Secrets of the Guardian (Waldgrave Book 3)

by A. L. Tyler

  Tom sat quiet for a while. He leaned forward in his chair, gazing out across the irises. “But if he comes back, he can fix it?”

  For what felt like no reason at all, Lena’s eyes started to tear up. She drew in a quick breath and held it while she bit down on her lip, trying to distract herself from the mess back home. Kids as young as Brandon were dead or missing. “I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone can fix it now.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  Lena looked out across the dark field, avoiding looking at this man—her new uncle, to the place where the stars hit the line of trees and disappeared. “Lately I do. He always knew what to do. Or at least he was good at making it up as he went.”

  “No, I mean do you miss him?”

  Lena tried to think. Did she miss Griffin? She knew she missed having his protection. She had never realized how much she had used the safety net he provided until it was gone. But then, there was that voice over the phone again, and the way she had felt when she heard it. “I think I do.”

  “It’s really bad that he did what he did, for whatever reason. People depended on him, and you can’t just go off and leave everyone else hanging because you don’t feel like doing it—my mom always told me that. I think what she did to my sister still haunts her to this day. But just going off isn’t how a community works. You have to take care of yourself, sure, but you have to consider what you’re doing to everyone around you, too. And some people are born with more responsibility than others, and it’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. He had a responsibility to take care of the people around him and he didn’t, for whatever reason. You seem to know what’s going on here, and I’m not meaning to lay any blame because what’s done is done, but maybe you should be talking to him about whatever happened—you have a responsibility to the people around you, too.”

  She had never heard it put so succinctly. This valley of irises was a magical place; it really did have all the answers. She wanted to stay there forever with these enchanting people; they were the family she had always dreamed about. They didn’t have territory wars with other families, they didn’t worry about the political repercussions of every trip they made and every conversation they had. These people cared about each other because they knew they didn’t have to worry about their children getting kidnapped or murdered. She would have stayed there forever, but Tom was right.

  It wasn’t fair, and she had responsibilities. She had to go home and fix this, because she was seeing clearly for the first time that she might be the only person who could. It didn’t matter what was going on between her and Griffin; they were both being selfish. There was a greater good here, and they were both going to have to get over it—Lena was going to have to go first.

  She had to tell Griffin about Brandon.

  *****

  They sat out on the porch for a short while longer, but Tom eventually took Brandon back in to feed him and Lena followed before too long. Olesia was sitting in the pink and blue living room, still smoking like a chimney with the window next to her wide open. For the first time, Lena had to wonder about Olesia’s smoking. Silenti were immune to many diseases, and perhaps cancer was one of them.

  “You going to bed?” She asked, wispy ashen tendrils leaking out of her nostrils.

  “No.” Lena said. “I have some thinking to do.”

  “Stay up with me for a while?” Olesia said, gesturing to the spot on the couch next to her.

  “Sure.” Lena said, collapsing onto the couch. After so much information in one day, she was mentally and emotionally exhausted.

  “I see Tom decided to ask you after all.” Olesia said, exhaling a wide, hanging plume of smoke. “Actually considering it?”

  Lena thought back to Tom’s request that she take Brandon with her when she left, and searched Olesia’s face. The elderly woman seemed entirely impassive, as though she didn’t care one way or the other about the fate of her only grandchild.

  “He’s not my only grandchild. You’re my grandchild too, remember, and I care about both of you.” She sat back, raising her eyebrows as the cigarette trembled in her hand. “You’re right. I don’t care whether Brandon stays or goes. I can’t and won’t force you to take him. I won’t guilt you into it because I know better than my mother that it’s your choice if you want a child. I’ve learned. At the same time, it’s hard for me to say I think he should stay here. I’m too old to start this over again, but you—well, I don’t know about now, but in my day you’d be the perfect age.”

  Lena sat quietly, not wanting to talk about the prospect of taking or leaving Brandon anymore. She was the perfect age by Silenti standards; in mainstream society, teen motherhood was generally frowned upon, but in the Silenti world, everyone who intended to married and started having children by their early twenties at the latest. Children grew up fast in the Silenti world because they had to; where there was no promise that they would live to see the world much longer, they had to live in fast forward. Hesper had Maren when she was almost nineteen, and Lena was almost nineteen now. When she thought about it in those terms, there was no reason she couldn’t take Brandon. But she wasn’t any normal almost-nineteen-year-old; people, even people here, would notice in a bad way if she showed up with an infant.

  She wanted to help Olesia, Tom and Brandon. Why did these people have to be so nice? It was bordering on abnormal how friendly and well-adjusted they were, except for one thing. “Why don’t you care that Tom is dying?”

  Olesia grunted, sending another eruption of smoke floating up to the ceiling. “I do care. I just don’t see the point in getting upset about it. You see, my father called it ‘living in the echoes’—my mother and my daughter are dead, but here you sit in front of me looking exactly like both of them. Beautiful and haunting to a fault. We’re doomed to live in the echoes, this family especially, for whatever reason you choose. It’s a Silenti thing that we share these connections with our ancestors, feeling their heartaches and acting out their dramas. It drove my grandmother Lenore mad to see it all playing out again; her husband was taken away by the Nazis. Did you know that?”

