by Sarah Noffke
“I’m trying to help you learn from my mistakes.”
“Well, I might have to stay here because of a bargain I made with you, but I don’t have to do anything you say. I’m not dumping George because you think it’s a good idea.”
I can’t believe what I told Aiden is correct. Trey doesn’t want me to be with anyone. Aiden was right all along. And I almost let him risk everything he’d worked for. His parents worked for. And he would have lost it…because of me. I’m some sort of asset to Trey, and he’s protecting it. The idea infuriates me and also seriously piques my interest. Why is Trey trying to keep my attention clear? What’s his agenda?
“Do you not want me in a relationship so I’ll provide a dozen news reports for the Institute each day?”
“No,” he says, like it’s a ridiculous notion.
“Why you do care?”
“Because you have a future to fulfill and you’re only going to do it if you’re free to make choices based on…”
“On what?” I almost yell, but find the tact to keep my voice in check. “Is this another ploy to hide information? What do you know, Trey?”
“Roya, this conversation is over.”
“It’s not over!” I say, stomping two feet in his direction.
“I’m going to ask you to keep it polite between you and George in front of the Institute, as well as behind closed doors,” Trey says in a steady, almost unrecognizable tone.
“Oh, so I should move out of his room?”
He cuts his eyes at me. “I know you’re not living in his room.”
“Because you have spies on me, right?”
“This conversation is over,” Trey says, shaking his head at me, more disappointment than anger in his eyes.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The moment Joseph answers his door he rolls his eyes at me. “You could save yourself a lot of trouble and just stop arguing with him.”
“And what fun would that be?”
“What was it about this time?”
“George,” I say, tugging him out the door and down the hallway.
“Oh, so Pops doesn’t want you dating George, huh?” Joseph says with a clever grin.
“More like anyone at all. I’m supposed to remain ‘focused.’” I use air quotes for the last word.
“So you really think it’s a good idea if I come out to him right now and make my relationship with T public?” Joseph whispers.
“Yeah, I do. Just don’t make out with him in the main hall. It’s not printed in the Institute Code of Conduct, but it’s apparently a no-no.”
“Oh, no! You didn’t?” He breaks into hysterical laughter.
“No, I didn’t. It was just a few innocent kisses.”
Joseph narrows his eyes at me, reading something deep within. “Sure,” he says, his tone full of disbelief.
“I’m still having trouble understanding why my personal life is everyone’s damn business all the time,” I say.
“Enough about boring you,” Joseph says. “I wanna talk about why Ren was there when our mother died.”
“That’s why we’re going to his dungeon to meet with him right now,” I say, my thoughts still absorbed in the Trey mess.
“I know, Stark,” he says petulantly. “It’s called speculation. Curious people do it.”
“Well, here’s something to speculate, Mr. Curiosity. Isn’t it creepy to have a meeting set up with the dark leprechaun so we can learn the sordid history of our mother’s death?”
“It is, but not in comparison to everythin’ else in our present reality,” Joseph says as we disembark from the elevator.
He’s right. Having a prearranged meeting to learn how our mother died is really not the creepiest thing going on in our lives right now. Lately, I’m on edge and hardly present because I half expect to hear a siren signaling Zhuang is on the third level about to start a killing spree. If that isn’t enough to make it ridiculously difficult to keep my breakfast down, then there’s also the Chase reality. I think the idea that he wants to impregnate me with little Voyageurs who’ll certainly grow up to do evil things is worse than Zhuang’s imminent attack. Yeah, in retrospect meeting with Ren to find out how our mother died sounds almost normal.
Ren’s office door is open. He’s expecting us. My shoulders tense and a dull ache runs down the middle of my spine. I don’t want to do this. Joseph gives me commiserating look. “Me either,” he says in response to the hesitations in my head. “Don’t worry, this will be over soon.”
“Have you so soon forgotten how lengthy Ren’s lectures can be?”
