Faith looked up, focusing on Sunday.
“Good,” Sunday said. “You’re listening. Instead of taking your life, Night took you out of that house, the one where your parents locked you in your room, where they abused you. I don’t need to know all the terrible details to know that, not when the evidence of it was right in front of my eyes.”
“They didn’t deserve to die,” Faith said.
Sunday shrugged. “What matters is that Night took you out of there. She kept you alive. She kept you safe. She loves you.”
“And you? Where do you fit into all this exactly?” Faith asked. “Night didn’t know you were even there because you weren’t supposed to be there. You disobeyed, too. Why?”
“Because I loved her,” Sunday said. “I still do. And that’s why I’m here now.”
My raw nerves shot to attention. She’d tried to telegraph something to me earlier. I hadn’t been able to hear it. “You didn’t come here because you tracked the Angel of Death to the house.”
She shook her head. “We’re going to have company. One operative, winging his way here on a chartered jet right now.”
The Order. “What are his instructions?” I asked.
“To take you both out,” she said. “You and Faith.”
“But not you?”
“The Order doesn’t know I’m here. The only reason they know you’re here is because—”
Faith interrupted. “Because of me. Because I used my magic.”
Sunday nodded. “There was only so much I could do—taking out the ones the Order sent after you, burning down the house—neither of those things could camouflage the fact that there was a body missing from the rubble. Four adults, but no child. The Order knew she was alive. They’ve been looking for her the same as they’ve been looking for you, Night.”
“Thanks for doing what you could,” I said.
She flashed me a ghost of a grin. “You’d have done the same for me.”
She was right.
“We’ve got to go now,” she said.
“Where?”
“Anywhere, Night. We need distance from that operative. A lot of distance.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“Night?”
“No,” I said. “There’s nowhere to go. It’s not just the Order, it’s the Angel. He’ll be back for me. We run, he’ll follow. And if we run, we have him breathing down our necks and an Order operative coming from heaven only knows where.”
Sunday nodded. “If we stay, the operative comes here, where we know the lay of the land, the layout of the house. We can take care of him here.”
“I’m thinking that’s our best shot,” I said.
“Agreed.” Sunday looked at Corey. “You live here?”
Corey shook her head. “Just Ben. His dad’s out of town.”
“And where’s Ben?” Sunday asked.
I answered. “He and a girl named Jess went to pick up Jess’s aunt Addie. Jess and Addie are Watchers.”
Sunday stared at me. “Not the same—”
“Yep,” I said, and held up a hand to forestall the apology for spilling about the Watchers that was about to roll out of her mouth.
Faith grabbed hold of the sofa arm and pulled herself upright. “Can we have that talk now, Night?”
“Get your jacket,” I said.
Faith ducked out of the living room, heading for the coat rack.
I met Sunday’s gaze. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
“Faith’s lucky to have you,” she said.
“No,” I said, “I’m lucky to have her.”
Sunday shrugged out of her slicker and tossed it over the arm of the sofa. “I’ll take a look around. Size up our situation. You know you’re going to have to remember who you used to be if we’re going to live through this, right? You can’t be the kinder, gentler you with an Order operative. You have to be ruthless.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“Can you do it?”
“For Faith? Yes.”
Sunday stepped in closer. “You know this isn’t just about Faith, right?”
“The Order? Yes, it is.”
“No,” Sunday said. “It’s all about the Angel, like I told you earlier. It’s about the end of the world. Choosing sides. Fighting.”
I didn’t know what to do about that, so I didn’t know what to say. “I can only worry about one thing right now.”
Sunday nodded. “I know what you’re going to say, and I’m tempted to agree already, but I have to ask. Shouldn’t we get the civilians out of the house? Send them somewhere?”
“They’re safer with us,” I said.
“Because of the Angel,” Sunday said.
“Because most of the people I trust are in this house.” And because sending Faith away would only make her a bigger, lonelier target for the Order, and for Addie should she choose to go her own way. “We probably should move Dave.”
I caught movement from the corner of my eye. Faith, her jacket on and zipped, waiting for me. We left Sunday with Corey. I debated the wisdom of that all the way to the porch, but finally decided that Sunday could teach Corey a few things, and vice versa.
We stepped outside. The temperature had dropped about ten degrees; the afternoon had moved on while Dave had been rendered unconscious and I’d fought for possession of my own body, while my former lover had come to warn us of an impending attack, Red had decided I was unredeemable, and the girl I thought of as my daughter discovered that I’d killed her parents and been ordered to kill her, too.
The mist had taken a break. The sky was still gray, but the quality of the light had changed, allowing a little more illumination, enough to make the droplets that covered the garden shine like diamonds. The air tasted of the cold night to come, and of woodsmoke from Ben’s chimney and a couple of others nearby. A crow cawed, maybe the one that’d perched in the park earlier, maybe a different one. The sound seemed to open the floodgates for Faith.
