by L. B. Clark
London just looked at his hands for a minute, then moistened his lips and ran his hands up and down the thighs of his jeans. He opened his mouth to speak a couple of times, but he couldn’t seem to find any words. Finally he shook his head and went back to staring at his hands.
“Right there at the end,” Ashe said, his voice hushed in the quiet room, “Julia sent London another projection. Another threat.”
“There was a little girl,” London said. “She said...she said I wouldn’t like the consequences if I didn’t cooperate. I couldn’t....”
“She threatened violence against a child?” Martine snapped.
“Not...I don’t know. I don’t know what she was threatening. But...she....” He broke off, repeating the nervous thigh-rubbing gesture before sitting back and tilting his head so that he was staring up at the ceiling. “The sending sort of implied that the little girl is mine. Mine and Julia’s.”
Ashe’s arms wrapped around me, maybe to comfort me, maybe to keep me from bolting. “If she even exists,” he said.
“I know, I know. I was listening. But I have to know the truth. I have to try to find her.”
Adrian and Martine both agreed at once. I agreed, too, but I was too much in shock to say it aloud, and by the time the world finally righted itself, the moment was long gone.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
London and I visited Brian in the hospital. Brian was in good spirits, despite his health problems. His speech was slightly slurred, his movements jerky and painstaking. As much as it hurt me to see him like that, I knew it had to be worse for Dylan.
While London filled Brian in on everything he’d missed, Dylan and I wandered the hospital hallways in search of caffeine and chocolate.
“I’m going to LA,” Dylan told me as she twisted the cap off her Coke.
“That’s not news, hon. Let me know what I can do to help with the move.”
And that’s when Dylan did something I’d rarely, if ever, seen her do. She burst into tears. I hugged her for a long time, fighting a losing battle against my own tears.
Afterward, we wiped our eyes and noses on cheap dispenser napkins and drowned our sorrows in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It’s cheaper than liquor, and works a helluva lot better.
It’d be hard, being that far away from my evil twin. But I knew it was time for the next chapter in her adventure, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand in her way – especially when Brian needed her so much more than I did, at least at the moment.
“What about you?” Dylan asked, licking chocolate off the peanut butter cup wrapper. “Any chance I can convince you to come to LA after you graduate?”
I shrugged. “Depends on where I find a job. And anyway, I still have that damned internship to get through. I won’t be joining you for a while, I don’t think.”
“Brian knows a lot of people....” she began.
“Don’t even start,” I said. “I’m going to get an internship – and a job – based on my own merit or go live under a bridge. I don’t do charity any more than you do.”
“It’s not charity. It’s networking.”
“Whatever. I still say ‘no’.”
Dylan sighed. “I’m going to keep asking until you change your mind.”
“Fair enough,” I said, taking a swig of her Coke. “Ugh. Doesn’t go well with chocolate.”
After we’d finished our junk food binge, Dylan and I went back up to Brian’s room. After a while, Dylan urged us to go home and sleep, saying there wasn’t anything we could do for them at the moment. London and I said our goodbyes and looked in on Quinn, who was sleeping, before heading back to the safe house.
When we pulled up outside of the house in Winter Park, London parked and turned off the key, but neither of us got out of the car. We just sat and stared at the milling agents and the half-destroyed house, the sight of last night’s confrontation. I don’t know how long we would have sat there like that if Ashe hadn’t come out to usher into the house.
A woman I didn’t recognize was sitting on one of the sofas when we came in. Ashe introduced her as Dr. Something-or-other-that-I-didn’t-catch and told us she was a psychologist who worked with the agency. We got shanghaied into a freaking counseling session, right then and there.
It was the worst two hours of my life, but I felt more human afterward. And I knew for certain that London didn’t hate me for doing what I felt I had to do. I wasn’t sure when I’d stop feeling guilty about not feeling guilty, but Dr. Whatsit assured me that what I was feeling was normal in a case like this one. I didn’t think there could ever have been a case anything like mine, but I appreciated the reassurance anyway.
