“That’s real personal, Addison. We don’t talk about things like that with anyone but our sensei.”
“Who is your sensei?” I watched her longing gaze shift toward the rental place, and I knew. “Remy is your sensei.”
“Was, but my training’s over now, and he didn’t waste any time cutting our ties.” Her voice held too many emotions for me to decipher, and I didn’t have time to work it out since King Kong came marching out of the building swinging a set of keys around his index finger. A waif of a girl came out after him with a clipboard, darting glances up at the big guy.
The girl did a circle-check of a silver Honda CRV and rushed back inside.
“Lesgo, wahines.” Remy climbed in the driver’s side. Sophia reached for the back door, but I shook my head.
“No, you can ride up front with King Kong.” I had no desire to be that near him. It frustrated the bajeepers out of me that he wouldn’t answer my questions about Asher. I’d barely gotten my third question out when he had told me to “shut it.”
Her gaze darted back and forth between the doors.
“Oh, wait just a damn minute. Is this some sort of status thing, too? Soldiers ride in the back?”
“It’s just the way it is.”
“Well, I’m not either right now, and even if I was, it wouldn’t mean diddley-doo-dah to me what uniform you wear, so get your keister up front.”
I caught Remy’s approving grin in the rearview mirror as I climbed in the back, and he crawled into my like-zone a little further. After a load of hesitation and obvious indecision, Sophia got in the front.
“Just turn right out of the parking lot,” I told Remy.
“Know the way,” he said.
“You do?” I frowned, then remembered Asher knew where I lived.
It seemed strange to be home. I’d only been gone since September, and I’d been back for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and reading week, but something strange and awkward twisted in me as we took Highway 11 south. Somebody once said you can never go home, but I didn’t really understand that until now.
I didn’t quite fit anymore, like a foreign body that once blended in but now rode on the surface, not a part of but not completely separate. Tears heated the backs of my eyes, where they stayed. It wasn’t my time at U Waterloo that had pulled me away from that safe feeling of home; it was Asher and the Machine. Asher, who said he’d train me, be there for me, and hadn’t even bothered to pop his head in to be sure I was alive. Yeah, thanks a lot for that, buddy. Unless he really was hurt and Sophia had lied about that. A cold finger went for a stroll along my spine.
Thoughts turning to his memories I’d shared, I wondered how many other sentinels had grown up in violent homes, who’d only known abuse. They all seemed to be cut from that same dark cloth, worn around the edges like a stone battered too long by the river raging around it. It helped me understand him a little more, why he seemed so harsh and unforgiving, and why he’d reacted so fiercely to my petting of him. He wanted other to feel safe, even if he couldn’t, and he was willing to do anything to get it done.
It still didn’t explain his absence. It also didn’t explain why the Machine had marked me as one of them, since I’d grown up in the most loving home I could imagine. Other than the stains my mother left on the family, of course. Even though she was long gone and had hurt us, Dad still disappeared into his office every year on her birthday. I hated her for that.
As Remy turned onto the road toward home, I returned my attention outside. How often would Asher allow me to return here? Or would this be the last time? No, that couldn’t be right. I wouldn’t let it be.
My mind had been in such a flurry, I realized I hadn’t asked the most important question. “So, what am I supposed to tell Dad?” I gripped the seat as we drove through the woods. “You need to let me know soon, because we’re almost there. He’s the most observant man I know, so he’s not going to accept some load of crap.”
“My brah’s already been to see your fadda,” Remy said, but not in a way that made him sound happy about it. “You just here to back it up an’ say aloha. Fo’ a while.”
Fingers digging into the plush upholstery, I leaned forward as much as my seatbelt would give. “He came here? Without me? What did he tell him?”
“He come as Professor Green. He tell your fadda he offer you a job with the International Anthropology Society. You eighteen, so he need no permission, but he visit to be nice.”
“And how does that explain my absence even if Dad wouldn’t flip his biscuit over it?”
“My brah say he take you to a dig in South America for six months.”
