by I. T. Lucas
“And nothing happened? No smooching and no touching?”
Ella shook her head. “Julian decided that it was best if I was in the driver’s seat. If I want to move to second base, I’ll have to initiate.”
“But you are too scared to do that.”
“Exactly. And it’s not only because of what happened to me. I have zero experience at initiating anything. I wouldn't know what to do.”
“I think I know what’s going on.”
Ella arched a brow. “You do?”
“I might be wrong, but it makes sense given the fact that you’re so inexperienced. You are reacting to Mr. D because he’s unapologetically dominant. Julian, on the other hand, is walking on eggshells around you, afraid to spook you with the tiniest show of assertiveness. That’s why you’re not reacting to him. He’s not giving you what you need.”
“But Julian isn’t wrong. I am easily spooked. His restraint makes me feel safe. Otherwise, I don’t think I could’ve slept in the same bed with him.”
Carol leaned forward and took Ella’s hand. “Poor baby. You are in a Catch 22. What excites you also scares you, so you can’t have any. And poor Julian doesn’t know what to do with you.”
“Do you know?”
Ella looked at her with so much hope in her eyes that Carol felt terrible about having to disappoint her.
“I’m not the right person to give you advice. What's right for me is not necessarily right for you. But maybe it would help if you talked about it with Julian and explained your dilemma. You could start slow and go from there.”
“I can’t. What if I offend him?
“Why would he be offended? The problem is mainly yours. In order to get excited, you need to let go and have him drive the show, but you are too scared to do it.”
“Yeah, but what if he is not assertive by nature?”
Carol waved a dismissive hand. “Almost all immortal males are dominant. I’m sure Julian is too, despite how sweet he seems.”
“Almost is not all. What if he is like Robert?”
“Robert is a great guy. He just needed to find the right woman.”
“Right, and apparently Sharon is that woman. But if you are right about me, and Julian happens to be an anomaly like your ex, he and I could end up like you and Robert. Incompatible.”
Carol crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t think it’s likely, but I can’t entirely discount it either. You won’t know until you try.”
Releasing an exasperated sigh, Ella slumped in her chair. “I’m no closer to a solution than I was before coming here.” She lifted a hand. “I’m not blaming you. You did the best you could. It’s just that this is so complicated, and it shouldn’t be. I know that Julian and I are fated for each other.” Ella patted her belly. “I know it in here, as well as in my heart. The only thing standing between us is all the crap that I’m carrying around with me. I wish I could just dump it down the toilet and flush the water.”
Carol laughed. “I love your analogies. They are very visual.”
Ella waved a hand. “I told you. That’s how I think. Everything is a movie. You’ve said I have a broken record playing in my head, but it’s more like a GIF.”
37
Magnus
“Do you know what Kian wants to see us about?” Vivian closed the fridge. “We were supposed to go grocery shopping.”
Magnus had been hoping to spend his day off alone with Vivian. Hopefully whatever Kian wanted wasn’t going to take long.
Magnus put his hands on her waist and pulled her closer to him. “He didn’t say. But we can still make it to the supermarket after the meeting. I also want to take you out for a nice dinner. We haven’t been on a date in too long.”
They’d settled into a routine of work and volunteering and taking care of two kids and a dog, and it was all great. Magnus was thanking the Fates every day for the family they’d given him. But a couple needed time for romance too.
Especially an immortal couple.
“In that case, I should put something nice on.”
He waggled his brows. “Do you need help choosing?”
“If you ‘help’ me,” she made air quotes, “we will never make it to Kian’s on time.”
Magnus glanced at his watch. “Regrettably, you’re right.”
“Give me five minutes.” She kissed his cheek.
“While you’re getting dressed, I’m going to check the pantry and make a list of what needs restocking.”
“I already did that, but you can check the cleaning supplies. I think we are running low on laundry detergent.”
When he was done, Magnus added to the list dryer sheets, glass-cleaning liquid, and toilet paper. Perhaps they should stop at the superstore and buy in bulk. It would save them some money.
He was about to suggest it but changed his mind when Vivian returned wearing a black wig, a silk blouse, a pair of tight pants, and spiky high heels.
Whistling, he walked up to her and pulled her into his arms. “Did I tell you lately how beautiful you are?”
She smirked. “This morning, when you groped my ass while I was brushing my teeth, and then after breakfast while I was loading the dishwasher and you were nuzzling my neck.”
“Because you are always beautiful to me.”
Pushing on his chest, she stepped out of her high heels, suddenly looking so much shorter. “I only put them on to make an entrance.”
She pulled a pair of flats out of her satchel. “I’m going to leave the heels in the car and put them on when we are done shopping. They are good only for sitting in a restaurant, not for running around on errands.”
“Smart. Walking through the village and then shopping in high heels would’ve hurt your feet. But then I would’ve massaged them.” He winked.
Vivian loved his foot massages, and they usually ended in him massaging much more than her feet.