“I’m trying to create my reality.”
I force a weak smile and let him take the lead.
Ren’s sitting at his desk, tapping a pen on his bent knee and looking more repugnant than usual. I sense he would rather be doing anything else than this. Two metal folding chairs sit opposite of him. With a dramatic wave he motions to them like he’s presenting us with side-by-side thrones.
“Go on now. Take a seat so we can get this show on the road.”
Ren drums the pen a few more times before looking up and catching my gaze. His emerald eyes are bloodshot, which amplifies the color of his red hair. He’s obviously not a morning person from the way his face is more drawn than usual. Setting down the pen he exchanges it for a mug, taking a few sips. “So, Trey has requested I fill you kiddos in on a bit of history. You’ll have to excuse the brevity I’m going to give this lecture. You see, I’m not a history teacher and I absolutely disagree with the idea that you two will benefit from learning anything about what I know. However, I’ve been overruled on the subject.” He drums his fingers against the side of the coffee mug. A nervous habit. One of the first he’s ever exhibited. Maybe I should be enjoying this.
Ren flashes me a look of contempt. I like to think that he reserves that one especially for me.
“It looks like you’ve softened Trey up after all. Bravo,” he says with zero enthusiasm.
Taking in a long breath, he stares at the floor. “Oh, all right, here we go. After Eloise became pregnant with you two, Trey moved her to Stockholm, Sweden.” Ren’s speaking at lightning speed. “Here’s some random, yet related information. Once a pregnancy has progressed so far, and the fetus has its own consciousness, then a mummy-to-be cannot dream travel safely. That extra consciousness could get tied up in the layers. Therefore your parents made the decision to live outside the Institute until you two hatched. The place they chose was well known to be safe and had the proper medical facilities in place, which was the biggest part of the equation for Trey. All went fine for the first few months, well, as far as anyone knew. However, Eloise was being haunted by a foreboding feeling that someone would come and try to kill her and her children. She was right.”
Ren pauses, but he doesn’t make eye contact. Instead he keeps his eyes low, like the light of the room is too much to bear.
“Allouette had been charged by Chase to find Eloise and kill her and her children. Your mother was always a bit passionate and driven by emotion, however she was a trillion times more charged when she was pregnant. She awoke one night and decided that the only way she could escape this nightmare was to face it. Apparently she left a note for Trey and popped off to the docks where she planned to charter a ship to France. She believed, because that’s what she’d been told to believe, that the safest way for her to travel at that point in her pregnancy was by boat. It had all been a setup. Everything to get her to that boat had been a part of the plan. While your mother looked over her shoulder during the first and second trimesters, fearing her own death, Allouette knew that the only danger was toward the end, which is how long it took that dirty witch to put her plan into the works.”
Ren coughs and takes a sudden gulp of coffee, probably to erase how uncomfortable he’s obviously feeling right now.
“As you’ve already learned, Allouette is especially dark. She’s also especially crafty. She had constructed the perfect plan for how to give Chase exactl
y what he wanted. It didn’t involve long brutal months of hunting down a pregnant woman and slaying her in a dark alley. Instead she used her resources and bored into this young woman’s brain to implant the message that there was no safe place on Earth. That no matter what, she and her children would never ever be safe. Allouette made it her mission for a long nine months to find every possible way to make Eloise believe that the only means of survival was to board a ship and sail back to her father, who would find compassion in his heart to end this war and protect his daughter and grandchildren. Eloise believed these dreams and thoughts that laced through her mind and knew that no one would ever support what she was preparing to do as each month of pregnancy ticked by. This was also a part of the planted message Allouette used because she knew if Trey got wind of this he’d reason with Eloise and stop the plan immediately. Obviously your mother never shared her concerns with Trey. She held these fears close to her until the day she awoke early and chartered that boat.
“Now Eloise was on this chartered boat and it was not sailing to France, as she had expected, but just to a set place where it would briefly pause before disposing of some cargo.”
