Victor (The Eden East Novels Book 2)

by Sacha Black

  When I reach Trey’s mansion, I hesitate. The rational part of my brain says he’s left me five missed CogCalls so he must be alive and wanting to talk to me. But he also left me in the library because I’d gone behind his back. Despite my fears, and the fact I don’t want to hurt him, I also can’t let this go. At some point, he is going to have to confront his mother. But now is not the time for that argument, so I decide I will drop it, at least for a while. I push open one of the rear doors, into a modest kitchen. There are a couple of chefs frying eggs and popping toast. My stomach growls in response. I’ve only had a few hours’ sleep, and I can’t remember the last time I ate. But there’s no time to stop, so I steal a piece of toast from the pile and keep walking. I climb a set of marble steps and push open the door to the cellar kitchen. The main foyer is the other side of the mansion, but Trey’s bedroom wing is this side, so I take the white marble staircase to his floor.

  As soon as I step out of the stairwell my skin prickles. My Elemental powers fire to life, roaming the air for anomalies. There’s a tang, cold and sweaty, like dread, and the movement in the molecules is juddery, like someone’s pacing. My legs spring to life, hurtling me down the corridor and straight into Trey’s living room. I throw open the door, my eyes skipping around the room until they settle on him, and I physically drop to the floor, crushing the toast in my hand as relief washes over me.

  “She’s here. She just walked in; I’ll get her out the door, and we’ll be on our way in five minutes,” Trey says.

  My head snaps up, remembering that there were a dozen missed calls from Titus too. “What’s happened?” I say, pulling myself together. He’s on the far side of the room pacing, one CogTracker between his shoulder and his ear and another one in his hand.

  He cuts the call off, “Where the hell have you been? Have you not checked your CogTracker?”

  My blood instantly heats. “Hang on a second, Trey. You left me in the library. Remember?” I say, my voice hard. “And thanks for asking, I’ve had one hell of a night, you could have been dead for all I knew.” As soon as the words are out, I realize how ridiculous they sound. Of course he wasn’t dead, I’d have known because of our Binding.

  “What?” he says, his forehead creasing.

  “Doesn’t matter. What’s happened?” That’s when an icy shiver slithers down my spine. The look in his eyes; pain knotting his brow; the stiffness of his posture.

  “Sit down,” he says. But I don’t because now I’m terrified.

  “Just tell me what’s going on,” I say, and glance down at my hand. I unfurl my palm; three crescent-shaped marks have dug into my palm where I’m clenching my hands so tight.

  “Nyx is missing.”

  I close my eyes, a dark veil slipping over my mind as my world shatters into a million fragmented loved ones, all lost, or dead, or gone.

  “What happened?” I say, my voice a whisper.

  He moves across the room and pulls me into his muscular arms. Even though he’s standing with his arms around me, I can’t help but do my ritual: I put my hand on his heart and listen to its thump, thump, thump.

  “It’s going to be okay, we’re going to find her,” he breathes.

  And maybe we will, but my chest is screaming like it’s already too late.

  “I don’t know all the details,” Trey continues, and where my cheek is pressed into his chest, his voice rumbles against me. “But Titus said she was preparing for your return home. He went to take her dinner, but she was missing. Her CogTracker is hanging off the dial, papers are strewn across the ballroom, decorations torn, and lights ripped off the ceiling.”

  “There was a fight?” I ask, closing my eyes again, imagining horrible scenes playing out, blow by blow.

  “Titus thinks so.”

  “Any blood?”

  “Some.”

  I stiffen. “We have to find her,” I whisper into his chest. My eyes sting, but I refuse to let tears of defeat out. I tell myself we can save her, over and over again. We can save her because we have to.

  “I know. Magnus has already prepped the train. We’ll go east first, straight to your tower to meet Titus. Then we’ll make a plan to search for her.”

  He untangles himself and grabs my hand. We race through the foyer, out the mansion, and down the hill toward the station. I want to shout at Trey for not having a station built under his mansion like I have. But I bite my tongue because I know it’s fear making me cross, not anything he’s done.

