by W. J. May
It was the last time she saw her stepfather. It was also the last time she saw Gabriel.
He had been standing directly across from her, on the other side of the coffin. During the entire, hour-long service he’d never looked up a single time.
Rae remembered it in excruciating detail. The moment of her mentor’s death. The way he’d burst into the room without any of them realizing it—unwilling to let the children he loved so much take the entire risk upon themselves. The way he’d jumped without thinking right in front of Gabriel as the bullet was fired. Absorbing it into his own chest instead. The way he’d died before he even hit the floor, leaving shell-shocked Gabriel standing in his wake.
From the look on his face, Rae guessed that he was remembering it as well. Playing it again and again through his mind. Trapped in a nightmarish loop. One that he couldn’t get out of. One that he didn’t want to get out of. One that had claimed him—body and soul.
After the funeral was over, he had just… gone.
Rae’s face tightened as she stared down at the grass, brought back to the present. Simon was moving slowly a few paces back, and Julian had quickly hopped on the bandwagon of ‘he doesn’t get near enough to Rae to touch her.’ Both men were flanking him on either side, leaving her in momentary solitude.
For a moment, she thought about calling Gabriel. She had vowed to give the guy his space, but she was beyond worried about him and this would have been a perfect excuse. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized there wasn’t any point.
If Gabriel had ever met Simon, surely he would have told Rae about it by now.
When the group got to the front door, they paused. Julian shifted up to the front with Rae, while Devon lingered back with Simon. Together, they pushed open the door.
“Hello?” Rae called tentatively, peering around the empty house. “Is anybody up?”
She felt like a kid knocking on the door on Halloween. Armed with the worst trick of all.
The walls rang with silence, not a person in sight. Julian stepped inside with a slight frown, peering around the empty living room and kitchen.
“They were all here when I went outside,” he murmured. Over the years, the group had learned to be wary of unexplained disappearances. “I don’t—”
But that’s when they heard them. Or rather, that’s when they were heard themselves.
“Rae?! Is that you?!”
Luke had never sounded more distressed. There was the sound of running water, followed by the shatter of a distant crash. “Guys—get up here!”
They didn’t need to be told twice.
Without a moment’s pause Rae and Julian took off sprinting up the stairs, leaping them three at a time. Devon followed at once, before remembering Simon. He glanced back at him with a fractured expression, then, throwing caution to the wind, grabbed his arm and pulled him along.
Molly was on the floor of the bathroom when they burst in. Prone and unresponsive.
“MOLLS?!”
Rae fell to her knees beside Luke, avoiding the shards of a broken mug which had been swept accidentally off the counter. She reached out automatically to lift her friend to a sitting position, but it quickly became clear that Molly wasn’t going anywhere.
“What happened?!” she exclaimed, lowering herself to the floor as well and slipping a towel beneath Molly’s cheek.
Up close, she looked even worse. There wasn’t an ounce of color to her already pale skin, and despite the fact that she looked too exhausted to even open her eyes, her little body wouldn’t stop trembling.
Luke was almost as pale. “She can’t stop throwing up. All night she’d been at it, hours and hours. But it tapered off this morning and I thought she was through the worst of it. Then it came back with no warning and she can’t seem to stop.”
As if on cue, Molly’s body lurched forward and she shot up to the toilet. Both Rae and Luke held back her crimson hair as she gasped for breath, her fingers clinging to the edge of the bowl.
“Oh, Molls…” Rae stroked her back in soothing circles, trying desperately not to act as frantic as she felt. To say that Molly’s pregnancy hadn’t been an easy one would be understating it to a massive degree. And she was only in her eighth week. “Just breathe, sweetie. Just breathe.”
“I’ve seen morning sickness before, but this doesn’t look like morning sickness.” Luke blue eyes tightened helplessly as her body rocked forward again. “What if it’s that other thing? Hyperemesis something or other? Should we take her to the hospital?”
