Return (Awakened Fate Book 3) (9 page)

I shivered.

“We don’t know for certain if it’s true,” Dad continued carefully, “but honey, that’s part of why we kept everything a secret. Let Chief Reynolds and his nephew just think you were our…” A pained expression flickered across his face. “Our girl.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“We didn’t want to risk that someone might hear about you, and might try to steal you away from us to do that to you. And now that you’re… well…”

“Alive?” I offered, my voice choked.

“Please just don’t tell anyone about this,” he finished.

I looked over to find Zeke watching me. His brow twitched up, every line of his face and body making clear how he’d come into the living room in a heartbeat if I just gave him a sign.

My gaze dropped to the carpet.

“It would also be better,” Mom added, her voice cautious like she was afraid something might break. “If your friend went back to his home.”

“What? No.”

The response came out fast, and harsh too, and my gaze snapped up from the ground to glare at her.

Her face tightened, as though arguing with me and trying to tell me what to do had suddenly become difficult for her. “Chloe, I… Whatever you think you’re feeling toward him, you can’t… it’s not…”

I stared at her in confusion as she struggled for words.

“He’s dangerous,” she concluded. “He’s dehaian, and if anyone finds out he’s–”

“
I’m
dehaian.”

“No, you’re our Chloe,” she countered fervently. “You are
not
–”

She cut off and turned away as Dad put a hand to her knee.

“Not what?” I demanded. “A fish? Scale-skin? Scum-sucker? What were you going to call us?”

Breathing hard, I stared at them.

“Like them,” Mom whispered.

Still shaking with fury, I took a moment to respond. “And what does that mean?”

Dad gave a small glance to the kitchen. “I’d rather we not discuss this with–”

“
Say
it.”

He paused, watching me. “Soulless.”

My brow flickered down incredulously.

“The dehaians,” he said, “when our people split from theirs, we each got a bit of what made us who we used to be. For them, it was the ability to live underwater. To change like they do. For us, we have the ability to live on land without pain, and apparently, well…”

He sighed. “I guess you’d call it humanity. The capacity to care about others. Dehaians… they’re not like people, Chloe. Every story we’ve heard of them makes it clear they don’t have feelings like us, and that they use the feelings of others for their entertainment. They enjoy manipulating people and their emotions, and they don’t care about the consequences or the suffering. They even use magic to force people to become obsessed with them, just so they can watch–”

“Wait,
that
?”

“They kill people with ‘that’, honey. For fun.”

I stared at him. “No, they–”

“That’s not true.”

Zeke’s voice made me stop, and I looked over to see him standing by the archway, his gaze on my parents.

“Only sick freaks do that. And it’s illegal. Using it at
all
on non-dehaians is illegal, and what you’re describing, we view as murder.”

I turned back to Mom and Dad.

Dad’s mouth compressed briefly. “Chloe, of course he’d say that. They’re manipulators, only interested in getting what they want. But if you understood what they are truly capable–”

“I
do
understand,” I interrupted.

“Then you’d understand that this boy has probably used it on you!” Mom cried. “Everything you’re arguing for him could just be a result of what he’s done!”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Chloe, they–”

“It doesn’t! Not between dehaians. For us, it–” I cut off, discomfort catching up with me, and I fought to keep myself from blushing. “It’s not like that.”

She shook her head. “You can’t be sure, Chloe. Please. You’re
not
one of them; you’re like us. You wouldn’t know what it is or if he–”

“I’ve used it,” I said.

She froze, her face a picture of shock and horror.

“We both have,” I continued. “The man who attacked us, when he was strangling me, I used it to stop him. And Zeke helped a friend–”

“Your daughter,” he interrupted.

I turned to him in confused surprise. In the cave, he’d told me he’d been trying to keep someone from dying.

He hadn’t mentioned anything about it being me.

Zeke didn’t take his eyes from my parents. “When she was in the hospital and the damage that Sylphaen bastard had done was killing her, I had medicine from back home that could help. But I needed to get past emergency room security, so I used that ability you’re describing. Aveluria. Just a bit, so the woman recovered. And your daughter did too.”

