by W. J. May
“What’s wrong?”
Her head snapped up to attention. Devon was standing now, studying her odd position with a concern that he was either unable or unwilling to hide. Their eyes met for the briefest moment before she quickly changed the subject. “Why are you here?”
It came out a little sharper than she had intended, but perhaps it was for the best. They both snapped out of their momentary trance, and Devon cleared his throat.
“I’m meeting Luke; we’re supposed to go to the gym. We thought we’d get an early start before—”
His voice cut off in sudden, incriminating panic, and Rae realized the words he had been going to say.
‘Before anybody else woke up.’
She and Devon might have broken up, but that didn’t mean that they stopped thinking the same way. Social retreats were best done at early dawn while everyone else was sleeping.
“What’s with the bags?” he deflected, feeling a little sheepish that he’d let something slip.
Rae glanced down where they sat on either side of her feet. “Oh, I’m just—”
“Well, good morning!” Molly threw open the door to her bedroom, looking considerably more relaxed than she had the previous evening. She leaned against the frame, wearing a long bathrobe, and offered each one of them a bright, oblivious smile.
A second later, she remembered their current situation and turned an off-shade of puce.
“Oh…sorry, I didn’t—”
“Hey man,” Luke breezed past her, casually alleviating the sudden tension, “you ready to hit the weights?”
“Yeah, absolutely.” Devon picked up his gear, but glanced again at Rae’s suitcases and paused. “I was just…”
Molly beat him to it. “Where the hell do you think you’re going now?”
Rae flushed, and spoke without thinking. “I’m going to New York.”
“New York?” Devon repeated with a slight frown. His eyes flickered between his gym bag and her suitcases, like he was trying to decide which way to go.
“New York City?” Molly asked a little more seriously. “What’s happened?” Before Rae could even answer, she disappeared into her room and began rummaging around in her closet. She appeared a moment later with an empty suitcase of her own, into which she began throwing random pieces of clothing. “Well, how long do you think we’re going to be gone?” she asked, sweeping her hair up into a long red ponytail as she worked. “We can text Julian and pick him up along the way—”
“I’m going to New York,” Rae repeated, stressing the isolation. “Just me.”
Molly paused in her frantic packing, looking utterly bewildered, while Devon set his bag slowly on the floor. “Why wouldn’t we…?” Molly trailed off uncertainly, before shaking her head. “Don’t be stupid, so you guys are having a fight. So what? You’ll get past it. Of course we’re coming with—”
“I’m going to New York to see my uncle,” Rae cut her off. “There’s no life or death situation, there’s no monstrous game afoot. I’m just…going to visit my uncle and aunt.” She was surprised by how easily the story rolled off her tongue. It wasn’t like she was exactly lying. She was indeed going to visit her uncle in New York.
There was just a bit more to it than that.
“Oh, well…” Molly glanced down at her half-packed bag, before her eyes drifted up to Luke. “Do you want a travelling companion, or…?”
“No, no it’s fine,” Rae assured her quickly. “I’ve been meaning to go for a long time, but there’s always too much stuff going on. But now Cromfield’s gone, and everything is just…” she avoided Devon’s eyes, “…over.”
“I’d still totally go with you if you wanted—”
“It’s cool, Molls.” Rae flashed her a quick smile before picking up the bags and heading to the door. “I’ll be back in a few days. A week tops.” She sucked in a quick breath and put on a brave face, hating to be lying to her friends, even if it was only a little white lie. “See you… everyone.”
“Okay, well…’bye then.” Molly raised a hand in a tentative wave, while Luke did the same thing behind her. “Text me when you get there?”
“I will. Bye.” As she headed out the door, she glanced back at Devon without meaning to. He was still watching her with that same worried look. He knows me too well. He knows something’s going on. Flashing a deliberately casual smile, she nodded to him as well. “See you, Dev.”
It wasn’t until she’d already shut the door behind her that she heard him answer.