“I’m trying to understand,” she said. “How it was for you, how you grew up like that and came out the other side looking like a decent human being.”
Looking like.
“I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like,” Faith said. “It’s, like, alien—the kind of life Sunday said that you led.”
Alien.
A nest of wasps seemed to take up residence in my belly, wings fluttering and stingers striking their marks. “I might seem like a different person to you than what you thought.”
“God,” she said. “You think?”
“I can tell you that I’m not—that I’m the same—but they’re just words.”
She shook her head. “Do you mean them?”
“Of course I mean them.”
“Then they matter,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to handle what you told me in there. I have one question that I didn’t want to ask in front of anyone else, one that I need you to answer if there’s any hope at all of my being able to deal.”
“Ask it,” I said. “I’ll answer.”
“Even if you don’t want to?”
“The truth,” I said. “Even if it kills me.”
She nodded, folding her arms across her chest. “Why didn’t you kill me?”
I sat down in the closest porch chair, the one Red had taken earlier. I’d had a lot of years to consider the question Faith had asked. That choice, to take Faith and run, had been the pivotal moment my entire life revolved around. I looked at the garden, at the world that kept on turning while our disasters played out, where billions of people celebrated their own victories and mourned their own catastrophes.
“There’s not just one answer, and it’s not simple,” I said. “There’s the obvious answer: I’d never been asked to kill a child before, and when I came face to face with you, I couldn’t do it. There’s the moment when I realized that your parents weren’t the real targets. But they were witnesses, and they couldn’t be allowed to live, which was why the kill orde
r specified they were to die. And I understood that you were the one with the magic, and I wondered who could be so afraid of a little girl that they’d want her wiped from the face of the earth. I couldn’t let that happen, because I could see inside your mind and I could tell from your thoughts and feelings and memories that your magic wasn’t some kind of evil.”
Faith settled cross-legged on the floor in front of me. I realized I’d been looking everywhere but at her, and she wanted—needed—to see my face.
“There’s a thing I don’t remember,” I said. “This thing happened to me when I was only a couple of years older than you were on the night we met. I lived in this little house. It was white, but really old white, like old paper, it hadn’t been painted in so long. My dad was a mechanic. He was an old man already when I was twelve, like his work had aged him before his time. My mother was a cook in the kitchen at the old folks’ home about a mile away. I thought they loved me. I think they tried to, but they were too afraid of me for love to win. Do you understand what I mean?”
That last—maybe it was the truth, maybe it was a lie. It didn’t matter. It only mattered that Faith understood.
She looked at me. Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away, refusing to let them fall.
“That’s why I didn’t kill you,” I said.
“They were afraid of your magic?” she asked.
I nodded. “They thought I was sick. Then they thought I was possessed by a demon. They tried to have it taken out of me. It was very bad. And when that didn’t work, they installed locks on my door and held me prisoner inside.”
“What happened to them?” she asked. “Your parents?”
“Red thinks—he thinks I killed them. I always figured the same thing. But that’s the part I don’t remember. It’s hidden inside my mind, and I’ve never wanted to find it because I’ve been as afraid of it as my parents were of me.”
She turned that over in her mind. “What does Red have to do with it?
“He tried to save me like I saved you.”
“It didn’t work?”
“He tried his best. And then the Order found me.”
She thought for a few more minutes, then wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. “So, what now?”
“I need to find out what happened. I think if I don’t, it will eat me up inside. And there’s another thing—it’s a weakness, not knowing. The Angel of Death wants to possess me, and he can take advantage of that weakness. I might not be able to fight him off.”
“I’ll help you,” she said.
“How?” I asked.
“I can go with you to the memory—you can take me with you, right? That’s part of your magic?”
It wasn’t the way I usually worked with my power. I invaded the minds of others and warped what I saw there. I didn’t allow others into my mind. In my training by the Order, my mentor had delved into my mind, sifting through my fear and desire and love and hate like sifting through so much sand. She’d sculpted my thoughts and feelings, turning me into a slave to her will. She could’ve made me do anything: kill another, kill myself, or worse—there were much worse things than death, after all.
She’d taught me a lesson, one I’d never forgotten.
I’d never trusted another person enough to override that teaching. If I was going to, though, that person would be Faith.
“I can do that,” I said. “Yes.”
“Do we have time before the guy from the Order gets here?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t chance it, anyway. I’m gonna need my full strength to help Sunday fight him, and I should probably go back inside and help her.”
“She said she loved you,” Faith said. “Was she your girlfriend?”
I nodded.
“She’s kind of scary, you know?”
I reached out and mussed Faith’s hair. “I know.”
“Were you that scary?”
The question startled me. “What do you think?”
“I think you were,” she said.