The good doctor hooked me and London up with referrals to shrinks in our necks of the woods, specialists who worked with those of us who were clued in to the metaphysical world. I knew I would need someone to talk to, someone outside the situation, so I was grateful for the name and number of the psychologist in Houston. Thankfully, I wouldn’t be the one paying the bill, though I wasn’t really sure who would be. Maybe the agency, maybe London, maybe a mysterious benefactor. I couldn’t even bring myself to care. I figured I’d earned a little free therapy.
The next couple of days were a blur of hospital visits, crying jags, therapy sessions, and cuddling up in bed with London. I booked a flight home, which London insisted on paying for, and tried to imagine going back to my former life. Somehow all the bits and pieces that had made up my world – beers and local bands with my friends, classrooms and essays, my live-action role-play group, laundry and dishes and errands – it all seemed so far away and unreal now. And so very, very unimportant.
The night before I was to leave, as I lay curled up with London trying to fall asleep, I felt his lips brush the shell of my ear. A couple more tentative kisses and touches asked my permission to explore farther, and I gave it. It was our first time together since the attack. On a physical level, it might have been the worst sex I’d had since losing my virginity. We were both tense and uncertain, and London seemed to think of me as fragile. On an emotional level, though, it was a time of healing that we both needed.
Thankfully, the wake-up sex the next morning was a helluva lot better.
We said our private goodbyes in the bedroom long before Ashe drove us to the airport and they both hugged me and told me to call when I got home. I promised to call them, and then turned and walked away. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Over the next couple of weeks, I forced myself back into the rhythm of classes and chores, squeezing in time for a trip to Dallas to pack up some things that Dylan didn’t want the movers messing with. As the week passed, my routine started to feel more normal, and with the help of the psychologist, I began to feel more normal as well.
Dylan kept me updated where Brian’s recovery was concerned. Every day was better for him than the day before, and he surprised the doctors with how quickly he improved. He probably wouldn’t be ready to play the next leg of DPS’s tour, but he’d be back on the stage, and sooner rather than later.
London plunged headlong into the search for the girl in Julia’s vision. I wasn’t sure who all he had helping him, but they managed to find out that Julia had been seen with a child matching the description of the girl in the vision. Knowing she was real didn’t put them any closer to finding her, though.
Ashe and I talked once in a while, and he let me know that Martine and her friends at the agency hadn’t made any headway at all in figuring out who the mysterious man in league with Julia might have been. For now, we’d just have to keep looking over our shoulders.
Much like everything else, my relationship with London fell into a state of stasis. Between learning more about his magic, looking for the girl who might be his daughter, and gearing up for the next segment of the DPS tour – including practicing with a temporary replacement for Brian – London didn’t exactly have a lot of time. I was busy catching up on the school work I’d missed and trying to keep from falling
behind on the new material as well as looking for an internship, which is pretty much a full-time gig in and of itself. We kept in touch as best we could, with brief phone calls and emails and social networking sites. That sort of communication doesn’t foster growth, but at least we weren’t losing any ground. We decided to take it one day at a time and just see how things worked out.
But then, what else can you really do? No matter how much we plan and scheme and set goals and work toward some end, life can only be lived one day at a time. The trick is learning to balance making the most of each day you’re given by living in the moment with planning for the future, cherishing memories, and learning from the past. I’m not sure I’ll ever find equilibrium, but I’m practicing the balancing act – one day at a time.
To learn more about the author or her favorite bands, visit http://kishi.netdojo.com
Look for Whatever It Takes, Jukebox Heroes book Two, coming soon.
Also available, The Hand of Fate, prelude to the Jukebox Heroes series:
With her 30th birthday on the horizon and life handing her lemon after lemon, Dylan Connelly wants nothing more than to get away from it all for a few days. The last thing she expected – or wanted – was to become intrigued by a gorgeous stranger. But sometimes chance – or fate -- has a way of changing our plans.
