Psychic
Chapter 23

“Happy Birthday!” Amy rejoiced, throwing confetti and smiling like crazy. Rick cut the cake with the same expression mirrored on his face.

When they said small party, they were lying. Apparently they called Bella told her to invite some people over. She rounded up a couple of her dancer friends that I got along with and their boyfriends. It was still a small party, but it was larger than any one I’d ever had before. Usually it was just me and maybe my social worker.

As the cake was distributed around, I couldn’t help but to think of the events of last night – no, this morning. I’d been hoping around so much during the night that I hadn’t even realized how much time had passed. By the time I was kidnapped for the second time that night, when Hawthorne brought me to their hideout, it was passed midnight. It was March 20th and no one had even realized.

The prophecy that Victoria figured was about me depicted me taking down a bad leader, so she immediately assumed it would be Hawthorne. When she saw what Hawthorne had done, taking out the royal family so he could have the power, she assumed he would be that prophesized bad leader. She thought that the people would reject him because of the mysterious circumstances revolving the royal family’s death. What she didn’t see was that Hawthorne would rally the magical community against all psychics after he imprisoned her and blamed her for the royal family’s deaths. He blamed her for their death, hereby rallying the people against a common enemy – not him.

I had to admit the smart planning.

But by telling Hawthorne the prophecy, perhaps at a try to scare him, she gave him even more reason to replace the next psychic. He thought, like Victoria, that the prophecy foretold himself being overthrown, so he rallied his forces against me. By blaming Victoria for the deaths of the royal family he had also gained a good reason to hunt me down. The only other psychics were old and definitely not strong enough to protest, so the people directed their anger towards psychics without a second thought, ignoring Hawthorne’s ruthless ruling and unfair judgements in the process.

By telling Hawthorne the prophecy, she accidently gave him a reason to search for me and use her ‘betrayal’ as the excuse.

Hawthorne had been bullied as a child, so he craved power, if anything to prove the bullies wrong. He’d also fallen for my mother, a woman who was also craved by the same men who used to bully him. He thought of marrying her as sort of winning, but it still wasn’t enough. He wanted absolute power, something taking the place of the royal family would give him.

He also accidently set his plan in place because of marrying my mother. Victoria was my mother’s cousin, something I learned from Hawthorn’s memories. Victoria never mentioned this, probably because she resented my mother just a little bit.

Victoria was taken with Hawthorne, for reasons unknown to me. She fell in love with him during all the time he spent with her cousin. Being locked away in a house doesn’t leave much time to crush on boys, unless they were over almost all of the time. Victoria fell for the first boy who looked at her as something more than to be feared for shied away from. Of course, he just wanted to use her power, but she didn’t know that.

Victoria fell for the man, and therefore swore to herself to never use her powers against him. I understood where she was coming from. If you really loved someone, you would want to trust them, and you would never use something like that against them.

Flash forward to when he betrays her and her kind. Feelings of betrayal and anguish build up inside Victoria. She goes crazy with hatred for the man she used to love. Over time the feelings just deepen and darken. So, when she starts to hear that Hawthorne possibly found me, for real this time, she tries to reach out to me. She probably got some new recruit to help her, one who wouldn’t know the dangers of weakening Victoria’s prison. She is able to send visions to me with the little power she can wield with the partially weakened prison. Soon she breaks free, slowly taking over this recruit’s mind until he takes down her prison, setting her free.

She found me first. We had a connection, the last of our kind. It wasn’t too hard to replace me, especially since she knew the area I was in. Her first order of business was to get me to trust her, which she succeeded in. I already disliked Hawthorne, so that part wasn’t hard. But what she couldn’t do was turn me against Magnus. She believed him to be another one of Hawthorne’s minions, perhaps even influenced by me. Hawthorne indeed thought I was controlling him somehow at first, so why shouldn’t she? But even she didn’t know – couldn’t know – for sure that he was loyal to Hawthorne. She took a leap of faith, and fell.

Magnus was the one person she couldn’t read, and the one person who was actually on my side. She couldn’t turn me against him, no matter how hard she tried in the end.

The whole building up my powers bit was partially for her benefit. I would become strong enough to defeat Hawthorne, and strong enough to where when she took my powers, she would become even more powerful.

That part backfired a bit for her.

When she told me the prophecy, it clicked. By taking down Hawthorne, I made the pass clear for Victoria to claim power. By taking power, though unofficially, she was an untrustworthy leader. Hawthorne had made the people hate all psychics, especially her. She was unaccepted, and an unorthodox leader. She was the one the prophecy talked about. By choosing to never read Hawthorne, she had unknowingly set in motion the events that would lead to her being the one the prophecy talked about. Perhaps if she’d never even told Hawthorne the prophecy, it would’ve never came true. Or perhaps it would wait until the next psychic.

Victoria named me as the one told about in the prophecy and Hawthorne the leader I would take down, and therefore set the events out.

