by Tara Brown
“Where is he now?” I was disappointed it wasn’t Lucas. He’d been gone a while.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged her ghostly thin shoulders. “Not much of a talker, that Mr. Brandon. You want I should make you something to eat?”
“No.” I walked out of the room. “Thanks anyway, Annabelle.”
“Ari?” Lydia’s voice filled the dark lonely hallway. “Honey, come in here.”
“Yeah.” I entered the sewing room at the far side of the huge house.
Lydia smiled up over her glasses. She appeared to be making something by hand, regardless of the fact an old sewing machine sat no more than three feet from her. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Really?” My spirits lifted. “What—whatever it is, I’m in.” She’d never asked me to do anything before.
“We’ve been doing some tests on your cells. I need you to go to the gym in the back and run on the treadmill as fast as you can for as long as you can.”
“Oh.” I sighed. “Okay.” She’d asked me to do this kind of crap before. They had been testing me for the entirety of my living there.
“I need you to cut yourself somewhere during the workout to see what your skin’s response is when your body is exerting itself.”
“Weird.” Old me cringed at the thought of a cut, but it soothed new me. The idea of a slash along my skin was exciting, like a shopping spree would be to most other girls. The bald little freak in me loved cutting. The scars running my arms and thighs screamed of her fun times.
I hurried upstairs and changed into running gear and ran to the gym where Lydia stood beside the Ron guy. He always watched me the way Lucas did, but he was a creepy old dude. Neither version of me was fond of him.
When I climbed onto the treadmill, Ron approached with a small blade in his hand. My hackles rose as his shaking hand drew near my arm.
“It’s okay. We’ll cut you twice for this exercise. I’m sorry, honey,” Lydia tried to sound soothing.
“This is messed up,” I muttered, not taking my eyes off Ron. His older face revealed his discomfort in being near me. I wondered what exactly he was and why he was scared of me.
A gleam of light flashed as Ron’s cold, clammy hand clenched down on my thin arm and the blade in his other hand slid along my flesh. Internally, I moaned with the pain and stream of fresh blood. Ron watched the thick crimson liquid flow from my arm. He licked his lips slowly as his breaths grew rapid.
“Ron, step back please,” Lydia’s voice stayed low, breaking the plan I’d formulated. It mostly involved grabbing the blade, stabbing it into Ron’s neck, and watching in joy as his blood spilled onto the dark-gray carpet where mine had started to drip.
It wasn’t a thought I normally had but the scary me enjoyed hurting people. Especially men.
“Start the treadmill. Sprint as fast as you can, for as long as you can.” Lydia sounded so clinical.
I turned the treadmill on as Ron crossed the room, getting as much distance from my wound as possible.
My feet pounded the moving platform as I pushed myself like I used to. I forgot about the wound and didn’t even consider the hate I harbored for Ron. I imagined the desert road where I used to run as hard as I could.
“ARI, LISTEN, PLEASE!”
I glanced up, realizing Lydia was shouting at me.
“Turn the machine off!”
“Sorry.” I pressed the emergency stop button, gasping for air, though I hadn’t noticed I was until that moment.
“My God.” Lydia walked to me, taking my arm. “You’ve healed remarkably well, considering the stress on the body. Cut her again, Ron.”
“I’m out of shape, Lydia. I bet I could’ve healed even more if I was fit.” I tried to take a deep breath but struggled.
“You were running at ten miles an hour for ten minutes. Anyone would be out of breath.”
“Maybe.” I winked, holding my other arm out to Ron. “But I’m not anyone.”
“That is the truth.” Lydia laughed.
Ron shook with anticipation and delight as he slid the blade down my other arm, again filling the air with the scent of my blood.
“Run again,” he muttered, backing off from me.
Again, I started the treadmill. I held back for a moment, trying to get my stride, and noticed how my body almost ached from the previous run.
It lasted a second before I pushed my legs, increasing the speed.
