“I’m not doing anything. This is my memory you’re stomping through. I think if I were violating someone else’s head, they’d be part and parcel of the experience.”
“This is my head you’re wandering around in. You came to me. I just fell asleep. I can’t push into your mind. Only Reavers can do that.”
Simeon considered this for a moment, his eyes searching into the darkness. “There was this night,” he said quietly, “when the moon was so full. Round and fat like a huge silver coin in the sky.” He pointed upwards, gesturing to the moon, which truly was the biggest Farley had ever seen, otherworldly in its beauty. “Aria said she had to bathe under it. She made me bring her here to this beach. We lay out on the sand on our backs until the dawn stepped over the rim of the ocean and she made me chase her through the surf.”
As he spoke, the deep void of the night sky slowly brightened and cleared of all its clouds, wisping away like teased-out cotton wool. The burnished copper head of the sun breached the distance, lighting the world a deep blue and then a soft yellow and then to brilliant gold. Simeon closed his eyes, the light washing over his face, turning his hair a deep caramel. Two figures raced through the white foam where it met the shore.
The slim, pretty woman with long, flowing blond hair, held up the soaked hem of her dress as the spray erupted around her ankles. Simeon was smiling, the skin on the backs of his arms and legs marbled with dried-on sand. He darted towards Aria and her smile spread wide, flashing her teeth. Their mouths moved quickly as they laughed and shouted to one another, but the sounds of their joy were lost to the annals of another time. Saxon paced towards the couple with his hands in his pockets, watching the scene, too. With the burning morning sunlight at his back, Farley could make out that his hair was fair, curling around his ears.
She was still studying the melancholic air about Saxon when, as quick as it had come, the sun dipped out of sight again, stealing back the light. Simeon opened his eyes. “Tell me, what is your remembrance of this beach?”
Farley opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t. The sight of Simeon and Aria running giddy and excited across the most beautiful dawn she’d ever seen had robbed her of all words. So this was his memory. She sank down into the sand beside him.
“Why isn’t she here with you now?”
He turned away, his face falling into shadow. “She’s never with me now. I see her sometimes in the distance, usually with another version of me, but I can’t hold her.” He shook his head, staring down at his hands. “I can’t touch her.”
“Then why are you here?” she whispered.
Simeon’s gaze flickered to her, picking her over. “I’m here always, in one way or another. I can’t seem to recall a time when I woke up and was part of a new day. It just seems to be one long memory that bleeds into the next. Occasionally, I get to be with her.” He smiled regretfully. “Mostly I don’t. I feel anxious, like something bad is happening, but I can’t seem to unravel anything. It all gets so confused.”
Farley glared at him, trying to pick apart the lie. But she couldn’t. He really seemed to believe everything he was saying. “If what you’re saying is true, then how am I here? I definitely didn’t come here of my own free will. And I’m not a Reaver.”
“A part of you is,” he said. “Some part of you must be. I’ve read about you. They said you would come. Tell me your name.”
“I’m Farley. We’ve already met. Don’t you remember?”
He frowned, each of his hands clamped around the top of the other arm as he thought. “Yes, I do. I think. You didn’t look like this, though. You looked like Aria. You were inside Aria.”
She nodded. “You didn’t make me do that either?”
“Of course not.”
It was mystifying. How did she keep ending up inside Simeon’s memories, especially when they were supposed to be visions or her dreams? She cracked her knuckles, frustrated. The fact that she found this problem so irritating was laughable- like she expected the abnormalities that plagued her life to behave in a particular way, working within the confines of rational parameters. Her understanding of what happened to her was vague at best. None of this should be coming as a surprise. She bit down on her lip until it felt like it might pop. “We’re from different times. Why do you look normal to me? Why are you wearing regular clothes and speaking normally?”
Simeon raised his eyebrows. “We’re not physically communicating, only mentally. Your brain is very good at filling in gaps, making sense of things. You’re picturing me how it would make sense to picture me, hearing me the same way. No doubt I’m not seeing or hearing you exactly as you are, either.”
Weird. Simeon was probably wearing lederhosen or a Dracula cape and all she was seeing was a dress shirt and black pants. The intricacies of the whole thing were intriguing. “Simeon, can you take me to another memory?”
His eyes, soft until now, frosted over. “This isn’t a game.”
“I know.”
“Then what is it? Tell me what it is.”
The beach started shifting, the sand vibrating underneath Farley until it felt like it might separate around her and swallow her whole. When she looked up, the waves crashing along the shore slowed until they stopped entirely for one stretched out heartbeat, and then they slipped backwards, flowing in reverse. Wave after wave sucked back in on itself, churned foam sliding away and turning to inky black swell, pushing out to sea. Farley’s head started to spin. She turned from the peculiar spectacle to find Simeon holding out his hand towards her. As he did so, grains of sand rose up from the beach, cascading skywards, working their way back between his fingers until his fist clenched around them tight.
“When you figure this out, Farley, when you realize what I’ve realized, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Until then, you really have to leave.”
