by May, W. J.
“I’m going to say this one time, and one time only. You will all stop this nonsense at once. You will not speak. You will not argue. You will not move. You will avert your eyes until Rae has left the room.” She rolled her eyes. “Then you can all go on killing each other.”
Kraigan gritted his teeth as he towered threateningly over the little redhead. “She and I aren’t finished talking yet—”
There was a flash of blue light, and Kraigan was sliding slowly down the far wall. One arm reached out to steady himself as he pulled himself up with a gasp.
Molly smiled coldly. “I think you are.”
Much to Rae’s secret glee, Kraigan immediately edged out of the room, casting Molly a terrified glance as he did so—his left arm twitching uncontrollably.
Once he was gone, Molly turned to the others. “Anyone else?”
“Molly Skye,” Gabriel raised his eyebrows in approval, “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Her eyes flashed with the same blue energy. “Oh…just give me a reason, blondie.”
He sobered up quickly and fell silent with the rest of them, waiting for Rae to take her leave.
But Rae was staring at Molly in silent panic. Under the thin sheet she was completely naked. How on earth was she supposed to just leave?
Molly caught her stare and closed her eyes with a look of strained patience. “You’re a super-hero, Rae. Figure it out…”
With a sudden jolt of illumination, Rae’s cheeks flushed. “Oh.” Then she melted away invisibly into the air.
Molly shook her head. “There you go.”
Rae slowly untangled herself from the mess of sheets, trying to ignore it as the boys watched with varying degrees of fascination, and extracted herself from the bed, getting hesitantly to her feet.
It felt utterly bizarre to walk past Devon, Gabriel, and Julian while completely naked. Like that nightmare you have of showing up at school without your clothes.
She rushed quickly past them, careful not to touch anyone, before coming to stop at Molly’s side. They were all still staring aimlessly around. Only Devon with his heightened hearing had followed every movement, though he couldn’t see her doing them. He stared at the air where she stood now, offering her a sad half-smile—a silent apology for the way the night had to end.
Invisible to the world, Rae smiled back. Then her eyes drifted to Gabriel, who happened to be staring in the right place as well, and she shivered. Time to get the hell out of here.
She tapped Molly on the shoulder, and Molly jumped a mile.
“Goodness! That’s so icky-creepy,” she murmured before opening up the door and gesturing to her own room up the hall.
Rae tiptoed away at the speed of light but she could still hear perfectly as Molly stuck her head back into the room with what was sure to be a wide grin.
“Try not to kill each other, I guess. Or not.”
Rae could almost hear the shrug of her best friend’s shoulders.
“Saves me the hassle.”
Chapter 6
Maybe it was the fact that Rae’s best friend had asked her to make popcorn when she wasn’t wearing any clothes. Or maybe it was that her boyfriend tried to kill her brother whilst wearing a blanket sarong. Or that Gabriel had stared, straight on, at her invisible naked body.
Rae wasn’t able to sleep that night.
Under the cover of Molly’s loud, triumphant snoring, Rae conjured herself a thick fleece trench coat and crept out the open window. Despite the older design of the house, the lock on the window had been oiled down, even shaved a bit so it wouldn’t make any noise.
Maybe my mother did this, she thought to herself as she perched on the roof and gazed up at the moon. Maybe this window was her childhood escape hatch. Maybe it could have been mine…
She sighed deeply and laid her head back against the chilled tile plates. For once, the house beneath her was at peace. All the explosive personalities were finally locked away in their separate corners, either dreaming already or searching for sleep. The only sound, save for the wind, was the soft hooting of a tawny owl as it went about its nighttime hunt.
Slipping into Devon’s tatù, she located the bird quickly and thoughtfully followed along as its tiny wings angled towards the barn. Then she frowned.
There was a tiny light flickering in the far window, something so faint that she most likely wouldn’t have been able to see it if it wasn’t for the help of her ink.
