Redux (The Variant Series, #3)

by Jena Leigh

  If Nate hadn’t grabbed Alex and yanked her out of the way, the tall woman in the overalls streaked with colorful globs of dried paint would almost certainly have collided with her on her way into the living room.

  Nate’s spectacular save immediately proved flawed, as the woman then decided that—after a short, polite exchange with the group at the front door—she needed to make her way up the staircase. A trajectory which put her on a collision course with Nate and Alex who were now standing on the bottom steps.

  They moved awkwardly up the staircase ahead of her and Trent hurried back across the room to keep them in his line of sight.

  If they were separated, Trent wouldn’t be able to keep them hidden. A fact that brought Aiden and Declan scrambling after him as he made his way up the stairs, moving as slowly as they dared and as silently as they could manage, in an effort to maintain the illusion.

  For one heart stopping moment, Alex’s Aunt Cil paused on the steps of the staircase, shifting her weight tentatively on the wooden panel beneath her feet. A slight creak sounded in response that caused her to look first up the staircase and then back down it.

  Clearly, she’d heard the muted sounds of their footsteps and was at a loss to explain it.

  No one moved.

  After a few more seconds, Cil shrugged, then continued up the stairway, the invisible group of intruders flanking her both fore and aft as she climbed the last few steps.

  Nate and Alex flattened themselves against a wall as Cil passed. Then, following Alex’s lead, the group immediately ducked into the only room leading off the hallway with an open door.

  Alex’s bedroom.

  Their grand escape offered them a sigh of relief that lasted roughly ten seconds.

  Immediately thereafter, Past Alex and the blond girl she’d referred to as “Cassie,” came striding through the open doorway—promptly shutting the door and trapping the entire group inside.

  The resulting shuffle as everyone struggled to find a safe place to stand in the crowded space was what sent Aiden scrambling up and onto the dresser as Cassie walked directly, obliviously, toward him, reaching out to turn on some music via the iPod dock on his left. The atmospheric sounds of Lana Del Rey immediately poured from the speakers.

  Thankfully, Cassie and the other Alex hadn’t noticed his sudden leap to safety.

  Aiden hardly had time to celebrate his narrow escape, however, before the blond girl’s hand was thrust between his legs, reaching for the handle of a middle drawer.

  Moving faster than he would previously have thought possible, Aiden managed to slide his legs to either side of the drawer, just in time to avoid being caught by the compartment as it slid open.

  Aiden sucked in a breath and froze in place as Cassie bent double and began rifling through the contents of the drawer. The scent of citrus and chlorine washed over him in a wave.

  Whatever the girl was looking for, it wasn’t on the top.

  A lock of her blonde hair came to rest on Aiden’s knee—making it appear to levitate just above the height of the dresser. He said a silent prayer to whatever god might be listening that this Cassie girl would find whatever the hell it was that she was searching for and move away from him before she or the other Alex noticed the floating hair.

  Across the room Declan was smirking, thankfully unable to voice the derisive comment that was no doubt on the tip of his tongue.

  Aiden gave him a one-fingered salute anyway.

  Cassie paused in her search and looked up and through Aiden’s waist, to the mirror at his back.

  “Did Connor change his cologne?” she asked, a small crease forming between her eyes.

  Crap…

  “What?” Past Alex asked without looking. She’d dropped herself dramatically atop her made up bed upon entering the room and hadn’t moved since.

  Cassie sighed and went back to rooting around in the drawer. “Nothing. Listen, Lexie. You have got to realize that she’s only pulling this crap because she knows it drives you nuts.” The girl straightened, withdrawing a leather-bound journal from the drawer and flipping it open. “And she’s only going after Connor because he’s yours now. If that girl is even remotely attracted to the guy, I’ll eat my Jimmy Choo’s.”

  Judging from the bits of conversation Aiden had heard so far, Connor was the name of the dark-haired kid, and he’d just left to pick up a friend of his that was stuck somewhere and needed a ride. Jessica something-or-other.

  For whatever reason, this had Past Alex pretty upset.

  “You don’t own a pair of Jimmy Choo’s.” Past Alex mumbled, arm still slung over her eyes.

  “Maybe not now. But I will after six more babysitting jobs,” said Cassie. “So think of it like promising to eat my firstborn. Both entirely hypothetical threats, and both with the same amount of weight behind them.”

  Past Alex finally dropped her arm and took notice of her friend’s movements.

  “So you’re saying that you value a hypothetical pair of heels the same as you will one day value your own hypothetical offspring?” she asked.

  Then she saw the journal in Cassie’s hand.

  “Hey!” she said, scrambling to sit up. “That’s private, you know.”

  The blonde girl raised an amused eyebrow, closed the drawer with her hip (sending another citrusy rush of air in Aiden’s direction), and continued flipping through the pages as she returned to her place on the edge of Alex’s bed.

  Aiden let out a slow breath of relief at having survived the encounter without being noticed.

  Across the room, Declan was smiling wide, his shoulders quaking with silent laughter. Even their Alex, distressed though she was by their current situation, appeared to be hiding a smile behind the hand at her mouth.

