Deception of the Magician (Waldgrave Book 2) (23 page)

She did. She was tired and confused, and more than a little emotional at the time being, but she knew Howard was never going to let her leave Waldgrave again. It was likely the Council was going to back him up on that decision for Lena’s own protection. If Griffin was right, and Master Daray was going to die in a matter of months, it was now or never. Finding the portal meant crushing a way of life, whether it was ever opened or not; but it also meant freedom. It was what she had set out to do.

“Why’d you buy a gun?” Lena’s eyes snapped very quickly to Griffin’s face. He looked a little surprised by the question, but not entirely so.

“I didn’t. It’s on loan from a friend of your grandfather.” He continued to look at the road, as though the answer was satisfactory.

“No—I mean 
why
. Who are we running from, Griffin?” Lena watched him carefully. “Or don’t you know?”

After several tense seconds, he heaved a great sigh. “I’m not going to tell you. You can’t handle it.”

“What, and you can? I’m not a child. You know, 
he
 had no problem at all telling me that Ava was killed…”

Griffin looked over. “He told you that?”

“Yeah.”

Griffin continued shooting quick glances at her. “What else did he say?”

Lena looked down at the speedometer. “You’re going ninety in a sixty-five.”

Griffin glanced down and tapped the brakes. “It’s not important, alright?”

“You seem to think it’s 
damn
 important!” Lena crossed her arms. “I’m not going to do this until you tell me what’s going on.”

Griffin drove on. He turned the radio on for a while, then turned it off. Lena wasn’t sure if he was debating with himself or just thinking. Eventually, he started to talk.

“This isn’t something you need to deal with. I can handle it.” He said.

“And I’ll say it again, Griffin—I’m not a child. This isn’t your decision to make for me.”

He glanced over at her several times, everything from annoyance to concern in his eyes. “A terrorist group is taking responsibility. It’s comprised of a number of human-borns that walked out on their households over the past few months, as far as we can tell. They’re being led by a radical calling himself Rollin King. His real name’s Rollin Miller, according to our records.”

Lena thought for a moment; the name sounded familiar. “Rollin? As in the Rollin you kicked out of Waldgrave on cards night? Rollin of the former Corbett household?”

“I told you he was dangerous…” Griffin shook his head. He squeezed the steering wheel hard. “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

Lena gave him an uneasy look. “That would have been…um, unnecessary.” Griffin rolled his eyes rather uncharacteristically as she said this—he probably felt that she was being too forgiving, or, as he frequently accused her, too feminine and sensitive. “Okay. What? I mean, why me?”

“They’re human-borns, Lena, I don’t know.” Griffin muttered. “They probably don’t even know what they’re doing.”

Lena mulled the information over. It didn’t make sense—of everyone she had thought had motive to kill her over the past few days, human-born Silenti were not on the list. They stood the most to gain, on many levels, from the safe return of the portal. There had to be some mistake; it couldn’t have been the human-borns. Even though Griffin didn’t give them much credit, Lena knew they were much smarter than anyone on the Council was willing to acknowledge. For the few brief moments that Lena had known Rollin, she knew he was very intelligent; he was very organized in thought and action, that much was clear. Lena studied Griffin’s face, searching for any trace of deception, and then finally conceded. She could have asked who else had been killed, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know anymore.

“Tulsa.” She said finally. “The next one came from Tulsa. I’m going to need your phone again…”

“Why?”

“Howard’s going to worry.”

“He’s going to worry more if you tell him what we’re doing. Trust me, he knows they would shove it right in the Council’s face if they manage to catch or kill us. Just like they did with Ava and the others.” Griffin set the auto drive and used his left knee to drive as he fidgeted with his bandages for a moment. “No news is good news. Howard knows that.”

Lena gave him a pleading look. “Please, Griffin. Please. I can’t do this to him.”

“No. If you tell him what we’re doing, he’s going to report it and they’ll head us off before we even get to Tulsa. So no.”