Dropping noiselessly to the ground, she gathered her coat tighter around her and flitted across the damp ground to the huge oak door. It was slightly ajar, and she was able to slip through the crack without disturbing it in the slightest. Once she was inside, she looked around and gazed up at the high ceilings with a bit of trepidation.
The first time she’d ever come in here she’d been in temporary awe. It was just so massive and…well, alone. A place of complete and utter isolation. Part of her craved to stay there forever.
She shivered now. There was something else about the barn that had set her on edge from the moment she stepped inside. There was a history to this place. It was the beginning of something. Something that might have started innocently enough, but Rae had the feeling they were still sorting out the repercussions of it today.
She drifted along, following the flickers of the distant light as it reflected off the rafters until she rounded a corner and saw her mother. Beth was sitting on a long bench pushed up against the far wall of the barn, a little candle by her side. Rae knew instantly what the spot represented. A tatù snuck its way over and seemed to whisper the truth in her ear. It was the same bench where her mother and father had shared their first kiss. Had fallen in love. Had started this whole mess in the first place.
“Hey,” Rae said softly, not wanting to startle her.
Beth jumped anyway, but smiled when she saw her daughter. Without saying another word she patted the bench beside her, and Rae took a seat. They were quiet for a long time, each listening to the gentle midnight breeze as it slithered in and out of the rafters.
“The house we were at today…” Beth began softy, staring uncertainly at the sky, “Simon bought Jennifer that house.”
Rae’s heart skipped a beat. “He did? How do you know that?”
“I called the town realtor and looked up the records,” Beth admitted, pushing back her long hair and looking suddenly tired. “I couldn’t help it. I’d a hunch and I had to know.”
Rae took a silent minute to absorb this. “So when Jennifer went to Scotland…she might not have been coming after us after all?”
“She might have just been going home.” There was another pause and Beth looked at Rae sharply. “Don’t get me wrong. Jennifer was still and would always be working for Cromfield. She was a threat who had to be eliminated,” she said with absolute certainty, and in spite of herself Rae began to relax. When Beth was finished speaking, her eyes clouded once more. “But, yes…she might have just been going home.”
“I don’t understand,” Rae said with a trace of anger, “why would Dad—I mean, Simon—buy her a house in Scotland? Just a few hours away from this one?”
“Simon always loved it here,” Beth answered quietly, her eyes a million miles away. “It was one of the only things I can say for certain that he did love.”
“Mom…” Rae took her hand, suddenly struck to the core with how sad it must be for her mother to come back here. To sleep in this house, to sit on this bench. “He loved you. I know he did.”
Beth smiled softly, patting her fingers. “You don’t need to reassure me of that. Simon was a difficult man. He certainly didn’t make it easy to love him, and love didn’t come easy to him. But once it did…it was a thing that was nearly impossible to shake.”
Rae’s face fell. “Jennifer certainly couldn’t shake it.”
“Well, we can’t always choose who we love.” Beth shot Rae a sideways smile. “A lesson I think you’re starting to figure out, my dear.”
Rae’s cheeks b
urned, and she hoped her mother couldn’t see it in the dim candle light. “You heard, didn’t you? I hoped you were too far away…”
“Honey, people in London heard that.”
Great. Rae tucked her hair behind her ears and gazed in the direction of the house. Although it pained her to say it she suspected her mother wasn’t just talking about the explosive nature of the confrontation, but of one or two specific people involved. She rolled her eyes when Beth chuckled at her hesitation, and sighed. How was she supposed to talk to her mother about what was going on when she didn’t understand it herself?
Devon or Gabriel? Gabriel or Devon?
Damn! When had that become a question?
It wasn’t really a choice. She was with Devon. She loved Devon. With all her heart.
It’s just, Gabriel made her feel…alive. Uninhibited. Free. Like a blank canvas. Untouched by the dangers of her past or the limits of her name.
An older, wiser part of her understood the reasons for that. Gabriel simply hadn’t been there during all the turmoil of the previous years like Devon was. He hadn’t had to wade through the muck with her, keeping her head above water. It was easy to look at him and see a simple, trouble-free life.
