My mother hadn’t died in my youth as I’d been told, but a group of men had come and taken her away in the night while I slept. My father, tired of caring for her progressing cancer—which I’d known nothing about—had committed her to a mental hospital. Not because she was insane, but because of her illness and a short life expectancy. Apparently, that combination made my mother a messy inconvenience. As her beauty faded, so did his interest. She died in the institution in Northern Scotland, hidden by Stephen’s money and connections.
“After I met Cali, I asked my Gran about her. She told me that Cali was a legend, a Star Child. As much as I wanted Cali to be real, I figured it must have been a dream.”
“Why did it matter to you whether she was real or not?” Gabe seemed less angry now and more curious.
Because it meant everything to me not to be alone. That had been after my mother died and before Gabe and Alistair. “She…she made me feel like everything would be okay. Like I had a friend.” Sharing this side of me with anyone, even Cali, went beyond my comfort zone. Emotions were a weakness, a vulnerability. Relationships were battlefields, with each side choosing their own strategies. If your opponents knew your weaknesses, then they could take you down, destroy you. It was better to keep your feelings close to the vest. Repress them.
At least that had been my approach until recently. When I decided to believe in Cali, something inside of me let go, decided to take a chance. Though it seemed risky, I didn’t want to lock away parts of myself anymore. Being alone had become exhausting.
My thumbs rubbed the fabric on the seat. Gabe glanced at me, his features softened from their rigid state of a few moments before. “I get that. You met when you were young. How did you find each other again later?”
Looking out the window made the conversation easier, for me at least. “I’m not sure we were ever apart. After we met, I dreamed about her every night, always the same dream, about our first meeting. Sometimes I believed she’d spoken to me when no one else was with me. She appeared to me every night for eleven years. Then after my Gran died, she just sort of…showed up.”
“You never told me about any of this.” Gabe repeated his earlier lament.
My thumbs scratched the fabric on the seat again. Gabe’s fingers drummed on the top of the automatic shifter. The car hit a bump in the road as we slowed for a construction zone. No one worked on the road, and abandoned signage sat positioned at various angles, ghosts along the highway. The car’s lights bounced off of the reflectors on the bright orange cones as we passed.
Another bump in the road jostled us. Glancing behind me, I checked to see if Cali still slept. Out cold. A ball of warmth seemed to fill my chest as I stared at her.
Gabe’s voice drew my attention again. “So these past few months…What happened then?”
“Lugh told you all about it.”
“Yeah, but I want the details from you, man,” Gabe said.
Where did I start? There was so much that had happened. There were so many things that I never wanted to talk about again.
Stretching my arms up, I linked my hands behind the seat headrest. “Cali actually showed up for real, not in my dreams, at Gran’s place when I got to Ireland. She told me about this prophecy and took me to this underground cavern under my Gran’s property. Paintings were all over the place that showed me fighting with her brother, becoming a god myself, then marrying her.”
Gabe didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he chuckled. “Dude. That must have been a lot to take in.”
Dizzy with relief that Gabe sounded like Gabe, I said, “You have no idea, man. Then, before I could really do anything about it, Lugh got kidnapped and Cali needed my help.”
“You could have walked away.” Even as Gabe made the suggestion, I appreciated that this was something that he himself never would have done. He epitomized loyalty. “Nah, you wouldn’t have done that,” Gabe went on, responding to his own comment before I could.
Clearing my throat, I unlinked my hands and glanced back at Cali, before looking out the window again. “She needed me. No one really knew why the prophecy was about me, but if there was a chance that I could help her…I had to help her. Plus…I’d already fallen in love with her by then.”
Saying that I’d fallen in love with her just didn’t cut it. She’d taken hold of my heart, taken over my life, and turned everything on its side.
Gabe nodded. “You do love her. I’ve always known that.”
Turning sideways in my seat, I watched his profile, my knee pushing into the console. “What do you mean, you’ve always known?”
Gabe smiled. “Well, you talk in your sleep. Every night I could hear you saying her name. Mostly I just heard ‘Calienta, don’t go’ or ‘Calienta, please don’t leave me’. I wanted to ask you about her, but I didn’t want to interfere. It was actually kind of weird.”
Wow. No one had ever mentioned me talking in my sleep.
“But you’ve never held back before. I’m surprised that you didn’t ask me,” I said.
Gabe inclined his head toward me, but kept his eyes on the road. “Kellen, you’ve had so many things happen to you, man. So many really awful things that I know you haven’t even told me anything about. You can tell when someone’s really been through it. You were damaged goods, man. My life has been happy, normal…like a Norman Rockwell painting.”
He couldn’t have surprised me more. I didn’t think he’d had any idea.
“Man, I figured there was a reason you weren’t telling me. I would have listened if you wanted to, you know, talk about it,” Gabe finished.
Gabe understood more than I’d given him credit for. I’d underestimated him. Shame weighed me down. “I’m sorry that I didn’t talk to you about any of this stuff,” I said.
“It’s over,” Gabe said. “Tell me next time something freaky happens, ‘kay, K?”
