NOVEL NEXT 29. Even More Lies
"Cass honey are you sure you're ok?" mom asked. "Can I get you anything? We saved you some pancakes, I could warm them up for you?"
I shrugged then shook my head. My voice was kind of dull and quiet as I replied, "I'm fine mom. Thanks anyways."
She gave me a worried look then sighed, "I know what happened to your mum yesterday was scary hon, but she's ok. You know she's ok."
"I know," I mumbled. "I'm fine, just kind of tired I guess."
Mom sighed again, but she finally turned and left my bedroom. As soon as she was gone I rolled over so my back was to the door, and continued cuddling my bunny plushie.
It was about half past ten Saturday morning and I wasn't tired, but I didn't feel like getting up. I didn't feel like doing anything at all, really. Not after everything that happened yesterday. I sighed quietly and closed my eyes, but I couldn't stop thinking about it.
My mom wasn't human, according to Melanie. The wolfgirl had supernatural senses, she could pick up scents and stuff. And she deliberately came out to the car last night, not to see me and Kaylee off but to check my mom's scent. And that scent wasn't human.
Mum probably wasn't human either. From what me and Kaylee overheard, a zombie attacked mum with a knife but she was ok because it was an 'ordinary' knife. So she healed up before she left the store. Normal humans don't do that. Normal humans don't shrug off zombie attacks. Normal humans don't talk about putting protective wards around their house.
And neither mom or mum said ever anything. They weren't human, they were some kind of supernatural creatures, and they never told me. Even when me and May told them about me being a witch, when we explained about how I accidentally turned into a girl, my parents said nothing.
At the time I was grateful they were so understanding. I was happy they accepted me as their daughter and they were ok with me being trans, but now I couldn't help wondering if it was all lies. Or if they knew all along, and never said anything.
Normally I'd call or text Kaylee or use the club's group chat to talk to my friends about this stuff, except I wasn't sure if I could trust them anymore either.
Marissa said the others didn't want to tell me that mom was supernatural. She didn't say which others, but it left me questioning if maybe she meant all of them. The group chat was quiet last night and Kaylee didn't answer my texts like she usually did. Now I couldn't help thinking my girlfriend and the rest of my friends were all in another private group chat without me.
It left me wondering if they were avoiding me to spare my feelings while they investigated my parents, or if they were excluding me because they didn't trust me. Maybe they figured if my family weren't human then neither was I.
Except I was adopted, and I was pretty sure I'd mentioned that at least once. Then again, I wondered why a non-human couple would adopt a human baby. Maybe I wasn't human either, except if I wasn't then why wouldn't they tell me that? Why keep all that stuff secret?
Nothing made sense and it left me even more confused and upset the more I thought about it.
With all that on my mind I ended up laying there another thirty or forty minutes, just quietly moping and cuddling my big plush bunny.
I felt sorry for myself, but eventually that changed to frustration. Not with my parents or my friends, but with myself. I was a witch darn it, and I was part of Club Luna.
If Marissa were in my position she wouldn't waste half the day laying in bed with a plushie, she'd be digging for clues and demanding answers. Kaylee would be doing research, maybe studying old books or looking at stuff at the library or the town archives. Paige might use her technomancy to hack into computers and dig for answers that way. Brooke would use her scrying.
And maybe Melanie would be sniffing around for scents or something? I wasn't actually sure what other skills and talents she had, and maybe I was stereotyping her when I imagined her sniffing for clues. I decided to forget that line of thought and just stick with the other four, since I knew them better.
Anyways the point me and my plushie bunny were trying to make was the rest of Club Luna would be doing stuff and trying to solve the mystery. I didn't want to be the one who hid in bed all day long feeling sorry for herself. I needed to figure stuff out just like I knew my friends would.
Except I wasn't ready to go stomping downstairs and demand answers from my parents yet. And with them both at home I wasn't going to start searching the house for clues either. So I had to find another approach, ideally something I could do quietly and without leaving my bedroom.
After a few minutes of trying to think of the situation more objectively, it struck me that if my parents were both supernatural then this wasn't new. Like ok they'd been lying to me all my life, but that also meant there might be other wierd things they did or that happened around them. Things that maybe didn't make sense but I accepted it because I didn't know about magic or supernatural stuff before.
I was pretty confident I'd never seen magic before, I was sure I'd have noticed and remembered purple glows or purple lights flying around. But if my parents already knew I drained magic, then they might have known I could see it too. Either way they were probably careful not to do magic where anyone would see it. So I had to think of other odd situations.
It didn't take long for me to come up with a few, and I grabbed my phone and started making notes for myself.
The first thing was kind of fuzzy since it happened so long ago, but I was positive it had to be magic. I was maybe four or five years old and there was a power failure one evening. It was winter so it was already dark out, and I got scared so my parents lit a bunch of candles. Then I got curious or something and tried to get a closer look at them. Somehow I knocked some of them over. I started a fire on the living-room table, and got a nasty burn where one of the candles fell on me.
