“I got it.” Mike swept in like a white knight and pulled my hair back for me, wringing it out first.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He grinned, but I should have known better that the glint in his eye wasn’t kindness; it was mischief. When I lowered my face and wrapped my lips around the smooth wet surface of the apple, I suddenly got a very cold drink of stale water, right up my nose and down my throat, snot and all.
I pulled back, coughing and spitting the liquid straight into the tub others would have to put their face in, and before I’d even caught my breath, I jammed my very firm fist right into Mike’s gut. He was laughing too hard to even notice. So was everyone else. And then I laughed too, because it was nice to see that things between Mike and I hadn’t changed all that much since we were kids. It took me back to that place where I used to know him so well and I almost thanked him for being such a jerk.
“Time’s up,” the host said, pressing the button on his stopwatch.
“What? But I—”
“Time’s up.” He pointed to the rules on the board.
My shoulders dropped. “Fine.”
My cheer squad called my name enthusiastically as I walked over to the flour bowl, hunched and with my arms hanging loosely in front of me, and plopped my apple in. The firm white powder puffed up and coated eighty percent of my apple right away, while the wind carried a little cloud in my direction that the water on my skin collected immediately.
“Aaara! Aaaara! Aaaara!” They all cheered, which, of course, attracted a larger audience to witness my humiliation. Good thing I was used to it.
I closed my eyes and leaned forward, but the last image in my mind before my eyelids shut everything out was of Mike’s heavy caramel boots—a half-inch deep in a puddle of water near the other tub. As I wrapped my teeth around the dry, floury apple skin, my tongue retreating to the back of my throat, my finger “accidentally” aimed itself at Mike’s feet and shot a small charge of Cerulean Light. I didn’t even need to see his demise; the sound of it was amusement enough. In fact, I’m pretty sure he farted as the shock went through his body.
When I opened my eyes and drew the apple from my teeth, quickly swiping away a line of slobber, it wasn’t me everyone was laughing at, even though I knew I had a white beard; it was the man sitting on the floor, his head and shoulders soaked and dripping, the big silver tub resting on an angle against his shoulder and the ground. He looked like a pissed-off kitten with his eyes closed, hair dripping over them, his lips in a tight line that opened only to blow the water away from them like a spray gun.
I jolted a few times as the laughter took hold before finally giving in and folding over in a full burst of amusement. My apple hit the ground and rolled away from my feet, stopping at Quaid’s.
“That was some payback,” he said, picking it up. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so funny.”
“You should try watching Ara cook,” Mike muttered dully, brushing loose grass off his jeans as he stood up. “That’s entertainment.”
“Aw, come on, baby boy.” I took Mike by the arm. “Let’s go find a nice quiet patch of grass and dry off.”
He followed me like a big sulky lump through the staring crowd until we reached the tranquility of the lighthouse, where we both flopped down in its moonlit shadow across the cut, itchy grass of the field. My chest rose and fell a little faster than Mike’s, purely from all the laughter, and under the noise of my labored breath I could still hear the hum of the festival—feel the warmth of the bonfires that lit up our faces, even all the way out here.
“Here.”
I sat up a little and looked at Mike’s hand. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He waited until I took the handkerchief before flopping down with one hand across his belly, aiming his eyes to the stars.
I rubbed the flour from my cheeks and chin and laid down beside him, our heads touching. “That was fun.”
He laughed once. “Yeah. It was.”
“I’ve missed that,” I added, reaching down between us to where I could feel the heat of his big heavy hand, and slipped my fingers into his palm.
He squeezed them. “Me too.”
“And…” I had to be careful how I said this, so he didn’t think I was trying to hold him back. “I will really miss you when you go, too.”
The squeeze tightened. “Me too.”
“You’ll miss yourself?” I joked.
He was quiet for a while, the crickets singing their songs again now they’d decided we were solid, unmoving objects and not a threat, while the thrum of the festival blended under the ocean breeze, disappearing somewhat. “It’ll be weird going back without you,” he said, his voice breaking as if it’d weakened from disuse. “You’ve always been there, you know? I just… it’ll just be really weird without you.”
“Well, you went back after we broke up. It won’t be so different to then.”
He shook his head against the grass. “I went back to regroup. I never went back to stay. This time, I know I won’t be coming back here. And I know you’ll never follow me back home. It’s not your home anymore. This is.” He motioned around this new world I belonged to.
“I disagree.” I looked away from him to the stars above me. “I came here to free the Lilithians. I’ve done that, Mike. And I freed the vampires in the process, protected the humans by developing the Pledge, and I’ve saved the Damned. The last of them will be adopted out by the end of this week, and then what?”
He sat up on one elbow and frowned down at me, but a hint of a smile indented his cheek. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying… I don’t want this. Any of this. I never did. I want a normal life, and I want my daughter to be raised human—not…” I ran my tongue over my teeth, thinking carefully about my choice of words. “I don’t want her to know she’s a vampire until she’s older. I want her to grow up with the same frailties and insecurities as a normal human girl.”
