Persephone’s dark, winged brows drew together at that remark, although her voice was even enough as she said, “Callista has a good point. If it’s true that they need humans to get at Sedona’s energies, then there are many more viable options available.” She sent a worried look toward her daughter, who sat quiet and still on one of the dining room chairs. Again Taryn had that “listening” look on her face, although I supposed that wasn’t so strange, since that was what she’d been doing for most of the conversation.
“Maybe that’s not what they want at all,” Lance put in. He got up from where he’d been sitting next to my Aunt Kara on the second of the two living room couches, and headed over to the window. The light outside had turned dark and bruised, purple shot through with streaks of blood color. Mouth twisting, he reached up and grasped the curtains, then pulled them shut.
For some reason, having the world outside hidden away made me a feel a little better. I loved the views from the house, but it wasn’t until Lance had closed the drapes that I realized how exposed we’d been, as if malevolent eyes were somehow able to pierce the gloom and spy on our conversation.
“Then what do they want, Lance?” Kara asked.
He paused, cool gray eyes flicking toward me before he returned his attention to his wife. In a way, that oddly dispassionate gaze seemed to strengthen me. I could always count on Lance to tell it like it was, with no coddling or hand-holding. Over the years, he’d gotten impatient with my parents on more than one occasion, since he clearly thought they spoiled me, but his disapproval didn’t change his affection for me. When he gave advice or offered input — which wasn’t often, since meddling in other people’s business was anathema to him — I knew it was in my best interest to listen to him.
When he replied, his tone was very gentle…for him. “I’m worried that they took Raphael solely as a bargaining chip.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
My stomach seemed to drop roughly a thousand feet. But I managed to keep my voice calm — well, almost calm — as I demanded, “A bargaining chip for what?”
“I’m not sure. At first I thought it might have been some sort of revenge for the member of their team you inadvertently killed during the Mars raid, but then I realized that didn’t fit.” He crossed his arms and settled his weight back on one foot, as if he intended to remain standing for a while. Who knows — maybe he thought better that way. “After all, they know they already have you on the hook for some kind of reparations, whenever they figure out what they want those to be. Also, Paul’s remark about them being cold-blooded and logical got me thinking. If revenge is out, and Raphael’s of no use to them as a conduit for Sedona’s energy” — despite knowing that those energies were actually real, Lance still couldn’t keep himself from grimacing slightly when he mentioned them — “then it’s logical to assume that they think he’s valuable because of how they can use him to make other people do what they want. Whatever that might be.”
“Couldn’t we make an appeal to the Assembly?” I asked. Again, I could sense the futility of such a question before I even voiced it, but I was determined to keep poking away until I came up with something useful. “I mean, he’s still a citizen, even though he’s chosen to stay here with me. Surely the Assembly won’t just stand by — ”
“Unfortunately, standing by is what the Assembly does best,” my father cut in, lip curling. “It exists to ensure that relative peace exists in the galaxy, but its main policy is non-interference unless there is absolutely no choice. We were allowed to rescue the Mars astronauts because leaving them to their fate would have interfered with the progress this world has made toward its own form of peace and co-existence. But stepping in to save one man?” He stopped there, mostly because my mother had given him a single shake of her head, mouth tight with worry. For all I knew, she’d also sent him a subvocal reprimand to stop talking about Raphael as if he was some stranger rather than the man their daughter had decided to spend her life with. Looking slightly chastened, he added, “I’m only saying that this isn’t the sort of thing they’ll step in to handle.”
Which I’d already pretty much guessed. “So what do we do now?”
“Wait,” my father said. “As Taryn pointed out, they did communicate by leaving that note for you. So it’s reasonable to assume they’ll make contact again. In the meantime — ”
“In the meantime, you’re coming home with us,” my mother cut in. “There’s no way I’m letting you stay here alone when a bunch of Reptilians could drop by at any time to leave another note.”
“That’s not exactly how it works — ”
“Even so,” she said, her tone flat. When her voice sounded like that, we all knew it was better not to argue, my father especially.
I got to my feet. “It’s all right. I’d get the screaming heebie-jeebies if I stayed here by myself anyway. Let me go throw some things together.”
An uncomfortable silence fell as I left the living room and headed back to the master suite to round up what I’d need for an overnight stay. Or maybe it would be much longer than that. After all, I had no idea how long the Reptilians planned to hold Raphael. Maybe they’d never let him go, would torture him, then —
Stop it, I told myself. If Lance is right, then Raphael is valuable to them. They won’t hurt him.
Much.
My hands were shaking as I pulled down my weekender bag from the top shelf in the closet. I clenched my fingers into fists, then released them. The trembling seemed to subside a little. Good. I had to maintain at least a semblance of calm, even if I felt as if I was flying into a thousand pieces inside. A solution hadn’t presented itself yet, but if the Reptilians truly had taken Raphael as a bargaining chip, then that meant they wanted something. We’d just have to figure out what it was.
