Traveler - The Price (Book 3)
Chapter 20

Sometimes, the strongest weapon someone has is a tormented soul on fire. I have always known that inside me was a storm ready to explode, and the calm from the surface was just an illusion.

“Jo!”

“What?”

“You have to listen to me!”

“Where are we? Why is it dark?”

“I don’t have much time, so you have to listen to me! Since Deby did that spell, the magic is almost gone from your world. I am in my world now, and I have found a loophole to talk to you. I don’t know if we will see each other again, but you should be aware that in there you are no longer a Traveler! Your mission has ended, so try to stay alive because if you die, you can’t come back. You will fill your place in the Underworld, and you will wait for the next Traveler.”

“But Ema, no one remembers anything! Only I have this burden!”

“You were warned there would be consequences! I don’t know if this was the price you had to pay for bringing Aaron back, but you should have been prepared for anything!”

“Damn it!”

“I found out about this just now, when I got into my world.”

“Ema, I have known about the fact that I will not be a Traveler in here since I was in the Underworld. I was ready for everything, but not for this…”

“This is your burden, and you have to carry it! I don’t know what else to tell you. Just stay alive!”

“Thank you for everything! For infiltrating among Aura’s creatures. You saved me! I owe you my life.”

“I hope it wasn’t in vain. Take care of you, of your new life, and make the best of it!”

“You too, Ema! You too…”

I was awakened by some weird noises. I woke up, and I realized Ema had communicated with me through a dream. This was the price I had to pay for bringing Aaron back? If I thought about it a little, it made sense. What could be worse than the world where only you know the truth and people around you will never believe you?

I entered the bathroom. The noises stopped, and I suddenly saw Aaron opening the bathroom’s door. I remained for a second with my toothbrush in my hand. He was standing on the doorstep, half naked.

“Don’t you know how to knock?!” I said outraged.

He grumbled an excuse, and then he slammed the door. Not the fact that he had entered in there bothered me, but the fact that he had remained under my roof and had slept overnight with Deby. This situation was way out of line. After I had got out from the bathroom, I changed my clothes, and I went to fix my car.

I stopped at Andy’s bar to buy a coffee. I found Ivy there.

“Hey!” she yells after me.

“Hey, Ivy. How are you?”

“I’m preparing stuff. We’re having a party tonight. Some karaoke. For me to get to know people better. You and Deby are invited! Oh, and her boyfriend too. I heard he arrived last night.”

“I will tell them” I said.

Then I had an idea. One that might have started some sparks around, now that Ivy was with Andy. I opened my mouth anyway.

“Ivy, have you ever heard about some woman named Kate Weber?”

“Hmm, I don’t know anyone” she says. “But why does this name sound so familiar to me?”

“Oh, what about someone named Ema?”

“No…”

“Fine. What about Eva? Aura?”

“No! Jo, what’s with these questions? They all sound so familiar, but I don’t know any person named that way.”

“Nothing… it doesn’t matter.”

I had tried at least. I saluted her, and I left. When I arrived at the service, I noted with amazement that I needed to leave the car there for about three days. I had to walk back home. I was stepping thoughtful when I heard a peep next to me. I winced.

“Jo, what the hell are you doing on foot?” asks Deby.

“I left the car at the service. It’s not like I was born in the car… I can walk home, you know.”

“Don’t you know my number? Come on, get in.”

Aaron was driving her car. I got inside.

“We just took Aaron’s car to the service too. You will use mine until yours are ready. You will take me to the bar, and then you can do whatever you want with it!” she smiled.

I rolled my eyes, grumbling a “thank you.” Aaron stopped for Deby to get down. After she had walked away, he made me a sign to get in the front seat. I thought about that for a while, but then I realized that if I wanted to make him remember me, I wasn’t going to do that from the backseat.

“Whereto?” asks Aaron.

“Home?” I said rhetorically.

“I was thinking of stopping at the bar to meet your friends.”

“I passed by earlier, but let’s go.”

We went to Andy’s bar, where I saw him too this time. He was happy to meet Aaron, and they served us what they had best. Time has passed quickly, and even if they couldn’t remember anything, we still had a good time together. Ivy was throwing me from time to time a weird look, which seemed familiar. There were a lot of memories in that look. After a couple of hours, Deby called us to go and pick her up.

When we arrived in front of the bar where she was working, I forgot to move in the back because I thought I belonged on that seat. I woke up just in time before Deby got angry.

“I think I will talk to Andy to hire me at his bar! I can’t stand these idiots here! They’re giving me hard times, and they don’t even pay me enough!”

“I think that’s a good idea. You will talk to him tonight” I say.

We arrived home, and we started getting ready for the party. I chose to wear a red dress and black shoes. At least my shoes to reflect how I was feeling. I took a little purse, and I went in the lobby. Deby was nervous, and at some point, she remembered she forgot her wallet upstairs. She went to get it, and she met Aaron on the stairs. His appearance left me without words.

The Aaron I used to know was wearing only T-shirts and blouses, gym suit and sneakers. This Aaron was dressed in a dark blue gorgeous suit, and the bow reflected his elegance I didn’t know he had. One more thing. His hair was trimmed, a thing I haven’t seen before. It wasn’t long enough to tie it on the back, but it was long enough, somewhere around his ears, and it gave him a mysterious look. I found myself smiling.

