Pure Blood (Time Spirit Trilogy, #3) (3 page)

Chapter
Four

Anastasia State Park, Florida – 2011AD

“When?” Harrison could barely get the word
free.

“1821.”

“You…” A shocked chuckle left his lips as he
shook his head. “No, Gem, you’re wrong. My dad died of cancer in
1992… when my mom was pregnant with me. I’ve told you that before.”
He slapped her shoulder and paced away from her. “He can’t have
been in 1821, he… that… I mean you must have seen someone else…
you…” He gulped and stopped talking. Gemma’s gaze was mesmerizing.
His heart slowed to a dull thud and his ears started ringing.

“That’s how your mom knows what I am.”

“But I thought you said you can’t travel into
the future. How did he get here?” It was like stumbling through a
minefield trying to get the words out of his mouth.

“Harrison,” Gemma paused, obviously assessing
whether he could take it in, then licked her lips and continued, “I
don’t think Nathaniel came forward… I think your mom went
back.”

His ears rang louder as he pinched his
forehead with his hands and walked towards the water with bug eyes.
Gemma was wise enough to stay silent as his mind reeled over the
news.

My mother is a… no way, that’s ridiculous!
She can’t… she…

His heart beat a loud double pound then
settled into an erratic rhythm.

Holy crap it’s true. My mother’s just as
weird as my girlfriend!

He spun to look at Gemma. She was standing a
few paces away, watching him with pained eyes. He knew the
expression was for him. He knew she could feel the emotion coursing
through his system.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed.

A small smile fluttered over his lips as he
paced back towards her. “It’s not your fault.” He rubbed her
shoulders and kissed her forehead. “This is just huge. I’m
struggling to get my head around it.”

“Fair enough.”

“I need to talk to my mom.”

“I know.” She stepped back from him. “Call me
later, okay.”

“Yeah.” He brushed her lips with a kiss and
headed for his car. He could sense her watching him leave and
flicked her a wave as he accelerated away. He felt a little bad for
cutting their date short, but the desire to hear the truth from his
mother was overwhelming. How could she have kept this from him?

The pressing feeling that he didn’t know who
his mother really was nearly pushed him through the floorboard. By
the time he pulled into his driveway his body was taut. Anger
sparked and flashed through his muscles as he wrenched open the
door and paced into the house.

He was about to bellow her name, but was
stopped short by the screaming coming from the living room.

“WE ARE NOT MOVING AGAIN!!”

Tears streamed down Rosie’s cheeks as she
stood, blotchy faced, in the doorway. Her eyes were rimmed red and
the second she saw Harrison she rushed into his arms and began
sobbing against his chest.

“What’s going on?”

Helen cleared her throat and tried to look
unfazed by her step-daughter’s outburst. Bryan stood behind her,
his hand on her shoulder, doubt flickering through his eyes.
Harrison frowned as he studied his mother’s expression. Keeping his
hand running comforting circles over Rosie’s back, he waited for
the answer he already knew.

“There’s a job opportunity for me up in DC,
working at one of the Smithsonians. Bryan and I are just discussing
what we might do.”

Harrison’s short laugh was cynical. “You know
running won’t change anything, Mom. It obviously hasn’t worked that
last twenty-eight times.” He puffed out an irate breath. “You might
want to start acting like a grown-up-parent at some point and think
about everyone else in this family
before
yourself.”

“Harrison…”

“No! Rosie’s right. We’re not moving!”

He ignored his mother’s shocked expression
and pulled Rosie up the stairs. The speech he had planned on the
trip home would have to wait. He was worried the bile of expletives
in his throat would be too acidic to hold a civil discussion
anyway. Before he confronted his mother on her past he needed to
make sure his family would stay where they were in the present.
This had happened too many times before. Rosie’s tears, his demands
and Bryan’s subtle attempts always seemed to be in vain. Within the
month they were packed up and gone. That just wasn’t an option this
time.

