by W. J. May
The words were half-joking, half-tragically serious. Utterly devastated, through and through.
Tristan met his gaze for a moment, then his face softened with a faint smile. “You’re not getting off that easily, Kerrigan.”
Momentum. Constant, forward momentum.
“Come on, let’s go home.” He wrapped an arm around Simon’s shoulders, leading him back to the car. “It looks like it’s going to snow again.”
It was an emotional reckoning, but the apologies didn’t stop there.
Later that same night, Simon stopped Julian as he was heading up the stairs. “Hey, kid, can I talk to you for a second?”
Julian froze where he stood, his handsome face paling with indecision. He might have forgiven Simon after the man saved his best friend, but that didn’t mean that things were any better between them. They hadn’t talked since the night they went after Samantha—despite having lived in the same house a good deal of the time, and it didn’t look like Julian was eager to change that now. “Why?”
Angel and Rae walked around the corner at the same time and froze as well, staring up at the two men. Without taking her eyes off Simon for a moment, Angel’s fingers closed over her gun. Without taking her eyes off Simon for a moment, Rae took it away.
Simon bowed his head for a moment before looking up with a thoughtful frown. “I know there’s nothing I can say to make any of this better for you. I know that, because of my actions, you didn’t get a childhood. Didn’t get a family. It’s a sin I can never make right.”
Julian stared down at the man, but said not a word.
“But if I were you…I would want to know what happened.”
It was, perhaps, the only thing he could have said. The only thing that would make Julian take a step back…before hesitantly walking down the stairs.
He and Simon settled at the kitchen table. Angel and Rae hovered on the other side. Two mugs of untouched coffee sat in front of them, but neither paid them any attention. They had eyes only for each other.
“You may think the first time we met was in the boathouse, after they found me in the factory, but that isn’t true,” Simon said softly. “The first time we met, you were running around an art gallery in Hungary. You couldn’t have been more than two years old.”
Julian grew very still. His dark eyes locked on Simon. “I’ve never been to Hungary.”
“You were born there,” Simon replied. “Spent your first few years living with your maternal grandfather. A renowned artist named Julian Bányai, your namesake.”
It was like a tennis match. The second Simon finished speaking, the girls’ eyes flashed back to Julian. But it was a tennis match with only one person playing. Julian was just trying to keep up.
“My grandfather…” He stared down at the table, looking a little lost. “I didn’t think I had one. Until my father came back, I’d thought all my family was dead.”
Simon stayed quiet, letting him work it out.
“We met at the gallery?”
“You kept knocking over these vases.” Simon smiled faintly. “Thought it was hilarious.”
Rae’s throat constricted as she stared with unspeakable pity at her best friend. All the things that Julian was able to see…his own past was a mystery to him.
“Why were you there?”
Simon sighed quietly. They’d clearly gotten to the darker part of the story. “I was looking for your father. He’d gone missing. Tristan and I were sent to find him.”
There was a heavy pause.
“But you knew where he was.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation. As cold and dark as Rae had ever heard.
“At the time, I didn’t.” Simon reached down, fiddling with the handle on his mug. “It wasn’t until I got back that I went down to the church and saw him there.”
“In a cell.”
Rae blanched as deep-rooted horror stirred deep in her memory. She knew exactly the place Julian was picturing. She knew exactly the cell. They had seen it together.
“Yes,” Simon admitted softly. “In a cell.”
Julian pulled in a sharp breath, pushing his chair away from the table. For a minute Rae thought he was going to get up and walk away. But he stayed where he was, gripping the edges of the wood as a war of emotions raged behind his eyes. “I…I don’t understand. You hated him so much?” A wave of pain rushed across his face, a pain for which there was no remedy. “The two of you had gone to school together—you knew he had a family, a child. You hated him enough to leave him there?”
“Hated him?” Simon repeated in wonder. “No! I loved Jacob Decker! I would have done anything for him. He was one of my oldest and dearest friends.”
Julian’s lips parted as he shook his head back and forth. “Then…”
Simon sighed again, folding his hands upon the table as he bowed his head. “I tried to save him. Tried to take away his memories. It would be simple, I’d thought. One little injection, and he could go free.”
Julian was holding his breath. Sitting on the edge of his chair.
“But he refused to take it. Fought me off. Said his memories were who he was. You, your mother—he’d rather die than lose you.”
He sounded like a brave man. He sounds a lot like Julian.
“So…that was the choice you gave him,” Julian said quietly. “You left him there to die.”
“Julian, I did worse than that.” Simon pulled in a deep breath. “I left him there, when you and your mother were still there out in the real world. Without anyone to protect you, should Cromfield decide to come. And he did. A few years later…he did.”
By now, the tension in the kitchen was almost too much to take. The very air was heavy with it, sticking in their throats whenever they tried to breathe.
“I wasn’t there when it happened,” Simon murmured. “I only know what Jennifer Jones told me later. People came to your mother’s house in Budapest. They’d found out about her somehow, and I’m sure they were coming for you. Your father could have seen it coming. Your father could have stopped it from happening…but he wasn’t there.”
