by C. L. Stone
“I don’t know,” I said quietly.
“Mr. Buble suggested somewhere downtown, close to the Academy hospital.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
He pulled his head back a bit, and I opened my eyes. I still couldn’t see very well but he kept close. “I feel weird about the idea of running into my parents.”
Oh. Living so close, it was highly likely they would. “It’s weird to think I might have to go back and make absolutely sure I’m not leaving anything important. I’ll have to see my sister. Maybe my mother… stepmother…” Despite what happened, it was still hard to think of her as not my real mother. And every time I remembered, it was like it’d happened to someone else.
The shape of his mouth moved, frowning. “My mom’s really mad. My dad would probably make a scene. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it, but I really don’t want to bump into them. I never want to see them again.”
Maybe for him it was different. Even while I didn’t like the idea of disturbing my sister or my stepmother, I still understood I couldn’t ignore them forever. It felt wrong to do so, too. Even Kota let me know on occasion he was looking after them to make sure bills were paid on time and they were at least comfortable.
I pressed a hand over his heart. “Is there a way to approach them first? Clear a bit of air? Won’t we live here for a while?”
He didn’t answer. Maybe he wasn’t sure how to make this work. It could be he could never make things right with his parents. Mine didn’t really want me, they wanted to hide me. His parents wanted to own him, control his life, and when they couldn’t control him, they tossed him out.
I was worried I’d said the wrong thing, that he was angry at them and didn’t want to try to get along. Maybe it was too soon. Should I stop talking about it?
Except as he held me, his fingers gently found their way to my rib cage at my back. He felt them, like he would keys at the piano, and then, gently, he tapped out some unheard melody, a slow methodic song only he was imagining and I felt through his movements.
His world might be changing, but he was still Victor. He was music and kindness and a strong desire to make things better. No matter what, it was still him. I wanted to believe that, at least.
He sighed and drew me into him. “I just want to be near you. I don’t really care where we live. I’d live in a box if we had to.”
“I don’t think Kota would let us live in a box,” I said.
He chuckled softly. He kissed my forehead, lingered again, and whispered, “I would. With you.”
My hand was still over his heart, and very softly, I gripped, pressing the cotton of the shirt to his chest, as if holding to his beating heart would somehow calm mine.
His lips remained and eventually drew down, until he was kissing my cheek, and then my lips.
I returned the kiss, with a partially open mouth and I loosely moved an arm around his neck.
The leg he’d hooked around my knees drew me in tighter. The hand at my back, the one playing a melody, it intensified, and then swapped from tapping to rubbing at my rib cage.
My fingers massaged the back of his neck, until I felt the silver band, the heart shield he wore around his neck, a gift from his mother. Despite what he’d said about being afraid to see them again, he still wore it. I hadn’t noticed it under the shirt.
He broke the kiss when he noticed me feeling the chain. He released me with one hand to fish the Celtic heart shield out from under his shirt. “I don’t know why I hang on to this.” He gripped it, like he was going to rip it off his neck.
I didn’t want him to throw it away if he liked it. I placed a hand on his, over the shield, and he paused.
“Why did you always wear it?” I asked.
He blinked, unsure. “She didn’t want me to get involved in any relationship where some girl would want their money. Gold diggers…” He made a half snort, half chuckle. “Although it’s kind of backwards when she would have wanted me to marry into someone else’s money. It’s kind of messed up.”
“But is that why you wore it?” I asked.
He paused, and slowly released the heart shield and captured my hand that had been over his, holding it. “No. I wore it because I wanted to remind myself.”
“Of what?”
“That I wanted someone who wanted me. The real me.”
“Victor…” I said quietly.
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he leaned in and kissed me. Harder than I anticipated.
My arms slowly went around him as I responded. And with the way the waterbed shifted, it pressed our bodies tightly together. Perhaps a little too snugly, as it was harder to shift around.
His kisses trailed, until he nuzzled a little at my lower jaw. He didn’t move from there for a while, and then gently returned to my mouth to kiss more.
I had a moment where I thought of the others, where we were romantically, and how different they were. Victor was ever so gentle, slow, and… seemed to be like me, a little shy about getting close, unsure. I thought of Gabriel, where I learned about massaging his scalp, or North’s biting. Victor seemed to enjoy massaging me. I wondered if that’s something he enjoyed. He was the one that surprised me by going to the spa for massages in the past.
I shifted my arms more, pinched in on one via the bed, and at first just tried placing my hand that could move onto his back.
From there, I froze. I wasn’t really sure what to do. Until I just used my fingertips and gently slid them along his spine.
He kissed me, but not any harder than before.
I tried again, doing what he did by finding his ribs and tracing one.
Suddenly his hand shifted until he could hook my arm and bring it around, away from his body, and he just held it.
He stopped kissing me so he could open up my hand and kiss the palm.
Did I do it wrong? I wasn’t so sure. I froze a bit, worried. Maybe there were wrong things to do, too.
“Roll over on your stomach?” he suggested to me, and he got halfway up.
I sort of did, though the bed more or less shifted me in that position as he moved.
