"And call me Sue," Luke's mother said and extended her hand. Kira couldn't see her resemblance to Luke quite as well, except for the wide happy smile that was similar to the one Luke almost always wore. "We're so happy to have you with us. Luke's barely been able to talk about anything else for the past few months. He—"
"Okay, Mom," Luke quickly interjected, and Kira thought she saw a blush rise on his cheeks. She almost laughed in surprise. Luke was her uber-confident and carefree best friend—he did not blush. "Come on, I'll introduce you to my sister." Kira followed his gaze to the now smiling girl behind his parents.
"Hi, Kira, so wonderful to meet you. Luke's been so excited for you to visit Sonnyville. I think I speak for everyone when I say welcome, and we hope you enjoy it here." The blonde girl came over and actually hugged Kira, pulling her out from under Luke's arm. Her smile seemed friendly, and her face appeared to be open. Kira breathed a sigh of relief. "Silly me, I'm Vanessa."
"Hi, so great to meet you. Luke's told me a little bit about you, mostly about the disco ball he stole from your room."
"Wow, he mentioned that?" Vanessa turned to Luke with surprise written all over her features. "Why don't you and TJ grab the picnic basket, so Kira and I can have a little girl time while we fold the blanket."
Luke grinned at his sister, and Kira read the love in his eyes. "Sure thing," he said and picked his brother up around the waist, tossing him over his shoulder before clutching the picnic basket with his other hand. Kira watched the two of them walk away with his parents. Maybe Sonnyville wouldn't be so bad after all, she hoped. But when she turned around, the mirage was ruined.
"Okay, let's talk girl to girl." The crossed arms, cocked hip, and evil glare were back. Kira sighed quietly. Here we go, she thought.
"Sure," she said, waiting for the onslaught.
"My brother is totally gaga over you, okay? I see it. My parents see it. Heck, the whole town probably sees it. But I see something else too. You're toying with him, and I won't allow that. Got it?"
"Look, I don't want to fight with you. I know it would kill Luke if he thought we didn't get along, but I honestly don't know what you're talking about. He's my best friend. I would never want to hurt him."
"Oh, really?" Vanessa challenged.
"Yes, really," Kira responded, trying to reign in her frustration.
"Then what was that?" she asked, waving her hand toward the council's platform.
"What?" Kira looked over at the scene, wondering if it held some clue to this girl's anger.
"Luke saved my life," Vanessa mimicked Kira, using a high-pitched voice that Kira knew sounded nothing like her own. "He's the only one I trusted. I would be dead if it weren't for him...blah, blah, blah."
"That was the truth," Kira said, taken aback. How had defending Luke to the council made his sister so annoyed? She thought she would be happy.
"Oh my god, you really are blind. Didn't you see his face? He was practically glowing while you spoke."
"What?"
"Look, I really do want us to get along, but you've got to back off. Luke told us all that you have a boyfriend, and as long as that's the case, just leave him be." Vanessa shook her head and bent down to start folding the picnic blanket on the ground.
"I won't stop being his friend," Kira retorted.
"You will when you finally realize that it's breaking his heart," Vanessa said softly and finished her fold. She held the bundle in her arms and started walking toward the rest of her family. Kira watched her go.
The nerve, she thought, wanting to scream. She doesn't know anything about our friendship. Sure, Luke's feelings had seemed to veer from friendship in the past few months, but it wasn't that extreme. He knows that I'm with Tristan. Kira chewed her lip. He knows that I'm in love with someone else.
"Kira!" Luke yelled and waved her over. She saw his family waiting for her on the lawn outside of a modest two-story house, so she hurried to catch up.
"Luke," his mother said when Kira finally reached the house, "why don't you take Kira upstairs and help her get settled."
Luke nodded and motioned to Kira to follow. "Come on," he said, and Kira noticed that their luggage had miraculously appeared by the front door of the house. She had totally forgotten about her small suitcase. Luke grabbed both bags before she had a chance to help him. She was too distracted by her surroundings.
