Lead Heart

by Jane Washington

  Hans and Andrei followed us into the room this time, apparently not wanting to get separated, and they closed the door securely behind them, taking up positions against it. I noticed Clarin’s roommate, Charles, sitting in his desk chair again and staring at us with wide eyes.

  “Hey, Charles.” I waved at him.

  He swallowed, waving back silently.

  “What’s going on, mouse?” Clarin planted himself in front of me, hands on hips, eyes narrowed on my face.

  “I need to get into Danny Callaghan’s room. Do you know where it is?”

  He shook his head, darting a look at Poison.

  “I do,” Charles spoke up nervously. We all turned to stare at him, and he stood from his chair, shifting his eyes from Clarin to me. “Um… it’s down the hall, do you want me to show you? He doesn’t have a roommate.”

  I nodded, and we all trailed Charles as he skirted the silent giants and made his way into the hall. Our company of six was now a company of nine, and we were drawing more attention than I would have liked, but there was nothing to be done about it. Charles stopped before a door that wasn’t closed properly, frowning at the marks on the frame indicating that the door had been forcefully opened. I pushed past him into the room, and then stopped, my heart beating so violently that I laid a hand again my chest, as though I needed an extra barrier in the event that my ribs weren’t sturdy enough to contain the panicking organ.

  One of the beds was overflowing with technical equipment; cameras and recorders, cords and old monitors, along with any number of things that I simply couldn’t put a name to. Along the wall were several boxes, stacked neatly with photographs. I walked numbly over to the boxes, picking up one of the photos and examining the shot of Quillan, Silas, Noah, Cabe and myself gathered in the driveway of the mountain house. Cabe had his arm slung around my shoulder and he was looking at Noah, his beautiful face caught in the middle of a laugh. Noah was smirking, and even Silas seemed to be flashing his breathtaking smile. Quillan was looking at me while the rest of us were laughing at Noah, and there was an expression on his face that I couldn’t quite label. It was soft and warm, a little exasperated, and a little amused. It caused a tight ball of joy to flicker inside me, and I slipped the photo into my pocket as I turned to survey the rest of the room.

  The light inside me spluttered out quickly. Poison was running her hands along the walls, where rhyme after rhyme had been scrawled.

  “You found him.” Clarin sounded like he was going to be sick. His face was pale, his green eyes frightened.

  “I used to read him nursery rhymes…” I moved to stare at the scrawl of words alongside Poison. “He had—has—a very dangerous ability; when he was little, it used to take him away from himself. It used to force him to do bad things, and he would come to me crying most nights. I used to tell him stories and it would calm him down. It never took away what he had done, but it helped him to pretend.”

  The tears were silently falling down my face and Clarin grabbed my shoulders, spinning me around as Poison switched her attention from the wall to me.

  “Please tell me you don’t feel sorry for this psycho,” Clarin asked, his fingers curling inward with too much pressure.

  “No.” I shook my head sadly. “Not anymore.”

  He released me, deflating a little. I rubbed at my shoulder and he cringed, immediately soothing his hands over where he had gripped too hard. Unsurprisingly, he was jerked away from me.

  Noah held him by the back of his shirt. “I get that you guys are friends and everything,” he groused, “but could you maybe be friends without touching ever again?”

  Clarin disentangled himself and someone in the room muttered, “I thought she was dating Professor Quillan.”

  We all turned to stare at Charlie, who immediately paled.

  “Did I say that out loud?” he asked.

  Dumbly, I nodded. “Professor Quillan is my… er, professor.”

  I dared a glance at Quillan, who was looking predictably uncomfortable.

  “So…” Poison interrupted, moving to stand in front of Charlie, as though blocking him out might dispel the awkwardness. “What’s the plan? What are we doing?”

  Charlie moved around her, sticking his hands in his pockets, and she shot him a look that was clearly supposed to say ‘what the hell are you still doing here?’ He only shrugged in response, and I had to bite back my laugh. I liked seeing someone stand up to Poison, especially someone as clueless—and frankly, adorable—as Charlie. I was honestly surprised that he was still hanging around, any other person would have escaped the room by now. Maybe that was why nobody was kicking him out. Nobody knew what to do with him.

