Everlost (The Night Watchmen Series Book 3)

by Candace Knoebel

  And that makes me love him even more.

  Jezi stands back up and moves next to me, loosely wrapping her arm across her chest, clutching her other elbow. When he finally looks at me, torment has settled in his brows. His mouth opens and then closes, words clamming up behind his lips. He wants to tell us why. Maybe not for us, but for himself. He wants to explain why he overreacted… why he took it out on Gavin… why hearing his mother’s name makes him such a wreck, but there isn’t a perfect explanation.

  Rationality is simply eleven letters crammed together when it comes to matters of the heart.

  He shrugs, and his shoulders roll forward a bit. “I don’t-I don’t know why,” he exhales out, plunging a hand through his hair.

  I take his hand in mine, rubbing my other hand across his rough cheek, which is already swelling. “Explaining it is like trying to explain how the earth was created. It just happened. Things happen and, sometimes, the reasons behind them are beyond our explanation. Sometimes, it’s just a collision that was bound to happen. And that’s okay.”

  He squeezes my hand and smiles, though it looks painful, forced even. “He’s right. I am an asshole.”

  “Maybe,” Jezi says, “but everyone understands, Jaxen. Just tell him you’re sorry. You know he’ll forgive you.”

  “He always does,” Jaxen says, the guilt in his voice weighing on my heart.

  “Come on,” I say, tugging on his hand. “Let’s get your nose cleaned up, and then we can head down there. The sooner you tell him, the sooner you’ll feel better.”

  “Better doesn’t have a place within the darkness eating me up inside.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic,” Jezi says as she turns for the door. “You had a fight. Get over it.”

  I RUN A WASHCLOTH UNDER warm water as he rests his backside against the countertop. I could clean him with a swish of my hand if I wanted to, but I know that’s not what he wants. He wants to feel this moment just as much as I did when I fought Chett back at the Academy. There’s something about acknowledging your wounds that makes the situation more real, because it’s so easy for the mind to discard the moments we don’t like to remember.

  Because we, as humans, can so easily pretend that we don’t make mistakes, and that’s the most unfortunate plague of our generation.

  “Isn’t this funny?” I say as I wring out the cloth.

  He looks at me, waiting for me to explain.

  “I clearly remember the night you helped me lick my wounds, because of my own doing, and now the situation is reversed.”

  “What you did was at least justifiable,” he says quietly. “Chett shouldn’t have treated Katie that way, and I’m sure a lot of novices agreed. They just didn’t have the guts to stand up the way you did.”

  “Maybe… but it went against what I was told to do. I broke the rules. I let my emotions get the best of me and took a punch in the face for it.”

  The corner of his mouth lifts just a smidgen. “Yeah, you did.”

  I bring the cloth to his mouth, carefully. The almost nonexistent smile begins to fade. Shadows creep into his eyes.

  “I don’t know if I want to know why,” he says distantly as I dab at the dried blood under his nose.

  “About your mom?”

  He nods.

  “It might make you feel better if you understand her reasoning,” I say, running the cloth back under the water. I wring it out again, and then dab at the cut above his eye.

  His gaze darkens. “I don’t want to feel better. Not about what she did, because that would mean the past twelve years of my life that I spent in utter torment and complete hatred was all for nothing. All because she didn’t explain herself before she ran from us and left us to pick up the pieces, moving from house to house until Mack took us in.” He grabs my hand, stopping me, and locks eyes with me.

  He looks like a twelve-year-old boy again, lost and confused. Scared and alone. And I want to hold him tight and chase his demons away.

  “To think there was a reasonable explanation for it, and she didn’t have the gall to tell us, well… I don’t think I could forgive her for that.”

  I set the cloth down and pull him into a hug. A warm, understanding hug. It only takes him a second until he settles into it and wraps his arms around my waist, squeezing me tightly, almost desperately.