A tear slipped down Julian’s face. Followed by another.
“They chased her up onto a bridge. High-speed car chase, Jennifer said. But they had years of training, and Lili had none. The car went over the railing, and fell a hundred feet into the river below. They found the wreckage the next day. Said there were no survivors.”
When Simon first saw Julian, Rae remembered that he had been surprised. Well, of course he was. He thought Julian was dead. That he’d drowned in a river in Hungary.
The story was abruptly over. But the damage left behind was permanent. The scars that remained could never hope to heal.
Julian had frozen very still. It looked like he was hardly even breathing. But, strangely enough, when he finally looked up it wasn’t at Simon. It was at Angel instead.
“So, you knew my dad?”
Rae turned around to see not just Angel shaking her head, but Gabriel standing in the corner. He had wandered in unnoticed during the story, and was leaning silently against the wall.
“No, I didn’t,” Angel answered quietly, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “If he was as powerful as you say, then he was kept in one of the back cells. I was never allowed to go back there. Only Gabriel was.”
Julian turned his eyes to her brother, but Gabriel shook his head.
“I never knew your dad,” he preempted. “I heard a man screaming. Then he stopped. They all stopped, eventually. I didn’t know his name.”
A violent shiver swept Rae from her head all the way to her feet. It was like a grisly chapter had unfolded right there in the kitchen. A dark door had opened, one she’d never seen before.
Julian sat like a statue in his chair. As pale and shaken as Rae had ever seen him. A part of her was dying to reach out, but he was in his own world. Lost in a place she couldn’t follow.
“My father…he could have stopped it.” He repeated Si
mon’s words from before. Speaking slowly, like he was pulling them from somewhere deep inside. “He could have stopped…you.”
There was a beat of silence, then Simon nodded. “Yes. There weren’t many people in the world who could have made that claim, but Jacob was one of them. Your father could’ve stopped me.”
A stream of tears slipped down Julian’s face. Unnoticed, and unashamed. “And if he had, then everything would have been…”
There was another pause as Simon Kerrigan died a little inside. “Yes,” he whispered, forcing himself to look Julian in the eyes. “Yes, it would.”
It was quiet for a very long time. There was nothing that could be said. There was nothing that could be done. Rae completely avoided looking at her father. She thought if she did, she’d be sick. Instead she kept her eyes on Julian, ready to do whatever he needed. To follow his lead.
But Julian simply sat there, staring down at the table. It wasn’t until a full minute had gone by that he pushed back his chair and walked out of the kitchen.
The story was done.
* * *
Days passed. Time moved ever on. And slowly, ever so slowly, things began to heal.
The little things that could be fixed began to gradually stitch themselves back together. The bigger things that could not…were left for another time.
Before Rae knew what was happening, they had just a week left to go. Whatever individual notions about preparation they had fell fast along the wayside as the gang came together and reverted to the old days. Hopefully, for the last time.
“Move your feet!” Rae commanded, cupping her hands around her mouth as she watched Luke and Devon flying back and forth across the yard. The sun was out, the birds were singing, and the entire afternoon had digressed to a round of high-stakes sparring. They’d even gone so far as to conjure bleachers just for the occasion. It was a brilliant pairing but, strangely enough, Rae was not on her fiancé’s side. “You know he’s going to swing left, Luke! You’ve got to counter!”
Devon flashed her a quick grin as the two of them broke apart, each unable to outmaneuver the other. “Have I told you lately that you’re going to make a lousy wife?”
She grinned back, leaning back smugly in her chair. “Every day.”
“Come on, Devon! Don’t let her get in your head!” In a strange twist of events, Molly had actually sided against Luke. Splitting off the couples and dividing them firmly against each other as the bets raged on.
“This next round might be interesting…”
Both girls turned around to glare suspiciously at the handsome psychic smirking behind them. Julian was never allowed to gamble. Although he delighted in dropping ominous hints.
“Ignore him,” Molly sneered, pulling out a wad of bills. “He just does it for the attention.”
Rae giggled and turned her eyes back front, but Julian leaned back with a knowing smile. “You know, Molls, raising a kid costs a lot of money.”
There was a pause as her fingers flipped through the cash. “Yeah, so?”
He shrugged his shoulders, staring innocently across the yard. “You might want to pick a different side is all…”
There was a dull impact, followed by a blur of speed, as Devon temporarily extracted himself from the fight. “Did I just hear that right?!” he demanded. “Did you just bet against me?”
The two of them were still locked in a stand-off, when Luke came barreling out of nowhere, knocking Devon to the ground with a single roundhouse kick.
Molly’s mouth dropped open as Julian flashed a grin.
“Told you.”
“That’s not fair!” Devon laughed, pulling himself to his feet. “You can’t team up with people in the stands! This is supposed to be between you and me!”
Luke bounced from foot to foot with a devilish grin. “It’s not my fault if the psychic says I’ll win.”
“No, but it’s your fault if the psychic causes it!”