I was full sprint, forcing myself to go as hard as I could, when something moved in my peripheral. A dark flash shot about the room so I pressed the stop button, again gasping for air. My heart pounded in my ears.
“She’s fine,” Lydia spoke softly. “We were just testing her healing capabilities. It’s part of the process.”
My eyes were blurred from the lack of oxygen, but when I was able to focus I found Lucas holding Ron against the wall. Both men shook as if fighting themselves instead of each other. Lydia stood behind them, maintaining her soothing tone, “Just stop this before one of you loses it.”
“She shouldn’t be bleeding with him here,” Lucas growled.
“I’m fine,” I wheezed, nearly tripping off the treadmill. “I’m okay. He didn’t hurt me.” I held out my arms that were almost completely healed, regardless of the blood that covered them.
Lucas turned to my sweat-covered face and sighed, letting go of Ron. He ignored everything in the room when his eyes met mine. “You’re okay?” he whispered.
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Lucas took my hand in his and steered us toward the door. I glanced back at Lydia. “The other cut has healed as much as the first one, Lydia.”
“That’s good.” Lydia laughed. “Thanks, sweetie.”
Lucas dragged me through the house, I didn’t fight him on it. He did this sometimes. He wouldn’t speak or he’d say something brief and then take my hand, randomly, and walk. It was similar to flirting but aggressive not flirty. It wasn’t threatening either, just weird. He was weird. He suited the house of freaks.
Whatever it was this time, he was even more intense about it as he led me to the second floor. He pulled me through a dark-blue bedroom, which I had never seen before, and into a bathroom. He put his hands on my waist, lifted me onto a large marble countertop, and knelt below.
“You okay?” I asked after a minute, not sure what was happening. He acted peculiar. Not psycho, just distracted.
“No. I didn’t mean to act like that,” he spoke gently from the large bathroom cabinet below. “I smelled the blood and it scared me.” He pulled out a medical bag and stood up, towering over me. His shaggy hair drooped over his intense eyes as he stared at me. His next words sort of fell from his lips, surprising us both, “I can’t seem to get a grip on myself where you’re concerned.” He lowered his head and took my small hand in his huge one and began cleaning my cuts. He washed the blood off, revealing mostly healed wounds. He tenderly wiped each part of my arms.
“Is this your room?” I changed the subject as the bathroom closed in on me and his warm skin burned mine with electricity and awkwardness.
“Yeah.”
“Your bathroom is really big and nice.”
“I chose the room because of the huge two-person shower.”
“Oh.” I blushed, glancing downward. Why would he say that? I wasn’t going to have a shower with him. Or did he shower with other people? I didn’t think I liked the idea of him and other people.
“Oh shit.” He paused, maybe realizing what he’d said. “I didn’t mean—I’m big so a two-person shower is awesome for me—by myself.”
“Cool.” I kept my eyes down. “I’m small.” I cringed at the weirdness filling the little room. Why did I have to say that? I’m small? Like he didn’t notice. Oh my God.
“Yeah.” He winced. “Anyway, it’s a nice bathroom.”
“Okay, well.” I tried to find my inner calm. “Thanks for cleaning up the blood.”
“You’re welcome. Any
time.” He blushed.
“Okay.” I slid off the counter and strode from the bathroom quickly, not looking back.
I made my way to my room, unsure of everything that had just happened.
The whole treadmill experience was peculiar but Lucas’ response to my being injured was downright strange.
I lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling, contemplating him.
The shape of his lips. The way his eyes peered up through his dark lashes and shaggy hair. The way my insides tightened and my heart raced whenever he touched me.
I liked it all. I liked him. I had to own that, lying there still blushing.
But liking him and owning it didn’t change the fact I really couldn’t be with him. He was something bizarre, something unnatural. And I made portals in time. And one day I’d make a portal for my uncle and he’d take me back. I would forget I ever met Lucas because I wouldn’t meet him. I would live in the desert again, blissfully unaware of the magic in my hands.
Whatever had turned them on would turn them off.
