by H. D. Gordon
Sam and Matt were not the ones I was mad at, and neither was Thomas Reid, for that matter, but that didn’t stop me from withdrawing from them a little. I knew the person I was really upset with was myself, but there was no way for me to escape me, so I tended to turn from the world when I felt as I was currently feeling.
Picking up on my mood, Matt broke the silence first. “So… uh… your neighbor is pretty intense. Thought he was gonna beat some answers out of us.” He gave a short laugh that didn’t help to lessen the tension in the room.
“Thanks for not telling him anything,” I said. “And thanks for saving me by activating that button on my suit.” I didn’t add that I would more than likely be dead if they hadn’t done it. I didn’t have to.
“Aria,” Sam said slowly, “what was that guy? His eyes glowed gold. We saw it… This Dyson… He isn’t human, is he?”
My body was still aching, and I pulled out my bed and plopped down on it, sighing up at the ceiling. “No,” I agreed. “He isn’t human.” Both Matt and Sam remained silent, and I sat up and explained, my body aching with each shift. “He’s a Halfling, like me, only half Werewolf rather than half Fae.”
“You’ve gone up against his kind before?” Matt asked.
“Less like ‘gone up against’ and more like have some acquaintance with. I met some others like him when I was with the Brokers. Wolf Halflings have terrible tempers, so they don’t make the best operatives.”
Sam and Matt took a few seconds to absorb this. “Okay,” Sam said at last. “I think this marks the end of our little adventures.” She crossed her arms, concern for me filling her aura. “I’m pulling the plug.”
For some reason, I took offense to this. “He just caught me off guard,” I insisted.
Sam gave me a dubious look. “Caught you off guard? More like almost choked the life out of you. This was crazy in the first place. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just too dangerous.”
“Hey, I got away, didn’t I? I always get away. I had it totally handled.”
Matt stood silent, watching this exchange as the heat between Sam and I increased incrementally.
“Totally handled?” Sam repeated. “You call that totally handled? It looked more like he ‘totally handled’ you.”
In some part of my rational mind, I knew all of this stemmed from Sam’s concern for me, that having watched me almost die while being helpless to stop it must have been nothing short of awful for her, but that part was overshadowed by all the emotions running through me. Anger, an old time friend of mine, reared its ugly head before I could grab a hold of it.
“Why don’t you just leave?” I said. “You’re the whole reason I got into this mess in the first place. The reason I went out there, to try and catch the people who killed your mom. You’re right, this is your fault.”
As soon as this rant left my mouth, I regretted it, but I was young, and once the words were spoken, I felt incapable of renouncing them, no matter how false they sounded to my own ears. God forbid I wound more of my already sore pride.
So I watched as Sam jerked her bag off the floor and left, slamming the door shut behind her. Matt stood awkwardly for a moment before shooting me a slightly apologetic look and following her out.
Once I was alone, I picked up the pillow on my bed and screamed into it until my sore throat burned all the worse. After this, I felt both mentally and physically exhausted, so despite the fact that the sun was starting to peek through the buildings of the city, bringing with it an indifferent Saturday morning, I laid down and tried for some sleep.
I ended up crying silent tears into my pillow, wallowing in my pity in that familiar old way that never failed at making me feel weak. Alone with my thoughts, I admitted to myself that what I’d said to Sam wasn’t fair, that my treatment of Thomas hadn’t been particularly fair, either.
But what can I say? I was hurting. And hurt people, hurt people. I may only be half human, but I was not an exception to this. Losing so obviously against Dyson the night before had thrown me right back into my depression, and as ever, I feared I would not be able to climb back out of it.
I had to be at work in a few hours, though, so I fed myself and rested until it was time to leave. That was the thing about earning a living, holding a job; your paycheck didn’t care if you were in the middle of a mental breakdown. You wanted to live, you had no choice but to charge through.
This was the mindset in which I arrived at Roses later that Saturday morning, doing my best to hide the small limp that wanted so badly to take over my right leg. I healed faster than full humans, but it was certainly not instant, and to say I felt like crap was a bit of an understatement.
Though I thought I was hiding it well, Rose must have picked it up somehow on my face. “Are you okay?” she asked, eyeing me with her sharp gaze.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, and managed a smile. “Stayed up a little too late last night.”
“Really? I didn’t take you as the partying type.”
“I’m not,” I conceded. “Special occasion.”
Her face lit up and the sight of it managed to soften my mood, albeit marginally. “Speaking of special occasions, isn’t that party Caleb Cross invited you to this evening?”
My mouth fell open, and I somehow restrained a curse from escaping my lips.
“You totally forgot, didn’t you?” Rose guessed.
I nodded.
She laughed at this. “Aria Fae, I’m pretty sure you’re the only girl in all of Grant City who would forget that. I suppose I was right when I pegged you as a strange one.”
“That seems to be the consensus,” I agreed, trying not to let the melancholy leak into my voice.
Thankfully, Rose let me be after that, and I finished up my tasks in silence, which only left me more time to my thoughts. I decided I needed to apologize to Sam for what I’d said to her, and although it pained me in a certain way, I supposed I owed Thomas Reid an apology as well.
