Her red rimmed eyes met his. How could she be all better? How could anything be all better? She was just lucky that Nicholas happened along when he had. Otherwise… “I guess I should thank your insomnia for saving my hide,” she joked, although her heart was anything but light. “How did you know where to find me, Nicholas?”
“I didn’t, that was the problem.” he answered softly. “I finally got your messages and I sensed there was a problem. You weren’t answering your cell phone and you weren’t at the office or at your home. I worried that you once again had insisted upon walking in the middle of the night, so I set off to find you. I was a few blocks over when I heard you scream.” She nodded. “By the time I rounded the corner whoever had attacked you had gone, leaving you unconscious and bleeding in the street.”
She thought about the homeless man… and Lily. “You didn’t’ see anything… anyone else?”
He shook his head. “Just you.”
Her eyes closed as she swallowed hard. Maybe she had been sleepwalking and simply stumbled and cut her hand. Or maybe a couple of creatures of the night had dragged the corpse of a vagrant to their lair to feast. Neither scenario did much to reassure her. “Want to tell me what happened?” he asked.
She hesitated. Surprisingly she did want to tell him what happened. But she didn’t want him to think she was crazy. She sighed. There was no getting around that now. “I honestly don’t know what happened. I don’t know what I saw. I don’t know anything, Nicholas.” She pulled her hand from his. “You better get while the getting is good. There’s nowhere to go with me but downhill.”
She got up from the chair and started to leave, he was quick on his feet to follow. “Don’t say that, Adele,” he scolded. “Don’t you know how special you are?”
That was it. That one little bit of kindness that cracked the dam and set everything free. “Didn’t you hear me?” she screamed. “I don’t know anything!” She spun away from him, unable to look him in the eye. “I used to think I saw the world through truth and fact. Now I don’t even know what’s true anymore. I thought I was so smart,” she said, her voice beginning to break. “I thought that was God's way of making it up to me that I was born…” she trailed off as she tried to articulate what she’d always suspected, but never validated with words uttered out loud. “For being born a mistake.”
Nicholas was quick upon her and grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. “You are not a mistake,” he told her, his voice strong… almost angry. “Look at me.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know me,” she insisted, and refused to look into his face. So he tipped her chin. Tears hovered in those dark brown beautiful eyes.
“I know everything I need to know,” he stated, “just by looking in your eyes.” He took her injured hand and brought it to rest on his chest. “Tell me you feel it too.”
She could almost feel his heart tapping against her fingers. Like the red string of fate she felt herself drawn into the miracle of his embrace.
“Feel me, Adele,” he whispered as he wound his fingers in her hair, tipping her face up for a kiss. His body trembled as his mouth engulfed her own, and she truly could feel every emotion flowing through his body. They were feelings she herself had recently felt when Dani had been missing. There was apprehension, then terror, then elation. There was that moment when they realized how close they had come to missing every opportunity to act on love before it was too late.
It was insanity. Mere weeks ago she would have never considered such a thing. But his words were a balm for her wounded soul that had been so lonely for so long. In a way that could never make sense, it was as if she had always been waiting for him, for this exact kiss and for his specific embrace. An undeniable love wrapped itself around her as he enclosed his hard body around her soft curves. And she wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything. She wanted to feel his fingertips along her skin, taste his kiss upon her mouth. Her body ached for him as if it needed him to be completed. Yet it was her soul that yearned for him the most. In his arms she wasn’t odd or strange or queer – she was unique… special… loved.
She didn’t resist as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the sofa. He held her until her tears were spent, murmuring words to her in another, unfamiliar language that gave her the comfort she needed.
He carried her to her bed after she fell asleep against his strong shoulder, and left a sweet, tender kiss on her forehead after he tucked her under her covers. He sat on the edge of the bed, stroking her hair, until she drifted to sleep.
That night she didn’t dream at all. It was just the respite she needed.
The next day she took a detour along that same city street, which looked less ominous in the light of day. There was no evidence to suggest a homeless man had been attacked and bled to death on the street. Even the light in the street lamp was intact. She rubbed her throbbing hand as her brow furrowed.
Twenty minutes later, the same familiar jingle heralded her arrival at the bookstore. Vincent glanced her direction from his position on the ladder where he filed books away. “Finished the books already?” he asked casually, paying no particular attention to her as he finished his duty.
“Some of them,” she replied, her voice deadened.
He scaled down the ladder landing beside her with a thud. He caught a glance of her hand wrapped in a handkerchief. “He got to you, didn’t he?”
“Who’s he?” she demanded.
“Uh uh. You know our deal. You read the books, then I tell you want you want to know.” He turned and disappeared behind a beaded curtain.
“How do you know what’s going to happen before it happens?” she yelled from the counter. She waited a long moment before he finally reappeared, carrying a cup of tea that smelled strongly of roses.
“What makes you think I do?”
“That’s what my source said. That you tell Denise things almost as though you know they’re going to happen.”
He shrugged. “Just perceptive, I guess.”
