by W. J. May
Gabriel stared nervously at Rae, pacing back and forth in front of the desk.
Rae wanted to tell him it was going to be alright but was terrified the bond she was using with her own memories of Samantha, using Curtis’ ink, would be severed. The original form of the ink, with the skin on skin contact, had been the only one she’d used before. This was new territory.
“Well, how long until she comes out of it?” Gabriel demanded. “Or what if she messes up something in the past, changes something she didn’t mean to? It’s the butterfly effect, right? What if she sets off a chain of events, and the next thing we know one of us isn’t standing here?”
Julian settled on the opposite sofa with a soft smile. “You know, for how callous you are you certainly worry a lot.” Gabriel opened his mouth for a scathing reply but Julian beat him to it, tapping the side of his temple. “If she’s about to do anything wrong or permanent, I’ll see. We’ll knock her out or something before it happens.”
“Knock her out?” Devon repeated slowly, turning around to stare at his friend.
Julian shrugged and flashed him a quick smile. “Or something.”
Chapter 8
Down, down, and further down Rae travelled. She lost focus of the others in the room and centered herself only on finding Samantha’s memories, or one of them. Falling through a blur of colors and detached memories. Flying so fast, Rae thought she might never reach the bottom.
Curtis’ power worked differently than Carter’s. Not just in theory, but in effect.
Carter’s ability to delve into a person’s mind felt like a pull. A deep pull that tugged at your very bones until you had no choice but to follow.
Curtis’ felt like a shove. Like some unseen force was driving you with unspeakable power from behind. Pushing you farther and farther down, until the memory itself became your only salvation.
Rae sucked in a quick gasp of air and threw out her hands to brace for a landing, well aware that in the real world she probably hadn’t moved at all. Her hair whipped out around her, and for a moment she felt a wave of sheer panic that she might never be able to stop.
But then, just as quickly as she’d slipped inside, she came to a crashing halt.
“Ouch!” she gasped, coming down hard upon a stiff carpet. The world around her blinked in and out of focus as a tiny smear of blood leaked down from her smashed nose.
Then she remembered that she could be seen, and quickly darted behind a door.
She was in a house of some sort. A nice house, from the looks of things. But quiet. Far too quiet. Considering the pictures of a family lining the wall, it was far too quiet indeed.
Then a single sound broke the silence. The sound of a door opening and then slamming shut. Soon followed by the uneven patter of little footsteps.
Rae cringed farther behind the door, wishing she had found a better hiding spot, when a tiny child raced inside the room. She was small. Unnaturally small. Rae had never noticed it before.
Samantha.
“Daddy! Daddy!” she squealed, her hands dripping a steady stream of mud onto the crisp white carpet. “Daddy, look what I’ve got!”
The unfortunate grasshopper in question had already slipped away unnoticed, but that’s not what caught Rae’s attention. Daddy? Confused, she followed the girl’s gaze to a tall chair in the corner facing the window. At first, nothing happened. Then Rae spotted a single wisp of hair.
She sucked in a silent gasp, her heart pounding in her chest. She hadn’t even realized he was sitting there. She’d never seen anyone so lifeless, so still. For a split second, she was terrified that he’d heard her speak when she first crashed inside, but on second thought she felt sure he hadn’t.
She wasn’t sure what exactly was wrong with this man, but he was in his own world. Lost and immune to everything going on around him. Including the little girl who’d just raced inside.
“Daddy?”
A look of extreme disappointment flashed through her dark eyes at his lack of reaction but, even so, she seemed to be expecting it somehow. Instead of retreating to the door she raced forward, spinning the chair around so that her father was facing the rest of the room.
For the second time, Rae clapped a hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t be heard.
Lifeless.
She’d used the word before she’d even seen his face. Thinking only of how unnaturally still the man had become. But seeing him now, there was truly no better descriptor.
There was nothing remotely alive about him. No light in his pale green eyes. No sign that he’d even registered the chair had been turned around. If it wasn’t for the faint movement of his chest, Rae would have sworn he had stopped breathing.
He was handsome. Or at least, he might have been handsome if his every feature didn’t look like it had been carved from chilled stone. His skin had the unnatural pallor of someone who had been kept too long indoors, and judging by the deep grooves worn into the carpet he had been sitting in that chair for a long time.
But that wasn’t the only confusing thing about him. It was the little pieces that didn’t quite fit with the rest. The vague hints at a previous life—a life before the chair.
The snake tattoo that laced up around his wrist, barely visible beneath the cuff of his sleeve. The slightly paler skin circling his finger where a wedding ring once was. The pictures on the walls around him. Pictures of a man who thrived on adrenaline. A man in every country, in any number of situations, with every possible assortment of friends.
Skydiving. Backpacking. Drunken bonfires. A beautiful girl kissing his cheek.
Always smiling. Always moving. Always a second away from grabbing the camera.
Pictures that had long been blanketed in a layer of dust.
Rae didn’t know how to reconcile it. Couldn’t imagine what had possibly happened to make the man in the pictures the same man she was seeing today.
