“Adelaide!” he gasped again. She recognized the voice, uncertain in that moment as to why she hadn’t before.
“Adam,” she whispered. Her voice felt sore. She’d been screaming recently but she didn’t remember when. Adam slid to a stop a few feet away leaving only a treacherous root between them. She held out her free hand to stop him from moving closer. Adam hovered in his spot, body tense and aura flickering.
She refused to look at his face.
“Please,” Adam suddenly begged. He said nothing else, but he repeated the word again.
She still held her hand out to prevent him from closing the distance between them. The agony still racked through her bones making her concentration on him fleeting.
“I saw it. Adelaide, I’ve never seen it before. I’ve never seen a shade leave a body…” He stumbled over his words. They triggered very agonizing and recent memories that she struggled to understand. She’d felt lighter, freer, with no resistance against her movements. She couldn’t place it before but now his words hit a nerve. Jane had gone from her somehow. Leon had been hollering in her face for her to perform a miracle.
Her mouth responded when she tried to speak, and this time, she begged.
“Leave me alone,” she whispered. Her whole world was racked in agony and he was making it worse.
Vision growing blurry, she could barely see him.
“Adelaide, I’m not here to hurt you,” he said softly. He offered her a hand but never approached.
She shook her head. She clutched her hands at her side, steeled herself, and spoke through the pain.
“Go get your brother,” she said.
She finally snuck a look at him. Maybe half an hour ago, he’d given her a glare of disgust that had been permanently etched in her memory.
Incoherent shouting sounded nearby and people buzzed around the house. Adelaide recoiled against the tree and when Adam glanced behind him, she stole the opening. She slipped through the trees and ran, but he didn’t chase her. Only when she reached the roadside, dry heaving, did she collapse. Her body refused to answer her now. Her eyes shut and the world slipped from her. She did not dream of the park again; she dreamt of nothing but darkness.
Thirty-four
The door gave under a gentle push and squealed on its hinges. The fact that it was locked dawned on her, but the second the street lamps illuminated the dark interior, she didn’t think about it twice. Taking the first high step inside was the most difficult. Her muscles cried out as she lumbered over the threshold. She patted along the wall until she found and flipped the switch to turn on the overhead lights.
The downstairs greeted her quietly. She maneuvered slowly around the wicker furniture and stopped inside the kitchen.
“Hello?” she called softly. She’d guessed it to be just past three a.m. when the occupants had to be asleep. Indecision racked her, but she knew she had to wake them. She slipped off her boots with much difficulty before she took to the stairs. Her body ached with each step until she reached the top landing. On this landing, all of the doors were open. She reached the first room.
Adelaide felt cold.
“Hello!” she yelled out. Her voice returned to her in the confines of the small room. Inside, the sheets had been torn from the bed and left on the floor in a jumbled mess. Dressers hung open, clothes dangled from the shelves, and trash had been left out. She raced to the last door at the end of the hall. Finding another room empty and basked in darkness, she faltered.
She stumbled down the stairs. The last step made her sway and she hit her knees. Shaking, she wrapped her arms around herself.
“Mom? Bradley?” she called out a last time, in sudden desperation. “Hello? Come out. Come back…”
No one answered her. She let out a breath. With every passing day, she felt more in control of her body but found it extremely uncomfortable. As if she’d been plucked from her skin and dropped right back into it, nothing fit quite right. Thoughts raced through her mind in a jumbled mess.
“They aren’t here.”
She heard the voice, but it took a solid second for her to recognize that it wasn’t in her head. Adrenaline surging in her veins, she lurched back and scrambled to stand. Before she recalled how to make her feet work properly, she identified the owner of the voice.
“Adam?” she asked without thought.
He stood in the front door and leaned against the frame. She recognized his familiar face below bruising discoloration and mad locks of his hair. She just didn’t believe what she saw.
“Hi, Adelaide,” he said.
The sound of his voice hit her hard. She clutched her chest as if the source of the pain.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
She’d seen him in the woods outside the Hawthorn house but had left him there. Despite that being their last meeting, she only remembered the expression he wore when she was a shade. She saw it now, through the watery smile he offered. There was a reason Adam stood so far away and next to an open door, an easy escape. It fueled her to add on another question.
“Why did you come?” she asked.
He only answered the first question.
