by Sarah Jaune
They made it back to the jeep about five seconds before a large, tan van with a brown stripe running down the side pulled around beside the jeep.
Eli stared at the driver in disbelief. What he saw was a large blond man with short hair and light brown eyes, almost the color of toast. He was older than the last time Eli had seen him, but there was no mistaking the man who exited the van and stepped hesitantly towards him.
“Cole?” Eli gasped out as he moved towards the man to shake his hand.
Cole’s smile was tight as he took the proffered hand and gave it a firm shake. Up close, Eli could see the exhaustion all over his face. He looked older than his years. “Eli,” he said with a nod. He turned to Ivy, who had come up next to him. “You must be Ivy.”
Surprised, Ivy nodded. “How did you know?” she asked as she also shook his hand.
“I ran into Thane a few months ago,” Cole answered evasively.
Something wasn’t right, but Eli had no idea what.
“So, you’re the one who saved Eli and his sisters from their house the first time?” Ivy asked him politely. Too politely.
She sensed that something was off as well.
Cole nodded. “We should go. I’m going to drive us there, and I’ll explain what I know. We’ll come back here and part ways again.” He assessed Eli critically. “Are you sure you can get us in and out without any problems?”
Eli didn’t know what Cole had been told, but that statement was a bit of a stretch. Still, his pride didn’t exactly want to let on that all might not be well. “I think so. I’m going to try. I can always hold back anything that might be coming while you and Ivy get…” he didn’t know how to finish his sentence. He didn’t know what they were doing.
“Grab your stuff, then,” Cole told them. “The jeep will be fine here. This barn is Guard property.”
What they learned from Cole was not much more than they already knew. “We had a call to the Guard from your old nanny who said we have a week to come get the kids. She said your dad was gone. Up until that point, we had no idea that your parents had had any more children.”
Eli, who had elected to sit in the back seat, felt his fists clench painfully. “There’s more than one?”
“I don’t know,” Cole answered honestly. “The message said ‘children’ so I’m assuming it’s more than one. I guess we’ll find out when we get there. We have a long day ahead of us, and I’d like to drive straight through if you’re okay with that. I don’t want to put this off.”
“I thought you’d retired,” Ivy said to Cole.
Cole cleared his throat. “I have, technically, from being a Pursuer. I have a family now, so I don’t want to be gone from them any longer than I have to be.”
It was weird to think of Cole having a family. The last time he’d seen the guy, he’d been about eighteen, but he was in his mid-twenties now, so it made sense.
“Have you seen Naomi and Beth?” Eli asked him quietly, unsure if he’d answer.
Cole’s shoulders tensed for a moment before Eli watched him forcibly relax them. “I see them fairly regularly. We live in the same town. They’re okay.”
He didn’t push it. Eli knew that he wasn’t going to get anything else out of Cole.
“Since we’re starting out earlier than I’d thought, I hope to hit Chicago by about midnight tonight,” Cole said quickly. “It should work to our advantage as all of the servants will be asleep.”
“Let’s hope so,” Eli said as he fell silent. The van’s engine soothed him, and before long, Eli’s eyes felt heavy. He hadn’t slept well the night before, and he’d pushed himself with his speed. Using that much magic always drained him and left him exhausted. Eli grabbed a banana from the bag and ate the whole thing in two bites, then he closed his eyes, slouched in his seat, and let the car lull him to sleep.
The dream was terrible. Eli knew it was a dream, but that didn’t make it any easier to take. Naomi stood across a room with a huge dragon filling the small space between them. The dragon roared and pawed at the ground, shooting fire from its nostrils.
“This isn’t real,” Eli called out to her as her face, which was olive toned like his, turned paler and paler in the light of the dragon’s fire. “It’s not real. Dragons are extinct!”
Naomi took a step towards him and then another until the dragon dissolved into mist, and he was left with the angry girl in front of him, staring at him in fear and horror.
“I don’t want to see you,” Naomi told him harshly. “I can’t see you, Elijah.”
“I know,” he replied as his voice echoed around the room, taunting him. ‘I know, I know, I know, I know.’
“You can’t ignore the past or you’ll never move on,” Naomi said again as she held out a hand to keep him from stepping forward. Her fingers were coated in blood, and her t-shirt was starting to soak through at her side.
She turned and ran through a door that hadn’t been there before, and he followed her until he saw, as though he’d walked into it in real life, his sister at twelve, standing against their mother.
Eli and Beth sat together on the floor behind Naomi, holding each other tightly. Eli stared at himself. He was so little, only about seven years old. Beth was sobbing hard in his arms as Naomi screamed at their mother to leave them alone.
“They tore my dress!” Noelle Hunt said coldly. “Someone will pay for that.”
“You can buy a new one,” Naomi argued quickly, trying to sooth their irate mother. “You can buy a prettier one. They’re little, Mother. They didn’t mean to do it.”