“Six months? I can’t be away for six months! I’d miss the summer with him and Thanksgiving!”
Sympathetic sentinel eyes met mine in the mirror. “Be grateful he no wipe you clean of your life while he in there base-lining you. Most sensei do.” The last came out with the sharp bite of anger.
I glanced at Sophia, who’d gone still beside him. “Did you wipe Sophia’s life away?”
Those eyes in the mirror glossed over, and fear stared back at me. Fear and horror, and then finally fury. Something more simmered just beneath the surface of secrets between those two. Did he hate that he’d had to violate her that way? Or was he angry about something in her past he’d wiped away? So not my business.
“Never mind. Sorry I asked.” I let my thoughts tumble around in my head and liked the scenario less and less. “I didn’t think this through well enough. You can’t ask me to say good-bye to my life, all I know. This is my home.” Catching sight of the mailbox where I’d stopped every weeknight after getting off the school bus, I muttered, “Was my home. Why doesn’t it feel that way anymore?”
“You’re part of the Machine now,” Sophia said, as if that should answer my question.
“No, Asher went digging around in my memory and gave me a funky light show.” And gave me the most perfect two minutes of my life. “I haven’t trained or gone hunting wraiths or anything that would change me this much. Why do you say that like it means something more than the words alone?”
“Once initiated,” Remy said, steering us into Dad’s tree-lined driveway, “you get a sense a loyalty that make us ohana … family. You soul an’ you subconscious mind know you don’ belong here anymore, that you got bettah things to do now.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me. Family? None of you talk to one another. You’re all a bunch of grouchy islands that happen to exist in the same small lake.” I crossed my arms and slumped back in the seat as the log cabin came into view through the trees. “You don’t know anything about family, since it involves touching and sharing feelings and the stuff you’re all phobic of.”
I’d never had a big family, but it was enough. Hugs when I came and went. Smiles that lit up the room the instant I walked in. Shoulders to cry on, people to laugh with, that was family. There were days when a pair of arms around me could make everything better. How could I survive without that personal contact? How did any of them? Maybe that explained why they were all so grumpy, other than Sophia.
The silence seemed alive in the CRV. As we pulled up in front of the separate garage, I asked, “So Asher talked to Dad. He’d never agree to let me go away for that long and ditch school, right? Did he tell Asher to piss off or what? How much convincing am I going to have to do here?” I’d never lied to Dad about anything other than covering my reality-unraveling episodes with talk of nightmares, and this was a doozy.
“He agreed,” Sophia said quietly.
“What?” I unbuckled myself. “Who agreed to what?”
She twisted in her seat to face me. “Asher told him about your passion for anthropology and archaeology. He told him you had an aptitude for it greater than any student he’s ever met and suggested this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to follow your dream and make a career out of it. He promised a steady salary and benefits, knowing that would be important to your dad.”
A great whit
e noise roared in my head. One corner of my lips twitched up. “Asher said all that?” Nah. I’d believe in unicorns before I believed in that degree of thoughtfulness from Asher Green.
“I thought he been smokin’ the pakalolo when he say so, too,” Remy said, a smile in his voice. “My brah don’ talk nice ’bout nobody. You make some kinda impression during the ceremony, yeah?”
Oh, yeah, I’d made an impression on him all right, with my hands all over his body. “Such an impression, he hasn’t even bothered to see whether or not he killed me when he shoved my soul so hard it almost came out the back of me.” It should have been an exaggeration, but it wasn’t. What we’d done should have shocked or scared me or … something, but it didn’t. Part of me wanted to do it again, to see deeper into him, to hear that haunting voice of his split me open and fill me up.
I got out of the car, struggling to draw in a breath that didn’t shake. Dad had accepted me leaving for six months and abandoning school, just like that? Maybe Asher had messed with him in some way. Either way, I needed to know.
Chapter 17
I planted myself by the ’79 Camaro Dad and I had assembled from the frame up as I stared at the log cabin Dad had built for two. All of the windows were trimmed with red paint. I’d redone it last summer before heading to Waterloo. The last bit of fun Dad and I had as a family while I still lived at home.