  We reach the station, both of us panting and sweating. It’s a relief to see the train’s sleek maroon exterior and the long black chimney puffing and chugging out smoke, ready to move. Magnus holds the door open, and we clamber on. Within seconds the train jolts forward, the metal undercarriage grinding along the tracks as the train moves out of the station.

  Even using the private lines and at top speed, it will be an hour or two before we reach the East. Siren City is in the south-west of the State, and it’s a trek home.

  Trey clunks plates and glasses behind the bar in the corner of the carriage. I sit in the largest maroon booth under a window and pull my legs up under my chin watching the city blur into a streaky pallet of color.

  He brings a plate of food and two mugs of coffee over and sits, just far enough away, that I realize the caring embrace he gave me in the living room hasn’t erased our fight in the library. The gap between us feels like an ocean of unsaid words and resentment. I hate it. I long for him to put his arms around me and for all of this to be forgotten.

  I look up at him. He pushes the coffee across the table and a piece of toast, and I can’t help but smile.

  “What’s funny?” he says.

  I take a sip of coffee, “I think I’ve left a piece of crushed toast in your living room.”

  “Oh,” he says, smiling but doesn’t look at me. Instead he looks through the window and eats his own toast in silence. I shift in my seat; we have to talk about his mother. I can’t keep hiding things, and he can’t stay angry at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, putting the coffee down.

  “Are you though?” he says, refusing to look at me. “You say you are, but you knew how I felt, and you still didn’t drop it.”

  His words hurt. I’m not used to coldness in his silky tones.

  “Trey… If I had the chance to see my mother one more time…”

  He turns to me, his eyes bright, burning hot blue. “This isn’t the same thing. Your parents were loving and devoted and sacrificed their lives to save yours. My mother ran off. Abandoned me… It’s not even close to the same thing.”

  I reach for his hand, but he flinches as if he’s going to pull away. He doesn’t, so I pick it up. “I know that’s how you feel, but I don’t believe that’s what happened. Yes, maybe I’m projecting because of what’s happened with my parents. But they’re gone, and I don’t have the chance to ask them why. All I’m asking is that we find out what really happened to yours. Mothers don’t abandon their children for no reason. Hermia said she stripped herself of her essence. I can’t imagine how horrific that was for her. You need to find her and ask why. For Kato. For you. Maybe even for me too.”

  He turns back to the window, his jaw flexing and clenching.

  “And when you find her and I’m right?” he says, giving the blurry scenery a hard stare.

  “If…” I say, squeezing his hand, “if you’re right. Then I’ll drop it. I’ll never speak her name again. But if you’re wrong…?”

  He turns to me, his eyes stony, “If… Then yeah, sure I’ll hear her out, why the hell not?”

  I close my eyes and let out a deep breath. When I open my eyes, Trey’s face is close to mine. He scoops his arms around me, pulling me in close. “I hate arguing,” he says, inching closer, “you’re everything to me, Eden. I don’t want anything to come between us.”

  “Neither do I,” I say, and slide my lips over his, my hands slipping under his shirt and over his warm back. His hand tiptoes up my arm and under the
back of my head, his fingers curling into my hair as he pulls me onto his lap.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he says, pausing for breath.

  We stay wrapped in each other for the rest of the journey, sharing kisses, memories, and dreams for the future. Our fingertips trace each other’s outlines, feeling every curve and dip of our bodies. And for a few short moments, I forget the world, forget the fact Nyx is gone and Victor is back, and I live in the moment. Just Trey and me. Tangled in our own little world of love and lust and happiness.

  When the light dims as we enter my home tower’s underground station, my heart beats faster; by the time the train docks, my mouth is completely dry.

  With the exception of the Dusting dinner, which ended in Israel’s arrest and me running away to Siren City, I’ve barely been to the East at all and never to my home tower. We leave the train and cross the underground platform. Trey walks up to a short set of steps and holds open the door to my foyer. But I’m frozen to the spot. When I don’t walk through, he stops and looks down at me at the bottom of the steps.

