by Sara Preucil
She peered around the corner. She could hear Dylan and Emmy talking, but they must be in the kitchen, because they were just out of sight. Keegan was facing that direction, listening to them. Aidan sat on the old, striped couch next to her, with his arm draped across her shoulders.
Tara’s stomach clenched. A blanket was balled up next to Aidan, suggesting its recent use by the both of them. The ache in her chest pulsed. Tara glanced back to Aidan.
She sucked in a sharp breath. Aidan was watching her.
Still working to extract herself from the pain of the memory, Tara met his gaze, feeling raw. Why had her first instinct been to seek him out? Now that she was standing there, growing more awake by the second, that impulse was seeming more and more ridiculous.
Aidan’s hand twitched, and she thought for one impossible moment, that he felt something similar. But then he gripped Keegan’s shoulder, pulling her closer to him. Keegan turned to look at Aidan and beamed at him, snuggling into him.
Tara clenched her fists at her sides. Fighting the urge to turn away, she instead forced herself to walk into the room. Keegan, finally noticing Tara’s presence, turned to look at her. Her thin eyebrows shot up when she saw the oversized pajamas on Tara, and she shot her an ugly look before turning back to the conversation.
“You’re sure she was headed north?” Dylan was saying.
Aidan nodded somberly. “She was really worried about you.” He laid his head back again the couch. “She left a note…I should have taken her more seriously.”
“When was the last time you tried calling her?” Keegan asked, taking Aidan’s hand in hers.
“Last night. Went straight to voicemail.”
“Who are you talking about?” Tara finally spoke up, fiddling with the cuff of her sweatshirt sleeve and determinedly avoiding looking at Aidan.
Keegan shot her a reproachful look. “Aria,” she said as if Tara should have known. “Aidan’s little sister.”
Right. Tara should have guessed that. It was only yesterday that Aidan had told her she had been missing for the past couple of weeks.
“Any ideas what happened to her?” Tara asked carefully, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Your lot kidnapped her, possibly killed her—who knows?” Keegan snapped.
Aidan stiffened at her words.
Stunned at the sudden accusation, Tara was lost for words.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Emmy chimed in, surprising Tara. During their previous conversations, Emmy hadn’t been nearly as forgiving of Tara’s background. “The only other elemental I saw there was Dylan,” Emmy continued, and then looked at Tara. “Did you come across or know of anyone else that the Order may have taken recently?”
Tara opened her mouth to immediately reply no, but then she remembered that awful meeting in the Whitlocks’ basement.
“Actually,” she began, shamefully, “there was another. A teenage girl. An air elemental.”
The air seemed to have been sucked from the room. They were all impossibly still. Then, Aidan slowly sat forward, his dark eyes fixated on Tara.
“Why didn’t you say—?” Emmy started, but Dylan put a hand on her shoulder, silencing her.
“What did she look like?” Aidan whispered between clenched teeth.
Tara thought back to that night, she remembered the small girl slumped over, the heavy chains weighing her down.
“She was small, couldn’t have been much more than five feet…white-blonde hair…very thin.”
Aidan shot to his feet; he was in front of Tara before she could even blink, his hands gripped her shoulders, forcing her to look up at him.
Tara could feel the heat rolling off him in volatile waves.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
Tara thought frantically, she was having difficulty remembering, and Aidan wasn’t making it any easier.
“I’m not sure…”
Aidan’s fists clenched tighter around her shoulders.
“You’re not sure?” he repeated.
Tara mentally ran through that night. She had avoided looking at the girl, and was so preoccupied with the start of her dreams that she hadn’t been paying full attention. What had they said?
“They were moving her.” Tara finally recalled. “I’m not sure where, they didn’t say.”
Aidan stared at her for a moment longer. He then seemed to return to his senses; his face reddened and he released her roughly. Tara had to reach back to the wall behind her to keep from falling.
“Sorry,” Aidan mumbled as he stalked back to the couch, sitting back down next to Keegan.
“Why didn’t you share this before?” Emmy asked, breaking the silence.
Tara chewed her bottom lip, the action seeming to anger Aidan further as he glowered at her. She cast her gaze around the room; they were all looking at her.
“I didn’t think…” Tara looked down at her hands, which were clenched in the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “I’m sorry.”
“Is there anything else?” Dylan asked. “Any information that would be useful?”
“Who’s to say she would tell us?” Keegan said. “She hasn’t exactly been forthcoming so far.”
Tara rubbed her shoulder, ignoring Keegan and thought about what Dylan asked. She looked over at him.
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. And then she froze, a sudden thought occurring to her. “But I know how to get some.”
Chapter 48
A few hours later, all five of them had loaded into a Jeep and were now driving north to Bellingham. It had taken some convincing, but Tara had finally brought everyone around to her plan. And the first step, the step that everything else hinged upon, was to return home.
Tara sat in the back seat, looking out of the rain-streaked window at the blurred green of passing evergreen trees, trying to prepare herself for what was to come. She was also trying—and failing—to ignore Keegan’s icy looks and the way her sharp elbow seemed always poised to jab Tara in the ribs with every bump in the road. Aidan sat on the other side of Keegan, and Tara was failing just as much in her attempt to ignore how much she was affected by his presence. How was it possible that without even looking at Aidan, Tara could sense every small shift he made?
