Nana made her way to the first doorway, which wasn’t too far away. She took a moment to collect herself before she pushed it open. The door creaked, as if it wasn’t used to being called upon to reverse its stance, but it let go of the jamb and revealed a tiny bedroom still decorated as if a teenage girl would be returning to her early ‘90s abode in a few minutes.
Ru stepped in and took it all in. It was as if Sera had just hung the Johnny Depp poster by the bed this morning. A book was open on the nightstand, and upon closer inspection, Ru saw that it was a Sweet Valley High book. There were several others in the series on the shelf across the room, next to the worn white dresser with little yellow flowers topped by a handful of stuffed animals. Though not all of the books were as innocent as the one her mother had been reading; some of them were the books about magic her grandmother had mentioned before when the team had been investigating how Ru had been hidden for so long. One in particular caught her attention. Cloaking and Other Spells. Sera didn’t seem quite as innocent as Nana had made her out to be.
There was a screeching sound as Nana pulled out a chair and sat down next to a wooden table that had various stationery and drawings upon it. She didn’t touch a thing, only observed Ru for a few moments as her eyes fell along the other spines on the bookshelf. Most of the books were teenage romances, classics like Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Isolde, or religious topics. Only a few seemed out of place, including the one that had originally caught her attention. There was also a photo album. Ru’s eyes lingered there until Nana said, “Would you like to look at it?”
Her voice startled Ru a bit, making her jump. “Oh, yeah. I guess so,” she muttered. She looked to her grandmother who nodded in approval as Ru reached up and pulled the volume off of the shelf. Carefully, she brought it over to the table, not sure if it would be all right to set it down on top of her mother’s unfinished artwork, but hearing no objection from her grandmother, she did so.
Opening it up, she was momentarily dropped into the everyday life of her mother almost thirty years ago. There were random pictures of other young girls and boys, all with similar coloring as Sera, similar to Ru and Cutter, too, for that matter, in various poses in what appeared to be Los Angeles. They were at a school, it seemed, in some of the pictures. One revealed her mother sitting on an older model Chevy. In some of them, her mother sat with her arms around her friends, making faces at the camera. In others, she must’ve been the photographer as she was absent, but her friends were compliant in making similar silly expressions. In all of them, Sera looked carefree, young, well-liked. Whatever had gone wrong to lead her down the path to meeting Ru’s father?
The very last page seemed telling. The last picture was of a dark-haired, handsome young man sitting atop a motorcycle. He had an angsty look in his eyes, one that showed pain as much as it promised trouble. It was the only picture of him in the whole album, and it certainly seemed out of place, as if Sera wasn’t quite sure whether or not she could include him, Larkin Ronobes, with the happy smiling faces of the other Keepers. Yet, here he was, his green eyes seeming to peer into Ru’s very soul. Where he was now, she didn’t know for certain, though both parties admitted he’d been banished to a place Ru couldn’t even think about it was so horrible. She felt the hot sting of tears against the backs of her eyes and closed the book, not wanting to cry for her father in front of a grandmother who likely held him responsible for stealing away her only joy.
Looking up, Ru could see her suspicions were confirmed in Nana’s eyes. She wore a scowl on her face, but it was tinged with regret, sorrow, and guilt. Ru knew all of those feelings quite well. “What happened?” Ru asked, quietly, hesitantly, not sure if she should even pose the question.
Nana was stoic for a long time, and Ru thought she might be choosing to ignore the inquiry. She must’ve been gathering her strength, however, because eventually the words began to come. “She was sixteen, Ru, a baby herself. She thought she could change everything, open the eyes of the others so that they could see there is no good and evil, only love.” Nana let out a laugh that turned into a sigh, the pain still evident in her eyes. “I didn’t realize… never knew she was serious about trying to enlighten everyone. She was always very fanciful, you see. Always wanted to right the wrongs.”
Ru wasn’t quite sure she was following, but she let her grandmother continue to speak, holding the photo album carefully in her hands.
“She came home late one night—very unlike Sera—and when her father questioned her, she said she understood everything now, that she had a plan. It wasn’t until a few days later that we discovered she’d been meeting Larkin out of town and that he’d somehow given her the ridiculous notion that they could unite both sides of this ancient fray through their love.”
The last word came out as a half-choke, and Ru couldn’t help but place her hand on top of her grandmother’s. “Sera thought that the Reapers and Keepers would come together if she married Larkin?”
Nana nodded. “Of course, her father and I forbade it. We told her she couldn’t see him ever again. Her father went so far as to attempt to lock her in her room, though that didn’t do any good since she didn’t need her body to find him.”
It was a little difficult to digest the last statement even though Ru knew it was true. “So… how did she get out?”
“She found a way. And… the next thing we knew, she’d sent a letter telling us she was married. And pregnant.”
Ru couldn’t help but gasp, her hand covering her mouth. “And she was sixteen?”
“Seventeen by then. And that is when all Hell literally broke loose. And Heaven for that matter.” Nana rested her head in her hands, her elbows on the table. It took her another long moment to gather her thoughts. “Raphael showed up at my door. That never happens.”
Ru nodded, catching her grandmother’s eyes. “And even he couldn’t find Sera?”
She shook her head. “No, Larkin had the two of you hidden away somewhere.”
It hadn’t occurred to Ru that she may have actually been alive at the time of her father’s capture. Where had she been born? Her birth certificate said New York, but was it in a hospital or somewhere hidden away from the world? Had her father been there when her mother had given birth?
Her grandmother was speaking again, and Ru almost didn’t catch the first part of the sentence she was so lost in thought. “Larkin did everything he could to keep us from finding you. I suppose Sera did, too. I believe she cast the spell, the cloaking spell. Once Raphael defeated Larkin and took him away to Hell, we could find no trace of Sera. He claims he doesn’t know where she is, and I suppose that must be true. He would’ve broken by now.”
Ru felt her eyebrows arch; she couldn’t imagine the type of torture her father must’ve endured, trying to keep the whereabouts of his wife and daughter from his enemy. The statement Nat had made to her in her dream not too long ago returned. Was her father really a villain, or was he just a hero whose story had yet to be told? Her mother must’ve seen something in him. Did Larkin also hope to unite the two sides through her birth, or was his intent something more sinister?
“And you have no idea where Sera might be?”
“No,” Nana replied, shaking her head. “She cloaked herself as well. She could be anywhere in the world.”
“No one can undo the spell she cast?” Ru’s eyes shifted back to the books on the shelf, the ones with the magic spells.
“No one that I know of.”
Ru let out a sigh. For the Keepers, finding Sera had more to do with the portals than anything else. They believed Larkin had revealed the locations to her. But when she looked into Nana Sue’s eyes, she could tell finding Sera had much more to do with making her heart whole again than anything else, as it did for Ru. If she could help the Keepers find the portals, she would do it, but finding her mother had more to do with completing a puzzle with missing pieces than anything else. For her, that puzzle seemed to be the very fiber of Ru’s existence.