“When we first met and we looked into your background, this was the house we found. I thought you might come home when we couldn’t find you anywhere else. But we beat you here. I thought if I waited that you’d show, and here you are.”
She stiffened. In her spot, crippled on the ground, it was difficult to manifest a threatening posture but she tried.
“We? You mean Tony. You guys came after my family!”
Adam looked shocked. He couldn’t seem to shake his head fast enough.
“No. It was like this when I came here. I mean, I did break open the front door but that was it.”
“They weren’t here?” she asked. Tony had threatened her family’s life—the memory of it made her stand. The bottom floor was perfectly ordered but lifeless. No one was here, or had been here recently.
“No, I promise. I’m not here to hurt you or your family.”
“You’re not? Who did you bring?” she hissed, suddenly eager to see behind him. An unfamiliar black sedan sat on the opposite curb. From her vantage point, she could not see through the tint. But that was even assuming that anyone waited in the car. Paranoid now, she whirled to double check the other rooms.
“Just me. When I said we, it was me and my brother but I’m the only one inside.”
She snorted.
“You’re stupid,” she quipped out of instinct.
He twitched.
“You’re crazy. If I wanted to ambush you, you’d never know it,” he countered.
She wasn’t sure if she believed that. She stood and leaned against the staircase to position her body at an angle to him. Though she watched him for the past five minutes, she couldn’t wrap her mind around seeing him. She was afraid to look away, as if he’d disappear like a figment of her imagination.
Her silence made Adam move. He dared another step inside the house but left his door open.
“I didn’t sense any shades when I arrived,” he said.
The thought striking her now, she openly panicked.
“Do you think they could have…” she said, but her voice broke and she went quiet.
“No,” Adam added quickly. As if to double check, he raised his chin and very briefly shut his eyes.
“No, I think your family left on their own,” he said.
She tried to calm the pounding of her heart, but her own gaze lingered on her hand. Jane would have known where her family was. She could have done something to them while Adelaide was completely incapacitated. She struggled to dig through her memories now. After a minute, she thought of it from her own memory bucket.
“I told them to leave. I forgot about that,” she whispered. Pressing a hand against her forehead, she remembered the phone conversation. At the time, her mother even predicted Adelaide would come home. She could have laughed now, but she was more concerned with how that memory had
escaped her. It felt like a lifetime ago. It was a lifetime ago when she slept with Adam and then tried to kill Leon.
“Good. They’re safe then, I’m sure. And that means it’s just you and me in here.”
She returned to watching him.
“Why did you come here?” she asked.
Her parent’s house was at least a state over from everything that made up Adam’s life or the Hawthorn’s base. Finding it may have been somewhat simple, but coming here had been a trip. Adelaide knew that last fact for sure—it’d been one of the most painful trips of her life.
“Why do you think?”
“That’s not an answer! You came here because you still think I’m one of them. That I’m a shade and I’m evil,” she spat, but couldn’t sound very angry. She sounded exhausted and scared, and she regretted speaking at all now.
“I’m not sure what I think, but I know what I saw. And Leon tells me that you’re okay. That you’ve come back to us.”
She stared him down.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I guess.”
Not having control over her body for even a day left her wondering what being in control of herself even meant. Every step, every blink, every emotion left her wondering if she’d done it, or if Jane had. Adelaide did know one thing. Since the incident at the Hawthorn house, she hadn’t felt Jane’s particular surge of anger. Or even the wild raw power. She felt like her weak, tired self.
“When I saw you after the fact, you were in so much pain. I searched for you. I was…worried.”
His voice sounded genuine and she believed his words. She just couldn’t grasp why, even now, Adam was still his sweet self.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You don’t look fine.”
She scoffed at him.
“Adam, I discharge you of any guilt for which you shouldn’t have had in the first place!”
She felt drained now so she sat down on the bottom step and looked up at him. Clasping the banister for support and comfort, she waited for him to leave.
“Guilt is not what brought me here,” he pointed out.
She eyed the door. The chill of exterior sought its way inside, and, yet, Adam hadn’t moved.
“You’re afraid of me,” she said.
Adam put two and two together, closing the door with a passing glance outside. Part of her hoped he’d leave. When he didn’t, any resolve she had lessened. He crossed the floor and sat down on the carpet before her. Only a foot remained between them now, and Adelaide was absolutely aware of every inch.
