Guardian (40 page)

“Now, no matter what, you’ll be able to get around and take care of Colton and Grace, even when I’m… busy.”

My lips and fingers suddenly felt numb, and it had nothing to do with the cold air. “Rafael,” I said slowly, horror creeping over me as I realized the truth, “why does it feel like you’re saying goodbye? Are you-” my throat choked up as I tried to form the words, but I forced them out anyway, “are you
leaving
?”

Everything came crashing down into place then; the promise he’d made to me to at least stay until my birthday. His unusual displays of affection the whole day, the declaration of love. He felt safe doing all of it because he was leaving and would never have to face me again.

“We have no definite plans right now, but I wanted to make sure you could still feel safe without me, Lyla,” Rafael said in a calm, somewhat detached voice.

And just like that, I felt angry. My fist clenched around the box and the ‘presents’, tight enough to be painful, though I hardly felt it. “So you thought you could buy me off with a car and endless supply of money, tell me how much you love me, and walk off into the sunset, and everything would be okay?” I was trembling with rage, I couldn’t recall ever being so angry in all my life. It was all I could do to keep from just screaming my rage to the whole neighborhood. “Well, I have news for you, Rafael. You can’t buy me off! Money and cars and clothes have never mattered to me and they never will! All I wanted was you, for you to always be in my life, but you’re too obsessed with your own eternal despair to find a way out of it. If you’re going to leave, I’d appreciate if you would just go, without the painful goodbye. Declarations of love don’t really mean anything when you have one foot out the door. You’re just like everyone else I’ve ever known.”

“Lyla,” Rafael began, and I saw flickers of alarm and concern in his eyes at my uncharacteristic rage, “I told you, I haven’t made plans to leave-”

“Just
go
!” I shouted. “And take your gifts with you,” I added in disgust, throwing the box, keys, and card onto the ground at his feet.

I wished I could run away, but couldn’t in my heels, especially with ice and snow on the sidewalk. Instead I marched up to the front door and burst into my house, though silently. When I passed the kitchen table, I heard Rafael’s car start up, but started in surprise at the sight of the box and its contents sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. He had come inside and left them there, too fast for me to see. I could only stare for a long moment, clenching and unclenching my fists. Then my mouth tightened into a firm line, and I snatched them up and stalked to my bedroom.

I didn’t give a thought to my dress as I lay down on the floor and pulled out my safe box and unlocked it. I threw everything inside and snapped the lid closed, shoving the whole thing underneath the bed once more with a savage kick.
And that’s that,
I thought, standing up and dusting off my hands.
See if I ever use either of those gifts in my life.

I tried to keep hold of my anger because I knew without it I would start to cry. Instead I sat on the edge of my bed and closed my eyes, because stroking Grace’s curls and listening to Colton’s steady breathing always calmed me down. I closed my eyes – and heard nothing. The dark room was completely silent. My eyes snapped open and I scrambled amid the covers of my bed, but Grace’s warm body was nowhere to be found. In a panic and trying to keep rational solutions in mind, I darted across the room and flipped on the light.

My bedroom was completely empty.

I didn’t go to school the next two days. I stayed huddled in the warehouse, watching the Fallen come and go as they searched the entire city for Colton and Grace. Damian swore they had been safely asleep and locked up tight when he left. I could see how terrible he felt, even through my own pain, and I saw how he looked the hardest, stayed out the longest – along with Rafael, who was nearly as frantic as I was. But at least he could do something to help. I was no match for the speed and efficiency of the Fallen’s search efforts and so I sat helpless in the warehouse, unable to eat, going home only at night to sleep.

Rafael stayed with me every night. After he left in his car, he said he had been able to hear me sobbing. He came back and sat with his arms around me until I cried myself to sleep. My parents never even noticed Colton and Grace were gone, and I never bothered to tell them. They had been asleep when I’d gotten home the day of my birthday, so I knew, or prayed at least, that they had nothing to do with the disappearance.

That only seemed to leave me with much scarier options. My mind whirled with visions of the men who had once almost kidnapped us, the demons who had taken Naomi. Rafael told me it was unlikely to be demons, that Colton and Grace had few ties to the Fallen and would probably have been found by now, but when I asked what or who else it could be, he had been unable to answer.

Thursday, after a dozen frantic phone calls from Natalie and with Rafael pushing me all the way, I went to school. It was useless. I was like a zombie, staring into space and unable to focus on anything, scrambling to my phone for the hourly text updates Rafael had promised to send in exchange for me going to school. I told Natalie the truth, though abbreviated so she wouldn’t urge me too strongly to go to the police. But it all became too much and I ended up skipping my last period and returning to the warehouse. Not that there was anything new to report. Rafael didn’t urge me to return to school the next day, and I ignored all the phone calls from my friends. I never left the warehouse that weekend, stayed wrapped in the blanket Rachel had given me, usually with Naomi sleeping on my lap.

I didn’t even go to church on Sunday, because that was the day Rafael, Damian, and Matthias approached me with grim faces and said that I had better call the police, just in case they had been taken into custody since Monday night. That was how I found out the truth.

Colton and Grace
had
been taken. Not by kidnappers or child traffickers or demons. No. On my eighteenth birthday, when I was finally independent, child services had come for Colton and Grace. My brother and sister were in foster care.

My worst fear in the world had finally come true.

I walked into my house woodenly that night, carelessly shedding my coat and leaving it on a chair in the kitchen. What did it matter if my mom got upset that I left it out? If she started to yell at me, I could just walk out. I didn’t have Colton and Grace to worry about saving now. So many people in my place might have resented Colton and Grace for making it so hard to survive such a life, but I hadn’t, not once, never for a second. Protecting Colton and Grace, caring for them, had been my mission in life, a job I had loved and was good at and perhaps executed a little too overzealously. But they had practically been my own children, and they had been my everything. My constant in life, the people who would never leave me.