I wasn’t very neat about my packing, but only threw things into the bag willy-nilly as they occurred to me. Eventually, though, I seemed to have everything I would need. And if it turned out that I had forgotten something important, I could just come back to get it, or one of my parents would fetch it for me. I was only going about a mile away, after all.
Paul was murmuring something to Persephone as I came back into the living room, but everyone else had remained quiet, apparently content to sit in silence while I got my things together. Raphael’s kidnapping had blown my original reason for coming home completely out of my mind, but seeing Paul and the now silent TV made it all come rushing back.
“Is that part of it?” I asked, pointing with my free hand toward the blank screen of the television.
“Possibly.” Paul exchanged a troubled glance with Persephone. A few feet away, Taryn sat quietly in her chair. It didn’t look as if she’d moved at all, whereas I could tell Kelsey was starting to get impatient, one cowboy boot–clad foot tapping against the leg of the dining room chair where she was sitting. As I stared at Paul, he amended, “Probably.”
“But won’t that bring the Assembly down on them?” I couldn’t quite quash down the tiny flicker of hope that began to rise in me. Maybe the Reptilians had just made a massive blunder.
My father’s shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly. “I don’t know. It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“What their intentions are.”
I sent him an annoyed glance. “Well, those intentions can’t possibly be anything good, right?”
“Probably not, but….” He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, most likely because he wasn’t sure what else to do with them. “We’ll just have to see what happens. In the meantime, we should get you home.”
That slip-up earned him one of my patented narrow-eyed glares, and he amended,
“Back to our house. The Reptilians know precisely where that is, too, so if they have something to say, they can come there and say it to our faces.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. Confronting a group of Reptilians in front of the Assembly, where I knew they couldn’t try anything, was bad enough. But
at my parents’ house, with just the two of them for protection?
Yeah, and they kicked their asses pretty well twenty-five years ago, I told myself. So I doubt you have much to worry about.
Thus comforted — sort of — I nodded. After that the group pretty much broke up, with everyone heading out to their cars so I could lock up the place and go with my parents in their Mercedes.
As we pulled out of the driveway, I couldn’t help but look back at the house and wonder if I’d ever live there with Raphael again.
* * *
My parents insisted on having me sleep in my old bedroom in the main house, not out in the casita.
“I just feel better knowing you’re right down the hall,” my mother said, and I didn’t have the heart to argue with her.
One bed was pretty much the same as another, if Raphael wasn’t there in it with me.
The world had already become surreal, and even more so as I set down my weekender bag and surveyed the room. Why, I wasn’t sure; my parents still hadn’t touched anything, and it was exactly the same as when I’d moved into the casita a year ago. I suppose I could have been thinking in the back of my mind that they might have finally realized I wasn’t coming back, that purchasing a house with Raphael had the sort of finality that living in the casita definitely didn’t.
Apparently not, though. Or maybe they just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. After all, Raphael and I had only been living together for a couple of weeks.
Thinking of him — of the quick flash in his dark eyes when he smiled at me, of the warm timbre of his voice, the way he could distill the essence of someone who annoyed him into a single sarcastically pithy comment that would invariably send me into a fit of the giggles — all that brought a sudden sharp ache to my chest and stinging tears to my eyes. Everyone had seemed so sure that the Reptilians would be contacting me again soon to let me know what they really wanted…but what if they didn’t? What if this really was about revenge? Anyone as cold and calculating as they were must know that the best way to hurt me was to hurt Raphael.
My fingers wrapped around the back of the chair that sat in front of the computer desk. The carved wood bit into my flesh, but strangely, I welcomed the pain. It seemed to help with grounding me in the here and now, and not some horrible possible future.
A soft knock at the door, and my mother stuck her head inside. “I know you probably don’t feel much like eating, but we were going to order some pizza. Any special requests?”
“Hawaiian,” I said promptly. It was my favorite, but I almost always got overruled because neither of my parents liked it.
My answer earned me a lifted eyebrow. “Trying to take advantage of the situation?”
“Of course.”
She chuckled. “All right, Hawaiian. Although don’t blame me if your father sneaks in a second one with pepperoni and olives.”
“I won’t say a word.”
Smiling, and looking faintly relieved that she hadn’t discovered me sobbing uncontrollably on the bed, she headed off down the hallway.
I’d actually contemplated breaking down and having a fit of hysterics, but I realized indulging that kind of weakness wouldn’t help the situation any. Besides, if the Reptilians did decide to relent, the last thing I wanted was for Raphael to see me with puffy eyes and a red nose. Wishful thinking, I knew. I had the distinct impression that they were going to take their time contacting me, just so they could drag out the torture a little longer.
The pizza came about twenty minutes later. Once I heard the doorbell, I knew it was time to head out to be with my parents, even though my mother had been right — with the way my stomach was churning, I didn’t know how much I’d be able to even eat. I’d do my best, though, if only because I knew that otherwise my father would tease me about leaving him a bunch of leftover pizza neither he nor my mother would want.