Upon arriving back at my apartment after work, I decided upon making my address to my neighbor as quickly as possible, as to get it over with, but was stopped in my tracks.
Coming out of Thomas Reid’s apartment door was a beautiful blonde woman in clothes and shoes that likely cost more than my annual rent. I had just reached the top of the stairway, on the landing that served the space between his door and mine, and the sight of the gorgeous stranger made a terrible lump form in my throat that I would have never admitted just then had my very life depended on it.
She shut his door behind her, saying not a word to me, but instead only eyeing me with indifference before slipping past me and down the stairs. I fumbled with my key as the expensive scent of her lingered, not even thinking of going to make my apology now, though the sight of the woman should not rationally have affected me so.
Once inside, I closed my door, and slumping back against it, slowly slid down until I was seated on the floor. My body still ached and pulsed and throbbed in various places, the pain a dull but insistent reminder of all that had taken place, but by no means as acutely felt as that of my head and my heart.
CHAPTER 45
I resolved to put Thomas Reid and all the thoughts that accompanied him to rest in my mind. It took quite the meditation, but controlling the things that went through my head was an ability that I had honed over the years, as a necessity for survival.
Whether it was rational or not, the contemplation of him vexed me, and it was only enhanced as the addition to all the other things plaguing me on that day, so it was best that I just do away with it.
After some cleansing of my mind, in which I’d sat for nearly forty minutes in deep meditation, I immediately endeavored to reach out to Sam. By text, she agreed to meet me at The Grind, and I grabbed my skateboard and headed out.
When I got there, she was seated at a table, and her cheeks went red under her glasses as her blue eyes met mine. I took a seat across from her.
“I’m sorry,” we both said at the
same time. This, in turn, made us both smile, if warily.
I shook my head. “I was the one out of line,” I insisted. “I didn’t mean what I said to you. It was wrong and cruel. And I’m sorry.”
I could tell from the look Sam gave me along with the rainbow of her aura that I had been forgiven before I’d even arrived at the coffee shop, and this touched my wounded heart.
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Sam replied. “You weren’t wrong in what you said. I was the one who put the whole idea in your head. I was the one who had a personal stake in it all.” She looked down at her hands, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “The truth is, you weren’t wrong. I was.”
There was some validity to what Sam was saying, but it didn’t detract from the truth of my sentiments, either. I could tell that the whole of this had thrown her into sorrows as deep as mine, and loved her all the more for the shared struggle.
I placed a hand over hers. “I make my own decisions, Sam. Always have, and I take what comes with them.” I swallowed, the next words more difficult to say than I was comfortable with. “Truth is… I was in over my head last night. I didn’t have it handled, but I got out of there, thanks to you and Matt, and I’m sitting right here, just fine. So set your mind at ease about it.”
Sam sniffed, a bit of moisture touching her eyes. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I thought you were gonna die, Aria. I thought he was going to kill you. I couldn’t sleep all night thinking about it.”
I leaned back, having almost as much difficulty saying what I said next as I did with the statements before it. “It’s all done with now anyway, so let’s think of better things… like a certain party we’re going to tonight that we got some badass dresses for.” I waggled my eyebrows in an imitation of her.
This had an immediate effect on Sam’s mood, and the gloom we were both wearing slowly began to shed from our shoulders. We still had three hours before we were to arrive at Caleb’s party, and Sam insisted we would need most of it to prepare, though I couldn’t imagine what kind of preparation would take so long.
We went back to my apartment to begin this prepping, which mostly consisted of Sam pacing and flailing her hands and repeating how nervous she was and how exciting it all was, and me nodding my head and chuckling as I exhausted the remainder of my refrigerator’s food supply.
As this took place, I came to the realization that a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, that it had been even more important to me than I’d understood that Sam forgave me, and our relationship fell back into place with the same ease as it had begun.
As the hour of the party drew nearer, we donned our new shoes and dresses, put final touches on our makeup and hair (all the supplies of which owed totally to Sam, as I had not the funds nor the mind to own such items), and called a taxi to come pick us up.
The taxi service rep assured us that a car would be there in fifteen minutes, and while we waited, I nodded at Sam’s messenger bag, which was leaning against the wall.
“You ever get into those files for Caleb?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Sam replied, nodding. She retrieved the MacBook from her bag and opened it up. “Took me way longer than it should have, but I got in.”
I moved to stand beside her while she fired up the device, and we both looked at the screen. “What’s that?” I asked. The file she’d opened contained nothing more than a list of what seemed to me random numbers and a symbol at the top that I had no familiarity with.
“That’s what’s in every file,” Sam answered. “The numbers vary, but they’re arranged in the same way and that weird logo is at the top of all the pages.”
We both stared at the symbol she’d indicated. It reminded me of an empty set of parenthesis, or two quarter moons turned back to back.
“You ever seen that before?”
Sam shook her head. “Can’t say that I have.”
“It’s gotta mean something, right? Those numbers must be a language, a code of some sort, too. Otherwise why lock it up like that?”
Sam was silent through this, and I was accustomed with her enough now to know that she was just as curious as I, but was scared where the road of this mystery might lead. I hated to admit it, but I shared the feeling.