  “Private?” asked Cassie. “Since when? I’ve been reading your journals since you first started keeping one back in the fourth grade. Besides, what could possibly be in here that you won’t eventually tell me about in even more detail, anyway?”

  “Nothing.” Past Alex seemed torn between lunging forward and plucking the book from the girl’s hands, and maintaining an air of intentional nonchalance.

  Their Alex adopted a far more alarmed expression, her eyes wide and the hand at her mouth closing into a fist.

  Cassie stopped flipping through the pages and looked up at Alex, examining her closely. Clearly, she’d known her friend long enough to read her as easily as the journal she currently held. She snapped the book closed with a sigh.

  “What is it?” Cassie asked, dropping the book onto the bed beside Past Alex. “What’s happened?”

  Past Alex let out a sound like a whimper and grabbed a nearby pillow, dropping it over her face.

  Beside Declan, their Alex was now sporting red cheeks and a grimace beneath her facepalm.

  Arching a brow, Aiden turned his focus back to the girls on the bed, interested to hear the potentially embarrassing tale with which Past Alex was about to regale them.

  Across the room, Declan was not attempting to hide his curiosity in the slightest. At least Aiden, Nate, and Trent had the good sense to school their expressions.

  A sudden movement to his left drew Aiden’s attention away from the scene unfolding on the bed.

  What the hell?

  He blinked slowly, unsure if what he was seeing was actually taking place, or if it was some strange side-effect of the invisibility causing him to hallucinate.

  If his eyes were to be believed, then their Alex was now inexplicably groping Trent.

  Trent, for his part, was trying—as quietly as he could—to get her to cease and desist. After a wordless argument involving slapped hands, mouthed objections, and intense glares that might have been comical were they not suddenly at an increased risk of exposure, Trent finally surrendered to Alex’s impromptu pat-down.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” said Past Alex.

  “Is it about Connor?” Cassie asked gently.

  As the conversation slowly progressed
at the center of the room, over by the window, their Alex’s hands dipped into Trent’s back pockets.

  Nate arched a bemused brow, Declan’s scowl transformed into a stony glare, and Trent’s arms immediately shot out and up, in a gesture of surrender.

  “It’s just…” Past Alex began. “Connor’s sort of…”

  Their Alex took a sudden step back, Trent’s cell phone in her hand.

  “Sort of what, Lexie?” urged Cassie.

  Alex’s fingers moved furiously across the screen of Trent’s phone, typing what Aiden assumed was a text message. After she finished, she immediately looked up and to the girls on the bed.

  When a couple seconds passed and nothing happened, she waved her hand in a circular motion, as though trying to speed up the process.

  “He’s kind of pressuring me to…” Past Alex cut herself short at the sound of her phone chiming a message alert, at which point their Alex blew out a breath of apparent relief.

  “Pressuring you to what?” Cassie asked, her voice turning cold. “If that toad so much as—”

  “It’s from Connor,” said Past Alex in a distracted tone, interrupting her friend before she could complete her rant. “Weird number, though. Must have borrowed someone’s phone. He probably forgot to charge his again.”

  Cassie huffed. “And what does that jackhole have to say for himself?”

  “That he wants to meet me at the dock in ten minutes,” she said. “To talk.”

  “The dock,” Cassie repeated. “Your dock, I’m guessing?”

  Past Alex nodded, still staring at her phone.

  “Must be Jessica’s cell he’s using. He’s already picked her up? That was fast,” said Cassie. “Then again, with the way Connor drives, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Now, back to more important matters. When you meet with the toad, you’re going to tell his sorry butt that you will be the one to tell him when and if you’re ready and not the other way around. And I swear to God, if he says anything other than ‘I completely understand,’ you had best channel your inner me, and give him hell.”

  Both versions of Alex now sported identical looks of embarrassment.

  “What kind of an area code is 206, anyway?” asked Past Alex. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Stop trying to change the subject,” said Cassie.

  Past Alex sighed. “I can handle it, Cass. Don’t worry.”

  Cassie huffed as she got to her feet. “Worry, my ass. I’ll dismember him if he even thinks about trying to—”

  “See, this is exactly why I didn’t want you to know,” said Past Alex, getting up and following Cassie out into the hall. Her voice began to fade as the girls made their way down the staircase. “Please don’t say anything to him. I can handle it, Cass. Honest. You don’t always have to fight my battles for me. I really can take care of myself, you know.”

  The comment sounded like a rewording of the exact argument their Alex had made to Declan earlier.

  Aiden, however, could easily understand where both Cassie and Declan were coming from.

  Alex was… sweet. She radiated a gentle nature that he was well used to associating with weakness. It was hard to imagine her having enough of a backbone to tell this Connor guy off, much less hold her own against a real, physical threat like Li.

  The girl could protest until she was blue in the face, but Aiden wasn’t sure it would ever make much of a difference.

  Someone you care about who is that good, that innately kind, is someone you instinctively feel inclined to protect. Just like Cassie. Just like Declan.

  And now, he supposed, just like him.

  Because why else had he agreed to this doomed mission in the first place?

  Across the room, the subject of his thoughts audibly exhaled as she sank onto the cushioned seat of the bay window.