Rae glanced back at Julian but he simply shook his head, looking almost as distraught as Luke. “I would if I could, but there are no decisions being made. It wouldn’t help.”
Rae nodded quickly and turned back to her friend, dabbing her face with a dampened washcloth. “Molly, honey, I’m going to call Alicia, okay? She’ll know what to—”
“Alicia’s still back in Scotland,” Luke countered softly, “helping everyone still recovering from the fight. All the other tatùed doctors I know are over there as well. I want to take her to a regular hospital, but I don’t know if something would look…unnatural.” His hands slid manically back through his hair, and he looked on the verge of tears. “I just don’t know what to do.”
A throat cleared softly behind him, and he turned with the rest of the group to look at Simon for the first time. It had been almost easy to forget that he was even there, what with the prospect of something going wrong with Molly, but he made himself known now.
“I don’t mean to overstep, but I don’t think a hospital will be necessary. She’s just caught in the convulsions now. If she can—”
He took a step forward, and Devon threw him into the wall. Not against the wall. Into it.
Luke’s eyes widened in shock—probably more so at the sudden sight of a bearded man than with the fact that Devon had used him to break the house—and even Molly tried to lift her head off the porcelain to see what was going on.
Simon kept his eyes locked on Devon.
It had to have been strange, Rae realized as she watched them. To find oneself in such a reversal of position. Simon Kerrigan had taken down more people in his day than half the people on the Privy Council’s most wanted list combined. By all accounts, he wasn’t the kind of person who would take a threat lightly. By all accounts…he wouldn’t take it at all.
Yet, there he was. Standing calmly amidst the crumbling plaster. Eyes glistening slightly as Devon’s arm pressed against his throat.
“Don’t,” Devon growled between his teeth. “You don’t go near her.”
Whether he was talking about Rae or Molly, no one knew. Realistically, it was probably both.
Simon slowly lifted his arms, putting up not an ounce of resistance. “I can help.” His eyes bypassed Devon and locked onto Rae, staring with soft sincerity deep into her eyes. “I can help.”
For a moment, all was quiet. Then, standing unnoticed in the corner, Julian’s eyes went white. He gazed into the future for a moment before blinking back to the present. Rae was the only one who’d watched him, and gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
A nod she returned to Simon.
The arm came down and Simon peeled himself off the wall. He flashed Rae a tentative smile as he walked past her, but just as he was about to kneel her eyes shot up in warning.
“Try anything…” She let the rest of it hang. He could imagine the worst.
For the second time, he locked eyes with her and nodded slowly. Then, with hands more delicate than one could imagine, he propped Molly carefully up against the wall.
“Re-wet that washcloth,” he instructed softly, holding out his hand to Luke. Luke flashed Rae a look of bewilderment, but hurried to do as he was told. The next second, Simon was pressing it gently against the back of Molly’s neck. “Hey, sweetie—it’s Molly, isn’t it?”
Sweetie?!
Rae flashed Devon a look but he simply shook his head, keeping his eyes trained on Simon and his ha
nds at the ready.
Molly opened her bleary eyes and struggled to focus.
“Yeah…who’re you?”
Simon simply smiled. “Molly, have you ever had the hiccups before?”
She nodded weakly as he dabbed at the sides of her neck.
“When you throw up this long, it’s kind of like the hiccups. Even though the thing that triggered it has long since passed, your diaphragm keeps contracting anyway. You get caught in a kind of loop. All we need to do is get you steady enough to break that cycle.”
As the rest of the kids froze, spellbound, he turned back to Luke. “Do you by chance have any ginger tea? Preferably with some raspberry?”
Luke turned automatically to Rae, holding out his hand.
“Rae?”
Without thinking Rae waved her fingers above her palm, conjuring a steaming mug.
Simon stared for a second, his eyes widening ever so slightly, before he took it and held it to Molly’s face.
“Don’t drink,” he instructed quietly, “just sniff it. Inhale it slowly.”
