Invidious

by Bianca Scardoni

  She was lying on the couch, propped up with cushions behind her head, and staring into the fire as though it held all the answers and apologies she deserved. Her once-beautiful long, blond hair was matted with mud and dirt and dried blood, and her alabaster skin didn’t appear to be in any better shape.

  “Taylor,” I whispered her name like a birthday wish.

  Her head turned slowly towards me.

  Tears brimmed from my eyes, trickling down my face without shame as I took all of her in. For the longest time, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to see her again. And now, here she was; rundown, tattered and broken, but she was here and she was alive.

  I rushed to her side, dropping to my knees beside her as if to beg at her shrine for forgiveness.

  “Jemma.” A small smile decorated her mouth as water pooled in her denim-blue eyes. She touched her hand to my face and creased her eyebrows as her eyes traveled over my features. “You look horrible.”

  I laughed, and then I cried. “So do you,” I sobbed, wrapping my arms around her neck and pulling her in so tightly that you would’ve needed the Jaws of Life to come between us. “I’m so sorry, Taylor. It was all my fault.”

  “Don’t you even dare,” she rasped. “Trace told me everything. It wasn’t your fault. You saved me, babe.”

  We squeezed each other even tighter, our filth mixing together like a noxious testament of our thriving friendship.

  “Ah. Ebony and Ivory,” leered Dominic from the entrance way. “My two favorite flavors.”

  “You’re rancid,” spat Trace as he walked over to us.

  I pulled away from Taylor and glared back at Dominic.

  He caught my death stare and immediately corrected himself. “I jest, love.” His eyes shimmered with sincerity, almost as though he were actually capable of feeling remorse.

  I softened my eyes as I recalled what he’d done for me last night. “You saved my life.”

  “I did.”

  “Thank you.”

  His lip hitched up on one side. “Anytime, angel.”

  Trace cleared his throat, causing me to shift my attention to him. My eyes easily fell on his form, taking in the divine being and all his glory as he stood in front of the crackling fire. The flames seemed to dancing behind him—for him, like they knew the status quo and yearned to worship him.

  “And thank you for bringing her back home.” I turned and smiled at Ben. “Both of you.”

  “Well, now that the outpouring of love is out of the way, we ought to move on to more pressing matters,” chimed in Dominic, the self-appointed bearer of bad news. “Unfortunately, Engel is still alive, which is putting quite a wedge in my merriment.”

  Taylor whimpered softly beside me. I looked her over and noticed she was trembling. She was shaking at the mere mention of his name. What the hell had he done to her?

  I turned to Trace for answers, but he just shook his head, unable to deliver. Ben stood up and moved to the foot of the sofa. Lifting Taylor’s feet with one hand, he slid down onto the couch and then placed them back down on his lap.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Tay,” said Ben. “We’re all here. No one’s ever going to hurt you again.”

  A sob choked the back of my throat, screaming to break free from my body, but I refused to let it go. I had to keep it together for Taylor’s sake. I looked up at Trace and ticked my head, signaling that I needed to talk to him—in private.

  “I’ll be right back, okay?” I squeezed Taylor’s hand reassuringly. “I’ll get you some more blankets, and maybe something to eat? Has she eaten anything?” I glanced around the room at blank faces.

  “My stomach’s too icky to eat.”

  “You have to try, Tay, please. How about some soup? It’ll warm you up and make you feel better.”

  She gave a small nod and that was good enough for me. I turned on my heel and zipped out the room, grabbing Dominic’s arm on my way out.

  Once inside the kitchen and out of Taylor’s earshot, I turned to Dominic and Trace with weighty tears spilling from my eyes. “What did he do to her?” I demanded.

  “She wouldn’t say,” said Trace, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  I sobbed into his shirt. “This is all my fault!”

  “No, it's not. You need to stop blaming yourself, Jemma.” He stroked my back with the palm of his hand in small, reassuring circles. “You didn’t do this to her. Engel did.”

  “Yeah, and I let him get away,” I said, stepping out of his comforting arms. I didn’t deserve them—I deserved to feel this burden of pain. “I screwed up, Trace. I screwed up bad.”

  “What happened out there?”

  I shook my head, glancing from him to Dominic, who was watching me intensely, and then back again.

  “I had him cornered. He was as good as dead and we both knew it. He was trying to talk circles around me, pretending like he didn't want the Amulet anymore. But I knew he was just trying to distract me, you know, throw me off my game.” I rubbed my sweaty palms against my pants as I recalled the events. “But then he said something about me needing it more than he did—that it wouldn't save me from the evil that was coming, and I hesitated.”

  “What's he talking about?” Trace asked Dominic as he folded his arms across his chest. “What evil?”

  “What makes you think I have the slightest idea?”

  “Because you're one of them, aren't you? Don't act like you don't know what's going on!” snapped Trace.

  “If I was 'one of them' as you so moronically put it, then I would not have been there tonight, fighting alongside Jemma. Besides, if you think I’m part of the supposed great evil that Engel is referring to, you've gravely overestimated my strength.”

  Trace pumped his jaw, considering it.

  Whatever it was that Engel was talking about, it had to be bigger and badder than both of them combined.