Eli saw now the madness he hadn’t been able to understand when he’d been seven. Noelle’s eyes were overly bright, her pupils dilated and fixed upon her youngest children. She shrieked in a bellow of rage and glass objects flew through the air, straight towards the children.
Naomi threw out her hands and the glass shattered as it was tossed back away from them. “No!” she ordered her mother. “You will not hurt them!”
“Someone will pay,” Noelle told her coldly.
“Me,” Naomi said, immediately.
“No!” the sixteen-year-old Eli hollered as he ran forward. No one saw him. He might have not been there. He tried to stop his big sister, but he couldn’t grab hold of her. “Please, don’t do this!”
Noelle grabbed the back of Naomi’s hair and dragged her from the room. Eli tried to follow, but the walls turned solid, and he couldn’t pass through them.
Behind him, Beth asked Eli, “Why did you rip the dress?”
Little Eli answered with a sob, “I didn’t!”
“I saw you do it, Eli,” she told through her tears. “I saw you rip it. You went all funny, and then you just tore it to bits!”
“I…” his seven-year-old-self hesitated, in confusion. “I didn’t… I don’t…”
Eli remembered this very moment. He’d not ripped the dress. He was sure he hadn’t ripped the dress. Beth clung to him as Naomi’s screams came from the room beyond. “You have to stop, Eli.”
The floor below Eli dropped, and he jumped, startling himself awake as a cold sweat drenched him.
He forced his eyes open and found Ivy studying him in alarm. “Are you okay?”
“Bad dream,” Eli said shakily. “I… very bad dream.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Ivy asked quietly as Cole, who was pretending not to listen, continued to drive on into the afternoon. Eli could tell the time because the sun was overhead now, judging by the shadows around him.
He couldn’t imagine talking about it, not with Cole right there. Whatever happened, Cole seemed to be reserving judgment on Eli, and thus far, Eli was not winning any points.
He remembered that last moment with Cole and Naomi, on the airstrip before the pilot flew Eli to be with Maia and Pablo. Cole had said something like, ‘It’s difficult to know where good ends, and bad begins when you’re standing so close to the line.’ Cole had said it then as though he wasn’t sure which way Eli was going to go, bu
t Eli hadn’t realized it at the time. He’d been ten years old, and scared out of his mind. He was being forced to leave his sisters.
“Do you remember when Coral said I was blocking stuff out?” Eli asked Ivy. A few months back, Eli and Ivy had gone to San Antonio to see if the Overseer’s children in that zone needed any help. They’d met Coral, who was their friend Zen’s attachment. Coral’s power was telepathy. She had the ability to read their minds, and she’d told Eli that he had a lot of things in his head that he wasn’t facing.
Ivy nodded reluctantly.
“I just remembered one of them,” he said as grief welled up in him. “I did something to one of my mother’s dresses. I didn’t remember doing it, but Beth said she saw me.”
“How old were you?” Ivy asked him as she turned more fully in her seat towards him.
He licked at his dry lips and forced himself to meet her green eyes. “I was about seven. Naomi stood up for me and took my punishment. I don’t… I still don’t remember what I did, but I know that Naomi paid for it.”
Cole made a quiet sound, almost like a gasp, but didn’t otherwise react. Eli and Ivy stared at him, but he didn’t speak.
“If you see her,” Eli told him as he forced the words out. “Please tell her how sorry I am. I don’t expect her to forgive me. I’ve remembered enough to know that she probably won’t, but…” he worked hard to fight back the emotions that were clogging his throat and making it nearly impossible to speak. “I’m really grateful that she got us out of that house and gave me the chance to turn my life around. I’m not wasting it. I don’t blame her for sending me away. It was the right call.”
Ivy turned back around in her seat, and they sat in silence again as the miles continued to drag along. They passed through the Omaha Zone before they stopped to switch off drivers and Eli took over while Cole stretched out in the back seat.
It was only as he checked the rear-view mirror to see if it was positioned correctly that he noticed there were several car seats in the very back of the van, the kind used for babies.
CHAPTER 4
A BEAUTIFUL MINIATURE
Each foot closer to Chicago added to the hard lump that was forming in Eli’s stomach until all he could focus on was the pit that weighed him down. He didn’t stop, though. They pulled into the Chicago Zone just after midnight, and he kept going as he forced his feelings down and aside. He had to face his mother, possibly, if she hadn’t gone with his father. He was not leaving any innocent children in that house.
“We should stop and form a plan,” Cole told him as he drove through the city streets towards his father’s house.
“The plan is we go up to the house and get them,” Eli told him coldly. He hardly recognized his own voice.
Cole fell silent as Eli turned down the correct road. They came to a stop at a gate and Eli waved his hand, pushing with his telekinesis, his ability to move objects. He infused it with his strength so that the lock on the gate snapped, and it slid open without protest.
Eli drove through the gate. Ivy shot him a curious look. “Did you know you could do that?”
