Bryan rubbed his chin, and Aidan could see that all the pieces of his case were finally falling into place. Oddly, he seemed to be having less of a hard time accepting it. Sirens grew louder in the distance.
“I’m going to take your statements now,” Bryan interrupted. “And then, Trent, take her home.”
Aidan told them everything that had happened from the time she left the restaurant to waking up chained to the wall. She told them exactly what the Russian had said to her, though left out her own part in the conversation. His words were just the ramblings of a psychotic without context. She told them he cut off her sleeve so he could see her arm burn in the fireplace, and that’s when Trent arrived. It was rather easy after that: since the suspect was dead, their conversation afterwards wasn’t part of the crime and didn’t need to be accounted for. A paramedic came in to look her over, but she explained away the blood on her arm as a bloody nose.
Since the killer drove Aidan’s car, it needed to be processed by the Crime Scene Unit, so she got in Trent’s car for him to take them back to the city. They remained quiet for most of the drive.
“Phoenix, huh?” he finally mumbled.
“I wanted to live as a human. There’s no place for the mythical bird in this world.”
“I could have spent the rest of my life with you and never really known who you are?”
Aidan swallowed the lump gathering in her throat. “I’ve never lied to you.”
“Amnesia,” he threw out.
“I took the form of an eleven-year-old. There was nothing before that to remember.” She looked over at him. “You have to understand that no one would believe me if I ever did tell the truth.”
Trent jerked the wheel and pulled over to the side of the road. His knuckles turned white in the vise-like grip he held on the wheel. “Yeah, I’m having a hard time with it myself.” He looked at her and shook his head. “But I know what I saw back there.”
“I meant it when I said that you were the best thing that has ever happened to me.” She wanted to reach out and touch him, but feared he’d recoil. “Ever. You’ve come the closest to truly knowing me.”
“Because I learned your secret?”
“No! Before that. I told you I loved dancing and you listened. I want to teach history, but before I met you, it was just a career to pass the time of this life. You made me see that it’s a part of who I am, that it could give me purpose. Two thousand years I’ve lived as a human and I couldn’t figure that out for myself?” Aidan shook her head. “The red bird is just a body. This,” she gestured to herself, “is just a body. Whether it’s this form or that one, I’m still these likes and dislikes, these feelings. I love Phoebe and Chris, and watching him die is tearing me apart. Yet, at the same time, being with you has given me a happiness I didn’t think possible. And I love you, more than—”
Trent reached over and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, pulling her into him. He stopped her mouth with his. At first, she wanted to resist, wary of the thoughts running through his head as he pressed his lips hard against hers, almost to the point of pain, but she melted into him as she realized his embrace hadn’t changed, that his intensity was pure. He had been truly terrified of losing her back there. His touch didn’t feel anything like the frantic possessiveness of the Russian.
“I love you,” he breathed, and reached up to cradle her face in his hands. His gentle touch contrasted starkly with the ferociousness of his need.
Aidan let out a breath. “I’m not too freakish for you?”
“No.” He stroked her cheek tenderly. “I fell in love with the person you described. Knowing your secret just explains all those little mysteries about you, while at the same time opening up a bunch more.” He smiled at her. “I love the mysteries too.”
Aidan pulled him into a tight hug. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
Trent sighed. “If we’re going to bare secrets, I guess I should tell you that Bryan suspected you would become a target of a serial killer, and I was checking up on you this morning when you got off work.”
Aidan laughed and kissed him again. They lingered there for a moment, their lips barely touching, breathing in the scent of each other. “Every animal fears a cage,” she whispered. “But today, I feared lying to you more, because it would mean I am truly alone. Telling you and Bryan could have been the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but right then I wanted it more than anything, damned the consequences.”
“He won’t tell,” Trent said, his voice husky. He leaned his forehead against hers. He smelled of smoke, as always.
“I know.” She clutched part of his shirt in her fist. She breathed him in deeply, trying to calm the racing of her pulse. She wasn’t alone anymore. Trent’s heavy breathing matched hers. She wanted to complete the union, to truly become one with him, for their souls to mate. It took all her effort to lean away from him. “Can we go home please?” she whispered.
Trent nodded and squeezed her hand before putting the car into drive and pulling back out onto the road. He drove to Aidan’s apartment so she could get a new shirt and wash off the blood that had dried on her arm. Trent followed her upstairs and waited while she washed and changed.
Aidan couldn’t foresee all the implications of telling her secret. She moved around her bathroom restlessly, her mind feeling buzzed, her skin tingling as though she was plugged into an electrical outlet. Her brush with the fire seemed to have awakened her innate power, which normally receded into dormancy as she fully surrendered to a mortal way of life. The voices of the flames still rang in her ears and vibrated throughout her blood. The sensation was euphoric—and unusual, since the only other time her phoenix and human form crossed in such a way was her transformations, and then her energies were so depleted that it left her feeling weak and distinctly human.
She came back out and saw Trent holding the compass sundial Bryan had gotten her for Christmas.
“So it’s not just that they’re pieces of the past,” he mused. “They’re pieces of your past?”
Aidan nodded.
