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Invisible Ink: The Taste of Ink
Chapter 6
perpLEXed
Avery sat on the couch, curled up in a ball. It had been three days. It had been three days of utmost silence. Yet, there was nothing peaceful about it. She hadn’t seen her mother in three days. She hadn’t heard from her father in three days. She hadn’t even found the will or time to leave the house in three days.
Her appetite was dwindling. The situation was taking a stronger toll on her than she’d ever expected. These days were supposed to be full of freedom, but she found there was nothing remotely enjoyable about being stuck in a torn home. The only person she had to talk to was Lex and even he was somewhat useless because he was refusing to shed any further light on the secrets her father was hiding ever since she moved him to her closet. The temptation to throw him back in the attic was overwhelming, save for the fact that the mirror was a pain in the ass to move the slightest bit.
“I hate commercials…” Avery grumbled, flipping the station on the television. “I hate a lot of things right now.” A loud thump echoed through the house. She threw the remote across the room and it smashed against the wall, the batteries flying out the back of it. She’d told Lex that he had to keep quiet. He had been thumping around all morning.
Angry and annoyed, she stomped up the stairs to her bedroom, not even bothering to keep quiet. If her mother hadn’t shown a reaction to Lex’s incessant noise making then chances were that a few footsteps wouldn’t attract her either. Careful to lock her bedroom door, she walked over to her closet and threw the doors open. “I told you to be quiet. In five seconds I’m going to drag you outside and toss you in the ocean!”
“Your temper controls you,” Lex said, as if he hadn’t even heard a word she said. “Aand I don’t believe that will be of much help to you in the future.”
“Oh, shut up already!” She snapped. “I can’t handle another riddle right now!”
“How was what I said a riddle?” One of his hands pressed against the glass and for some reason, she felt the urge to reach out for it.
“I said shut up.”
His head bent to one side and he smiled broadly. “I want to go on a walk with you.”
She forced a laugh, crossing her arms defiantly. “Oh yea, I’m going to lug around a mirror on a walk.”
Something about his smile caused a sudden shiver to shoot down her spine. Against her will, she found herself taking a step forward. “You don’t have to take this mirror around with you. I’m trapped in this mirror, not damned to it, which means that I do possess the ability to leave…under certain circumstances.”
“Like when I touch the frame?” She asked, curious.
“That allows me the slightest bit of freedom, but it takes more than that to get me completely out of the mirror.” His expression turned wicked in an instant. “But you can also come in.”
“Lex!” The sudden outburst even caught her off guard. She hadn’t expected to yell at him. She was so frightened by the way he was acting that it was almost like…
“I resent that tone of voice!” His own voice sounded genuinely angry. He had no right to be talking to her in such a manner. Her being skeptical seemed to be frustrating him. “Now come here.”
Avery shook her head violently. She didn’t want to be sucked into the mirror. She didn’t want him somehow managing to get himself out.
“You act as if you think I am going to hurt you.” Lex shook his head disapprovingly at her. He began to scrutinize her, his eyes ever-searching. “Someone told you I would hurt you…”
She tightened her arms around her. He had to have somehow overheard her conversation. There was no possible way he could have figured that out so easily. “I have no reason to trust you-,”
“You have no reason not to,” he retaliated.
“You’re not real!”
“I’m real to you!” His face momentarily softened as he continued on. “You were intrigued and fascinated by me the first two times you spoke with me. Now, suddenly, I have become some bloodthirsty monster that you must fear. Tell me what you have to be afraid of. What have I done to you?”
“You used to terrorize me when I was little!” She hissed. “I think that says enough all in itself.”
He tsked her, fluffing off her remark. “I was simply passing the time. I told you that. Avery…I am all you have right now.”
“I shouldn’t been talking to you.”
Something pulled inside of her, drawing her towards the mirror. Several times, she tried to force her feet to stop, but it wouldn’t work. She studied the mirror, looking at the reflection of the attic in the mirror. It hadn’t changed upon his relocation…something that struck her as extremely odd, but nowhere near as odd as the occupant it contained.
“What are you doing?” She muttered. “I have to go out to the barn.”
“You mean you have to call Seth?” He straightened himself pompously.
“How would you know about Seth?”