Strange thing to say. “Are we okay?”
She wiped her eyes again. “I don’t know. I don’t know that, and I don’t know whether I’m okay.”
Hearing her say that made my heart hurt. “I want you to understand something,” I said. “Nothing that’s happened is your fault.”
“Really?” She shook her head. “How can you say that when everything that’s happened is because of me? It’s like I’m wrong just for existing, for just being who I am. If I was never born, my parents would still be alive. Maybe they would’ve had a different kid, someone who didn’t scare them so much. Maybe she would’ve had a normal childhood, without locks on her door. If I wasn’t here, I wouldn’t have used my magic and brought the Order on us. Or the Angel.”
“You’re not wrong. You’re special. As far as I know, you’re the only living person who can talk to gods and hear them when they talk back.”
“The Watchers don’t think I’m special. They think I’m dangerous. They missed their shot at killing me. Now what? They think they can take you away and then use me?” she asked.
That was a pretty accurate description of the situation. “They want you on their side when the apocalypse starts. It’s gonna be good versus evil, and they want you locked up on the side of good.”
“That’s what they are?” she asked.
“That’s what they think they are.” A crucial distinction.
“They want to force me,” she said. “Why do they hate me?”
“They don’t,” I said. “They’re afraid you won’t do what they want, when they want. They don’t trust you.”
“Well, fuck them.”
“I trust you,” I said.
“Do you?” She narrowed her eyes. “You held back the truth all this time.”
I sighed. “I was afraid.”
“Of me?”
“That you wouldn’t understand,” I said. “That I wouldn’t be able to handle it if you didn’t.”
She thought about that. “Part of me gets it, and part of me doesn’t.”
“That’s fair,” I said.
She balled her hands into fists. “Nobody trusts me. If nobody trusts me, how can I be good?”
The question cracked my heart in two. “You’re good not because of anyone else—what anyone else thinks. You’re good because that’s who you are inside. Listen to your intuition, your instinct, your heart. Trust in that. Trust yourself.”
She said nothing.
I stood up and helped her to her feet, squeezing her hands to let her know I loved her.
I’d said what I could, and done what I could. Faith deserved the space to figure things out for herself, even if I didn’t like the outcome. Even if I wanted to find a quiet corner to hide in and cry.
There was no time for that. I pushed my roiling emotions down and locked them away. We had a battle to prepare for and the clock was ticking down.
Chapter 9
COLD AND DAMP seeped in through the seams of the house in spite of the insulation and the central heat blowing through the vents. I shivered, clutching the sill of the window over Ben’s bed, watching for the slightest movement out front through the beads of mist on the glass as the sun went down. Waiting for the operative the Order had sent. Waiting to kill or be killed.
Sunday would be on the first floor, watching the backyard. Faith and Corey stood in the room next to mine, scanning the north side of the house. Red had the south, which he guarded at the window two paces behind me while sitting at Ben’s desk.
I’d shoved the neatly made bed away from the wall so I could sit or stand as I liked, and right now, I chose to stand to the left of the window. I kept my eyes on the prize, but I could feel Red’s gaze settle on me now and again, and I didn’t appreciate feeling as if I had a bull’s-eye between my shoulder blades. The ghost of patchouli incense from the kids’ ritual made me uneasy, too, although that was because it messed with my sense of smell—specifically, my abil
ity to scent anything or anyone who shouldn’t be here.
I tightened my grip on the kitchen knife that served as my non-magical weapon, should I need one. We all had them, except for Sunday, who’d arrived armed with a nine millimeter. I trusted her with the gun. Anyone else would be at greater risk of panicking and shooting themselves or a friend.
What kind of operative had the Order sent? It would be someone whose magic had a chance to work against mine—to neutralize, to overpower. The Order might not be aware that their man would have to fight Sunday as well. She seemed convinced they didn’t know, but I wasn’t so sure. One school of thought suggested that I’d betrayed her trust when I’d left, so she’d have gone as far from me as possible when she did the same. The other school could argue just as well that she’d have made a beeline for me, for love or for revenge. No, the Order would’ve sent someone they believed could take us both, just in case.
I hated waiting like this, and the company was uncomfortable as hell.
Red cleared his throat. “Your friend said the man from the Order would be here within the hour. That was two and a half hours ago,” he said.
“The operative would have taken the time to case the area. He’d assume we knew he was coming, so he’d wait longer than we anticipated to throw us off. And he’d come after dark. Less chance of being seen that way. It’s what I would do.”
“So any minute now?”
“Any minute now.” I caught movement at my eleven o’clock, in the branches of a tall maple. Leaves rustled and parted. Black-feathered wings fluttered. They reminded me of the Angel, but they weren’t his wings. These belonged to another crow.
Night Awakens: The Awakened Magic Saga (Soul Forge Book 1) Page 11