He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice shook with quiet intensity. “We care.”

They stared at him.

“Zeke’s saved my life over the past few weeks, Mom. He’s done it more times than I can count, even when it meant he might die.” I trembled. “Dehaians aren’t monsters, no matter what those stories say.”

She blinked as she dropped her gaze from his. “It’s still not safe,” she persisted. “He shouldn’t even be able to
be
here–”

“Everything we know says your kind can’t go much more than a hundred miles from a coast,” Dad said to Zeke, a note of challenge in his voice. “And yet here you are.”

Zeke glanced to me, not answering.

“I did that,” I supplied quietly.

Mom’s brow furrowed.

“I don’t know how,” I continued before they could ask. “I just know that it’s working.”

She glanced to Dad, obviously seeking help. “T-that may be, but he still needs to leave. If he becomes sick at the wrong moment…”

“If he goes, I go.”

She looked back at me in alarm. “Chloe, you–”

“I mean it.”

My heart raced as Mom stared at me, her brow twitching down. I’d never gotten away with demands like this. Ever. But they weren’t acting like themselves, and this was important. I didn’t know, if he left, how far Zeke could travel before the pull of the ocean came back.

And killed him.

With effort, Mom tugged her gaze to Dad. “Bill?” she tried.

Dad drew a slow breath. “Alright. Fine. The boy will stay… for now.”

Without another word, he pushed to his feet and headed for the hall. Mom rose from the couch as well, hesitancy written all over her.

“Well, um… in that case… are you hungry?” she asked. “I could cook something?”

I stared at her, so taken back by her uncharacteristic behavior, I didn’t quite know what to do.

“Uh, sure,” I answered, knowing we’d both eaten only a few hours before and could probably keep going for a day or two if necessary. But I couldn’t tell her that. She almost seemed desperate. “Food would be nice.”

She nodded. Clutching her hands together, she started for the kitchen, only to balk at Zeke still standing in the archway.

He stepped aside. She skirted past him.

His brow rose as he glanced back at me.

I shook my head in bafflement. Getting up from the chair, I walked over to him. He took my hand and I drew a breath, feeling a bit of my tension leak out just at having him there.

“Chloe,” Dad called.

I tensed all over again. I looked down the hall to find him at the base of the stairs.

“You should probably get cleaned up before dinner.”

I hesitated, reading the stern way he was watching us.

Zeke squeezed my hand. I glanced back.

“Be right here,” he whispered.

My lip twitched up in a grateful smile.

“Chloe,” Dad said again, his voice even harder.

“Coming,” I replied.