“I’m not afraid of the shade. I’m not even afraid of you being a mage. I’m still not very afraid of you blowing me to bits.”
A small smile lit his face after he said it and his dimples showed. This close she couldn’t picture the look of horror he’d worn when he saw her as a shade. She could only see his smile. Her heart churned.
“Har har,” she quipped.
A momentary quiet developed between them. He sat so close—so tempting. Above the pain of her body, she still itched to touch him. With the passing minutes, the desire grew. She wanted to feel his body heat again, smell his distinct scent, and see him smile for her. But she hesitated.
“Why did you come back here?” she whispered.
“I came for you. I’ve decided I’m not going to let you go.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Crazy and stupid. I feel like I’m being insulted a lot today,” he laughed, but she refused to acknowledge him.
“Did you miss the memo about what I did before I became a shade? It’s all fine to make peace in a jail cell awaiting death, but we’re not there anymore.”
He groaned.
“I’m going to cut to the chase on this one,” he said firmly, but she strongly suspected he was struggling as much as she was. “I know. I’m well informed. I might be crazy, but hell, that’s my choice. I followed you because I tried to let you go and couldn’t. I feel like I should at least re-meet you, officially. I feel like you have no reason to lie or hide from me now, right? Adelaide, your story may have changed but your actions haven’t. You attempted to help me save my brother when you had a clean slate to go home.”
His long-winded attempt to convince her worked only a bit. She looked up and met his gaze now, but immediately she wished that she hadn’t. She’d fixated on him now. Her fingers reached out slowly and he met them with a grasping hand and his warm lips. She gasped and her cheeks flushed. Her own reaction embarrassed her, but she never pulled her hand away.
He turned his face and spoke again.
“Adelaide, will you come with me while we figure this out? Your family will be safe. You will be safe. Together, mages are always safer.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“You might be crazy, but I don’t think your coven is. Adam, they’re not going to want me around. Tony might even try to kill me.”
The moment between them shattered, Adam released her hand entirely.
“They’ve already broken off from my brother and me. Tony and Priya. Angie went with them. They’ve gone with his mother for now. I don’t think you had much to do with it honestly.”
She shook her head quickly.
“Your coven’s broken? What are you going to do?” she exclaimed.
“Restart one. With myself and my brother for now.”
She watched the floor, unsure if her expression would show more dread than she intended. The Hawthorns might have been blown away temporarily, but they’d be back. Adam must have known that too.
“Adam, your brother is…okay?”
He grunted.
“Worse for the wear but they never got a chance to try and turn him. He’s too much a fighter to make it easy. Honestly, had you not pulled that whole forcing-shade-out thing then we never would’ve gotten the upper hand. He’s in the car now, resting.”
“Good,” she whispered. Talking about him now brought up bad memories that wouldn’t go away.
“He was one of the people who convinced me to come here too, Adelaide. So far, you are the only two mages that have escaped the shade transformation. That’s something huge.”
She nodded slowly. It made sense for Leon, when he was in his right head, to have questions. And, moreover, it made sense for Leon not to be afraid.
“Preeti?” she asked so inaudibly, she was surprised Adam could hear it. He might not have, and just knew from her coiled body what she referred to.
“I don’t know,” he said.
She bit her lip until it turned white. If the past day had taught her nothing else, it was how to control hedging hysteria. She took a few careful, calculating breaths, hopeful that the images of Preeti’s beating wouldn’t haunt her now.
“I’m not going to lie, there’s going to be problems there but…” he started but found no way to finish.
She silenced him with her hands in the air.
“I can’t believe you came back for me,” she said, suddenly finding it funny. She laughed and felt more daring. Her fingers reached out and grazed the frame of his face. He grabbed her hands with his and squeezed. She stopped laughing. In the next moment, he released her hands and circled his arms around her waist. He drew her into a firm embrace. The angle on the stairs was awkward, but he tightened his grip.
Her mind blanked. She forgot the world around her, the memories plaguing her, all in favor of being close to him. She wasn’t certain how long he held her there, but she only reluctantly moved.
“The door,” she said her thought aloud. With the broken, loud, unsecure hinges, it’d opened again; the breeze beating it gently against the wall. Adam’s hands left her back and trailed down her arm, as he watched the same thing. His face fell and it seemed he remembered where they stood or that his brother still sat the car.
“Let’s go, Adelaide.”
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