And yet, despite it all, there was something strangely familiar about him. Like she had seen his face somewhere before…
“Sammie?” he spoke suddenly, startling both girls. Blinking like a man coming out of a deep sleep. A man who would rather be back there. “What are you doing here? I thought you were at your aunt’s.”
Samantha paused, looking him up and down in an appraising sort of way. Then she fixed a cheerful smile on her face—a smile that was just as false as she was too young to have known it.
“That was last week.” Her voice was like a tiny, chirping bird. A childlike precursor to the cartoonish lilt she had today. “This week, I was going to spend a couple days with you. Remember?”
The man’s eyes clouded over, and he ran a hand up through his unkempt curls. “No…I don’t.”
Samantha flinched, but never lost hold of that smile. “That’s okay, Daddy.” She took him by the hand, having completely forgotten that her own was covered in mud. “Have you eaten anything today? I could make you something.”
The child taking care of the parent. A five-year-old girl, with a thirty-year-old man.
He didn’t answer, but seemed hesitant to move so far away from the window. The second he registered it he pulled himself gently free, not noticing the mud any more than his daughter. “I’m fine, Samantha. Why don’t you go and play?”
Her eyes lit up with a surge of hope. The kind of hope that had dimmed through years of constant disappointment, but refused to completely die. The kind of hope that only hurt you. “Will you come with me?”
For a split second, his handsome face showed a flicker of life. A deep shining regret slowly made its way to the surface, followed by the most exquisite pain. “You go, honey,” he said softly. “I’ll…I’ll watch from here.” His finger flicked gently underneath her chin before he settled himself back down, turning the chair back to face the dusty window. Settling the castors back into their groove.
Samantha stared after him for a long moment before she turned suddenly on her heel and darted away, quickening her escape lest her father see tha
t she’d started to cry.
Not that he’d notice. Not that he saw anything through that dirty glass.
Rae’s heart broke as she stared through the slit in the door, watching as Samantha raced down the hall and headed back outside. At this point, she wasn’t sure which one of them she was supposed to follow. But something told her to stay with the man.
There was something more to him than met the eye. Something lingering just beneath the surface, just waiting for her to remember.
She pulled in another quiet breath and prepared to wait it out, but no sooner had Samantha left the house than the chair spun back round. The man leapt to his feet with a speed and grace that Rae didn’t think he was capable of, peering through the window until he saw the top of her little pigtails bobbing up and down in the yard.
A sad smile twisted up the corners of his lips, sticking there for a moment like his mouth didn’t really know what to do. A soft sigh wilted his shoulders, and in a move so swift and sweet that Rae could hardly understand it he kissed his fingers before pressing them to the glass.
Then he was on the move.
Rae cringed further behind the safety of the door as he reached across the desk and picked up his cell phone. He stared at the buttons for a moment, as if trying to remember which ones to press, before typing a quick message onto the screen. It sent with a cheerful little ding.
The second it went out, he pulled a key from his pocket and reached to the bottom drawer in his desk. His face, already pale, grew whiter still as his fingers touched upon something cold.
…What are you doing?
Rae shifted uneasily, watching a series of micro-expressions dance across his face. What started out as uncertainty sharpened to fear, before giving way to a resolved sort of determination.
Seriously, man, what’re you doing?
Her toes curled in her shoes as she was plagued with the sudden, unshakable feeling that something was about to go very wrong.
That’s when he pulled out the gun.
No, no, no! This is not good! Samantha—come back!
But in the seconds that followed, Rae suddenly wanted Samantha to stay as far away from her father as possible. She felt sure that the message he’d sent was to the girl’s aunt, asking the woman to come and collect her. And judging by the way he was staring down at the weapon, she also felt dreadfully sure that the man was never going to leave the room alive.
Do I stop him? Her mind raced desperately as they lived those final few seconds together. Is that why I’m here? To stop him from committing suicide?
Three times, she almost bolted from her hiding place to snatch the weapon away.
Three times, she stopped herself.
You cannot change time. Not something this big. Not when you don’t know the consequences.
“I told you…”
Rae jumped in her skin as the man’s voice rang out across the room. Strong this time. A far cry from the hollow murmur he’d used with his daughter.
At first, she was afraid he was talking to her. But his eyes were fixed upon the gun, staring so hard into the reflection it was as if he could see someone staring back.
“I told you I would never make it out of here alive.”
He took a breath. Closed his eyes. And lifted it to his temple.
“I was right.”
“NO!”
Rae’s scream rang out at the exact same moment that the shot fired. One masked the other as both rang out through the house.
She was still screaming when her eyes snapped open and she found herself back in her living room in Kent. The last thing she saw were six concerned faces before her chair tipped backwards and she felt herself falling to the floor.
A pair of strong arms caught her.
“Rae!” Devon’s hair spilled into his face as he stared down at her, his bright eyes wide with worry and alarm. “What happened?! Are you alright?!”
“Should’ve knocked her out,” Gabriel murmured. “She changed something.”