“Yeah, well, you might not have long to wait,” I said.
The interior of the car was silent for a moment. We’d become just a car full of friends on a journey. At least that’s what I pretended. Gabe’s next words dispelled my own illusion.
“So these guys that are coming after us…” Gabe began.
I smiled. I liked how Gabe included himself in the chase by using the word us. He could have walked away and they wouldn’t have touched him.
“They’re pretty messed up, huh? You must have really pissed them off, K.”
Among other things… “They are. That’s why I think we should go wherever you want to hide us and then you should leave. Immediately.”
Gabe shook his head. “No, I’m sticking with you guys.”
Then something occurred to me. “Gabe, don’t you have to go somewhere? Are we keeping you from something? Like law school?” Self-reproach weighed me down. I should have asked this question before, not after we’d dragged him across the ocean and made him drive through the night. “I should have asked you sooner,” I said.
He smiled at me, a determined grin spread across his teddy-bear-like face. “This is where I need to be right now.”
To Gabe, things were that straightforward. Selfishly, I couldn’t help but feel relief that he planned to stay. Our situation seemed a little less dire with someone else involved.
More silence ensued as we continued to drive, heading further north. Despite the coat and comfortable jeans that I now wore, it was cold. Reaching over, I turned up the heat.
Gabe bit into his granola bar. After he’d downed it in three bites, he looked at me and then back to the road, a smile on his face. “So K, tell me all about this creepy Faerie place and killing that bad dude. Did you, like, get to use a sword and stuff?”
Smiling, I laughed out loud. “Oh yeah.”
Staring into the black, I wondered where the C.O.D. were and how much time we had. Only one thing brought me any degree of comfort: the old Gabe was back…at least for now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CALI—UNCONSCIOUS
I couldn’t b
elieve how exhausted I felt. From the moment I got back in the car, I found such difficulty even keeping my eyes open. Though it was all for the best: Kellen and Gabriel clearly needed to have a discussion.
It had been such a challenge for Kellen to accept what I’d shared when I originally told him about the prophecy. How would Gabriel take it? Would he think differently of me when he knew everything? I couldn’t imagine Kellen leaving anything out.
“I love her…” Kellen’s voice drifted into my mind and I wanted to listen, to hear more. Yet I just couldn’t stay awake.
So, so tired.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
KELLEN—HIDEAWAY
Gabe continued to drive as the hours passed. He wouldn’t accept my offer to take over, no matter how much I persisted. We just kept going, through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, then straight into Maine. I glanced back at a sleeping Cali for about the hundredth time. Her hair had fallen along the seat beside her, the strands ending in soft curls that bounced as the car moved over the pitted asphalt.
Though Gabe and I had kept diligent watch, we hadn’t seen anything strange. There had only been one other car behind us, and it had exited about a half hour earlier.
“They don’t really need cars,” I reminded Gabe. “They could be watching from a distance.”
“Maybe, but you need to at least get some sleep. One of us has to be well rested besides Cali,” he said, inclining his head to the backseat and smiling at me.
He had a point. Cali had been sleeping from almost the moment we’d gotten into the car. I’d been surprised that I could last that long; normally I conked out at the barest hint of white noise.
Gabe turned on the radio so that it blared rock music, before switching to some sort of eighties party station. He started singing along to the Human League.
Eventually I gave up, unable to fight the heaviness of my drooping eyelids. The image of Cali’s hair bouncing on the seat kept replaying in my mind as sleep claimed me.
***
Hair. Someone combed his or her hair. Parted it down the middle, rigidly. Not Cali, but a man. He leaned forward, so that I couldn’t see his face. Then he looked up and into the mirror and I recognized my father, Stephen St. James. Before I could react, my perspective shifted and I stood in the room behind him.
My father, or Stephen as I chose to call him because he never deserved the title of “Father”, looked haggard. If we’d never met, I would have assumed that this man hadn’t slept well in about a week. Though I hadn’t spent much more than that under Stephen’s roof in the last ten years, I knew something was up with him.
Looking around, I tried to figure out where we were. The warm and toasty room couldn’t have been more of a contradiction to the environment that I’d known as a child, when Stephen would insist on keeping the house unnaturally cold. Either he’d remodeled or he’d been traveling. Though it just as possibly could have been the home of a one-night stand.
“It’s like Kellen has disappeared. I can’t find him anywhere,” Stephen said. His voice sounded uncharacteristically worried.
When had he ever been worried about me?
Looking around, I tried to see to whom Stephen was speaking. Probably one of the many women he dated. There had been a revolving door in our house since my mother died. All of the potential contenders for her replacement left as quickly as they arrived.
A male voice answered then, surprising me. “He’ll turn up. You know how kids are. Besides, we’ll be the first to know when he surfaces.” The other person technically sounded like he tried to console Stephen, but his voice rang untrue. As if he neither cared about me coming back nor believed it would happen.
“He has to. I need him!” Stephen punched his fist on the desk.
My stomach dropped; disbelief paralyzed me. Was this really Stephen? Or was this just another manifestation of the father that I wished I had?