Dylan hit another bump, and Tara received yet another sharp jab to her side. She gritted her teeth and skootched even farther to the side; her leg was now firmly pressed against the door, her shoulder pressed against the cold window. She watched the rain run down the glass. At least they were nearly there.
And then, Tara realized that in the silence of the drive, she never once heard the windshield wipers going. She glanced around Dylan’s left shoulder to look at the windshield.
It was perfectly clear.
“Are you doing that?” Tara reached past Dylan to point at the glass.
He laughed. “Yup.”
“Wow,” she murmured, sitting back. “Neat trick.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aidan’s hands form fists on the top of his legs. She bit her lip, and decided to keep quiet for the rest of the ride.
About twenty minutes later, however, Tara was forced to break her silence as they exited the freeway and she had to give Dylan directions to her house. They wove their way through the “charming” narrow streets of residential Fairhaven until Tara told Dylan to park. The five of them poured out of the Jeep and followed Tara as she walked down the street toward her house.
Tara nervously made her way up the familiar paved path, between the rhododendron bushes that her mom kept meticulously trimmed, up to the wide porch. They had planned on arriving midday, so that her parents would be at work, and by the look of the empty driveway, things were going in their favor.
Fishing her keys from her coat pocket, Tara quickly unlocked the front door and gestured for the others to follow her inside.
“Looks like human experimentation pays well,” Keegan muttered snidely as she crossed the threshold, coming in last.
T
ara relocked the door behind Keegan, choosing to ignore her comment and the sickening fact that she was basically right. The comfortable home she had grown up in had been funded by monsters that kidnapped and tortured people that were unlike them in the name of religion.
“Right, I’ll just go get what we came for.” Tara turned to head up the cherry wood staircase to her left.
“Wait.”
Tara froze, her hand resting on the smooth bannister. She turned back to look at Emmy, who had spoken.
“Someone should go with you,” Emmy said, unabashed.
Tara sighed. “You seriously still don’t trust me?”
Emmy looked away.
“Whatever.” Tara turned and began to ascend the staircase. Footsteps sounded behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see that Aidan, who had been closest to the stairs, was following. Keegan stood on the landing below, arms crossed over her chest, looking murderous. Tara shrugged and continued to the second floor.
They headed down the hallway, their footsteps echoing against the polished wood floor. At the end of the hall on the left was her father’s study. Tara slowly pushed the door open, feeling, for a brief moment, guilty for entering a room that had nearly always been off limits to her.
“Okay,” Tara breathed. This was the whole reason they were there. She had explained that her father had a propensity bordering on obsessive compulsion for writing things down. Anything of the smallest importance, he made a note of lest he forget. And she prayed that included passwords.
“Let’s start. Grab anything that looks like it can get us into the system at MA.” The information she had access to on her own laptop was limited; they needed to get into the computer of someone with higher clearance. Someone like her dad.
Tara and Aidan began rifling through endless papers on the top of her father’s desk, in its drawers, in filing cabinets, setting aside any loose scrap that looked promising. They worked in awkward silence, and Tara could tell Aidan was still angry with her.
“Look,” she started, trying to find the right words. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention the girl before. I had no idea she could have been Aria.” Tara opened another desk drawer. “Actually, with everything else going on, I sort of forgot about it.” She closed the drawer, feeling her face flush. How selfish must she be to forget something like that? She opened another drawer.
Aidan sighed, and Tara finally looked up from the contents of the drawer to face him. He closed the folding closet door, within which he had just been rummaging, and looked at her. “No,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you. You’re only trying to help, and I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He shot her a cockeyed grin. “Sorry.”
“Thanks.” Tara returned his half smile before resuming the search, feeling slightly better. But after another fifteen minutes passed without them finding anything that was a definite lead, Tara started to panic. What if her dad actually didn’t write his passwords down?
“Found something.”
Tara had just been checking under the keyboard when Aidan spoke from somewhere behind her. She whipped around. He was holding a crumpled piece of paper. Tara set down the keyboard and crossed the room, hand held out. Aidan dropped the paper into her extended palm. It was an old receipt. On the back of it, in her dad’s handwriting was: Eld3rJ0hn48.
“It was in that bag.” Aidan pointed to a leather briefcase that her dad sometimes used for work. “It looks old though.”
Tara bit her lip and flipped the receipt over. The fading ink was that of a gas receipt dating a little over a month ago.
“It’s the best thing we’ve got.” Tara pocketed the receipt, hoping that her dad hadn’t changed his password in the last month. If that was what they had found at all. “Keep looking, I just need to get a flash drive.” Tara left the office and walked down the hall to the first door near the staircase. She pushed open the door to her bedroom, flicked on the light switch at the wall, and headed straight for her desk across the room. She pulled open the top drawer, shoving aside pens, pencils, and other odd bits until she found the small storage device.
The floor creaked behind her, and she spun around.