Lena turned quietly back to face the landscape rushing past the car window. Howard was going to worry; he didn’t deserve it. It was an offense worthy of a permanent grudge, and Lena knew she would understand if he never forgave her for what she was about to do. For what she was already doing, really. But she was stuck between a rock and a hard place, because Griffin was right—if she told, he would stop them. And as much as Lena loved Howard and didn’t want him to worry, she needed to do what she was going to do. But still, it bothered her.

Griffin pulled out his cell phone, dialed it, and then passed it to Lena. “Tell her we were discovered and I’m taking you to Phoenix—our parents kept a summer home there. The way she talks, it’ll get back to Waldgrave sooner or later.”

Lena pressed the phone to her ear just in time.

“Hello?” A female voice asked.

“Hello?” Lena echoed.

“Lena! Are you alright? No one’s telling us what’s going on…” It was Hesper. She sounded worried.

“I’m fine. We’re fine.” She glanced over at Griffin, secretly cursing him. He expected that lying to her best friend was going to be any easier than not saying anything at all? Even then, Hesper had an unusual and inconvenient gift for spotting lies. “I’m with Griffin now, and—“

“That’s what Greg said was going to happen! He’s doing much better now, we’re told. We just landed and we’re going to see him…We’ve all been so worried.” Lena breathed a sigh of relief; Greg was alive. She heard voices in the background. “What? Yes, it’s Lena. She’s with Griffin.” Hesper’s voice returned to the phone. “Serena says ‘hi.’ We’re all so happy you’re okay!”

“Greg’s okay then?” Lena confirmed.

Hesper spoke quickly. “It was a close call, but he’s going to make it. The Council’s been going nuts with all of this…”

Griffin was starting to give her anxious looks. He tapped his wrist, and Lena tried to wrap it up. “I'm happy he’s okay…tell him I said ‘hi,’ and I’m thinking about him. We’ve had a little trouble, and Griffin’s taking me to the summer house in Phoenix.”

Hesper paused. “Phoenix? We haven’t used it since I was, like, twelve probably. I thought they sold it…”

Lena felt panic rise in her chest. “Griffin says it’s still there. I need to wrap this up, or Griffin’s going to get angry, so…yeah. We’re okay. We’re definitely okay, and we’re going to Phoenix.”

“Okay.” Hesper stopped talking. “Why are you telling me this?”

Lena glared at Griffin. Why had he thought this would work? “Because I really need you not to dig too deep on this one. Because I need you to do me a huge favor, and tell Howard exactly what I just told you. Okay?”

There was another moment of silence. “Are you in trouble?”

“Well, no…Just tell him, okay? We’ll be in Phoenix.”

“Okay…Take care of yourself. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Lena rolled her eyes. Despite the many times they had said that phrase to each other, neither of them had ever listened. They said their goodbyes and Lena closed the cell phone. As she was handing it back to Griffin, it occurred to her that they should probably get rid of it altogether.

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll be able to track us with GPS?” She asked.

“This phone isn’t traceable.”

“Oh, really?” Lena doubted that his untraceable cell phone was legal by Council standards; but then, they were already traveling illegally, attempting to locate, possess, and return a relic illegally, carrying a concealed weapon, which was probably illegally acquired, and driving in a car that she doubted Griffin held the title to. In effect, she had just purposely misled a Council representative concerning her whereabouts, which was grounds for immediate expulsion from the Council. Legality wasn’t exactly a big thing in her life right at that moment.

Though Griffin stated his intent to drive through the night early in the day, he tired quickly and they had to stop around dusk. Despite twenty minutes of persuasion, Griffin was not willing to let Lena drive, even if it meant getting a little further away from anyone that might be chasing them; he stopped in the first semi-large town they could find to check them into a hotel. He put on a thick jacket and kept it on until they were in the room to hide the dried blood stain on his shirt.    