A warm, friendly smell came from the dining room, where two boxes of pizza sat on the sideboard. And, bless her, my mother had just opened one of those straw-wrapped bottles of chianti and was pouring some for all of us.
“Thank God,” I breathed, reaching for my glass before I was even fully in my chair.
“We thought you might need a little fortification,” my mother said.
“You could say that.” I swallowed a mouthful of chianti and waited for the warm rush of it to flow down my throat and hit my stomach. Where it would mix with the martinis I’d had a few hours earlier, but right then I wasn’t too worried about blending two different kinds of alcohol. What with all the shocks I’d experienced earlier that afternoon, most of those martinis had probably worn off anyway.
From where I sat at the table, I was able to see that the television in the living room was turned on, but the sound had been muted. It was a twenty-four-hour news channel, the sort of thing Raphael loved to mock. I lifted an eyebrow at my father, since I assumed he was the one who’d turned it on.
“I figured it couldn’t hurt,” he said. “There haven’t been any new developments, but that could change.”
“And in the meantime all they’re doing is speculating and making fancy graphics to illustrate those speculations,” my mother put in as she took my plate and deposited two slices of pizza on it. “I wanted to turn it off, but — ”
“It’s all right,” I said, taking the plate from her. “Since there’s no sound, it’s really not that big a deal.”
Her shoulders lifted, but she picked up my father’s plate and dished up a couple of slices without comment. Then she got her own food — magnanimously taking one slice of each kind of pizza — and sat down.
For a minute or two, none of us said anything, only drank our wine and made some good inroads on our pizza. After all, what was there to say? None of us knew anything, not really. In that way, we were just like those talking heads on the news station. All speculation and no facts.
All right, I did know one thing. I loved Raphael, and I would do anything to get him back. Until I’d met him, I hadn’t even known I was capable of such a fierce devotion. I’d thought I was doomed to be one of those people who drifted from short-term relationship to short-term relationship but who never met anyone who inspired love, real love. Maybe it was silly of me to have felt that way, since at barely twenty-two, I hadn’t exactly put in much time in the salt mines, so to speak. But I’d seen people my age and younger fall in love, and I never had. Even losing my virginity had been a calculated act, not something that happened in the heat of the moment.
Now, though, I knew all that early detachment had only existed because I hadn’t met Raphael yet. There wasn’t something intrinsically wrong with me, as I’d begun to worry. I was only being true to my Pleiadian blood and waiting for my soul mate. And if I couldn’t have him…
…then I would have no one. I accepted that realization with a strange level of equanimity, although I was feeling anything but calm at the prospect of losing Raphael when I’d just found him.
Terrified, more like.
I forced myself to eat pizza and drink wine, and I began to feel better. No, “better” was the wrong word. My thoughts were as worried and frenzied as ever, but my body relaxed just the slightest bit, as if it had realized it needed to take care of me at a time when my mind couldn’t.
“…anything you need?” my mother was saying, and I blinked.
“What?”
“I was just asking if there was anything you needed. I hadn’t checked the guest bathroom’s toiletries and stuff lately.”
“No,” I replied absently, although I didn’t know for sure if I’d really packed everything I required for a stay of indeterminate length. My mind hadn’t been all that focused on the task. “I’m fine.”
She shot me a troubled look, followed by a glance in my father’s direction. Since he was in the middle of taking a large bite of pepperoni pizza, he couldn’t really respond except to lift his shoulders. What could he say, anyway? I was sitting there and eating calmly enough. I hadn’t dissolved into a big p
ile of blubbering goo. Right about then, that was the best either of my parents could hope for.
Even as I was looking over at my father, though, I saw his eyes widen. The half-eaten pizza slice fell from his fingers and landed with a thud on his plate, flinging bits of sliced olive in several different directions.
“Martin!” my mother exclaimed, then stopped dead, her gaze apparently following his. The color left her cheeks.
“What is it?” I asked, even as I swiveled in my seat so I could better see what they were both staring at.
Which seemed to be the television. Which was showing….
I blinked, certain that all the stress — on top of the martinis and the wine — had made me begin to hallucinate. Because I couldn’t possibly be seeing what I thought I was seeing.
The setting was normal enough — dark blue curtains, a podium with the Presidential seal. I’d seen that sort of thing hundreds of times over the years, the typical setup for whenever the President wanted to address the nation.
There was nothing typical about the scene currently displayed on the TV, though. I saw the President, looking calm and focused enough, although something about the strained expression in her eyes reminded me of a horse that intended to bolt at any second. Behind her was a line of men and women wearing either business suits or military uniforms, and off to one side was the ubiquitous interpreter for the deaf.
Facing her, though….
I recognized them, even though I didn’t know all their names. Tall, taller than any of the delegation who faced them. One almost human, except for his greenish skin and ruby eyes. One definitely not human, with coppery-brown scaled skin. Two more striped in green and black, and the last taller than all the others, the scales that covered his face and neck shimmering palest gold.
Lir Shalan. Along with the rest of the delegation who’d confronted me back on Penalta.
sedona files 05 - falling angels Page 23