Luke shot him a look as Rae pulled in a gasp of air and sat bolt upright. The room around her wouldn’t stop spinning, and her ears were still ringing with the crack of the gun.
“He killed…he killed…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t even catch her breath enough to try. Her entire body was caught in a wave of shivers, and it wasn’t until the room went dark that she realized Devon had pulled her up into his arms.
“It’s okay,” he soothed, smoothing her hair while she buried her face into his chest. “You’re here now. You’re safe. It’s all over.”
A dry sob ripped out of her and she pulled back, her eyes spilling over with tears. “I saw him do it,” she wept, unable to stop herself. “I was standing right there.”
“Who, baby?” Devon bent down a little so they were at eye level, scanning her face with a practiced skill that had been taught by the Council long ago. “Who killed himself?”
Rae shook her head, unable to pull herself together. “I should have stopped it. I should have—”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” Devon took her firmly by the shoulders and forced her to look up into his eyes. “Rae, no matter who he was you could not risk changing history that much, do you hear me? You could not have possibly saved his life.”
Almost instinctively, Rae glanced at Julian. Desperate for a second opinion.
He caught her staring and shook his head, offering a sad but reassuring smile. “You don’t want to go messing with the future like that. Trust me.”
As she nodded her head shakily Molly slid in beside Devon, silently taking her hand. “Who died, Rae? What did you see?”
Rae pulled in a steadying breath, her eyes still adjusting to the dim lighting in the room.
“Samantha’s father.” Another shudder ran through her body as she remembered. “I went back to their house. Samantha couldn’t have been more than five years old. She ran inside, trying to get him to play with her, but he was just…gone.”
“He was already dead?” Devon asked. A strange look of relief washed over his face. “That’s good. That means you didn’t have to see it.”
“No,” Rae murmured, reaching back to touch the inexplicable braid tumbling between her shoulder blades, “he wasn’t dead when I got there. He was just…gone. I don’t know how else to say it. The man was dead inside. It’s like something killed him already.”
Or someone.
“But his face,” she continued suddenly, “I knew his face. It was like I had seen him somewhere before. Except…I don’t know how that would have been possible.”
“If Samantha was five, we were only a few years older than that.” Molly shook her head sadly, giving Rae’s wrists a squeeze. “So, that’s when he did it? When Samantha ran inside?”
Rae shook her head. “No. He sent her out first. I think…I think he loved her a great deal. He just…couldn’t cope. It was like something had broken him. Broken him in a way that he could never be fixed. The second she was gone…he pulled out a gun and shot himself.”
Julian and Devon looked away at the same instant, bowing their heads. Molly and Luke exchanged a quick look, while Angel and Gabriel were grim but unsurprised.
But that’s not all he did…
“But wait. First, he…he talked to the gun.”
Six pairs of eyes shot back at the same time, absorbing this sudden revelation as well as they could. Clearly, it left quite a lot to be desired.
“He talked to the gun?” Devon repeated, giving his fiancée every benefit of the doubt. To his credit, they had seen stranger things before. “What did he say?”
“He said…” Rae stared off into space as she remembered, hearing an echo of the dying man’s final words. “He said, ‘I told you I would never make it out of here alive…I was right.”
It was in that precise moment that Rae realized where she had seen the man before. Why his handsome, hollow face had already been burned into her mind.
It was recent. Very re
cent. In fact, it had happened just the other day in a courtroom.
… within her father’s memories.
* * *
“Rae, wait!”
The others tore after her, slipping into helping powers if they were able—anything to try to keep up with her frantic pace. But it was no use. The second the image struck home Rae sprang to her feet and stormed from the living room like the hounds of hell were behind her, making her way down to the basement.
“Rae, please slow down.” Devon was the only one able to catch up to her, and even he seemed a bit out of sorts as to what to do, not that he had done so. “Just think about this for a minute. Whatever you do, it shouldn’t be done in anger.”
“Why not?” she snapped, hardly breaking her stride. “Why shouldn’t things be done to my father out of anger? I tend to think it would be quite fitting considering the things he’s done himself!”
“Rae, come on.” He grabbed her by the arm and spun her back around, giving the others a chance to catch up. They were standing in the kitchen, right by the stove. Rae on one side. And all the rest skidding to a stop on the other.
“Just tell us what’s going on,” Devon reasoned, raising his hands calmingly in the air. He was neither stopping nor helping her plan, he simply wanted to understand it. “One second you’re just sitting there, talking about this man’s suicide. The next, you’re storming down to the basement on a revenge mission to murder your own father.”
The words echoed back and forth across the high ceilings, coming back darker and graver every time. They reflected in the faces of everyone gathered around, but none so much as on the young man who had just walked through the door.
The same man now frozen on the spot. “WHAT?”
Everyone whipped around at the same time. Staring open-mouthed at Kraigan as he paused incredulously in the frame. Rae’s eyes widened upon seeing him, and for a split second she felt a burning stab of shame.
Kraigan. What was I thinking?
