"Caroline," Greta said and nodded at my mother, who was not yet in my line of sight," I see that Shirley actually did her job in bringing you here. Please come join us, dinner is about to be served. It has been so long, hasn't it? How long has it been since we spoke?"
I heard the sounds of my mother approaching. Her footsteps bounced off the high ceiling and echoed all around us.
"Probably at daddy's funeral 16 years ago when you disowned me as your child," my mom answered while she drew steadily closer.
From where I was sitting, she probably couldn't see me yet, and I had no control over my mouth.
"You always blamed his death on the stress of my getting pregnant. But if stress is what killed him, it would more likely be the stress of his wife claiming that their daughter wasn't there's and she somehow was switched at birth. That or being married to such a cold-hearted witch!"
"And I was right about you being switched at birth," Greta said, a smug smile pulling tight on her lips, but her storm gray eyes held no friendliness to them, "You weren't my child," she gestured to both Santana and Savannah, who were standing right beside her, "This is my real family. Their mother and my real daughter are still in the other world, but as soon as this little war that your baby daddy helped start is over, we'll be having her here shortly as well."
"Santana, are you alright? How did you get here?" my mother, still out of my range of sight, called out to Santana, who was still standing beside Greta with her arms wrapped around her sister.
"A redhead woman with a half-burned face," Santana replied, "And how did you receive your invitation to this..." Santana stared down at the table set with food before her, "...lunch thing?"
"Violet!" my mom yelled suddenly, probably finally close enough to see me sitting frozen at the table. Seconds later, I felt her arms go around me from the back of the chair, and I was soon surrounded by the warmth of my mother's embrace. She planted a quick, frantic kiss on my forehead before she grabbed both sides of my face and knelt beside my chair. She turned my head so I was looking at her, "Are you all right?" she asked, her brow creasing in the middle. Her blonde hair was soaked, and little trails of water ran down her cheeks and dripped off her chin, while the fire burning in the fireplace cast strange shadows on her face.
I looked up at her helplessly. My eyes were the only thing on my body that I could move.
She turned away from me to once again stare across the table at Greta. "Let her go!" she growled, and Greta gave a cynical smile.
"Let her go?" Greta held her hands up to my mother before letting them drop down to her side, her white dress crinkling softly with the movement. "How can I let her go when I was never touching her?"
"You will not control her as I watched you do so many years ago as a child and then fake innocence!?" she hissed, "You have crossed every possible line with me, but you dare do that with her..."
Greta narrowed her eyes, causing the wrinkles around them to crease even more. "Oh, like she hasn't crossed any lines with me first, like going up against her own government. All we want to do is invade the other world and claim it for our own. It would be a great thing for our people. We've already seen how weak those that came from the other world our," Greta retorted, "You are the perfect example of that."
"You were my mother," my mom said, her voice shaking, "You loved me up until you found out I was a magic dud, and then you became obsessed with proving to the world that I wasn't your daughter. You messed up my life, I'm not going to let you mess up more lives for your own selfishness! The people voted not to invade, and you decided to take over the government and go ahead with it anyway! That's why we are rebelling!"
"I'm becoming obsessed with preserving the 6th element and finding my daughter that the universe stole from me!" Greta screamed suddenly, "And I don't understand why you are trying to stop me!" Greta cleared her throat and looked down at the table and back up again and resumed a calmer tone of voice, "And I'm doing this for the good of the people even if they don't know it."
My mother scoffed, "You couldn't even take care of your one daughter. How can you take care of a nation where half the people want you dead?" she replied.
"Oh, and you are such a great parental influence," it was Greta's turn to scoff.
"I know for a fact that I'm a better parent than you! Violet turned out way better than I did! " my mom replied.
"So you think that sacrificing her father to raise the dead is turning out okay?" she asked, and if I had ever felt the weight of a stare, it was then when I felt my mom turn to lie on me.
I felt the tension of Greta's magic leave my body, and I exhaled and turned to my mom. My mom gazed back at me, her face frozen into a mask of shock, her blue eyes wide.
I inhaled sharply before I began to speak, "He asked me, so I didn't want to do it, but I really didn't have a better option, I-" I said, and tears began to roll down my face, and my mom placed a hand on my shoulder.