Thirty One
Indigo
The hotel was a sleek black obelisk thrusting out of the ground. No name lit up against the side of the building like the other hotels in the area, and that in itself said something: it was too select to advertise. If you didn’t know its name, you probably weren’t ever going to find out. Daniel said it was simply called Indigo. He parked the Viper in the underground car park, and before she knew it they were standing in an elevator that looked like it came from the set of Star Trek. The only thing missing was some lens flare and a hissing sweep when the doors closed.
When they made it to the ground floor, Daniel slung her bag onto his back, carrying his own identical duffel in his hand. For the first time Farley felt self-conscious about her scruffy jeans and cotton shirt. All around her, people in business attire and designer clothes moved in and out of the hotel, pausing for the concierge to open the door because, heaven forbid, they should have to open it for themselves. This wasn’t her world. She didn’t care for this world, not one bit.
The polished marble floor of the foyer was slick. Her sneakers squeaked as she followed the self-confident figure that was Daniel as he bee-lined for the receptionist. The noise drew a few mildly displeased glares from people sitting on the leather couches, reading newspapers and working at laptops. They were all equally as polished as the floor.
Daniel dropped the bags with a loud thump and smiled briefly at the skinny blond behind the desk. Farley ducked behind the foliage of a Ficus, trying her damnedest to blend in and avoid the hot stares of the LA elite. They were obviously asking themselves the same question she was: what the hell was she doing here?
Daniel didn’t seem fazed by the fact that he was in a five star hotel wearing a faded black t-shirt and worn jeans, or that it looked like they’d slept in their car the night before. Which, technically, she had. Or at least she had some of the night. Mostly, she’d rolled around on the passenger seat, unable to get comfortable while attempting to work out Simeon’s riddle. Daniel had just driven. He slipped his hand into his back pocket, procuring his wallet, from which he drew a plain black card with silver embossing on the front. It made
a snapping noise when he placed it on the desk.
“I’m checking in. I’ll be using my rooms.”
The blond didn’t even look up, just palmed the card and keyed some information into the computer. She stared at the screen for a moment then blinked at him. “Very good, Mr. Montisauri. Welcome back. I’ll have them opened up immediately. You can leave your bags and a porter will bring them up. Would you like to wait, or would you like a contact call when everything is arranged as per your requirements?”
“The requirements on record are no longer necessary. We’ll just go straight up by ourselves. Thank you.” Daniel took back the card and collected the bags, heading for the elevator. Farley extricated herself from the plant and shadowed him to the door. She couldn’t help but think it: what on earth was he doing with an actual account at a place like this? And what were his ‘special requirements’? There was only one kind of requirement a hotel such as this organized for its guests, and that was the dodgy kind. Usually along the lines of prostitutes and class A drugs.
The elevator dinged and the doors rolled back. Daniel stepped inside and slotted his card into a key reader. He stood there looking at her with a shy smile on his face until the doors began to close and he had to stick his foot out to block them. “You okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you coming?”
“I guess.” She stepped forward and the doors closed behind her, trapping them inside. She barely felt the moment when they began to ascend. Daniel was studying her out of the corner of his eye; he looked like he was trying not to smile.
“You’re thinking that I bring hookers here, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Yes, you are.”
Farley rocked back on her heels, looking up at the display as it trawled through the floor numbers. They’d reached the twenty-second floor when she said casually, “Well, do you?”
The elevator ground to a halt, and the doors slid open. Daniel paced out, throwing her an amused glance over his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows in an infuriating way that wasn’t an answer at all.
“Ugh!” She stomped out after him and froze before she’d taken five steps. They weren’t in a hallway. They’d exited directly into a suite, and a freaking big one at that. The far side of the room was walled glass from ceiling to floor, and Los Angeles sparked and spat out light like a dysfunctional circuit board beyond. There was a sunken circular leather sofa at the far side of the room, which sat before a ridiculously big flat-screen television. In the center of the room was a full-length pool table with blue felt, the cues resting up against it like a game had been abandoned half finished. Daniel tossed the bags on the sofa and strode back to the entrance, holding his hands out to her.
She looked at his hands, looked at the room, looked at him. He took hold of her wrist and kissed her knuckles, pulling her towards him. “Don’t freak out, okay. I used to come here sometimes when I wanted a break. I haven’t been here in five years. When I was here, I liked smashing golf balls off the roof. They used to leave buckets of them up here for me, no questions asked about how the windows on the surrounding buildings kept getting smashed. I hit a helicopter once.” He pulled the left side of his mouth up into a lop-sided smile that made her insides flutter. “And no, I’ve never brought a woman here in order to pay her for sex.”
Somehow, that clarification didn’t make her feel better. “Oh? Just plenty of women who didn’t want payment, right?”
Daniel frowned, pulling her into the room. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
A horrible, bitter thought formed as Farley spun around taking in the beautiful artwork and the plush rugs and the sleek-looking kitchen that branched off from the main room. There was one girl she did not want to have been here. She was already picturing her running around half naked in nothing but one of his shirts. Farley scowled, shaking her hands out of his. “Cassie’s been here, hasn’t she?”