  Lena nodded. Lenore had become one of her favorite twigs on the family tree; it was partly because she had never written anything, and only sketched the world. She saw beauty, even when the world was ugly. Griffin had called her insignificant, but in the end, it had been Lenore’s drawings—her “corner diary”—that had unraveled everything.

  “Well, that’s nice that someone’s been keeping you informed. Might help you down the line. I never really knew her in person. She left when I was very young, because she couldn’t take the pressure. Just up and left…I think it was all the politics. After her husband was taken away, she couldn’t stand to be around all of us, slaughtering each other over politics, making up reasons to fight and be prejudiced. She retired somewhere in Greece, I think. Old family land. An island like this one, I think. Huh. That was the reason he wanted Jack in the first place—so much death. He thought Jack was a strong enough leader to bring everyone to the table and hold the line, and I guess it’s true he did it.

  “But then, I’m going off the path again. The echoes. Yes. My father was a staunch believer in the old religions and all of their implications, even though he only saw the portal once when he was a child before coming to America. He believed that none of us ever really leave because we don’t belong here to begin with—that our souls were trapped here on Earth, forever returning in new bodies, until we went back where we came from through the portal. Our trapped souls would forever affect the people they returned to. Angst, secrets, and depression can do that do a soul, he said. Personally, I think it could be a simple matter of psychology. I watched a show on the television one day, talking about how these situations run in families—women who have mothers that walk out on their families do it themselves and whatnot. Of course, as Silenti, we’re a little different—we do live in the echoes more so than any human. Here you are, the ghost of my past, about to make a very big
decision regarding the future of yourself and that baby in the next room, just like the rest of us had to. God knows the rest of us screwed up—my grandmother ran away from her responsibilities, as did my mother, as did I—I hope you can do a little better, whether that’s taking Brandon or not.”

  Lena felt goose bumps forming on her arms. It was true that she had been living in the echoes since coming to Waldgrave. The legacy that Jack and Olesia had left had played itself out again between Griffin and Lena until he had broken it by walking out at the start of the summer. He had been a house hand at first, until Daray claimed him as heir; he was the leader Lena could not be. The only person who could have prevented the bloody revolt, as Jack had the first time around, and he had broken his destiny by walking out. It explained the way Lena had felt toward him since his departure—like he was supposed to be there, just taking care of things. Like even though she wasn’t fond of the fact of everything that he had done to get where he was, she was somehow thankful that he was keeping everyone safe. Since his leaving, she had been on her own without the guidance of the past, and the world had descended into chaos.

  Ava had lived in Olesia’s echo by choosing to abandon an unhappy life and marriage, leaving her daughter behind.

  And Lena had probably created new ones that future generations—like Brandon—would live with. It was the reason Brandon was destined to be an orphan, never knowing his true identity. Someday, people were going to find out, she was sure, and then Olesia would have to flee with him, traveling so far and fast that people would never catch up with them, because she didn’t want this life Lena was living to become his reality.

  And someday, inevitably, it would.

  Unless Lena refused to live these echoes. She knew her intuition was telling her not to take Brandon with her. And now she knew that her intuition was nothing but a phantom of the past, and it was wrong. She had to take Brandon with her to break the spell; she had to fix this. She wasn’t going to walk away from the child that needed her.

  “It’s not as easy as you think.” Olesia said, resting a hand briefly on Lena’s knee. “The answers are never what you’d think they’d be, or I’d have figured it out years ago. Maybe it’s right for you to take him, maybe it’s not. Do what you think is right and I won’t judge you. You can’t see the future, after all.”

  Olesia got up off the couch and headed towards the stairs; her final words made Lena sigh and laugh as she shook her head.

  Olesia looked over her shoulder, winking. “What?”

  Still shaking her head, Lena looked up. “I always thought Pyrallis was good at telling lies…I thought he was the best. But you…no one even knows, and you read all the books, and you understand this stuff. You disappeared, and no one will ever know how. It’s like you know everything.”

  Olesia looked down at her cigarette and smiled. “You can think what you want, Lena, but I’m no magician. I made a deal with the devil, and no one controls the magic. You’ve got to learn to live with that.”

  She turned and left, leaving Lena alone in the living room with the dying vespers of her nicotine addiction. She eventually found her way up to her assigned bedroom. She set up her laptop and wasn’t surprised that there was no internet connection; they really had fallen off the face of the planet. Things were weird here; everything fit. There weren’t mysteries or games or contests—everything just was as it was, good and bad, naked and pure as the first sin.

  In Lena’s mind, this was the way things were supposed to be. Except for the fact that the Silenti felt the absence when they were isolated from others of their kind, Tom had lived a blessed, simple life. The irony that Silenti could not live alone, and yet could not live together, made Lena wonder how much longer they could possibly survive on Earth. Perhaps it was true that they had come from some other place, where they weren’t constantly driven to be at each other’s throats.