Lifting my hands in the air, I wished they were the ones I’d had before, the clean hands. Not these scarred and tattooed ones with chewed nails from a nervous habit I never had before.
Everything was before.
Everything but Lucas.
Chapter 6
Port Mackenzie, part deux
Ari
“It’s been three months, Lydia. She’s ready to snap. I hated being here with you guys for months with no break. Everyone else leaves for a week or a day or a month, but Ari has been here, day in and day out, for three months. I can see her struggling with it.”
“I am well aware of that, Aimee, but we don’t know enough. Ron’s been doing tests on her samples.”
“She’s one of us, clearly. Those eyes.”
“There’s that, but she isn’t immortal, I don’t think. But she might be now. Every time she sends someone back with her portals, she collects the years they had left. It’s like a bank account—they go back, but they deposit the years they would’ve lived in this life, the way they were. She’s virtually stopped aging. He’s testing her DNA to see if she’s strong enough to join the Roses Academy. You know we can’t just put a regular human out there. She heals fast but not immortal fast.”
“She has talents. She would survive,” Aimee defended me.
“I know but there’s much we need to learn. We don’t even know if her talents can send back immortals. More importantly, we don’t know if she can do anything else to help defend herself.”
I sat on the stairs listening. Lydia knew I was there, but I didn’t care. I had begun to sink into a depression. Lucas had been gone a lot since the bathroom incident. My theory of him liking me died a fiery death when he vanished that day and didn’t come back.
“Just let me take her. What’s the worst that can happen? If anything goes wrong, I will wink back here within seconds. She can’t get away from me. And I’m going home anyway. Honestly, nothing happens in Port Mackenzie.”
“Yeah right, you became what you are just by accident.”
“I became this in the city.” Aimee laughed.
Lydia scoffed. “Technicalities.” She paused and then sighed. “Fine—Ari, if you want to go with Aimee, you can.”
My cheeks flushed, knowing I’d been busted for eavesdropping, but I was grateful to be leaving the mansion. “Thank you.”
“Well, guess you’ll be needing a bag packed, won’t ya, miss?”
“No.” I turned and smiled at Annabelle who’d been eavesdropping with me. “I don’t know.” I paused for a moment. “Uh, Annabelle, where is Port Mackenzie?”
Annabelle shrugged. “How should I know? I came here from Georgia with Miss Lydia. I don’t know where nothing is here.”
Aimee rounded the corner. “Dude, I want to go now. Get ready. You don’t need a bag.”
“Okay.” I grinned. “Thanks, Aimee.”
“Oh my God, seriously, I get it.” Aimee rolled her eyes. “Lydia kept me here for five months when she found me. I couldn’t get these bad boys under control.” She held her hands up.
“Creepy.” I didn't need to hear five months was a possibility for containment.
“Be downstairs in five?” Aimee winked.
“Sure.” I ran up the stairs. I wanted to be cool like Aimee was and hide my excitement, but I couldn’t. Trapped in the rainy winter in a mansion on a lake was about as depressing as a girl could get.
The trip to Port Mackenzie was not quite what I’d thought it would be. I held hands with Aimee for half a second and then we were in a town.
The “ride” made my stomach queasy which in turn made Aimee laugh.
Gagging and shuddering, I viewed the small town from where we stood on a dock between a couple of old-looking boats. The rain drizzled on us, making me sigh. “It’s raining here too?”
“Yeah, it rains a lot. Let’s go to my dad’s place. I haven’t seen him in a long time. I hope my sister isn’t home.” Aimee took my hand again.
She winked us to a patch of forest behind a huge fence. I gagged again as she jumped the fence with ease, leaving me behind, staring at it.
“Jump,” she called over.
“What?” I gawked at her through a crack. “I can’t jump that. It’s like six feet high. I’m five feet high.”
“Yes, you can.” Aimee laughed. “Don’t think—just do it.”