Lex scoffed at her and pounded one of his hands against the glass. “I’ve been around as long as Aden has been alive. I know Seth. You should stay away from him.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned against the mirror. “How funny of you to say that.”
In one swift movement, he secured a hand around Avery’s arm and pulled. Her initial panic came from her assumption that he was trying to pull her in. However, she quickly realized that it was quite the reverse. Not just his hands were coming from the glass this time. His entire torso was slowly emerging…and the expression on his face hinted to her that the experience was far from pleasant.
“What are you doing!?” Instinctively, she tried to help support him…or at least the part of him that wasn’t still on the other side of the glass. “Lex!”
“I have been trapped in this forsaken mirror for eleven years. Imagine being caged in a box for eleven years!” His face was dangerously close to hers, his lips pressed against her ear as he spoke. “I did nothing to deserve this fate and all I want is out. Could you understand that? I was fooled, oh so cleverly, by a desperate and young man and I did something for him out of the kindness of what was left of my heart and for that he cursed me to a mirror. Tell me how I can be dangerous when I cannot even free myself without someone’s help!”
Avery placed her hands on his chest, trying to keep her breath from racing and revealing how truly nervous she was. “My dad! What did he need?”
“This.” Lex placed his hands on either side of her face, planting his lips on hers.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t quite push him away. It bothered her, because she wasn’t sure if it was because he had too strong a hold on her or because she wasn’t really trying. “Avery,” he pulled away briefly, but only long enough to speak. “I am begging you…just one hour. You can come with me for one hour your time and I promise you’ll be able to get back out…I promise.”
Managing to free herself for a moment, she glanced at him suspiciously. “An hour my time? What is that supposed to mean?”
“One hour for you is a day for me.”
“Wait…” Avery paused and then felt her heart sink.
Lex’s look only confirmed what she was thinking. “I have been in this mirror for almost three hundred years.”
The shock had her temporarily frozen. Three hundred years was…forever. “Let go of me…let go of me!”
Lex almost instantly let her go, straightening his jacket. “I apologize for my behavior, but I trust that you can understand why I would start to act in such a way.”
She hurriedly collected herself and ran out of the closet. He had just kissed her. He had tried to persuade her to enter into his realm…and she’d almost agreed. “Grow up, Avery,” she scolded herself. “It was only a kiss! Stop being so…so…”
“So what?” Pounding her fist against her closet door, she tried to silence him. She learned from her mistake, though, and proceeded to discipline herself profusely in her mind. “Avery!”
“Be quiet, Lex!” She heard her cell phone ring and sprinted over to her bed. Tearing through her covers, she searched wildly for it. There was never any telling where it would be in the mornings. Looking at the caller I.D. she felt her hopes instantly melt. It was only Claire. “Hello?”
“Whatchya doin’?”
“Um…I was just getting ready to go clean out the stalls actually,” Avery lied.
“Oh, bummer. I wanted to go out for coffee. I thought your dad took care of the barn?”
Avery stared at the phone, perplexed. Claire’s voice had perked up somewhat towards the end of the sentence. Neglecting the odd occurrence, she tried to think of a somewhat buyable lie to tell her. “My dad had to…go out of town for work.”
“He works? Since when…and where?”
Was it just curiosity or was there a tad bit of eagerness in her voice as well? “Just…um…you see…it’s kinda…horses! He handles horses…horse shows…he took two of them down for a show for these two riders to…ride…they got entered in a horse show and he had to take them. Yea…a horse show…he hasn’t been home for…” She couldn’t say a few days because horse shows were a weekend long at the most. “Well, he left early this morning and it’ll take him a day or two to get there and then the show lasts for three days so being as my mom has been working on this story a lot lately I took the barn on as my responsibility…” Taking a deep breath, Avery collapsed on her bed. That was the worst lie she’d ever told. Half of it didn’t even make sense to her and she had made it up!
For a few moments there was nothing but silence on the other end of the phone. Avery could only imagine the type of work Claire’s brain was doing to try and understand the bullshit she had just been fed. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Why don’t you just call me when you’re done then?”
“Sure thing. Bye.” Somewhat winded, Avery closed her phone and took a deep, very deep, breath. “That was stressful.”
