by B D Grant
She opens her eyes turning her head in my direction. I want to smile at her, but I feel like I shouldn’t with Uncle Will facing the Supreme Council it would be in bad taste. She must see the indecision on my face, because she reaches out and takes my left hand in her right. “He’ll be okay,” she tells me. I look down at my hand in hers. “Yeah,” I say quietly.”
It’s only a few minutes more before we hear the click of approaching heels on the tile. A woman in a light gray skirt suit and short heels rounds the corner of the elevator on our left. She smiles at us, seeming to know who we are even though I’ve never seen her. Mom and I stand.
“Hi there,” the woman says sweetly, walking up to us. “I’m one of Mr. McBride’s attorneys.”
Mom cuts her off, her scowl returning. “Then why aren’t you in there defending my brother?”
“Mom,” I say.
“I’m not his primary defense,” the woman says. She must deal with difficult people a lot in her line of work. “Those guys are in the courtroom with him. I’m just support staff. You know, paper pusher.” She gives my mom a reassuring smile. “I understand your frustration. But, the good news is he’s got no chance of facing any real time over this.”
One of the doors to the courtroom swings open, nearly knocking the guard in the shoulder. A woman charges out. I know her.
“That’s Uncle Will’s secretary from The Southern Academy,” I whisper to Mom. She’s followed closely by a man in a navy suit. He carries a brown leather briefcase and it wearing one of those skinny ties that only look good on attractive men (and, I admit, it looks good on him). Neither of them pay attention to any of us, and the guard steps back to let them through the doors.
The woman strides forward.
“Hey. Hey, hey, hey,” the man says, speeding up to catch her before she can reach the stairs. She spins around when he tries to touch her shoulder, red splotches bright on her cheeks. “You did good,” he says, shaking his head as if agreeing with his own words.
“Were you even in the same room?” she barks. “I was crucified in there!”
Silently, the attorney next to us directs Mom and me away from the scene. He motions us past the elevator as the woman yells, “I don’t get paid enough to deal with that level of abuse!” She points wildly at the courtroom. “They called me an accomplice. An accomplice!”
“They were only trying to scare you,” he tells her. “You answered all of their questions to the best of your ability. We practiced this. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Easy for you to say,” she spits. “You weren’t humiliated.” She turns for the stairs again. “I quit,” she says as she stomps down the hall. Her attorney rubs his forehead hard before heading after her.
“She wasn’t that great at her job anyways,” I say to myself as we turn to the left of the elevators.
Two men are lugging a long, wooden pew down the hall heading in our direction. We move close to the windows to get out of their way.
After they pass, the attorney takes us to a open stairwell at the end of the hall that takes us downstairs. No time was spent to stain these stairs. Down the hall there’s a guard at the front of the metal detectors by the front entrance who barely glances in our direction. We pass a couple of closed doors on our right before it opens up to a large waiting area. Each of the three walls encircling the waiting area has four doors, all of which are shut. Bryant is among the Seraphim who are patiently waiting on one of the many benches.
The attorney starts to tell us where to sit, but I stop listening when a door opens behind her on the far wall. Jake emerges. He looks like he’s going to church wearing lightly wrinkled khakis and a light blue polo. He’s even taken the time to comb his hair, parting it on the right side like his dad. Mom sees him too. “Jake!” she screeches.
Jake smiles across the waiting room at us.
And it’s only then that I look behind him, back to the door. For a second, I let it sink in that I still don’t fully recognize my own father. He’s new to me, still, in this frail state, but at least he’s alive.
“Catherine,” Dad says in disbelief, his arms opening as if he could take her in his arms from across the room.
Everyone waiting to be called has turned to watch as my family reunites. My mom takes off toward me father, nearly diving into him. Jake’s still headed towards me, but she pulls him into their hug anyways.
Bryant rises from his bench to fall in step with me as I pass heading for my family. He’s smiling, and when I glance around, a bit self-conscious, I notice that the handful of people seated around the waiting room are too.
