It was abandoned. Cobwebs hung like birthday streamers across the ceilings. Dust blanketed everything like newly fallen snow on Christmas morning in the North Pole. I glanced back over my shoulder to find a mangled path of footprints in our wake as we crossed over the threshold.
“Don’t come this way very often, huh?” I asked.
“The main part I haven’t in over a year.” He paused for several long seconds as though he wasn’t sure how to continue. Then, in a tone heavy with regret, he finished. “The other half, in thirteen.” Hazel eyes met mine. “I did promise I would show you your first home.”
Something thick and round lodged in my throat. I could have easily chalked it up to allergies, possibly some kind of reaction to all the dust and grim, but I knew it wasn’t. Suddenly every step deeper into the maze felt infinitely long. My feet dragged as though encased in cinderblocks, hindering me from getting there.
We traveled past doors, empty sitting areas and stairways. Dark emptiness followed us all the way down a wide wing. Ashton stopped before a set of enormous, wooden doors, the sort that you only saw in movies. The arched top nearly touched the cavernous ceilings and the whole thing was etched with symbols that made no sense to me.
He removed a different ring of keys from his pocket—the ones he’d used to transport us through the nexus the first day—and pushed the gold one into the lock. A howl like a lost soul split the silence as he nudged the doors open into vast darkness.
I took the first step, then another. The others followed.
Unlike the grimy, unkempt hallway, the sprawling sitting room was immaculate, stubbornly void of any dust or filth that may mar the otherwise glossy furniture and shag carpets. The cream and mahogany décor looked pricy, not at all like the lumpy and worn surroundings I was used to. I was a little afraid of touching anything, never mind actually walking any closer.
It was like something out of an IKEA catalogue. Everything was tastefully organized around a gleaming, stone fireplace. Next to it was a large bay window that opened onto a terrace overlooking a dead garden. On the opposite end of the room, the wall curved, disappearing into two dark openings I assumed were other hallways deeper into the place.
“Did my mom decorate this place?”
I had a very hard time believing it. Modern chic was not my mother’s style, nor was so much white. But then, this was a place in the before era when I didn’t know my mother, or maybe, I never knew her. That thought had pain spearing through my chest.
Ashton laughed. “She did.”
I couldn’t find the words to answer. My feet carried me deeper into the chasm of memories to the wall of neatly placed photos. I’d never seen any before, at least none of me. But there I was, round, pink and tiny, cradled in either of my parent’s arms. Both of them were grinning broadly at the camera, showing off the bundle of pink as though it was the most beautiful thing in the world.
But I didn’t stay tiny. With each passing photo, the bundle grew, becoming more than a lump of pink flesh wrapped in a blanket. It was like time jumped forward and suddenly I was sitting up in my mom’s lap or walking holding my dad’s fingers and smiling broadly as I took each careful step. There was more than a dozen of me in the tub, standing in my crib or getting food all over my face as I sat in a high chair. In a few, even Isaiah made an appearance. I couldn’t help staring at those, endeared and amused by how small and wary he looked.
He had the same dark hair, the same electric blue eyes and the same scowl. But his face was rounder, his cheeks pink. He was always glowering at the camera like it had offended him. I was in a few with him, sitting on the sofa reading, or building a house of blocks on the floor. In those ones, he seemed almost content, like he couldn’t think of a reason to scowl. I liked those ones.
“Your mom has about a million of those pictures.” I hadn’t heard Ashton come up beside me until he spoke. “I almost had to use a crowbar to pry that camera from her fingers sometimes.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I had a hard time believing I’d spoken, but Ashton answered so I must have.
“Because this is the safest place I can think of without taking you back to Agartha.”
I turned to him then, uncaring that I could feel tears clinging to my lashes and streaming down my face. “This is where you bring the kids you rescue?”