  “The plan is never to trust Silas ever again,” I said, kicking my shoe against the ground.

  “I could have told you that ages ago.” Clarin sounded exasperated. “What has he done now?”

  “He kidnapped Danny,” Quillan replied, a wince evident in the downward curl of his mouth. “He’s probably going to get us all killed.”

  “And he lied to us,” I added.

  “Well that’s what you get from a person who can’t be punished,” Poison said. “If he can’t be disciplined, there’s nothing holding him back from whatever he wants to do. Honestly, how many people has that guy killed? Don’t get me wrong—I love him as much as it’s possible to love the sociopathic boyfriend of your best friend, especially since he also happens to be my cousin… but seriously, guys… he needs to be reined in. Maybe also put into solitary confinement. He definitely needs to see a psychologist. One that he won’t be tempted to kill.”

  “Silas as in Silas Quillan?” Charlie asked, as we all grew silent and pensive.

  “Why are you still here?” Poison snapped.

  “Got nowhere better to be,” Charlie muttered. He turned to me. “How many boyfriends do you have anyway?”

  I held up three fingers, but someone grunted out an annoyed sound behind me, and I could feel the negative emotion that rolled off of Quillan through our bond, so I stuck up another finger. Noah snorted humorlessly. Charlie didn’t seem to know how to respond. I heard a muffled sound, and it drew my attention to the doorway, where Hans had his hand wrapped over his mouth, trying not to outright burst into laughter.

  “Shut up, Hamburger.” I was less annoyed than I should have been because it was actually kind of nice to see the big guy reacting to something.

  “We need to search the room for anything useful.” Quillan decided to take control of the situation. “We’ve wasted enough time already. You two,” he pointed at Clarin and Poison, “stay here and sort through everything. I’ll leave Hans and Andrei to act as lookout.” One of the silent giants cleared their throat, but Quillan only glared at them. “That wasn’t a request,” he clarified.

  “I’ll help,” Charlie piped up. “What are we looking for?”

  We all turned to stare at him again, and Quillan didn’t seem to know how to react. He looked as though he was wavering between telling him to get lost and giving him instruction.

  Eventually, he said, “Can you hunt down any of Danny’s friends and ask if they might know where he is right now?”

  “Sure.” Charlie nodded, and we all watched as he left the room before turning back to each other.

  Me and Clarin started laughing immediately, but Poison looked annoyed.

  “You,” Quillan wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, “are coming with us. We’re going to see if we can draw out Silas.”

  I stared at the pad of paper in my hands, a pencil stuck to the page, as the others crowded into Quillan’s office attempting to be inconspicuous about watching me. I closed my eyes to block them out, trying to busy my mind with thoughts of Silas. Unfortunately, the memories that swam to the surface prompted a reaction out of me that I hadn’t been prepared for. Burning warmth flooded through me, and I could feel the colour staining my cheeks. I shifted uncomfortably, my body reliving the memory even though I tried to push it from my mind.
/>   “Ugh,” I grumbled, scrunching up my eyes tighter.

  I realised what he had been doing, now. He had been playing me; ensuring that I was so far distracted by my physical feelings to properly examine him. He was more unhinged than he had ever been—crazier, further entrapped by the monster that shaded his person… and he hadn’t wanted me to notice. The second I had seen the truth, he had cut me off, and the others right along with me.

  He was going to do whatever he wanted to do, and he didn’t care about the consequences. Weston had said that when Silas was out for blood, he would get it no matter what. I didn’t like that Weston’s version of Silas was winning against my version of Silas. I—we had to reach him before it was too late and we lost him for good.

  The couch dipped beside me and I felt the gentle nudge of Quillan’s presence.

  “It’s not happening, is it?” He sounded calm, but I could feel that he was tightly reigning in his feelings.

  I blinked my eyes open, regarding him carefully. “I don’t know how to control it.”

  “Her power is unadulterated…” Kingsling’s voice echoed inside my head. “She is not a Zevghéri born with a gift, her gift was born with her.”