Except that a simple, trouble-free life wasn’t real. And Devon shouldn’t be penalized for being present when she’d needed him the most. On the contrary, it was one of the reasons she loved him so much. Because he loved her unconditionally. Despite her darkness, despite her name. He’d give up anything and everything for her, and she knew it.
But, in a way, that was just another reason that she liked Gabriel. She knew it, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself.
There was a weight to that—a responsibility that came with the unconditional affection of Devon. One that, while being ‘the thing’ that people spent their whole lives searching for, she sometimes worried she just wasn’t ready for as a teenager.
Yet there was no pressure with Gabriel. No weight, no expectation. Just lightness. An effervescence that he seemed to radiate to everyone around him. To everyone in reach of his light.
“I’m sorry,” Beth squeezed her hand suddenly, “I didn’t mean to make you fret.”
“You didn’t,” Rae assured her quickly but her heart wasn’t in it. Strangely enough it wasn’t the Devon-Gabriel conflict that most troubled her about what happened that night.
It was her brother.
“I don’t know what to say to Kraigan,” she murmured, hugging her knees to her chest. “You should have seen the look on his face tonight. He was so…betrayed, somehow. And I don’t understand it. All I did was try to help—”
“I know you did and so does he. But it’s not as simple as all that.” Beth squeezed her hand again. “Kraigan needed to hate you, sweetie. You got the life he thinks he wanted. The father he thought he wanted. The ability he always wanted. And then, as it turns out, your mother is still alive. When you offered to give yourself up for him…I think it made hating you pretty hard.”
Rae shook her head miserably. “Well, he’s still managed it. Trust me.”
“I don’t think he hates you as much as you might think. Quite the opposite.” Beth smiled warmly at her and helped her to her feet. “Shall we head inside? It’s getting cold.”
“Yeah.” Rae cast a final look around the barn, and a familiar chill ran down the back of her neck. She shook it off quickly and joined her mother by the door. They’d better get some rest if they wanted to survive the gang at breakfast tomorrow. If tonight was any indication, it was going to be rough.
* * *
“So then I threw him down one of those ventilation ducts and headed back to the villa. To be honest, the hardest part of the whole thing was scrubbing off all that liquid latex…”
Rae froze in the doorframe on her way into the kitchen the next morning. She couldn’t have heard that right, could she?
Much to her utter astonishment, Kraigan and Gabriel were in the middle of an animated conversation over eggs and toast, practically grinning as they told each other tale after tale. Julian was sipping an espresso in the corner, looking dubious, but even he couldn’t hide his amusement.
“What about Roberto?” Kraigan asked excitedly.
Gabriel downed his coffee with an unconcerned shrug. “He turned up in a duck pond about a week later. Said he couldn’t be called upon to testify because he was color-blind.”
Kraigan roared with laughter, and Rae’s mouth fell wide open.
Kraigan…laughing? A non-sinister, non-supervillain laugh? She didn’t even know he could do that. It sounded incredibly out of place coming from his mouth.
“Sis!” he cried, spotting her. “Stop lurking about and pull up a chair.” He yanked out the one beside him and Rae eyed it like it might explode.
“I’m sorry. I think I just stepped into a parallel universe.” She glanced at Julian for help, but he just shrugged over his coffee.
Gabriel, however, leapt to his feet and led her graciously to a chair; pulling it out and pushing it back in behind her. “Toast?” he offered with a smile.
“Uh…yeah. That would be great.”
As he tipped some onto her place, her eyes flickered again to Kraigan. He didn’t appear to be armed; in fact, the only thing he seemed to be interested in was helping himself to more potatoes.
Nevertheless, she switched into Molly’s tatù and kept her fingers at the ready. “So, uh…looks like everyone’s in a pretty good mood today,” she said tentatively, her eyes flashing to Gabriel for explanation.
He smiled again. “Yeah, well, after you bolted naked from the room last night, I decided to go and make peace with your brother over there.”
Rae blinked. “You did?”