Squeezing Zeke’s hand as well, I nodded and then headed for the stairs.

~~~~~

The steps creaked under me and when I reached the second floor, everything was still. Not bothering to look back to where I knew Dad watched me at the base of the stairs, I continued down the brown-carpeted hallway, only to pause when I came to the white wood of my bedroom door.

My hand rose and the door swung aside at my touch. Reaching past the doorframe, I flipped on the light.

Sterile white walls with pictures of the Sahara met my gaze. The brown quilt with its crosshatched patterns of wheat covered my twin bed against the far wall. A few snapshots of me and Baylie stood on the oak dresser, trapped in bronze frames. On the window, the heavy, tan curtains were closed, sealing out the darkness.

I barely felt like I recognized it all. Only a few weeks had passed, but in that time I’d lived under the ocean. I’d swum with royalty through a palace the size of a mountain and fled from mercenaries God-knew-how-far beneath the sea.

And now…

A shaky breath left me. I stepped into the room, feeling like I was walking into another reality. The backpack I’d taken to California was tucked against the side of my bed, and my cell phone and wallet were on the nightstand nearby.

I glanced to the window and the closed curtains. Baylie could be home. The lights at her house had been off when we drove up, and most of the curtains had been closed, but she still could be. After all, our stay at the Delaneys was supposed to have ended over a week ago.

But then, she’d still been in Santa Lucina when I called the day before Zeke and I left.

I swallowed. Maybe she was here. Or maybe Peter and Diane had shipped it or something.

Mom cleared her throat behind me and I jumped.

“Would you like help?” she asked.

I stared, confused. That weird, worried look was on her face again. “Help?”

“Putting your stuff away,” she elaborated.

My expression didn’t change. “That’s alright.”

She hesitated, seeming as though she still wanted to try. She gave me a jerky nod and didn’t leave.

The silence stretched.

“So I wondered what you might like for dinner?” Mom asked. “I thought maybe we could see if anywhere in town carries sushi.”

I made myself blink.
Sushi?
She–

“If you’d like,” Mom pressed on hastily. “I just… I want you to feel… what I mean is, I heard that’s similar to what they eat, and if you need to have food like they do, then we can find it.”

I shook my head. “Whatever you make is fine for both of us,” I managed. I paused. “Mom, what is this?”

“Nothing,” she replied, a touch of familiar defensiveness coming into her voice. “You’re my daughter. I’m not going to starve you.”

I looked away.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

My eyebrows rose as I turned back in surprise at the words.

“I’ll make barbecue chicken,” she continued. “Your favorite. Is that good?”

“Y-yeah. Thanks.”

Giving me a tense smile, she moved to leave and then hesitated, looking back. “I want you to know,” she said tightly, “we’re happy you came home. I know things are… are tense sometimes. But we’re really just…”

Mom’s brow furrowed and, as impossible as it seemed, she actually looked like she was trying not to cry.

Swallowing hard, she forced her expression to clear. “We always want what’s best for you, Chloe. That’s all. And so if there’s anything you need in order for you to be okay here, you just let me know. Anything in the world, understand?”

I stared and succeeded in moving my head in something like a nod.

Mom echoed the motion. Without another word, she left the room.

It took me a moment to drag my gaze from the doorway, and a moment more before my thoughts ordered themselves enough to process what had just happened.

My mother… wanted to make things
okay
for me.

Okay for me.

A breath escaped me, the sound loud in the quiet.

My mother wanted to make things okay for me here.

I didn’t know what to do. I’d thought coming home would be normal. I’d known what ‘normal’ meant – fights, months of being grounded, and my parents possibly even trying to move us out of town simply because I’d run off to California with Baylie – but after the past few weeks, I’d been willing to risk it.

But this…

This was a parallel dimension.

This was crazier than what I’d left. This was Mom and Dad acting in a way I’d never seen in my life.

Acting like they’d been scared I wouldn’t come back.

I trembled at the memory of Zeke’s words. I didn’t know what I’d planned. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I’d just been trying to survive.

And now I’d returned to something as strange as anything I’d seen in the past few weeks.

Turning away from the door, I hurried toward my closet to get changed out of the clothes I’d worn for the past few days. I didn’t want to be in here, in this familiar-alien room with the desert décor my parents had mandated all these years. I didn’t know
how
to be here.

And Zeke was downstairs.

He was the only part of this new life of mine that still felt sane.

Chapter Seven

Zeke

It’d been several hours since we’d arrived at Chloe’s parents’ home.

The time had been awkward enough for several years.

On the makeshift bed Chloe’s parents had put together on the couch, I lay with my arms behind my head, watching nothing in particular. The house was dark, everyone else having gone to bed a few hours before. Moonlight slipped through a gap between the curtains above me, turning a tiny measure of the night to paler shadows but otherwise leaving the blackness unchanged.

Dinner had been a silent affair but for small comments about passing various dishes. Her parents had hardly taken their eyes from us the whole time, and soon after the meal was finished, they’d herded Chloe back up to her bedroom again, from which I hadn’t seen her since.

They were still scared of me, it was obvious. And still partly convinced I’d put some spell on their daughter, forcing her to be attracted to me. They didn’t want us near each other, and had set up the table to keep us from sitting anywhere close. Truthfully, I was mildly surprised her father hadn’t tried to bundle me out of the house the moment Chloe’s back was turned.

Though, of course, there was always tomorrow.