  “I screwed up and he was ready for it,” I said, lowering my head. “And now he’s still out there. Because of me. I let him get away.” The fizzing anxiety was back with a vengeance, making my body thwack with fear. “He's going to make me pay for this.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Dominic huffed. “Let’s not placate the girl with falsities.” His gaze shifted to me. “You still have what he needs, love, and worse, you’ve now royally pissed him off.” He didn’t bother sugar-coating anything for me.

  “We need to go back there tonight. No, right now,” I said frantically as I tried to head out the kitchen and make a push for the door. I'll show him a Princess of Darkness!

  Dominic snagged my elbow and pulled me back. “He’s long gone, angel. Returning is futile. We need to lay low for a while until I can gather more information on his whereabouts. Luckily, he only saw my wolf form and not me. I’m fairly certain I can still get close to him without alerting him to our motives.”

  “What about Taylor?” I felt another surge of panic as the air became harder and harder to take in. “What are we supposed to tell her? God only knows what they did to her. She’ll never be able to eat or sleep again knowing he’s still out there.”

  “Then we lie to her,” suggested Dominic.

  “She already heard me admit that he got away.” Crestfallen, I turned my eyes to the ground.

  I felt utterly powerless in my ability to take the horror away and make everything better for her again. There was nothing I could do short of a complete lobotomy, which—

  My mind froze on the thought, and my eyes snapped up to Dominic. “Unless we take her memory away.”

  “You mean compel her?” asked Trace, eyebrows rutted.

  “Exactly.” My eyes remained pinned on Dominic, heavy with desperation. “Erase her memory so that these last few days never happened—take it all away and replace it with something better, something beautiful. Can you do that?”

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” asked Trace. I could hear the skepticism in his voice, the gr
ounded rationalism, and I wanted to sucker-punch him for it. “Shouldn’t she be prepared if she’s going to be around us?”

  “She doesn’t belong in our world.” I shook my head as the sobering reality set in. “If it wasn’t for me—for our friendship—none of this would have happened. She wasn’t supposed to be a part of this. She was supposed to be home, living her normal life, completely unaware of this horrible world she doesn’t belong in.”

  “Jemma.”

  “That was her right, Trace. Her gift. And I took it away from her.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for being friends—”

  “But I can make it right,” I went on, not hearing a word of his argument. “I can give it all back to her.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, unable to keep up with my infinite spiral. “What are you going to do?”

  “Not me.” I turned to the silent Revenant who was watching me with great interest. “Make her forget me, Dominic. Make it so that we were never friends. Make it so that I’m nothing to her.” The words twisted bitterly from my mouth and stung my ears as they reverberated in the room.

  “Don’t you think you should talk to her first?” objected Trace. “Make sure this is what she wants?”

  “I can’t do that,” I said, shaking my head at his perfectly valid point. “She’ll never agree to it. She’ll fight me on it, and I can’t let her change my mind.”

  Trace ran a hand over his face like he didn’t like where any of this was going and wanted to wipe away the entire conversation from his mind. Sadly, his apprehension barely registered with me. The answer to all of Taylor's problems had been uttered, and I refused to turn a deaf ear to it.

  “Will you do it, Dominic?” The grit and desperation blended in my heart like a potion that begged to be taken. I was going to make this happen. I had the chance to make her life better, to take away her pain and trauma, and no one was going to stop me.

  Not even Taylor herself.

  “Certainly.” His lip quirked up on the side, pushing up into his smooth, flawless cheek. “For a price, of course.”

  “Typical,” said Trace, flexing his jaw.

  “Name it.”

  His eyes darkened. “I’ll do it in exchange for one night with you.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind!” snapped Trace, shoving Dominic into the doorway. “I’ll kill you right where you stand.”

  Dominic laughed, amused by Trace’s reaction. “What’s the matter, Romeo? Are you afraid of a little competition?”

  “Competition? You’re not even in the race, leech.”

  “Then what’s one date going to change?” challenged Dominic.

  Trace turned to me with rage in his eyes. “You’re not seriously considering this, are you?”

  “You can always ask Gabriel instead,” suggested Dominic, knowing that would never happen. “Though you’d have to explain to him how she came to be in Engel’s grip in the first place, and of course, why you’ve been lying to him this entire time.”

  “He’s manipulating you,” spat Trace.

  I knew that, but it didn’t change anything. He had something I needed—the ability to restore my friend to her former grace and make everything in her life right again. How could I turn away from that?

  “Jemma, please. Don’t do this.”

  I couldn’t even look him in the eyes. “I have to,” I said and then flinched at the sound of Trace punching a hole through the wall.

  “You’re going to pay for that,” bit Dominic, but Trace was already storming out of the room like a caustic hurricane hell-bent on destroying everything in its path.

  Water pooled in my eyes, burning under my lids as it fought to be released. No matter how hard I tried to do the right thing, to do what was best for everyone, someone always seemed to get hurt anyway. And it usually ended up being the one I cared about the most. I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t, and damned every other which way in between.

  Dominic stepped into my blurry line of vision, hands crossed behind his back as he waited for the verdict. “What do you say, angel? Do we have a deal?”