“Of course!” He clapped Kraigan on the shoulder, and to Rae’s continued bewilderment Kraigan actually flashed him a grin. “As it turns out, there’s far more that unites us than divides us.”
In spite of herself, Rae couldn’t help but laugh. “So that’s all you two did? You just found some common ground?”
“More like…a common enemy.” Gabriel winked.
Ironically, at that precise moment Devon walked through the door.
Rae’s heart dropped to her stomach and she sank down in her chair. “Oh…I see.”
“Morning,” Devon kissed her on the cheek and pulled up a chair beside her, nodding at Julian but ignoring the other two entirely. “Sleep alright?”
Rae couldn’t stop glancing between her brother and the eternal thorn in her side, already dreading the unholy alliance that had sprung up between them. “Good enough—when I finally got to sleep.”
“On that note,” Kraigan turned to Rae with a good-natured sternness, “I know that we’ve got some time to make up in terms of sibling bonding, but I have to say I think it’s entirely inappropriate that you were planning on sharing a bed with Devon last night.”
Julian snorted coffee through his nose and quickly excused himself, while Devon looked at Kraigan in shock.
“Entirely…inappropriate?” he echoed, not understanding what was going on.
Kraigan’s eyes narrowed as he sneered. “Well, I was going to say nauseating, but I didn’t want to spoil a family breakfast by recalling images of you wrapped in a sheet about to do my sister.”
Rae’s head sank into her hands. “Waking up this morning was a mistake…”
“Nonsense,” Gabriel declared, enjoying himself immensely. “Here, take a biscuit.” He tossed one onto her plate and leaned back to enjoy the mayhem he’d spent the night engineering.
“I don’t…” For the first time, Devon looked a bit uncertain. His eyes flashed between Gabriel and Kraigan as he tried to discern their new shift in dynamics. Coming up blank, he turned again to Kraigan. “What the hell are you talking about? Since when do you give a damn what happens to Rae or who she happens to—”
“To have sex with?” Kraigan banged his hand on the table, though his eyes were dancing. He was obviously enjoying himself just
as much as Gabriel was. “Maybe that’s not a big deal to you, Wardell, but in this house—”
“In this house?!” Devon cut him off, staring at him like he’d gone crazy. “You do realize this isn’t your house right? That Beth’s not really your family?”
Kraigan got to his feet with all the self-righteous indignation of an Amish minister. “I am not going to sit idly by and allow you to tarnish my sister’s—my—good name, just for the sake of satisfying your debauched urges.”
Devon’s mouth fell open as Rae turned to Gabriel with a glare. “Gabriel,” she lowered her voice to a hiss, “what the hell have you done?”
Gabriel bit his lip to stop from laughing, watching as Devon tried to half-heartedly defend himself. Gabriel shook his head. “Oh, come on, it’s not like he’s wearing a ‘Team Gabriel’ tee-shirt.” He dropped his voice conspiratorially. “Although, I’m not above asking you to conjure one—”
“Gabriel!”
“We needed a truce, didn’t we?” he murmured quietly. “You needed something to re-direct him so he didn’t turn all that frustration onto you.” He glanced at the heated argument raging on between Devon and Kraigan with a smile. “I merely re-directed him.”
While Rae couldn’t help but admire the wisdom in this tactic, it was Gabriel’s specific strategy that was giving her heartburn. “So you had to re-direct him onto—”
“Honey?” He cocked his head to the side with a sweet smile.
“What—?” Her cheeks flamed red. “Don’t call me that!”
“Rae,” he rolled his eyes and shoved forward a little jar, “I meant for your biscuit.” His eyes sparkled as he spooned her out a dollop. “Honestly, don’t be so narcissistic.”
She dropped her head to the table with a groan. “This cannot be happening again.”
“Hey,” he nudged her sympathetically, “at least you’re not naked this time… Unfortunately for me.” She was about to retort when he leaned in with a sudden, curious frown. “Actually, on that note, I was going to ask: Do you and Devon ever…you know…when he can’t see you—”