The house was so typically suburban that Kira almost wanted to laugh when she walked inside. Before arriving, she had thought Sonnyville would be so foreign, but so far the town looked like something out of a fifties television show. The family room had a cushiony sofa and a few chairs, all centered around the coffee table and a widescreen television. A few video games leaked out from the entertainment center, and books lined the shelves. To the other side there was a dining table, and Kira spotted the kitchen through an open door. More than anything, Kira noticed the personal touches. The family photos hanging on the walls and lining the shelves immediately caught her attention.
The wooden staircase directly in front of her was a gallery of sorts, and as she followed Luke up the steps, she gazed at the little flashes of the Bowrey family life. An embarrassing family Christmas card photo, complete with terrible sweaters, was the first to catch her eye. Then Luke and Vanessa as children playing in the backyard. The streaks of fire dancing between them looked more like Photoshop than real life. Another showed a more grown up Luke holding his baby brother who seemed barely a year old.
"I love that photograph," Mrs. Bowrey said from behind Kira. She turned, not realizing that Luke's mom had started climbing the steps too.
"They look so much alike," Kira said. Even as a baby, TJ giggled with energy.
"My two boys." She smiled, creating two dimples in her slightly rounded cheeks.
"Not photos already, Mom," Luke said, bouncing down the steps to grab Kira's arm. "Don't believe anything she says," he whispered and started pulling her up with him.
"I heard that, Luke," his mother said in amusement. Luke rolled his eyes and Kira smiled. It was clear to her why Luke was so caring and open. He had grown up surrounded by love.
"Here we are," he said and pushed open the blue door at the end of the hallway. Kira walked inside and knew in an instant that it was his room. Superhero posters graced all the walls, and she saw a serious collection of comic books on the shelves. A wooden desk topped with notepads and a pile of old books sat in one corner. On the opposite wall, Kira's suitcase rested on a twin-sized bed covered in a blue comforter.
"Wow, Luke," she said while fingering one of the comic books, "you were such a loser in high school."
He laughed. "I had a bit of a superhero complex."
"Had?" Kira mocked and walked over to her suitcase to start unpacking. As she started to unzip the duffel bag, a wave of nerves hit her. She blinked in shock and rested her hands on top of the suitcase to take a breath. What the heck? She thought. Butterflies fluttered around, not in her stomach but in her head. Strange. She shrugged and turned to Luke to tell him.
He leaned against the wall, in a seemingly relaxed pose, but his eyes were intense as they watched her. The anxiety grew until it was all she could think about. Kira couldn't look away from him. Something strange was happening, but she had no idea what it was. The nerves quieted, replaced with resolve. But Kira's head spun as her own uncertainty pushed the other emotions back to the corner of her mind. Her heart felt only confusion, but her brain was racked with an overwhelming mix of different feelings.
Luke started to step forward, but they both jumped when they heard someone call his name.
"Luke!" Kira heard again and recognized TJ. Like a vacuum, the emotions were sucked from her head, leaving her alone with her confusion. She saw Luke's shoulders slump slightly as he yelled back to his brother.
"I'll give you some time to unpack," he said and walked out of the room. Kira closed the door behind him and leaned against the wood. Something odd was going on. That wasn't the first time she had bee
n overcome by a strange flux of emotions, ones that felt foreign and not her own.
"I'm losing my mind," Kira mumbled and shook her head, "literally." She walked over to the window and twisted the blinds open to let the dying light of the setting sun into the room. Feeling curious, she fingered some of the items on Luke's desk. A photo of his family, one of him surrounded by three other blond boys and one of him and a blonde girl were displayed in a three-fold frame. She picked it up, wondering what life he had had before she interrupted it. He was eighteen when he volunteered for the job. He moved to South Carolina to watch her family and prepare for her return. He waited there for a year before Kira finally arrived. He had left his family, friends, and maybe even a girlfriend behind. And Kira had never really appreciated that until now.
She put the picture down and leafed through the old books on his desk. Study material, she assumed. Kira opened one to read the table of contents and saw labels for conduit history, battles, and famous leaders. She would definitely look through it when she wasn't training.
