When I got to my room, Tristan was there ahead of me. I really wasn’t up for company, but luckily, he didn’t push me to talk. I started in on my homework in silence.
The first book I got out of my bag turned out to be my history book, and seeing it brought back my first meeting with Gideon and how annoyed and frightened I’d been.
I found myself smiling at the memory.
Smiling.
When I realized what I was doing, I tossed the book away in frustration. It skidded along the floor to my night table. If there was anything I should have learned in my years of martial arts training it was to keep myself from lashing out like that, and embarrassment added itself to the muddle of sadness and anger and frustration. Crap.
I picked up the book and straightened the night table, and there, in front of me on the far side of the table, was the rose Gideon had given me. It was still as dewy and fresh as the day he’d given it to me, almost creepy in its perfection.
The rose, that rose, still perfect when everything else in my world had gone to hell, was the last straw. I pulled it from its vase and slowly plucked away each petal, crushing them in my hands until my fingers were stained. I’d expected that to make me feel better than it did.
“Abigail, stop.” Tristan said, taking the ruins of the flower from my hand.
I was getting impatient with Tristan and the pressing weight of his kindness. It felt intrusive and smothering, and I pushed him away. “Just leave me alone.”
“Calm down,” he said, tipping up my chin looking straight into my eyes. “You’re fine.”
“No, I’m not! I’m not fine. I hate myself!”
“You hate yourself?” His voice was full of honest surprise. “Well, that just shows you’re not a very good judge of character. There’s not much to hate about you.”
“Come on, Tristan. I’m being serious.”
“So am I. Do you really expect me to believe you hate yourself?”
“Yes. I ruin everything. I’m the reason my father is dead. And it’s because of me that those innocent people were killed the day of the concert. Gideon was trying to kill me.”
“You didn’t hurt those people.”
But I knew he was wrong. If I hadn’t sneaked out to that concert, those people would still be alive. If I hadn’t shouted in the speedboat, my father would still be alive. I was the end cause of all those deaths. I was responsible.
“Why do you say I didn’t hurt anyone? Because Gideon took credit for their deaths? That doesn’t absolve me of all responsibility.”
“You’re reaching, Abigail. You feel guilty, but you know that guilt isn’t related to anything you actually did. It was Gideon whose actions harmed those people. Gideon. He’s the one who should be feeling guilty.”
“Then why do I feel like this? By all rights I should hate him, but…”
“You don’t hate him?”
“I don’t know!” I wanted to hate Gideon—I knew that I should—but I didn’t. I couldn’t. All the anger I felt was for me, not for him. “I don’t know what I’m feeling, but whatever it is, it’s not hatred.”
KRYPTONITE
Gideon
“This my friends, is how
‘too good to be true’, looks like.”
Seriously, why weren’t evil people born with a nice convenient button to push so they could shut out the feelings they didn’t want?
“So what have you got to say for yourself?” Valoel sniffed, staring me down like a schoolteacher from the corner of my bedroom ceiling. She seemed to be everywhere nowadays. “Why are you killing every single creature you stumble upon here in Grands?” She shook her head sadly. “Do you really think you can get over Abigail by taking innocent souls?”
I flew out my window without bothering to answer her. She could have my room, just like I had given Earth to Abigail. They could have everything I had. I just wanted my life back, my normal life—the life I had that allowed me to not care, the life that hadn’t make me long for a human, especially one who hated me.
I no longer denied it when Valoel say I had romantic feelings for Abigail. I didn’t understand what I felt for her, but I no longer wanted to kill her. Truth was, I missed her and I wanted to be around her. I wanted to make her laugh and be happy. I didn’t know what that said about me, but I really didn’t want to interpret it.
I flew to the Underworld to see D again, since she was the only true friend I had. I think I could have been good friends with Basligon, who was said to be the most evil angel other than me, but since Basligon died a century ago, I was stuck with D.
