Page 31 of Illusory

I blinked back at her, failing to see the difference.

“Tessa isn’t prepared to keep up with your required level of combat training right now,” she stated flatly.

I crossed my arms and smirked to myself. “Can you make sure you say that again at breakfast tomorrow morning so she can hear it, too?”

She ignored my very well-timed joke and said, “You’ll continue sparring with me.”

The smugness immediately dropped from my face. “With you? Now? But you’re supposed to be handling the Nephilim shit this time,” I whined as horrifying flashes of my past “training” sessions with my mother zipped through my mind, making me shudder at the memory of it.

While her maniacal methods had indeed gotten me to invoke my ability to freeze time at will, the whole experience had been the stuff that nightmares were made of. She had been cold, unrelenting, and shamelessly brutal. Sadistic, really, and I wasn’t interested in living through that ordeal again. Once had been more than enough, and as far as I was concerned, I wasn’tevergoing to train with Jaqueline Morningstar again for as long as I lived.

Not if I had anything to say about it.

“You know, Jackie, as much as I’d really love to do the wholemano a manothing with you, I’m actually pretty wiped out myself. I think I’m going to just grab a bite to eat and turn in for the night, but we’ll totally make this happen tomorrow,” I said, lying through my damned teeth. If training with Jaqueline was back on the table, then I had every intention of leaving the country and changing my identity by morning. “That is, if Tessa isn’t healed up by then.”God willing.

“Jemma.” Her clipped tone sent a cold tremor down thewhole of my spine, but it only made my feet move faster.

“So yeah, I’ll totally come find you first thing in the morning,” I said and then spun around to make a run for it, hoping to get away before she could object.

She stepped out in front of me in a flash, standing directly in the path of my one and only escape route. “We can either do this the easy way, or we can do it theotherway. Which would you prefer?”

* * *

Jaqueline’s question had been a rhetorical one. Clearly, she didn’t know how to do anything the easy way and had made that much obvious when she proceeded to beat me to a cruel and merciless pulp for the next three hours.

It had taken every bit of strength and wherewithal I had just to break away from her onslaught of blows long enough to catch my breath and not drown in the steady trickling of blood flowing down the back of my throat—courtesy of aprobably-fractured-possibly-brokennose.

How ever I had remembered it, how ever terrifying the memory of training with Jaqueline had been, the reality had proven to be so much worse.

There was something irreversibly wrong with that woman.

By the end of the session, I barely had enough strength left to pick myself up off the floor let alone to make it back up to my room. I’d seriously contemplated spending the rest of the night on the dining room floor where I had dropped like a lifeless corpse, and if it wasn’t for the fear that Mother Dearest might show up in the middle of the night to continue “training” me, I may have even done it.

But there was no way I was taking that risk.

Instead, I allowed the promise of soaking in a long hot bath until the feeling returned to my face guide me all the wayback up to my room where I promptly double bolted the door shut behind myself. Just in case.

Nearly one full hour later, I emerged from the bath feeling slightly better than when I’d gone in, and even though I could already feel the bruises forming on my face, I didn’t once allow myself to check my reflection in the mirror. Mostly out of fear that that the grotesque sight would ruin what little bit of peace I’d managed to restore.

After quickly towel drying my hair, I changed into a sleep camisole and shorts and then quietly made my way back downstairs to the kitchen in search of something to eat. As per usual, my hectic day of training and dealing with life in general had taken precedence over remembering to eat. Not that I would’ve admitted that to Tessa, though.

My stomach, however, wasn’t having any more of the charade, evidenced by the growl-like rumbles sounding from it at regular intervals.

The house was as quiet as a graveyard save for the gentle rain pattering against the windows. The distant flashes of lightning and thunder told me that the storm was finally moving away from Hollow Hills and onto greener pastures. If only that were symbolic of all the problems troubling my life lately, but alas, I knew that storm was set to circle right back around and hit us all over again like a bad song set on repeat.

It was just the way things always seemed to go for me.

I didn’t plan on worrying my mind with the thought for long, though. Not tonight. Tonight, I intended on basking in my momentary stint of solitude and enjoying the peace and quiet. After dealing with a steady influx of people in my face all day, it was nice to not have anyone talking to me or demanding yet another thing from me. Even though I knew they were all hereforme—to help me—it still didn’t make their weighty expectations any easier to carry around all day.

Flicking on the light switch, I quietly set my math homework down on the kitchen island and did my best not to make any noise. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally draw anyone’s attention my way and ruin my self-imposed timeout from life.

Tessa had already retired to her room hours ago, probably to lick her wounds and tend to her bruised ego while Jaqueline had disappeared into the study to continue combing through the grimoires, picking up from where Gabriel had left off before he’d called it a night and returned to the basement to check in on Trace.

Fuck. Trace…

Despite the heavy feeling in my heart, I tried my best not to allow my thoughts to linger on him for too long either, choosing instead to believe that Gabriel was exactly who he needed at that moment and that he would be doing everything in his power to get Trace back on his feet. Anyone with half a brain cell could see that my presence there would only further upset him, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.

He’d already gone through enough and really didn’t need to deal with me on top of everything else he was already going through. I had enough sense to at least know that much.

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