by Julie Hall
This mess I could clean up on my own. Time to find out if she had any advice for the quagmire I didn’t know how to navigate.
“That water is deceptively cold.” I glared at the large pond in front of us. Romona’s laugh was like the chiming of bells.
“You would know.”
We were seated on a bench overlooking the very body of water Logan had pitched me into so many months ago. The memory of that event usually both irritated and amused me, but as I sat with my best friend and grandmother, the tug of the bond telling me exactly which direction Logan was relative to my position, I felt only vexed. I shook off the feeling and concentrated on what was important.
“How’s Grandpa?”
“Doing well, considering the circumstances. He was pretty beat up in the accident, but when I left they’d removed him from the intensive care unit. They think he had a mild stroke. Healing will be slow for him because of his age, and there’s a good chance he may get his driver’s license revoked, but he’ll live. Your parents were talking about having him move in with them. For his sake, I hope he agrees, if for nothing else than companionship. He’s been alone for too long. I think living with family will be good for him.” The sigh she heaved gave me a clue as to the true state of her heart.
“Grandpa can be pretty stubborn.”
“Ha, don’t I know it.” Her eyes took on a faraway quality. “Only time will tell how things are going to play out.”
“And the family in the vehicle he struck?”
“Broken bones, bumps and bruises mostly. The mother is still in intensive care. She sustained a head injury, and they are keeping her in a medically induced coma.” She breathed deeply. “That one’s rough. The whole lot of them are at the same hospital.”
“Oh gosh. How’s Mom doing? Is Grandpa with it enough to understand what happened?”
“Yes, he is. He’s pretty devastated about the whole thing. He doesn’t remember much. Your parents are holding it together. It could have been much worse. Right now, I think everyone is focusing on the fact there wasn’t any loss of life. Your brother has been talking with the other family. Praying with them.”
“What? Really?”
She nodded. We sat in silence for a few minutes. Both of us lost in our own thoughts. The mention of my brother had me reliving moments from the battle.
“Did you see what happened to James at the house? After he started to pray with Mom?”
“Only some of it. I was trying to fight my way to them. That was some powerful stuff. I’m proud of him.”
“Me too. Who knew my little bro had it in him?” I laughed.
“Strength in the face of adversity is a family trait.” She gave me a cheeky grin. “You all got that from me, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it. But that whole glowing transparent armor thing was crazy! I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“He truly did step up to the challenge. He bore the full armor of God. Once he did that, the demons didn’t stand a chance. Speaking of God,” she turned her body toward me, “it seems like you’ve been holding out on me.”
“Hey.” I held up my hands in front of me. “I had no idea who he really was. To me he was just Hugo. I didn’t have a clue I’d been training with a deity—the deity—for the last several months. I just thought he was a little . . . quirky.”
Romona busted up laughing. “Only you would come up with that, Audrey.”
I flushed. “Please don’t make me feel any dumber than I already do. It seems so obvious to me now.”
“Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. If Hugo didn’t want to reveal to you who he truly was, you weren’t going to stumble across it on your own. It’s all in His timing, you know?”
“I think I’m finally starting to grasp that. Even if I don’t like it.”
“I’m sure, given the opportunity, many of us would be tempted to choose our own timetables, but they wouldn’t be what is best for us. Considering my finite knowledge versus God’s omniscient and omnipotent power, I’m glad I’m not the one in charge.”
She had a valid point. It was my impatient nature that repeatedly reared its ugly head. “Yeah.”
We lapsed into a comfortable silence once again.
“So, Logan and I are bonded again . . . or rather, for real this time.”
“What?” Romona’s body jerked so violently she almost fell off the bench. If we’d been about to dive into a different subject matter, I might have laughed.
“Yep. He smacked a good one on me earlier today. And I . . . well,” heat rose to my face, “didn’t exactly do a good job of stopping him.”
Romona’s giggles brought my gaze to her. My eyes narrowed.
“Déjà vu much?” I asked.
“Oh, my. Audrey, you look so grumpy. You two just couldn’t stay away from each other, could you?”
“How can you seriously find this funny?”
“How can you seriously not?” she countered. “You are probably the only one who didn’t see this coming from a mile away.”
“Apparently so,” I grumbled. “Come on, I’m your granddaughter. Shouldn’t you be more protective of me or something?”
Romona did her best to iron out her expression. She failed. A sly smile still lit her face. “I don’t fully understand why you are so upset. It does, as they say, take two to tango.”
At that moment, I hated the saying. I wasn’t ready to admit my own guilt. I crossed my arms over my chest and slumped into the bench. “See, that right there is why I’m so mad. It was a total sneak attack. Like a kiss and run.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, this is getting interesting indeed. A kiss and run. It sounds rather . . . quick.”
“Never mind about the length. We’re not talking about that right now.”
“Oh, my.” Romona’s eyes flitted around my head, looking everywhere but my face. “I don’t think we need to actually have that conversation for me to make an educated guess.”
Why was I always the last to realize my hair was doing its thing? “Argh, this stupid hair!”