I stood near one of the gates of the Underworld, calling out to D in hopes that she would hear me and come out to play. “D, let’s go kill something!” I shouted.
She heard me.
“I was about to grab some lunch. Come along with me.” D linked her arm through mine congenially and headed for Earth. I wanted to tell her I was avoiding the place, but I didn’t want her to know that I had a weakness, and that it wasn’t Tristan: it was a human.
I was sure D and I killed someone on that little luncheon trip, but I couldn’t remember how we got there or what we did. Normally a nice bout of murder will lift my spirits, but I couldn’t even remember any details. Eventually D had said her goodbyes and told me she had to go to work, and I was alone. Alone on Earth.
I wanted to fly back home, but I didn’t want to leave without at least seeing Abigail and reminding myself just exactly how much she hated me. I flew to her mansion and invisibly entered her room.
“It’s ruined,” Abigail was saying, holding a broken stem that was all that remained of the rose I had given her. I should have left when I saw those petals scattered on the floor at her feet, but I didn’t.
I wondered what had happened as I glanced around her messy room, and I almost asked Tristan, the busybody, since he was always there, but for once he didn’t seem to notice me. I watched him sit beside Abby on the floor. “It’s not ruined,” he said, waving his hand over the petals, and the rose magically came back together, the petals falling into their places. It was beautiful, just as it was meant to be.
“I hate feeling like this.” Abigail took the rose from Tristan. “He killed my father, you know. He wants me dead as well. I shouldn’t be feeling this way.”
I felt the stirring of a strange emotion somewhere between my liver and my heart. Was it regret? No, it couldn’t be. Me? Regret?
“Everything is going to work out somehow,” Tristan promised. Even I, who didn’t believe him, felt like he was talking to me. “I promise you.”
I wanted to be the one comforting her, but looking at her and Tristan, I saw that she needed him in that moment more than she needed me. I saw that although she was sad, she was safe with Tristan. This made me want to strangle him. Even more than I normally wanted to strangle him, the prat.
Watching Tristan comfort Abigail, and doing a better job of it than I could ever have done, I decided to go home. At the very least I wanted to go somewhere desperately far from here. I wanted to call some friends, grab a six-pack of beer, order pizza, and then head off to a nightclub. I’m sure I’d have followed that very course, you know, if I’d had any friends, or any hankering for beer. Or any skill at dancing.
Crap.
I was about to fly off from the balcony when Abigail asked, “What do you want, Gideon?”
Crap again.
I quickly looked down at my hands to make sure I’d made myself invisible. I had.
“What? Gideon? Is he here?” Tristan scanned the room until his eyes met mine. Crap crap crap.
“He’s here,” Abigail whispered, also looking around. “I know it because I can feel him.”
Tristan took Abigail’s hand and pulled her to her feet.
I made myself visible, and was pretty sure both of them could tell I was blushing just a bit. “I forgot you could do that.” Damn. Supervillains shouldn’t be embarrassed. They certainly shouldn’t blush.
“What more do you want, Gideon?” Abigail sighed. Now that she could see me, she looked me right in the eye, trying to be fearless. I wondered if she thought I was fooled on that score.
I saw pain in her eyes, and saw that I was responsible for that pain. I wasn’t surprised by any of that. I was surprised that it made me weak. The burning blush was gone, and I was left cold and clammy.
“Oh. Oh. Um, call me if you need me, Abby,” Tristan muttered, and disappeared. I was sure he wasn’t far away. Far enough to give us some privacy, perhaps, but close enough to come to Abigail’s rescue if I decided to hurt her.
“I know you told me to stay away,” I started. I tried to take a step closer to her, but she took one back, then another. “Look, I didn’t come here to hurt you, Abby.”
“Why did you come back?” Her voice was cold, and so were her eyes.
“I couldn’t stay away.” My voice was much shakier and much less confident than I wanted it to be. I took another step closer to her, and this time she didn’t move.