“Yes and no.” He moved away from me to take a seat on the plush sofa facing the empty hearth. I didn’t join him. He didn’t ask me to. He sat with his hands laced between his knees, back hunched, staring at the space between his feet as though the answers lay there. “This area of the house is off limits. After your mother left, I had our home brought here where it would be safe. I concealed it from sight inside the sanctuary I built for the children. This is only a temporary place of residence until I can get them new identities and transport them somewhere safer.”
I wanted to know how he was able to transport an entire house from one place to another and then meld it so seamlessly into another house, but the question seemed pointless. Hadn’t I learned enough about the supernatural to recognize magic when I saw it? Seriously, I was at a point where nothing would surprise me anymore.
Instead, I asked another question.
“Where do you take them?” I asked as Isaiah and Archer finally budged their frames away from the open doorway and made their way deeper into the suite. Archer threw himself down in one of the armchairs while Isaiah sat on the sofa opposite Ashton and motioned me down with him. “The children,” I clarified, moving to sit.
“Edmonton,” Ashton said. “At least for a little while. Eventually, they are moved to Quebec.”
I frowned. “What’s in Quebec?”
He spared me a glance. “Freedom. It’s as far as I can get them from Garrison. My friend Galeen is the one who does the documents for me, giving each child a new name and a new life. Then he takes them anywhere they want to go. But they are asked not to return here.”
“That sounds like a lot of trouble and money,” I observed, secretly impressed.
He sat back, tossing one arm over the back of the sofa as he set his right ankle over his left knee. “It’s like I said, one child away from Garrison is one less in his army, don’t you think?”
I could only nod.
Ashton turned his hazel eyes on Isaiah. “What do you think, Isaiah?”
Isaiah, who had been studying the wall of photos, expelled a shaky laugh. “Nothing’s changed.”
Ashton glanced around at the crown moldings and the stone fireplace and smiled. “I didn’t have the heart to change anything.” He looked to me. “Your room is still exactly as it was before you left.”
I blinked. “I had a room?”
Ashton laughed. “Did you think we made you sleep outside on the porch?” He raised a hand and pointed towards the back of the house. “Just through there.”
“Want company?” Isaiah asked when I rose to my feet.
I shook my head without looking at him. “No.”
No one followed me as I ventured away from the group, moving deeper into the house that had been my first and only home. My eyes darted over everything, my mind desperately trying to grasp even a shred of remembrance.
At some point, during some moment in my life, I had walked those floors. My cries had echoed off those walls. I had been there, cradled and loved by both my parents. So why the hell couldn’t I remember? I should remember something. Even the smells were foreign; age, citrus cleaner and history. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. I hated it. I hated that I had wanted this for so long, dreamt of it for even longer and now that I was there, surrounded by it, I felt nothing.
Granted, I had only been two, hardly old enough to remember anything, but that only pissed me off even more.
I was right in my earlier assumption. The curved wall did lead into a hallway, which led to five doors, two on either side of the hall and one at the far end.
The first one was a bathroom, small with white tiles, a claw-footed tub
and a toilet. The second was a bedroom with soft grayish purple walls and a queen sized bed draped in a black and white duvet. The iron frame was painted black to match the nightstands and the dresser. I crept inside, feeling like a burglar in someone else’s home.
Nothing had been touched. It was as though the people who had lived there had simply gone on vacation and could return at any moment. Dresses, suits and shoes were lined perfectly inside the walk in closet. Framed photos of my mom and Ashton smiling on their wedding day, on the beach and at a park cluttered the dresser top. A silver, ornate hairbrush and mirror sat on the vanity next to several jars and tubs. And I touched everything. I let my fingerprints coat everything denied to me for so long. I pressed my face into the dresses I knew had once been worn by my mother. I ran my fingers over the soft bristles of the brush.
I bit my lip hard, muffling the sound of my heart breaking into a million pieces. I moved out of the room, too afraid someone might come looking for me and I didn’t want them to see me crying in an abandoned bedroom.
