“Damn,” I say under my breath. I have no idea what he’s telling her, but I’m positive that it has nothing to do with the truth. For the first time, the anger coursing through my body is beginning to feel a lot like fear. Like he said about Veronique, now that I know the truth, there’s no reason for him to hold back. He killed me once before. What’s to stop him from trying again?
I start to walk quickly back up toward Haight. If Griffon is going to be in my house, then I need to find somewhere else to go. Somewhere he doesn’t know about. Somewhere he can’t find me. I pull my phone out of my pocket just as it starts ringing. Mom. I swallow hard, hit ignore and pull up Rayne’s number.
“Where are you?” Rayne yells into the phone. “We just got back to the beach and everyone is freaking out about the fight you had with Griffon.”
“I’m at my house,” I say. “Except he’s here too. I … I can’t face him right now. Can I come over to yours?”
“Of course. Sienna’s driving, want us to pick you up?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Can you meet me at the café?” It will be warm and busy enough there for the ten minutes it will take her sister to drive over this way.
“We’re leaving right now,” Rayne says.
I walk toward the café as my phone starts ringing again, and I don’t even have to look at it to know it’s Mom. I hit ignore again and then open a blank message. The cursor sits there blinking at me as I realize I have no idea what to say. I’m going to have to tell her something or she’ll freak out for sure. Just a short note saying I’m staying at Rayne’s and that I’m okay. It’ll have to do for now. My eyes are on the screen as I bump right into a guy walking the other way.
“Cole!” There’s no mistaking the Italian accent.
I look up in alarm to see Giacomo and Veronique standing in front of me along with another well-dressed couple. “Oh! I, uh…” I can feel my cheeks getting red as I try to figure out what to say.
Veronique’s eyes brighten as she smiles. “Hey! Your timing’s great. I was just telling my friends all about your recital.” She glances down at the splint on my wrist and her smile fades.
All I can picture are the headlights speeding behind us as we raced against time on the motorcycle. Veronique isn’t supposed to be here. She should be far away from here by now. This isn’t making any sense. “Where did you come from?” I finally ask.
Veronique looks confused. “From the martini bar,” she says, indicating a spot up the street. “We met Siobhan and Hamish there after we left your house.”
Now it’s my turn to look confused. “You mean you didn’t drive anywhere after dinner?” I ask. My thoughts are racing. I study her face to find any sign that she’s lying to me. “You weren’t on the Great Highway earlier tonight?”
“No,” she says slowly, her eyes steady on mine. “We’ve been in this neighborhood all night.”
If that’s true, then Griffon lied about the car chase, too. So far, everything I’ve known about him is a lie. But why? What does he want from me? I’ve never felt so alone in my life. I burst into panicky tears. “Excuse me,” I say pushing past them. “I have to go.”
I run toward the café, blinded by the hot tears that burn my eyes. I hear the click-clack of high heels on the sidewalk just as Veronique catches up with me. “Cole! Stop.” She puts her hand over mine as I reach for the door handle. “I can’t just leave you like this. What’s wrong?”
Suddenly nowhere feels safe. “I can’t … I have to go,” I say again, pulling at the handle, but Veronique puts her arm around my shoulder and steers me toward the doorway of the building next door.
“At least stay here for a second and calm down,” she says, opening her bag and taking out a crisp white handkerchief. “Take this.”
After a few minutes I manage to catch my breath, certain now my face is bright red and blurry from crying. “I’m sorry,” I say, trying not think about Griffon, knowing that will start the tears all over again. “This is so stupid.” I turn away. I need time to sort this all out. To know if there is anything safe I can say to her. “You should go.”
“You can’t keep this all locked up inside,” Veronique says. She tilts her head. “Obviously something’s wrong.” She pauses. “Is it Griffon?”
Is it Griffon? A simple question, with such a complicated answer. Even his name feels like a dagger. I look into her eyes, trying to see the danger that Griffon always insisted is there. All I see is concern, and I start to feel ridiculous for listening to him; he’s lied about so much. He tried to convince me that she was trying to kill me, but so far Veronique is the only person in my life who has done anything to help me. God knows I need some help right about now.
I want so badly to confide in her, to tell her what’s going on. To have her tell me what to do. “Yes. Sort of. We … had an argument.”
“Oh, no! Everything looked fine at dinner. What happened?”
I hesitate. Each of us is holding tight to a piece of our past, not ready to let the other one see. Or am I? Besides Janine, Veronique is the only other Akhet on earth that I know. Now, she’s the only one who might be able to help me, to give me some answers. To teach me how to live like this. I watch her face as I answer. One little flinch, one glance away and I’m out of here. “Griffon lied to me. He’s been lying to me for a long time.” I glance toward the street. Giacomo and their friends are talking animatedly to each other and not paying any attention to us.
“Must have been a big lie to get you so upset.” Something shifts in her movements. A decision has been made. Veronique steps closer and speaks more softly. “Is there anything else going on?” She holds my eyes steady with hers. “I have to say, I was really impressed with your Italian tonight. I had no idea you knew how to speak it. And you sounded like a native. Like you’d been speaking it all your life.”