I didn’t want to forget both of us covered in paint when we’d started flicking it at each other, or the laughter that had filled the August day as we’d worked and played. But it seemed distant, like someone else’s memory, one I no longer felt a part of. Would that be my last memory of good times with him?
I tore my gaze from the windows and committed the rest of the house to memory. Wine-red tin covered the roof, which made a soothing pattering sound when it rained. Best sound ever to fall asleep to. The front walk we’d assembled with broken flagstone curved around flowerbeds I’d planted with tulips and daffodils, now bright with red and white and yellow—spring at its finest. I stood there and wanted that feeling back, the sense of home, of belonging. It didn’t come.
“You coming in, Addy, or are you just going to stare at the house all day?” Dad asked from the open doorway. His short hair had begun to gray around the temples, and the rest matched my shade of rich brown. Six feet and built like he worked for a living, his plaid shirt tucked into green work pants, he smiled, but it didn’t go anywhere near those honey-brown eyes. For some reason that made me feel better. If he’d been truly happy, I’d have assumed Asher had messed with his memory.
“Hi, Dad.” Smiling back, I raced along the flagstones, up the two steps to the door, and jumped into his outstretched arms. He pulled me inside and swung me around. No matter how old I got, I was still a kid in his arms, little and safe and loved. Remembering that Asher had never known the safety of a father’s arms shoved the keen edge of a knife in my chest.
Was that why he wouldn’t come home with me? Because he’d seen the memories of my life, my family, and it hurt too much to see the real thing? No. I was overanalyzing. And, I remembered, he’d been here many times before even if I hadn’t seen him. Maybe he was just out hunting Bugmen. I wasn’t one to make everything about me.
Dad let me slide out of his arms. As always, he smelled of the outdoors, fresh air and earth, and under that, his Zest soap. “Who’s your friend?” he asked.
I turned to find Sophia appearing tiny in the open doorway, hunched as if waiting to be told to go away. How often did someone have to be dismissed to expect it like that? Too many times. She dropped her gaze, her streaked bangs sliding down to cover her face with such skill she must have done it to hide a thousand times.
“This is my friend, Sophia. Sophia, this is my Dad, Raymond. Where’s Remy?”
Smiling, uncertain and shy, she stepped across the threshold, her hands wringing together. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Beckett,” she said, then turned to me. “Remy had … um … some stuff to do. He’ll be back when we’re ready to go.”
No way had he gone anywhere. At the ceremony, Asher had mentioned the danger of a wraith finding an unbound guardian, so Remy was probably keeping watch. Was I safe now that Asher had done his taste-test? Either way, better safe than sorry.
Dad held out his hand. She stared at it, stared at me, and I nodded, motioning for her to take it. She did, and they shook, probably the first skin contact she’d had since joining the Machine, and wasn’t that sad.
“Good to meet you, young lady,” he said while she smiled and stared at her fingers. “Are you going off on this big adventure, too?”
I almost asked “what adventure?” before cluing in. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
Sophia shut the door, lingering there. “You have a nice home here, Mr. Beckett.”
While Dad pointed out a few of his favorite pictures of me on the wall next to her, one at the beach and my kindergarten picture before my life ventured into Strangeville, I shook out my fingers, in need of something to do with my hands. How did I start this conversation? How could I tell him good-bye for so long? “Dad, I …”
When nothing more made it out of my mouth, he leaned in and kissed my forehead. “Kettle’s on. This talk’d go over better where we’re all comfy with a steaming mug of hot chocolate in hand, dontcha think?”
Sophia’s eyes grew round and large. Not fear, but wonder. “Hot chocolate?”
My brow took a short elevator ride north. “You’ve never had hot chocolate before? That’s, like, food blasphemy or something.”
“No. I mean, we only have healthy food at the … at the office.”
