by Lan Chan
I turned around and walked down the hallway. He caught up to me a second later. “You’re messing with me, right?” he said. “You’ve rescheduled my duties, haven’t you?”
I snorted. “Does that sound like something I’d do?”
I had literally left a “playing hooky” note on Alex’s desk for Jacqueline. I had school but that didn’t seem very important right now. Durin would take care of any Council stuff, and I was sure Astrid or one of the other Nephilim would cover his shift. But for all intents and purposes, Kai and I would be M.I.A today. He appeared torn. I skipped down the dorm staircase.
“It’s not that easy,” he said from the top of the railing.
That was the crux of our entire relationship. He couldn’t run out of a sense of obligation, and I chose to run so I wouldn’t be trapped by mine.
“If it isn’t that easy then you should bond with Chanelle,” I reminded him.
“That’s completely different.”
“All cages are the same. This one just looks prettier.”
Maybe I had misjudged the whole thing. He seemed perfectly happy with his routine. “Forget about it,” I said. “It was a stupid thought anyway.”
I might as well start my chores in the Grove. He caught my elbow as I opened the dorm door. “Wait,” he said. “If you really want to do this –”
“It’s not about what I want. It’s your birthday. We should be doing what you want. But it’s okay if what you want to do is work.”
“What did you have planned?”
I showed him the shield amulet. “I thought we could get lost in the human world. Somewhere no one can find you and you don’t have to be Malachi Pendragon for a day.”
“I am Malachi Pendragon.”
I finally got that. It was inescapable. To my surprise, he took the amulet from me. “I’ll do this on one condition,” he said. “I want you to show me the human world you lived in.”
I stepped right into that one. He grinned at me and I knew he’d been waiting for an opportunity to raise it. “That’s not really what I had in mind,” I said.
“Too bad. It’s my birthday, remember? I want to see what it was like for you before all this.”
I could feel the cage closing in. Two could play that game. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. After we do my thing, I want to do something you used to do with your family. One small thing. It doesn’t matter what it is.”
We locked eyes. “Why?” he asked.
“Because I want to.”
He took a menacing step closer to me. I probably shouldn’t have said the unsafe family word. But if I was going to push today, then I might as well go over the edge.
“Why?” he asked again.
“You don’t get something for nothing in this world,” I said. That was a complete crock. In my past life, I used to get stuff for nothing all the time. But it seemed apt at the moment. I wondered how he would react knowing I had been a thief.
“Deal.”
I wasn’t sure I heard right until he opened the door wider and nudged me outside. “We’re going to need to teleport,” I said skittishly. We landed on the road outside of Nanna’s psychiatric hospital. I shrugged off the last of the bad vibes from the teleport and scowled.
“Why this place?” I asked him.
“It’s familiar,” he said. “And it seemed like a good place to start.”
“You don’t seem to understand the concept of birthdays.”
He shrugged. “Probably not. But I understand a swindle. So get moving.”
Smart-ass.
“You’d better put the amulet on. It’s all technology from here.”
We took a train into the city. I elected to get off at Jolimont Station so we could avoid the train barriers and public transport staff. “Are you certain this is how you want to waste your birthday?” I asked.
“Definitely.”
I stood stock still and looked at him. It was then I remembered he’d helped Nanna get my records from the Department of Human Services. It meant he’d probably seen the contents of my files. “This is not going to turn into a manhunt,” I told him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
I started walking up the ramp in exasperation. Outside the platform I bought two temporary transit cards for later. The shield amulet seemed to be working because the ticket machine didn’t immediately short circuit. Kai’s presence did make the screen skip so I couldn’t press any options. “Can you step back a little?”
He eyed the two guys farther down the platform. “No.”
I took a calming breath. “I lived for seventeen years without you looming over me. You can step back two metres.”
He didn’t move until I mashed the screen of the ticket machine to prove my point. Only then did he take two measured steps backwards. The streetlight above us flickered. Oh brother.
Instead of hopping back on the train, I decided we were better off walking to kill some time. While the bad stuff still haunted me, there were some things about the human world that I missed.
One of those things was the freedom to go anywhere and do anything I wanted. That was the beauty of having no parents and not caring about school. I wasn’t saying that it was glamorous, but it wasn’t all bad either. It wasn’t until we were at the top of the steps of the Shrine of Remembrance that I realised I was eighteen. Even if I went back to living in the human world, I had aged out of school.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Wait.”
I had never been that great with timing. Today, someone was smiling down on me. It was the middle of winter, but for once, it wasn’t raining in this gloomy city. I stood there as the sun rose over the tree line of the Botanic Gardens. I couldn’t help smiling, remembering all those times I’d stood here and hoped for a good day.
“You didn’t sleep out here, did you?” Kai asked.
Classic party pooper. “No way. They have patrols here. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.”
Before that look in his eye could settle, I forced him to a fast food place for breakfast. He made a face while I happily ordered half of the things on the menu. For the first time in years, I handed over actual cash for my food.
