by B D Grant
“I didn’t want you waking up and worrying that I wasn’t in bed with you.”
“You can share a bed with Dad, Mom. I can sleep by myself.”
“You used to not be able to fall asleep unless I was with you,” she reminds me. Mom used to have a photo framed on her nightstand of me and her asleep when I was little. My arm was slung across her face so that all you could see was her partially-open mouth and my leg propped on her stomach.
I pull the bed-sheet higher over my shoulder, beginning to feel cold without the heat of Mom’s body against me. “I was, like, two.”
“And after you started sleeping in your own bed, I could always tell when you were anxious about something because you would sleepwalk into our room.”
Not this again. She and Dad always teased me for it until around middle school, when I started storming off every time one of my parents brought it up. “I’ll sleep just fine.” I don’t say it, but I’m glad they’re in the room with me. I feel another low pang in my stomach for Jake.
She kisses my cheek several times before going to her bed to pull the covers down.
The sound of my dad snoring only wakes me once during the night.
Chapter 20
At the old insurance building, Dad stops by the restroom while Mom and I meander around the first floor. Uncle Will left a message for us at the front desk of the hotel letting my parents know that his defense team wants to review everything with Mom before we report to the courtroom in case the council is planning to ask her any questions about the statement she gave. Dad checked on Jake before we left. He wasn’t ready to leave yet, so Dad has him making an appointment with the council’s grievance counselor once he gets here.
Kelly joins Mom and me once we’ve taken a seat on a bench in the first floor waiting area. The waiting room is already mostly full, Seraphim sitting around wearily. There’s some quiet chatter, but most are drinking coffee, reading magazines, or staring blankly at their phones. I guess they must have more detectives taking statements.
Kelly squeezes in next to me, and I shift over on the bench to make room. His arm presses uncomfortably into my right side. “Do they already have Mitchell back there?” mom asks.
“Yeah,” he says, watching a middle-age man walk by, “they have more questions for him about the raid.” He looks over at my mom. “Do you think they’re planning on putting him on trial next?”
“It sounds like he’s just helping them build their cases against the Rogues.”
From the other side of the door facing the bench to the left of us, we hear an angry yell. Immediately, Kelly stiffens. A security guard from the front entrance rushes from around the corner to the door.
Everyone’s heads turn as the security guard rushes through the door, but I hear nothing else.
“Uh, Taylor,” Kelly mumbles beside me.
I look over and find that my hand isn’t grasping the edge of the bench but rather the top of Kelly’s hand. “Oh, um, sorry.” I pull away.
“The detective who took Mitchell back told me that they want to talk to me again soon,” he tells me, keeping his voice low.
Gratefully, I take the change of subject. “You’ll be fine. You might even get a detective who doesn't have time to hear everything like I did.”
He leans in toward me. “I don’t know if I can talk to them again…” he trails off. I’m about to give him a pep talk when he says, “Could you…come back with me, maybe?”
That last part gets Mom’s attention. I can already hear her asking me if I think Kelly’s cute in my head. He’s cute and tall like your dad, don’t you think? I’m already getting annoyed, and she hasn’t even said anything yet. “You’ll be fine. They’re talking to everyone.”
His eyes plea with mine. I turn from him to the empty wall straight ahead of me. The council really should decorate this place, if for no other reason than to give someone like me something to stare at. I pretend there’s something interesting to look at on the wall. I make the mistake of looking too far to the side, and catch sight of Kelly still looking like he’s silently pleading with me. “I have to have you with me,” his eyes say. The discomfort of his gaze getting the best of me, I stand.
Mom slides across the bench to him. “We’ll see what we can do, sweetheart.”
“Mom!” I squeal. I catch a few people looking at us over the tops of their papers, and I shrink in on myself. “I don’t want to,” I whisper angrily.
“He’s scared, Taylor.” She reaches out to take my hand, but I pull my arms back before she can get to either hand.
“I’m not scared,” Kelly counters, “It’s for…” he looks back at the door where the yelling has since turned into silence, “their safety,” he explains. “She needs to be there to keep me from losing it.” Mom nods along.