  Aiden slid off the dresser and moved silently to the doorway. The hallway was clear, so he took the risk and slid the door closed.

  As he turned back to the group, he found Alex with her face buried in her hands, Trent and Nate exchanging an exceedingly awkward glance, and Declan… Well, Declan looked about ready to throttle someone.

  So no real change, there.

  After clearing his throat, Nate asked, “Shouldn’t we be following them?”

  Alex looked up. “We should be okay to take a couple minutes and let Trent get his strength back. We know where she’s going. And she’ll almost definitely be making the trip on foot, so we ought to be able to catch up pretty easily if we drive.”

  “You know, Alex,” said Trent with a rakish grin. “Next time you get the urge to feel me up, you could at least buy me dinner first.”

  The comment earned him a small smile and a thump on the shoulder.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Here’s your phone back, by the way. And thanks.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” said Aiden. “Do you remember any of that actually happening? Or did we somehow manage to change something by being here?”

  Alex shook her head slowly. “I honestly don’t know. For me, this happened over a year ago so it’s all a little foggy. I do remember Connor leaving to pick up Jessica and it making me angry. And I sort of remember this conversation with Cassie, but I can’t be certain if I actually altered anything by sending myself that text.”

  “You don’t remember going to the dock, thinking you’d be meeting Connor?” asked Declan. “I would have thought him standing you up tonight would have been a little more memorable than his leaving to serve as Jessica’s personal taxi service.”

  Her brow furrowed and her gaze grew distant as though she were struggling to search her memory. “No,” she said. “It’s weird. I can’t really remember anything that happened after I left this room. It’s almost like…” She leapt to her feet. “Oh my God.”

  And with that, Alex was rushing past Aiden and out into the hall as though her very life depended on it.

  What worried him was that, with the way things were headed, there was a very good chance that it might.

  Twenty-Four

  Alex muttered a curse as she reached the end of the driveway.

  At the far end of the cul-de-sac she could just make out Cassie cutting through a neighbor’s yard on her way back to the Harper household a few blocks over.

  Alex’s past self, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  “So much for my break,” Trent said as he and the others joined Alex outside. A thin film of sweat was beginning to appear on his brow. “Why the sudden rush to leave?”

  When she continued to stare at the passing cars at the far end of the street, Nate put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Which way did she go, Alex?” he asked.

  She pointed toward the traffic.

  “That way,” she said, then shook her head. “But I don’t think we’re going to find her anywhere along the path she should have taken.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Aiden.

  Alex frowned. “Because unless she broke into a run the second she stepped off the porch, I should have made it out here in time to see her long before she turned the corner onto the avenue. I didn’t.”

  “Hang on.” Aiden walked to the middle of the street and scanned it from end to end. “So she’s just gone?!”

  “I knew we should have stayed on her.” Exhaustion crept into the heavy timbre of Nate’s voice. “We never should have let her out of our sight.”

  “Did Li show up and snatch her off the road?” asked Trent.

  “If that’s how it happened, then why didn’t that other girl notice?” Aiden asked, pointing toward the row of houses Cassie had disappeared behind moments earlier. “She would have been standing right here when it went down.”

  Declan stepped into Alex’s line of sight. “What sent you sprinting out of the house, Lex?” he asked. “What did you remember?”

  She shook her head again. “It’s not what I remembered. It’s what I didn’t remember.”

  The observation was lost on Trent and
Aiden, but realization dawned simultaneously for Declan and Nate.

  Declan groaned. “Why didn’t I think of that before? Of course that’s how it happened.”

  “What?” asked Aiden. “How what happened?”

  “What’d I miss?” Trent asked.

  Nate rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the asphalt beneath his feet, shaking his head in frustration. “She was pushed.”

  When Aiden and Trent looked to Alex, she nodded.

  It was the fog that did it.

  The hazy nature of Alex’s recollections that allowed the final piece of the picture to slide into place.

  The tricky thing about memories is that once enough time has passed the days and weeks begin to blend together. It becomes increasingly difficult to realize when something’s actually missing.

  It’s nearly impossible, for instance, to tell the difference between a chunk of memories that faded away due to banality or unimportance, and an entire spring evening that was intentionally stolen from you.

  Unless you know what it feels like to be pushed.

  Thanks to the old man on the Misty Rose, Alex now had firsthand experience. She finally understood what Declan and Connor meant when they told her that their memories of being pushed by Jessica were all “foggy.”

  The heavier the fog, the stronger the push. The spot in her mental record where her memories of this night should have been wasn’t just a little misty; it was a total whiteout.

  Whoever hid her memories was more powerful than both the old man and Jessica put together.

  And that could only mean one thing.

  “I told you this whole mission would be for nothing,” Aiden said.

  “I don’t think it’s over yet,” Alex said.

  “How is it not?” Trent asked. “All this Li guy had to do was inject the past you with this serum, right? If he’s got you, then Aiden’s right. It’s game over. He’s already won.”

  “No. He hasn’t.” Alex walked purposefully toward the Charger. Declan trailed in her wake. “Not yet,” she insisted.

  From behind her, Declan asked, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”