by Dean Murray
"I doubt that you do understand, but yes, that will do."
I turned to go, but she grabbed my shoulder before I could take a step. "I wish that the world you crave was one that was possible. Once upon a time your kind and my kind worked together, but now it's nothing more than an unobtainable dream. Only the newly born can indulge in that kind of relationship."
Chapter 24
The drive back to Colorado went by much faster than I would have believed possible, but it still seemed like it took forever. We were riding in a silver Mercedes and Kat kept the accelerator all the way to the floor for nearly the entire trip.
I'd half been expecting her to use some kind of advanced effect to make us not show up on radar, but she did it the old-fashioned way—with a radar detector and white knuckles. Apparently she didn't feel like she could spare the emotional reserves to maintain any kind of effect for that period of time—not when we were going to be fighting Mephistoles once we got back to Colorado.
It was awkward as all get-out, but I tried to talk to Jace while we were still on the road. It felt like the wrong move to get into everything while Kat and Bethany were there listening, but I also didn't feel right not saying anything.
Jace shut me down before I even got started.
"Now isn't the time. We can talk once your dad is okay."
"But it's not fair for you to go into that fight under false pretenses…"
"I'm not. I'm going into it because your dad is a decent guy and Kat would never let me hear the end of it if we didn't at least try to save him."
The scattered pieces of the puzzle finally clicked into place and I turned to Kat.
"You're in love with my dad!"
Kat flinched, but she didn't look away from the road. "I'm not in love with your dad—not yet, at least. I would like to get to know him better though. He's attractive, interesting and a genuinely good person. I was going to tell you earlier, but I just hadn't figured out how to bring it up. The fact that he's been captured by Mephistoles sucks on every level, but if we manage to get him out of there it will mean that he's already part of our world. That's a major bonus in a potential boyfriend."
Part of me wanted to yell that it was completely unacceptable for her to be crushing on my dad, but I kept my mouth shut. I was the last person who should be complaining about her keeping secrets from me—not considering the size of the secret I was still kind of keeping from Jace.
I was going to have to just grin and hope that everything worked out between the two of them. I wasn't ready for my mom to be replaced—her death still felt like it had happened just yesterday, but my dad could do a lot worse than Kat and they'd both been lonely for far too long.
I split the remaining time between looking over at Kat and back at Jace, but nobody said anything else for the entire rest of the drive. It was hard to believe, but we'd each managed to do something to alienate the other two. That wasn't quite right, I wasn't pissed at Jace, and Kat probably wasn't pissed at him either, but there was still something unresolved between all of us.
It wasn't the kind of team that anyone in their right mind would be taking up against two Awakened demigods, but none of us felt like we had any choice but to try.
We pulled into Jace and Kat's garage half an hour before Mephistoles' deadline. Based on the lack of visible damage to the house there was a reasonable chance that Mephistoles hadn't ransacked the place, but I still walked in half expecting for the inside of the house to be in tatters. It was a relief to see that wasn't the case.
I'd only been to Jace's house a couple of times, but it still felt like home in a way that no place other than my actual home ever had. I'd always felt safe and wanted there, and that was a lot more valuable than I'd ever realized prior to this.
"Jace, I really want to talk to you. I know you don't want to talk to me, and I'll respect that if you're determined to keep me at arm's length, but I hate the thought of going into a fight where one or both of us might be killed without you knowing everything."
I was pretty sure Kat thought I was crazy, but that didn't matter. I refused to tear my eyes away from Jace.
"Kat, can you call Mephistoles and then bring the research journals up? They need to go in a fireproof vault like we talked about."
"Yeah, I can do that, but don't take too long or he'll start the party off without us."
Kat already had her cellphone out as she walked past us. Jace waited until she disappeared into the massive pantry and then pointed towards the living room. "You want to talk? Let's talk."
"Isn't she going to be coming out in a second?"
"No, the pantry is one of the few places with direct access down to the lower levels. The house was built so that you could open the other side of the pantry up and either offload into the pantry or take the food further down to the secure storage. Kat won't be back up for at least another twenty minutes by the time she checks on Ari and grabs the journals."
"Wow, the original owner really was paranoid."
"Yeah. Ironically, all of his security wouldn't stop Mephistoles for more than an hour or so without the ward that I put in place when we first moved in. It isn't as strong as I would like—not even once it's had a chance to fully stabilize, but it's far enough down that it's not detectible unless you're inside the house."
I shook my head in amazement. There was just so much I still didn't know.
"Kyle found a way to conceal stronger wards behind weaker wards. Maybe once this is over we can figure out a way to replicate what he's done and put an even stronger ward up, something that will really do the job."
Jace flinched at the sound of his brother's name, and I instantly wished I could take the words back. What the hell was I thinking?
I expected Jace to explode. He should have yelled at me and called me a slut, but he just shrugged.
"Is that even a possibility, Selene? There's no reason to put time and effort into upgrading this place if you're not going to be here. If you pick Kyle there's no reason for Kat and me to stay here. We'll go find some deep, dark hole and pull it closed behind us in the hope that we can buy ourselves another decade or two of relative safety."
