“I’m saying that you’re fired.”
Thornton’s face remained expressionless for a moment. His jaw worked in disbelief. “You can’t fire me! I’m the CEO!”
“And I’m your mother. I can do anything I want. It’s still my company, honey—you know I have controlling shares. After inheriting K.T.E. from my father, and his father, and spending my life building this corporation from the ground up—it’s impossible for me to fully retire. I’m not going to let you mess up my life’s work. And let’s face it: every one of those wrinkly old men on the board of directors has had a crush on me since I was in my twenties.” Rose sent her son a smug smile.
Thornton swallowed, overwhelmed with guilt and fear. “Mom, I’ve dedicated my life to this company too. I know that recently I made some big mistakes…”
“Sweetie, I’m only requesting that you take a temporary leave. I think you’ll agree that once a CEO starts screwing up so much that he gets blackmailed, agrees to have sex with a competitor, and accidentally gets her murdered… well, maybe it’s time for a break.”
“But no one even found out about that!” Thornton argued. “I did a great job of covering it up…”
“The point is that there shouldn’t be such problems to cover up in the first place. And wasn’t the cost of losing your girlfriend—not just any girlfriend, but Paxie—to cover up a company issue, a little too steep? You need a vacation, son. Maybe you can spend some time with your dad, practice your deva powers a little. Hang out with Ash some more. Do anything; just stay away from the office. Please.”
“Who will take over my responsibilities?”
“I will step back in. Don’t worry, I’ll figure everything out. You will need to keep up appearances and appear at the Charity Ball in the fall, just as you always do. You can serve as a figurehead for a while, but nothing more.”
“When is this effective?” Thornton asked.
Rose smirked. “Now. Get out of here, kid.”
Thornton leaned back in his chair, running both hands through his hair. He felt like he had just been informed of the death of a child. “But what am I going to do with myself?”
“See if you can find that amazing young man I used to know. He’s buried under there somewhere. Rediscover yourself, and bring my son back to me.”
He released a sigh, and nodded slowly. “I’m… sorry, mom. For all this… everything, lately.”
“Just get it together,” Rose said, standing up. She pointed to the door, indicating that he should make his departure.
Sometimes, Thornton was not sure which of his parents was more terrifying: the demigod or the businesswoman? He lifted himself out of his chair, feeling as though he weighed more than a blue whale. He picked up his glasses, and was about to return them to his face when he realized that he did not need them any longer. He sighed and began walking around the desk, but he paused and turned back to look at Rose Kalgren. “Do you think she’ll agree to marry me, mom?”
The woman’s hard face softened slightly. Her periwinkle-blue eyes glided to the photograph on the front page of the newspaper. “I think she’d be a fool not to. I think she’d have difficulty living without you. But Thorn—I’m almost positive she’s going to make you suffer first. Because you made her suffer… and well, the girl’s a fire goddess.”
“Then I’ll suffer,” he answered. “That’s fair.”
Rose watched her son leave the room, but when he had almost reached the door, she shouted after him. “Thorn!” When he looked back, she picked up the newspaper and thrust it forward so that he could see the photo. “Keep me involved in your life, young man. If things don’t go the way you want with Pax, and you find yourself spending more time with this girl—remember that I’m your mother. Before you get in any deeper with this girl, bring her home to meet your family. You should also find out her last name.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Okay. Go on—get out of my office.”
Thornton had never felt greater shame than when he pulled open the door and left that room. The room to which he had devoted decades of his life. He felt the burden of true failure for the first time in his life, and it had caused him to stumble from his pedestal. He now clung to the edge of the pedestal with just his fingertips, trying desperately to pull himself back up—he was somehow unsure of whether he was even worthy of being on top.
“Have a good day, sir!” Nina said amicably. She smiled at him and took a sip from her coffee mug. It was a mug that Thornton had given her years ago, and printed on the side were the words: World’s Greatest Secretary.
Those three words were almost enough to make Thornton break down in tears. Instead, he scowled at himself for even wanting to cry. Wow, I guess I really do need a break. I am way too emotional and high-strung lately. When did I become like this? He nodded at Nina as he entered his private elevator. He punched in buttons angrily and crossed his arms, leaning against the glass wall as the capsule descended. He had a spectacular view of the other downtown office buildings from his glass elevator, but it gave him no joy on this day. When the elevator landed, he marched out of the pod and into the company foyer.
He felt a hand roughly grab his arm. “Thorn!” said a young woman’s voice.
Knowing that Pax and his sister were as much out of the country as possible, he imagined that it could be Medea. But when he turned to see his attacker, he was surprised by the face of a stranger. She had dark skin and dark hair, but striking hazel eyes with green flecks. What he noticed next was the glaringly green outfit that she wore—possibly some kind of gaudy new athletic gear.
“Do I know you, miss?” Thornton asked politely.
“Yes,” she said in a tired but serious voice. “Listen, Thorn. An apocalypse is about to happen. The end of the world as we know it.”
“Oh,” he answered in disappointment. She was just another crazy. He gestured to security by inclining his head to the side slightly. “Sweetie, every day that Kalgren Tech mass produces new innovations is the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of a better world.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” the young woman exclaimed. “I give up everything to come to you with serious information, and you respond with some fluffy PR spiel?”