Ren’s eyebrows twitch, another nervous tick I’ve never seen on him. “Not only did Eloise not know that the ship she was currently sailing on was not actually chartered by her, but she also didn’t know that the person she’d been running from was onboard. While Allouette hung back, waiting for the ship to get to its halfway point, a few unexpected things happened. The first is that Eloise went into sudden early labor. The second is that Allouette’s companion, who was now facing a laboring and completely defenseless woman, had a change of heart.
“You see, someone has to be properly motivated to want to kill a pregnant woman and her unborn babies, because not only is it raunchy, but it’s also something only evil people can do. Allouette was motivated though. You see, she is on the long list of women who have fallen for Chase’s charm and good looks. She was, and still is, in love with him. She was motivated to kill your mother and you without the slightest hesitation.”
Ren pauses for a second and rubs his teeth together a few times. There’s tick number three.
“Let me rephrase that. Allouette did kill your mother. She guided the knife that slit her throat just after a ship’s mate was wiping off a disgusting newborn baby boy a few feet away. And with Eloise’s last dying breath she forced out a repugnant little girl.” Ren shudders like an invisible source has shaken him.
He sits up straight and does something quite unexpected. Ren looks at both of us. Something flashes on his face. Another new look, one strangely bordering on sympathy.
“I wish I could say I was the ship’s mate. I wish I could tell you I was the captain or even the guy who swung in from an adjacent ship and saved the day. The truth is, I was Allouette’s companion.”
A rock sits in my throat. Blocking air. Head swimming with lightheadedness borne from disbelief.
“I was the one who Allouette seduced and asked to bore into your mother’s brain,” Ren says, like recalling a past life. “For all those months I was the one who put hypnotic images in her head and made her believe she was unsafe. Your mother knew how to shield Chase, but she was unaccustomed to me and I was successful at getting through and laying the trap. However, as I watched her die and realized the depths of filth I’d gotten myself into, I had a change of heart that I never expected. Right there in a cabin with a dead woman, the second mate holding two screaming infants, and the person I thought I loved, I became someone very different. It’s only because Allouette never expected this possibility that I was able to take her over so easily right before she was about to turn and kill you two. Using mind control, I forced her to go to the bow of the ship and throw herself overboard. After realizing in those last horrible ten minutes that my companion was the grossest murderer I’d ever known and also in love with another man, I had no trouble sending her to a cold and wet death. The ship steered its way back to Stockholm and once it arrived I took you both to Trey, who I was well aware of and knew where he’d been located for quite some time.”
Ren pauses again. I rustle my hands back and forth on my legs, earning me a contemptuous look from him. “I’m not proud of being a part of Allouette’s plan. However, if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else and that someone might have let you die.”
Joseph clears his throat. “I think we owe you a strange bit of gratitude.”
“Oh, golly gee, shucks…don’t flatter yourself. I didn’t do it for you.” Ren gives us a cold expression. “I did it because I didn’t agree with killing people, but I didn’t know that until I was witnessing it. I also didn’t like being used. If I had it to do over, I’d have had the ship circle around and run over Allouette, but unfortunately I took my mind control off her long enough for her to recover and dream travel to safety. Damn bitch.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Not one word came out of my mouth during our meeting with Ren. Strangely, his long monologue filled in all the gaps. It left me with only one question, but not one Ren could answer. Only one person can answer this question, and there’s no way I’m ever going to confront him with it. I turn to Joseph, stopping his progress down the hallway. He’s almost sprinting, like he needs to get as far away from Ren’s office as possible before a bomb goes off.
“Stop,” I say, clutching his arm.
He looks at me, not quite seeing me. Blinks rapidly. “You wanna say it, so just go ahead. It’s all right to have a little sympathy for the guy. Maybe more now than ever.”
