A Matter of Time_Paranormal, Tattoo, Supernatural, Romance

by W. J. May

Devon was still kneeling on the grass, but it wasn’t at Gabriel’s mercy. He was in a state of momentary shock, pulling in silent gasps as he tried to catch his breath.

  Gabriel was a different story.

  “I can’t…I can’t believe I just…” He stared down at his hands in sheer astonishment, like he couldn’t fathom what he’d just seen them do. His voice faltered and he lifted his eyes, looking suddenly small. “I can’t believe I just did that.”

  * * *

  The three of them never mentioned what happened in the clearing that day. Even in the immediate aftermath with each other… they never said a word.

  As soon as Devon was able to stand without help they headed back inside, only to find that Simon had been successfully relocated to the basement. The tatù-inhibitors from the boathouse had also been relocated and the problem had been successfully, if only temporarily, put out of sight.

  There was no more talk of killing Simon. Whether or not the desire still remained, Gabriel had also put it successfully, if only temporarily, out of sight.

  That moment with Devon had been a wake-up call, a warning of a line that could never be uncrossed. It was a lesson Gabriel was unlikely to forget anytime soon.

  But while the drive to fight had been eliminated, the one to flee had increased tenfold.

  Twice, Gabriel tried to carry Angel away from the house, slinging her over his shoulder despite her pounding fists and protests. Twice, Rae and Devon found him frozen on the driveway. When Gabriel realized he wasn’t making any headway he actually tried dragging Julian along as well, as if that would convince her.

  The strange siblings battled for the better part of an hour, but made little headway. Gabriel was clearly unwilling to leave Angel alone in the house, and Angel was clearly unwilling to go.

  In the end, Gabriel simply pulled up a chair and sat at the top of the basement stairs, staring unblinkingly at the door.

  As much as Rae wanted to hover in the shadows, monitoring his every move, she knew the danger had momentarily passed. The incident in the field had awoken something deep inside him, reminding him that he still had something to lose.

  Besides…there was another man in the house who required her attention.

  “Hey.” She flashed Devon a quick smile as she slipped inside their bedroom. He was standing with his back to her, rifling through a dresser drawer for a new shirt. “Stripping, are we?”

  He grinned, but kept his eyes on his task. “I got blood on the other one. Didn’t want anyone downstairs to start asking questions.”

  Rae opened her mouth, but found herself unable to speak. Their light banter had gotten them through a number of tense situations, but the images in her mind were still too fresh.

  “Hey, come here.” Devon saw the look on her face, and gathered her quickly into his arms. He smelled of grass and blood. A strange combination, but a comforting one nonetheless. She breathed it in deeply as she closed her eyes.

  “I was so scared,” she murmured. “I thought for a second that he—”

  “Gabriel was just lost.” He stroked the back of her hair, his eyes faraway in thought. “He’s been broken more ways than I thought were possible. Everything was stripped away.”

  Rae pulled in a shaky breath, haunted with the memory of his tear-stained face.

  “But he’s built something here as well,” Devon continued thoughtfully. “He has a life now, a family, a home. He just needed someone to help him remember that.”

  She paused for a moment, thinking.

  “So you volunteered yourself as a ritual sacrifice?”

  An involuntary shudder rippled through Devon’s body. “No…I didn’t think he was going to do that.”

  They pulled back at the same time, and he flashed her a quirky grin.

  “So you decided to light the guy on fire?”

  She hesitated, then buried her face back in his chest. “No…I didn’t think I was going to do that, either.”

  Chapter 8

  The rest of the day grew intentionally subdued.

  Molly dozed fitfully as Luke read parenting books beside her. Spared from his impromptu kidnapping, Julian had gone for that drive after all—Angel riding shotgun. In a most uncharacteristic move, Devon had passed out for a few hours on the bed. Apparently, having one’s blood held hostage could do that to you.

  And amid working out her great plan after the discovery of Simon Kerrigan, Rae realized there was something she couldn’t put off for even a second longer.

  She was going to have to talk to Simon Kerrigan.

  For their first official father-daughter conversation, she selected her clothing carefully. Head-to-toe black. Reminiscent of the Privy Council. Respectful of the actual father she’d just lost. No skin to make contact. No color open to interpretation.

  Likewise, she swept her hair up into a simple ponytail. She looked enough like her mother without the added benefit of her tumbling raven locks. She’d already caught Simon staring at them in the kitchen, and the last thing she needed was an unnecessary distraction.

  She wore no makeup. No jewelry. No ornamentation or frills. After using it as the final nail in Cromfield’s coffin, Rae had locked her engagement ring away in the drawer of her nightstand. She couldn’t bear to tell her heartsick mother that she was soon to get the happy ending that they had always wanted. At least not yet.

  She finished dressing quickly, and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Perhaps she was imagining it…in fact, she would have to be imagining it, since it was only a short time ago that her brother, Kraigan, had stripped away her troublesome immortality—but she could have sworn that she looked different. Older, somehow. Or perhaps, a strange kind of tired. The kind that couldn’t be cured by just a few nights’ sleep. The kind that required complete and utter absolution.

  Then, all that was left to do was wait.