  The pain a parent can leave behind is an irreversible kind. A pain we can learn to manage, but never truly get rid of. It’s a living, breathing monster that seeps into a child’s open, innocent heart, and there it lives, thriving off every happy moment. Chipping away at every chance we have at letting the pain go so we can really live. Because you never get over losing a parent, no matter the reasons why.

  Not really.

  I have to open my stinging eyes because I see my parents’ faces when they close. It’s their smiles, their love, and the sacrifices they made just to keep me safe. It’s the fact that because of me… because of our Coven… because of who we are, Primeval, that they’re gone. That they left me to figure this all out on my own.

  And on some level, that’s what Jaxen has felt his entire teen-to-adult life. And now he’s being forced to face it head-on, and it scares the crap out of him.

  “What if I can’t forgive her?” he says, his voice choked with raw emotion.

  “No one expects you to,” I say softly, running my hands through the back of his hair, holding him tighter to me. “Just hear her out. That’s all you have to do.”

  He tugs in a stifled breath and pulls himself out of the hug, forcing strength back into his stance. Pulling himself back together like he always does. “Yeah,” he relents. He ruffles his hands through his hair, exhaling with a loud grunt. “Why do I always get so emotional when I think about her?”

  I tilt my head to the side. “Because she’s your mom, Jax, and you love her. It’s okay to love her. It’s okay to hurt because of her. It’s okay.”

  His face softens as he runs his fingertips along my cheeks until they’re safely wrapped around my neck, and then pulls me in for a kiss. Not a knock-your-socks-off kind of kiss, but the kind that tells me he loves me. The kind that only he could give me.

  When he’s done, he kisses my cheek, my nose, and then my forehead. “Words can’t touch what I feel for you.”

  I place my hand over his rapidly beating heart. “They don’t have to.”

  YOU KNOW THAT FEELING YOU get when you know you’re forgetting something?

  Like there’s an extra person in the room that you can’t see? Or a missing piece of time that you can’t recount, no matter how hard you try? No matter how deep you search back through your memories for that one small signal flare that will illuminate what you’ve recently lost.

  That’s when you know there’s a memory hiding deep inside your brain, warm and cozy, not willing to wake itself up for you. And that’s what I feel as I follow Jaxen out of the bathroom. I feel like I’m missing a part of my body, like I’ve left something behind, but all my parts are intact. My face furrows as the answer dances on the tip of my tongue. It’s something important. Something I know I should have no trouble remembering, but for the life of me, I can’t put my finger on it.

  “First day in the house, and already there’s drama. I knew I could count on you two for entertainment,” Weldon says at the base of the stairs, watching us coyly as we make our way down. He’s wearing a white, button-down shirt with the top three buttons undone, revealing a small amount of chest. Grey slacks hug his thighs, which are crossed neatly as he leans against the yellow-painted wall that accents his bronzed skin.

  I shove what I’m forgetting aside and shake my head at him. “All thanks to you,” I say bitterly, remembering him standing over Jaxen and Gavin as they fought, without a single ounce of worry.

  “Oh, come on. You can’t seriously be upset about that?” he says, uncrossing his arms from his chest. “It was long overdue. A little aggression is good for the heart. Gets the blood pumping and all that. If anything, I think I
did them a favor.”

  He’s smiling like he’s just finished solving a Rubik’s cube and presented it to us.

  Jaxen stops at the base of the stairs, his head still slightly hung. He isn’t finding any humor in this.

  Weldon’s smile falls. He puts a hand on Jaxen’s shoulder. “Look, man, no one is upset with you. So you had a fight. Gavin, above anyone, understands. Don’t beat yourself up over this.”

  “It’s not the fight. It’s her.”

  He doesn’t have to say her name for Weldon to understand. It’s clear in the way Weldon’s face morphs into an understanding frown. “I wish I had the right words for you. As your dearest and best friend, I feel like I should have them. But there isn’t a vault with great advice locked inside of me, waiting for moments like these, because these kinds of moments can’t be fixed with words.”

  Jaxen drags in a breath. “It’s all good, man.” He steps back until Weldon’s hand falls, and then looks over at me. “You should probably go meet with the girls. The sooner the wards are up, the better.”