As he softly talked Rosie out of her tears,
his mind fled to Gemma. There was no way he was leaving her. After
all they had been through it was not going to end with him moving
to DC. He didn’t care that it was still the same coastline and
probably easily drivable, if he didn’t get to see her nearly
everyday, it was too far.

Pulling the phone from his back pocket, he
bunched up the pillows behind Rosie’s head and flicked on the
TV.

“You calling Gemma?”

“Yeah.” He found her number as he scrolled
the channels for something good.

“Hey, that was quick?” Gemma’s voice calmed
his nerves.

“Yeah, well, we’ve got another problem now.”
He dropped the remote beside him and heard Rosie snort with disgust
at his choice of
Mythbusters.

“What’s happened?”

“She wants to move again.” He flicked Rosie’s
arm away as she tried to reach for the remote then coughed at the
fist in his stomach.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just trying to eradicate a pest. Hold
on.” Grabbing Rosie’s wrist, he wrestled for the remote.

“Let go!”

“Would you… Rosie!”

He could hear Gemma’s laughter and gave up,
slumping back onto his pillows and grimacing as Rosie turned up the
volume on
Keeping up with the Kardashians.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m gone.” Rolling off the
bed, he slumped out of his room and found solace on Justin’s lower
bunk bed.

“Do you think they’ll go through with it?”
Gemma’s laughter had diminished as his news sunk in. He could hear
the worry in her voice.

“I don’t know.” He sighed, feeling
exhausted.

“But I don’t want you to move.”

He smiled at Gemma’s child like voice. “Don’t
worry, sweetie. I’m not going anywhere.”

“So, I take it you haven’t raised your
parentage issue yet?”

“No, I’m thinking I’ll save that up until
we’ve won this moving battle.”

“I wonder what she’s searching for?”

“What do you mean?” Harrison sat up.

“Well, it’s like she goes to a town, can’t
find what she’s looking for so moves on. You said she worked with
old documents, maybe she’s hoping for a letter or some sort of sign
that Nathaniel doesn’t hate her. He was a writer, you know.”

“Why would Nathaniel hate her?”

“Because she left him, remember?”

Harrison nodded and fell back onto the
pillows to listen to Gemma’s theories.

“She’s probably spent her entire life feeling
guilty for leaving him, not to mention missing him. If she even
feels half of what Nathaniel obviously did, it must have torn her
apart to leave. Not to mention the fact that less than a year later
he dies of who knows what… possibly a broken heart. You can’t tell
me she wouldn’t have researched every facet of his life from back
here. She probably knows exactly what happened to him… and what’s
the bet it’s not pretty.”

Harrison’s brain pumped with Gemma’s words.
The anger at his mother diminished and was replaced with a heavy
sorrow. He tried to imagine what it must have been like for her,
living with the burden.

“I wonder what made her leave?”

“It must have been something pretty huge.
Maybe her life was in danger. Remember how we read that stuff about
witchcraft? Maybe they were after her?”

“Man, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe my
mother is one of you guys.”

Gemma chuckled and dropped another
bombshell.

“Which means you are too.”

Harrison swallowed.

“Hey,” his girlfriend bubbled, “maybe that’s
why we were so drawn to each other.”

“Do you think your parents will accept me
now?”

“Hmmm, let me think about that… a
non-traveling time spirit who’s not supposed to exist anymore…
yeah, I don’t think so.”

He chuckled.

“Besides,” her tone went serious, “what’s the
point of even trying when your mom wants us as far apart as
possible?”

“What’s the bet this is the reason why she
wants to move again.”

“What’s the bet she thinks I’m going to do to
you what she did to Nathaniel.”

Harrison sighed and closed his eyes.

“You need to talk to her.”

“Yeah, I know.” His heart felt heavy as he
pushed himself off Justin’s bed.

“I better go,” his girlfriend groaned. “My
mom thought it’d be a good idea to meet me and Courtney for lunch
at the mall. I can see Courtney now, what a star.”

Harrison chuckled. He knew she would rather
be with him, holding his hand and delving into a hairy conversation
as opposed to eating a civil lunch with her mother and possibly
being dragged around various clothing stores.

“I love you.”

He sensed her smile.