“Now this just makes me feel warm inside,” Bryant says as we stop next to them.
Mom’s eyes rack over my dad. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop them,” she begins, but Dad cradles her face in his hands, gently keeping her from looking anywhere other than at his face. Seeming aware of how sickly he looks, Dad tells softly, “I’m okay. I’m so, so happy you’re both alright.”
Mom brings her hand up, touching the tips of her pointer and middle finger to Dad’s mouth. They stare into each other’s eyes. Bryant turns around when my mother starts to sniffle. He looks around the room at the people watching making eye contact with each of them as if to say, Mind your business. A couple of them don’t seem to be able to look away.
I clear my throat in the loud, annoyed fashion. It’s my go-to way to break up my parents any time they get overly mushy in my presence. They finally separate, but their hands are still linked when they part.
The door behind Dad opens again, and a rather short man leans out. “Evelyn Longston,” he calls into the waiting room.
A woman stands, straightens her shirt, and then follows the man inside the room. The door shuts crisply behind her.
“You got away.” Jake says, moving to stand next to me. He says it as if it’s no big deal, like I didn’t just escape a densely populated Rogue complex without so much as a scratch.
“You okay?” I ask.
It takes him a second to answer. “I told them,” he says, watching my mom begin to quietly weep in my father’s embrace. I suppose this means I’m far less likely to be chastised by Dad for running off from Clairabelle’s. “I told them…everything.”
I softly pat the top of Jake’s back. Hopefully having told me first made it easier for him to confide in a detective.
“I was brought to the Rogue headquarters,” I say quietly, wanting to draw his attention away from what he must be feeling. “I met the man running it.”
Jake perks up. “Did you talk to him? How did you get away?” His face tightens before I have a chance to answer. “Jesus, Taylor, you put a gun to your head. That was so stupid.”
I check to see if anyone’s still watching us before leaning in to Jake. “That guy that took me, the smaller one, he’s Cassidy’s brother.” Jake doesn’t look astonished. I chalk it up to him not knowing Cassidy like I do. “He brought me to—well, I think to their headquarters. It’s huge. They’ve got all kinds of machines doing—I don’t even know what.”
I notice his eyes lowering, then realize he’s scouring my arms. When he catches sight of the translucent band aid, he grabs my arm and rips it off to reveal the tiny punter mark.
“That’s nothing,” I say, but his grasp tightens, becoming borderline painful.
“Did they inject you with something?”
“All he did was take a sample of my blood. I watched him. He talked me through the whole process.”
“Who? Who took your blood?”
“The guy running the place.”
Jake pulls me by the arm to face my parents. Dad breaks away from my mom to lean down and plant a kiss on my forehead.
“They took her blood,” Jake whispers to my dad, pointing to the injection site on my arm.
Dad’s face darkens. Mom comes to my aid. “Rogues have been collecting blood from Seraphim for a long time.” She looks over at Jake. “They took your blood didn’t they?””
“Yeah, but—” Jake begins but Dad stops him.
“I need some air,” he says loud enough that everyone around can hear. We get another glance or two. “Jake, tell Detective Susan that Catherine and Taylor took an old man out for some fresh air?”
I can tell Jake doesn’t want to stay behind, but agrees nonetheless. He joins Bryant and two other guys who have clustered around a bench, though none of them actually sitting. Must be a power thing. Jake watches us as we depart.
He directs us to the door on the back right marked with an exit sign hanging over the door. “We’re going to have to walk around to the front entrance to get back in,” he tells us as he opens the door for us. The door opens to a short corridor. Do not enter signs are posted on the doors lining both sides of the corridor. At the end of the corridor is another guard sitting on a tall stool beside the door with a lite up exit sign above it. The door has a metal bar across it. “We know how to get back in,” Dad tells the guard as he gets up from the stool taking a key out of the chest pocket of his shirt.
“Good deal,” he says, putting the key in the lock in the middle of the bar, turning it, and then lifting the bar from the door.