I do want to voice the question rolling around in my head, like a bowling ball in a clothes dryer. “To find out that the woman you loved, the mother of your children, died like that,” I say, my throat quickly turning to cement. “To be handed your two children and told…what was that moment like? How devastating would that be?” I speculate, trying to remove myself from the equation, but it’s impossible. I was one those babies, handed to my father with the news that my mother was murdered during childbirth.
“Trey doesn’t seem like such a monster anymore, huh?” Joseph says.
“No, he seems like a man given a heart-wrenching fate. I suspect his scars run deep.”
“I know they do.”
“Maybe he resents us though, for living, when Eloise died? Maybe that’s why he sent us away?” I say.
“I think you don’t want to believe that he loves you as much he does because you’d have to start caring too.”
“I don’t know,” I say in a sincere state of confusion. “I think this information will help me to understand him better. Maybe even forgive him…one day.”
Joseph’s eyes are sharp, rimmed with a new hostility, but it’s not aimed at me. “Who could do something like that? What kind of person murders babies?”
“I can’t even begin to understand the evil…” Every inch of my skin feels like its crawling with sharp-legged beetles.
“Will it make what you have to do with Chase harder? Now that you know he’s responsible?”
A humorless grin spreads slowly on my mouth. “Oh no, now my motivation is firmly in place. More so than ever I’m certain I can pull off the plan. And make him suffer a painful death.”
“Damn, that look in your eye right now kinda scares me…in a good way.” Joseph pats me on the back as we resume the walk to the elevator. “Good luck tonight. I feel sorry for the man you’re meeting.”
“I don’t.”
♦
The marble steps of the Parthenon feel both solid and fragile under me. I sit. Wait. I don’t know how he does it, but he will find me. I’m like an antelope prancing in front of a hungry lion, but this circle of life is about to be revised.
Two and a half minutes. That’s how long I have to wait. Behind me his rubber-soled shoes barely make noise as he crosses through the inner chambers of the Parthenon––the cella. Its walls, no longer standing, make this possible. I pretend I’m enjoying the morning light as it kisses the top
s of the buildings of Athens. But I’m not taking in the view or the magnificent structures around me. I’m rehearsing. Reinforcing my shields. And slightly worrying what will happen if my protective charm fails. Aiden knows what he’s doing though. With this I can trust him.
I rarely pray and when I do my agnostic heart doesn’t quite know who I’m praying to. But right now I know exactly who I need to direct this prayer to: my inner goddess. Please help me to deceive this man. Unleash inside me what I need to convince him that, to me, he’s irresistible.
Standing, I straighten, like my senses have just been lured by something deliciously human. I slide my chin around until my eyes seize him strolling around a column. I know how an intense desire feels. At the sight of him my chest convulses forward once, but only an inch. My lips part, like breath has just escaped my lungs. And my eyes scream “I want you.” The way my body reacted to Chase before I had the patch to my protective charm is engrained in my memory. And right now I’m triggering that memory, making my body live in the past.
Chase’s eyes are like two round-cut aquamarine diamonds, a well in their middle. A bottomless well, as empty as his soul. Still, it’s impossible to not appreciate such beauty. He’s like Niagara Falls, breathtaking and deadly.
To my inner goddess’s pleasure he’s wearing a tuxedo shirt, the neck opened, no bow tie. The best part of his ensemble is the taut suspenders. My job is getting easier by the minute. When he’s only a foot away I slip two fingers under the paisley silk suspender at his waist. Watching my fingers as they slide up, I wait until they’re just at his chest and then I tug him forward.
“I didn’t even have to ask this time,” he says, his cold breath greeting my face like I’ve just opened a refrigerator.
“Ask?” I say with a shiver.
“For you to touch me.” His eyes are like that of a proud cat’s, all self-serving.
“I’ve been slow to warm,” I say, slipping my fingers out from under his suspenders and running them down until I find the place where they attach to his suit pants. Again my fingers tuck inside the fabric and tug. “But I can’t resist you any longer.”