Mum grabbed me while mom went to deal with the fire, and thinking back I was positive she just made the fire go away. I couldn't remember seeing magic, but then I was crying and freaking out at the time. Mum used cold water and ice on my arm, but I ended up with a scar from that. The scar faded over the years, then disappeared completely when I turned into a girl.
Thinking back to when it happened, I was positive we didn't have a fire extinguisher or anything like that. Mom had to have used magic, because whatever she did the fire just stopped. Or at least, that's how I remembered it.
The next thing that came to mind was when I was seven or eight, a neighbour's dog got run over in front of our house. I remembered the neighbour lady crying and I was crying, mom had an arm around me while she was trying to console the lady. Then mum went over to where the dog was laying on the road. Her back was to the rest of us and she was between us and the dog, but then she picked up the dog and it was ok. Mum said the dog was just stunned and needed a few minutes to wake up again.
Now I knew mum could do healing stuff, since she said she healed herself yesterday. I couldn't help thinking maybe she healed that dog too? She didn't heal me when I got burned, but that made sense too since I'd just absorb the magic if she tried. Like when Kaylee tried to heal that hickey on my neck in December.
The last odd thing I could remember was about four years ago, I'd have been twelve or thirteen. A strange woman showed up at our house for a visit, she looked like she was in her twenties and she was dressed all in black. Mom introduced her as 'Aunt Merel' from out of town. I remember thinking it was odd that I never heard of her before. And if she was an aunt she'd have been sister to one of my parents, but she seemed too young and didn't look anything like either of them.
On its own it wasn't anything that screamed magic, except I don't have any aunts or uncles. No cousins or no grandparents either. No relatives at all in fact. Which meant either my parents lied when they said we didn't have any other relatives, or they lied when they said that Merel lady was my aunt. And either way, who was she for real? Where'd she come from? Why hadn't they ever mentioned her before or since?
Actually not having any relatives at all sounded strange too when I really stopped to think about it. I made a note to try and look into making a family tree at some point, because supernatural or not my parents had to come from somewhere.
That led to another question. Both my parents were known as 'Mrs. Underwood' but I didn't know which of them was originally an Underwood and which changed her name when they got married. I didn't even know when they got married, for that matter. They didn't have any wedding pictures up around the house, they'd never told me about it or showed me a photo album or anything.
They had loads of pictures of me and them from when I was a baby and growing up and stuff, but I couldn't remember seeing any pictures of them from before they adopted me. In fact I didn't even know when they met or how they got together.
I noted all that down in my phone with loads of question-marks. It was weird to suddenly realize how little I knew about my own parents, but it was all stuff I'd just never had any reason to question before.
Just as I finished tapping out the last of my notes there was a knock at my door.
"Hi Cass," mum said as she stepped into my room. "I know you're not feeling great this morning, but will you be ok on your own for a couple hours? I have to go to the store to meet the insurance agent and your mom's going to come with me. We should be home in two or three hours, then maybe the three of us can all do something fun together? Maybe go see a movie, or go out for a nice dinner or something?"
I sat up and asked, "Can I come to the store with you? I can be dressed and ready to go in like five minutes!"
Mum shook her head, "Sorry hun. It's going to be boring, and the store's a bit of a mess. And I don't want you getting more upset by any of that. And your mom and I will have to focus on what the insurance guy says, we don't want any distractions."
I slowly nodded my head, but I couldn't shake the feeling she was lying to me again. Maybe her and mom were going to the store, but not to see an insurance guy. What would an insurance guy do about a zombie attack anyways?
Then another thought occurred to me and I asked, "What about the police? Have you talked to them already?"
"Oh um," mum hesitated a second before she explained, "That was yesterday. They took some notes and filed a report after it happened, then when they were done I came home."
"Ok," I nodded again. But I was even more convinced she was lying. So I asked again, "Are you sure I can't come with you? I'll stay quiet and I promise I won't get upset or anything."
Mum shook her head but before she could say anything my phone buzzed with a text.
That seemed like the distraction she needed, and mum smiled "That's probably your friends hun. Maybe you can spend time with them, or invite them over? That way you won't have to be on your own while we're out."
I sighed, "Ok mum. See you later."
She gave me a smile, then turned and left my room while my phone buzzed with a second text.
After she was gone I looked down at my phone and found a couple texts from Kaylee.
"Hi Cass, sorry I didn't text you back last night. Something came up and I got distracted."
"Can I come over? Or can we meet somewhere? I need to see you."
I thought it over, then finally texted back that she could come over but I needed some time to get ready first. She responded that she'd be here in fifteen minutes, and at long last I dragged myself out of bed and started getting myself dressed and ready to face the day.