He straddled me, over my hips, and his lean fingers drifted over my back. His palms massaged my muscles, and his fingers worked around my spine. I couldn’t move, just enjoy.
It was like a light switch, as I realized me touching his back triggered him doing this for me.
As he massaged, though, he leaned over, and he kissed gently at my neck, and occasionally at my shoulders.
And occasionally lower along my back, following my spine.
A tingling sensation spurred in me. Enjoyment. Delight. He could mold me with his fingers and get me to relax in a moment.
He was passionate and doting.
I mumbled quietly, partially talking into the pillow. “Victor, do you want me to try to do this to you, too?” It seemed only fair.
“If you want,” he said. “But… I enjoy this. I don’t know why.” He leaned forward and whispered hotly into my ear. “Every time I touch you, I want to touch you more. And please you.”
I didn’t quite understand. I enjoyed it immensely, but did he want me to do something else?
Questions floated to my lips, but before I could ask them there was a sound, a shout of a deep, adult voice, and for a very quick moment, the fear that someone, Mr. Griffin perhaps, or even someone else, had broken into the house and would come find us, horrified me until I was too stiff to move.
Victor had just pushed away the blanket when the door to the bedroom opened and the light was flicked on. The overhead bulbs became blinding, and I was blinking through watering eyes to focus on who had entered.
There was a paused moment as Victor was sitting up in the bed, I was partially covering my eyes from the light, and a tall figure was standing just inside the door, looking in at us.
Mr. Buble.
My heart raced. It was way too obvious we had been in the bed together.
Yet he didn’t look troubled or concerned about that in particular, but there was a worry etched on his face, and he immediately barked at us. “Forget your things. We’re leaving. Now.”
He left, heading to the other bedroom, calling for Nathan and telling him the same thing.
Forget your things.
Get out.
Victor was up in an instant. He reached to me. “Come on.”
There was no hesitation. No question. No time to ask. Something had happened.
Enough to get Mr. Buble here, telling us to run.
Capriccioso
(Capricious, unpredictable, volatile)
Sang
Dr. Green sat in the passenger seat, leaning out the window, motioning for us to get in. Victor, Nathan, and I crowded into the back of Mr. Buble’s car. Mr. Buble got in, barely closing his own door before he put the car into reverse to back out of the driveway.
“What about Kota?” Nathan asked. “We can’t leave him.”
“He is not at home,” Mr. Buble said. “Neither are his mother or sister. Everyone else is safe.”
I sat between Victor and Nathan, holding on to their hands in the darkness in the back seat. Mr. Buble’s clock in the car said it was two in the morning.
“What’s going on? Who is it?” Nathan asked.
“You’re being targeted,” Mr. Buble said.
“The outside cameras are broken,” Dr. Green said. “I was on sensor monitor duty while we were at the diner. Got a notification.” He made a hand gun and pretended to shoot the windshield. “Pow. They broke one at a time. From a distance.”
“First rule of safety at this point is getting those in the vicinity together and out of range of danger,” Mr. Buble said.
“We didn’t hear anything,” Nathan said.
“I didn’t either,” Dr. Green said. “I’m not even sure it was a gun. It was just one at a time and very sudden. I was going to call to warn, but we were so close we wanted to scare whoever was doing it off by approaching with the car. We thought if we alerted you, whoever it was would rush in, maybe in a dangerous way.”
Nathan grumbled. “It’s probably Volto.”
“We have various nefarious suspects it could possibly be,” Mr. Buble said. “It would be irresponsible to guess. Collecting evidence is the only way to know.”
“I am very upset that I didn’t get to finish my pie… I’d been looking forward to it all day,” Dr. Green said. He was wearing a thin sweatshirt and jeans, his curly sandy-colored hair a bit wild and off to the side like he’d been running or in the wind. He turned a bit in the seat and smiled at me. “Hey, pumpkin.”
“Hi,” I said quietly. His tone was slightly flirty, but otherwise didn’t indicate anything, for which I was grateful. Especially after getting caught with Victor…
Where was Kota? Was he still out with Luke and Gabriel? He never came back, and we hadn’t heard from them. They said he was safe but what happened? Why were they gone for so long?
“Where should we go?” Nathan asked.
“For tonight, we’ll head to a hotel while we send another Academy member with someone from the police to your house to investigate.”
“We’re not messing around anymore,” Dr. Green said, his voice dampening a bit from his cheery tone. “We’ve let this go for too long. We’ve let them cross the line into illegal territory and always felt we needed to hide it because… reasons.”
He didn’t have to say it. I was the reason.
Even now, calling the police was on pause until we could make sure we were ready for them.
“No one stays home tonight,” Mr. Buble said. “Investigations will happen tonight and in the morning. However, it’s likely we’ll push to move immediately instead of waiting, even if into a temporary Academy house.”
My heart was beating wildly, despite us being safe in the car together. Volto didn’t often directly threaten our lives, he usually ran us off, which made me wary. What could be happening?
The neighborhood around us changed, largely unfamiliar to me, and Mr. Buble took many turns. I sensed it was with caution, that we were making sure no one was following us. The car ride in the middle of the night went on for at least a half hour before Mr. Buble finally pulled into the lot of a small motel. He left the car running and disappeared inside, I assumed to rent a room.
