Redux (The Variant Series, #3)

by Jena Leigh

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Aiden roared next to him, grabbing the sleeve of Nathaniel’s rain gear and giving it a yank.

  Nathaniel jerked his arm loose and continued climbing. “I’m going in after her,” he said. “Take care of the waves!”

  “Take care of the…” Aiden repeated. “Take care of the waves?! Nate, have you completely lost your mind? These are gale-force winds, asshole! Poseidon himself wouldn’t be able to tame those waves!”

  Finally making it clear of the ship, Nate dove into the water against the backdrop of his cousin’s angry shouts.

  Four

  Aiden paced the deck in frustration, stopping only to press against the slick metal railing as he scanned the water for signs of movement.

  Rainwater fell in sheets around him, but the tumultuous waves that had rocked the ship so violently moments before had settled to a mild chop.

  The Misty Rose was at the epicenter of a massive circle stretching out five hundred feet in every direction, the seas as glassy as bath water when compared to the towering waves crashing outside the perimeter.

  “Bloody hell!” Tim’s lanky form shuffled toward him, kicking a chunk of ice off the starboard side as he approached. His thick Cardiff accent gave even his expletives a lyrical quality. “What’re you sneaking into that coffee of yours, O’Connell? And mightn’t I have me a taste?”

  Pike appeared on Aiden’s other side, sniffing as he wiped his windburned nose on the back of his glove. “What’s going on, O’Connell? I nearly lost that last pot on account a’ you! And where the hell is Palladino?”

  His teeth clenched and his body rigid with exertion, Aiden couldn’t respond. Instead, he released his hold on the rail and raised one arm in an attempt to narrow his focus.

  Screwing his eyes shut, Aiden searched the water for Nathaniel and continued to draw as much warm water toward him as possible. Those few degrees could mean the difference between survival and a slow death from hypothermia.

  “O’Connell!” Captain Ellis’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “What in the sphincter of hell do you think you’re playing at? Let those tides loose and get your ass back to work!”

  Pike followed Aiden’s gaze and put two and two together. “Oh, for the love of… man overboard!”

  Aiden felt the displaced water from his cousin’s submerged form grow as Nathaniel changed direction and began dragging another object toward the surface.

  Aiden fought to maintain his mastery over the waves, the circle’s perimeter shrinking rapidly as he weakened.

  By the time Nathaniel surfaced, the circle stretched barely a hundred feet. A warm stream of blood poured from Aiden’s nose and cascaded over his chin. It mixed with the rain water as it disappeared over the railing.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” exclaimed Mallard. “There’s a girl!”

  Tim readied a lifeline, but before he could use it, Nathaniel rose from the still waters with an unconscious form cradled in his arms. His telekinesis held them both aloft.

  The second they were on board, Aiden released the waves and the storm once again surged around them, rocking the ship violently.

  Nathaniel lowered the girl carefully to the deck, checking her pulse before muttering a curse and kneeling beside her. He placed a hand on her rib cage, then folded his other fist on top of it, pressing down repeatedly as he began to administer CPR.

  For the next three full minutes, Nathaniel continued the cycle of compressions and exhalations. Work on deck ground to a halt as the crew formed an anxious ring around them.

  “Come on, beautiful… come back!” Nate shouted, his voice ripped away by the raging wind. He continued pressing against her sternum, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat.

  Aiden reached forward to grab his elbow “Nathaniel,” he said. “Nate! She’s gone, man! She’s gone!”

  Nate shrugged him off and continued. “Don’t you die on me!”

  As if responding to the command, the girl gasped, choking on the seawater that had filled her lungs. She rolled onto her side and began coughing up the briny liquid. Nathaniel pulled the wet hair away from her face. Her fair skin glowed white as snow under the floodlights.

  When the coughing began to subside, Nathaniel knelt and turned her head slightly to look into her eyes. His hand cupped her face.

  The girl blinked slowly, dazed. When her eyes met Nathaniel’s, her expression twisted into a mask of confusion.