“I love you, too. Call me after you've spoken
to her, okay?”

“Yep, sure.”

He slid his phone shut and pushed it into his
back pocket. Pulling in some oxygen, he placed his hand on the
doorknob and paused.

Chapter
Five

St Augustine, Florida – 2011AD

Gemma frowned. She hated that she couldn’t be
with Harrison right now. She sensed a movement from the corner of
her eye and smiled as she waved back at her friend. Keeping the
smile in place, she wove her way towards Courtney and kept her
voice bright.

“Hey. Thanks so much for meeting me here.
You’re a life saver.”

“No problem. It must suck having to keep this
from your parents.” Courtney squeezed her arm.

“You probably think I’m an awful person for
not telling them the truth.”

“Not after the summer you guys put up with. I
bumped into Harrison for like two seconds on his birthday. You guys
were going through your break up and he just looked dead on the
inside. It was horrible.”

The look on Courtney’s face was glum and
Gemma matched it. She couldn’t believe she had missed her
boyfriend’s birthday! If her parents hadn’t gone back in time and
tried to make Harrison disappear by arranging his
great-great-great-grandfather’s death, she would have been able to
celebrate with him. Instead she had been working with Gabe to learn
how to travel on her own so she could go back and fix things.

“I mean I really care about Darren a lot,”
Courtney continued, “and I like being with him, but what you guys
have… that’s forever, you know?”

Gemma nodded with a smile.

“It would have to be something way bigger
than your parents’ disapproval to break you guys up.”

Gemma’s eyes continued to smile as she agreed
with Courtney, but her brain was doing somersaults. If Helen and
Nathaniel were the same as her and Harrison, which she was pretty
sure they were, then they had both been living dead on the inside.
There was no way Helen would have inflicted that on either of them
if she hadn’t had a good reason. She must have gone back on some
sort of mission, met Nathaniel and decided to stay, but then
something made her leave him. The threat of death was an option,
but what if it was something else… like a baby.

Her breath caught in her throat as she ran
the scenario through. Thankfully her mother had just breezed into
their presence and was distracted in polite conversation with
Courtney.

If Helen had been pregnant with Harrison she
would have had to put her baby first. Maybe she knew her life was
in danger and fled because she was responsible for more than
herself. She probably didn’t tell Nathaniel about it, because she
knew he would try to stop her… and she needed to get home before
she was too pregnant otherwise Nathaniel would have noticed.

I wonder if Nathaniel knew what she was? I
wonder why she went back in the first place? Was she traveling
alone? What about the family she must have left behind to stay with
Nathaniel? Maybe they thought she had died or something?

Gemma’s mind reeled as they walked through
the mall. She could barely touch her salad and had to force herself
into the conversation a few times just to remain polite. She could
sense her mother getting irritated with her distracted manner and
knew she would pay for it later, but how could she help it?

Poor Helen had been living with this
dichotomy for years. On the one hand, she knew she had made the
right choice by coming home and gifting Harrison a modern day life
free of danger, but she had also left the man she loved without a
word, only to find out that he was killed for loving a witch...
maybe. Gemma knew she was jumping to conclusions, but she had a gut
feeling that Nathaniel’s death was untimely and somehow
sinister.

If only there was some way to fix it. Some
way of giving Helen the peace that she had made the right decision.
She’s probably lived her whole life thinking Nathaniel hated her
for leaving, but if he knew the truth he wouldn’t. Heck, he didn’t
know the truth and he still adored her.

Gemma relived the gleam in his eye when he
spoke of his morning star.

If she only knew, then maybe she wouldn’t
feel the need to move around all the time. Maybe they’d stay!

Gemma’s body jerked with an idea. It lit her
brain from the corners then flew forward so fast her whole mind was
on fire with it.

“Gemma! What is going on in that brain of
yours?”

“Nothing,” she muttered. “I just… remembered
that I haven’t finished some homework that’s due tomorrow. I forgot
about it.” She dropped her gaze to the floor.

Courtney grabbed her arm. “You’re not talking
about the History essay are you?”