  “You have a deal,” I said, nodding my defeat as I swallowed down the remnants of my pride. “One date.”

  31. THE GIFT OF GONE

  I took a few minutes to get myself together before I rejoined Taylor and Ben in the study, carrying a tray of warm chicken soup and a glass of orange juice as promised. Although she wasn’t very hungry at first, with a little coaxing from me, she forced herself to take a spoonful, and then another, and before I knew it, she had devoured nearly half the bowl.

  While I sat with Taylor, Trace, who had calmed down enough to come back inside, pulled Ben aside and clued him in on what we were planning to do for Taylor. Like Trace, he didn’t agree with it and thought that Taylor should be the one to make this decision, but I knew that if I told her, she would have chosen our friendship over her safety, and I couldn’t let her do that. She did not belong in this world. She had no ability to see the enemy coming and she was entirely powerless to stop them. It was up to me to do what was best for her, even if that meant saying goodbye to my best friend.

  When the time finally came, Dominic strolled in calmly and took his seat next to Taylor while Ben and Trace stood by the fireplace, arms crossed over their chests in matching vexation. Dominic was confident enough to go ahead with his side of the deal, knowing that what he was about to do could easily be undone if I decided to renege on our date.

  “He’s just going to make sure you’re okay,” I said to Taylor as Dominic scooted closer to her.

  “Look at me,” he instructed her, and she did. He began to recite the script I rehearsed with him earlier. “Everything is going to be okay. You had an accident last week and hurt your head. You were confused for a while and couldn’t find your way back home, but you are better now. Nothing bad happened to you.”

  “Nothing bad happened to me,” she repeated in a daze-like trance.

  “After you leave here today,” he continued, his hypnotic eyes captivating her full attention, “you’re going to forget this ever happened. You’re going to forget Engel and the warehouse, and everything that happened there. You’ll remember waking up on the side of the road and heading back into town when Ben happened to drive by and find you.” He glanced back at me for a final confirmation.

  I nodded for him to continue, refusing to meet Trace or Ben’s eyes, already knowing good and well what I would find there. Disapproval. Judgment. Scorn.

  “As soon as you leave this house, you’re going to forget your friendship with Jemma. She’s merely a girl at school with whom you’ve never interacted. She means nothing to you. Your life is full and you are safe and content.” He gently swiped her chin with the pad of his thumb.

  Taylor smiled back at him, her eyes beaming with the same carefree happiness she had the day I met her.

  Ben moved to her side again, hovering around her like her own personal Guardian. “Come on, Tay. It’s time to go home.”

  “Home,” she murmured contently.

  Even though it was a school day, I was fairly certain Taylor would not be attending classes today. Probably not for a few days...if her parents ever let her out of the house again, that is.

  Taylor stood up and joined Ben. Turning to me, she smiled. My heart swelled as I saw the light reach all the way up into her slate-blue eyes, and I knew I’d made the right decision.

  “I love you, Tay,” I said, knowing that the moment she left Dominic’s house, she would completely forget me and everything we’d gone through together.

  “I love you too, babe.” She stepped forward and threw her arms around my neck. “Call me later.”

  “I will,” I lied.

  “Alright, later peeps. Come on, doofus.” She tapped Ben’s arm playfully and strutted out of the room.

  Ben bounced on the ball of his feet and happily took off after her.

  “You ready to go?” asked Trace, his piercing blue eyes
slicing into my heart as he stood by the entryway, his shoulders high as though anxious to put this room and everything in it behind him.

  I nodded, and then gathered my jacket and bag.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” sang Dominic as I made my way out the room, but I didn’t bother looking back this time.

  I’d made my bed with Dominic and I was going to have to lie in it, but I was too tired to deal with that right now. All I wanted to do was go home, wash the grime off my body and crawl into my bed.

  A light drizzle peppered the windshield as Trace and I pulled up to the Blackburn Estate. My uncle’s luxury black sedan was missing from the driveway, confirming that he’d bought my story last night and left for work this morning without a doubt in his mind.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked Trace as he stared out the window in quiet contemplation.

  He turned slowly, meeting my gaze with a heaviness in his eyes that ripped my heart to pieces. “Not today,” he said, his voice low and somber. “I should probably get home.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek and scrutinized him. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for hurting him again, for always doing the wrong thing, but I couldn’t seem to twist the words out of my mouth. “Will you call me later?” I asked instead.

  He nodded but didn’t say anything else.

  I opened the door and slipped out into the haze. Throwing my jacket over my head, I made a run for the door and then turned back to wave at him, but he was already backing out of the driveway.

  My heart splintered.

  I was going to have to find a way to make this up to him, to convince him that this date with Dominic was just a means to an end and that he had nothing to worry about. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that, but I knew I had to find a way.

  Once inside, I wasted no time shucking off my dirty clothes and jumping into a steaming hot shower. I tried to relax my mind and enjoy the momentary hiatus from mortal danger, but I couldn’t seem to get my brain to cooperate. Anxious thoughts whipped out at me like a form of corporal punishment, knocking the wind out of my lungs as they slapped me with the dire circumstances of my newest reality.