“We should go.” She headed for the door.
When they arrived at Kian’s office, his door was wide open, and he got up to greet them.
“Please, take a seat.” He closed the door and motioned to the two guest chairs.
Magnus waited for Kian to sit behind his desk before asking, “What is this about?”
“Ella’s dream visitor.”
Next to Magnus, Vivian tensed. “Did something happen?”
Ella had left with Tessa for the sanctuary more than an hour ago. She should’ve arrived already.
Kian lifted his hand. “Nothing happened. You don’t need to contact her.”
“Thank God.” Vivian slumped in her chair.
“I called you in here to tell you about my plan. I didn’t discuss it with Ella yet. I thought that as her mother and future adoptive father, you should be informed first. Besides, it involves you too, Vivian.”
Magnus had an inkling where this was going, and he didn’t like it.
Kian hadn’t invited them to his office to ask their permission to use Ella in whatever scheme he had in mind. He was informing them of it, mainly because he needed Vivian’s cooperation with sending and receiving covert messages to and from Ella.
“Go on,” Vivian said.
“Lokan’s dream visits provide us with a unique opportunity. If we can lure him into a trap and capture him, we will finally have the island’s location as well as a host of other information that Navuh’s son no doubt has knowledge of.”
As Magnus opened his mouth to protest, Kian lifted his palm. “Hear me out first. It wasn’t an easy decision to involve an eighteen-year-old girl who has just been to hell and back, but I just can’t let this opportunity slip away. Besides, if we don’t capture him, she will never be safe from him. He can get to her no matter where she is. This is as much for her as it is for us. Once Lokan is in stasis, he will no longer have access to her.”
Presented like that, Magnus couldn’t argue with Kian’s logic.
Vivian shook her head. “What if he can dream-walk even from there?”
“Stasis is a d
eeper state than a coma. He’s not going to dream, let alone do any dream-walking.”
“I hope you’re right. So, what’s the plan, Ella agrees to a date with him?”
Kian smiled. “Nothing that simple. First of all, he might get suspicious, and secondly, we don’t want him to know where Ella is. Not even the general geographical area. So far, she’s been very smart about it, not revealing even her time zone. The plan is for Ella to start looking into colleges.”
That perked Vivian up. “I’m all for that. I told her she needed an education.”
“Whether she actually chooses to go is up to her. My plan is for her to share her deliberations with Lokan and have him suggest a college. That will give us an idea where he is. Then she’ll apply and schedule an appointment, which we will, of course, expedite, and tell Lokan about it.”
Magnus smoothed his hand over his beard. “You think he’ll try to capture her during the visit?”
Kian nodded. “She will tell him the date and time of the appointment. Not as a statement, that would make him suspicious too, but as an absentminded slip-up.”
“I’ll go with her,” Vivian said.
Kian nodded. “Of course, and it’s part of the plan. Turner suspects that Lokan might be more interested in capturing Ella’s ability than her romantic interest, and if that’s true, then she would be useless to him without you. The bait will be the two of you together, for which a campus visit is the perfect setting. Naturally, we will have you surrounded by Guardians posing as students, teachers, and taxi drivers, so there will be no single moment when you are unprotected.”
Magnus shook his head. “I still don’t like it. What if he can compel the Guardians to step aside?”
“According to Dalhu, Lokan can only compel humans. And don’t forget that we know what he looks like. We can probably grab him before he gets anywhere near Ella and Vivian.”
Magnus kept pressing. “As Navuh’s son, he probably goes everywhere with a heavy guard of his own.”
“I don’t think so, but even if he does, there will be enough Guardians there to take care of him and his entourage. I’m not going to skimp on warriors. If needed, I’ll have the entire fucking force guarding Ella and Vivian.”
“I want to be there,” Magnus said. “I assume Turner is planning this?”
Kian nodded. “He is.”
“Then have him write me into the script. I want to be where I can see and hear Ella and Vivian at all times, and by that, I don’t mean the surveillance van. If someone manages to grab either of them, I want to be close enough to intervene.”
“I understand. It will be done.”
38
Ella
“Are you sure about this?” Tessa looked even paler than usual.
Ella sat in the interview chair. “No, I’m not. Record one minute. I want to make sure that only a silhouette is visible.”
It was one of the hardest decisions Ella had to make, but it was necessary. If she wanted to convince the girls to record their stories, she had to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.
“Okay, go.”
Ella cleared her throat. “You can call me Heather, but that’s not my real name. I don’t want you to know who I am, and most importantly, I don’t want those who took me from my home and sold me to know that I’m doing this. My story is not the most terrible there is, but it is bad enough, and I’m telling it as a warning to girls everywhere.” She motioned to Tessa to stop the recording.
“This will do for now.” Getting up, she walked over to the camera and lifted it off the tripod.
“Crap, I need to wear a headscarf. My spikes are showing.”
“So what? Many girls spike their hair.”