  “It’s time you touch those witchy roots anyway, Faye,” Weldon says. “A Grimoire can only get you so far.”

  His words feel like a bucket of ice-cold water being poured over me.

  That’s when the flare of what I forgot goes off.

  My mother’s Grimoire.

  Three words have forced the floodgates open. Memories rush back, catapulting over the side of my brain and crashing down below. I stumble back until my back catches the edge of the railing, and my hand flies up to my mouth.

  “Faye? Tell me,” Jaxen says, his hands in my hair, resting just behind my ears.

  But I’m choking, tripping, falling over my truths. How could I be so reckless? So careless?

  I find his green eyes. Swallow down the bile gnawing its way up my throat. My stomach is a steel barrel sloshing with acid, corroding away from the inside out. “When we were summoned to the courthouse by Clara in Ethryeal City, and I tore the only evidence against her that my mother left me out of the Grimoire… I sent it back to my room, thinking that I’d be able to return.” My gaze drops and I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head against the onslaught of consciousness. “I was so blind and naive… thinking we were going to walk right in there and take down a corrupt system with barely any preparation. Thinking we were somewhat safe. Safe enough for me to leave it in my room.”

  His face pales a little, and I know he gets it now. Weldon’s staring at me with wide eyes.

  “Did you try to manifest it?” Jaxen asks.

  I close my eyes again and try.

  Nothing.

  When I meet his gaze with tear-filled eyes, he curses under his breath and lets go of me, looking off to the side. A moment passes by, painfully slow, and then he paces in front of me, tugging his hands through his hair. “We’ll get it back, Faye.”

  “I knew we couldn’t go more than twenty-four hours without a new problem. I need a drink,” Weldon says, walking past me. “Want one?”

  We both shake our heads at him, and then he walks away from us, leaving me at a complete loss for words.

  “Grimoires are made from old, almost ancient magic, Faye. It can’t be easily tampered with. And who knows… she might not even be aware of it yet,” Jaxen says, turning back to me. He’s offering me solace inside of hope, but I don’t want to hope, because hope is fickle. Hope is torn between two lovers—satisfaction and disappointment. You never know which bed she’ll fall into because no matter what, hope makes you feel safe. She makes you feel like everything will work out… and sometimes it does, and that’s why you continue to invest in her. That’s why you continue to believe in her.

  But then when hope fails you, when she falls into the arms of disappointment, the pain is a thousand times harder to take because not only did your hope not pan out, but she also broke your heart.

  And I can’t afford a broken heart right now.

  “I’m going to get it back,” I say, shoving away all the awful emotions attacking my central nervous system. The fear, the guilt, and the embarrassment for being so reckless with the one thing my mother trusted me the most with. “I have to.”

  I turn, and he follows me as I head toward the voices coming from a few feet away. We find the group spread out around the library. Unspoken thoughts clog the air. Electric tension raises the hair on my arms. It’s one of those moments when you have to force your feet to remain rooted in place. One of those situations where every atom in your body is screaming at you to retreat, to go back and wait for the tension to blow over, but your brain overrides the need, because the right thing to do is face the awkwardness head-on.

  And it’s not even because of something I did, but because of my fear for Jaxen and his relationship with Gavin.

  Rich, dark wooden shelves line the walls, reaching all the way up to the vaulted ceiling, which is pitched high with wooden beams. It’s a book lover’s dream; a place I could get lost in day in and day out. Small colorful plants hang from the ceiling near the windows. There’s a couple of lounge chairs and a chaise strategically placed within the room, all set over a sizable Persian rug.

  Gavin’s sprawled out on the cream-colored chaise, with Cassie sitting at his feet, running her fingers over his leg. Weldon has one arm propped against the frame of the large, arched window, the other hand holding a glass of amber-colored liquid. Jezi sits in the other window, her knees pulled up to her chest.

  They all turn when we cross the threshold.