“Why?”
“It worries me what she might become if she grows up here among death and royal formalities. She needs to go to a normal school with human kids and sympathize with them as if she was one. She’ll one day rule all of this.” I moved an upturned palm across the sky. “If she has no respect for humans, why would she protect them?”
Mike’s lips arched downward and his brows went up. “Good point.” He flopped back down, and we laid in silence for a while longer until he said, “What about David?”
“What about him?”
“Doesn’t he get a say?”
“Of course he does. If he wants one. But I think…” I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. “I think maybe it’s over between us.”
“Why?”
“Morg said he’ll always hate me now—”
“She said he might. Not that he will.”
“Yes, but even if he doesn’t hate me, he ended the marriage before that hex ever took place. That night outside his room, and that day he practically tore my wedding band from my finger—that was all him, Mike. That’s the real David—the one my doe-eyed schoolgirl-self had refused to see. The one I should have seen.” I took a deep breath and steadied my voice. “He’s angry and cruel, and the hex had nothing to do with that.”
Mike’s tongue clicked, and he brought my hand up to his lips to kiss it. “Thing is, I know you’re right. I do. David is a dick at the best of times, and I’ve wanted to shake you just for being with him. He’s… he’s exactly the kind of guy I’d eventually end up arresting when I was on the Force—you know, for spousal abuse. It was always just a matter of time. But…”
And he left the ‘but’ hanging, as everyone around here seemed to do when I was just dying for them to finish. “But?”
“But, jerk as he may be, he loves you, and I am certain, as certain as I am of my own sexuality, that he would never lay a hand on you. He just needs to be taught how to be kind.”
“I see your point but…” I left my own �
�but’ hanging. “He’s hurt me a lot. I love him. I want him back. But I’m kind of afraid, too.”
“Of what?”
“Of how long it will be before I do something else to make him hate me and we end up back here. He can be really cruel when he wants, Mike. I don’t know if…” I bit my lip, and a lukewarm tear rolled down my temple and into my ear.
“If what?” He rolled up onto his elbow again and wiped it away.
“You’ve always been here. I don’t know if I can cope with him treating me like that if I don’t have any family here to make it all okay.”
“Aw, Ar.” He folded himself around me, protectively squashing me into the ground under half of his body. “I—”
“No. Please don’t take that to mean I want you to stay,” I said, pushing his chest until he leaned back a bit. “I want you to go. I just… I might follow you.”
“And leave David?”
“I don’t know about that bit yet. I need time. But… I know I’m tired. I know I’m the queen everyone wanted me to be and I know I can do this. I know I can. But I’m not sure I want to anymore.”
“Well, there are plenty of people in your staff that do.”
My thoughts instantly placed Walt on the throne to rule as regent in my stead. “I know. And, in all honesty, I’ve been thinking about all this for a while, so don’t think you’re prompting me to do something I wouldn’t otherwise do.”
“I know.” He looked lovingly down into my eyes, the warm caramel familiarity of his putting me, and all my crazy thoughts, at ease. He brushed my hair off my face a few times and scratched at a chunk of crunchy flour with his thumbnail before taking a deep breath and rolling away again, tucking my hand under his elbow against his belly. “And you know my mom and dad will be happy to have you for as long as you need to stay.”
“I know. I just don’t know what I’d do for income. I mean… I’ll be a single mother!”
He laughed. “Well, you’re welcome to come live with me and the boys for a bit—go to uni.”
“Thanks,” I said softly, but my heart slowly sunk through my spine and into the ground.
“But… you don’t want to live with me, do you?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“I don’t want to be dependent on you—on anyone. And I don’t exactly want to leave David behind either.”
“So make him come.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Because if he ever, by the grace of God, decides to take me back, he won’t follow me to the human realm, Mike. He’d have to go back to killing discreetly.”
“He’ll have to anyway if you don’t want the baby exposed to all that.”
“True. But even then, there’s no way I can raise her with David if he can’t change his ways. I mean, a person shows their true colors when they react to a bad situation—you taught me that—and his colors are all blacks and grays.”
“Are you scared he’ll hurt the baby?”
I clasped my hands over my belly. “No. Well, not physically anyway, but if he can talk to me the way he does—be that cruel—what might he say to hurt this sweet innocent daughter one day?”
“Nothing that he’d truly mean, Ara.”
“It wouldn’t matter if he meant it or not. It wouldn’t even matter if he was sorry. Once it’d been said, the damage would be done. I don’t want her to cry herself to sleep every night like I do. She needs a dad that loves her and protects her. Like I had.”
“And you don’t trust David to be that?”
I shook my head. “Sometimes a big part of me wonders if he and Jason were switched at birth, and David is the evil twin.”
Mike laughed. “Yeah, see, you say that, but you still love him. So he can’t be that bad.”
“You’re right.” I nodded. “I do love him. I always, always will. No matter what. But I need him to be a better man if he wants to be a part of my life from now on,” I said decisively. “Seeing what he’s capable of last night—taking my life—it shook me up enough to see that loving someone like that, loving them unconditionally, can be dangerous, stupid even. It isn’t just me in the picture anymore. I have to think of the baby.”