I almost asked, “What about before?” But if Remy had erased her past, then she might not remember food or drink she’d had before being inducted to the Machine. “You’ll love it. Come in, make yourself at home. I’ll get the chocolate. You like marshmallows?”
She shrugged, grinning like a kid offered a pass to Candy Land. “I don’t know. Will I?”
“I’ve never met anyone who didn’t. Why don’t you take Sophia for a little tour, Dad?”
He gave me a cock-eyed look, as if he knew I wasn’t ready to be alone with him for our inevitable “talk” and wasn’t sure he approved.
“Sure thing.” He went into the living room, guiding my new friend along with a sweep of his arm. “You like fishing, Sophia?”
I sniggered to myself. It was the first thing he asked anyone he met. He always joked that he loved me first and his little boat and fishing rod second.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever done it, so I don’t know,” she said.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever done it. She didn’t know if she liked marshmallows. How much had she lost? Could she remember anything of her childhood? Had it been good? Horrible? Would Asher eventually take mine from me?
Swallowing hard, I made an abrupt turn from their chatter and went into the kitchen. Maple cabinets lined the log walls. He’d made those, too. He was an electrician by trade and a carpenter by hobby. A large window over the sink let the spring sunshine flood across the green tile floor, warm and bright. The little square table in the corner still held crumbs from his lunch that would have been a sandwich of some sort.
I’d been zombie-staring out the window when the kettle gave a shrill shout and nearly peeled me out of my skin. I turned the burner off and moved the kettle to the center to stop the whistling while my heart had conniptions.
When Dad’s slippers squeaked against the floor behind me, I busied myself gathering mugs from above the sink and then went on to fetch the hot chocolate from the corner cabinet, studiously avoiding his gaze. If our eyes met, it would be time to talk. I so wasn’t ready for this conversation. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready. How could I lie to him? How could I leave him for six whole months and maybe more?
I suddenly realized I’d never live with him again, no matter what happened. When I went off to Waterloo, I knew it was a big step, but the possibility that I might come home while I looked for a jo
b afterward was still there. Now …
“You gonna spend the afternoon staring into that mug?” he asked, his voice tinged with humor and sadness at once.
I sighed and let the mug plunk back to the counter. Still didn’t turn. Brave, that’s me. “Dad, I—”
“Just hold it right there, Addy.” Tender, deep words. “I need to say my piece before you get yourself all twisted into a knot over there.”
I looked at him then, turning slowly, afraid to see the expression that went with his unusually serious tone. His lips curved in a slight smile, and the sun bisecting him made his hair appear even grayer than normal. I didn’t like the thought of him getting old, and that made leaving so much worse.
Would I still be eighteen in body while he shriveled into old age and died? “What do you mean?” I asked, desperate to chase that terrible thought from my head. “And where’s Sophia?”
“She’s in the bathroom. Think she knew we needed to chat. Real nice girl. Now, stop trying to change the subject and put your behind down at the table here so I can recite the speech I spent the night duct-taping together.” Two strides had him at the maple table he’d made himself using Uncle Oliver’s wood shop. He pulled out a chair for me.
I marched over and plopped down, wishing I could hide in one of the cupboards instead. Give me wraiths or Kat or Asher, and I’d have been less twisted up than I was now. “I know what you’re going to say, that this is rash and irresponsible and going to ruin my life, and I’ll pay you back every cent of the tuition money, but—”
He put his finger over my lips, grinning. “Looks like I’m not the only one who’s been rehearsing. Now, hush.”
I laughed without humor. Tired. Terrified. Unwilling to cut the kite string and fly off on my own just yet. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m listening.”
I tried to picture Asher talking to Dad in a way that wouldn’t have made him angry and throw my sensei out on the lawn, but I just couldn’t do it. Asher wasn’t exactly Mr. Charm, or even Mr. Tolerable-For-Five-Seconds. Except in the chamber. I began to wonder if that softness I’d seen was real or an act to get me to do what he wanted. I had a terrible feeling I wouldn’t be seeing that Asher again, even though I needed him like air.
Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace) Page 15