She did as she was told, breathing in the herbal steam as it flushed her clammy face. This went on for about a minute. Then the shaking slowed and finally stopped. A minute after that, she took the mug from Simon’s hands and lifted it tentatively to her lips. “How did…how did you know how to do that?” she asked, taking a tiny sip.
His smile remained, though his face grew abruptly sad. “When my wife was pregnant, she had the same thing. I used to sit with her for hours on the bathroom floor. Ginger tea was the only thing that worked.” His eyes locked on Rae for the briefest of moments, then they both looked away.
“Thank you.” Luke flashed him a grateful smile, stroking Molly’s damp hair away from her face. “Really. Thank you so much.”
“Yes, thank you.” Molly was sitting up on her own now, looking like hell warmed over, but smiling for the first time. The smile faded slightly as she gathered enough of her wits to wonder why she’d been rescued by what looked like Grizzly Adams. “But… I’m sorry… Who are you?”
This time, Simon seemed to rethink just announcing his name. Instead he leaned back on his heels, apparently tossing the ball in his daughter’s court.
Rae braced herself against the shower with a little sigh. “Actually, we have something to tell all of you…”
Chapter 6
It was a testament to how grateful Molly and Luke were for Simon’s help that his formal introduction wasn’t met with instant screaming.
That came a minute later.
It was a testament to how bad Molly was still feeling that it didn’t last very long.
As the boys took Simon downstairs to wait in the living room, Rae tucked her best friend back into bed. She was still incredibly weak from the events of the morning, and despite having just met a supposed dead man she didn’t offer one word of protest.
“There you go,” Rae said gently, helping her into bed. “Easy does it.” She pulled the blankets up to Molly’s chin, and tucked another pillow behind her head for good measure. “You think you’re going to be able to get any sleep?”
Molly grinned faintly, her red-rimmed eyes standing in stark contrast to the paleness of her face. “I don’t think I have much of a choice.”
“That’s the spirit.”
But as Rae gave her hand a final squeeze and headed to the door, Molly called out weakly once more. “Rae… Are you happy? That he’s alive?”
Rae hesitated, trying to consider the question as objectively as she could.
On the one hand, what kind of sicko would be upset to learn that their father, who everyone had assumed burned up in a fire, was alive and well? What kind of daughter wouldn’t have at least some small part of her thrill with the opportunity to get to know her biological father? The man who should have raised her. The man who gave her his name.
On the other hand, what person in their right mind could be happy to see Simon Kerrigan?
In the end she merely offered Molly a forced smile, her fingers gripping tightly around the edges of the door. “I don’t see that I have much of a choice.” With that, she flipped off the light and gently closed the door behind her. Molly was asleep by the time she made it back to the stairs.
The men weren’t in the living room, as Rae had thought they would be. Instead, they were positioned in a strategic circle around Simon in the kitchen. Apparently, one of them had taken note that the man hadn’t eaten in two or three days. That was being remedied now. Rae assumed Julian had something to do with that.
“Rae,” Simon looked up cheerfully as she walked into the room, “how’s she feeling? Doing a little bit better?” He was seated at the table with a plate of biscuits and honey in front of him. On the edge of the placemat, a cup of fresh-brewed coffee was steaming into the air.
Rae resisted the urge to smile. Paper plate. Plastic knife. Styrofoam cup. That had all been Devon’s doing. The honey was most likely Luke’s.
“Yeah,” she tucked her hair behind her ears, and leaned against the wall next to Julian, “she’s doing a lot better. Thank you… Simon.”
His lips twitched up with a slight smile. “You know, your mother always used to do that when she was nervous.” When she blanked, he gestured to her hair. “Tucking it behind her ears. She did that on the first day I ever met her. Done it every day since.”
“I think it’s probably best if you refrain from talking about Beth while you’re in this house,” Devon advised coolly. “Things are strained enough as it is.”