“It’s only been three weeks.” Oh, no. She didn’t want me around. As much as I wanted to stay and talk with her, I realized I’d have to leave. Could I do that? Could I actually go?
“Three weeks?” I croaked. “Feels like centuries.” I took another step forward.
“I’m trying to forget you, Gideon.”
I took her hand. “You should. I know you hate me, and—”
She cut me off. “That’s just it, Gideon.” She let go of my hand and stepped away. “I don’t hate you.”
Wait, what?
“Well, you should hate me, Abigail. I deserve to be hated. I hate myself for all I’ve put you through.”
“Do you want me to hate you?”
“No,” I answered honestly. A little spark of happiness sputtered and grew deep in my chest, which I tried to extinguish. I was evil. I wasn’t supposed to be happy.
“I know what you are,” Abigail said. “Tristan told me everything. I know you’re a killer.” She paused, fighting for words. “So am I.
“I tried to be scared of you. I tried to be angry with you. I tried to hate you I really did. I know I should. But I don’t, and I don’t know what that makes me.”
I thought it made her completely bonkers. Apparently she thought so, too.
“Tristan?” she called out, and in a second Tristan was beside her. I knew he hadn’t gone far enough to be out of snooping range. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
Tristan laughed. “You lost me.”
“I must be crazy, because after everything Gideon has done, after he took Dad…”
“Stop right there. You’re not crazy, and Gideon didn’t kill your father.”
“What? He didn’t? But he said he did.”
“Of course. Abby, after he saved you, he went back for your father, but it was too late. He was already gone.”
“But the whole cause of the accident was my shouting, my seeing him!”
“That wasn’t intentional. He didn’t mean to scare you. He didn’t mean for you to see him.” I had almost forgotten that Tristan was there at the scene, and that he could read my thoughts.
“You didn’t?” Abigail turned to me. “So it was just me, then. I distracted my father. I screamed. And all the while I’ve been blaming you.”
“Hey.” I took her hands. “This wasn’t your fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame me.”
“No, I can’t blame you. You tried to save him. You did save me, and I didn’t even thank you.” Things were starting to get all mushy. Tristan was getting visibly uncomfortable.
“I didn’t tell you this to make you sad, Abigail. I told you so you’d know Gideon didn’t take your father from you.”
“Thank you for telling me.” She flushed, and hugged him. Then she composed herself and turned back to me. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”
I shook my head. “I have a rep to protect,”
Abigail massaged her temples and went over to sit on her bed. Between the two of us, we had given her a lot to process. I wanted to comfort her, but I had no idea how to go about it.
You could just sit with her, Tristan thought, forcing his way into my brain once again.
I opened my mouth to tell him to go jump off a cliff, but closed it again, because I realized he was right. I couldn’t actually make anything better, but I could let her know I was there for her.
Taking his advice, I sat beside her and took her hands. She didn’t protest. We sat there in silence until the moon replaced the sun.
BRIDGES AND WALLS
Abigail
The most evil angel of his generation is in my room, sitting on my bed, reading a book.
“Are you kidding me?” Gideon asked flipping it over and looking at the back cover with a sniff. “You read this?”
Murder didn’t faze this guy, but apparently my taste in fiction did. We were slowly getting comfortable with one another again, but there were hiccups. We weren’t back to the half flirtation half friendship we’d had before the accident, but we were getting there.
Last night he’d come to my room and found me crying into my pillow. He’d sat with me, and held me close, and I’d felt safe with him, joking and laughing and then, eventually, simply enjoying long, comfortable, easy silences.
Easy for the two of us, I should say. Eventually Tristan, who is always lurking about, couldn’t take the silence anymore, and tried to turn on my TV. The volume was on high, and the noise had shocked us all. Worse, when he’d tried to turn it down he’d kept pressing the wrong button on the remote and making it worse. Finally he’d just pulled the plug out, which sent me and Gideon into fits of laughter.