Dad stops in the middle of the manicured lawn that stretches a good length behind the building before meeting the neighboring lot. He rubs the flesh between his upper lip and nose as he talks. “The reason Jake is up in arms about Rogues taking Taylor’s blood is that,” he watches Mom carefully as he says, “she’s what they have been looking for. By that I mean she’s…” He tries to find the words.
“More than a Veritatis.” Mom drops her head to look straight down at the ground.
Dad rests his chin on his hand, letting his fingers curl in front of his mouth as if in deep thought. “You know?”
Mom digs her hands in her pockets, keeping her chin tucked to her chest. She looks like she must be cold, but her forehead beads with sweat. “We don’t need to discuss it in depth,” she tells him. “I know Taylor is unique.”
Not knowing what to say, I give her my failsafe response: “Thanks, Mom.”
“I love you,” she says, taking a hand out of her pocket and hooking it around my arm to pull me closer to her.
“You too.” I lean into her.
She looks back at the ground and mumbles with her mouth under her collar, “Is there anything they can really do with just a blood sample?” when I finally figure out what they are doing.
Without much thought I ask, “Why are you talking like that?”
Mom pulls me to her in an almost hug. She nuzzles her nose in my hair just above my ear as if I had said something so sweet she that couldn’t help it. “Anyone could be watching us out here,” she purrs in my ear, letting my hair hide her lips. “The council has been known to employ professional lip readers.” She kisses my temple softly before releasing me.
I look between the two of them. “Do I have to talk to the Supreme Council?”
Dad nods his head adamantly, no longer covering his mouth. “Yes, you do. They need to know. Emphasize any fear you experienced or abuse you witnessed. It could help William’s case.” His finger uncurls to cover his upper lip. “Were you told why your blood was drawn?”
I think for a second, trying out a couple ways to cover my mouth without looking like I’m trying to do so. By the expressions on my parents’ faces, they must look as silly as they feel. The best I can come up with is taking a thick section of hair from my low ponytail and pulling it in front of my mouth to look like I’m playing with it. It’s an old habit I picked up when I studied for exams. Running the smooth strands of hair over my lips while smelling my shampoo helped me focus.
“I was told that it would prove that I was special.”
“Any specifics on what kind of special?” Dad asks, looking worried as he peers over at me.
“No,” I say, wondering how many kinds there could be. “He was going to show me the markers in my blood that were supposed to prove it once the tests were done, but we left before the machine finished.”
Dad’s looks relieved before Mom adds, “Plenty of people were still in the buildings when we left. Anyone could have finished the test. We have to assume that they know.”
I pull another section of hair from my ponytail, tickling my upper lip with it. “What are they going to know from it that they don’t already?”
My parents exchange a glance.
“The Supreme Council’s here,” Dad says, looking at Mom as if to assure her more than me. “They aren’t going to take any of us away.”
She looks up at Dad. “And all the other children out there, who’s going to protect them?” Her voice carries a hint of anger.
He stares at her a minute. The skin around his eyes tightens making the creases more visible around them. “We should go inside,” he finally says. “And you can tell them what you know.”
“Hello, Taylor. My name is Detective Susan,” the woman tells me as she walks me into a small, closed in cubicle. She looks to be close to my mom’s age. She’s dressed decent in a blazer, slacks, and cute ballerina-like flats, but I can’t help notice that she’s using a rubber band to hold her hair back. Woman to woman I would normally mention the damage a rubber band can do, but I doubt she’d care with how unkempt her hair looks. It’s a frizzy mess on top with hairs falling out on either side and she doesn’t even have it in a ponytail. It’s like she was pulling it through the last loop and gave up leaving it half pulled through in a floppy loop. “I’m not a Seraphim,” she states as if I didn’t know that the second she called me from the waiting area. “So there may be some follow-up questions once things have been reviewed.” I nod, sitting down in the first chair I get to in the tiny cubicle. Detective Susan steps around the small table I’m seated in front of to get to the seat across from me where a laptop is open and a box of tissue. She pushes the tissue box to the side to lay the folder down that she’s been carrying.