“And you remember it so well because you were there?”
She nodded again.
Trent put the compass down. “So you’ve already done everything, traveled everywhere.”
Aidan frowned and walked closer to him. “You make it all new again.” She reached up to touch his cheek. “Sharing it with you, seeing it through your eyes makes everything a new experience.”
He nodded as if he understood. “That’ll just take some getting used to.” He gestured to the phone and the blinking red light on the machine. “You have messages.”
Aidan pushed the playback button.
“Aidan, where are you?” came Phoebe’s panicked voice. “Your cell phone is off, and I can’t reach Trent. I know you were supposed to be together. You need to call me. Chris is in the hospital, and the doctors say it’s the end stage. I can’t do this. Where are you!” The message ended with a beep.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Aidan half jogged down the hospital hallway in search of room 332. Trent was close on her heels. They had run to his car as soon as the answering message had finished, and Aidan had called Phoebe from the road. Aidan didn’t tell her why they had been unreachable or what had happened back in Edmonds.
Chris had collapsed again, only this time it wasn’t the flu. Phoebe had called an ambulance, and he had been admitted to the hospital’s ICU. The doctors said declines like this ended quickly. Aidan couldn’t form a coherent thought beyond that of finding the room he was in and wrapping Phoebe in her arms.
Trent grabbed her elbow and veered her to the left. There was the room; she could see Chris through a glass wall. He was hooked up to several monitors and IV lines, and had an oxygen mask over his face. He looked white, like he had gone swimming in the arctic, and Aidan had a hard time fathoming the drastic change that he had undergone so quickly.
She stumbled into the room. “Phoebe.”
Phoebe sat in the chai
r next to Chris, but jumped up and ran to Aidan. They wrapped each other in a hug, and Phoebe started crying.
“This is it,” she sobbed into Aidan’s shoulder.
After everything that had happened that morning, Aidan didn’t think she had it in her to endure another heart wrenching moment, especially not this one. She felt Trent’s arm under hers, and he led them both to the chairs to sit. He held each of their hands, and Phoebe wept until her tear ducts ran dry.
Aidan held onto Phoebe’s hand tightly and looked at Chris lying so still and soundless in the bed except for the steady beeping of his monitors. She could still hear the ringing in her ears. As she looked at Chris, the panic and despair drew back like a curtain, giving her a moment to think. The idea came like an epiphany, a clear whisper from somewhere else speaking through the vibrating chords inside her. Like the rays of sun breaking through rain clouds, it retreated just as quickly, and Aidan felt the weight of the decision that lay before her. An hour ago she had been faced with losing everything she loved, and now she faced giving it up willingly. She looked at Chris again, and then at Phoebe, eyes swollen and red, now heaving dry sobs.
Aidan shook Phoebe’s hand gently. “Hey. There’s a bathroom down the hall. Why don’t you wash your face with some cold water, okay? You’re not going to be able to see anything soon.”
Phoebe lifted her head and nodded slowly. Trent helped her stand, and Phoebe walked off like a ghost gliding aimlessly. Aidan waited until she had drifted around the corner and turned to Trent.
“I need your help.”
“With what?”
Aidan didn’t know how she was going to say it, how she would make him understand. “Chris doesn’t have to die. I can save him.”
Trent looked at her incredulously. “You…the other part of you…can save him?”
“Yes.” She hadn’t thought of it before because until that morning, she had been fully mortal—at least consciously. But now she could feel the ancient power of the phoenix alive and awake inside of her. “I can give him the rest of my life.”
“What does that mean?” Trent’s face became a mixture of doubt and fear.
“I have eighty years left in this body,” she tried to explain, and glanced around to make sure the hall outside was clear. “I can give them to Chris instead.” She took a deep breath. “He can live and I can die.”
Trent’s jaw worked as he stared at her. “It’s not a real death though, is it? You’ll come back?”
Aidan bit her lip. “I can’t become human again right away. It takes time—about a year.” She shifted in discomfort. “A person can’t just disappear for a year and come back, not in today’s world. I’d have to start over again. Bryan can report that you never found me after I was abducted.”
“No!” Trent shouted, and clenched his fist as people outside turned their heads. “I thought I lost you today, and now you want me to pretend that I did?”
“I can’t let him die knowing that I could have saved him. I can’t look Phoebe in the eye with that knowledge.” Aidan reached out and cupped both his hands in hers. “Can you?”
Trent moaned, glanced at Chris, and then at the door. He grabbed her by both arms. “Then come back to me. I’ll take care of things while you’re gone, say you’re on a trip, notify the school, your apartment, work, everything. Bryan can help. But you come back.”
Aidan raised a hand to his face, her heart swelling with inexplicable sadness and joy.
Trent searched her eyes. “I will wait for you.”
She turned her head away. She had never come back from a death to an old life. Yet, more than anything, she didn’t want to leave him. She leaned her head forward against his chest and listened to the beat of his heart singing in tune with the fire in her blood. She surrendered.
“I’ll come back.”
Trent nodded. “Then what do we need to do?”
“Go to the mountains. It can’t happen here.”
“That’s not going to be easy.”