The sound of a phone ringing made Kira turn around—she recognized her cell. She ran to the bed and sifted through her purse to find the source of the muffled noise.
"Hello?" she questioned, seeing an unfamiliar number.
"Hey," the deep rumble of Tristan's voice sounded. Kira smiled involuntarily and sat down on the bed, curling up for a long conversation. It had seemed like far longer than one day since she had seen him.
"Where are you?" she asked and let her head fall back against the pillow. There were glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling.
"Still in South Carolina," he sighed through the receiver. "Do you remember when I told you about Aldrich, my maker?"
"Yes," Kira responded, remembering that day by the Ashley River. It was the only time she could remember him mentioning the man and the painful memories he triggered.
"I think Diana is maybe trying to mess with me and not you. I followed her back to the mansion where we all lived almost a hundred years ago—she, Aldrich, and I. She knows exactly how painful it was for me to return to that place. The only reason she would go there is to screw with my head."
"I'm sorry," Kira said, wishing she could reach through the phone and comfort him. Just talking, Kira could hear the obvious strain to his voice. "Did you at least find anyone there?"
"No, Diana was gone by the time I arrived. But she's heading north. I'll find her eventually," he said, changing his tone to one of resolve and determination.
"Enough about that," Kira said, not wanting to harp on his journey farther and farther away from her. "I wanted to thank you for telling my parents that I'd gone. How'd they take it? My mom seemed upset on the phone."
"Please," Tristan scoffed, and Kira could almost envision his grin as if he were lying next to her on the bed. "Your mom loves me. All I had to do was flash a smile and give her a hug. She invited me over for dinner later this week."
Kira smirked at the inside joke. "Too bad you don't eat food." Her parents always invited him to dinner, but he always managed to find some excuse. "And my dad?" she asked.
"I think he still doesn't like me." Tristan laughed.
"Yeah, well..." Kira trailed off. Tristan had told her the story many times. Months ago, after Kira had saved Luke but almost killed herself, Tristan was the one who rushed her to the hospital. He made sure the doctors called her family, but he never left her side. As Tristan described it, he had been caught off guard when her father was the first to arrive at the hospital after coming straight from work. Tristan had been leaning over her bed, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, when the doors burst open. He had jumped up and reached out to say hello when her father promptly tried to punch him in the face. When he stepped out of reach, it finally dawned on him that he had forgotten to change into the scrubs the doctors had offered. Tristan was standing in her hospital room shirtless and covered in blood. Needless to say, their relationship had been strained ever since.
"I remembered to change this time." Tristan chuckled. Kira could only imagine what her father would do if Tristan had shown up in the bloody, ripped-up shirt she had last seen him in on that back road in Charleston. "So, did you see it?" he asked, and Kira could sense the excitement in his voice.
"What?" she asked, getting a little giddy herself.
"Have you opened your suitcase?"
Oh crap, Kira thought to herself. She had entirely forgotten that Tristan had packed everything for her. She almost didn't want to know which clothes he had thrown in. She just hoped he remembered the basics.
Kira sat up and unzipped the rest of her suitcase while Tristan urged her on. She peeked inside and resting on top of her clothes was the picture he had been drawing of the two of them. She reached inside and pulled it out.
"You finished it!" Kira was thrilled. She set the photo out on the nightstand and leaned it against a lamp. In the picture, he was smiling and crystal eyes stared not out of the page but across it at her.
"Not that. Keep looking," Tristan said, and Kira closed her eyes for a second to envision his face. When he was excited, his eyes widened and his smile stretched out to show all of his teeth. Usually, Tristan was more reserved and secretive, showing only a side smile with one upturned lip. But the more he opened up, the easier it was to make him happy. Kira could tell when he smiled like that it meant he had forgotten about what he was for just a moment. When he forgot to keep his teeth hidden, she considered it a personal victory, and she pictured him that way now.
"Did you find it?"