“To save time, I won’t ask you to write a statement. Everything that is said once you begin is recorded.”
Susan turns the laptop allowing me to see the screen and then taps on the screen to wake it up. A screen pops up. I watch as she types in my name, Taylor Jameson, and then presses a key that adds in the time and date. “Now,” she says, pressing the space bar. The “recording” sign appears, little voice waves rippling to life as a timer ticks the seconds off on the bottom of the screen. “Start from the beginning. And if you remember any distinguishable marks on anyone that you encountered while in the city—tattoos, scars, that sort of thing—no matter how unimportant you feel it may have been at the time please describe them.”
“Did you catch the people who left in the helicopter?” I ask.
Her mouth tightens into a flat line. “I don’t know anything about a helicopter. So it’s doubtful.” She adjusts the laptop just a little, sliding it so that it’s pointed right at me. “Now, from the beginning.”
I tell her about my family’s relationship to Jake and his parents. She doesn’t stop me to ask me what any of it has to do with being in the city. I take it as a sign that she isn’t going to rush me, so I touch on my part in the raid, just for the record. I don’t get much from her though, just a couple nods, so I pretty much speed through it.
The only part I really describe thoroughly is the state in which I found my dad when I opened his cell. She looks up at me, and I don’t realize there are tears coming until I see her reach for the box of tissues. She averts her eyes as I pause, and then takes one for herself. I shrink back in my chair some when I finally get to the part about getting taken by Gradney and Dex, and for a second I think about leaving out the bit with the gun. But that wouldn’t make any sense and I can’t think of anything better, so I just put my cards on the table. I’m worried she’ll think I’m unstable, but once I start talking, it seems like she’s finally listening. She almost seems impressed.
Detective Susan remains more alert as I tell her about being taken to the large complex. She asks a couple of qu
estions about some of the upper floors I visited, but then she pulls out a couple of papers from the folder and keeps glancing at them as I’m talking.
When I bring Cassidy’s name up, the detective seems to have stopped listening again. She looks like she’s having a rough day so I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I’ve had a pretty bad several months and I’m still doing what she’s asked. The least she could do is listen. I even repeat Cassidy’s last name each time I mention her, but Detective Susan just gives me a blank stare and occasionally wipes her nose with the tissue. I guess maybe she already knew about Cassidy and Gradney Sipe, but honestly I think she just really doesn’t care.
When I get to the part of Sidney being shot in the stomach I know for sure she isn’t paying attention. I completely skip over what happened after Kelly shot her while simultaneously failing to mention anything more about Mase. If she were listening, she would at least catch me on Mase being there one second and then forgotten the next.
It isn’t until I say something about running into the SWAT team while trying to get to an exit that she perks up. Once I have her attention, I immediately regret it.
“Did you just see SWAT or was there other law enforcement with them?”
I glance down at the table as I recall the men busting out of the stairwell their guns pointing out of it in all directions, but mostly at us. “There were regular police and a couple FBI with them.”
“Were any of them injured?”
“Not that I could tell. Bryant, one of the guys with me, knew Detective Ash and he started talking to him as they were instructing us to put our weapons down.” I leave out the part where the detectives recognized my mom. “The offices on either side of us and the SWAT were shut. The blinds on the office windows were closed too so we didn’t realize that we were surrounded until the detectives started walking towards us on the other side of the room. All of a sudden the windows are being shot out and bullets are flying,” I through my hands up added effect. Susan can’t take her eyes off of me now. “I mean, I’m pretty sure they were shooting from both sides. I don’t know how they didn’t shoot the guys in the office across from them, but as everyone scrambled back I saw the smaller detective and one of the SWAT guys get hit.” Susan is nodding along slowly. “There was another SWAT guy checking the offices,” I shrug, “I never saw what happened to him. They got everyone else back in the stairwell and we doubled back.”