“Uhh…” Daniel looked around, as though he thought she meant Cassie was here now, hiding behind the sofa or something. He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Right. So you only ever hooked up at the cabin.”
He took a step back as though he needed space between them in order to see her properly. “What?”
“You know what I mean.”
By the look of confusion on his face, he possibly didn’t. There was no way she was going to spell it out for him; the mental images were bad enough without voicing the whole nasty thing. She shoved her hands into her pockets, wishing away the past few seconds. Who knew jealousy tasted so disgustingly, horrifically bad? Daniel turned around slowly, his shoulders tense, and made his way into the kitchen.
“I’m going to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about so we can avoid this conversation, okay?”
Unbelievable. Totally unbelievable. He was a nightmare. Farley charged over to the view of the city below, surging and throbbing to a rhythm that could only be heard on the other side of the glass. The metropolis, like any other night, was a living, breathing, ugly, beautiful thing. “Coward,” she whispered.
Daniel’s reflection approached her quietly from behind, his face serious and sharp. He wound his arms around her waist and rested his chin gently on her shoulder. “I am a coward. But only when it comes to you.”
“Well, don’t be. The thought of you with someone else makes me feel physically sick but I’m not a child. I’m not stupid. You’re ancient. Of course there have been people before me, Cassie included.” Farley re-focused her eyes, not wanting to look at the intense expression on his face; instead, she concentrated on the dark outlines of the high rises, lit sporadically against the darkness. Daniel’s arms fell slack from around her, and his hands came to rest on her hips.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he murmured, pressing his face into her hair. He hooked his thumbs under her shirt and rubbed them in slow circles over the base of her spine. She shivered, fighting with herself. It was hard to be angry when he was so close, when the smell of him flooded her senses.
“Then tell me,” she demanded, placing her hands behind her over his. His thumbs stopped working over her skin.
“There was someone. Once,” he whispered.
Farley narrowed her eyes, intending to zero in on the Daniel in the glass again. Before she could see what his face was doing, though- whether he looked awkward or uncomfortable- she caught sight of her own reflection. Backlit from the room behind, she looked pallid and washed out. Her clenched jaw made her look tired and hard. Suddenly she wished she hadn’t pushed it. There was no way she wanted to hear about this. “Stop. Don’t. It…it doesn’t matter.”
“No.” He shook his head, softly brushing her hair back over her shoulder to expose her bare neck. “It doesn’t matter. This matters.” He leaned forward and slowly lowered his lips to her skin, his eyes still locked on hers in the glass. The heat from his kiss was explosive, wracking through her body. She twisted in his arms, turning to face him. He rolled with it, slouching down to continue kissing her neck, gently grazing his teeth across her skin in a way that made her legs go weak. It felt like he was holding her up, his hands rough against her back, her hips, her thighs. He shoved her against the glass, hard, and she slapped her palms against the cold surface, momentarily scared. The whole world was at her back. It felt like with one heady heartbeat they would topple back into it, lost in the dizzying sensation of the fall and the kiss and the way everything felt like it had stopped moving.
Daniel brought his hands up to cradle her face, kissing her like didn’t need oxygen to breathe, couldn’t bear the space between them. A low crackle ripped through the air, and Farley felt the sweet burn of his light biting at the skin on her neck. Her whole body tremored involuntarily. She gasped, low and shocked. Daniel sucked in a deep breath and jumped back, clenching his fists by his sides. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Farley slid down the glass as her knees buckled. Her breathing matched his, ragged and uneven.
“What?”
He raked his hands back through his hair in a motion that gave away his frustration, and shot her a pained look. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t do that. It’s… it’s kinda weird.”
She looked up at him in a daze, feeling slightly flushed and embarrassed. There was no way her cheeks weren’t fuchsia right now. “It’s not kinda weird,” she said in a breathy voice that barely sounded like her own. “It’s kinda hot.”
Daniel quit pacing and pulled a troubled face. “You don’t think what I just did bares any resemblance to Simeon’s predilection for doping up his wife?”
Confusion burst through the crazy lust crowding her mind, and Farley finally gripped hold of her senses. “No, I don’t think that. Simeon was forcing energy into Aria and getting energy in return. He connected with her soul in a physical way. She was addicted to the feeling, like it was an incredibly powerful drug. This…” She slowly got to her feet and closed the distance between them. “This is different. Your power’s just light when you want it to be, right?”
He fixed his green eyes on her like she was speaking a different language. “Yes.”
“And when you do that to me… it’s not like you’re connecting with my soul, taking my energy. You’re just…” she shrugged, “shocking me a little. Pleasurable pain and all that.”
Farley’s words were barely out of her mouth before something crazy happened: Daniel blushed. He dipped his head and hid behind the curtain of hair that fell into his face. “I guess, when you put it like that…” A surprised laugh worked free from Farley, and he looked up at her ruefully, running his hand over his face. “Be kind,” he laughed half-heartedly, prodding her in the ribs.
“I’m always kind.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his forehead against hers. “Not always. Sometimes you can be positively cruel.”
Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) Page 19