“…See you.”
* *
Rae spent most of the flight to New York with her nose buried in some nonsense book she had gotten at the airport. She knew enough about international travel to know that if you were travelling alone—someone, didn’t matter who, but someone—would always try to talk to you. And while that may be an amusing way to pass the time for some people, she simply didn’t have the energy. Or the time. She would be landing in just a few short hours, and still had to come up with a way to pry sensitive information out of her uncle.
“Miss? Another soft drink?”
Rae flipped a page in the book, trying to look busy as the young man behind her leaned forward with interest to get a better look. “Yes, thank you.”
“Here you are.” The woman set it down with a kind smile before leaning closer. “And, Miss…your book is upside-down.”
With a look of extreme mortification, Rae sank lower in her seat and turned it back the right way. “Thanks.”
Five hours later, she was no closer to coming up with a tactic to combat her uncle, but was now suddenly out of time. She hopped into a cab at the airport and headed straight to her aunt and uncle’s house in the middle of the city.
Cabs in New York were nothing like cabs in London, she realized as she pressed her nose against the window and watched the commotion.
Instead of her serene English streets, there was a dissonant symphony of rapid honking and profanity. Instead of her charming little break-up park lined with antique benches and miniature roses…there was a broken- down hot dog stand and a pair of stolen bicycle wheels.
Still…home sweet home, in a way. It was good to be back.
As fate would have it, she pulled up at the house just as Uncle Argyle and Aunt Linda were leaving it. King Arthur, her aunt’s prized cat, was wedged in a carrying case beneath Linda’s arm.
“Is that…?” Linda shoved the case into Argyle’s chest and raced down the steps, her arms raised for a huge hug. “Is that my Rae?! Honey, I didn’t even recognize you! Come here!”
Before Rae could say a word, she’d been pulled into her aunt’s famous bone-crushing embrace. For the second time that day, her body slipped into Charles’ ability. At least this time she understood the reason why.
“Hi, Aunt Linda,” she gasped, mentally checking to make sure all her vertebrae were intact.
“Oh, sweetheart! You look all grown up! I didn’t even recognize you!” Linda twisted around and squawked in Argyle’s direction. “I didn’t even recognize her!”
“Yes, darling, I heard you the first two times.” Argyle trotted down the steps and set the cat in the backseat of their car. “Rae, it’s so good to see you. All is well, I hope. We weren’t expecting a visit…” His voice trailed off and he studied her face curiously. While Linda remained cheerfully oblivious, he looked at his niece with a bit more caution. He alone knew the well-deserved implications behind her last name. He alone knew that ‘surprise visits’ were seldom a good thing.
Rae pulled back a bit nervously, but smiled with false cheer. “Yeah, well, I’d saved up some vacation days at work and decided to hop on a plane and surprise you!”
Linda clapped her hands. “Argyle, isn’t that wonderful! She’d saved up some vacation days at work and decided to—”
Argyle chuckled softly and put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Yes, dear. I heard her the first time.” He glanced at the black town car idling beside the curb. “We were just on our way
to the vet’s. Apparently Arthur is feeling…depressed, and urgent medical care is required.”
Rae looked back and forth between them and stifled a smile. The royal treatment of the family cat had always been a fervent insistence of her aunt’s, and the bane of her uncle’s existence.
“He’s…depressed?” she repeated curiously. “How can you tell?”
A shadow passed over Argyle’s face and he rolled his eyes to the heavens. “The same question I’ve been asking for three days—”
“He’s just not feeling like himself,” Linda cooed, sticking her fingers through the case. “Ever since they closed down the Picasso gallery at the Met, he’s been inconsolable.”
Rae couldn’t tell if she was joking. Then again, her aunt never joked about the cat. She decided to act cautiously. “Well, that’s enough to make anyone go to the vet. You two run along. I’ll just show myself in. I could use some sleep anyway.”