  “Nate?” she asked softly.

  Aiden wasn’t sure what he’d expected the girl to say, but that definitely hadn’t been it. He glanced back and forth between the girl and his cousin.

  Nathaniel stared back at her, his mouth a thin line and his brow furrowed. He looked nearly as perplexed as she did.

  Her eyelids seemed to grow heavy, and a moment later she was out again.

  Aiden leaned forward to check her pulse. “She’s out cold.”

  Mallard had joined the group surrounding them and now eyed Nathaniel warily. “Who is she, Greenhorn? And how in God’s name did she get all the way out here?”

  Instead of answering Mallard’s questions, Nate reached forward and scooped the unconscious girl into his arms.

  Before Nate could get fully to his feet, Aiden held out a hand and started to draw water from the girl’s clothes and shoes, extracting as much as he dared.

  Pulling water away from a person was tricky.

  It was all too easy to accidentally siphon water away from the body itself.

  Aiden didn’t want to be the one responsible for adding dehydration to the girl’s issues, but he could at least try to help her win the fight against hypothermia.

  By the time Nathaniel was on his feet and repositioning the girl in his arms, her clothes were only slightly damp.

  It would have to do.

  With the mystery girl cradled against his chest, Nathaniel left Aiden and the rest of the crew staring curiously after them as he made his way into the cabin.

  Unsure of where else to take the girl, Nathaniel carried her through the narrow corridors of the ship and into the crews quarters, laying her gently atop his bunk. He ran a hand across her forehead, sweeping her hair back to get a better look at her unconscious face.

  Her skin felt like ice.

  Nate quickly shed his rain gear, ripped the blankets off of the neighboring bunks and piled them on top of the girl’s supine form.

  Aiden had kept the water around Nate relatively warm while he had been submerged, but four long minutes passed between the time the girl crashed and the moment he pulled her from the water—more than enough time to leave her half-frozen from the ocean’s embrace.

  She stirred beneath the mound of fabric and let out a small sound, causing Nate to pause.

  Aiden appeared behind him in the passageway and stared down at her with an unreadable expression.

  The girl burrowed farther beneath the blankets, seeming to relish the warmth, even in her sleep.

  “Christ,” Aiden mumbled. “Just… just… Christ, Nate. Who is she? Where did she come from? Did she stowaway somehow?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” Nate repeated. He sank onto Tim’s bunk, directly across from his own, and stared numbly at the girl lying in his bed. Nate shook his head. “I don’t know who she is. I’d swear I’ve never seen her before. I don’t know how she knows my name and I don’t have a clue how she got here. But I’m telling you, Aiden, she just… fell. There was all this red lightning and then there she was. Falling. Right into the sea.”

  Most of the crew had appeared behind Aiden, forming a cramped queue of curious faces in the narrow passageway.

  “Step aside, O’Connell,” said Seamus, trying to force his way past Aiden and into the crews quarters.

  At first Aiden stood his ground, silently refusing to let the others pass.

  Nate understood their curiosity—he had a thousand questions of his own—but this wasn’t a sh
ow. The girl needed rest. His crew mates were gunning for an interrogation.

  Mallard placed a hand on Aiden’s shoulder and said something in a voice that only Aiden could hear.

  Face blank and eyes glazed, Nate’s cousin stepped aside. The crew filed silently past him.

  “Sorry, son,” said Mallard.

  The sound of the old man’s voice seemed to shake Aiden from his sudden reverie. He blinked slowly.

  Mallard only rarely used his gift.

  Most pushers kept their ability a secret. It made folks uneasy when they knew you could control their thoughts and actions with little more than a touch and a whisper. Mallard had told him once that he only used his power “when the situation called for it.”

  Apparently, this situation called for it.

  Still dazed, Aiden sank down beside Nate.