  The memory took me unawares, and I dropped the notepad, my brow creasing in confusion. Lela was trying to break through again but I didn’t want to allow her entry. I wanted to cling to the lie that had been my life growing up, because even Gerald’s abuse had been more tolerable than the memory of my… of Danny. I had loved Danny. I had cared for him, protected him, and cried for him. But more than all of that… I had lost my only real family. I hadn’t lost him in the way that I had lost Gerald. Not even in the way that I had lost my mother. I had lost him even while he remained living: I had been forced to watch as he slipped further and further from himself while I clung to the remnants of his humanity, and then I had been forced to watch the light inside him die altogether. It spluttered out in that waterlogged room, washing away along the tangled, pale limbs of so many bodies. I had lost him, but his killer had remained, determined to haunt me until my dying breath.

  “I don’t think I was born with my abilities,” I told the others, my limbs falling slack. “I feel like they existed before me, and they gave birth to me instead of the other way around. I felt it when I was little… and again, when I touched the forecasting in the Komnata of the original Atmás. I can’t control my power… it… it controls me.”

  “What do you mean?” Cabe asked, appearing in front of me and kneeling, his hands gentle on my knees. “The forecasting doesn’t want you to find Silas and Danny?”

  “Maybe.” I shook my head, having no idea what I was trying to say. “Maybe the lack of forecasting is a kind of forecasting in itself. It won’t show me, because it doesn’t want me to go there.”

  Cabe’s hands slid from my knees, confusion washing over him. I could see the same expression on Noah’s face, and I didn’t want to turn toward Quillan, because his opinion mattered to me more than I would ever admit. I couldn’t stand to see the confirmation on his face that I was being ridiculous.

  “Actually, that almost makes sense.” Quillan surprised me, his words thoughtful. “You said that you couldn’t forecast the night that Silas and I bonded to you; not until after the bonding. And yet, if you had turned up to that gravesite even a few minutes earlier, you would have run into Danny himself. You arrived at exactly the right time. Not to save Aiden, but to save yourself.”

  That hit me like a kick to the gut, and I hung my head. I would have preferred to save Aiden, and didn’t want to think that the forecasting could really be so selfish.

  “So what do we do?” I asked, the hopelessness bleeding into my voice.

  “If that’s all true… if we can’t go to them…” Cabe stood up, folding his arms over his chest. “We’ll have to make them come to us.”

  I nodded, tossing the notebook aside and beginning to pace. “How do we draw them out? Silas isn’t answering his phone and I doubt he has the GPS tracking thing enabled if he doesn’t want to be found—” I stopped pacing, an idea occurring to me. “Whenever Silas has needed to hide something in the past, there’s one person he always goes to.”

  “Jayden,” Quillan confirmed. There was a heavy note of resignation in his voice, as though he had already thought this far ahead, and had been trying to find a better solution.

  “Jayden.” I nodded. “He’s our best option right now… the only problem is, he kind of flipped out the last time I mentioned the messenger—er, Danny.”

  Quillan tilted his head up to the roof, screwing his eyes shut for a moment. The others watched him, waiting for a confirmation, and he eventually gave a short nod. “Alright,” he said. “We’ll go and see Jayden. Leave the talking to me.”

  Cabe called Clarin to see if they had found anything useful as I called Tariq, asking him to stay at a friend’s place for the night. I made up a lie about needing some alone time to sort things out with the guys, and it made the call awkward enough that Tariq quickly agreed and didn’t question me further. I wanted him as far removed from this whole situation as possible. If it dragged on for longer, I would beg him for more time. Anything to keep him safe, even if it meant lying to him. I supposed that was how he had learnt that particular behavior. He had learnt it from me.

  We all hurried down to where the news vans and other vehicles were all still overcrowding the college. We found Albert and the limousine parked a good way down the road winding through the mountain to the college, and I was surprised when Quillan gave him directions to the mountain house. For a moment, I was afraid that they were going to lock me inside. I considered that Quillan might have lied to me to prevent me from running off on my own again. When we arrived, however, Noah and Cabe moved toward Quillan’s Porsche while Quillan spoke to Hans and Andrei. He was convincing them to take the limousine so that they could watch over Tariq for the night.