Veronique has opened the door. All I have to do is walk through it. “I think I was born speaking Italian,” I say. I pause, knowing that once it’s out there, I can’t undo it.
“But not this time,” she finishes for me, a glint of hope in her eyes.
I shake my head slowly. “Not this time.”
Veronique’s face shines with relief as the words come out of my mouth, as if something heavy has been lifted between us. “I knew it!” she says quietly. “You’re starting to remember, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Some.” I look around again to make sure nobody is paying attention to us. It feels like everything I’ve kept from her the past several weeks is coming out in a rush. “I already know. About the Akhet. Griffon told me. He told me a lot of things, even though I’m not sure how much to believe.”
Veronique puts one hand up to her mouth. “Wow. That’s a lot to deal with. How long has it been?”
“Not that long. A couple of weeks, maybe.” I feel like I’m on the edge of something big, of figuring out a way to start repairing what happened between us in the past.
Something shifts in her features as I speak. “Did he ever say anything about me?”
“When you guys met that night at the recital,” I say. It all seems so ridiculous now that I can hardly tell her. “He told me that you were a rogue Akhet and that all of the bad stuff that’s been happening to me is your fault. Falling down the stairs that day at the conservatory, an accident we almost had on his motorcycle tonight.” I look at my arm. “He even said that you’d somehow caused the broken window.”
Veronique looks hurt, and I immediately feel guilty for all of the bad stuff we’d said about her. “But you don’t believe any of that, do you?” she asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “Not anymore. He’s been lying to me from the very beginning.” I can feel my stomach flip as I think of him. I glance up the street, ready to see Griffon riding by any minute. I look in her eyes so that she’ll get the importance of my words. “Apparently, he’s been lying to me for centuries.”
She looks surprised. “He’s an old Akhet, then? Iawi?”
“Very,” I say
. It’s so weird to hear those words coming from someone else. “We were together back in the fifteen hundreds.” I stop talking, seeing once again the vision of the axe flashing on the scaffold. “He … he killed me in that lifetime.”
Veronique looks thoughtful. “If he’s an Iawi Akhet, then he has abilities to hide things, to manipulate things. I’m sure he’s been telling lies for his own purposes.”
“I can’t believe I listened to him for so long.”
“You need to be careful,” she says slowly. Her eyes dart up and down the street, and I get the sense she’s looking for him too. “Now that everything’s out in the open and he knows that you’ve seen his true essence, Griffon doesn’t need to pretend anymore. If he killed you in one lifetime, then you might be in danger in this one.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Is there somewhere safe you can go?”
“I’m going to stay at a friend’s house tonight. I’m not sure what I’m going to do after that.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
The way she says it reminds me of Alessandra and how kind she was to me. I want that back again. I want her back on my side. “I remember other things, too.” I can’t look at her right now. I don’t want to see her reaction. “About us. At the Pacific Coast Club.”
Veronique doesn’t say anything. The silence is so intense that I have to look up at her.
“What do you remember?” she asks. I might be reading too much into it, but her voice sounds colder to me. More distant than just a few seconds ago.
“Just bits and pieces,” I say in a rush. “I remember the party. And you being so nice to me—letting me use your cello when mine broke.” I stop, picturing the last time I saw her. “And I remember the roof.” Her eyes are kinder now, and I’m shooting for forgiveness. “I don’t know what happened exactly, but I know that I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt you. We were friends. Weren’t we?”
Veronique puts her hand on my arm, and I realize that for the first time, I feel nothing from her touch. No vibrations. No wayward memories. “Of course we were,” she says. “You were like the little sister I never had. It was all an accident—”
“But it wasn’t an accident. I can prove it.” A horn honks, and Rayne leans out the passenger side window of her sister’s car at the curb. I look over and wave. “That’s my ride.”
There’s so much else I want to tell her. About the newspapers. About Paolo. But Rayne honks again and there’s no time. The moment’s gone.
Veronique reads my mind. “Call me. Tomorrow, okay? Then we can talk more.”
I feel a shudder as I swallow the last of my tears. “I will. Tomorrow. And thanks.”
She squeezes my right hand, and I feel the Akhet vibrations again. But there’s something else. An uncomfortable undercurrent. Something desperate and uneasy. “I’ll talk to you soon,” she says lightly.
“Okay.”
Veronique waves as I climb into Sienna’s backseat, and for a split second I wonder if I’ve done the right thing. Can I really trust her? Can I really trust anyone? I push the uneasy thoughts away. I want to believe her. More than anything, I want to believe that someone, somewhere, is telling me the truth.
Twenty~Two
“Can I stay here tonight?” I ask as we slip through Rayne’s front door and pull it shut.
“Counting on it.” One thing I love about Rayne is that she doesn’t ask too many questions. At least, not at first. She didn’t ask me anything in the car while Sienna was driving, just kept turning around to watch me from the front seat.
Rayne’s books are spread across her bed, and I slide a few of them to the side so I can lie down and curl up into a ball. I think that if I can make myself as small as possible, the ache in my chest will somehow magically shrink too. I know Rayne is staring at me, but she’s uncharacteristically quiet as I lie there, trying to come up with a rational explanation about why my world is ending.