Simon’s eyebrows lifted slightly when Devon used her first name, but he quickly returned to his coffee. “You’re quite right. My apologies. At any rate, I’m sure I’ll be seeing her soon enough.”
The little group froze, casting nervous glances around their circle.
Simon paused, looking about with a slight smile. “She is still my wife, you know. No matter the circumstances of our parting, I would have assumed she’d still be one of your first calls.”
Luke folded his arms tightly across his chest, diverting as best he could. “I think you’re going to have enough problems as it is, Simon, without trying to reconcile with your wife.”
He was grateful for the help, sure. But one cup of ginger tea didn’t atone for the countless lives Simon had ruined during his heyday in London. The countless lives he had taken. The Knights were as keenly aware of his transgressions as the Council was. In some ways, even more.
“You look incredibly familiar…” Simon squinted slightly as he tried to place the face in his memory. Tried to age it up by a few dozen years. “You’re Patrick Fodder’s son, aren’t you?”
Luke hesitated, but didn’t seem the harm. He’d find out soon enough anyway.
“His grandson.”
“Of course, of course.” Simon smiled warmly. “You’re far too young to have been anything else. That would mean that his son…? Anthony…?”
Luke nodded swiftly, eager to turn the conversational spotlight away from himself. “He has two sons. I’m the younger.”
“And did you receive a tatù?”
The question fired out at a speed that startled all of them. Simon included. It was spoken as a reflex. An instinctual, supernatural hunger that couldn’t be undone.
Rae stared at him warily as he slowly lowered his cup to the table.
“I’m sorry,” he began to apologize, “I didn’t mean to—”
“Try to eat, Mr. Kerrigan,” Julian advised, providing a gracious end to the conversation, one way or another. “You’re going to need your strength.”
It was absolutely surreal. To hear him addressing Simon in such a normalized manner. Mr. Kerrigan. As if he could have been Mr. Fodder, or the father of any of them.
And speaking of…
From the second Julian opened his mouth, Simon was fixated on him once more. There was a reason the psychic usually hung back in the shadows, but in such close quarters it seemed that no one could escape the man’s probing gaze.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Simon’s eyes twinkled as they studied Julian’s face with an intensity that made the poor guy squirm. “I just can’t get over it. You look so much like your father. It’s almost like stepping back in time.”
Julian fidgeted nervously, and tried to avoid his gaze.
“Tell me, has your gift progressed even further than his? Jacob Decker was already one of the most talented psychics the world had ever seen. If you have somehow managed to…” He trailed off suddenly, looking at Devon instead. His lips parted in momentary surprise, turning up into a beaming smile. “That’s exactly the look Tristan always got before he decided he’d had enough of my rantings and punched me in the jaw.”
The room went dead quiet, stiff with a sudden chill that Rae didn’t understand.
Tristan? Who the hell’s Tristan? Wait—isn’t that the name he called Devon before?
Devon’s eyes never left Simon. It was like he couldn’t look away even if he wanted to. “You don’t know my dad.”
Simon’s face softened a bit upon hearing his voice. They must have even sounded alike, too. “Oh Devon…if you really believe that, my bet is that you don’t know your dad.”
It wasn’t said to be cruel or insulting. It was simply a sad statement of fact. Before it could be contested Simon continued, speaking with a wistfulness that seemed almost tender.
“Tristan Wardell was my best friend. My partner. He was even my roommate for a few years back in London.” As bright as they were, his eyes fell suddenly to the table, filled with a kind of sadness that Rae was only beginning to understand. “I loved him like a brother.”
The silence that followed this statement was profound. Devon’s eyes flickered instinctively to Julian before glassing over, wondering if it could possibly be true.
And then there was one…
There was only a single person left in the circle who had been spared Simon’s inquisition. But Rae sensed that he had passed over her on purpose. Focusing on each of the men instead to give her time. Time to figure out how she was supposed to be feeling about all of this. Time to figure out if she wanted to be feeling anything at all.