“You know how to work the equipment,” Aidan said, devising a plan. “You can keep him hooked up to what he needs and get him to the car?”
Trent nodded. “What are you going to tell Phoebe?”
She took a deep breath. “To get some food from the cafeteria. She’ll forgive me when Chris comes back to her safe and well.”
Trent raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re sure?” he pressed.
She nodded, but paused. “You’re not going to go to jail for this, are you?”
He laughed. “If I do, maybe we’ll get out at the same time.”
Aidan went to find Phoebe and take her down to the cafeteria. Trent would get Chris downstairs and to the car, and Aidan would slip away and meet them.
Aidan watched her best friend poke at her food. “Phoebe.”
“Hmm?”
“I love you. Everything will work out for the best.” Then Aidan said she needed to visit the restroom, but she walked right past it and out the doors into the chilly afternoon air. Trent pulled up along the curb and she jumped in. She looked back at Chris bundled in blankets in the backseat, the IV bag lying next to him. He was too weak to know what was happening.
“I’m guessing a secluded place?” Trent asked as they got onto the freeway.
“Near the cabin,” Aidan said. “You can go there when it’s finished.” That place had given her some of the fondest memories she would ever cherish. That’s where she wanted to die.
***
They were lucky; they had gotten on the road before commuter traffic. Trent didn’t want to think about them being delayed or arriving too late. There was no going back from what they had just done, and it needed to work out only one way in order to be all right. Trent’s head swirled with different thoughts and emotions; he was surprised he could still concentrate on the road. Aidan was…mythical seemed the safest word he could use at the moment.
He had been so terrified when he quietly cracked the door to the study to see what the man was shouting about, and had found him forcing her arm into a blazing fire. He had seen burns before, on victims, on colleagues. Then there was nothing, no brown crinkled flesh, not even a dark red like a sunburn. He had wanted to be so relieved that she was unhurt, but—he felt ashamed to admit—was a little afraid of what that meant. Then there was the feather in the glass box, glowing on its own with no visible wires or battery. It was strange and beautiful. Aidan was strange and beautiful, and as she tried to explain what had happened with the same voice she always used, and with the same deep, knowing look in her eyes, Trent knew that nothing she said could change the way he felt about her.
Bryan, ironically, seemed to be the most calm and levelheaded one throughout the conversation. They would have to talk later; Trent knew it was unavoidable. He had expected the three of them to talk, but that wouldn’t happen now. What would he tell Bryan? The truth? Or the same made-up story he was going to tell everyone else?
“What do I tell Chris and Phoebe?” he asked, breaking the silence they had been driving in for an hour. “They’re not going to accept something superficial like you went back to Colorado for a family emergency.”
Aidan remained quiet for a few moments. “Tell them what happened today in Edmonds. The official story,” she added when he raised an eyebrow. “Tell them I love them, but that I needed to deal with what happened, and that it involves going back to my roots.” She shrugged as though that would be enough of a cryptic explanation. “They won’t like it. They’ll probably be hurt, but I know you can get them through it. The important thing is Chris will get through it.”
Trent tightened his hold on the wheel. He hated this. He had half a mind to turn around and go back, to keep her with him, but knew he couldn’t. This was her decision, and it was the right one. He just didn’t want to live without her.
“Aidan, will you marry me?”
“What?” She sounded surprised. “I don’t think there’s time.”
That made him smile; it wasn’t a no
. “When you get back. I’ll propose more formally then too, but…I just wanted you to know my intentions before you left.” He glanced at her.
She tilted her head to look at him, her eyes watering like pools of molten fire. “Yes.”
Trent pulled off onto a side road that would take them up an isolated trail to a campground parallel to the cabin. The closer they got to the spot, the tighter his heart constricted within his chest. He pulled into a clearing and stopped the car. The sun was beginning to sink, casting bright, horizontal rays against the bark of trees and patches of white snow. Trent got a wheelchair from the trunk and took it around to the back. Carefully, he lifted Chris into it while Aidan held the IV bag. They moved several feet away from the car, and Aidan turned around to face them. The lines around her eyes crinkled with pain, just as Trent felt. She suddenly moved into his arms and kissed him. Her hands ran through his hair and clutched at his shirt, desperate as though she knew she wouldn’t be able to convey all she felt in words alone.
She finally pulled away, her chest heaving. “I love you.” Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.
“I love you,” he whispered back. “It’s not forever, not this time.”
Aidan nodded. “I know.” She took a deep breath and knelt in front of Chris. She shook his shoulder gently. “Chris,” she called. He stirred and moaned, but couldn’t open his eyes.
“Happy New Year.” She leaned in and kissed him, and as she did, she began to glow like the feather in the box had. The light grew brighter, and Trent had to take a step back from its intensity. He watched, frozen in awestruck wonder as Aidan appeared to age. She grew thin and pale, and her stunning red hair waned to a pale yellow. She was still beautiful, Trent thought. Chris, on the other hand, looked as though life was pouring back into him, which is exactly what was happening. The hollows around his face filled in, the lines and shadows faded. His color came back, bright and flush.
Phoenix Feather Page 21