Once in the hotel room—Lena guessed it must have been about a three-star from the amenities—Griffin’s cell phone started ringing. He checked who was calling, and then promptly turned it off, grabbed his backpack, and headed for the bathroom.

“It was Howard,” he mumbled as he walked past Lena.     

She went and sat on the edge of her bed and waited for Griffin to finish changing the bandages on his shoulder; there was a black and white picture of a sunset over the beach on the opposite wall over the television. A single wooden reclining chair was settled amongst the reeds, and off to the right there was a long pier hanging over the tumbling water. Though she had been many places, she had never spent much time around commercial beaches because the sand got all over everything in the suitcases and then became impossible to remove. She had enjoyed her time on the beach while visiting the Masons in Australia; maybe after all of it was over, she would spend an extended vacation at a beach house. Since she had already seen the world, and it wouldn’t be the same without Aaron anyways, she might even decide to live on the beach someday.

Griffin came back out of the bathroom, with fresh bandages and in nightclothes, and tossed the backpack into a corner before collapsing onto the other bed. “We’re leaving early, so you might want to sleep now. Don’t answer the door or the phone. If anyone knocks or the phone rings, wake me up.”

Lena got up and tried to inconspicuously grab the bag with the bandages in it before heading off to the bathroom, but Griffin saw.

“All of your stuff’s in the other bag.” He mumbled, closing his eyes again to try to sleep.

“I know.” She knelt down and tried to quickly and quietly extract what she needed.

Griffin cracked an eye again. “I told you, all of your stuff’s in the other bag. What are you doing?”

Lena closed her eyes tightly for a moment, bracing herself for what was coming. “I got a cut while we were running, and I need a new bandage.”

Griffin sat up and gave her a questioning look, as though she might have been joking. Then he got up and walked over. “You should have told me.”

He grabbed the bag and walked with Lena to the sink, where he set the bag down, opened it, and looked at her, waiting.

“I can do this myself. I did it this morning.” She gave him an annoyed glance as she started to reach for the bag again.

“You don’t know what you’re doing. Now, we can lose sleeping time fighting about this, or we can do it my way now.” He kicked the bag behind him and out of her reach, gave her an exhausted but stern look, and crossed his arms.

Lena stared at him for a moment, then acquiesced. She rolled up her pants leg and sat down on the suitcase stand in the inset closet space that was opposite the sink area. Carefully, she unwrapped her leg and peeled off all the gauze. The wound had finally scabbed over, and while it was still a jagged mess, it was looking better than she had ever seen it. “See? It’s not that bad.”

Griffin knelt down and gave her a disapproving look. He awkwardly brought his left hand to her injured right knee and settled it with his thumb just under the cut. His touch was warm and firm. “You needed stitches. Who helped you with this?”

If she had been in more of mood to fight, she might have called him on thinking that she couldn’t have done it herself. “The woman back at the church. I told her I didn’t want any hospitals or doctors—I know how the Council feels about public records.”

Griffin cocked an eyebrow. “I think you could have made an exception for this.”

“Right. But it’s fine now, so skip the lecture.” She doubted he would have been so generous if she actually had gone to a hospital—after all, he had been shot and hadn’t seen it as reason enough to seek professional help. Griffin had gone back to staring at the twisted, bloody scab that trailed from one side of her knee to the other in a sort of lop-sided crescent. He ran his thumb very gently across it, transfixed. “Griffin?”

He looked back up at her quickly, then sighed and started pulling supplies out of the bag. After doing a quick cleaning with the disinfectant, he re-wrapped her with a clean bandage and taped it in place.

“Get some sleep now. It’s going to be a long drive tomorrow.”

Lena stood up. “Yeah, you said that earlier today, too. Really, how bad is it? Your shoulder?”

Griffin got up and walked away across the room. He sat back down on his bed. “I told you. Not bad.”

Lena went over and sat next to him. “Not bad, or not bad for a gunshot wound?”