AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The little cutie slow blinked at me, clearly enjoying himself.
“So, is the family still out for blood? Should I skip dinner tonight?” I asked.
Dad rubbed his cheek. “They’re still grieving.” That was a yes, then. “Wouldn’t you have been angry if I had died this time instead of Ray?”
“Yeah, Dad. I’d have been furious. But I’m angry now that we can’t stop someone else dying in the future because we can’t just sit down and talk like adults.”
“Just promise me you’ll stay away from them. Please?” Dad asked.
“I told you, fine.”
Why did he always bring out the petulant teenager in me?
“Great. Lecture over.” Dad held his hands up before he got up from his desk and pulled open a drawer, taking something out of it. “I need to show you this.”
Dad made his way around his desk and held out a thick book to me, bound in navy-blue binding and adorned with crystals. A thick metal lock fixed the covers in place.
“What’s this?” I asked as he handed it to me.
“That was your mother’s.”
I took it in my hands and placed it on my lap. Sammie gave it a curious sniff.
Mum had a diary?
“I wanted to show you years ago, but you always seemed distant whenever I talked about your mum. When you asked about her the other day, I thought maybe you were ready to look,” Dad said. “She made this herself and wrote in it almost every night.”
I turned the diary over in my hands. All I had seen of my mother was pictures and secondhand memories. But this… did it hold answers to questions I was desperate to ask her after discovering what I was?
“Do you have the key?” I asked.
“I don’t know where it is,” Dad said. “Your mum said that she would show you this when you were older, so this really belongs to you now. I’ve looked everywhere for the key, but maybe we could have a look for it together.”
I clutched the diary to my chest. I had to find the key. If she had wanted me to see this one day, that meant she might actually have prepared to tell me about being a mermaid if she died. Maybe she had put the key somewhere safe before she passed?
Everything I needed to know about my mother’s heritage—my heritage—might be in here. If only I could get inside.
“Theo!” An alarmed shout from the corridor had us both bolting out of the room, Sammie on our heels.
We followed the sound of loud discussion down the corridors.
My heart leapt to my throat at the sight of half the family gathered around the open door to The Room.
They stepped aside as we got there to let us see inside.
The arrow stuck into the pillar glowed with golden light, pulsing like a star.
I held the diary to my chest as it glowed brighter still. The arrow that bound the curse to our family had never so much as glinted of its own accord before. Something told me that whatever Ben and I had unearthed between our families by working together, it was just the beginning.
The End