“Crazy night, huh?” Dr. Green said, twisting in the front seat. The smile was back on his face. “Don’t worry. Owen has the others. They’ll stay in a different hotel tonight. Uncle’s at the diner still, and he’s not a target but he won’t go home tonight. He’ll sleep there nearby, just in case.”
“Not keeping us all together?” Nathan asked.
“Just an extra precaution, split up but not alone.” He beamed, and then yawned. “First day off in a while and I’m running around. Good to be in the Academy, am I right?”
Mr. Buble returned and passed a key to Dr. Green. “Last building, last room. We’re away from others.”
“How’d you get that without sounding weird?” Victor asked.
“I told them we had a dog,” he said. “It’d bark if it heard other people too much. That usually works.”
Outside the last building, Dr. Green got out of the car to open the motel room up as the rest of us got out of the car and stretched. It was a cold night, and we were all in various stages of not totally dressed, with Nathan in a pair of boxers, Victor in boxers and a shirt, and myself still in some shorts and one of the guys’ T-shirts I’d worn for the evening.
The motel room was a standard two double beds and a wide mirror and sink on the far side of the room next to the bathroom. Despite it being a randomly picked motel and randomly picked room, Dr. Green and Mr. Buble immediately set to work inspecting every inch, including the wall sockets and the overhead light using tools from keychains they’d carried with them. It was unlikely there was reason to think someone had been here before us, but they left nothing to chance.
When it was deemed clear, the feeling among us in the air changed and the door was locked. Victor, Nathan, and I sat on one bed, Dr. Green flopped onto the other, making a star with his body and stretching while kicking his shoes off. “Way better than the hospital cot I’ve been sleeping in for the last week.”
“You should go home more,” Victor said.
He turned his head to look at us and grin. “I can’t. There’s a Volto.” Despite the danger, he looked like he was enjoying the excitement.
“Possibly,” Mr. Buble said. He stood by the door, checking his phone and occasionally typing into it. “I suggest we all double-check our phones, if you’ve brought them, and make sure they’re still secure.” He perked his head up. “And may I ask for a volunteer to come join me. If you choose to do so, it’s likely we’ll be up for the rest of the night.”
Victor, to my surprise, immediately stood up. “I’ll go with you.”
Mr. Buble nodded. “We’ll leave the others to sleep.” He motioned to the rest of us. “Don’t leave this room without a good reason, and if it’s a must, don’t leave each other. Go immediately to the hospital if that’s the case.”
“Boo,” Dr. Green said but sat up. “I’m just kidding. I’ve just been at the hospital a lot. But that’s okay. I’m a doctor.”
Nathan and Victor groaned simultaneously. I giggled.
Dr. Green continued, “We’re good, don’t worry.”
Mr. Buble opened the door, walked out but held it for Victor.
Victor heaved a sigh and waved shortly at us, although he looked at me. “See you tomorrow.”
I finger waved back as he walked out the door.
Nathan let out a long breath and shook his head. “Man, this is going to be a really long night.” He paused. “And we have a small problem.”
Dr. Green was twisting himself, trying to crack his back but stopped this and leaned on the bed to look over at us. “What problem?”
Nathan grim
aced but said, “It’s complicated…”
He quickly went over how we found Volto’s mask in Erica’s car, suspected it was her, and how we’d earlier tried to confirm it by getting a look at what was on her computer.
“The USB drive is still in my room. We were packing and Silas had to go to the diner before we could actually look at it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to the rest of us?” Dr. Green asked, frowning. “Does Kota know?”
Nathan shook his head.
I spoke up quickly, “We just didn’t want him to worry about it until we saw something more substantial. Some clue.”
“I kind of worried he’d tip her off somehow. If it was her,” Nathan said.
Dr. Green stood up and paced the motel room in front of the beds. His sandy hair swept across his forehead and his brows wrinkled in concentration. “Where’s the mask now?”
“At the house. I probably should have grabbed it on the way out.”
“If they find it, it’s likely they’ll think Volto left it and assume that this was him, even if it might not be.”
Nathan flopped back and pressed his palms to his eyes. “Shit. I didn’t think about that. I guess we have to tell them now. I did hide it but there’s a chance they’ll find it.”
“And there is a way to tell if it’s her or not,” Dr. Green said.
“How?” I asked.
“If she’s been at work this whole time, or the times when Volto has been around, and so on,” he said. “Once you have a suspect, you work on a timeline. They can’t be in two places at once.”
“Oh,” Nathan said slowly, as if considering the idea. “We started with evidence.”
“Evidence and clues are what you look for without a suspect, timelines are when you actually have someone in mind,” Dr. Green said. “So timelines first. Less invasive.” He beamed. “Trust me, I’ve done the reverse before and you end up reading into things too much, especially if you know the person. But you’d know this, too, if you’d talked to us.”
Nathan averted his gaze and grimaced. “Okay, yeah. You got me. I just thought it’d be a quick solution… at the time… And maybe I didn’t want to believe it and didn’t want anyone to think of her differently if I was wrong.”