  Gavin groans when he peers over the edge of the chaise and meets eyes with Jaxen. Cassie stands, as well as Jezi. Weldon barely turns his head.

  “Are you ready?” Cassie asks me, picking up a tarnished silver tray next to her that holds all the ingredients we’ll need for strengthening the wards.

  Jaxen searches my eyes for any sign of if he should speak up about my Grimoire.

  “Not yet. When we get back,” I say quickly through our link. “I want to get through this first. It’s more important.” It feels like I’m being forced to swallow a jar full of nails having to admit this, but I have to put everyone’s safety above my own needs. I have to keep my head on straight, even when I feel like the world is being ripped out from under me.

  Jezi waves her hands in front of me as if she’s trying to get my attention. “Earth to Faye,” she says.

  “Sorry,” I say, letting go of Jaxen’s hand. “I’m ready.”

  She turns to look down at Gavin, her face and tone shifting to that of a stern mother. “We’re going to go do this and, when we get back, we’ll start our discussion for what comes next. Can you two be civil while we’re gone?” She looks between Jaxen and Gavin, eyebrows raised in question.

  “It’s not me who’s the problem,” Gavin says shortly, dropping back to a laying position on the chaise.

  “We’ll be fine,” Jaxen rushes to say, his hand rubbing the back of his neck.

  Cassie looks up at him with a small amount of gratitude. “Good,” she says, sparing a smile. “That’s what I want to hear.” She walks over to me. “Come on, chicky, it’s time for the women to show these men what real strength looks like.”

  “Ha!” Weldon says with a snort. “What’s that? Cuddling puppies to death and lifting pies to the windowsill?” He chauvinistically lifts his drink as Jezi glares at him. Without warning, magic zips from her fingers in his direction as he puts the glass to his lips, and then, all of a sudden, the glass disappears and he’s wearing the whiskey down the front of his freshly pressed, button-down shirt.

  “What the hell!” he shouts as he holds his hands up, looking down at his chest, which is now peeking through the soaked fabric.

  “Oops! Did I really just do that? Silly me. I can’t seem to make my magic work right. I meant to turn your whiskey into cow shit, but got the spell mixed up when I confused you with actual cow shit. Must be the estrogen,” Jezi says, tossing her hair over her shoulder in triumph.

  He stares at her in part anger… and part
wonder as Jaxen and Gavin chuckle to themselves.

  With a coy smile, she turns and heads out the door without another word. Weldon’s already unbuttoning his shirt, grunting and groaning about wasted liquor and women with anger issues.

  “You asked for it, man,” Gavin says, lifting his glass to Weldon with a smile.

  Jaxen tosses a small towel at Weldon. “You know better than to mess with her.”

  I can’t help but agree with him.

  “Well, apparently, I don’t,” Weldon says, tossing his wadded-up shirt at Jaxen.

  “That’s because you act like a damn child on the playground, trying to pull her hair to show her you like her,” Gavin says before taking a sip of his drink.

  Jaxen nearly snorts from laughing so hard.

  Cassie giggles. “I have to agree,” she says, nodding at Weldon. “Your womanizing skills seem a little rusty.” She turns back to me when he scowls at her. “Come on,” she says to me, her smile lighting up her piercing blue eyes.

  With that, we head out of the library, leaving the boys and, for some reason, I’m not worried for them anymore. Jaxen will do the right thing. He always does.

  “YOU’RE GOING TO WANT TO wear something warm,” Cassie says as we stop by the stairs.

  She manifests a light pink, oversized cashmere sweater with a cupcake stitched on the front, and then puts it on over her slate-gray tank top. Jezi’s already wearing a large, navy-blue cable-knit sweater.

  I glance down at myself.

  I’m worlds away from looking put together in my sweatpants and oversized shirt, so I just manifest a black hoodie and call it a day.

  “Do you know anything about wards and how they work?” Cassie asks as she sets the tray down on a small, wooden table near the front door.

  “A little,” I admit, adjusting the shirt I’m wearing under the hoodie so it isn’t bunched up. “I read about them back at the Academy.”