“Sorry, whatever your name is. You’re beautiful, but even if the world was going to end tomorrow, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to sleep with you. You see, I already have a girlfriend… I think.”
The dark-skinned woman looked horrified. “What the hell, Thorn? When did I ever say anything about sleeping with you? Disgusting! As if I’d ever find such an old man attractive!”
“Did you just call me old? Security!” Thornton shook his head angrily and began walking away. “As if this day could get any worse!”
“You ungrateful fool!” she shouted after him, easily shrugging off the security guards that surrounded her. Thornton hastily left the compound, and she stared after him furiously. And I thought he was less intellectually inept because he works in an office? A security guard tried to grab her arm, and she sent him flying across the room using only a thought. He crashed roughly into the wall. Various guards continued to surround her, perceiving her as an active threat. The woman sneered and flung her hands out to her sides, hurling all of the security guards into the walls without touching them. Several concussions and dents in drywall later, she begun marching after Thornton.
A man instantly materialized before her, blocking her path. The massive older blonde man was scowling, with his arms crossed across his chest. “Nyssa!” he shouted. “Stop this.”
She froze in surprise. Her shoulders, covered in bright green fabric, had been tensed up in rage—now they relaxed and fell. “Uncle Vince. Thank Sakra you recognize me.”
“I do not observe the world with only my eyes,” Vincent answered. “I can distinguish your life force. So come with me, and explain why you have traveled back in time. When I saw the Earth Deva this morning, his daughter, Nyssa, was only five years old.”
Pseudosphere, Month Twenty
Pax pressed the pause button on the remote so that she could make an embarrassing confession: “It actually has been nice to rest a little.”
“Right?” Amara smiled, feeling more like her old self now that she was dressed comfortably and relaxing in the purple safe-room. “Aren’t you glad I brought all these awesome movies from our childhood?”
“Yeah,” Pax said reluctantly, “but we’ve wasted far too much time. We really need to get back to training, Mara. There are still three trials left.”
“We aren’t getting any older while we’re in here, are we?” Amara asked. “Time is frozen for us. We should enjoy it!”
“Enjoy what?” Pax asked. She gestured around them to the perfectly square room. “We aren’t making any progress while we dawdle between rooms.”
“We could benefit from some strategizing out here in the safe area before we enter the thick of it again,” Amara said, lounging on the bed. “For example, I’ve been thinking a lot about Para. I don't really think that we can talk to each other in her mind. She only has one brain—it should be impossible really.”
Pax nodded. “I was wondering about that. Maybe Para has a mental disorder. She’s created two separate personalities she calls Pax and Amara, and she talks to herself in her mind to help make decisions and to avoid being lonely. In other words, Para acts out being each of us.”
“That’s hilarious! But it makes sense… so when the ‘Amara’ in Para tells ‘Pax’ to do something, it’s really just Para playing games inside her own head? It’s not me talking to you?”
“Possibly. Probably. It’s confusing, but I guess it helps her stay sane. The only negative aspect of being Para is not having a best friend to talk to—or anyone who really knows who she is. I guess she made her own friends.”
“Sane? That sounds like the definition of insanity to me—but they do say that the most brilliant people are also crazy. But how can Para have something like multiple personality disorder if she really is two people?”
“Well, she is technically just one person,” Pax reasoned. “She’s just very self-conscious about being made from two people, and trying to make both halves happy all the time. We both have our own desires, but in Para they blend into one. Sometimes I forget I’m not myself when I’m her. I consciously think of the fact that I’m joined with you, and I constantly try to seek out other parts of myself that are not me… parts that might disagree with what I’m doing. Does this make sense?”
Amara began laughing. “I think she gets all her madness from you!”
Pax grinned and used her mind to slam a pillow into Amara’s face.
“We just need to spend more time as Para,” Amara said, rubbing her nose. “She needs time to just be herself and to feel normal and comfortable in her own skin.”
“All we have is time,” Pax said softly.
“But half an hour every day isn’t enough! She needs to exist for a longer period, continuously. Days or even weeks. Heck, if we could have stayed together as Para, she would have beaten all six trials already! Maybe I can come up with some sort of invention…”
“You should try, Mara. I’ll also see if I can find a creative way to use my prana to keep her joined. If we put our heads together, figuratively, we should be able to find a way to keep our heads together, literally.”
Amara giggled at that. “Okay, sure. But can we finish watching Cinderella first?”
Pax nodded and pressed the play button to continue the movie. During the scene in which Cinderella saw the clock, told the Prince that she had to leave, and rushed out of the ball frantically, Amara used her telekinesis to float the remote over to her hand, and purposefully hit pause. It’s so familiar, she thought to herself. Having to run away before the magic ends. Cinderella only gets to stay in her beautiful gown for a measured amount of time…
“Hey, I’m not telepathic like you are, Mara. Penny for your thoughts?”
“Cinderella did it,” Amara whispered.
“What?” Pax was lost. “And you call me crazy.”