I shake my head at him, keeping my voice low. “I helped you snap out of it after you went D-mode. That was one time. And I’m not even one hundred percent sure I had anything to do with that.” He tries to interrupt, but I’m on a roll. “You can’t say for sure that I could even stop you if someone sets you off; that’s what their Tempero are here for.” He gives me a less than convinced stare. “And what are you going to say if they want to know why I walk back there with you?” I ask.
“Easy,” he says, sounding sure of himself. “I’ll say that we’re dating, and that as an ex-Rogue prisoner, I need the emotional support. They told me last time that I could have Mitchell in there if it made me feel more comfortable. Why not a girlfriend?”
Although Mom knows we aren’t really dating, she gives me an accusing glare. “But I’m not your girlfriend,” I say tell Kelly for the express purpose of my mom hearing it, and being a Veritatis, for her to know without a doubt that I am not dating him.
To my dismay, Mom says to me, “All he has to do is ask you out and then it won’t be a lie.”
My eyes grow big in indignation. “Who’s side are you on?”
She smiles sweetly, enjoying my reaction. “You know they’ll know if you’re lying.”
Kelly takes my hand in his. “Will you date me?” he says with unnecessary relish at my discomfort.
I try not to make it obvious to anyone who might still be watching that I’m trying to pull my hand away from him. He's too strong though, and I give up frowning at the both of them. “Sure,” I say bleakly.
“And thanks a lot,” I tell Mom, crossing my arms as soon as Kelly lets go of my hand.
A door opens behind me. Kelly’s head snaps to the right as Mitchell emerges from the door several feet to the right of our bench. Kelly goes straight to him while I turn pointedly away from Mom. She grabs my elbow and pulls me toward her. I plop down on the bench beside her. She proceeds to gently run her fingers over my back and through my hair just like she would back home when she could tell that I was having a rough day. If it didn’t feel so good to have her back, I would shrug her hand off.
“What if they call Kelly back next, and you and Uncle Will are with the council when he gets finished?” I ask her.
“I have to meet with Will’s attorneys first,” she says, rubbing my back. “I can control my temper fine, but if Kelly attacks one of the detectives, he’ll be arrested.” She leans in closer to my ear. “And the council has never taken kindly to Seraphim who act up on their watch, no matter the circumstances.”
She’s right, and I know it. And besides, Mom has Dad to be there for her if Kelly’s interview takes a while.
After a minute longer, Mitchell knocks on the door he just shut; when someone opens it halfway from the other side, he slips through. Kelly rejoins us by the bench.
“He’s going to tell them that you have to come with me.” He gives me a small wink that I return with an eye roll.
Mom stands up. “And if the detectives start asking you about Taylor, what are you going to say?” Her tone is all business.
“That my relationship is none of their business. And if they really want to dig into my personal life, they should be l
ooking into what Lia Heincliff tried to do to Gran while I was at that school.”
“Gran?” Mom asks.
“His grandmother,” I tell her.
She tilts her head looking intrigued. “What did they try to do to your grandmother?”
Kelly smiles triumphantly. “Exactly.”
Mom sits back after a second, nodding approvingly.
Mitchell reemerges, followed by a skinny woman in a dark skirt suit with a laptop cradled in her arms. He walks her over. “I’m Sandy, I work for the Supreme Council,” she says, smiling cordially at Kelly. “You’re Mr. Edwards, I presume.”
“Yes ma’am.” Kelly says, offering her his hand. She keeps both hands firmly on the laptop. That’s rude. Kelly retracts his hand, looking around at all of us uncomfortably. He steps to the side so that she can have an unobstructed view of me. “And this is Taylor.”
She gives me the same smile. “How do you do?”
“I’ve been better,” I answer quickly, and then immediately second-guess myself. Does how do you do mean the same thing as how are you?
“You both can come with me,” she says, retreating toward the door.