  Seamus took a step closer to Nate’s bunk, hovering just above the girl. He leered down at her. “Pretty young thing you’ve got here, Greenhorn. I can see why you wanted to keep her to yourself.” Seamus reached out to touch her face. “Where’ve you been hiding her? It’s rude not to share.”

  Before Seamus’s fingers could make contact, Nate made a twisting motion with his right hand and sent the Welshman sprawling onto the floor. The burly sailor landed in a mass at his younger brother’s feet.

  “You deserved that,” said Tim, kicking his brother none too gently in the ribs. “What would mum say?”

  Old Man Mallard cleared his throat. “Answers, Greenhorn.”

  “I don’t have any,” Nate replied. “I don’t know where she came from or how she got here. She appeared in the sky in the middle of the storm and fell into the sea. I watched her fall and jumped in to fish her out. End of story.”

  “Obviously it’s not, since she knew your name,” Pike grumbled. “Who is she?”

  “My hand to God, I haven’t got a clue.” Nate tried to keep the anger from his reply, but he was exhausted and freezing and out of patience answering the same questions over and over.

  “Then why don’t we ask her?” chimed Seamus. He’d gotten to his feet and was now glaring down at the girl’s sleeping face. “We’ll just wake her up.”

  Before Nathaniel could argue that it was a bad idea and that she obviously needed rest—and possibly a Coast Guard medevac to the clinic in Dutch Harbor—Mallard placed his hand on the layers of fabric covering her right shoulder. He whispered into her ear and the girl awoke with a start.

  Pulling herself upright in a flash of movement, she shuffled backward, away from the old man, knocking her shoulder and the back of her head against the inside wall.

  She swore.

  Nate studied her expression as the girl drank in her surroundings, gray eyes wide and anxious as she scanned the faces of the men crammed into the small quarters, watching her closely.

  Those eyes, thought Nate. There’s something familiar about her eyes…

  In her fear, the girl had pulled her right arm close to her chest, a brilliant sphere of violet light appearing in her palm. As it grew, her eyes began to change, turning the same unearthly color as the sphere in her hand.

  Even terrified and water-logged, the sight of her was breathtaking.

  The men in the cabin inched warily backward, a couple holding up their hands in placating gestures.

  Nate took a closer look at the sphere of energy swirling in her hand. It was the same color as the lightning that consumed his brother each time he teleported—although he’d never seen Declan form a sphere like that before.

  Still.

  Maybe there was some strength to the theory that she was some kind of wayward jumper.

  Although how she’d made it all the way out here…

  “Calm down, darlin,” Mallard said softly. “We ain’t gonna hurt ya. Just need to ask you a few questions.”

  Her eyes snapped toward Mallard and then away, still scanning the room. When her gaze came to rest on Nathaniel, she relaxed visibly and let out a slow breath.

  The sphere grew smaller, then blinked out entirely.

  “Nathaniel,” she breathed. The girl’s voice was raspy, her throat ragged from all the sea water she’d swallowed. Just as when she’d said his name on the deck, a strange pulse of surprise and confusion surged through him. “Nate, where are we? What’s happening?”

  Nate didn’t reply, just continued staring at her in vexation.

  Who was this girl? Had he met her somewhere before and just couldn’t recall it?

  No.

  No, a girl like this, he would remember.

  And then her gaze fell on his cousin. “Aiden,” she said. “You’re here, too?”

  Aiden jolted in surprise at the sound of his name.

  She seemed puzzled by his reaction, if only for a moment.

  “Wait!” she said. “Wait… Where’s Decks? I know I dragged him with me, but… but his hand… I couldn’t keep hold of it.” Her own hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, God. Please tell me he’s here. Please, Nate, tell me Declan’s here, too.”

  Declan?

  “When I fell, did you see anyone else?” she asked in a rush. “Was there anyone else in the water?”

  “I… No. No, it was just you.”

  And it had been just the girl. The red lightning centered only around her.

  She’d been alone.

  The girl’s expression fell, then her eyes glossed over, her thoughts seemingly miles away. “He’s really not here, then. I can’t sense—” she cut herself short, looking to be on the verge of tears.