She shrugged as if to say ‘you said it, not me’.
Closing my eyes, I smiled at Romona’s soft gasp. I had turned my hair green on purpose. For some reason the thought of me ruining my brown hair was always a little disturbing to her.
“There, that feels better.”
The grimace on her face told me exactly what she thought of the new shade. “It reminds me of a booger,” she said.
“Well that’s perfect. I love boogers.” Oops, that was a little loud. I snuck a glance around, and sure enough there were more than a set or two of eyes on my neon hair. Just on principle, I wasn’t going to change it back right away.
Romona patted my hand. “Whatever you say, dear.” Her disgust had morphed into amusement once again. “But back to the point. I’ll tell you what I told you before. You let him go in your heart, and you won’t need to worry about this pesky bond. Poof, problem solved.” She waved her hands in the air like she was batting a mosquito away. Her sly smile was back in place.
“Like I’m capable of that anymore,” I grumbled under my breath.
“What was that?”
I let out a frustrated breath of air. Time to get real. We both knew this bond wasn’t going to disappear. “I have feelings for him. Big feelings. The bond’s not going anywhere this time.”
“Well, of course I know that.”
“I know you know.”
She frowned. “Then what I can’t understand is why you are so upset.”
Did I even understand why? “I’m upset because I didn’t get a say in the matter.”
Her eyebrows lifted as if she didn’t believe me.
“Seriously, it was like a smash and grab.”
“You’re likening it to a robbery now?”
I sat up a little straighter and pointed a finger at her. “Yes, exactly. It was like a bonding heist. And I was the bank. What’s a girl got to do around here to get a little wooing be
fore committing her eternity to someone?”
“Oh, Audrey.” Romona’s light laughter filled the air, “I have a feeling Logan has quite a bit of wooing in his future before you fully come on board with his plans. Some groveling probably as well.”
I flopped back against the bench and folded my arms. “Dang straight. Like right now, I know he is . . .” I reached out to that newly awakened part of me that zeroed into Logan like a stinkin’ GPS signal, “Right in there.” I pointed back toward the training center. “When we first came out here he was over there.” I pointed off to the right. “I’m not interested in knowing where he is at all times, let alone being all in tune and aware of it. How am I ever going to not think about him?”
“You can tell where he is right now?” She sounded surprised.
“Yeah. Is that not normal?”
She shrugged. “Maybe it is. I wouldn’t know. I’m not bonded to anyone.”
“Aren’t you supposed to know all about this stuff?”
She gave me a stern look. “Audrey, I’m your grandmother, not your bonding guru.”
“So much for older and wiser.” I cracked a smile.
“Hey. I’m still plenty wiser.”
“If you say so.” I used my most patronizing voice. She rolled her eyes at me.
“But you do have a point,” she conceded.
“I do?”
“Yes.” She finally, finally sobered. “Bonding is a huge commitment. You are rather young. And I am your closest Earth relative here.” She crossed her arms and studied me closely. “I should be more adult about this with you.”
I nodded. Yes, yes, she should. This was some serious—
“What were you thinking kissing Logan, young lady?”
“Wh-what?”
She leveled me with a look. “Audrey, you are a very intelligent young woman. What did you think would happen if you allowed Logan to kiss you?”
If Romona was only pretending to be authoritative, she was a really good actress. This wasn’t exactly what I was going for.
“What part of ‘hit and run’ or ‘smash and grab’ didn’t you get?”
“The part where your hair went bubble-gum pink when the length of the kiss came up.”
She was serious, too. This was so much worse than her playful ribbing.
“Ah, there it is again,” she said with a self-satisfied smile. “I knew I could get rid of that putrid shade of green.”
“Are you messing with me right now?”
She looked at me with a straight face and blinked. Twice. Then a smile broke through. “Of course, I am. I think the world of Logan. He’s really come a long way in the months you two were apart. And just because you’re bonded doesn’t mean you can’t still take things slow.”
“It doesn’t?” A sharp slap of relief jolted my heart.
“No. In fact, I am going to get parental for a moment and insist you take your time. It’s not like you’re going to be going ahead with the ceremony and moving in with each other tomorrow.”
I choked on nothing.
“Right?” she demanded sternly.
“Oh my gosh. Of course, not. There’s a ceremony?”
“This situation is a little like an engagement, so of course there’s a ceremony. But there’s no limit on how long the ‘engagement,’” she used air quotes, “period has to last.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” I sagged back in my seat. “Everything has just seemed so out of control lately. It’s nice to know it’s possible to slow this train down. A century or two ought to teach him a lesson.”
Romona actually snorted at me. “Like that’s going to happen.”
“I don’t like what you are implying.” I stuck my nose in the air. “I have amazing self-control.”
“Sure you do, dear.” She patted my hand. “But do you think that’s maybe what’s truly bothering you? The afterlife moving a little too quickly for you?”
I thought about it for a minute. It had only been how long since I’d died? Not even a full year. And in that short time, everything had changed.
“Perhaps. Most likely. Maybe?”