  She opened her window to the sound of distant waves and wind rustling in through the sleeping flowers, put on her nightclothes, and got back into bed, pulling the comforter over her legs. Her cell phone suddenly beeped at her, and she picked it up off the nightstand. At some point, either Warren or Kelsey Astley had tried to call her and had been bumped directly to voicemail due to the lack of signal; she couldn’t even call out now, and made a mental note to get in contact with Kelsey as soon as her phone and internet allowed it. If she had bothered to call, it must have been serious.

  The door creaked and Lena looked up. Devin was standing just outside her room, dressed in his usual evening attire of sweatpants and a raggedy old T-shirt. “I’m sorry…are you going to bed now?”

  “No.” Lena said quietly. “Come on in. What’s up?”

  Devin sidled into the room and shut the door behind him. Lena moved her laptop off onto the nightstand so that Devin could sit facing her on the bed.

  “It’s really nice here.” He began. Lena tried to remain impassive, but she already knew where he was going. “It’s really nice here, and I don’t think we should leave.”

  She had never seen him so serious in his life. For a second, she found herself flashing back to the short, giddy, smiling youth she had once met years before as he was doing dishes. He had asked her if she came there often—now here he sat, taller, thinner, one kidney short, and still baring that charismatic smile when he chose to share it with the world. He was choosing to share it less and less since getting shot, she reminded herself. He had been shot because of her—because he had met her, and she’d had to drag him into all of this.

  “We have to go, Dev. We have a responsibility to fix things.” She said softly.

  Devin’s response wasn’t quite a yell; he was obviously trying not to wake anyone. “No. No! He has a responsibility to fix things—Lena, I know you think we can’t, but we can make this work. Don’t go back there. There’s nothing there for us anymore. Please, we can make this work. He can fix things on his own.”

  Lena toyed with the edge of the blanket on her bed. She was having a hard time looking Devin in the eye. He had been so wonderful since their ejection from the Silenti—traveling wasn’t his strong point, but he had taken on a whole new persona to keep her safe, moving her around, never complaining about the fact that she had screwed up his life so badly. “It’s my responsibility to fix things with him, Dev. It’s my responsibility to fix things with him, so that he can fix the rest of it. He’s never been able to take care of himself—you always said it, and it’s true. I need to take care of him, so he can take care of the rest of us. I am half of the blame for what’s going on right now.”

  They both fell silent, as Devin stared at her in dismay. He finally looked away, shaking his head.

  Lena tried to change the subject. “Tom wants me to take Brandon back to Waldgrave.”

  Devin looked up at her sharply. “Why would he want that?” He asked in an even tone of voice.

  “He wants him to be with family.” She said simply. “He thinks that family is more important than—“

  “Our safety? Look, I realize you all think he’s going to die, but even so, why can’t we stay here with Brandon? It’s safer, Lena, it’s better. If you leave here, bad things will happen.” He took a moment, and Lena realized that even though it was quite cool in her bedroom with the window open and night air pouring in, Devin was sweating. “I have a bad feeling. You remember the last time I told you not to go?”

  Suddenly, the chill air was too much. Lena pulled the down comforter up and hugged it to her chest.

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  “He’s out here, Lena, and he knows we’ve got to come out sometime. He’s looking for us. No more hostages, remember?” Devin’s bright sad eyes locked with hers. “He’s moving again. He’s growing stronger.”

  “You’re paranoid.” She accused.

  Devin laid a hand on his side, where the doctor had cut into him. “I know you think it’s just silly superstition. But he left a mark, and I don’t just mean a physical one. When someone wants y
ou dead—when one of us feels that strongly—you know. And I can feel it, Lena. He’s hunting again, but he won’t find us here. This place is safe. It’s forgotten.”

  Lena tried to shake off the chill that was cutting into her being by sinking lower onto the bed and curling into a fetal position so that she could pull the blanket over her shoulders and up to her chin. He couldn’t know for sure, could he?

  “I have to make a call to Howard at least. And I’m not using their house line to do it…”

  They were both quiet again. Devin got up from the bed. “Maybe you could run into town tomorrow and find a place. But geez, you’ve got to be careful. We’ve been pushing our luck awful far lately.”

  The next day got off to a slow start. Lena awoke sometime after ten to the smell of pancakes, maple syrup, and manic laughter wafting up the stairs. She found her way down to the kitchen, where Devin was still in his nightclothes flicking a half-done disk of batter across the room and at Olesia. Olesia, dressed in a flowing old woman’s nightgown with cartoon cats all over it, ducked swiftly and then turned to watch the pancake hit the wall behind her, stick, and slowly start to dribble down to the floor.

  Then she grabbed it and chucked the mess back in Devin’s direction, sending crumbs and goo spraying across the room.

  Confused, Lena turned to face the noise of more footsteps tumbling down the stairs behind her.