“You’ll do fine,” Mitchell tells Kelly as we follow after her. He pats his shoulder and speaks so quietly that I almost miss it. “I’ll be waiting here.”
Sandy brings us to the same room I was in for my interview. The cubicle has been rearranged; there are now two chairs on one side of the thin table. A pen and notepad are waiting in front of Sandy’s chair on the other side. “Mr. Edwards, I’ve heard good things about you from Mitchell Lanton and Christopher Baudin.” She carefully sets her laptop on the table and takes a seat in the lone chair facing the door. Kelly lets me have my pick of the two chairs remaining. “Neither one of them mentioned your size—you can’t deny you’re a Dynamar, that’s for sure,” she says giving Kelly a toothy smile as she types. Kelly and I force polite chuckles.
After a second, she swivels the laptop around so that Kelly and I can see it. “This will be transcribing what we say as well as recording.” As she’s talking, her words pop up on the screen. She presses the space bar, and the screen goes dark. “It’s helping tremendously since we lost some of our manpower.” She pulls out two bottles of water from behind the table and then sets them in front of us.
“This may be repetitive,” she says to Kelly, “but I need you to recap what you experienced, starting with the bus incident. And only your firsthand account. Refrain from telling me what others may have told you.” She taps the space bar again, and the screen comes back to life. She picks up the pen and notepad from the desk, flipping the pad to the first page. “Please begin.”
As Kelly talks, Sandy listens intently. The only time she writes anything down in the notepad is when Kelly mentions a new name.
The Tempero working in the building are doing a good job keeping the sad vibes to a minimum today. I should be fighting back tears when Kelly describes his struggle to get Boston down from the noose he’d made with a bed sheet. Instead, I sit motionless as I try to connect the lively Boston I’d known in the hospital after the raid to the Boston who felt so depressed and lost that he would hang himself. I hardly feel a twinge. Still, I reach across our chairs to rest my hand on Kelly’s forearm. He barely seems to notice. I keep watching his face for any signs that he’s getting too worked up, but he seems to be allowing the Tempero to do their thing.
Sandy scoots her chair closer to the desk leaning across it when Kelly gets to the part of his Elite training after agreeing to work with Kian. She can’t take her eyes off of him. I catch myself stroking his forearm with my thumb. Sandy’s hand moves along the top edge of the desk. Not seeming to be able to find what she’s looking for, she finally looks down at the desk pushing her chair back. She opens the top drawer and smiles. She takes out a notepad and pen. She shuts the drawer and doesn’t bother to pull her chair back up as she flips the pad open. She scribbles as Kelly talks about the first training exercise where the candidates were left in the woods for days.
“The first guy was kicked out after that. He suffered some sort of mental break. I ended up getting an infection in my arm and thought I was going to be the next one to go, but they were surprisingly cool about it. They took a skin sample.” He glances at his right arm. His arm looks nothing like it did after the basement explosion. I can only tell in the areas where he sustained third degree burns that he was even ever injured. “From that they made a solution that they sprayed on my arm and neck,” he glances over at me, and I lean forward slightly to look at his neck. He grins. “It’s crazy, right?” Sandy clears her throat, causing Kelly to turn back to her. “I ended up being sent to the guy several times for treatment, but the training never stopped. I got better at…” he glances at me out of the corner of his eyes, “doing what was asked of me. Once it was past the field trails the remainder of the guys dropped like flies. They wanted us to kill people.” His words are harsh, but Sandy doesn’t react, just her writing slows.
He leaves the worst parts out. He doesn’t tell her about the Tempero the Rogues unleashed him on once he had perfected his internal blocking ability, nor those he killed in his final Elite test. The young boy from his memories keeps flashing in my head. I think if the Tempero weren’t here I’d have conflicted emotions of sadness for the boy and anger toward Kelly for what Kian’s people had him do. I can’t tell if he’s keeping those parts from Sandy so she won’t see him as a cold-blooded killer, or if he’s subconsciously managed to bury the ugliest memories deep enough that he no longer recalls them taking place. Either way, I go along with it, trying to do my part in portraying the loving girlfriend of a guy who has been through hell.