"How did you know that I kissed him? Was it Kat? I begged her to let me tell you, but she refused, said that it would just ruin your focus for the fight against Fenrir. I would have rather told you myself, but if she told you then I'm still glad. I didn't want to hide anything from you."
Jace refused to meet my eyes. "She didn't have to tell me, Selene. I knew the odds. I figured if you ever met Kyle that you would have a hard time resisting him. Even after he hit you and turned against everything you believed in, it was still hard for you not to be with him."
I tried to get a word in edgewise, but Jace just kept talking. "You don't know how happy I was when you called the first time. I could hear it in your voice. I knew that you were already struggling against the attraction you were feeling for him, but you were still fighting it, I could tell that you hadn't kissed him yet. When you called Kat instead of me with your location it was all the confirmation I needed to know that you'd kissed him and maybe even…"
"No! I kissed him, but that was it. I know that was still wrong, but that was all it was."
"So you've picked him then? You just need Kat and me to help free your dad and then you'll be going back to him?"
Jace asked his question in such a lifeless, monotone voice that it was obvious he was hurting—and badly. I wanted to reach out and hug him, but I wasn't sure that I had that right anymore.
"I haven't made any choices, Jace. I wish I could say that I had, I wish that I could just tell you that I pick you, that I'd never kissed Kyle, that I'd never even been tempted, but I can't. I went into that bunker wanting nothing but a chance to spend my life with you.
"Somewhere along the way, I started wondering what life with Kyle would be like. He has one of my journals, the one that starts when we were all in London, and continues on until after he lost his memory and split away from
the three of us. It's hard to explain, but that version of me told a pretty convincing story about how happy we'd been. She was desperate to make things work if Kyle ever changed enough for that to be a possibility."
Jace still refused to meet my eyes, but he was nodding. "It's true. You were inconsolable for the longest time. At one point, I thought that nothing but those memories being consumed by powering effects would let you get over him."
I'd never seen Jace so defeated. I couldn't help it any more. I grabbed his arm and pulled him around so that he had to look at me.
"You can't sit here and tell me that the last two hundred years were all like that. You and I didn't get married just out of convenience. I refuse to believe that—I wouldn't have settled for that."
"No, we were happy—extremely happy for the most part. You told me a thousand times that you were over Kyle. At first I didn't believe you, but as time went on part of me started believing. You went from just knowing that the two of you wouldn't work the way he was now to actually appreciating my differences and saying that you liked what I brought to the table. Even so, there was a part of me that wondered if you would leave me if Kyle ever came looking for you."
There was the faintest bit of life back in Jace's voice and even that small change was almost enough to make me cry.
"I know that I don't have a right to ask you to fight for us, Jace—not after what I've done—but that's what I'm trying to do. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. I read my old journal and it sounded amazing, like I'd had everything I could have ever wanted, and that was such a powerful thing that I almost couldn't resist the idea, but I kept telling myself that I'd been with you after I'd been with Kyle.
"I kept thinking that I'd picked you knowing full well what things with Kyle had been like. I must have loved you even more than I'd loved him. If we survive the fight with Mephistoles I want to read those journals—all of them. I want to find out what our life together was like."
"It's all there and most of the last several journals are all in English. You can read them, but part of me thinks that it won't make any difference, that you'll still pick my brother."
Tears started running down my face, but I wiped them away. Crying felt like cheating. It probably wouldn't have felt that way with Kyle, but it did with Jace. Jace had such a big heart that it was probably hard for him to fight with me and stay angry once I started crying.
"Do you not want me anymore, Jace?"
He gave me a sad smile. "I still want you, Selene, I just don't know if I can do this. You want to date Kyle and me at the same time. Kyle might be able to deal with you dating both of us since he doesn't actually remember what it was like to be with you. I don't have that advantage. I look at you and I see my wife. I know you're not, I know you're a different person with a completely different set of memories, but in my chest it doesn't feel like that. I'm not sure I'll be able to stand watching you head off on a date with Kyle."
"I'm so sorry, Jace. I didn't want to make a mess out of everything. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone—you especially—I just felt like I owed it to myself to find out what things had been like before. Things just kind of happened after that. You have every right to hate me."
Suddenly Jace's arms were around me and I realized that I'd been wrong about this house. It wasn't the house that felt like home, it was Jace. Standing there wrapped in his arms was like coming home after a long trip. The trip might be new and exciting, but at the end of it all you were glad to be back home, glad to be back in a world that was perfectly suited to you.
"Jace, I—"
"Don't say that you've already decided, Selene. You may believe that right now, but you haven't—you don't know enough to make that decision. You've only known me for a few days, you can't possibly be ready to commit to the next few hundred years with me. Even if you believe it right now, it can't last. Eventually you'll start wondering what you've given up on, what you're missing out on. I wish there was another way, but I knew all along that there wasn't. That's part of why I was trying to keep you at arm's length before. I knew that I needed to tell you about Kyle before I could ask you to marry me again.