  I almost couldn’t believe that they weren’t trying to stop me.

  It took a little while to convince Hans and Andrei, and then it took us another hour to get to Jayden’s house, since I had to rely on my memory of the day I had run away to get us there.

  By the time we finally gathered outside of Jayden’s house, I was sufficiently terrified. I knocked timidly on his door, waiting even more timidly for him to open it and finish casting his eyes over the four of us. He looked beyond us, probably expecting to see Silas, before settling his attention back on me.

  “Hey.” I waved. I was acting as though we turned up on his porch every Sunday for dinner.

  “This should be good,” he stated dryly, stepping aside to allow us entry.

  We filed in and took up positions about the sitting room while Jayden turned to face us, crossing his arms and waiting for someone to say something. Noah and Cabe were both sitting on the couch, but I could tell that Noah wanted to be standing and brooding over everyone, because his eyes had darkened with a looming storm and his arms were crossed tightly over his chest. I supposed that he was seated so as to make himself appear less intimidating. I wasn’t sure if it was working for Jayden, but it wasn’t working for me. Quillan stood not far behind me as I shifted from one foot to another, wringing my hands nervously.

  “Here’s the thing,” Quillan started, sounding so casual that even I was tempted to lower my guard. “You know everything now, so there’s no point in dancing around the fact. You can’t harm any one of us because if even one of us dies here today, you’ll be directly responsible for the culling of Weston’s precious line of succession. He will never forgive you for that, and the Klovoda will never forgive you for killing me, specifically, since they’re counting on me being the next Voda.”

  “How will they ever know?” Jayden replied, his grin stretching in a humourless curve that lacked any real menace. He was goading Quillan without any apparent motive—it was more a technique to keep the conversation going, I assumed. Jayden was curious.

  “I called them and told them we were all head
ed here.”

  “I could manipulate their minds.”

  “I don’t think you could. If you had that much power, you wouldn’t be so scared of Danny. I think even the great hypnotist has his limits.”

  Jayden became very still, his eyes snapping straight to mine at the mention of Danny’s name. I couldn’t see anything at all in his expression, so I quickly blurted, “Silas knows about Danny too. We need to find both of them before Silas does something stupid, because he can’t win. Not this time.”

  Jayden wasn’t even blinking.

  “Please don’t make us regret trusting you,” I groaned, forcing my hands into my pockets so that I didn’t start pulling at my hair. “Even if you won’t help for our sakes, Silas needs you right now.”

  “I was waiting for this to happen.” He was as toneless as he was expressionless, and I feared that I had made a terrible mistake. He seemed to shake off the unnatural stillness and he refocused, looking us over again. “So we’re all out in the open now? The fake Voda Heir, the real Voda Heir, and three out of four of the Voda harem?”

  “Please don’t call it that.” I cringed.

  “You can’t rule the world without a fan club.” Jayden was almost openly laughing at me now. “Just ask Hitler.”

  “Did you seriously just compare me to Hitler?” I asked, almost at the same time as Noah stepped up to my side.

  “Did you seriously just call us a fan club?” he spat out brusquely.

  “Would you prefer a less violent dictator?” Jayden asked me. “And what would you prefer?” He turned on Noah.

  “We’re her pairs, Jayden. We don’t follow her around with flags and prep her up when she’s down. We aren’t even a team, or a family—that doesn’t come close, anymore. We’re all borrowing the same damn life.”

  I laid a hand against Noah’s arm, watching Jayden carefully. I didn’t expect to see a reaction on his face, but I felt that I understood him, even a little bit. Even if I only understood him through the filter of my own fear. I feared life without my pairs more than I feared anything, and not for the fact that it would kill me. I feared the empty existence that I saw in Jayden’s eyes. It was the first time I really acknowledged the very inhuman nature of my existence. I wasn’t human in my connection to Quillan, Silas, Noah and Cabe. It wasn’t simple friendship, love, lust or any kind of relatable human emotion. To part from them would hollow out my person: I would warp into another human being entirely, and not a human being that I would be proud of, because the power inside me would take over, just as Danny’s power had taken over him.