Ana Mourns (The Clermont Coven Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “Where else would you be?” Mom shook her head. “It’s not as though you had any plans.”

  Chapter Six

  “Acting is the only way we’re going to get through this, for now.” I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can break whatever it is Madeline’s done to Mom, but I can try, if I spend some time in the sanctuary. The problem is, I don’t know how much of Mom’s memory Madeline had changed, whether it’s permanent…I hope it’s not, but right now, if there is only one thing I am certain of, it’s who did this to her.”

  “How is it even possible?”

  “Miss Cane, Alice, and I have come to the conclusion that there’s only one possible reason for all of this. The Easons are vampires. After the witches turned on the demon when they were first created, the demon made some new minions. Those new minions were the vampires. At the moment, we don’t know much about them, but it’s obvious they have some skills when it comes to manipulating the mind. It’s entirely possible Damien might try the same thing on me, but I’m stronger mentally than Mom is, and I always have been.” I nibbled my bottom lip. “I need to see if I can find anything on them. Anything that will point towards how we can break whatever it was Madeline did to Mom, and how we’re going to get rid of them, preferably before they open a door. From what I was told, it appears that the demon will give the vampires back their mortality if they do what it wants them to.”

  “Give them back their mortality?” Dad shook his head. “Nothing about this is making any sense.”

  I smiled. “No, it’s not. But we’re in Clermont. Nothing is going to make sense. Basically, it seems that the demon chose people who would be affected by the change. They were taken from their families, turned into something that might not have existed before, and given the ‘gift’ of immortality, which means watching everyone they love die. All they have is each other now. Maybe that’s enough for them. I don’t know. We can’t be certain that the Easons are vampires, but it is possible, and with how Mom’s acting, there’s definitely something very different about them.”

  “Before today, your mom was talking about how she was wary of Madeline. Now, they’re best friends.” He sighed. “I just have to keep on going, don’t I?”

  “For now, you do. I promise that if there’s a way to break this, I will do it, but until then, we just need to pretend everything is normal. That it’s normal for Mom to be cooking.”

  Just as I said that, I thought I could smell something burning downstairs. Dad and I shared a look before the fire alarm started going off. After a moment of silent emotion, Dad went down to help Mom, while I went to my bedroom. I had to stay in the house while Mom was acting weird. Madeline taking the memory of the sanctuary was something I could see her doing in order to stop Mom from being who she always was, and without that memory, it was going to make everything very confusing. Explaining to Mom she was a witch, that she had been since she was a teenager…I shook my head. It didn’t make sense that Madeline could take all those memories, yet Mom was a very different person than who she’d been before. Someone who was trying to cook, even though she knew better. There were a couple of times when Dad was ill that Mom tried to cook, but it didn’t take long before she decided it was safer for all of us, and far more edible, if she just ordered takeaway. Her trying again…I shook my head.

  There was nothing I could do right then. When dinner was over, it would be easy enough to lie and say I was going to see Sabrina or something, so I could spend some time in the sanctuary. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to find anything useful on the vampires. If they had been created by the demon, it would have happened back when the first witches were created, so I could start off with the first journal, but I had no reason to think they’d even have noticed the vampires back them. It was likely that they’d come back at points to try to open the door for the demon, so looking for that would probably be the better option, and it might actually make more sense to go through the newspaper archives first. Surely there’d be something there if people had been killed by vampires.

  “Lilah, it’s fine.” The merest hint of exasperation crept into Dad’s voice, but that was to be expected, and I glanced at him, doing my best not to say anything. “I can teach you more if you want, even if that’s never worked out all that well before.”

  Mom shook her head. “I used to cook just fine. For some reason, there was a problem today, but it’s never been a problem before. I don’t understand it.” She looked over at the oven again. “Maybe we need a new one. It is old, Will, so it could be that there’s something wrong with it. I’ll have a look into that in the morning.”

  Dad raked a hand through his hair. I could see him doing his best not to explode, because he had very different memories. Madeline making Mom think she was able to cook was easily the most unfair thing she’d done, but there was nothing we could do right then to change it, which meant saying all the right things. “Why do you think you can cook?”

  “Whenever you were too busy with work, I was the one who took over. You know as well as I do.” She studied him. “You’ve been acting strange ever since I came home. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me.” I could hear his unspoken words because I was thinking of them too. “You’ve never wanted to be a housewife, Lilah. You’ve always worked, and you being home all the time would be very unusual for you.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you to make a mistake due to someone else believing you might be better off somewhere else. Madeline barely knows you. I do know you.”

  “Yes, that’s something you’ve said before, and I’m really beginning to wonder if you do. Everything you’ve said…” Mom looked at me for a moment. “I have been the one who cooked when your dad wasn’t well, haven’t I?”

