Silent Scream (Bittersweet Series, Book 2)

  Silent Scream

  Marcia Colette

  Copyright © 2020 by Marcia Colette

  Silent Scream is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Dedication

  To my beloved Genevieve.

  Acknowledgement

  The biggest thanks goes to my daughter. Had it not been for her voracious reading appetite, this book might not have ever come. I’d also like to thank my wonderful cover artist Vikncharlie who nailed the cover on the first try.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgement

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  I don’t know which I dreaded more: my grueling midterm or my pathetic attempt to make friends. People didn’t scare me as much as my powers did. I should’ve been on the road for the hour and a half drive back home to Colburn, North Carolina, but we all agreed if we survived, we’d celebrate. Even though I split my time between high school and college courses, these guys didn’t seem to care since I tutored more than half of them through our Latin class. This meetup will be a win-win for me...I hope.

  “So how do you think you did on the exam, Phaedra?” Melonie Hicks sipped her drink like she was up to no good and couldn’t wait to prove it with her boyfriend Max who was sitting next to her.

  “I think I did okay,” I replied. I picked up the menu and ordered since the waitress seemed to be stalking the table for any last-minute shows with our party of ten. Ryan Babbage and I were it. We rode together in my geriatric sedan.

  “Please, stop boasting.” Ryan handed the waitress back the menu. “She did good only because she had a headstart compared to the rest of us jack-offs.”

  “Nothing stopped you from picking up a Latin book to learn the language while you were in high school.”

  “Touche.” Jorge Martinez raised his glass to me. “But some of us were busy with other things like surviving high school.”

  “If you were homeschooled by a pack of ghosts, you would’ve gotten by just fine.” Adelaide Manchester scrunched her nose at him and grinned.

  “No, I was homeschooled by a bunch of bullies who were more freaked out by the fact that I’m medium. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

  “I still think sorcerers are the most interesting.” Ronan Hutcher slid his glasses up his nose before reaching for a nacho chip. “My parents gave me a headstart on everything. Math, science, engineering, you name it. Latin is a nice-to-have checked off.”

  “So how do you think you did, superstar?” Melonie wiggled next to her boyfriend before swatting his hand away.

  “I think I did well enough.”

  Jorge snorted. “More like you’re scared to death that this is one class you won’t be nailing an A in.” He pointed at me. “Now that girl over there? She’s got the goods on all of us when it comes to Latin and whatever other languages she’s learning. All I want to know is how in the world do you do it?”

  “Languages and I get along, I guess.” Interacting with people was a new thing for me. My school counselor’s voice echoed in the back of my head about relaxing and just being honest with myself and with others. What a load of crap. Seriously, who the heck else was I supposed to be? “It also helps that I started earlier than you guys, only it wasn’t as structured as it is in class, so I learned most of it in bits and pieces.”

  I wasn’t into sharing a lot about myself. Unfortunately, in our tight-knit paranormal community, you didn’t have to. It was like everyone knew something about you whether you had supernatural abilities or not. Considering I was a special case where I was a part-time college student and a part-time senior in high school, everyone seemed to know about me.

  I missed a lot of school while trying to raise my six-year-old sister and take care of my schizophrenic and psychokinetic mother. That meant she had no control over her powers, which were ten-times the strength when she was having a mental meltdown. Unfortunately, she could barely tell my voice from the vehement voices in her head. That’s when things got really explosive. I usually end up sleeping with ice packs and bandages covering parts of my body. Better me than my seven-year-old little sister. It was as dysfunctional as a mother-daughter relationship could be and we all knew it. Seeking help from outside the paranoid supernatural community would have cataclysmic consequences ten times worse than Nadia and I going into foster care. Since psychokinesis tainted our family tree—as did mental health issues—it was best not to open up to the human world either.

  We had nobody after my father and older brother left. So, up until six years ago, I missed a lot of school to take care of her, I made up by learning things I really wanted to learn rather than follow a curriculum. Strangely enough, I discovered I was a language prodigy.

  “More like you had nothing better to do because you came from a messed up high school.” Ryan reached across the table for a nacho and scooped up some dip with it. “Plus, a five-star school in North Carolina is like a one-star school in the city. You’re from New York, Phaedra, so you know what I’m talking about.”

  “My parents are from upstate New York,” I replied, feeling the claws of offense gripping my shoulders. I twisted my neck as though I had cramps when I really needed to break my anger welling up inside. “I was born here.”

  “You’re still not exactly a native either. No accent. You don’t like sweet tea from tea bags. No Bible-thumping on Sundays either.”

  “And if you want friends, you should do less talking,” Sonya Murelle, from Alabama, said as she slapped his hand for double-dipping before she went in for a chip, too.