She slumped over on her bed, trying to silence the ringing in her ears. Opening her eyes, she saw her mother standing in her doorway with her arms crossed, looking around the room. “Where’s the mirror?”
Avery stared at me as if she had just seen a ghost, not that I doubted the possibility. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not in the attic. I just went up there and it’s gone. I wanted to make sure that you were okay and that it hadn’t…well…”
I looked at her, feeling the same confusion that was painted across her face. “No, I know what you’re trying to say. I haven’t really heard it at all the past few days, to be honest.”
“Who were you talking to?” I felt as if I was firing twenty questions at her, but I had been gone for several days and I felt awful about it.
“Claire. I started panicking halfway through the conversation and came up with some absurd lie about a horseshow dad is at.” She fell silent at the mentioning of Aden, a glum expression hiding beneath her features. “Have you…heard from him at all?”
I shook my head. I was still furious that he would leave in such a way. I was furious he had taken Seth’s abilities. It could have been the worst thing in the world to wish, but I would have rather lost Seth to such powers than Aden. If such a thought was wrong on my part, than so be it…I was tired of getting the short end of the stick. I know that life isn’t fair, but there is no saying about it being an eternal black hole.
“I’m gonna go get something to eat.” Not that I had much of an appetite. Part of me wanted to pack up and move so that when Aden came back there would be absolutely nothing left except his damned mirror. Moving the horses would be a pain, but I still somehow managed to think it would be worth it. I hated California, but it would be the last place he’d expect me to go.
“Mom,” Avery cut through my thoughts and I turned around, waiting patiently. “I’m sorry for everything I did to dad. I never meant any of it. It’s just…”
“Avery,” I said slowly. “None of this is your fault. Your father, he’s not the same man I fell in love with. Getting into details won’t help in the least, it’ll only make everything ten times worse, but I have hope that he can change. The way he acts now is how Seth more or less used to be, so at least maybe you can understand why there is a rift between him and I.”
“I just want him to be okay. I know you love him…but I think that mirror you hate…I just get this feeling that keeping that mirror safe is crucial to his survival.”
My thoughts froze. Avery was trying to play off the old hunch feeling, but I knew better. She was my own daughter, for crying out loud. I knew much better. Simply nodding my head, I turned on my heel and started for the attic.
“Where are you going?” She called.
“To see what you’ve been up to.”
I heard her brisk footsteps behind me and knew immediately that she’d been up to no good. She’d been meddling with the mirror again and I was furious. She didn’t understand the risk involved in meddling with the paranormal. No ghosts could be trusted, not even one trapped in a mirror. Chances were that if he was put in a mirror, there was some way to get him out of it. Avery was innocent and vulnerable, the perfect victim for a desperate ghost to trick into helping it.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Avery protested. “Only what I thought is right.”
In the attic, my stomach knotted. The mirror was completely gone. “You have no idea what you’re up against,” I said sternly. “If you play with fire you get burned. You’re trying to help that ghost trapped in that mirror and as a result, you are going to end up hurt and worse off than you are now. Where is it?”
“Mom, I promise he’s not dangerous. He’s a little straight forward and somewhat rude, but he’s not dangerous.”
“And neither was your father at first!” I yelled, knowing that I’d said too much, but part of me didn’t care.
“What…” Avery shook her head violently, looking more disturbed by the information than I had expected her to be. “Why have I never heard anything about dad’s past? Did he just spring out of the ground as a full-grown man? What about his parents? Where are they and, even if they are dead, why doesn’t he talk about them? I have no memory of dad until I was five…explain that to me. Explain why you two never got married until I was nearly six. I don’t understand this life. It’s all a bunch of lies. Who is my father?”
I felt torn. I wanted to tell her the truth, but I knew well enough that she wouldn’t believe any of it. But then again, maybe nothing could surprise her anymore. “You wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t believe a single word that left my mouth if I told you.”
“Why don’t you let me decide how I’ll react?”
“Because,” I said slowly. “I already know.”
I refused to continue the conversation any further. Maybe it wasn’t right of me to refuse her the knowledge of Aden’s past, but it wasn’t my past to tell. I went downstairs to the kitchen and heard her bedroom door slam. Oh, I knew that she was frustrated, but I had more pressing matters to deal with, like Aden’s current whereabouts.