Certain I couldn’t, I put my hands on the fence. For a moment I struggled but eventually I pulled myself up. My arms shook, but I made it to the top. I lay at the top, peering down. “This was a shitty idea.”
“I’ll catch you.” She chuckled and held out her arms.
I kicked at her and ended up slipping and falling down the fence, wrenching one of my arms on the landing.
She laughed harder.
“Shut up.” I gave her a dirty look and followed her toward the house, limping.
“I don’t know where my dad is.” Aimee snuck along the yard to the back door and opened it with a key from under a fake rock. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was scared. It felt illegal.
“You sure you live here?” I glanced around, guiltily.
“Yeah.” Aimee slipped inside the house and checked out the cluttered basement for a moment before she skulked up the stairs like a spy. When we reached the top of the stairs, Aimee didn’t move. The living room and kitchen were empty. She snuck along the hallway, stepping purposefully in certain spots. I copied her the entire way. Aimee walked into a room, a bedroom. It was half boxed up. She flinched, staring at the boxes.
“Is this your room?” I whispered.
“Yeah.” Aimee looked sick.
“Is your dad moving?”
“No.” She glanced down.
The room wasn’t what I expected. Awards and trophies lined a shelf above the bed. Science and literature books were everywhere. I started to see Aimee in a new light, a nerdy one. She dropped to her knees and reached her hand under her bed.
“You were a nerd?”
“Yeah.” Aimee grinned through some obvious pain. “Huge nerd, like World of Warcraft and science fairs.”
“Wow.” I raised my eyebrows, stunned. “I never saw LARPing as a possibility for you.” I used the word like I totally knew what it meant, when in reality it was just something I’d heard about with WOW.
“Whoa.” Aimee scowled up at me. “I never did any LARP.” She continued to fish around under the bed.
“Cool.” I continued to scan the room as she came up from under the bed with a manila envelope.
“Why didn’t we just blink in here for that? Why all the sneaking around?”
Aimee pressed her lips together. “I can’t wink in here. What if my dad was in this room sitting on the bed? It would scare the hell out of him. He’s normal.” She walked from the room, clutching the envelope to her chest and seeming crushed.
Even though I didn’t understand what was happening, I was sad for her.
Aimee’s dad thought she was at a medical center, but I didn’t understand why we would be sneaking around the house. Why she couldn’t just say she was home and all better.
I followed her to a door. She turned the knob slowly, opening it a crack, just enough to see a messy bedroom. A man was sleeping on the bed. He held a book, an album it looked like. Aimee’s face crumpled. I wondered why she wanted me to see this. It sickened me to see her—strong and confident Aimee—in such pain.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered and turned back to me. “I need to go home.”
“What?” I dreaded going back to the mansion after such a short amount of time. “Can we just get a little air first? I still feel a bit sick.”
“Okay, but not here, okay? We can go somewhere else.” She backed out of the room and closed the door. She touched me just as I murmured, “Who’s the cop Annabelle told me you used to date?”
We flashed and were standing outside another house. It was much larger and had a circular driveway with a big blue truck parked on it.
“Oh my God.” Aimee cringed. “You can’t talk while I wink. I go where I think.”
“Aimee?”
Her face dropped as we turned to find a super-hot cop standing in the driveway behind the truck. I smiled weakly, knowing I had just made Aimee wink us directly to the hot cop Annabelle had mentioned.
He seemed upset and confused as would any person when two girls appear out of thin air. “Aimee, what are you doing here? How did you do that?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “This is Ari. And this is Shane. We were out for a walk.”
“Hi.” I waved awkwardly. Part of me hated the fact he was a cop, a pig, the 5-O, the hot fuzz. The other part of me loved cops. They had always been good customers and great tippers. I remembered with fondness one young new police officer in particular I went on a date with. I didn’t really date, but I did dinner with him once.
“Hi.” He walked toward Aimee. “Aimee, what’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m so sorry, Shane. I just needed to see my dad and then we sort of accidentally ended up here.”
He put a hand up to touch her, but Aimee stopped him by backing away.