She had enough, enough of the games, enough of the spooky mystical stuff that she couldn’t explain. Though she had no evidence to support the night before except for a deep cut in her hand, she strongly suspected what she had seen has not been a hallucination. Otherwise the demon she was fighting lived solely within her own head. “I want to know how to fight this,” she exclaimed, banging her fist on the counter, drops of blood oozing from her handkerchief.
“Read the books,” he told her again, unmoved by her show of emotion.
“He attacked my daughter,” Adele finally confessed, figuring there was no need to quibble over semantics when Dani was her daughter in heart if not by blood. And details seemed to be trifles only as Vincent didn’t look surprised by the news. “I need to know if he will be back. I need to know,” she gulped, unable to believe she was about to say, “I need to know if she’s going to turn into one of them.” She caught his gaze. She knew how crazy she sounded but at that moment she felt she was in the company of someone who not only would understand, but be able to help. “The other little girl did. She killed a homeless man last night. She nearly came after me. Is my little girl infected now? How does this work?”
“What do the books say?” he asked.
Adele grew furious. “The books are fiction! I need you to tell me what you know!”
“There’s a little truth in all fiction,” he suggested. “Read them. And I’ll tell you everything.”
That was the final straw. “This cat-and-mouse thing you’re doing is very dangerous, Vincent. I can only buy into it so far before I start to question if you’re the one behind all of this. How else could you know what happens before it happens?”
He took a sip of tea, not worried in the least. “Don't you?”
“And if you are the murderer,” she continued, trying to cover how his astute comment hit its mark, “Then this is all a game so you can keep me from figuring out who you are.”
He shrugged.
“Anything is possible if we play the ‘what if’ game, Adele. But I think you know deep in your heart what’s true. You just need to trust yourself.” He paused. “And others.”
She let out an exasperated sigh and without warning he grabbed her injured hand. Something charged between them. “You can trust me, Addie,” he said softly, using Michael’s pet name for her.
It brought a sadness to her eyes. She knew she wanted to, but just like the events from the night before, she had no real evidence to support there was anyone left she could truly trust. She pulled her hand free and stalked toward the door.
He halted her with his words. “About your little girl…”
She stopped walking and waited, never turning back to face him. She was breathless as she heard him tell her flatly but firmly, “Get a priest.”
She gripped her injured hand into a fist and marched on.
Vincent’s words haunted her as she entered Dani’s hospital room. The child lay sleeping peacefully, as if nothing had ever happened to her. It scrambled Adele’s brain even further. As she drew closer to the bed, she debated on if she loved this child enough to trust Michael again. If it was even possible.
He had shattered her by what he had done. It was a clear violation of every rule of friendship, of love itself. How could he be her friend, how could she trust his love, if he couldn’t even keep her darkest secret, especially when he had kept his knowing her secret completely to himself?
If she had stopped for two seconds to be truly honest with herself, she’d have realized that was what truly bothered her. Michael had always been the one who never treated her like she was different, damaged or sick. He treated her as though she had been born normal, but all along he knew how truly corrupted she had been upon birth. He knew the truth, he knew she was a freak, but never let on. Never once did he give her the chance to know his affection was no doubt born out of pity.
She had always trusted that he loved her, even when she wasn’t consciously aware she was doing so. Now she had to question if he ever really did. Maybe the reason he had never offered himself truly was because he knew she had been created out of evil, and as such unworthy of anyone normal and good. All this time she thought he pined for her with an unrequited love born of a pure heart and the best of intentions. She thought he had backed away from pursuing her to respect her wishes to stay unencumbered. She had always believed, perhaps arrogantly so, that had she given him the option he would have come running. She had never considered that he might have set these boundaries for himself, or that he had been grateful she had never tried to take their relationship to another level because he himself knew she wasn’t good enough to be loved. By not telling her what he knew about her past, he had fed into the self-serving illusion that it was her decision and not his.
This realization, this ultimate rejection, had been what cut her to the core.
How could she bring herself to ask for his help now? She collapsed into the nearby chair and sank her head into her hands. She loved Dani. She hadn’t wanted to, but she did. She understood that love required things that had never come easily for her, like faith or trust. And it always, always demanded sacrifice. Why did love always require such personal risk? Most importantly, why was it so impossible to avoid, even when she set her life up to do just that?
Adele sighed as she leaned back against the chair. She saw something out of the corner of her eye, something under the bedside table. Quietly she bent to retrieve it, shocked to discover it was an ornate bottle half-filled with what she knew instantly to be holy water.
Her brow creased. Michael had brought it there, there was no question. Had he known what to do? Had he deliberately withheld that from her too?
Adele rose and approached Dani. The child did not stir as Adele gently peeled back the clean bandages from her neck.
The two holes were gone. The bruises were gone. It was as if she’d never been injured at all.
Whatever Michael had done had healed her. Why hadn’t he told her? What more was he withholding? Adele thrust the bottle in her jacket and rushed back to her apartment.
