After the long jog I had at the park, I went directly to the café to meet Valerie. I pulled the glass door open, as I immediately inhaled the aroma of the freshly brewed coffee. There was jazz music resounding through the entire place along with the chatters of the people inside. The vicinity was lit with yellow-colored lamps that hung on the ceiling just above the wooden tables. It wasn’t too swarmed by a lot of people, leaving the place neat and spacious. It also didn’t take a while before I spotted Valerie, sitting in the corner of the café, just beside the glass pane that had moist from the air condition. Her chestnut-brown hair was tied to a high ponytail, and her lips were plastered with bright-red lipstick. Her gaze was fixated outside the café as if she was waiting for me, and she would casually glance at her gold wristwatch to check the time. Moving closer to her, I stood in front of the empty seat beside her table as her eyes flitted up to face me. As soon as she saw my presence, she let go of the spoon she was holding and abruptly stood up from her seat. She pulled me into a tight embrace, as I hugged her in return.
“Oh my god, thank you for coming,” she said before pulling away from the embrace.
“I just wanted to hear good news from you.” We both sat on the chairs as she curled her lips to a grin. “So, what’s up with you? You look really happy.”
“I don’t really know where to start, but great things have been happening to me lately and it’s unbelievable,” she said with enthusiasm filling her tone while she gestured her hands. “I just got a promotion.”
My mouth gaped, but it quickly changed to a gleeful smile when I saw the gleam in Valerie’s eyes. She was radiating this good energy that also made me feel good, somehow. It was like I could already feel the delight in her heart and the positivity it brought her.
“Oh my god, you’re beyond great. You deserve that promotion because you’ve worked hard to earn it.” I grasped her hands that were placed on the table and rubbed my thumbs along her palms comfortingly. “I’m so proud of you.”
Though I had been fired from my job yesterday, at least Valerie got a promotion because her success was mine too. She was like a sister to me and whenever someone achieved something great between us, we would both celebrate as if we were together in that accomplishment.
“Thank you so much for saying that.” She pulled her hand away then placed them atop her chest as if to indicate my heartfelt compliment. “Oh, and I have another great news.” Her brows wiggled as I stared at her in anticipation. “Remember the guy I told you last time that I’m too afraid to drop his name because we’re not official yet? The one I told you that I’m currently dating?”
My mouth formed to an ‘o’ shape as a squeal almost tore out of my throat if I hadn’t covered my mouth with my hand. Lifting my brows in utter shock, a grin crept across my face, and leaned closer to her.
“Did he ask you to be his girl?” I asked and she nodded in response.
“Yes,” she answered which almost sounded like a squeal.
“You’re literally having the best moments of your life,” I remarked and noticed the blush that was slowly appearing on her cheeks. “You’re life’s now full of cakes and ale.”
“Thank you so much for empathizing with me. I really appreciate your always being there,” she said with much sincerity in her tone. “How about you? How’s everything going?”
I halted, pursing my lips together before looking away. Tapping my fingers on the table, I stared back at Valerie and tugged a faint smile.
If I was being honest, I was embarrassed to tell her what had happened to me lately. I had a rough week, and passing through a day seemed like a struggle. I had been put to disconcerting circumstances lately, maybe too unsettling that I became outwardly lost. I didn’t sulk over it, I was just caught off-guard and perplexed. Since I hadn’t gotten my life together, I just went with the flow.
“Life’s great—um—it’s not that hard,” I stammered and miserably failed to hide the strain in my voice.
I received a stern face from Valerie, as she lightly shook her head, displeased. Her eyes pierced through mine as though she was scolding me for not being transparent. She wasn’t fond of my lying, and since she was constantly informing me about the things that were going on in her life, both good and bad, she expected me to do the same.
“Blurt it out. You’re lying,” she pointed out as I bit my bottom lip awkwardly.
“I got fired from my job yesterday because I got into a fight with a customer, specifically an old lady,” I blurted without hesitation, cursing inside my head at the memory of it.
“You lost your job?” she reiterated in disbelief. “That’s messed up, what are you going to do now? Do you need a job, I can help you get one.”
“I’m fine,” I assured her, pulling the crumpled paper out of my pocket. “I found something that can be the solution to my problems.” I smoothed the wrinkles of the poster and handed it to her. When she took it, I folded my arms and placed them on the table, and gave her a convincing look. “Half a million bucks aren’t too much for finding a werewolf.”
When she studied the text on the paper, her expression became unreadable. She looked rather perplexed and her lips parted as if she couldn’t believe what she just saw.