Aidan was standing in the middle of her room.
“Honestly,” Tara rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t even trust me to get this on my own?” She held up the flash drive before shoving it in the front pocket of her jeans.
When she glanced at Aidan, she realized that he wasn’t looking at her, but at something over her shoulder. Tara looked back at her desk, wondering what it was that had caught his attention. All that was there was her laptop and school books.
But then she saw it.
Her trig textbook, wrapped in brown paper that she had absently doodled all over. That odd interlocking triple spiral decorated the cover of her book in various sizes and boldness. It had meant nothing to her then, but now she realized—with a sudden shock that felt like being doused in icy water—where she had seen it before. That symbol had been tattooed on Eagan’s chest.
Tara inhaled sharply at the bittersweet memory, and slowly turned back to Aidan, a strange suspicion making her suddenly afraid of what she might see.
She caught a glimpse of his dark eyes, full of resolved determination as he crossed her bedroom in the space of a moment. He caught her face in his rough, warm hands, closing the distance between them.
They were only a few inches apart when he paused. Tara looked into his eyes. At this proximity, they were all she could see. But then, the face belonging to them seemed to blur, shifting between Aidan to Eagan and back, but his eyes—their eyes—remained the same. The soul behind them was the same.
And then Tara knew. With complete certainty that defied reason, she knew.
Past and present slammed together as she stared into his dark eyes.
“Eagan?” She breathed.
Chapter 49
Aidan answered by eliminating those last remaining couple of inches. His lips met Tara's with palpable hunger and desperation. Tara threw her hands around his neck, pulling herself closer as she kissed him back. His fingers wove themselves into her hair, and she clung to him as she remembered the pain of losing Eagan and the quiet, married life she had dutifully led afterward. That life hadn’t been miserable exactly, but there had always been a nagging feeling that something was always missing. Now, she felt—or more accurately, Briana felt—that completion as Eagan finally held her in his arms. And Tara experienced a surge of desperation at the thought of being separated from him again.
The unmistakable sound of a key turning a lock shattered the moment.
Tara broke the kiss, pulling away slightly as reality came crashing back. Her hands were still around Aidan’s neck, his were around her waist, but they were both frozen, listening as they caught their breath.
Downstairs, the front door opened.
“Shit.” Tara stepped out of his embrace, raced past Aidan, into the hall, and bounded down the stairs.
“Mom, you’re home early!” Tara pointed out unnecessarily, feeling panicked.
“Tara!” Her mother exclaimed when Tara came into sight of the front door. “Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick!” Dina moved forward and embraced her daughter. “Reed Whitlock told me you were involved in releasing an unnatural…” She stepped back from Tara then and looked around the room at Emmy, Dylan, Keegan, and then turned her green eyes on Aidan, who had followed Tara down the stairs. “Wait a minute…” Her sharp gaze darted from face to face, and Tara could see the recollection forming. “Tara…” Her mom finally looked at her, but it was a look full of unease. “What have you done?” she whispered, reaching for the doorknob behind her, but Keegan stepped between the door and Dina.
“Mom, listen. Please.” But Tara could see the panic setting in and knew that there would be no reaching her. She tried anyway. “It’s wrong what you’ve been doing. What the Order has been doing. The imprisonment, the experiments. Mom, it’s inhumane.”
“They are unnatural. They aren’t human.”
The mood shifted immediately. Tara saw Emmy’s pale hands ball into fists at her sides, Keegan was glowering at the back of Dina’s head, and Aidan took another step down the stairs so that Tara could feel him towering behind her. She suddenly feared for her mom’s safety.
“And what about me, Mom? What do you consider me?”
“I—I don’t understand.”
“Sure you do,” Emmy cut in. Dina’s eyes flicked toward Emmy and then back to Tara.
Tara watched her mother’s expression shifting. Her green eyes lingered on her daughter’s face, searching. She then sighed. Her shoulders sagged, and she appeared defeated.
“How?” Tara finally whispered the question that had been plaguing her since the dreams began. “How is it possible?”
Her mother stared at her for a moment longer and then spoke. “Your father and I were driving home from Redding on a business trip. I was too far along in my pregnancy to fly, and as we were passing near Mount Shasta, I went into labor.”
Mount Shasta was the location of one of the major ley line intersections, Tara recalled.
“You always said I was born here.” Tara argued.
“We lied. It wasn’t difficult to cover up, to change the official record.”
“So you thought it was possible that I would be…” Tara gestured lamely in the air, lost for words.
“Yes. I feared that there would always be a chance for you to be…well…unbalanced.” Her mom explained.
Tara crossed her arms in front of her chest. She felt betrayed. How could her parents dedicate themselves to her induction into the Order without telling her the truth? How could they practically brainwash her against her own kind? Rage swirled around in the pit of Tara’s stomach, hot and gnawing. She had to blink to fight back the tears. “Well, you were right.” She sneered. “Just like I’m sure you also know that I can’t just stand by and do nothing.”
Tara saw her mom’s free hand inch toward to her coat pocket.
“Don’t—” Tara warned, but she was too late.