The third door led into a nursery. My nursery. And I almost laughed.
Everything was painted yellow and trimmed with white. It was like being inside a custard pie that smelled of baby powder and sunshine. Stuffed animals and dolls grinned back at me from shelves mounted on the walls. A change table was pushed into one corner, next to a rocking chair. On the other side was a window with a window seat. In the middle of the room was a white crib with a single blanket inside. It was pushed back, quite possibly from the last time I slept there. I pressed my hand against the firm mattress, not sure what I was searching for, but was oddly surprised to find it cool to the touch. Maybe I’d hoped it would still be warm, the temperature somehow frozen the way the room had been.
Raising my hand, I reached for the stuffed bear perched at the foot of the crib. Its glassy eyes stared up at me from a face full of soft, white fur. I raised it to my cheek and tried to picture my mom holding the thing over me, trying to make me smile. I could almost see that, could see her grinning, her green eyes bright with laughter. I could also picture Ashton walking up behind her, putting his hand on her shoulder and staring down at me.
I pulled away from the crib and looked around at the room.
I was happy here. I could almost feel it. I may not have been there for very long, but it had been my home.
I glanced down at the bear. Gingerly, I set it back down where I’d found it and turned to leave. The door next to the dresser caught my eye and I paused. My feet moved without my permission towards it. It gave easily in my grasp and swung outward.
Little outfits hung in neat little rows. I found myself grinning as I flipped through the tiny dresses and soft sleepers. I couldn’t imagine I was ever that small, yet there was the proof.
Still grinning, my gaze went up to the several rows of shoeboxes lined on the top shelf. There were nine, each in rows of three and each marked with my name and a date. Curiosity had me going up on my tiptoes and lowering the first three. I set them on the floor and opened the first one.
Pictures. An entire box of pictures. The second, third and even the ninth box all held the same. So many pictures that I could have wallpapered two houses from top to bottom. Each one was of me at different stages between birth and two years, doing something, doing nothing. I did laugh this time as I sat amongst the boxes and flipped through them.
“I bet you thought I was joking about the number of photos your mother took of you.”
I jumped, my head turning to find Ashton standing in the doorway, hands in his pocket, watching me. I turned back to the stack of photos in my hand.
“I could make a flipbook,” I said, shaking my head.
I heard him move close and stop when he was just at my side. “Your mom didn’t want to miss a single moment of you growing up. She wanted to remember every second of it.”
But it wasn’t all of me, there was the odd photo of them, laughing, kissing, embracing. They looked so happy. It hurt to look at.
“She was so beautiful,” I murmured, looking at one of their wedding. Mom was wearing a beautiful gown of white with a million beads raining down the front.
He hesitated, but gradually nodded his head. “Yes. She was.”
For several long moments, neither of us spoke. His gaze had been captured by the photo I’d been holding. The hurt and loss was impossible to miss.
“Can I keep these?” I asked, gesturing to the boxes.
Ashton blinked, surprised by my question. “Of course. They’re yours, Fallon. Everything in this house belongs to you.” He dug into his pocket and removed the keys he’d used to open the front doors. He tossed them to me. I caught them in both hands. “Perhaps one day soon, it could be where you raise your family.”
My family. I wanted to laugh at the notion. There was no future for me. Garrison had made certain of that. But now the bug had been planted in my head, all I could picture was a little boy with electric blue eyes and a little girl with green eyes and me with Isaiah on the front porch, watching as they played. The image made me smile before I could stop myself.
“Fallon…” The tightness in Ashton’s tone had me coming out of my fantasy to focus on the tension in his face, the hard set of his lips as he stared down at me.
Guilt and self-loathing took over the lightness that had settled in my chest. “I know,” I muttered, slamming the lid back down on the box closest to me. “There is no future for me and Isaiah. No children. No family.” My shoulders slumped. “I know.”
