I’m working on this portrait just doing my thing when all of a sudden, I fall into this kind of trance—like my body had been taken over,” she said speedily as she reached into her back pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

My eyes bounced from her to the paper and then back again.

“I have no idea how long I was in that state, but when I finally snapped out of it, I looked down at my sketch and found eight words scribbled across the page.”

She flattened the sheet of paper on the counter and slid it over to me. “The weirdest part is it’s not even in my handwriting,” she added, though her voice sounded as though it were a million miles away from me then.

With my heart knocking against my chest, I picked up the thick sheet of sketch paper and unfolded it. My eyes scanned the half-finished, beautiful black-and-white portrait of a young girl I didn’t recognize before landing on the scribbled message hand-printed across the bottom.

The path to transcendence is birthed in transformation.

I read the line in my head, glanced up at her, and then read it again.

“So?”

she asked, her gaze studying me as I reread the line over again, and then once more for good measure. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?”

I repeated in disbelief.

She nodded eagerly.

“I don’t even know what the hell this is supposed to mean,”

I snapped, looking at her as though she had just shown up at my house and thrown an egg in my face. “How do you know this is even about Trace? I mean, this ‘message’—if you can even call it that—doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

“Of course, it’s about Trace. Who else would it be about? And it makes perfect sense,”

she answered in a huff and then snatched the sheet of paper out of my hands. “It’s saying that in order for him to transcend this, he needs to transform—to change!”

“To change? Change what? His clothes? His Facebook status?”

I barked back, irritated by the false hope she’d momentarily given me. “This has to be the stupidest, vaguest, most useless piece of information I’ve ever received—in my entire life!”

“Useless?”

Her eyes narrowed into slits. “I’d say it’s a whole lot more than what you have, which is nothing!” she countered and unfortunately, I couldn’t argue that point.

I did have nothing. But still…

“You’re not that far off from my nothing,”

I muttered childishly under my breath and then took the paper back from her, hoping that if maybe I gave it another look, it might suddenly seem as useful as she seemed to think it was.

“My visions are never black and white. They’re fluid and malleable, but they’ve never let me down before and I believe this is no different. The message might not come with step-by-step instructions for us to follow, but I know it’s a clue. It means something. We just have to figure out what it is.”

I let her words simmer for a moment and then let out a heavy sigh as I gave the note yet another pass.

The path to transcendence is birthed in transformation.

What the hell did that mean? I couldn’t seem to make the pieces fit together in my head no matter how many times I read it over. “What if you’re wrong and this has nothing to do with him?”

“What if I’m right and it does?”

she argued.

Okay. Good point.

“Is there any way you can recreate what happened tonight?”

I wondered, still trying to warm myself up to the idea. While I wasn’t as confident in the message as she was, I wasn’t discounting it altogether anymore. If she was right, then maybe this was just a steppingstone. A clue to point us in the right direction. Maybe all we needed to do was dig a little deeper. Search a little harder.

“Why would I want to do that?”

she asked.

“To see if you can get another message. Maybe something that can help us figure out what this one means.”

She shrugged. “I can try, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m not even sure how it happened in the first place. I’ve gotten plenty of visions before, but this is the first time anything like this has happened to me.”

“The out-of-body-trance thing?”

“Yeah. For all I know, it was a one-time deal.”

“Well, if there was ever a time to figure that out, it would be now,”

I reminded, my voice growing serious as I thought about what we were up against. “The Council isn’t going to help him, Morgan. They have more important things to deal with right now. We’re all he has.”

“I know that.”

She nodded woefully, the pain and worry prevalent in her eyes.

If there had been any doubt in me before, it had all but vanished now. Trace was important to her, and in that moment, I knew I had an ally in Morgan. I knew she would do everything she could to help me protect him.

My phone rang again, halting our conversation as I pulled it out and checked the caller ID.

Benjamin Pratt.

My heart sped off in my chest as I hit the accept button and put the phone to my ear. “Ben? What’s going on? Is Trace okay?”

I asked speedily, eyeing Morgan as I waited for confirmation.

“Hey, Jem. Hope I didn’t wake you. I know it’s late.”

“It’s fine, I wasn’t sleeping.”

I paused. “I’m with Morgan actually.”

“Wow. Never thought I’d hear those words come out of your mouth.”

You and me both, Ben.

“What’s going on?”

I asked again seeing as he hadn’t answered my question the first time.

There was a deafening pause on the line that seemed to go on forever. “I think you should pass by Trace’s tonight.”

Panic jump-started my heart into overdrive. “Wh-why? Did something happen to him?”

I could barely get the question out without choking on it.

Morgan’s eyes bugged out of her head as she watched me for clues as to what was going on.

“No, no. He’s okay,”

he answered hesitantly. “It’s just—I don’t know. He’s been asking a lot of questions lately and I’m starting to wonder if keeping the truth from him is really the best thing for him.”

Well, that made two of us. Then again, it hadn’t been my idea to lie to him in the first place. They had all come up with that brilliant plan way before I came back from my summer away with Tessa.

“Why are you bringing this up now, though? What changed?”

I asked wearily, unsure if I was really prepared to hear the answer to that.

“He had another one of those headaches today and I can’t help but wonder if it’s because of all the digging he’s doing in his head trying to remember what happened.”

Dread descended over me like a suffocating black cloud. This was the third headache since Friday. Not good.

“It’s probably nothing but—”

“I’m leaving now,”

I said and hung up the line. I didn’t need to hear another word. If Ben was worried, I knew this was getting serious. Even though we had no proof that these migraines were anything other than regular headaches, I wasn’t taking any chances. I needed to see Trace for myself, with my own eyes, to make sure he was okay.

Whether he wanted to see me or not.

“What is it? What did he say?”

asked Morgan, her face as pale as a ghost as I slipped my phone into my back pocket and removed the hair tie from around my wrist, needing something to distract myself with as I gathered my bearings.

“Trace had another headache,”

I said as I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and then secured it with the elastic. I didn’t need to say anything more than that. Morgan knew as much as I did what was at risk here and that any change to his current state needed to be taken seriously. “Ben thinks it’s because he keeps trying to remember what happened—that maybe hiding everything from him is hurting him more than helping him at this point.”

Her eyes widened. “What are you going to do? Are you going to tell him the truth?”

Am I?

“I…I don’t know,”

I answered honestly because I didn’t. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was sick of lying to him. Sick of keeping the past buried like a dirty secret. And for what? For who’s benefit? “He already knows the worst of it anyway. Maybe it’s time I finally fill in those missing pieces for him.”

I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince Morgan or myself. Not that I needed to convince Morgan. Judging by the look on her face, she was about as keen on lying to Trace as Ben was.

“Should I come with you?”

she asked as she picked up her piece of sketch paper and neatly folded it in half.

I shook my head at her. “I think it’s better if I go alone,”

I said as I threw on my leather jacket and quickly checked my pockets for my keys. “I need to do this alone,” I amended, knowing that it was my lies that had hurt him the most.

She nodded and then crossed her arms as I started to leave the kitchen. “Jemma?”

she called, halting me mid-step.

I turned back and met her worry-filled eyes. “Yeah?”

“He’s going to be okay though, right?”

“Yeah.”

I swallowed roughly and then forced out a smile. “Of course, he is. He has to be,” I said and then started off again. I only made it a couple of steps before pausing again in the doorway to look back at her. “Hey, Morgan?”

“Yeah?”

she answered, her expression still wrought with anxiety.

“Keep working on decoding that message, though, okay? Just in case.”