“No, check this out, Paxie! She captured the prince’s heart in probably less than thirty minutes. She got to the ball pretty late, and she had to rush to leave before her horses became mice and her coach became a pumpkin at midnight! And the prince only wanted her because she used magic to make herself greater for a limited amount of time; he didn’t care about the women who were always there!”
Pax raised her eyebrows. “You think Para could really do that to Thorn and Ash?”
“Yeah,” Amara said, with a little sadistic smile. “It took you and me our whole lives to make memories with the guys. All those years of wasted love, trust, and devotion. But we were always there and they took us for granted. Now, in a few measly half-an-hour sessions, Para can destroy all of that. She’s something new and magical—greater than both of us.”
Unable to respond, Pax stared down at the bulge of the ring under her leather glove.
Amara moved close to her friend and took Pax’s hands in her own. “Paxie, please say that even if you choose to marry my brother, you’ll still help me to hurt Ash. Please! I need to get even and take back what he took from me.”
“It’s nice to see you showing some balls,” Pax said with a smile. “Of course I’ll help. We’re in this together. I promised—as long as you help me too.”
“You still want to hurt my brother?”
“Are you kidding me? I think about it every day!” Pax frowned. “I keep thinking that if I just go back and marry him, I’ll grow to hate him. I’ll be so unhappy, and I’ll spend every day making him unhappy like so many other married couples. I’d rather just get all my vengeance out of the way at once in a huge attack than make him suffer in small increments for an entire lifetime.”
“Now I recognize you, Pax Burnson. I was wondering where my best friend had gone.”
* * *
“I’m not wasting another minute!” Pax shouted. “We can’t just sit around and watch movies and talk about boys! This is not important. I feel like I am rotting. All the strength and skill we’ve achieved from training—we’ll lose it if we don’t keep practicing!”
Amara chewed on her lip. She knew that she had been stalling for far too long. She had been expecting Pax to blow up at her a long time ago, and now she feared her friend’s wrath. “Paxie, we’ve achieved so much. I still try to stay in Ruby Form a little longer each day, just like you told me. I have far more energy, and far more control of my prana than I had when we first came into the vector zone. We are both getting better at using Ruby Form, even in the safe-room! Isn’t that preparation?”
“Are you serious?” Pax hissed. “It’s like you’re trying to sabotage us! There’s so much more to achieve than Ruby Form. There’s Silver, Golden, and Pure White—haven’t you seen it done? When someone achieves Pure, their irises disappear and their eyes become completely white. Their body is completely possessed by ancestral energies, and they lose all human consciousness. Their human blood and human thoughts burn away and they completely black out; but they become unstoppable—I doubt we could ever get to that level. We’re still so weak. There’s so much more to accomplish that we will never realize unless we get going now.”
“My dad can easily do all of that stuff,” Amara said in confusion. “If there’s ever a fight at home, we can just depend on my dad. He is so strong that we don’t have to be.”
Pax stared at her friend silently for a moment. “My father is powerful too. It didn’t stop the Asura from killing my mother.”
Amara closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Paxie…”
“No. How would you feel if it had been Rose? You don’t understand what that was like, seeing her body on the floor and realizing she had been killed!” Pax knew that her anger had crossed a tipping point, and she would not be able to calm down or lower her voice. “Vincent would have protected my mom if he could have done so. But no—I was t
he only one around, and I was a weak, useless kid. I didn’t even realize there was an Asura attack. Twelve years later, and I’m still weak and useless—it could happen again. It could happen to my grandma, or it could happen to you or Rose. I wouldn’t be able to stop them.”
“Pax…”
“And you stopped talking to me for years,” Pax added fiercely. “I was fourteen; my mom was murdered, my dad lost his mind and went to India, and my best friend stopped hanging out with me. You and I barely talked through all of high school.”
“I didn’t know what to do!” Amara cried. Tears began to slip down her cheeks at the truth of her friend’s words. “You were so depressed. It was hard to be around you...”
“And easier to be around the popular, rich, fashionable kids,” Pax finished viciously. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to calm down. Involuntarily, the face of the man she loved came into her mind. “All I had was Thorn. I guess that’s why it doesn’t really matter what he does to me; I’ll always run back to him in the end. Everyone knows it. I’m nothing. I’m nothing when it comes to people. You, Ash, my dad—our relationships become so strained when things go wrong. I used to have confidence in Thorn, and think he’d be there no matter what, but now I know that depending on anything outside myself is foolish. But my power is my own. My power is something that can take pride in—this is who I am. I’m a goddess. I’m the granddaughter of the Fire Deva.”
Pax did not realize that she had advanced on Amara and was speaking harshly, very close to the blonde woman’s face. “I am not going to depend on my father to protect me. I’m going to think about the fact that my father won’t be young and strong forever, and someday I will need to protect him. I am not going to depend on Thorn, Vincent, or Ash, just because they’re men and they’re older than us. I am going to take responsibility to become just as strong as they are. I want to be able to lift some of the burden off their shoulders. I love these men, and I don’t need them to carry me. I want to stand beside them. If they need me to do so, I will carry them.”
Thirty Minutes to Heartbreak Box Set (Books 1-3) Page 36