He sucked in a room full of air, exhaled, then shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be like that. You can still have a family and children—”
“But not with Isaiah.” I rose to my feet. “And when I think of those children, all I see is Isaiah, so I guess we have a problem.”
Not waiting for him to comment, I slipped past him and moved to finish exploring the remaining three rooms. The last door at the end of the hall turned out to be a closet. The two across from my parent’s bedroom and my nursery were spare rooms, both elegantly decorated in sea foam green and sapphire blue. I walked my way back to the front of the house and slipped into the small alcove that tunneled into a short hallway that ended in a beautiful kitchen made entirely of wood and stone. Granite counters gleamed beneath glowing lights. The polished hardwood matched the cupboards and the paneling along the walls. It felt warm and welcoming.
I couldn’t exactly picture my mom standing there playing Martha Stewart, but she must have. All the necessary appliances lined the counters, just waiting to be used again. Rotten luck for the others, as I knew next to nothing about cooking.
Isaiah and Archer were still in the sitting area when I returned. The worry lines on Isaiah’s face instantly melted away the moment he saw me. He grinned and it was so light and perfect, I returned the smile without thinking.
“Hey.” I went to him.
His hand reached for me. His fingers closed around my wrist, gliding down to wrap around my hand. I felt the full force of that single touch all the way to my toes. It was like floating on a warm stream bathed in sunshine. I wanted to bask in it forever, and all he’d done was touch my hand.
“Hey,” he murmured back quietly, tugging me down closely next to him on the sofa. “You okay?”
“A little overwhelmed,” I admitted. “But I’ll be okay. You?”
He nodded. “Just worried about you.” He rolled the pad of his thumb over the back of my knuckles.
I dropped my gaze. “Just strange being here and not remembering it.”
He squeezed my fingers, but thankfully said nothing.
I cleared my throat. “So what do we do now?”
“Now you stay here until we figure out how to deal with Terrell.” Ashton swept into the room, his features set. “This place is completely undetectable. Because of the mountains, GPS and other mortal location detection devices won’t work. You will be safe here.”
“What about Trackers?” Isaiah asked. “If Garrison has another
one besides Carpenter…”
“That’s what you’re here for,” Ashton told him. “You can sense Terrell. Archer will keep an ear out for the non-humans.”
“So I just sit here?” I said.
He shrugged. “You can go outside. This entire property is secure. But I ask that you remain within the perimeters, which is within the clearing. Archer and Isaiah will stay with you, but I will drop in frequently.” He said frequently like a threat. I wasn’t sure what he was afraid will happen. Okay, not true. I totally knew and I didn’t blame him. “I’ll have clothes and other supplies brought to you later this evening.”
At the mention of clothes, I leapt to my feet. “My clothes!” I blurted loudly. “I need my clothes. I need my duffle.”
Ashton started at my sudden exclamation. “I don’t think I can—”
“Please!” I interjected. “I really need it back. It’s very important.”
Amalie’s diary. Why did I keep forgetting about it? I promised her I would read it and I didn’t even have it anymore. For all I knew, the authorities did, which would mean they could have read it and know about Garrison and his twisted experiments, which I personally didn’t give two farts about, but that was Amalie’s personal thoughts. I didn’t want a bunch of random strangers pawing through her sorrow and misery.
“Please,” I said again, panic running hot along my skin.
Ashton inhaled deeply. He nodded. “I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise.”
I nodded, too anxious to speak. My stomach was a snake’s pit.
“Archer, please walk me out.”
Archer rose to his feet and followed Ashton from the room. I watched them leave and waited until they were completely out of sight before spinning around to face Isaiah.
“I don’t like sitting here while Garrison’s out there, destroying my country trying to find me. I hate that I’m being such a coward.”
He rose to his feet and drew me to him. “You’re not a coward, Fallon.” He squeezed my shoulders. “Handing yourself over won’t save the country either. Right now, the military has it under control and Ashton will find a way fix this.”
Touching Fire (Touch Saga) Page 33