Now, not only had I failed that job, I had lost them, probably forever. Rafael didn’t love me, not enough to stay or take me with him, and he would leave eventually. Colton’s and Grace’s disappearance had only prolonged the inevitable. I would be all alone. I had never been completely alone before, and I found the idea absolutely terrifying. I just wanted them
back
. I laid my head down on the table and began to cry. Quiet sobs, but intense ones, my eyes watering so much I felt I was drowning in my own tears.

There was a soft creak of a floorboard behind me, but I didn’t panic. I knew who it was even before Rafael pulled me bodily from the chair and pressed me to him, almost as urgent and frantic as I felt. I clutched him tightly, needing his strong arms to keep me upright as I sobbed all the harder.

“I’m sorry,” he kept whispering over and over. “I’m so sorry, Lyla. I’m so sorry.”

“Will you go with me?” I asked, though it came out so wet and garbled I barely understood myself. “I need to see them, Rafael. Will you help me?”

“Of course,” Rafael said soothingly, rubbing my back. “Of course I will.”

We set out the next day. Looking in the mirror that morning I couldn’t believe how old and worried I looked. I looked
sick
, with dark circles under my eyes and hollow cheeks. My hair fell limply around my face and it took all the energy and ambition I had to take a shower and don clean clothes that matched. Rafael came and picked me up at eight, and we headed downtown.

It was the beginning of a long day. We spent most of it waiting outside various offices, getting shoved from one person to another, just trying to find the right agency that had taken Colton and Grace and where they could possibly be now. I’d heard of all the hoops that people jumped through trying to adopt someone, and now I knew the kind of patience and trouble it took.

As the day grew later and later, our time running out, Rafael finally relented and did what I had been begging him to do: he used his compulsion powers to find the right people for us to talk to. We found ourselves at a foster care agency, still downtown, and after waiting for nearly an hour, were ushered into a private office.

The woman was too skinny and her hair was too big, seated behind a large desk covered in neat piles of paper. Though her manner was friendly, there was something underneath that said she was wary of this young couple that had come to see her.

“Colton and Grace Evans?” she repeated, shuffling amid her piles of paper, but then looking at us sharply. “And you’re… interested in adopting?” Her tone was doubtful.

“No,” I said quickly. “Colton and Grace are my sister and brother. I’m Lyla Evans. They were taken from my home and I wasn’t around to stop it. I want to see them, to make sure they’re all right.”

The woman, Mrs. Sanders, I saw from the nameplate on her desk, met my eyes and folded her arms over her desk, looking intently at the two of us. “And you are how old? And who is this young man?” she gestured vaguely to Rafael.

“I’m eighteen,” I said, past the lump in my throat. “This is Rafael, a family friend.”

“Well. I am sorry, but information about the whereabouts of the children is confidential, even to family members. There are forms and waiting periods before one can establish contact, and the adoption or foster family and the children have to agree for visits. Just in case.”

I felt my anger rise. This woman thought I could have had a hand in Colton and Grace’s abuse! I opened my mouth to tell her I was the one who had practically kept them alive, but Rafael’s soft hand on my arm kept me quiet.

“Surely,” he said to Mrs. Sanders, “you can at least tell us their condition? Whether they will be spending Christmas alone? They were taken suddenly from their home and it took us days to find out where they were. We’ve been worried sick, and would at least like reassurance they’re doing okay.”

Mrs. Sanders blinked, hesitated, and then said haltingly, “They are… well. Two of the most well-behaved children we’ve ever had in here. And as a matter of fact, they’ve already been placed with a foster family. One that,” she leaned in closer to whisper confidentially, “has plans to adopt. They’re a lovely couple and have been waiting for the right child for nearly six months now. Now they’ve found two. Scooped them up as soon as they laid eyes on Colton and Grace. In light of the holidays we rushed some paperwork so Colton and Grace could be with them for Christmas.”

My insides had turned to ice, and I felt as though I was suffocating. Colton and Grace, already with another family? It couldn’t be. It had all happened too quickly. Weren’t my parents allowed to try and get them back first? Couldn’t I
see
them first?

“How is that possible?” I asked, through numb lips. “Isn’t there some kind of waiting period or something? Don’t we get to try and take them back first? Petition to the court, or something like that? It wasn’t fair they came and took them when I wasn’t around, in the middle of the night.” I would bully my parents into doing whatever it took to get them back; make sure they showed up to every court appearance well groomed and with note cards telling them exactly what to say.

Mrs. Sanders eyed me for a long moment, and then leaned back slightly in her chair. For the first time, she looked somewhat sympathetic to my plight. “I don’t think we’re quite on the same page here,” she said in a calming voice. “In ordinary cases where children are taken from unfit homes against the parents’ will, because there was a complaint called in or a witness to some kind of abuse or neglect, there is a court appearance. Most times, they are able to get the children back, unfortunately. But that isn’t the case with your brother and sister. There was a report, yes, but when Social Services arrived, your mother signed away all her rights as parent and guardian to Colton and Grace. As did your father.”

I couldn’t ever remember being so stunned, not even when I had heard Rafael’s story. Not when I had seen the demons outside the cathedral. I’d never felt betrayal that cut so deep, shock that left me breathless and without a coherent thought in my brain.
Signed away all her rights as parent and guardian
. The phrase echoed forcefully through my brain over and over, ricocheting everywhere until I had no choice but to believe it was true. I looked to Rafael, but he appeared just as stunned as me.