  “Oh,” he says, noticing I’ve turned into a statue. He returns to me, wrapping me in an embrace.

  “I don’t think I can,” I mumble into his chest.

  “Kind of ironic this.”

  “Ironic?” I say, untangling myself from him to frown.

  He smiles, “What was it you were just saying about me burying my head and not confronting stuff with my mom? I know it’s a different situation, but you’re doing the exact same thing.”

  I blink at him, processing his words, and then a laugh bubbles up from my belly. He’s right. I’m being a total hypocrite. “We really are meant to be Bound.”

  “Yes, we are,” he says, and kisses me, soft, loving, and as his lips touch mine, warmth trickles from his mouth into mine and fills my body with the glow of reassurance. Just enough compulsion to make me step forward. “I’m right here, okay? If you need a moment or you want to leave. I’m here. But this isn’t about them today. It’s about Nyx.”

  “Okay,” I nod.

  “Are you ready?” Trey says, sliding his hand into mine.

  “No.”

  “Good. Let’s go,” he says, and tugs me up the stairs.

  I take a deep breath, push open the tower doors, and step into my home for the first time in weeks.

  I stand in the middle of the foyer, scanning the room. Keepers bustle in and out of rooms, corridors, and lifts. Faces I’ve known my entire life. All of them hesitate when they see me and stop to give me smiles filled with sad eyes. I don’t want their pity. I’m meant to be their leader. Leaders shouldn’t be pitied. And for the first time, I understand why Nyx has been pushing for me to return home. I’ve not been here, not been present, and not been in control, and now they think I’m weak. This isn’t what I wanted, and it’s not what my parents would want either.

  “Come on,” I say to Trey. This time I tug him into the lifts and push the button before anyone else can enter with us.

  “What’s wrong?” he says.

  “I just… I should have been here. It’s fine. I’m going to change that now.”

  We exit the lift on the floor below the penthouse into a long corridor. This is where the highest-ranking Keepers in the East either live or have business quarters in order to be close to my parents for work. My eyes glance up at the ceiling; the penthouse is home. As my eyes scan the ceiling, I picture all our rooms in order, but I have to pull my eyes away because the aching in my chest gets too much.

  The corridor is bright; this high up in the tower, there are no other sky scrapers blocking out the light. The desert sun streams rays of light in through the two end walls, which are made of glass. It makes our lilac carpet and the East State symbol printed at equal distances along the runner sparkle like shiny brooches.

  I knock on Titus and Nyx’s apartment door; there’s a scuffling inside, and then it opens. Titus looks awful. I fling my arms around him, and he sucks in a stilted breath.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,” I say.

  “Don’t say that,” he says, putting me at arm’s length. “This isn’t your fault. You’ve had academy work, and I know you’re still struggling with Lionel and Eleanor.”

  “But maybe if I was here…?”

  “No, sweetie, you couldn’t have stopped this,” he says. He goes to shake Trey’s hand, but Trey bats it away and pulls him in for a hug. Titus coughs as though he’s trying to stifle a sob. After a minute he straightens himself up and shows us into the living room before wandering into the kitchen. Cups rattle, and the click of the kettle follows.

  “Tea?” he calls.

  Trey looks at me; I nod. “Sure,” Trey shouts back.

  The room is spacious; there’s a rectangular cutout hatch in their kitchen. I can see him pottering around through it from where I am. The room is separated into an open plan diner-living room. On the other side of the room, their dinner from last night is still set. There’s a lingering aroma of fish and steamed vegetables, but the two plates are full, the meals untouched and cold. Just another shadow to add to my home tower, I think, before shaking the thought away.

  I pick up a photo of Nyx and two other women on a side table. It’s crinkled and stained like it was left in the loft before someone decided to frame it. In the photo are two other women with the same wild black hair as Nyx. All three of them have the same birthmark she does on her cheek. Must be a family trait.

  Titus puts three cups of tea down and slumps into one of a pair of tatty arm chairs. In front of the chairs is a coffee table and opposite a larger sofa, which Trey and I sit on.