After I overpowered her and passed out, Magnus regained his potentia Source. He unfroze Bella and imprisoned Hawthorne. Arnold was also imprisoned, but only for a short while. He was only following orders, even if he was a bit of a scumbag.

Magnus brought us back to Bella’s house, where Bella’s uncle and a couple other hunters were residing. After Hawthorne took me and Bella, the warlocks retreated. The hunters regrouped and many thought about storming the stronghold where the warlocks were held up. Magnus explained what had happened to the hunters. They came to some sort of an agreement: they would spread the word to stay out of the business of warlocks for all hunters, so events like this wouldn’t happen again.

Bella’s father was absolutely astounded to hear this news, until he was told of his wife’s fate on the hilltop. He and Bella retreated into her bedroom afterwards, comforting each other.

Magnus tucked me into the guest bedroom at the house and when I finally woke up and was told the end of the night by Bella, he was gone. I walked back to my house, apologizing for not telling Amy and Rick that I slept over at Bella’s after we got dinner. They forgave me quickly, only happy that I was here to celebrate my birthday with them. I think they were afraid I had run away, like I had done when things got intense at various other foster homes years ago.

I got a piece of cake and sat down next to Bella, making small talk with her friends. They actually weren’t that bad, and their thoughts only said goof things about me.

Maybe it would do me good to befriend more people.

Amy and Rick walked in just then, a big boxed present in Amy’s hands.

“Awe, guys, I told you not to get me anything.” I argued, staring apprehensively at the big box. If it was expensive, I would never forgive myself for letting them spend it on me.

“Just open it, honey.” Amy urged. The way they were treating this box, it must’ve meant a lot to them.

I ripped off the wrapping paper and opened the box. Inside was a small piece of paper, the reason why the box was so light. I picked it up and skimmed through it, only getting a couple sentences through before I realized what it was.

“No . . . you didn’t” I said breathlessly, hurriedly skimming the rest of it.

I looked up at Amy and Rick’s faces, who were hopeful and a bit scared, I didn’t even bother reading their thoughts, and I was too excited to even try. “It’s okay if you don’t really want this, it isn’t final – at least, not yet. If you’d rather-“

“No.” I cut them off, “This is amazing.” I was literally gleaming as I tackled them both with a giant hug. I felt a tear fall down my face as I laughed gleefully, hugging them tighter.

Bella must’ve picked up the paper when I dropped it to hug Amy and Rick, because she suddenly screamed, “Oh my god! You’re getting adopted! This means you can stay here with me forever!”

Bella joined the hug fest and I laughed again. This was literally the best birthday ever.

It was then that the doorbell rang. I could sense who it was before he even stepped into the threshold.

“Magnus.” I breathed.

I stepped away from Amy and Rick, my foster – no, adoptive – parents. One of Bella’s friends had let him in. I hadn’t seen him since the events this morning (Which technically were at like 2 a.m., so I still thought of it as last night) and my heart skipped a beat when I saw him.

“Hey. Do you mind if I steal you for a moment?”

I looked to Amy and Rick, who were both crying like me. Maybe they expected me to refuse, but they were nowhere near close. I was beyond elated, and nothing could bring me down. I finally had a family who wanted me. I had a family who loved me.

It was more than I could ever ask for.

I assured them that I would come back and stepped away into my room with Magnus, the only quiet place in the entire house where we’d be left alone to talk.

“Umm . . . so, what happened after you left Bella’s house?” I asked tentatively.

He shrugged. “Oh, do you mean the entire magical community replaceing out that their leader went crazy and the missing psychic he’d been looking for years to replace was the cause of it all? Well, everyone is just swell.”

“So, what will happen to them?”

“Well, they’re currently gathering representatives from all the branches of magical creature. Now that Hawthorne’s gone, their eyes have been opened. They think that maybe if they can set up a sort of democracy, like the humans have, then maybe no one will get that power hungry again. The story of what really happened when the royal family died kind of spread after Hawthorne was imprisoned. They would all feel sorry for Victoria, but she, you know, kind of tried to take them over.”

I nodded.

“So, if they want a representative from every creature . . .”

“No,” he assured me, “they won’t need you if you don’t want to. I know you just got dragged into this whole mess, but you don’t have to be forced into anything. Half of the magical community still doesn’t even know what kind of creature you are. After Victoria, your species got hushed up. Some probably wouldn’t believe psychics actually exist anyways.”

“So, they’re leaving me alone?”

“For now.”

I looked down. “So, does that mean that you’re going to leave me alone?”

“How do you mean?” He questioned.

I shrugged, “You found me. Mission complete.” I paused and added, “Kind of. The point is, you have no reason to stay here, in Chesnutt Falls. You can go back to whatever life you had in . . . wherever you live.”

He shook his head and stepped closer.

“Why would I leave you again?”

He leaned in, but the quick slamming of my bedroom door opening made us both jump away.

“Am I interrupting something here?” Bella asked, a sly smile on her face.

I shook my head and reached for Magnus’s hand. “No, not at all. Let’s go back to the party, shall we?”