"We will talk about this later, honey. For now, we must focus on the task at hand," she said calmly, although the stricken look on her face said that she was anything but calm.
The whoosh of the wall opening caused my mom and me to divert our gaze from each other to the wall opening, and a man with dark hair stepped into the room. He had black hair and two black eyes that looked like bottomless black pits that, if you fell into them, you would never be able to claw your way back out. He looked at us both with no emotion on his face.
He carried with him a great heavy aura about him, like his presence alone was making the gravity in the room increase by twofold. He moved towards Greta, and immediately both Santana and Savannah let go of one another, and both scampered away from the man approaching them, and there long-lost a grandmother.
Greta looked up at the man and smiled broadly up at him, and the man bent down and placed a light kiss on her cheek before he pulled away. He smiled down at Greta.
"Hampton Blackwing, our final guest," she smiled at him.
Hampton, as in the one who murdered Lacy "accidentally ", who had been engaged to Vivian, the who I had been warned was a very dangerous man. Yeah, he would be here too, wouldn't he?
Her smile dropped, and her cold gray eyes took in Santana and Savannah. Everyone sit!" she commanded, and all at once I felt her power take hold of me, and I was forced to stare directly ahead of me at Greta.
I did not doubt that she was using it on her other unwilling party guests because out of the corner of my eyes, I witnessed my mom pulling out a chair and sitting down in it, an action I doubted she would do on her own free will. I saw Savannah take a seat, too. However, Santana did not sit down immediately.
I watched while Greta's placid expression became strained and she grunted before her eyes rolled back up into her head. Then her body jerked forward suddenly, and she leaned over the table, her breath coming out in small, irregular gasps.
When she finally did sit up, and I could regretfully once again gaze upon her face, gray strands of hair hung around her face in loose tendrils, like the tentacles of a dead Kraken whose flesh had turned gray with decay. She turned to Santana and glared at her, but a smile soon spread across her face, and she began to laugh.
"Nobody has ever given me such resistance in such a long time. She said to Santana, You truly are the child I've always wanted and was stolen from me. I can't see into your mind at all, and I love it. Finally, some challenge!"
"I don't like the challenge," a deep voice said, and I listened while Hampton made his way around the table and the chair beside me, which squeaked against the floor, "That's why I like it when Greta does her magic and makes it so that no challenge can be made. If the fifth element users pose a challenge to us after our talk, I have no problem following through with plan B, although barely legal isn't really my type."
I felt a hand reach out and touch my wet hair, and then fingers grazed my chin and slid down to my neck before they pulled away. I shivered internally. I didn't know what plan B was, but I already knew I didn't like it.
"Wow, things are starting to get a little bit creepy? Like, as in don't touch me in my no-no spot, creepy," a voice said from somewhere above my head, and all of a sudden a blinding light flashed across my eyes, and I was alone in the room, and I could move again, well, I was almost alone. Lacy stood on the table looking down at me with her cat-shaped brown eyes. She wore her purple robe with the black sash.
"Lacy?" I said
"Yes, it's me, but I have to say I'm disappointed. Four hundred years in Purgatory still didn't make you go through puberty, yet a see.
"And becoming an angel didn't seem to make you less of a witch yet," I said and rolled my eyes.
Lacy hopped off the table and "Ah, well, anyways, I'm supposed to come and give you some advice. You know guardian angel things and whatnot because it seems you are doing something dumber than going towards a griffon's den."
"Really, I'm doing something stupid!?" I said angrily, "Do you think I came here by choice!? I motioned around the room."
"I'm not talking about pigging out with your worst enemy," she stopped and looked at me, "By the way, one messed up family dynamic. No, well, I should say you might be about to do something stupid. It appears your little boyfriend is not the only one who had a vision. Angle perks include visions, too. Too bad they are just of you, ditz with no tits."
"So am I going to possibly do?" I asked.
"Agree to work with them?"
"And why would you do that?"
"They're going to kill somebody unless you do."
"Who?" I said, my heart sinking in my chest, "Please, nobody else. I just had to sacrifice my own father."
"It doesn't matter, but you absolutely must not. Everything will be destroyed if you do, as in both of the worlds... Well, time's up Lacy said abruptly, climbing to her feet."
"Wait!" I said before, another light flashed before my eyes, and she was gone, and I was back to where I had started.