The girl behind the register stared at Kai the entire time I was ordering. He in turn stared at the two drunk men carrying on just outside the door. He grabbed the tray of food and found a spot as far away from the doorway as possible.
I wasn’t even sure why it mattered. He could sneeze and they’d go flying. “You’re making me eat this on my birthday?” he asked.
“It tastes better than it looks.”
I wanted so bad to say I told you so when he went and ordered more. After breakfast we walked over the bridge and into the warren of the casino. “When it was super cold, I used to come here all the time,” I said. By now I knew not to give too many details or he’d get that stormy look in his eyes like he wanted to teleport me right back to Bloodline.
“Wanna see a movie?”
“You did that often?”
More often than not. At this time in the morning it had been easy to sneak into the movies without anyone noticing I didn’t have a ticket. Then I’d have a couple of hours of peace and clean before I’d have to sneak into another theatre.
I had no idea what was playing. Once upon a time, I could recite whole movie scripts. I chose what looked like a general action flick. The theatre was pretty quiet.
“So, you just sit in the dark and watch this screen?” he asked. “Cassie and Gran sometimes watch human movies, but it seems sort of pointless to me.” It completely tripped me out that he had never done this before.
“Well, yeah. And then the movie plays and you watch. It’s not much different to watching something on the MirrorNet.”
“The stuff that happens on the MirrorNet is real,” he said.
I found that pretty funny. Never in a million years would I have imagined any of what happened in the magical world could be real.
Five minutes into the movie, Kai hoisted me up and settled me in his lap. He brushed his lips over my cheek. When he kissed me, he tasted like hot cakes and syrup. Huh, so he did understand the point of going to the movies.
By the time we left the theatre, I didn’t have the slightest clue what the movie was about. But I did know that Malachi Pendragon was a faster study than anyone gave him credit for.
“Are you just going to show me the nice stuff?” Kai said when I suggested we take a walk along the Yarra.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “What were you expecting?”
He stopped me from stomping off. “You’ve seen the worst parts of my life.”
“That’s different. It got shoved in my face. But we don’t have to do this.”
“I do.”
“What are you even talking about?”
He gripped me by my shoulders. “It wasn’t all that hard for me to get those files for your Nanna,” he said. “When the Council decides they want to snoop into your past, I need to know what I’m in for.”
What he left unsaid was the reason the Council would do that. To prove that I wasn’t up to scratch. I tried to shrug him off.
“If it matters where I came from, then we shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
He wouldn’t let me go. “Come off it, Blue. You know it doesn’t matter to me. But I’d like not to lose my cool in front of the entire Council, both of them, if I’m faced with something I don’t like.”
I bit my lip. At the very core, I didn’t want anyone to see what my life had been like. I didn’t want to see it anymore. But he was right. If I wanted him to face up to his past and let it go, I couldn’t very well refuse to show him mine. “Promise me you won’t freak out about anything.”
“No can do.”
“Kai.”
He was immovable. I sighed. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Instead of leading him over the south bank of the Yarra, I turned left under the train tunnel and up to the Docklands. I showed him some of the places where I had slept rough on the nights when it was warm enough. We walked through what looked like a beautiful public garden during the day. At night it turned into my bedroom. I shuddered when I thought of some of the things I’d seen going on in the pitch of night.
Finally, after I thought I had put it all in the past, I flagged down a taxi and we drove to a nondescript building in the Western Suburbs. There were five guys sitting out the front smoking.
I wouldn’t let Kai get out of the taxi because I didn’t know what he would do. “Okay,” I told the driver. “That’s enough.”
He put his foot down and gladly drove us out of there. It wasn’t customary in this country to tip, but I doubled his fare amount when we got out. Kai hadn’t said a word. I had a feeling he was trying to memorise the location of the clubhouse so he could go back there later.
“There you have it,” I said. “My life in a nutshell. Unless you’re particularly keen on seeing the inside of Nanna’s cell again. For the record, I’m –”
He yanked me into his arms. We stood there on the sidewalk as he let go of whatever was eating him up inside. Eventually he let out a breath. But he wouldn’t stop holding my hand.
“Don’t tell Nanna,” I said. “You can’t say I don’t know how to celebrate a birthday, huh?” Even though I hated it, I really felt like getting a bit drunk. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough liquor on earth to affect Kai. My stomach rumbled anyway.
“Do you want to find somewhere to eat?” I asked him. The sun was already going down.
“I’m done with this,” he said. “So are you.”
He wrapped his arms around me and teleported me back to Bloodline.
29
We appeared inside the Grove. “Stay put,” he said. He disappeared in the blink of an eye. We would have to work on his inability to make a request without it sounding like a command. The nymphs came out to chastise me for not showing up this morning. And just like that, the last of those horrible memories from my childhood were banished to the back of my mind.
“It was one morning!”
I ducked the first missile, but the rest hit me in the back. “I’ll do it now, okay.”
