The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 4 by Bella Forrest (best e book reader android TXT) 📗

a little, but he knew that wasn’t going to be possible now, unless there was a magical side to her she hadn’t told him about. Somehow, he doubted it. If she were magical, surely there would have been a way her magic could have cured her sickness, and as far as he knew she was still sick.

“Shall we begin?” asked Vincent.

Alex nodded, closing his eyes.

Seeking out the glowing heart of his spirit once more, Alex began the increasingly familiar journey down his spirit line, watching the memories of his life whizz past in a blur, taking him backward through his childhood—vacations, school plays, finger-painted porcupines, picnics in the park, hugs from his grandparents, his mother running after him, smiling with the naivety of her remaining youth. He could see they were rapidly approaching the place his memories ended.

“Now, focus on the bridge between your life and the life before,” Vincent instructed, his voice echoing in Alex’s ears.

Alex did as he was told, gathering his energy and pouring it into the place where his childhood met the adulthood of someone else, like gluing bits of film together to make a whole reel. Suddenly, his eyes were not his own. He had made the jump successfully, the image before him blazing back in crystal-clear Technicolor. It felt odd at first, slipping into the body of a person from his own history, but it became more comfortable as he moved through the man’s memories, getting a feel for them.

It took a while for him to realize he was witnessing the moment his father first laid eyes on his mother. He could feel his father’s anxiety feeding into his own emotions, followed by the instant flash of love his father had felt for the girl standing behind the café counter, pouring coffee from a jug. The sight of his mother, so much younger than he had ever known her, broke Alex’s heart. As he watched his father approach the counter, he saw his mother turn and flash her most dazzling smile at him. Yet Alex could feel no joy for the young soon-to-be couple, not when he was privy to the end of the story, flipping to the last page before he had read the whole book. She had been so happy once—he knew she had—so what had gone wrong?

What happened to you? Where did you go? he asked his father silently.

With a jerk, the vision shifted.

Before Alex’s eyes, flashes of his parents’ life together blended in and out, kaleidoscopic to behold. It was hard to keep up, but the visions filled him with bittersweet joy as they played out in front of him. He saw his mother in a way he had never seen her before, so much younger and healthier, without as many worry lines upon her face.

He couldn’t deny there was a strangeness to it, and he made sure to skip quickly over any romantic moments that came along, but there was a pleasantness to the rest of the memories—to wander with her on warm, sunlit walks and to hear her laugh again, the sound ringing comfortingly in his ears. His mother had always loved to laugh, and it was heartwarming to see that she had once been deeply in love. Her affection glimmered in her eyes each time she looked at Alexei. She had truly adored his father.

The images slowed for a moment upon the sight of his mother holding up a plastic, pen-like object with two tiny displays that showed pink double lines. She looked scared but excited, and Alex wished he could see his father’s expression, but he could only feel the emotion his father had felt. It echoed his mother’s—there was fear and excitement bristling within.

“I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “We’re having a baby.”

“I can’t wait,” he heard his father reply, his voice choked with emotion.

Alex moved swiftly on, leaving them to their moment in the bathroom, not wanting to intrude upon it, even though he had technically been present at the scene anyway.

In the next image, Alex realized they were in the house he had grown up in, though there were subtle differences. The walls were the same color, but the carpet was different, with a garish pattern Alex was sure hadn’t been popular since the seventies, and there were paintings and pictures on the walls that he had never seen before. Many of them were of Alex’s mother and Alexei, grinning into a camera, posing against beautiful backdrops of glistening lakes and bright forests. There was one of his mother standing beside a giant redwood that towered over her like a skyscraper. It seemed somehow familiar in Alex’s mind, but he could not place where he’d seen the picture before. In the shoebox under the bed, perhaps? He wasn’t certain. He realized his mother must have taken the pictures down when his father went away, wherever it was he had gone.

A feeling of sudden panic shivered through him, not one of his own emotions, as the visions shifted onto a street. Alex recognized it as Main Street in his town, with most of the shops unchanged, even now. He smiled with invisible lips—not a lot ever changed in Middledale, Iowa.

Alex could sense that his father was behaving strangely, his mood shifting rapidly, his eyes constantly looking over his shoulder as he walked beside Alex’s mother, though Alex couldn’t see anything untoward in the direction his father kept glancing. It was as if Alexei were trying to find a face in the crowd. To Alex, there was nothing but plain old Main Street, with the grocery store, the clothing boutiques, and the antique shops he had only ever seen old people go into, the displays unchanged since the 1940s. Cars beeped their horns and people wandered up and down the sidewalk, minding their own business. Nothing seemed out of place. But perhaps that was the problem. There was definitely something worrying Alexei, and that, in turn, worried Alex.

In every vision afterwards, Alexei’s mood felt tense, his eyes