  Nathaniel narrowed his eyes. “You know my brother?”

  “Of course I know your brother,” she gave him an odd look. “What are you—oh. Oh!”

  The girl’s eyes widened and her lips parted in an expression of stunned realization.

  Nate would have thought it impossible, but her face paled even further.

  Slowly, nervously, she asked, “What’s the date?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The date,” she repeated. “What’s today’s date?”

  “October twenty-third,” answered Tim. “It’s Sunday.”

  “No, I mean…” She hesitated. “I need to know the year.”

  Silence.

  “Maybe I should get to the wheelhouse,” Pike mumbled. “Call for a medevac. If Cap’n Ellis hasn’t called for one already, that is.”

  “A what?” the girl asked.

  “Coast Guard chopper,” said Mallard. “It can take you back to shore. Get you to a hospital. If you’ve forgotten the year, darlin, you might need more help than we can offer you.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Aiden.

  “I… My name’s Alex,” she said. Her eyes met Nate’s, the look in them beseeching. “Please. Please, don’t call the Coast Guard. I’m—I’m fine. Honest. I’ll be okay.”

  Another long moment of silence passed as the crew exchanged puzzled looks.

  “How do you know me, Alex?” Nate asked.

  “I… um…” Alex bit her lip. “It’s sort of complicated.”

  “Then simplify it,” he said.

  “I can’t,” her voice broke. “Not…. Not here. Not now. Just, please trust me. I’m a friend. And right now I think… I think I need your help.”

  “Why should I trust you?” he asked. “I don’t even know you.”

  The girl chewed worriedly at her bottom lip, struggling to come up with an answer. And then her eyes lit up.

  “White irises!” she blurted.

  No.

  No… She couldn’t possibly—

  “And,” Alex cast a nervous glance at Aiden before once again meeting Nathaniel’s gaze. “And your mother.”

  “What’s she on about?” asked Seamus.

  The girl’s expression was pleading. “Nate I promise I will explain, but right now I need to find Declan. He could be hurt. Or worse.”

  Aiden nodded silently toward Mallard.

  The old man placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder and bent to whisper something
in her ear. She blinked tiredly, fighting against Mallard’s influence as she struggled to keep her eyes open.

  “But we need to… to go back,” she whispered. “Running out of… out of time…”

  Another few seconds and she was once again down for the count.

  Nathaniel pursed his lips.

  White irises.

  How had she known? How could she possibly know about the flowers?

  Unless the girl was telling the truth. Unless he’d told her about it, and just didn’t remember.

  But that’s not the sort of information he went around sharing with complete strangers. His brother, Declan, knew about the irises—had seen them at the gravesite more than once—but he never knew they held any deeper meaning.

  Even Aiden didn’t know. And if there was anyone he might have told, it would have been Aiden.

  So how did some girl he’d never met know something so personal about him?

  It wasn’t possible.

  None of this was possible.

  “Nate,” said Aiden.

  His crew mates were staring at him expectantly, awaiting an explanation. Lost in his thoughts, staring at the wisp of a girl lying on his bunk, Nate hadn’t heard a word Aiden said.

  “What’s going on, Nate?” Aiden repeated. “Who is she? And what was all that about white eyes?”

  “She was talking about a flower,” he said slowly. “Not about eyes.”

  Mallard’s gray, matted eyebrows rocketed toward his hairline. “So you do know her?”

  “No,” said Nate. “I mean… Maybe. I’m—I’m not sure.”

  “Which is it, Palladino?” Seamus asked gruffly. “Either you know the girl, or you don’t.”

  The cabin door swung open and Captain Ellis stepped inside, his hulking presence blocking the exit and causing the narrow passage to feel even more confined. He looked from the girl, to the motley group that hovered around her, and back again.

  “Explanation,” he said. “Now.”

  All eyes turned toward Nathaniel.

  At a loss, he could only shake his head and shrug his shoulders in reply.