Tearing my eyes away, I tried to see the other person. A foot extended out from a pair of crossed legs, but the bed hangings were blocking the person’s face from view. Inching forward, I craned my neck, trying to see who’d been speaking.
***
In an instant, I snapped out of the dream and looked around me. Cali and Gabe were talking. She’d leaned forward, her head resting sleepily on the back of my seat. Heart pounding, I sat up straighter in the seat, taking a slow breath.
There hadn’t been a time in my life when dreams were not part of my normal sleep pattern. However, I’d never once dreamed about Stephen before. He’d looked so different, so worn out in the dream. Who had he been talking too?
“Kellen, we’re here, man.” Gabe seemed tired, but pleased.
“Where are we?” Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, I tried to see out the window. We rolled to a stop, the headlights illuminating a small parking area.
“A bar.” Cali’s voice sounded sleepy. She yawned.
Gabe chuckled. “No, I said Bar Harbor, not a bar.”
“Maine?” Searching my imagination, I tried to recall any attachment that Gabe might have had to Maine. Ah, yes. He’d said his family had some beach vacation homes. His favorite was in North Carolina. The other one had been in Maine. Okay, I’ll ask the blunt question. “Why didn’t we just fly here, man?”
Gabe turned the ignition off and the car silenced. “We had a connecting flight for later today, but I didn’t want to have to wait around in the airport or be in the air any longer than necessary. It seemed risky, with all that’s been going on.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I said as Gabe reached over and opened his door. I got out, shutting my door then walking to the rear door to help Cali. Swinging open her door, I offered her my hand, which she accepted, and pulled her into my arms. “How you doing, baby?”
“Good.” She seemed to sag into me despite her words. The wind blew her hair in my face and I smelled the salt in the air. The ocean sounded close, a roar that filled the otherwise quiet night.
Needing a good stretch, I reached my arms to the sky. Cali never moved from her position against my chest. Had she fallen asleep standing up? After a brief moment, I leaned forward and picked her up. She had the weight of a feather in my arms, almost non-existent. Since I didn’t have Gabe’s six pack and pecs, this surprised me. Then again, I had changed physically during my time in Faerie, gotten stronger. Maybe I’d bulked up and didn’t notice it. It would probably be good to actually look at myself in a mirror now and again.
Gabe walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He shoved our bags into a larger duffle bag that he’d bought on our shopping trip. Once he seemed satisfied that he’d gotten everything, he slung the bag over his shoulder and shut the trunk. He shook his head as he looked at me carrying a sleeping Cali in my arms.
A beam of light cut into the darkness as Gabe turned on his flashlight and pointed it in the direction of the house. “Be careful here. There’s a bridge,” Gabe said. Mimicking his stance, I followed him, taking my time and trying not to bang Cali’s head or feet against the safety railings.
Reaching up, he searched along the top of a massive doorframe for something. With a start, I realized that he was searching for the key. People still do that? Amazing.
“Gotta have the key,” Gabe said. The clink of the key in the lock followed Gabe’s comment, and soon we were inside the house. It had to be colder on the inside than on the outside.
“Sorry about the cold. It’s the off-season. All of the utilities are shut off to keep the pipes from freezing during the winter. We’ll have to rough it at first,” Gabe said.
“It’s fine.” It didn’t matter to me where we were going. I wanted nothing more than to crash.
Using his flashlight, Gabe walked over to a dark corner of the room. For a moment, he became completely engulfed in the shadows and I lost sight of him. Then Gabe’s quiet exclamation broke the silence. “Yes!”
My lips curved into a wry smile. It was probably three-thirty in the morning by now and Gabe still appe
ared happy and upbeat. At least now that he didn’t seem angry with me and he’d had his granola.
A moment later, a crackle, and light pierced the quiet darkness as a fire came to life in the fireplace. The small flames soon partially illuminated Gabe’s face. “Why don’t we stay in here tonight and we’ll sort out rooms tomorrow?” he suggested.
“That would be good,” I said. Searching for the best spot, I finally set Cali down on the part of the sofa closest to the fire. Taking off Cali’s coat and my own, I tossed them onto the floor of a little alcove by the door. Gabe left, but returned quickly with a stack of blankets. I helped him spread them out on a large sectional, which looked like it could accommodate at least fifteen. Gabe took one end of the sofa and Cali and I took the other.
My stomach grumbled, but snacks didn’t appeal to me. I wanted real food. Pushing images of a ginormous cheeseburger and soft drink from my mind, I kicked off my shoes and removed Cali’s. Lying down behind Cali, I curled up against her, reaching for several of the thick blankets. The fire would start to warm us eventually, but in the meantime I could still see my breath. The warmth from the blankets enveloped me, even though they’d been sitting around in the cold house. Contented, I lay my arm over Cali and buried my face in her hair. She smelled incredible.
I knew I should sleep. I wanted to crash and not wake up for a week. But with Cali’s softness pressed against me, I just couldn’t. I wanted her in a way that I’d never wanted a girl, a woman, before.
Closing my eyes, I willed myself to relax, to calm down. Yeah, right.
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