  After the rest of the house had fallen asleep she tiptoed downstairs, careful not to wake Devon when she left. It wasn’t often that she could slip past him undetected, but his brush with Gabriel’s tatù had taken more out of him than he was willing to admit. He was still passed out cold when she pushed open the door and ghosted outside to the hall.

  Despite the late hour, every light was still shining brightly. Just as they had done every night since the gang had moved into the house. For a moment, she was tempted to turn them off. If for no other reason than to spare them from a massive electricity bill. But as soon as she lifted her finger to the switch, her hand fell back to her side and she continued on her way.

  Maybe tomorrow night. Or the night after that.

  The house had three levels. Four, if you counted the attic. She descended to the ground floor quickly, and then hurried down the back hallway to the door that led down to the basement.

  Gabriel was still sitting at the top of the stairs.

  “Oh!” She clutched her chest and fell back a step when she saw him. “Sorry. I didn’t know that you were still…what are you doing here?”

  He hadn’t moved a single inch since the second he’d sat down—over nine hours ago. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he had used some sort of self-freezing charm. A defensive sort of ink that would render him a perfect statue.

  His eyes flashed up, flickering briefly over her carefully selected wardrobe before coming to rest on her face. “I could ask you the same question.”

  A blossom of heat rose in her cheeks, and she reached up automatically to fiddle with hair that was no longer there. “Actually, I was just…I mean… I was just checking on…”

  His lips twitched up into the ghost of a smile. “Are we going to play this game?”

  She let out a quiet sigh. “I’m going to talk to him, Gabriel.”

  For a second, his muscles tensed at the ready. Then, with what looked like a visible effort, he relaxed them with a nod. “I figured you might.”

  Her eyebrows lifted, and she took a step back in surprise. If she’d known Gabriel was still sitting watch, she would hav
e expected the inquisition. At the best, a reprimand the likes of which she would never forget. At the worst, a reenactment of his ‘forced relocation’ stunt from earlier that afternoon. Truth be told, if she’d known that Gabriel was still sitting watch, she would have put off this conversation altogether for a later time.

  “You figured I might?” she repeated incredulously, taking a tentative step forward. “Is this some kind of trick? Are you about to throw a bag over my head and lock me away in your trunk for safe-keeping?”

  He pushed stiffly to his feet, stretching out his long limbs. “It isn’t like you to avoid something because it makes you uncomfortable. And I’ve never known you to hide away from the tough conversations just because they were tough.” He cocked his head towards the front door. “Case in point.”

  They flashed back at the same time. Not to the near-catastrophic events that had followed, but to the time they had spent earlier. Sitting together on the icy grass. Catching their breath in the silence, before eventually trying to talk it through.

  If only it had ended there.

  Gabriel seemed to be thinking the same thing. He dropped his eyes to the floor and headed down the hall. Presumably to set up his watch at a further distance so she could have a little privacy. But just before rounding the corner, he suddenly paused. “Rae, about Devon—”

  “He made his choice,” she said briskly, unwilling to discuss it, “and so did you. It’s over now. Nothing left to talk about.”

  He held her gaze for a second more before nodding abruptly and turning around. It wasn’t until he’d reached the end of the hall that Rae called out once more. “Gabriel, if you ever touch him again…”

  His face whitened. Not at her threat, but at the memory of what he’d done. His jaw clenched and he glanced over his shoulder, a promise rising to his lips. “I’d do it myself.”

  A few weeks ago, she might not have believed him. A few days ago, she might not have believed him. But looking at him now? She couldn’t have been more sure.

  The epic battle between Devon Wardell and Gabriel Alden was finally over.

  He disappeared around the corner and proceeded to the living room, flipping off the lights as he went. She almost called out to tell him to stop and then caught her breath. She turned with great trepidation to the basement door. She had felt so prepared upstairs, done anything she could think of to make herself ready. But now that the moment was upon her, the only urge she felt was to run away.

  Except you don’t run away from the tough conversations, remember?

  A chill ran through her shoulders as she lifted her fingers to the knob.

  What the hell was he talking about? Of course I do.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she took a deep breath and pushed open the door, peering down the dimly-lit stairs to the man sitting in a chair at the base. Will he ask me about my tatù? Ask to see what it looks like?

  The second Simon saw her, his entire face came alive with a long-awaited smile.

  “It’s about time.” He gazed steadily up at her. “I imagine there are some questions you’d like to ask me…”

  * * *

  “Why shouldn’t I have let my guards shoot you?”

  Simon blinked, taken aback by the directness of her query. They were sitting in opposite chairs—granted, he was strapped into his. And with the iridescent lightbulb dangling above them, the entire thing felt a good deal more like an interrogation than a conversation.

  But as well-trained as his daughter might have been in the art of information extraction, he had been taught the same lessons decades before.

  With a wry smile, Simon shifted in his chair to slow down their pace. “I suppose it depends on who you ask.”

  She didn’t blink. “I’m asking you.”

  Father and daughter shared a look.

  “I know what you want me to say,” he said quietly. “You want me to say that you should have done it. That you should have pulled the trigger yourself. You want me to say that I deserve it.”