“So, I have to ask. What the hell happened? I’m assuming Griffon did something,” she finally says.
All I can do is shrug. Just the sound of his name makes fresh tears spring into my eyes.
“Bad kisser?”
I shake my head no.
“Girlfriend?”
“No.” If only.
Rayne sighs. “Well, you’re going to have to work with me a little here,” she says. “I can’t try to make you feel better if I have no idea what’s going on.”
I push myself into a semi-sitting position and lean against the wall. There’s been so much craziness the past few weeks that I can barely keep track of what I’ve told her. “I remembered more. About Griffon.”
“Wait a second. I thought we were talking about Veronique and what happened in San Francisco.”
“Another lifetime. In England. I thought all of my memories were just random, but it turns out Griffon was there after all.” I take a deep breath, pull a pillow into my lap, and hug it tight. “Let’s just say he’s not who I thought he was.”
Rayne’s eyes get wide. “You mean that you were together in a past life? Oh my God, that is so freakin’ romantic.” Out of everyone I know, Rayne is the only one who will take that kind of news as normal. And think it’s romantic. “Now you have to tell me everything.”
So I try. “We weren’t ‘together’ together in the time before,” I explain. “Not like that. I don’t remember all that much about it. Just that I lived a long time ago in England.” I suddenly remember the graffiti inside the tower. It had a date on it. “In 1538, I think.”
“In 1538 you think?” Rayne asks.
“Yeah. There’s some graffiti … oh, never mind.” I have to try to focus my thoughts. “I was some sort of Lady at the Tower of London.”
“Like a queen?” Rayne asks excitedly.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I was a queen, anyway. I keep having visions of parts of this one day. It was … the last day. I was led up to a platform while all of these people watched. There was a guy there with a hood on, and the only thing I could see were these intense eyes.” I have to stop here, my voice wavering as I picture the cold resignation of those eyes. I swallow hard. “It was the guy with the axe.” I close my eyes. “It was Griffon.”
Rayne puts her hand over her mouth. “No way! Are you seriously saying that Griffon executed you in another life?”
I nod, biting the inside of my cheek to keep myself from crying. “And he’s known all along.”
“Wait a minute,” Rayne says. “Didn’t you meet him at the Tower of London?”
“Yes. Right on the spot where the execution happened. He’s been lying to me the whole time. He admitted it when we were at the beach.”
“So what did you do?”
“What do you think I did? I got the hell out of there.”
Rayne thinks for a second. “I can’t believe he’d really do that. He seems so into you.”
“People like him are good at hiding things,” I say. “He can do things that other people can’t.” I’ve been pushing that thought to the back of my mind. It’s bad enough that Griffon has been lying to me. Thinking that he might actually want to hurt me, that part of his reason for being here is to repeat that time at the Tower, is overwhelming. “Think about it. He did just happen to be outside when the window broke.”
“That’s ridiculous. He wasn’t anywhere near you when you had the accident.”
“What if he doesn’t have to be near me?” Griffon was right. Being able to remember the days of the week or memorize entire books are just simple tricks. What else can he do? What other abilities does he have that I don’t know about? “Every time something bad happened, Griffon was somewhere nearby. When the glass broke, he was right outside. He was the one who dropped the cello when I almost fell down the conservatory steps. We almost had a motorcycle accident tonight on the way to the beach. He said someone was chasing us, but all I saw was a car behind us—I took his word for the rest of it. For all I know, he made
the whole thing up just to scare me. Veronique is right. The pretense is over.”
“Veronique?” she asks. “Is that what you were talking to her about?”
“I ran into her while I was waiting for you. I told her what happened.” I see the look on Rayne’s face. “I had to. She’s the only other person on earth who might really understand.”
“Thanks.”
“Come on. You know what I mean. The only other person I know who remembers too.”
“Still, blabbing to Veronique about everything might not be the best move,” Rayne says, skepticism still edging her tone. “Did Griffon really try to hurt you tonight?”
“He might have, if Peter hadn’t been there. You should have seen the look in his eyes when I figured it out.”
“Well, no matter what, you were smart to come here.” Rayne looks up at the ceiling. She tilts her head as she looks at me. “When you were the queen back in England, what was your name?”
I shift on her bed, hugging the pillow tighter. “I wasn’t a queen. And I really don’t want to talk about this any more right now.” I just want it to all go away.
“Griffon knows what happened,” Rayne says quietly. “You said yourself that he admitted being the one on the scaffold that day. If he was the executioner, then he knows all about it. Don’t you deserve to know the truth too?”
I nod, my mind flashing back to the scene at the Tower and the ritual the two of us performed with the payment and the polite words just before he carried out somebody’s order to have me killed.
“Okay, now, don’t freak out on me,” Rayne says. “But maybe you should talk to him. Just once. Get all the facts so that you don’t have to try to guess at things on your own.”
“No way,” I say, my heart contracting at the thought of not seeing him again even as I stand my ground. “You didn’t see the look in his eyes on the scaffold that day. He could have been the one to stop it. He could have not raised the axe, but he did. How can you possibly be a good person when your entire job is to chop the heads off of innocent people?”
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