“You’re kidding me?” she asked, putting the poster down the table. She stifled her laughter, as I shrugged in response. “You’re seriously taking your werewolf fantasy that far. Seriously, since when did you stop taking your medications?” she sarcastically said and I shifted my hand and snatched the poster from the table.“I didn’t stop taking my medications, Val.” I chuckled, folding the poster and slid it back inside the pocket of my denim jacket. “I mean, these people won’t be offering
I laid flat on the bed, hands clasped above my abdomen, as I stared at the ceiling. The dim light of the lamp on my bedside table had illuminated the room, as the gust of frigid wind passed through the window, caressing my bare skin that caused me to pull the blanket to cloak my entire body. It was already dark outside and I was inside of my room, contemplating.Since the time I was having anxiety attacks because of the trauma I had when my parents died, we’d moved out of our place and transferred to another. We were currently living in a small ap
The day went by and I got dressed for the medical appointment today. Grabbing the keys on my nightstand, I headed out of the room and sauntered downstairs. Just in time when I reached the bottom of the stairs, Aunt Odessa appeared in front of me and gazed. I halted, putting the keys inside of my pocket before gripping the strap of my bag.“Where are you going?” Aunt Odessa asked.
“Porsche?” Valerie looked over her shoulder, with the guy’s arms still wrapped around her. I looked down to cover my face though I couldn't be unnoticed. If only this nurse didn’t have a loudmouth.I could see Valerie in my peripheral view, slowly walking towards me with her skeptical look. The nurse handed out the form after confirming my appointment for today so I faced her to finally leave this counter.
“Are you my doctor?” I glared at his prideful demeanor.He looked around the office and finally answered my question.“I guess I am.”&nbs
Valerie had been my best friend since high school. We were neither nerds nor part of the queen bee’s pack, just normal high schoolers who did their best to maintain scores above the passing rate. We got along well, being socially awkward people but at the very least, Valerie was able to improve her social skills. For the most part, we just saw each other and knew we should hang around. I honestly had no idea how our friendship developed. There wasn’t a time that we weren’t together at school. Every little thing, we had to do it together, except when one of us was sick and had to skip school.
Tobias TrevinoMixed emotions filled me to the brim. I must be assuming that he was the Tobias that I knew. Even if he was, shouldn’t I be happy about it? Why was I feeling more anxious then? Besides, they must have had the same given name. He couldn’t be the only Tobias in this town.
I focused my attention on the briefing, while I felt Tobias staring at me on the other side of the room. When I would glance at him, he would immediately look away like it was nothing. Seeing him here made me skeptical and unnerved that my hands were starting to sweat. The hair at the nape of my neck bristles as I swallowed, trying to deviate my attention from him.Tobias had been following me, I concluded. If this wasn’t weird, then I didn’t know what was. His appearance brought mixed emotions to boil inside of me. It was lik
A few years later I peered through the oven before grabbing the potholder and pulled it open. The smoke and the aroma of the freshly cooked chicken made its way through the kitchen, as I laid it on the counter. I saw someone moved at the side of my eye and when an arm suddenly laced around my lower torso, I giggled and turned my back around to face Giofré. “Hey,” he said in a husky voice before leaning his face to me and placed a kiss on my lips. I curled my lips to a smile and wrapped my arms around his neck. “Hey, hun. Have you already considered my proposal?” “You’re making it sound like we’re dealing a business matter.” Giofré chuckled before pulling away from me. He moved to my side and opened the fridge, getting a glass pitcher before continuing, “I’m still not sure about it.” “Why not?” I shrugged. “I mean, we’re not leaving this town completely. There’s
It had been a few months after that tremendous crisis we had gone through in defeating the dark soul and the other supernatural creatures that dared to destroy our living. We had survived that tribulation and we managed to get back up and rebuild everything that was destroyed, especially our pack. It still hadn’t struck us that the war was over, and the crippling anxiety was still lingering around. But those circumstances taught us the biggest lesson in life: no matter how hard it gets or how unbearable life gets, you get back up and fight. It felt as though we were trained as soldiers—battle through hardships and face the biggest hurdles that came along the way, not knowing if we would survive. But we fought anyway because we had some people to protect—those people we cared about. I once thought that, perhaps, I was supposed to get rid of all the pain in order to find genuine happiness. But I figured,
The veins bulging from Elspeth’s face began to diminish and she fluttered her lids open, gasping for air as she came back to life once the knife was pulled out of her. But when she tried to move from her spot, she failed because her body seemed to froze because of the spell Aunt Odessa cast upon her. With fury building up in her eyes, she stared at Aunt who was chanting under her breath while sprinkling some salt on top of her. She screamed in torment as soon the particles touched her skin, and I could imagine how much it must’ve hurt her. It might’ve felt like there was a burning sensation on her flesh because of the smoke her skin emanated as soon as the salt landed on her. She groaned loudly, too loud that not even the rainstorm could overpower her ear-splitting voice. As Aunt Odessa continuously chanted the Latin words written on the pages, the wind became more aggressive, making me almost lose my balance. The candles were still lit and the wind didn’t swe