“Are you sure, dear?” Linda looked torn. “You just got here, I don’t want to miss out on any time with you, and I certainly don’t want you to be all alone—”
“Tell you what,” Rae proposed slyly. “Why doesn’t Uncle Argyle stay with me? You can take King Arthur to the vet, and we can have some dinner ready for when you get home.” When her aunt wavered, she pressed her luck still further. “I’m sure Arthur would rather go with you than Uncle Argyle anyway,” she said in a conspiratorial voice. “You are his favorite…”
Linda nodded whole-heartedly. “Too true, dear, too true. In that case, we’ll be back in less than an hour. Cupboards are stocked. You two have fun!” She put Arthur in the front seat and hopped into car without another word, waving out the window as Rae and her uncle stood on the curb—fixed smiles on their faces.
“So you want to tell me what this little visit is about?” he asked, still waving as Linda pulled around the corner.
Rae grinned at the departing car. “Funny you should ask. You and I need to have a little talk about my dad…”
Chapter 3
“Your father,” Uncle Argyle began wearily as he pulled various ingredients from the cabinets to start making dinner. “As I recall, you came here for Christmas not long ago and already asked me all about your father. I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”
Rae leaned against the kitchen counter with her hands on her hips. “You can tell me if you trusted him.”
Argyle paused, hands frozen in the refrigerator, before he pulled out a slab of cheese. “You know I did, Rae,” he sighed, “we all did. None of us saw it coming.”
She scurried around the counter to get the cutting board and a knife. “Saw what coming, exactly? That’s why I’m here, Uncle. My entire life, all I’ve ever gotten is a series of partial answers and vague half-truths. I need someone to just sit down and tell me the whole story. No more cryptic dodges. Just the truth. I think you’re the only one who can.” The words came out with a bit more passion than she’d intended, probably a result of her recent internal rant about precisely that frustration.
Argyle considered her carefully over his reading glasses before pouring himself a glass of wine. “The truth is…” he took a deep sip, “the truth is that I believed in him. He inspired me. He inspired a lot of us. And it wasn’t just that he had an eloquent way of talking; there was this…this quality about him. An aura, if you will. It made him rather irresistible.”
Rae hung on every word. So absorbed was she, that she didn’t realized she had stopped slicing until her uncle motioned for her to continue.
“In school, he was well-liked and admired. Perhaps not by all the faculty, and there were a few students who never quite warmed to him. Your boyfriend’s father, for one.”
Rae almost sliced right through her finger. “What? Dean Wardell knew my dad?”
“You’ve been dating his son for how many years, and you still call him Dean Wardell?”
Rae flushed beet-red, and returned to the cheese. “For your information, the man and I never really warmed to each other either.” Her cheeks flushed even hotter. “That, and I’m no longer dating his son.”
Argyle frowned over his wine. “What was that last part?”
“Nothing.” Rae cleared her throat quickly and moved on. “You were saying?”
“Yes, well, the teachers at Guilder soon took a great interest in the ‘propaganda’ your father was preaching. Freedom to use our powers openly in the world. Refusal to hide. While most of them dismissed it as the vigor of youth, news of it soon spread up the ladder to the higher-ups actually running the school.”
“And from the higher ups…to the Privy Council,” Rae surmised. “Lanford was one of those teachers spreading it, wasn’t he?”
Argyle nodded. “Simon was one of the only ones in his year not to be offered a job with the Council after graduation. Not before, like you had, nor after he graduated. His peers couldn’t understand it. Not only was he one of the best and the brightest, but his tatù was powerful and unlike anything they had ever seen. I remember your mother being devastated that he wouldn’t be joining her and her friend Jennifer at the agency. But I digress… I imagine it’s what Simon did after school that’s of greatest interest to you.”
Simon had worked for the Privy Council, but it had been a secret. Rae was sure of it. Maybe he’d left or been fired. Maybe he’d started the Xavier Knights or joined up with them. It didn’t matter at this moment. Argyle wouldn’t know. She nodded slowly, and watched her uncle’s face for any hidden clues that might lie there.