“I don’t want there to be any identifiable features.”
Tessa waved a hand. “Where are you going to get a scarf from?”
“My mom’s supplies. All I need is a long piece of fabric. Wait here.”
She ran into the room where Vivian held her sewing class and rummaged through the box of swatches. Nothing was long enough to tie around her head, so she grabbed several safety-pins to hold three swatches together.
Tying it around her head, she took a peek in the window that reflected her blurry image. “Good enough.”
It wasn’t as if she was going on a date.
“Okay. Let’s do it again. Ten seconds should do.”
This time, Ella didn’t say anything as Tessa shot the video. “Let’s see.” She rushed to the camera and checked the recording. “Good. That will do.”
“How do you want to do it? Do you want to record it first and then show the recording to the girls, or do you want to record it with a live audience?”
That was a good question.
The upside of recording live was that they would see how it was done, and that Ella was for real, and not an actress reading from a script. The downside was that if they made any noise, the recording was going to be useless, and Ella doubted she could bring herself to do it again.
She still wasn’t sure she had it in her to confess the entire ugly story on camera. Well, she actually wasn’t going to reveal all the details, that would be stupid because those who knew her story would realize that it was her. She needed to change things around to obscure her identity in more than appearance.
“I still don’t think you should do it,” Tessa said. “I wouldn’t want Jackson to see mine.” She quickly lifted both hands. “Not that I’m going to make one. I’m not that brave.”
“But if you and I are not willing to record our stories, how can we expect the others to do it?”
“It’s not the same. Theirs will be truly anonymous. Ours will not. The entire village will watch them and know who we are, and that includes Julian.”
“What if we camouflage our voices?”
“Jackson will recognize my story, and most clan members will recognize yours. So, unless you want to change the details so completely that it barely has any resemblance to what happened, or invent a whole new story, they will know it was you.”
Ella shrugged. “If they know so much already, then what I say in that video is not going to be news to anyone.”
Tessa shook her head. “You are a brave soul. I salute you.”
She wasn’t brave at all, but she was faking it well. This was going to be hell, and Ella wasn’t even sure whether she was doing the right thing.
What if her story was too vanilla compared to what the other girls had gone through?
They might scoff at her, thinking that it was easy for her since there had been nothing truly horrific in what had happened to her.
From what Vanessa had told her, Ella had a clue as to how bad it had been for the others.
Compared to them, she’d been incredibly lucky.
But then Tessa’s story was truly horrific, and if she thought that Ella was brave for telling hers, then maybe the others would think so too.
“I have a question for you, and I want you to answer me frankly.”
Tessa’s expression was guarded when she nodded.
“I need your perspective. I know that what happened to me is nothing compared to what you went through. Do you think the other girls will think that it was easier for me to go on video because of that?”
“Perhaps some will think that, but I don’t. I admire your guts for doing it.”
“Okay, good. Do you want to come with me to Vanessa? I need to run this by her if I want all the girls gathered for the recording.”
Tessa pushed to her feet. “That’s the least I can do.”
As they headed to the therapist’s office, Ella wrapped her arm around Tessa’s slim shoulders. “I don’t want you to feel bad. You have very legitimate reasons not to go on tape. First of all, because you want to forget, and I totally understand that, and secondly because you don’t want Jackson to hear all the gory details, and I understand that too. I think you’re incredibly brave for even being here. I’m sure it’s no picnic for you to be surrounded by reminder
s.”
“It’s not. But again, that’s the least I can do.”
As usual, Vanessa’s door was open, and she waved them in. “How is it going? Ready to start filming?”
“I am,” Ella said. “But I decided to go first, and I want to do it with all the girls watching. I think this is the best way to present the idea to them, and to lead by example.”
Vanessa looked impressed. “That’s very brave of you. When do you want to do that and where?”
“The only place big enough for everyone to fit in is the dining hall. We will have to take the tables out and bring chairs from the classrooms. Tessa and I can set up the stage in the front of the room.”
“The only problem I see with your plan is recording live. Are you going to prepare and rehearse what you’re going to say?”
Ella had thought about it on the way and decided not to. If her delivery was too smooth, it might intimidate the other girls. She had to stumble and stutter and convince them that they could do a better job than her.
“Nope. Before I start, I’ll explain that the video is going to get edited, so it’s okay to stumble and repeat things or even tell the story out of order. I shouldn't even try to make it sound good. I don’t want to add any unnecessary barriers like performance anxiety to what is already a tough gig.”
Vanessa nodded. “You have good instincts.”
“Thank you. What do you think about Monday after dinner?”
“Perfect. I’ll put it on the schedule as a lecture.”
Ella grimaced. No one wanted to listen to a lecture after dinner. “Instead of calling it a lecture, call it a presentation and add my name, so they will know who’s doing it. Tessa’s too. Several of the girls already know what we are planning, and they can spread the rumor, so it isn’t going to be a complete surprise.”