“Nope,” Eli replied as he pulled to a stop in front of the house. He shut off the van and stepped out before either of the others could react.
He hadn’t made it more than five steps before Cole grabbed his arm. “You have to be calm.”
“I am calm,” Eli hissed out as he shook himself free. “I’m not going to risk anyone getting hurt.” He stared hard up into Cole’s face and waited.
“He’s right,” Ivy said to Eli. “You look like you want to punch something.”
Eli counted the beats of blood that rushed through his ears as he fought for a serenity that didn’t want to come. “I’m furious that I didn’t think to ask Nanny about kids last year. That’s nothing to do with anything. I’m mad at myself. I can deal with it.”
Cole hesitated, but Ivy stepped in. “He’ll be fine, Cole.”
Whether Cole agreed or not became irrelevant when the front door quietly slid open to reveal Nanny Florence.
Eli grinned, despite himself, and strode over to pull the old woman into his arms. She was shorter than he was, now, and so amazingly solid. She smelled just as he remembered, and it was a smell he associated with being safe.
“You made better time than I imagined,” she whispered to them as she pulled back to study Eli. She cupped his cheeks with her wizened hands and smiled. “You’re so handsome, Elijah! Look how you’ve grown. You’re almost a man, now.”
A little embarrassed, Eli shrugged. “What happened, Nanny?”
She sighed and her whole body seemed to deflate. “Come in. We should go up. All of the servants are asleep and the guards have been warned to stay away. No one is loyal to your father anymore, not after what has occurred.”
Florence wouldn’t say anymore, not as she led them up the stairs towards rooms that were further down the hall to Eli’s old bedroom. She stopped outside one door and turned to face them. In the dim hall lights, Eli could see the wrinkles, and the pain on her face. “Eli, your mother died.”
Eli’s brain froze as his whole body went numb. He barely registered Ivy’s gasp, or that she took his hand in hers. His mother couldn’t be dead. He’d seen her the previous April. She’d been fine, except for the fact that she was completely nutty.
“What happened?” Cole asked, which was the question that was trying to break from Eli’s stunned mouth.
Nanny’s thin lips flattened into a firm line as she fought for composure. “She died shortly after her surgery to have the baby. She… she had all her babies through surgery. After the last one, the doctors begged her not to try again, but Mrs. Hunt was insistent on wanting a boy. It’s a miracle the new baby lived.”
“So there are two children?” Ivy asked her as her hand clenched in Eli’s.
“Rebecca will be two in March,” Nanny informed them, but she directed this towards Cole. “I have everything that’s important written down for you.”
It struck Eli as odd that she would say that to Cole, but he still couldn’t form any coherent words. His mother was dead.
“The baby is named Jonas,” Nanny said with a hitch to her voice. “He was born in late December. He’s only a few weeks old and very small. He’s fragile.”
Cole nodded in understanding. “He’ll be looked after.”
“I have milk for the baby,” Florence told him. “It should be enough for two days. I have diapers as well for both of them.”
Eli’s brain kicked back into gear as he spun on Cole. “Where are we taking them?”
Cole’s jaw twitched as Eli watched him fight to keep his expression neutral. “I’m taking them home with me, Eli. My wife and I just had a baby. We’ll be able to care for them.”
“I could take them,” Eli argued instantly. “I could look after them.”
“No,” Cole’s expression hardened. “You’re not even an adult yet. They need parents. You’re a Pursuer with the Guard. I’m here as a foster parent.”
Grief welled up in Eli and he spun away, wrenching his hand from Ivy’s as he fought not to break down crying. He’d lost his sisters, and now he was about to lose the rest of his family. There was no way that Cole would let Eli visit them.
The horrible part was that after he’d remembered some of what had happened with Naomi, he absolutely could not blame Cole.
He had been the monster that Naomi had feared. Just because he’d changed some, didn’t make up for all of the damage he’d done.
Slowly, Eli pulled himself back together. He turned back to see them all staring at him. “What about Naomi? Why can’t she take them?”
Cole’s answer, when it finally came, was not what Eli expected. “Naomi has her own role to play. Thane told you that Beth has been struggling. Naomi is helping her.” He turned to the old woman. “You’re to tell everyone that it was Naomi that came for them.”
Florence nodded, even as Eli said, “No!” He shook his head vehemently. “I am n
ot having her take the fall for something I did, not ever again. I own my own actions.”
For the first time, Cole seemed impressed with him. “This isn’t about that, Eli. We need to make it seem like their big sister came in to save them. That makes more sense than you, me, and Ivy coming for them. Naomi is the logical choice.”
“He’ll go after her,” Eli pointed out as he referred to his father.
“Naomi is planning on moving again soon,” Cole replied quickly. “She’s smart and capable. She’ll be fine.”
Eli faltered as he tried to think up another argument. “Does she know that we’re doing this?”
“Yes,” Cole promised seriously. “I ran it past her before I left. She agrees that it is the best plan.”