  “Come on, seriously? A Bachelors degree down here is like an Associates up there. That’s the only reason why I came here. I want an easy ride for maximum return.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Anyway, we’ve fallen completely off track. We were talking about the exam.”

  “That was until your prejudiced, arrogant attitude showed up.” Sonya cut him with a poker-face glower.

  “Sounds like you got a D on that test.” Ryan reached for a hot wing next. “But getting back to my point, the exam was easy for Phaedra because she’s a mastermind. There. I said it.”

  “Anything else you want to put out there about me that’s nobody’s business?” My hand clutched around my fork before I realized it had happened.

  “Whoa. Wait.” He lifted his hands in defense. “I thought that was open kn
owledge like you not having any other friends, except for us.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Everything slid off the table and onto either the floor or laps. Silverware, menus, napkins, salt and pepper, and all of our appetizers. Everyone squealed or yelled as they jumped back or tried to dodge the mess. Anything not being held had hit the floor.

  I sat there still staring at Ryan and clutching my heated fork. Unlike the rest of them, I was unfazed because I knew what my powers could do. No sense in getting upset and making it worse. I calmly wiped away something that splashed onto my cheek and stood.

  “You’re right,” I told him. “I don’t have friends. Life gets more interesting when I make them my enemies. Good luck getting a ride back to whatever hole you crawled out of, too.”

  I picked up my purse, apologized to everyone else, and left. Sonya high-fived my still heated hand on the way out.

  #

  After dodging motor-speedway wannabes and hoping I had put enough oil in the engine to keep the light from turning on, I finally made it home. Our large, Victorian house was always in need of repairs, but it was starting to look like the haunted house on the block that dredged up stories of why little kids shouldn’t trick-or-treat there. The only thing missing was a rusted, wrought iron fence and a creepy, twisted tree in the front yard. Thankfully, the entire neighborhood was somewhat rundown. We just happened to have one of the biggest houses on the block. I grabbed both my satchel and laptop and hurried inside out of the cold rain.

  “Phae.” Nadia hurried across the wood floor and hurled herself into me with a tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re home. Kurt has been a real pain. He’s thinking about giving me chores and stuff.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I rubbed my cheek against her soft, frizzy hair that had been pulled back into a ponytail. “You didn’t have a problem with holding down your own when I was in charge.”

  She pulled out of the hug first and stared with all seriousness loaded into her dark eyes. “Yeah, but at least your chores made sense because they involved me helping you with dinner and setting the table and stuff. He’s talking laundry and scrubbing floors and toilets like I’m some maid. Is he crazy or what?”

  More than that drive back home, I hated returning in the middle of a war.

  Kurt had only been back in our lives for six months and I guess that mechanic’s job wasn’t keeping him busy enough these days. He left for years, hoping to find a cure for our mother, but returned with an incubus as a temporary answer. While I thought his motives were gallant, I wasn’t even a teen and Nadia had just started walking. I was left to raise a baby while trying to navigate my mother’s psychotic, psychokinetic outbursts. Kurt should’ve waited, but he was stupid and only thinking about himself since he was next to develop the genetic burden that had estranged our family. I got that he was scared, but his fear was nothing compared to my having to dodge social services and school officials while navigating the adult world to keep up the false pretense that my mom was still around.

  “Anything else I missed while I was gone?” I started up the staircase to my room.

  “Kurt doesn’t cook as good as you do either,” she said, trailing close behind me.

  “Oh, man.” I placed my laptop bag and my satchel on my bed. Already, my tired body was looking forward to a warm shower. While it might have been spring break for Cornerstone, it wasn’t for hub high. “Maybe you should do the cooking and leave the laundry and stuff to him.”

  “I tried to tell him that.” Nadia shrugged before plopping herself onto my bed. “But he's scared of me being in the kitchen. He thinks I’ll hurt myself or burn the house down. He’s crazy.”

  “Where is our beloved brother now?”

  “Busted back down to private.” Mom appeared in the doorway with a towel wrapped around her head and wearing a striped robe. Her dark eyes beamed as she stared at me, clutching the front as though her boobs might fall out.

  I flew across the room and snatched her up in a tight embrace. Every craptastic thought plaguing my mind was washed away by a happiness tsunami. I planted a smacking kiss on her cheek, thankful that she was in her right state of mind, which was few and far between.

  My mom was my everything, even during head-butting times. What we had was different, though most would probably classify it as an abusive relationship topped with Stockholm syndrome. Not us. Unlike most relationships, my mom had hoped someday I’d take Nadia and leave, but I couldn’t do that. She’d either die in our bolted attic or be killed by those in the preternatural community who wanted to keep this world a secret. There was no way I’d leave her to either one of those fates, so we stayed and made the most of it.