“There was no graduation for passing the training, but they had a couple of Elites come shake my hand.”
“Names,” Sandy says from her notepad, the laptop changing fonts when she speaks. “What were their names?”
“I don’t know that they told me.” He waits for another question, but she doesn’t say a word. “I was put to work in the Baton Rouge compound as a glorified bodyguard when Kian Sipe was in. The room that they gave me was an upgrade from the boys’ barracks I had been in before the training. I worked twelve hour shifts with the other Dynas working security.”
Sandy holds a pointer finger in the air for him to hold on. “How many Elites were working with you?”
“There could have been some on the opposite shift, or working on the lower levels, but I was the only one on my shift.”
“How did you know who was an Elite and who wasn’t?”
Kelly looks at her a moment. “We don’t talk…much. That’s probably the easiest way to tell.”
Sandy frowns, looking down at her notepad. “They don’t make all of you wear the same uniform?” Kelly shakes his head when she looks up. Looking disappointed, she glances back at the notepad. “I’m not getting a clear picture of what exactly it was that made them want to train you to be an Elite.” She runs a pen over the side of her notes. “Can you give me a demonstration of you blocking the Tempero here in the building?”
This is what he was worried about. I can see his wheels turning as Sandy looks at him expectantly. He reluctantly gives me a sideways glance. I hesitantly lift my hand from his arm. Sandy leans back in her chair, watching him carefully.
As Kelly rises from his seat, she sits up straight in her chair in anticipation.
His hands curl into fists at his sides, but it’s his eyes that I’m watching closely. The second I no longer see my Kelly, it’s going to be hard for me to keep myself from grabbing on to him and pulling him back from wherever he goes.
The door behind me opens, and I jump. Kelly barely turns to look over his shoulder.
The woman opening the door brings with her a peacefulness that I try to breath in. With Kelly standing beside me, I reach the back of my hand out and brush the back of his hand as she steps inside. She’s Native American, I think, with warm brown skin. Her hair is long and dark. It sw
ays gracefully around her arms as she moves.
With a glance at us, she asks Sandy, “Is everything okay in here?” Her voice is like a feather, soft and gentle.
Sandy gives the woman a tight grin and stands. “Perfectly. We’ll be done shortly. Do you need the room, Kemma?”
Unsure of what they want, I sit, and Kelly follows. Kemma looks at the laptop screen. “I’m relieving you,” she says. “The council needs you at the penitentiary.”
“Oh,” she says, her face brightening. She hops around the table. “Mr. Edward’s has filled me in on just about everything.” For the first time, Kemma’s eyes fall on us, and Kelly gives her a little nod in affirmation.
“Thank you,” Kemma tells her, turning the laptop to face her as she swaps notes with Sandy. When Sandy’s gone, Kemma moves the laptop over to the side of the small desk. Once she has pressed the space bar, initiating the transcribing program, she’s no longer interested in it.
She smiles warmly at Kelly, but I don’t get so much as a glance. “Are you sure you want Taylor in here for the remainder of your interview?” Her knowing my name throws me. I know that I’ve never seen her before, but the way she says my name has me second-guess myself.
This time, it’s Kelly who reaches over and rests a hand on my arm. The warmth from his hand spreads through my arm. “Yes.”
She nods, unsurprised. “Pick up where you left off, when you’re ready.”
Kemma doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that Sandy took the notepad. She simply watches Kelly and listens. “Mase was shadowing me when I was paged to escort Flea and Taylor to meet Kian Sipe.” Kemma takes a deep breath, but she doesn’t stop him.
She doesn’t interrupt him to ask any questions even when he begins describing our escape, nor does she say anything when he mentions my mom, Bryant, and me disappearing from the group once we made it to the ground floor of the Rogue complex. Anytime he breaks eye contact with her, Kemma follows his gaze to whatever he turns his attention to: his hand rubbing his jeans, his shoe, the loose thread poking out of his jeans just above his knee.