“You look good” he says passing by me and studying me.

“Thanks. You look good too!” I said keeping the fierce woman appearance.

He smiled me back, and that reminded me of so many things from the past.

“That’s a smile which hides a lot” he says suddenly.

I was blocked, and if Deby hadn’t shown up, I couldn’t have got out from that situation. I took a deep breath, and I walked to the car. Deby sat behind the wheel, and I sat in the back. Aaron took the right seat, and we headed to Andy’s bar.

It all seemed so weird, but I tried to adapt to that situation. When we walked into the bar, the party had already started. I saw a lot of unfamiliar faces. I sat on a table next to the bar, and I took a cocktail.

A couple of seats away was sitting a man around twenty years old, and he was staring at me. I haven’t seen him until that moment. He seemed pretty tall, he had short brown hair, and he was wearing a black suit. He waved to Andy to bring me another drink, as soon as I finished mine. I had seen Aaron talking to different kind of women, which more sophisticated, and Deby on a corner throwing angry looks at him. I had the impression that was the old Aaron, the one he used to be before he fell through that portal.

“You got yourself an admirer” laughs Andy.

“Yeah” I grumble.

Then I saw Aaron and Deby dancing. It was a sad song, and I was sick of being the only one who knew the truth, and who suffered from that situation. I wanted to forget like everybody else. I got up, and I went outside, with the cocktail in my hand. I took out my pack of cigarettes.

“Can I have one?” I forgot mine.

I turned around, and I saw the guy from the bar. I handed him the pack.

“James” he says.

“Josephine” I say.

“Jo” he says again.

I looked at him weirdly. I knew it was evident for people to call me like that, but he sounded as if he knew me.

“Sorry, do we know each other?” I ask.

“You don’t know me” he says.

“But…” I continued.

“I know you. In fact, I don’t want to scare you, but I know all about you.”

I took a defensive position, dropping my cocktail on the floor.

“Hey! Easy there! I’m not here to hurt you!”

“I am the one who decides that! What do you want from me?”

“Look what’s the deal. I think we have the same problem.”

I threw him a stupefied look.

“And what would that be?”

“I heard a lot about you. I know what you were and I think I am somehow connected to you.”

“I believe that this is a sick joke!”

“I feel what you feel. All of it. Fear, sadness, love, adrenaline, pain. For a couple of days, I was feeling strange, and I didn’t know why. I had no reason. Then I dreamed about a woman named Ema. She told me to replace you because she couldn’t tell you one last thing. I am connected to you, and this means that the magic in not entirely gone from this world.”

“So, you’re not joking! This in real!”

“Yes! Did you have any doubts?”

“Damn it! Where are you from? I haven’t seen you around.”

“I woke up here, and I just realized I have a house! But I remember clearly how I had improvised a shelter in the woods, after the war, and I was hiding from all kind of weird creatures. On that time, I first heard of you, that you could save the world.”

“It seems I haven’t done such a good job…”

“Oh, yes. But the thing is I heard you died. Twice!”

“Oh, long story…”

We sat on the stairs, and I told him how it all had happened. He said that when he first came to look for me, he saw Deby too, who seemed nice.

“We have a problem here, pal. Deby’s taken. She’s with Aaron.”

“Aaron as Aaron, your lover?”

“Something like that. That’s another story.”

“I think we have the time. I’m starting to understand why I’m feeling so weird. They say a lot of things about you two. They used to say…”

“What kind of things?”

“Something like you went into the Underworld for him. That you are destined…”

“If I haven’t killed the Ouroboros, I would still believe in destiny…” I said disappointedly.

“All they say is true? Have you done all those things?”

“Yeah…”

I started to explain him that part of the story too, and when the evening was over, we felt like we knew each other for a lifetime. We were two strangers standing together in a world where only us knew the truth, and that made us feel incredibly alone. We were sharing a curse, a punishment I was supposed to carry alone.

“You’re saying you can feel what I feel” I said after Aaron and Deby passed by us. “Tell me, what do I feel right now?”

“Sadness, anger, injustice.”

“Damn! You’re good!”

Deby waved at me that they were waiting for me at the car. I changed numbers with James, and I rushed to them.

“It looks like you got yourself an admirer this night” she laughs.

“I have made a friend” I cut her off.

Aaron started laughing, and Deby didn’t say anything else. We were going home, where I was going to spend another night with the two of them under the same roof. That thing made me go crazy, but it wasn’t like I could leave my home or to make Deby go away. She was, after all, my childhood friend and she was in that situation just like the rest of us.

In the night, I looked for Ema in my dreams. But she didn’t answer. I needed more information about this mysterious James. I found amusing the fact that he found Deby cute. He had chosen an awful timing for that.

If that was the price I had to pay for what I had done, I could have lived with that. I knew I had done the right thing, just like I was doing now. I knew that feeling inside me was going to guide me in the right direction. I don’t know why, but when Aaron had said that he wanted to spend forever with me, I had believed him. I had based too much on the fact that in the end, we were all going to end up together, forever. I soon realized that you shouldn’t depend on somebody ever, especially sentimentally for even your own shadow leaves you in the dark.