  “I missed you, too.” Mom returned the kiss before pulling out of the hug, but not letting go of my hands. She seized me up with pride in her eyes that said more than words could. “How’s my beautiful part-time college student doing these days? First quarter’s spring semester grades came home and I’m seeing four B’s and three A’s. Pulling an unnecessarily heavy load for a part-timer, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.” My smile faltered. I gulped. “But this means I only have one class to take in summer school at the hub and I get college credit for my freshman year.”

  She shook her head before letting me go. “You’re going to burn yourself out.”

  “Mom, I—”

  “I’m not saying you’re not good for the grades. Obviously, you are. But I thought the plan was to make up three classes during summer so you can focus more on this part-time college thing that the hub is pushing you into.”

  “They’re not pushing me.” I went back to my bed to empty out my things. “The choice was mine, just like skipping out on classes at Colburn High. That’s why I’m making up for it now. If it hadn’t been for the hub and their rules being more flexible than a normal high school, I would have been set back a whole semester.”

  “What for? Why the rush?” Mom motioned for Nadia to leave the room while she talked. Once my sister’s footfalls padded down the hall, mom tipped her head, her face turning to curiosity. “Is something wrong that I need to know about?”

  “No. Why?” I turned away almost too fast. I hope she didn’t catch that. I thought about the bag I had left in the car and wondered if I could slip around her to get it. “How much time do you have on the clock?”

  “I have about two hours and thirty minutes before I have to go back into the attic. So, we don’t have time to mess around, Phaedra. Only the truth. Why the extra courses?”

  Annoyed, I stepped away from her. I didn’t want her so close when nervousness was creeping up on me.

  Everything slid off my dresser and landed on the floor. I learned a long time ago that whenever my psychokinetic powers got away from me, it was best not to have any glass around. It was best not to have anyone nearby either.

  My powers worked so fast that I hardly knew what was happening before I could reign them in. There was no strange taste in my mouth, no temperature changes around me, no smells or ripples in the air. At most, maybe a low hum in my ears, assuming my adrenaline wasn’t surging long enough for me to pay attention to it. That’s what made my psychokinesis so scary and so dangerous. It activated with hardly any warning. To some extent, I could stop it once it started, but half of the time the damage was already done.

  “I can find better things to do with my lucid time and this isn’t one of them.” Mom went to the dresser and picked up a plastic picture frame with me, her, and Nadia all in a side hug. She placed it back where it belonged.

  “Fine,” I snarled. “I don’t mind doing some translations on the side for a discount on mine and Nadia’s tuitions, but when does it stop? When do you go back to being a real fashion designer again, where your clientele extends beyond the supernatural echelons? You could do so much better and have ten times more customers if it weren’t for them trying to control who you supply to.”

  “What control? Sweetie, the bittersweet leaves only allow me three hours of co
ntrol and they’re so expensive that we can only use them once a week. Mason can help, but he also has his own business to run, so it’s not like he can always be at my beck and call to take the schizophrenia away either.” A book was the last thing she sat on my dresser.

  As much as I disliked Mason because of his “arrangement” with my mother, he was a necessary evil in our lives. For reasons we didn’t understand, his being an incubus gave him the ability to bring my mother back to lucidity and squash her powers in a way that was more effective than the bittersweet leaves. So much so that we went away on our first weekend trip ever as a family without having to worry about our mother having a psychotic fit and tearing up the hotel room. Despite my reservations about Mason, it was better to have him on speed dial when we needed him than to have our mother locked in the attic. Prior to his move to the Raleigh-Durham area, we only got to see our mother once a month for three hours because all we had were bittersweet leaves.

  “As much as I’d like to continue this conversation, we have other things to talk about over dinner.” Mom glanced at the plastered crack in the ceiling that stretched from one side of my wall to the other.

  I snorted. “Please don’t tell me Mason’s moving in.”

  “Stop.” She swatted at my hanging hair. “We’ve gotten several offers on the house.”

  “Wait. What?” My brain went from blank to a flood of questions. “When did we put the house on the market?”

  “We didn’t. The offers started coming about two or three months ago. All of them are from the supernatural community.”

  My entire chest of drawers flipped front first, slamming onto the floor on the other side of my bedroom. Both mom and I shrieked before jumping back, me mostly into her arms. When it looked like my own psychokinetic energy might not do any more damage, mom guided me toward the door for a quick escape. Besides, it was safer in the hall. We removed everything that could be used for projectiles.