Agatha opened the trunk as I dropped Elspeth’s body inside, with the knife still plunged in her back. Her pale skin turned to grey and purplish veins became prominent on her skin, some even bulged in her neck and face. As soon as I got Elspeth inside, I turned to look at my right and spotted Lucas and Weston, running toward the car while Lucas lifted a body on his shoulder. I motioned them to hurry and, once they were already in front of me, Lucas dropped the body beside Elspeth. His face immediately came into my view—eyes shut close, mouth parted, and his skin was almost as pale as Elspeth. My heart clenched at the sight of him and I couldn’t help but cover my mouth in shock. I hadn’t seen him after the incident and it pained me tremendously that this was what happened to him. All of these, defeating the dark soul and the vampire, was for him and the pack. Though his loss caused me to be wretched inside, it brought out the suppressed st
We arrived at the mountain of witches, venturing through the forest with my arms wrapped around the book protectively. All of their attention averted to me as soon as we halted, so I roamed my eyes around and took a deep breath. “Aunt!” I shouted, but my voice was overpowered by the thunder. “Aunt Odessa, we have something for you!” The vigorous wind caused the leaves that had fallen from the trees to fly around us as we scooted closer to one another. And just as I thought that Aunt Odessa wouldn’t appear immediately, I heard her voice from behind me saying, “Portia.” I turned my back to face her and when she noticed the book in my grasp, there was a sudden spark in her eyes. She tugged her thin lips to a half-smile and slowly approached our vicinity. “We got the grimoire you were looking for.” I
Our clothes were soaking wet because of the rainstorm and we had to drop by in Giofré’s house to find some clothes to wear. And since almost all of our stuff were stuck there, we managed to change our clothes so we could head to our destination which was the library. Library of Hillford was the oldest library in this town and was the main library of this city. It was one of the largest libraries in this country, containing the oldest—ancient—books that only the Hillford was authorized to have. I remembered, during high school, I had been there once. It was for a research and when we got the chance to use the computers, we found some skeptical files in there that the librarian was quick to notice. As soon as they thought we were snooping around—like what usual highschoolers do—we were kicked out. That was the only memory I had in that place, never had I thought that the grimoire would lead us to that lib
I approached the voice and, as I got closer to the end of the hall, the light of the torch reflected to the iron bar where I spotted Weston, seated on the ground near the rusted bars. He was staring at me in dismay, his eyes hinted sorrow as if he was about to tear up. He tilted his head down to hide his face, shifting from his seat before he sighed. “Weston,” I mumbled his name, walking closer before crouching down beside him. The muffled groan of the werewolves inside this place was the only thing I could hear aside from our heavy breathing. “I’ll get you out of here.” I gripped my free hand on the bar and immediately flinched as soon as I realized that it was made of silver. Silver tarnishes because of the sulfur substance in the air. “You can’t get me out of here.” His voice was laced with hopelessness. “And I do not know if I can still fight.” “If I can muster enough strength, t
Under the stormy night where darkness engulfed the forest and the trees were soaked up with rain, their branches falling on the ground as their leaves rustled, we ventured through the woods and hid behind a huge rock that stood just in front of the warlock’s tower. We viewed the vampires guarding the place from afar and we kept our noises as inaudible as possible so they wouldn’t sense that there were other creatures around. As we held the wooden stakes, with Agatha holding the crossbow, we all stared at each other to plan for an attack. “There are about twenty of them outside the tower, and some were roaming around inside,” Lucas said, peering through the huge rock as Agatha and I leaned against it. “We already manage to escape kill most of them last time, I’m sure we can do it again. Maybe we have more advantage because of these weapons.” “But what if the warlock suddenly shows up?” Agatha asked and I sighed in frustration. &nb
“We’ve been in the dwarves’ village to find some answers. They told us that only the witches have the ability to resurrect a dead body. But since the nature wouldn’t allow this loophole to maintain the balance, it was near to impossible to find a grimoire containing a complex magic,” I told Aunt Odessa but she shook her head as if disagreeing from what I said. “There’s, indeed, a grimoire containing the spell that could resurrect any creatures.” She pulled away from me, her hands falling to her side as she started pacing back and forth. I glanced at Lucas and Agatha and noticed that they were already shivering from the cold atmosphere, but they chose to stay in my vicinity to watch me intently as I talked to my aunt. Agatha mumbled something under her breath, mouthing what now to me. “You’ve seen the grimoire?” I asked, raising my brows and casually glancing