Tristan had left shortly after that, saying there was something urgent he needed to take care of. This set off another round of muffled laughs.
“That guy is weird,” Gideon had said, nuzzling into the nape of my neck.
“He’s not,” I defended him.
“Believe me, I’ve known him most of my life, and he is.”
“You what? Just how long have you two known each other?”
“At least six years.”
“Most of your life is six years? Wait wait wait. How old are you, Gideon?”
“I’ve known him about six years, could be more, but I don’t remember anything up until I was eleven.”
Huh? Gideon couldn’t remember his childhood?
I spent the rest of the evening asking him about what he did remember. Not my best idea.
Tristan had suggested a movie to lighten things up, and I’d agreed. Unfortunately, halfway through, Gideon started getting antsy and we’d started to laugh. I’d told him about how the movie was based on a Greek myth, and he’d immediately wanted to look into the myth itself to see how it compared to the film. I handed him a book of myths by Robert Graves that was on the bottom of my bookshelf.
“Hmm,” he’d said, after speed-reading most of the text. “Zeus isn’t that generous, not by a long shot. He’s actually kind of a dick.”
“You know Zeus?” I asked sitting up straight so I could face him. “Zeus is real?”
“Unfortunately.” He sounded a bit peeved.
“Wait. So, you know him? You know Zeus?”
“Know him? The guy was chasing me with a pitchfork a few months ago.”
“He does tend to get a lot of people angry.” Tristan added, nodding toward Gideon, before I could ask why.
“So if the Greek gods are real, what else is real? Atlantis? The Underworld?”
“The Underworld is definitely real. In fact, Gideon is a pretty good friend of the Grim Reaper.”
“Oh, come on, Tristan. You’re her friend, too. She actually thinks you’re pretty handsome.”
She? The Reaper was a girl?
“All right. You guys probably wanted to get me all confused. Well, you’ve done it. You both know the Grim Reaper? And he’s a, well, a she?”
Gideon laughed. “D is, um…” and then he waved his hands in fron
t of my face, and there before me was the image of a very beautiful blonde girl. Sexy. Intriguing. Forget Mom’s cookie-hating models; this girl could give them a run for their money.
“That’s the Reaper?” I knew what I was looking at was just an illusion, but she looked real, and what’s more, she felt real, as though she were actually there. It was unnerving. “That’s your… your friend?” I had trouble believing any guy would want to be just friends with a girl like that.
Gideon nodded and made the image disappear.
“She is so beautiful,” I said, and suddenly I felt ugly. I felt all too human. Not at all beautiful. Not in that unearthly way.
“You haven’t looked in the mirror lately, have you?” Gideon asked. He snuggled into me, and distracted me from any further questioning.
“Not to spoil the moment, Abby, but your mother is home, and she’s on her way up.” And just like that he and Gideon disappeared.
IT USED TO be that most of my time on weekends would be spent with Logan, running sprints or sparring. Since my father’s death we hadn’t seen one another at all, and I was a little out of sorts with so much new free times on my hands.
This weekend I was getting together with my friends to work on our Titanic projects. Sarah had invited us to her house for the day, and I thought the work and the change of scene would do me good. Mom asked her driver to drop me off, and I tried to get some reading done in the car on the way there. Tristan appeared beside me, and we compared notes during the rest of the ride.
When we got to Sarah’s house, Tristan was somehow already there, playing air guitar with Danny and Gideon; the boys insisted Tristan had arrived twenty minutes ago, even though I knew he’d been in the car with me at the time. I decided it didn’t bear thinking about.
Sarah had been looking into early twentieth century maritime safety regulations, and for her presentation was trying to decide whether she wanted to act the part of a lawyer representing the family of a deceased passenger that was filing suit against the White Star Line or that of a British government official investigating the tragedy. Listening to her work through her ideas left me a little intimidated. It was difficult to see what Danny, Jake, and Gideon were planning, as they were concentrating on a game of Monopoly rather than on their homework.
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