Shutting the laptop, Sam put it back in her bag and slung the pack over her shoulder. “Well, it’s not really our business, is it?” she said. “I’ll just give it back to Caleb at the party. What he chooses to do with it is up to him… right? Our days of playing detective are over.”
Against all the logic in the world, these words saddened me. Like a drug addict, I felt myself rail against the idea of stopping what we had started, the knowledge of it being the less wise of paths not enough of a deterrent to quell my want of the rush and adrenaline that my nighttime activities had offered.
Then I thought again of Dyson, of how I’d felt when he’d had me by my throat, squeezing the air out of me as though I were a rubber chew toy, which was ironic considering his race.
Like that, my depression settled back over me, but for the sake of the evening, I tried to conceal it as Sam and I climbed into the back of our ordered taxicab ten minutes later and headed out to Cross Manor.
We rode in silence most of the way, our legs crossed like ladies in our expensive dresses, our minds on our separate though surely partially similar woes. I watched out the window as Grant City passed before me, mulling over the idea that we really were done with the whole hero business.
Fate, it would seem, had other plans for us both.
CHAPTER 46
I would not describe myself as a girly girl, as a person of vanity. I was far more likely to put on jeans and an old pair of skate shoes than lipstick and high heels. I also have never considered myself to be particularly bewitched by the wealth of others. Money was not something Halflings were taught to value, and I was no exception to this.
Despite the truth of this, there was no way I couldn’t be impressed with Cross Manor, no way to guard the wonder that filled one’s eyes upon approaching the estate, especially on a night like tonight, where all the bells and whistles of its splendor were laid out for the visitors to see.
Suddenly glad that we’d taken up Caleb’s offer to accept appropriate clothing, Sam let me know she shared this awe in the way that Sam had.
“Holy macaroni,” she muttered, staring out her own window of the cab as we followed a long procession of cars up to a winding driveway, trees lining both sides. A vast green lawn manicured to perfection spread out beyond, and a fountain fit for the castle of a king was lit up tastefully as the water flowed over its expensive surfaces and began its journey again.
The main house, the destination of the line of cars we currently waited in, offered everything from tall columns to a stately drive with a valet where visitors in fine clothing emerged from their vehicles and were ushered inside by stately men in penguin suits.
I felt a lump forming in my throat, suddenly understanding why Sam had been so nervous earlier. I’d seen the estate from afar, but nothing could have prepared me for being this close to it, for attending such an extravagant affair. I tried to keep it from my face, but as we pulled up at last, and the door of the cab was opened for me, a servant offering a gloved hand as I stepped out of the car, I could do nothing about the fact that the whole of it took my breath away.
Sam stepped out of the car with me, and we linked arms as we entered the tall double doors that led into the house. Faintly, music could be heard from inside, and I swallowed hard as I realized how nervous I suddenly was.
“This may be the craziest thing I’ve ever done,” Sam whispered, her eyes glittering same as mine.
“Sam,” I laughed. “You do recall the events of the past week, right?”
She raised a brow at me, pulling her gaze from the splendor for a moment to give me an incredulous look over the rims of her glasses. “You’re completely unaffected, are you, Aria Fae?”
We stepped into a great entrance hall, a chandelier dr
ipping brilliant crystals hanging high over our heads. After that, we were led into a space that could be called nothing other than a ballroom, the crystal chandeliers numbering many, and a full orchestra in the eastern corner, playing soft, beautiful music.
The room was full, but not crowded, and more men in penguin suits were walking around with trays of food and beverages. I grinned over at Sam in answer. “Be still my heart,” I mumbled, and earned a laugh from her.
I couldn’t help but glance around for Caleb, but I didn’t spot him anywhere, so I heralded one of the waiters and forced myself only to take two of the samplings the tray he held offered, rather than tipping the edge of it to my mouth and pouring all its contents down my gullet as I admittedly wanted to do.
“Dude,” Sam said, “it’s not like your figure isn’t perfect or anything, but you literally eat more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
I swallowed a French onion soup dumpling and answered before sampling a Kobe beef slider. Shrugging, I said, “I’ve got a crazy metabolism.”
It would be in this manner that Caleb would find me, of course, because nothing else would’ve made sense. Sam, luckily not as distracted as me by all the food, saw him coming and took the little plate I was holding, passing me a mint that I popped in my mouth quickly.
Running a hand over my lips and wondering if any of my lip-gloss had made it through my indulgences, I turned around and found Caleb Cross standing before me.
The look on his face when he took sight of me was enough to raise a blush to my cheeks, and dorkily as ever, I curtseyed. It seemed like an okay thing to do at the time, but afterwards I felt like a huge buttwipe.
To my relief, however, this only made Caleb’s smile grow, deepening the dimples in his cheeks, and like a true gentlemen, he only offered a bow in return. His eyes ran the length of me, pausing on my legs and my waist before moving up to my eyes.
Stepping close, the slight smell of his cologne for some reason making my heartbeat pick up in pace, in a voice only meant for me, he said, “I daresay I’ve never seen a lovelier sight than you this evening, Miss Fae.”