They were slave drivers. The Arcana trees didn’t even need tending to anymore. The one I’d planted had caught up and was every bit as sturdy as the one that had always been here. I suspected they were just siphoning my hedge magic for their own gains.
I was standing there watering the tree when I felt a cold tingle run down my spine. Out of the corner of my eye, I swore I could see a shadow close to the Nightblood barrier. When I turned in that direction, there was nothing there but grass and trees.
“Can you sense anything strange?” I asked the purple nymph. She was busy working on what appeared to be another contract for some poor sucker.
She shook her head at me and made a motion to indicate I might be losing my mind. I frowned and allowed the insistent tug of the Ley dimension to take hold of me. This section of the Grove was now dangerously close to Nightblood. The barrier I had erected was holding steady. All around it, the lights of the Ley dimension were erratic. Something flashed in my periphery, but it was never tangible enough for me to get a clear picture.
I must have been twirling around like a crazy person when I felt something touch my shoulder. I shed the Ley sight to find Kai peering at me quizzically.
“What were you doing?” He had a backpack strapped to his shoulders. He’d traded his motorcycle jacket for a dark blue chequered shirt.
“Something’s off with my Ley sight,” I said. “Why the outdoor get-up?”
He searched my face for a second as though trying to decide whether he should push the issue with the Ley dimension. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” I said. “At least that’s what Professor Mortimer tells me.”
That seemed to be enough for him. “Come on,” he said.
The next teleport saw us appearing in a vast red gum forest. The evening light was only just beginning to wane. Something told me we weren’t in Australia anymore. I never thought my first time overseas would be via teleport.
“Where are we?”
“Everywhere and nowhere,” Kai said. “In theory, anyway. We’re on the outer edge of where Seraphina intersects with this realm.”
I couldn’t really conceptualize it. “In earth terms, please.”
“Let’s say we’re on the borders of Yosemite.”
“As in the National Park? The one in the States?”
He nodded.
“Okay, next question. What are we doing here?”
“You said if you showed me something of yours, I had to show you something of mine.” He looked up into the canopy of redwoods. “We used to come here all the time for my birthday. I haven’t been back here since.”
I swallowed. This was classic me not really thinking stuff through. Now that we were here, I didn’t know what to say to him to make it better. Maybe there would never be anything that would make things better for him.
“We don’t have to do this,” I said. I slotted my hand into his and held it tight.
He stood there for a beat, his expression completely unreadable. Then I felt his fingers tighten around mine. “Yeah, we do. It’s time.” He turned to me. “Can those little feet of yours walk or do you want to fly?”
“Where are we walking?”
He led me up the path a little farther up. As we hiked, the trees fell away until we hit the base of a steady incline. I couldn’t see the top. “Too much?” he asked. I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me or whether this was some kind of test.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “For someone like me, running is sometimes the best option. I could do this in my sleep.”
Halfway up the hill, I was starting to get a stitch. It was beyond annoying that he wasn’t even breaking a sweat. He was taking his damn time so I could keep up with him. I gritted my teeth and kept going. If I died on thi
s hill, it would be worth it just to prove the point that I could keep up.
“You okay there?” Kai asked. I shot him a glare to cover up the fact that I couldn’t really speak at the moment. When we finally reached the top, I leaned against a pine tree. I pretended to admire its bark while I concentrated on not having a heart attack.
Kai threw his head back and laughed. He reached out with a flare of his angelfire and brushed the back of his fingers over my cheek. The magic eased the vise from around my chest.
“You know you didn’t have to run up here,” he said.
“I wasn’t running. It was a brisk walk.”
He held his hands up. “Fine. Call it that if you want. Try not to die while I set this up.”
I threw him a withering glare but that only amused him further. Now that the danger of asphyxiation was gone, I looked out over the edge of the hill. What little breath I had left caught in my lungs.
We were at the very top of a small mountain range. Spreading out in front of us was a vast landscape of treetops. The setting sun bathed the area in gold-mottled green. Standing up there, I was suddenly struck by the notion that I could fly. That if I stepped foot over the edge, the trees would catch me.
That was the exact reason why I took a step back. Illusions were often just that. “We can’t get away from here without flying or teleporting, can we?”
Kai grinned at me from where he was setting up dinner. “You noticed that, huh?”
“So I’m trapped.”
His smile turned fierce. “You’ve been trapped for a long time, Blue. You just never realised it.” Somehow, I knew he didn’t mean physically. “Come away from the edge. That look on your face is worrying me.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you’re going to jump to annoy me.”
It had only been a fleeting thought. I sat down only because my stomach was growling. After that bit of gruelling exercise, I could eat a horse. Kai handed me a plate. I started to stuff my face. He went to reach for my plate at one point and instinct took over. I snatched it away from him before he could touch it. Even though there was still plenty of other food, my arm curled protectively around it. I could be really quick when I needed to be too. His face stilled for the briefest second before he laughed his ass off.