Truth be told, she wasn’t looking for any one thing in particular. There wasn’t a specific anecdote she was waiting to uncover. She simply wanted to understand the man.
Her entire life, she’d been unable to reconcile it.
So he’d had affairs—lots of men do. Of course, they didn’t do it as a genetic experiment to try to create a hybrid super-baby, but hey—semantics.
So he’d created a secret society—she didn’t exactly disagree with their doctrine. While the extremist tendencies were obviously downright wrong, the premise of what the HOC stood for wasn’t too far away from things she believed herself. She didn’t like to hide her gift. She didn’t like the fact that, as a hybrid, she was openly reviled even within her world. And she certainly didn’t understand how every person with ink was banned from sharing the secret even with family.
After decades of marriage, Aunt Linda still had no idea what kind of school Argyle had attended for a short while. She had no idea what Rae had been doing for the last few years, and as far as Rae knew, Linda believed she ‘worked in sales.’ Whatever that was supposed to mean.
How could Argyle keep something like that from her? Something as fundamental as what he was—his family and bloodline? How could Devon’s mom have no idea how her son spent his days? How could Molly’s mom? How had it become a standard that everyone was simply okay with?
And the fact that the PC even had the gall to tell people who they were allowed to love?!
Now I’m digressing…
But the fact remained her mother had still fallen in love with this man. How had this charming school boy turned into the Simon Kerrigan monster she knew today?
Rae brought herself back to the present and began plating grapes with the cheese. “All I know is that my mom was tasked with spying on him. That he was on the Privy Council’s most wanted list as enemy number one.”
Argyle sighed. “He was placed there after it was suspected that he murdered his parents.”
That. How could her mother have fallen in love with that? How was anyone capable of that?
“Do you think he did it?” Rae asked quietly, peeking up through her lashes to see her uncle’s face. The second she did, she almost wished she hadn’t.
He had gone from almost wistfully nostalgic to abruptly sad. He downed the wine in another gulp and started sprinkling seasoning on a plate of steamed vegetables.
“All the evidence says that he did,” he said quietly. “The Privy Council ran an offi
cial investigation. I remember your mother studying the case report herself. She said it was black and white. Simon was guilty.”
Rae’s shoulders fell with a little sigh. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath. Holding out hope was more like it. That this heinous crime didn’t belong in her family. That there had been some kind of mistake. “I barely remember Grandpa P and Nanny K,” she murmured. “I’d only seen pictures of them.” Her father rarely spoke of them, from what she could remember. Her six-year-old self didn’t have much family stuff to go on except what Argyle and Linda had taught her in the years following.
Argyle chuckled, “I forgot you used to call them that.”
Rae looked up curiously. “What else would I call them?”
“Well, I always knew them as Peter and Katerina. Their given Russian names.”
Rae sliced through her finger.
“RAE!”
She looked down in surprise to see a small geyser of blood gushing over the counter. While Argyle raced forward with a towel, she lifted the plate of cheese out of the way with almost robotic disinterest. Truth be told, she was so distracted she hardly felt the pain.
Grandpa P and Nanny K…Peter and Katerina.
They were the same people.
Her grandparents.
Her mind flashed back to the words from her father’s letter. ‘The Privy Council was not always so spotless and forthcoming as they would have people believe. You need proof, ask Peter and Katerina…’
But what the hell did that mean? Why would he point her attention to the very people he’d killed? What on earth did he think that was going to prove against the Council?
“Earth to Rae! Are you even listening?!”
She snapped back to attention to find her uncle holding a towel firmly over her finger with one hand, while the other reached for the phone.
“Just hang on, sweetie; I’m going to call the family doctor. He makes house calls—”
“Uncle,” she pulled away, “I’m fine. Look. Already healed.”
Maybe she should just stick to Charles’ tatù. From the way things were going, she’d probably need it.