“Sounds like you have an awful lot of thinking to do before you speak to David.”
“Not really.” I closed my mouth tight and scrunched my face up in consideration. “I just need to talk to him and set him straight—make things clear. Whether he comes back to me or not, things have to change.”
He tucked a wrist behind his head and readjusted himself comfortably. “You seen the painting yet?”
“Painting?”
“Yeah, the one Jason left.”
“So that’s what it was.” I sat up and crossed my legs under me.
“You didn’t know?”
“No. He just said there was a gift in my room for me.”
Mike closed his eyes, smiling, like he was going to sleep in a very comfy bed. “Maybe you should go up and check it out—get cleaned up while you’re there.”
I touched my face and felt another big clump of sticky flour. “Good idea. I need to be a bit more presentable to close the festival tonight.”
“Well”—he checked his watch—“you have about thirty minutes until eleven.”
“Okay.” I brushed my long dress off as I stood, stepping on the skirt and stumbling for a moment until I righted myself. “Come get me at about quarter-to?”
“Sure.” He closed his eyes above a smile and went back to enjoying his little spot on the grass.
* * *
I was acutely aware that Falcon had caught my scent as I passed the festivities and followed me up to my room, smelling, obviously, that Mike wasn’t with me. I let him follow, even though we both knew there was no threat here, because I also knew he was worried about me after what I went through last night. He didn’t engage, though—didn’t talk or make it obvious that he was following. He just walked at a distance behind me. Watching.
When I reached my room and pushed the door open, he stayed at the end of the corridor, and only as I set my door firmly back into its frame did I notice a shadow moving under the crack. There was a distinct taste in the air tonight, like concern or fear, but it only seemed to follow my guards. I could feel it pressing down on my shoulders when I was around them, even Mike, but he was better at hiding it. Something had happened. Something that made them worry enough to hang out like old mates at the festival, as if they didn’t all have better places to be. If only Jason were still here; I could make him read their minds. Then again, if I could figure out how I was reading his mind, I could just go and read their minds myself.
I sighed, leaning my forehead on the door. People keeping things from me was the worst form of disrespect.
“Falcon?” I said through the door.
“Yes, My Queen.”
“Call a council meeting.”
“My Queen?” he said, meaning “Come again.”
“Call a council meeting—for after the ball. We’ve something to discuss.”
“We do?”
“Yes. Like the fact that you all need to confess what you’re hiding, or I’ll have you all locked up for the night.”
A second passed, where the tension in the air thickened, even through the door. “Of course,” he said.
I waited until his footfalls became distant patters, then turned around and leaned the back of my head on the door. But before I could close my eyes and plot out the Angry Queen speech my knights would suffer, a giant gold-framed canvas caught my eye, leaning against the wall right between the sitting room and my bedroom. The gift from Jason.
My eyes widened to take in the majesty of David’s lake, right there in thick oil brushstrokes, like looking at it through a window. It was summer, and the trees were in full foliage, the water reflecting the blue sky and a dark-haired girl sitting atop the black rock, hugging her knees—her back to the artist, her solemn thoughts miles out past the tree line.
&nbs
p; I wandered over and traced a fingertip along the shadowy figure of a man standing in the tree line, watching her. Even though Jason had painted the man with his face hidden by the angle he stood at, I could see it was him—his gait, the set of his shoulders… no, wait. There was something more dominating about the way he held himself, as if the man commanded a certain response to his appearance: submission. Fear. And Jason’s words filtered out from among my thoughts then, echoing in my mind: It’s David. It always has been.
The detail and the texture, the brushstrokes, the entire masterpiece, made me miss Jase terribly all of a sudden. He had such an unappreciated talent for art, given that his heart was in science, making self-expression and creativity really just more of a hobby. Then again, I suppose with the laws of the old king that he lived under his entire vampire life, he couldn’t really take up a career in artistry. There was nothing stopping him now though except, I guess, his new fantastic job.
I sat back on the blanket box at the end of my bed, folding my arms while I considered the painting. But I wasn’t studying it from my room. Not really. I was there by the lake, years back into the past. It felt like the first day I saw it. Such a strong emotion attached to it that I could still feel all of the sadness and doubt surrounding me. As it always had. It seemed then that I’d spent my life so far in an empty room, missing David, waiting around for him—just praying he’d come back and stay with me. Nothing much had changed. But what did Jason mean by “It was always him”?
I got up and touched David again, as if I could tap his shoulder and make him turn around.
Why did Jason paint him lingering there in the shadows—watching me? Why didn’t he paint him beside me, where I needed him to be?
“What are you trying to say?” I asked the painting. Millions of conclusions ran through my head and heart, and as I looked at the lonely figure sitting on the rock, completely unaware she wasn’t actually alone, it snapped like a rubber band flicking all my random thoughts into one neat line.
Echoes & Silence Part 1 Page 51