Devon launched himself through the air in a blur of speed, the kind of supernatural attack that Luke could never hope to replicate. Half a second later Luke was lying on his back, panting silently as he tried to catch his breath. As Molly cheered wildly in the stands, Devon flipped once in the air and landed on the ground beside him, offering his hand with a smirk. “And let that be a lesson to you…” He trailed off suddenly as something on the ground caught his eye. For a split second he simply stared, before his mouth fell open in surprise. The others turned automatically to see what he’d found, but by the time they looked back he’d already collected himself.
“Dev, you okay?” Molly called.
He glanced up quickly, nodding his head much faster than usual. “Yeah. Fine.”
The girls exchanged a glance and Rae leaned forward in her chair, unwilling to let it go. “What was about? What did you see?”
“Nothing,” he replied casually. “Piece of trash or something.”
Devon had always been a bad liar. At least to the people who mattered most. While the girls started heckling him, and his best friend tranced out to the future, he strode swiftly across the grass and picked something up, hiding it in his hand. A second later, he returned to Luke.
“I think this fell out of your pocket,” he muttered, passing it into his hand. “Sorry.”
Molly and Rae looked on with curiosity, but Luke had gone pure white. He glanced down a moment at his closed hand before looking up in the stands at Molly. At this point her face clouded with concern, and she and the others raced down to meet him.
“Luke?” she asked nervously. “What’s wrong? What did he give you?”
Luke stared down for another second, frozen stiff, seeming to decide there was no way around it. So, he pulled in a deep breath, flashed a shy smile, then slowly opened his hand.
A breathtaking diamond ring sparkled in the air between them.
Molly’s mouth fell wide open as Rae and the others melted back a few steps—staring with breathless astonishment as he dropped down onto one knee. “What…what is that?” she gasped.
His eyes twinkled as his face softened into a tender smile. “It’s a ring, my love.”
Rae bit down on her lip with a grin as Devon whipped out his phone to discreetly begin filming. But Molly’s grip on the world seemed to have been temporarily misplaced.
“But…” She trailed off, staring in astonishment. “How long have you been carrying it?”
Luke grinned, staring up at her. “Oh, you know…about a year.”
Even the guys melted a little at that one.
“A year?!” Molly shrieked, her little shoulders trembling up and down with fast, shallow breaths. “Why didn’t you give it to me?!”
Luke chuckled quietly. Everything about this moment was clearly not what he had in mind, and yet Rae couldn’t help but think it was absolutely perfect. “I wanted to. I tried a million times to think of how to do it—but nothing ever seemed good enough. Plus, we were saving the world a good portion of the time…”
The others nodded practically. It was true.
“And then—you asked me.” He laughed again, shaking his head, wearing a twinkling smile. “I didn’t know what to do. How could I give it to you then?”
Molly tried to answer, but for once the girl who could never stop talking was stunned into silence. Her hands lifted slowly to her face, but she merely stood there. Trembling from head to toe.
Fortunately, Luke didn’t need a long answer. He just needed a single word.
“Molly Elizabeth Skye, will you marry me?”
* * *
“Call everyone! Everyone in your phone! Call them right now!” Molly giggled, and shrieked as Luke lifted her up and spun her round and round. They had made it inside, barely. The soon-to-be married couple was completely unable to keep their hands off each other. “Devon, are you calling? I don’t even see you getting out your phone! You guys need to call everybody—”
She broke off with another breathless gasp as Luke grabbed her face with his free ha
nd and forced it down for a kiss. All conversation paused for a moment, and people watched with fond smiles as she returned it full force, wrapping her arms around his neck.
…then she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough.” Devon swatted at her ankle. The big brother in him was unable to stand another second. “We’ll send out calls to everybody, don’t worry. Just keep your clothes on.”
“Make sure Julian’s the one to call my mother,” she said quickly, releasing her death-grip on Luke long enough to fire off another command. Her fiancé gazed up at her curiously, and she rolled her eyes. “He’s the only person who can get her to make any sense.”
The joyous celebration raged on for the next few hours. Beth drove up from Kent just to offer her congratulations in person, and Commander Fodder looked so happy he could cry. It wasn’t long before the entire group was settled around the table for dinner. Rolling their eyes as Molly went smugly from chair to chair, forcing everybody to gawk at her ring.
“Where’s Gabriel?” she demanded when she came across an empty seat. “I swear on everything good and holy, that boy’s never there when you need him to be!”
Angel glanced up with a slight frown. “He should be here. I texted him over an hour ago.”
The rest of the group returned to the celebration without another thought, but Rae stayed rooted to the spot, staring into Angel’s worried eyes. Time itself seemed to slow down as a creeping feeling of dread swept over her body.
But it wasn’t until her eyes swept around the table that she noticed the only other empty chair. “Where’s my dad?”
Chapter 13
“I’m telling you, Rae, he couldn’t possibly be here! This entire place was shut down!” Devon raced into the darkness after her, staring in dismay as she flew down the pavement, past the signs warning against trespassers, and leapt over the tall chain-link fence. Angel had flown off in her own direction, but Rae hadn’t slowed down since tearing out of the house just twenty minutes earlier. At this point, he had no choice but to follow her.