  For a moment, I tried to work out if there was a better thing to say, but maybe we could break through whatever Madeline had done to her by reminding her of how things were before, because seeing the pain in Dad’s eyes wasn’t something I enjoyed. “No, Mom, you weren’t, because you’ve always burnt anything you tried to cook. Last time Dad was ill, we had takeaway the first night before I took over the cooking. I know this isn’t an easy thing to hear, due to you remembering things differently, but Dad and I both remember things the same way. Surely that tells you something.”

  Blinking, like she was trying to keep from crying, Mom looked between the two of us. “It only tells me that for some reason, you’ve both decided to gang up on me, and I don’t get it. What did I do wrong?”

  Of course, there was nothing in the journals about the vampires. Just the tiniest hints of them existing. I raked a hand through my hair, doing my best not to scream, because that wasn’t going to help the situation. If there was nothing in the journals, I was going to have to make something up. That much was obvious. Fortunately, Miss Cane and I had worked on the creation of spells, but how was I supposed to know if a spell was going to work on Mom? The fact that she was so certain the memories she had of who she was were right told me the vampires had a lot of power. Probably more than we realized. If I broke what Madeline had done to Mom, it was going to be obvious I was just as strong, or stronger, than she was, meaning I’d be in even more danger than I had been before. Sighing, I shook my head. Was there a right choice I could make in this situation? Right then, I really didn’t think there was.

  Breathing in deeply, I grabbed one of the last journals from the shelf. I’d stopped going through them in any kind of order when it became obvious how little I was learning about vampires. Flicking through the pages, hunting for the word I was looking for, I wanted to be disappointed. Then I saw it. Once. I stopped, looking down at the page.

  ‘There are those who said the day would come when the vampires returned. At least, those who remembered said it. The memories of what things had been like before were held on to, because someone had to remember. Someone had to write it all down, even if the others had forgotten. Our leader doesn’t remember the vampires, even though she should
, but we did hear tales of the vampires taking the memories of those they could, to make certain we wouldn’t know what to expect when they came by again. I believe the journals that held anything on them were stolen and burnt, because they wanted us to be as unprepared as possible. Understandable.

  ‘Like the demon’s other minions, they’re here to open a door between this world and the demon’s world. Only, we’re here to stop that from happening, which means the vampires need to stop us first. Those with the weakest minds are transformed. I didn’t understand what that meant until I saw it happen for myself. My best friend, a witch like myself, no longer remembers being a witch. The vampires, somehow, have taken everything that made her who she was. They’ve replaced it, yes, but she will never be the woman she was before all of this. I don’t think there is a way to fix the damage that was done, although I am going to see if I can find a way to undo the change.

  ‘A couple of the others were affected too. Mother has been working with Hannah Cane, in the hope that they might be able to find something, because it’s Hannah’s daughter, Miriam, who’s been the most affected by all of this. We always thought she was one of the stronger ones, but obviously, we were wrong about that, and I wish we weren’t. This happening the way it has…if so many of us hadn’t had the memories of the vampires taken from us before, then we would have been ready. We would have known what to expected. I’m writing this now, in the belief this will be useful in the future, even if I don’t know all that much right now. I have this horrible feeling things are only going to get worse from here. There are only four vampires, so nothing really makes sense right now, but I’m beginning to think they’re far stronger than we are, and if that is the case…well, nothing good can come from this. Mom will do what she has to, in the hope that it will make things easier for everyone, but I don’t know if she will ever be able to do enough.

  ‘I know I’ve met one of the vampires myself. He calls himself Damien, and he’s been very interested in me since the first day he met me. That’s not a good thing. I believe he’s the one who worked on Hannah’s memories, and I don’t doubt he’s going to try to do the same to me, but I’m the stronger of the two of us. I’m not going to let him change me into someone I’m not. I’m going to fight him.’

  Chapter Seven

  Miss Cane looked at me. “You’re certain?”

  “Unfortunately.” I nibbled my bottom lip. “I’ve gone through every journal, and the only one that mentions the vampires is Violet Conway, even though I know Lillian should have at least mentioned them. From what I read, Violet was the strongest of the coven at that time, and she fought the vampires to keep her memories. She fought Damien, specifically. The vampires have done everything they can to protect themselves, and I don’t doubt for a moment they’re going to keep doing it, unless we bring an end to this now.”

  “What can we do for Lilah?”

  “For now, I don’t think we should do anything. Madeline believes Mom doesn’t remember anything about who she was and we need to keep it that way until we’re ready to deal with them, which…” I shook my head. “Last time they were here, the coven took them on, and the coven lost. I believe there were thirty coven members at the time. Now, there are two of us, which is definitely going to complicate things.”

  “There is still a chance we’re wrong.”

  “Yeah, there is, but I don’t believe we are wrong. Not now. Not after seeing Mom last night and reading what I did. The vampires will do what they have to in order to take over Clermont, and they have a far better chance of doing that this time because of how few of us there are. I don’t doubt they’re going to do what they can to take you out of the equation too, but since I’m probably the strongest of the three of us, they aren’t going to be able to do anything to me.”