  “Would that be true?” Rae asked stiffly, sitting rigid as a board in her chair. “Do you think that you deserve it?”

  Simon paused for a second before leaning back with a twinkling smile. “Tell you what—I’ll make you a deal. I’ll answer your questions, and I’ll answer them truthfully. But for every question I answer, you have to answer a question of mine.”

  Rae fell silent, considering the proposal. It wasn’t what she had planned on but, truth be told, she had very few expectations when it came to what Simon would or would not do. There was little harm in satisfying his curiosities, and if it would lead to the satisfaction of her own? Plus, she knew what kind of questions he was going to ask. “Fine.”

  “Excellent!” Simon clapped his hands together. “In honor of your participation, I’ll even volunteer to go first. In answer to your first question…” his smile faded, “…yes. I deserve it.”

  The room grew abruptly still.

  “You do?” Rae shivered in spite of herself, searching his eyes for any hint of a lie. “You really think you deserve to die?”

  Simon’s face grew thoughtful. “The man I was before, the man I was ten years ago…yes, I believe he deserved to die. The things he did, the people he hurt—the world would have been a better place without him.”

  The things he did? The people he hurt?

  “You’re awfully quick to disassociate yourself.” Rae’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Pronouns can’t save you here. You did those things yourself. No matter how wide your perspective.”

  “Well, prison gives that to you.”

  “What?”

  “Perspective.”

  The entire exchange came out a lot quicker than either of them had intended, and Rae leaned back in her chair, slowing things down a notch. “Alright, well…do you think the person you are now deserves the same punishment?”

  “Not so fast.” He stopped her with a smile. “It’s my turn.”

  While she shifted restlessly in front of him, he laced his fingers beneath his chin, studying her with intense curiosity. “Do you like pancakes?”

  For a second, she almost laughed. Then she caught herself. “Do I like…pancakes?” Her eyebrows lifted delicately. “Really? That’s your question?”

  Simon’s face warmed. “When you were a child, I couldn’t get you to eat them for the life of me. I tried everything I could think of. Threats. Bribes. Telling you that your mother made them instead. It didn’t matter what I did. Every time I put them on your plate, they’d end up on the wall.”

  It took Rae a second to realize she wasn’t breathing. Her body had gone very still and she was watching him with rapt attention, hanging on his every word.

  “Beth said it was just a phase. Promised me that you’d come around eventually. But you were always a stubborn child, and I’d be willing to bet that hasn’t changed. So, my question to you is simple: do you, or do you not, like pancakes?”

  A single tear tingled at the corner of Rae’s eye, but she brushed it away using her best speed tatù. Odds were, Simon never even saw. “I don’t like pancakes.”

  It wasn’t true. She happened to like them very much. But for whatever reason, she was suddenly sure she was never going to eat one again.

  “My turn.” She collected herself quickly, and looked him right in the eyes. “When you married my mother, a woman with a particularly powerful tatù, was that all just an act?”

  It was said directly enough, and the silent implication was clear.

  Was I just another entry for your wicked diary? Was my entire existence just one of your games?

  Simon’s eyes tightened, and for a moment the playful charade fell away. All the witty back-and-forth came to an abrupt stop as his face darkened with a heartbreaking nostalgia. “I loved your mother,” he murmured. “I loved her with all of my heart. Even at the very end, after I’d found out what she’d done… I never stopped loving her. Or you.”

  He tagged it on as an afterthough
t, but the two words caught in Rae’s teeth. She tried very hard to maintain a neutral expression, but it was getting harder and harder to stay distant.

  “Are you dating one of the boys I met today?”

  The sudden frivolity shocked her, and for a moment she was too stunned to speak. The guilty silence that followed gave her away.

  Simon nodded sagely, running back through the roster in his mind. “Which one?”

  Rae’s head jerked to the side, and she back-pedaled quickly.

  “That’s two questions.”

  Simon let out a bark of laughter. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have to answer either—”

  “Did you murder my grandparents?”

  The back and forth stopped abruptly as the conversation took a sudden turn.

  “No.” Simon gave her a hard look. “That was Jonathon Cromfield.”

  Funny he should mention him…

  Rae sucked in a quick breath as the question she had most wanted to ask floated to the surface of her mind. It went beyond interrogation and mind games. It even went beyond the shock of seeing her long-dead father. It was something that had plagued her for as long as she could remember. Haunting her since she was only just a child.

  “You were working with Cromfield—for however long a time. Doing the same kinds of experiments, trying to develop the same kinds of serums.”

  “That’s not a question, Rae.”

  “You kidnapped people. Tortured them. Treated them like lab rats until they were too used up to do anything but die.”

  “Again—not a question.”

  “You traded one life for another, played God—”

  He shifted with a tad of impatience. “If you’re trying to ask me why I did it, then the answer is that I had everything to gain and nothing left to lose—”

  “You had ME.”

  An unexpected surge of emotion coursed through her body, sending shockwaves through her legs, and sporadic shivers through her arms. The fairy on her lower back seemed to burn with long-awaited rage, and no matter how hard she tried to stay neutral it was impossible to keep the hate and bitter resentment from leaking into her voice.