She spent the night immersed in the pile of books Vincent had given her. The clock ticked away the still, quiet minutes of early morning as Adele pored over volumes of ancient lore. She turned through pages of graphic illustrations until she landed on one that looked exactly like the creature she encountered in the alley.
As she tried to wrap her mind around the sheer coincidence of it all, her window clattered open as if on cue. She jumped and then chided herself for being so skittish. It was only the wind. But as she started to close the window again she could hear a wolf bray in the distance. The same unnatural mist hung over the darkened forest, and the wolf's cry was strangled by the grip of death. Adele knew another wolf carcass would be found the next day, and she had the unenviable experience of listening to it die.
She closed the window and locked it.
Despite what she had discovered with Dani, Adele could not bring herself to talk to Michael. She walked by the church but there was no way she could will her way up the steps. He had hidden too much from her to fully trust again, even though in her heart of hearts she really, truly wanted to.
Life did not seem complete without her dearest friend, even if it had only been an illusion.
Instead she went to see her mother. Brenda was much easier to forgive. She had told something in confidence and truly expected Michael to keep it secret. Brenda, like Adele, had simply misplaced her trust. Sure, she had broken a sacred bond with her daughter. But who was Adele to judge Brenda’s path to peace after such a horrific crime Adele couldn’t even fathom? To compound that, she had sentenced herself to nurture and take care of the byproduct of that crime for every day that had followed, without ever making her daughter feel like it was her fault.
Brenda couldn’t stop the tears when she saw her daughter. It was the second time in Adele’s young life her origin had caused her such distress, and it broke Brenda’s heart to see it. Adele clearly hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, and if Brenda knew her daughter, hadn’t been faithfully taking her meds either. She was a mess.
She couldn’t even bring herself to shed another tear as her mother held her in a long embrace. After the events of the last few days, Adele was empty. She sat at the dining room table while Brenda made her some tea.
Adele stared at the long line of wooden blocks her mother would magically transform into religious statues, crosses, crucifixes and saints, all to sell to the tourists like she had done since she had been pregnant with Adele. It had been a trade she’d found when she was living in a convent, protected by the nuns and the priest, while she was pregnant with the offspring of a monster. Adele reached for a block, awed once again that her mother could take something so plain, so ordinary, and turn it into something beautiful.
She had tried desperately to do that with her child, as well. But Adele knew better than anyone that was a lost cause.
She returned the block as her mother approached. As Adele took the cup from her, Brenda noticed her injury with a gasp. “Adele! Your hand!”
“It’s nothing, Ma,” Adele dismissed. “A minor cut.”
“You know there is no such thing for you,” Brenda admonished. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“I don’t need a doctor,” Adele replied. Before she could stop herself, she muttered, “I need a priest.”
Brenda sat back in her chair. She never thought Adele would say something like that. She saw Michael as a friend, not a pastor. “You have a priest,” she finally said.
Adele shook her head. “I cannot trust Michael. And neither can you.”
“Adele…”
“No!” Adele cut her off. “What he did was unforgivable.”
Brenda sighed, looking again to Adele’s hand. She noticed the ornate crest stitched on the handkerchief. “Who gave that to you?” she questioned softly.
“Nicholas,” replied Adele, and subtly squared her shoulders with unconscious possessi
on. The gesture did not go unnoticed by her mother. “Nicholas Sterling.”
Brenda stiffened. “I had no idea you’d become close.”
Adele sighed. How could she explain it to her mother when she didn’t understand it herself? “It’s complicated,” she finally said.
“You’re falling in love with him,” Brenda decided.
Adele’s shocked eyes met her mother’s. “Don’t be silly. What could make you think that?”
“A mother’s intuition. Am I wrong?”
Adele stood and started to pace. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I feel. I don’t even know who to trust, including myself.”
“I never told Michael,” Brenda interrupted. Adele just shook her head. That was impossible. That would mean that Isabel really was psychic. No one could have guessed that. This was no vague generalization.
And if psychics were real, that meant all this other supernatural stuff could be real, too. The thought was terrifying.
“I gotta go,” Adele mumbled, sidestepping her mother and running from the room.
She ended up running all the way to Isabel’s parlor. She stood on the porch out of breath as she pounded on the door.
Isabel answered, staring at Adele suspiciously through the screen.
“Tell me more,” Adele pleaded.
“You doubt still,” Isabel concluded.
“My doubts have doubts now,” Adele insisted weakly. “Please help me learn.”
Isabel turned from the door and Adele followed her back to the room with the red velvet walls and the crystal ball. “You saw something that frightened you,” Isabel concluded. “But not because it could hurt you, but because it proves to you there are things you cannot explain away with logic and reason.”
“What was it I saw?”
“You know what you saw.”
Adele shook her head. “It couldn’t have been what I thought it was. Those things aren’t real!”
“What is real?” asked Isabel. “Is what we see real? Is what we think real?”
“Stop talking in riddles!” Adele exclaimed. “I want to know the truth!”
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