"I've spent a lot of time lately reading through my old journals, the ones from before you and I were together. It sounds like it was hard for me to see you with Kyle, that sometimes I wasn't sure if I could take another day of it, but in the end I never went anywhere. I knew all along that I wanted you in my life in whatever form I could get, even if that was just as my friend. I don't think that we could go back to that—too much has happened between Kyle and I since then—but I'll give you a chance to decide."
"I'm so sorry, Jace. You deserve so much better than this."
"Maybe. It doesn't really matter though—I've known since the first moment I saw you several hundred years ago that I was made for you, that I would never be happy with anyone else."
Chapter 25
I would have stayed there forever if I could, wrapped in Jace's arms, pretending to myself that my decision had been made, but time marched relentlessly forward. All too soon Kat showed up pushing a dolly that was loaded down with a massive metal case.
"That's all of them?"
"Yeah, everything including the two that Genevieve left in that box for you to give Selene when you found her. Mephistoles claims that he's on his way with Peter, but my bet is that he's already here watching us, waiting to make sure that we really leave with the journals. His accomplice, whoever they are, is probably bringing Peter."
Jace nodded absently, no-doubt thinking through contingencies. Finally, he sighed and patted the metal box.
"Okay, this is all new for you, Selene, but the real prize as far as Mephistoles and the other pantheons are concerned is this vault and the journals inside it. He's never going to even let us see your dad unless he really believes that the journals are outside the protection of our wards.
"Mephistoles wants us to believe that he's going to go through with the exchange if we give him the journals, but the truth is that he's going into this expecting to kill us so that he can bash down our wards and make sure we didn't hold anything back. It's just the way someone like Mephistoles thinks—your dad is nothing more to him than leverage that will let him pin us down so he can finish us off."
"This is all a huge mistake. I never should have asked the two of you—"
Kat cut me off before I could go any further. "This isn't all just about you, remember? We aren't going to leave your dad in Mephistoles' power. Besides, I'm well and truly sick of Mephistoles. He was a thorn in our side even before he got that stupid artifact, but he's gotten even worse since then. It's past time that we put him down."
The words were harsh, but I knew Kat well enough to know that she wasn't tearing into me. She was just functioning as best she could through a torrent of fear and anger.
The last of my concerns about her dating my dad melted away as I finally registered how hard this was for her. If she was willing to face her fears like this for him then she didn't just have my permission, she had my blessing.
I crossed the distance between us in two quick steps and wrapped my arms around her. "Thank you for doing this, Kat. I don't deserve you, but I'm glad you're here."
"Yeah, well, nobody really could deserve me so at least you're in good company."
Her voice carried more of the laughter and teasing I was used to from her, and hearing that was a little piece of coming home too. Some people went through their entire lives wishing that they had a family, but I didn't have just one, I had two, two incredible families that I didn't even begin to deserve. All I could do was give them all my best and hope that it would be enough.
I looked over and caught Jace smiling at the two of us. He saw me watching and his smile shifted from being for both of us to being just for me. Maybe things could still be okay between the two of us.
"Mephistoles won't risk destroying the vault, so we stay as close to it as possible to start out with. When Mephistoles tries to d
ouble-cross us, Selene stays next to the vault while Kregor, Kat and I carry the fight to him. Selene, you can throw an occasional sun lance his way, but keep an eye out. Sooner or later his accomplice will make a play for the vault and you'll need to be ready."
Bethany had been so silent for the last little while that I'd almost forgotten about her, but she suddenly buzzed in and settled on my shoulder.
"What if there are more than just two of them?"
I shook my head at her. "This isn't your fight, Bethany. You said it yourself a little while ago. You don't have enough power accumulated to survive being disembodied yet."
"This is my fight if I choose for it to be. I spent the better part of twenty years looking for you and then once I found you, I only got a couple of days with you before you disappeared. I'm not doing another twenty years like that. This is my fight too."
I closed my eyes for a second. We didn't have time for an extended fight, but I needed to make her see that there wasn't any point in throwing her life away like that.
"The next twenty years don't have to be like the last twenty years, Bethany. Jace and Kat can see you now. If the worst comes to pass you can find some other Awakened and hang out with them. You'll get to watch TV and talk to people."
"Yeah, fat chance of that. I'd just end up as a glorified gopher. No TV, just a lot of running around delivering messages with no prospect of getting any bigger for another twenty years until you come back in your next incarnation."
"Then don't go find another Awakened, go hang out with the Seelie Court."
"I can't do that!"
"Why not?"
Bethany looked embarrassed, like she'd said something that she shouldn't have. "I just can't. Can we leave it at that? I'm coming with you and all this is doing is wasting time. What do we do if there are more than just the two of them?"
Jace and Kat exchanged looks and then shrugged. "We try to burn peak memories and take as many of them with us as possible. We can't win at that point so there's no use holding anything back."