"Not yet," Kira said, enjoying his impatience. She shifted her arms until she felt something hard near the bottom of the bag. Pulling it out, she realized it was a frame. Tristan always gave her slips of paper, never finding his artwork worth the grandeur of a frame. She flipped it over and immediately felt a knot tighten her throat.
"You didn't," she said in shock.
"I did," he happily replied. "Consider it an early birthday present, since I won't be able to see you three weeks from now on the actual day."
Kira bit her lip to keep from smiling so widely that her cheeks hurt. She tried to blink away the slight pools of water welling in her eyes. Framed, in her hands, was a blown up version of the photo in her locket. Tristan had a skill for re-creating people's faces in his artwork, and she stared at the drawings, amazed because it looked exactly like the photograph. She was a baby with unruly curls in the middle of a fit of giggles while she stared at her mother. Her father, freckle faced and openly displaying his love, looked out toward her. And finally, Kira's mother, with the secret smile she had witnessed on her grandmother's face just that afternoon, watched on. In the bigger size, and especially with the muted color tones Tristan had added, Kira almost sensed that her parents were really gazing out of the picture. It almost seemed like they were watching over her.
Engraved at the bottom of the frame, Kira saw the words "Love Will Prevail" in cursive. She hugged the whole thing to her chest with her free hand. That phrase, which was engraved on the wedding ring hanging around her neck, had once belonged to her parents. Kira liked to think it belonged to her now.
"I met my grandparents today," she said softly, after realizing she hadn't said anything for a few minutes.
Kira heard him release a slow breath. He did that when he was thinking and trying to understand her feelings. "Are you all right? How'd it happen?"
Kira told him about the council and about her grandfather. She described the argument they had gotten into, the test she was issued, and finally playing with the children. She didn't want to mention Luke to him. The two of them always seemed to butt heads, and there was no reason for Tristan to worry about Luke trying something because Kira would never let it happen.
"I think it actually went well," Tristan said.
"What?" Kira laughed into the receiver. How could that meeting possibly be described as a good one?
"Look at it this way, the two of you fought, right?" Kira nodded. Somehow, Tristan sensed
it and kept talking. "Well, you only really fight with the people you love. If he didn't care at all, he wouldn't have been emotional. The fight shows he was a little nervous about seeing you and that he lost control."
"I guess," Kira said dubiously.
"Come on, think of all the people you've fought with."
Kira took a moment—her mom, her dad, Tristan at times, and definitely Luke. "I see your point. I just...I want them to like me. I don't want to be the thing that got their daughter killed."
"Kira," Tristan sighed and spoke in a soft voice. "I promise you that they don't think that."
"You didn't see the look in his eyes or the way he said he didn't want to regret the decision." It was like he had the weight of the entire world on his shoulders, Kira thought, remembering the dark clouds she had seen in the old man's eyes.
"I didn't have to. You can weasel your way into anyone's heart, trust me. Besides, it sounds like your grandma is rooting for you."
Kira thought back to the tiny smile that had played on her grandmother's lips. "Yeah, you're right," she said in a slightly stronger voice.
"I know," Tristan said, playfully smug. "Haven't you realized by now that I'm always right?"
"How could I forget?" Kira mocked.
"Don't feel too badly," he continued, joking. "You're still young and naive. In twenty years, you might be able to start proving me wrong."
"That long, huh?" Kira rolled her eyes, wishing he were lying beside her so she could punch his arm lightly.
"Eh, fifteen if you're lucky." He chuckled. She loved hearing the deep rumble of his laughter.
"Let's play a game," Kira said and rolled over in the bed, using her foot to push the duffle bag out of her way.
"Which one?" Tristan asked. They were used to this routine by now. When Kira had been in the hospital, there were very few activities she could actually do. They had become experts at turning daytime soap operas into mad-libbing games. They had spent hours playing board games. Tristan always beat her at Pictionary, but Kira thought she had the one-up in Charades. Of course, no one knew they were this cheesy and lame, Kira laughed silently to herself.
The Complete Midnight Fire Series Page 25