  “What happened?” I say, picking up my tea to drink it.

  “She was working in the ballroom on the first floor. Organizing a themed ball for when you returned. She’d been busy all day, and I’d barely seen her. Once I’d finished some routine maintenance on the trains, I decided to make her dinner and take it down so I could give her a hand finishing the basic decorations. She was planning an elaborate element theme…” He pauses, his voice cracking. “She was going to use air, just for you. The room was going to be full of electricity lights and those glow bugs. She even booked a specialist Elemental chef to make the food tingle with static.”

  My eyes sting at his words, but I refuse to cry when I know he must be hurting so much more than me.

  “What happened when you took her dinner?”

  “Well, I didn’t get the chance. I set it out and went downstairs to fetch her, but as soon as I left the apartment, Archibald collared me and asked me to help him downstairs with a sofa.”

  Archibald is one of my parents’ senior Elementals. He lives on this floor, but he decided to retire when my parents passed away.

  “When we reached the foyer, we heard thudding and crashing on the first floor. We ran upstairs, but by the time we got there, it was too late,” he says, his hand scrunching into a fist. “She was already gone. The ballroom is exactly as it was when I opened it. Her CogTracker cracked and left in the middle of the room, the furniture all scattered… She was just gone. I phoned the Guild immediately and they sent the group of investigators. They’re down there now.”

  I glance at his forearm, his Binding scar poking out from under his sleeve. I want to ask the question fluttering on my lips, but I bite it back because I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.

  “She is alive,” he says, looking from his Binding scar to me.

  “Of course she is,” I say, silent relief washing over me. I sink a little further into the seat. “Nyx is a survivor. I expected nothing less.”

  Titus tries to smile, but it's weak, and he looks more like he’s about to cry. I reach out to touch his hand, “I didn’t mean to bring up…”

  “No, it’s fine,” he says, patting my hand. “You’re right. She is a survivor; I should take comfort in that.”

  I nod, and we fall into silence. Nyx was orphaned as a child. Her parents died when she was only eight. She didn’t have any other
family. She survived for a couple of weeks by herself until the food went moldy, and the heating cut out. The Northern Eris mountains are always cold. Even in the valleys closest to the border, if the heating cuts out, you know about it. She shifted and ran away, figuring she could survive easier in her cat form. She made it to the Ancient Forest and spent the next few weeks scavenging and eating mice. That’s when my mother found her, thinking she was actually a starving, flea-bitten kitten rather than an orphaned Shifter. Nyx was too weak to shift back to her Keeper self, so Mom had no idea. Anyway, she took Nyx home and nursed her back to health. Which is when Mom got a shock. A few days later when Nyx had the strength to shift again – Mom found a sleeping girl in the cat basket. Of course, my grandparents wouldn’t let Nyx go to an orphanage. So they gave her a scholarship to Keepers School, and that was that. Nyx was family.

  I blink back the tears, forcing the growing lump in my throat to subside.

  “Will you show us the ballroom?” I say, breaking the silence.

  Titus looks up, blinking his own tears away and gestures for us to move.

  We take the lift down to the first-floor ballroom in silence.

  “Wait…,” Titus says, clutching my wrist as we reach the ballroom door. “It’s not nice in there.” The color drains from his face.

  I give his arm a reassuring squeeze, “We will find her, I promise. But to do that, we need to speak to the Guild Sorcerers to see if they’ve found anything.”

  Titus nods, but his brow and upper lip are shiny with sweat. I glance to Trey and flip my eyes to Titus. Trey’s eyes blaze to life, a fiery blue coating his pupils. He places his hand on Titus’ shoulder, “We’re not going anywhere Titus,” he says.

  Titus’ eyes gloss over, the stiffness in his shoulders dissipates, and the hunch he was cradling vanishes. As I stare at Titus, who is clueless to what just happened, I wonder if Trey was right. If Keepers can’t tell when they’re being compelled, maybe Sirens are the most dangerous and powerful Keepers.