  “At least, you don’t think they will.” Her eyes met mine for a moment. “We need to start thinking about ways we can weaken then, because they are, it seems, far stronger than us.”

  “I’m pretty certain the demon did that on purpose. It wanted to create something that would be able to fight us and win. Had there been fewer witches here last time the vampires tried, I’m certain they would have claimed Clermont for the demon. Or for themselves. There was never any sign of the vampires trying to create a door to let the demon through, even though we believe they would want to let him through, in order to be free of him.”

  “Considering what you’ve told me, what I read could have been something the vampires wanted to be written. Maybe they always wanted us to believe they were working for the demon.” She shrugged. “The only thing we can do is learn more about how to kill them, but if what you’ve said is right, it’s not going to be an easy thing to do.”

  Even though I wanted to tell Alex everything, I knew I couldn’t. I sat opposite him in our favorite booth and stirred the spoon around the mug, trying to work out what it was I should say. How much I should tell him. If Sabrina was right, and there was a chance Jessie might go after him, it was logical that I tell him what they were capable of. Was it possible she could wipe everything we’d been through together from his mind?

  Breathing in deeply, feeling more confused than I had in a long time, I looked at him, seeing the person who’d been by my side when I worked to defeat Principal Woods. Nothing he’d seen would have made any real sense, but he hadn’t walked away. He’d stayed with me. Would he make the same choice if I told him there was someone in town who might be able to take his memories from him? Maybe, if the two of us weren’t together, he’d be safe from that, but I couldn’t walk away without being honest with him.

  “By now, you should know that you can tell me anything.” He reached out to take my hand. “No matter how weird it is.”

  “Yeah, you say that, but I have no idea if this is going to be too weird for you.” My eyes met his. “How would you feel if your memories of the entire time I’ve been in town were changed?”

  Alex stared at me. “Is that actually possible?”

  “I’m beginning to think it is.” I looked back into the mug because that was easier. “There are things happening that have affected Clermont in the past, but this time, I don’t have any information I can truly rely on. I believe the memories of those who lived through it were changed. I’ve been looking into this in-depth since last night because of something that happened with Mom. Now…I kind of wish I hadn’t needed to, but I did, so…I need to think about what my best option is right now, and I honestly don’t know for certain what that is. It is possible that I made a mistake telling Damien the two of us were together.”

  “That makes me a target for the Easons. You were right when you had that feeling.”

  Nodding, I almost found myself wishing I was more like Mom. That I could walk away when things were hard. I wasn’t, so I only had one option, and that was to stay. My only choice was to work against the vampires, who were probably going to end up being stronger than all of us. “I was right, and now you need to think seriously about whether this is something you want to be a part of.” I looked up once more, his eyes meeting mine again, and I tried to seem calm. I didn’t feel calm. Nothing about what I was doing was what I really wanted to be doing, but I knew I needed to protect Alex. “Us being together is something that might be taken from you if you don’t choose to walk away, and I honestly don’t know what would hurt more, because this is…honestly, it’s more than I really believe I can cope with, but I have to. You don’t. You can walk away.”

  “Like I could have before, but I chose to stay with you. Things being dangerous doesn’t change anything, Ana. I’m not going to leave you to cope with this mess alone. You deserve better than that.” He squeezed my hand. “Maybe someone will be able to take my memories, but I believe in you. I believe, if they manage that, you’re going to be able to find a way to give them back to me.”

  “Right now, I don’t know if I can. It’s something I need to be working on, for Mom.”

  He stared at me. “They took your mother
’s memories?”

  “She definitely isn’t the person she was before. Last night, she kept trying to insist that she could cook, which isn’t at all like her, because she knows from experience that she can’t. Then, she accused us of lying to her. Whatever they did to her…” I shrugged. “I believe it can be undone, but in order to do that, I need to make it clear to them that I’m able to fix what they did, though it might put me in even more danger than before. Right now, there are no good options. I can leave Mom as she is, but I can’t help thinking that it’s just going to make her hate us more. If she does…I just don’t know what I should do, could do, or want to do. Everything about this is hard. Harder than I knew it could be.”

  “You have me. No matter what, I’m going to be right here.”

  “Unless they take your memories.” I felt a tear trickle down my cheek, and I scrubbed it away. “They might not make that choice. It might not even be possible with someone like you, because you aren’t truly connected to this, but losing you…it’s not what I want to happen. I hate the thought of you not being a part of my life, and yet every time I talk to you, it seems like I have to ask if you actually want to be with me. It would be safer for you if we weren’t together.”

  “Maybe it would, but safe isn’t worth the pain it would cause both of us.”

  “How do we know it won’t cause more pain in the future?”

  “Ana, we will never know what the future might hold. Either of us might die tomorrow from reasons not related to this, and that would hurt in ways I can’t imagine, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to walk away. Those are nothing but hypothetical theories. For now, we have no certain conclusions. That’s just how life is sometimes.”