Romona slung an arm around my neck and pulled me forward into a hug. “If it’s one thing you have now in spades, my darling granddaughter, it’s time.”
“You really did a number on this place,” Romona said, looking around the gym after we returned. “How do you suppose you managed to get that sword stuck all the way up there?”
With arms loaded down with bits of a practice dummy, I tracked her gaze up to where a rapier was impaled in the ceiling twenty feet above our heads.
“I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, I have no idea. I don’t even have an educated guess.”
“Huh.”
“Exactly.”
I returned to the task of putting the gym back together, but a seed of something unpleasant had taken root in my gut, where it had been blooming for the past half-hour. It was an uncomfortable sensation of unease I just couldn’t shake. Shortly after it started I noticed I couldn’t detect Logan’s presence anymore. I almost said something to Romona a handful of times, but I didn’t know how to explain it to her.
“You know, I think we may need to track down a ladder to—”
The gym doors slammed open with a bang, cutting off whatever Romona was going to say next. Kevin stood panting hard in the doorway. I glanced at Romona, and I’m sure I mirrored her look of surprise. I wanted to ask Kevin what was wrong, but the unpleasant bloom in the pit of my stomach said I wasn’t going to like whatever he was here to tell us.
A part of me I almost didn’t want to acknowledge already knew what was wrong. If I could stop him from uttering the words, would the realm keep moving forward as it should? For surely once the truth passed through his lips, whatever peace I’d made with my afterlife would be ripped away.
He looked straight at me. The whites of his eyes stood out in stark contrast to his dark irises and mocha-colored skin. “You have to come right away. He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Romona asked in confusion.
Kevin answered, but it was for Romona’s benefit alone. I didn’t even hear his words, for I already knew. My intuition had been screaming at me for thirty minutes.
Something terrible had happened to Logan.
26
A Truth Revealed
“Oof. Sorry,” I mumbled at the hunter I’d just bumped off of like I was the metal ball in a pinball machine.
Romona snuck a worried glance over her shoulder for about the millionth time as she and Kevin gracefully moved through the mass of bodies like shifting mist. I was taking the bull-in-a-china-shop approach to navigating the foot traffic. Bouncing, rebounding, and plowing right into people.
Logan was gone, and my mind felt as if it was missing right along with him.
Logan.
I didn’t know exactly what was going on, Kevin hadn’t been forthcoming with information, but still my heart twisted painfully. Each hurried step forward brought me closer to finding out what in the world was happening.
“Whoa. Whoops, we just passed it.” Kevin skidded to a stop, then brushed past me back to the nondescript door we’d all flown right by.
They seriously needed to label these doors. How anyone knew where they were going was still a mystery to me. I still got lost more often than not.
Kevin twisted the handle, and the three of us pushed through the doorway all at once. There was a momentary jam before we popped through the bottleneck we’d created.
The glowing figure in front of us turned upon our entry.
“Shannon?”
It was Shannon who had first introduced me to Logan, and although I didn’t know it at the time, she was an angel. Back when I was training with Logan it was somewhat common to see her, but not so much since I’d been working with Hugo.
Shannon appeared just as put together as I remembered. Her severe, yet beautiful, features didn’t convey any of her underlining emotions. That is, if she had any.
Her raven hair was pulled tightly back into her signature bun. Her fitted navy dress and suit jacket were all business, just like her. Only the ethereal glow of her skin gave her away as a being other than human.
“Good, you’re finally here. We can start the official debrief. In this situation, we really don’t have a moment to lose.”
A sniffle from somewhere behind Shannon caught my attention. I stepped up to the rectangular table along with everyone else and noticed Kaitlin was already there. Tears ran down her cheeks, and her normally flawless skin was red and blotchy. My anxiety ratcheted up.
“Hey, guys,” she said in a small voice as she lifted her hand in a weak hello.
My lid had officially been flipped.
“Someone better tell me what’s going on in the next three seconds or I’m going to start . . . start throwing some chairs or something!”
Yeah, that was good. Throwing chairs was surely a scary enough threat to loosen their tongues. Sometimes I was a complete moron. The look Shannon shot me said she agreed.
“Audrey. Sit.”
My butt hit the seat without hesitation. She had that authoritative thing down like no one I knew.
“What’s going on? Where’s Logan?” I demanded. Kaitlin let out a wet crying-choking sound I completely ignored.
“Before I start, I don’t want any of you panicking,” Shannon said. “You’ve all been called here because you’re close to Logan. I want you to know a plan is being created as we speak to ensure his safe extraction, but we didn’t think it was wise to keep you in the dark.”
“Extraction!” I panicked whether Shannon liked it or not. “Where does he need to be extracted from?” He was just here. Foreign anxiety mixed with my own, but since it wasn’t as severe as my own, it actually calmed me a bit. I looked down to see Romona had taken hold of my hand.
Shannon blew out a breath of frustration. “Audrey, I understand the delicate nature of your concern right now, but will you please let me finish?”
“Delicate nature?” Kaitlin asked in a small voice.
