Secrets [5] Echoes: Part One (65 page)

I placed my hands behind my back and bent over, but Bump got in the way a little and I had to shift my feet further apart and stand back from the tub a bit more than the others did. Then my hair fell around my face and hung like a heavy branch into the water.

“I got it.” Mike swept in like a white knight and pulled my hair back for me, wringing it out first.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He grinned, but I should have known better that the glint in his eye wasn’t kindness; it was mischief. When I lowered my face and wrapped my lips around the smooth wet surface of the apple, I suddenly got a very cold drink of stale water, right up my nose and down my throat, snot and all.

I pulled back, coughing and spitting the liquid straight into the tub others would have to put their face in, and before I’d even caught my breath I jammed my very firm fist right into Mike’s gut. He was laughing too hard to even notice. So was everyone else. And then I laughed too, because it was nice to see that things between Mike and I hadn't changed all that much since we were kids. It took me back to that place where I used to know him so well and I almost thanked him for being such a jerk.

“Time’s up,” the host said, pressing the button on his stopwatch.

“What? But I—”

“Time’s up.” He pointed to the rules on the board.

My shoulders dropped. “Fine.”

My cheer squad called my name enthusiastically as I walked over to the flour bowl, hunched and with my arms hanging loosely in front of me, and plopped my apple in. The firm white powder puffed up and coated eighty percent of my apple right away, while the wind carried a little cloud in my direction that the water on my skin collected immediately.

“Aaara! Aaaara! Aaaara!” They all cheered, which, of course, attracted a larger audience to witness my humiliation. Good thing I was used to it.

I closed my eyes and leaned forward, but the last image in my mind before my eyelids shut everything out was of Mike’s heavy caramel boots—a half-inch deep in a puddle of water near the other tub. As I wrapped my teeth around the dry, floury apple skin, my tongue retreating to the back of my throat, my finger “accidentally” aimed itself at Mike’s feet and shot a small charge of Cerulean Light. I didn’t even need to see his demise; the sound of it was amusement enough. In fact, I’m pretty sure he farted as the shock went through his body.

When I opened my eyes and drew the apple from my teeth, quickly swiping away a line of slobber, it wasn’t me everyone was laughing at, even though I knew I had a white beard; it was the man sitting on the floor, his head and shoulders soaked and dripping, the big silver tub resting on an angle against his shoulder and the ground. He looked like a pissed-off kitten, his eyes closed, hair dripping over them, his lips in a tight line, opening only to blow the water away from them like a spray gun.

I jolted a few times as the laughter took hold before finally giving in and folding over in a full burst of amusement. My apple hit the ground and rolled away from my feet, stopping at Quaid’s.

“That was some payback,” he said, picking it up. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so funny.”

“You should try watching Ara cook,” Mike muttered dully, brushing loose grass off his jeans as he stood up. “
That’s
entertainment.”

“Aw, come on,
baby boy
.” I took Mike by the arm. “Let’s go find a nice quiet patch of grass and dry off.”

He followed me, like a big sulky lump, through the staring crowd, until we reached the tranquility of the lighthouse, where we both flopped down in its moonlit shadow across the cut, itchy grass of the field. My chest rose and fell a little faster than Mike’s, purely from all the laughter, and under the noise of my laboured breath I could still hear the hum of the festival—feel the warmth of the bonfires that lit up our faces, even all the way out here.

“Here.”

I sat up a little and looked at Mike’s hand. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He waited until I took the handkerchief before flopping down with one hand across his belly, aiming his eyes to the stars.

I rubbed the flour from my cheeks and chin and lay down beside him, our heads touching. “That was fun.”

He laughed once. “Yeah. It was.”

“I’ve missed that,” I added, reaching down between us to where I could feel the heat of his big heavy hand, and slipped my fingers into his palm.

He squeezed them. “Me too.”

“And…” I had to be careful how I said this, so he didn't think I was trying to hold him back. “I will really miss
you when you go, too.”

The squeeze tightened. “Me too.”

“You’ll miss yourself?” I joked.

He was quiet for a while, the crickets singing their songs again now they'd decided we were solid, unmoving objects and not a threat, while the thrum of the festival blended under the ocean breeze, disappearing somewhat. “It’ll be weird going back without you,” he said, his voice breaking as if it’d weakened from disuse. “You’ve always been there, you know? I just … it’ll just be really weird without you.”

“Well, you went back after we broke up. It won’t be so different to then.”

He shook his head against the grass. “I went back to regroup. I never went back to stay. This time, I know I won’t be coming back here. And I know you’ll never follow me back home. It’s not your home anymore.
This
is.” He motioned around this new world I belonged to.

“I disagree.” I looked away from him to the stars above me. “I came here to free the Lilithians. I’ve done that, Mike. And I freed the vampires in the process, protected the humans by developing the Pledge,
and
I’ve saved the Damned—the last of them will be adopted out by the end of this week—and then what?”

He sat up on one elbow and frowned down at me, but a hint of a smile indented his cheek. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying … I don’t want this. Any of this. I never did. I want a normal life, and I want my daughter to be raised human—not…” I ran my tongue over my teeth, thinking carefully about my choice of words. “I don't want her to know she's a vampire until she’s older. I want her to grow up with the same frailties and insecurities as a normal human girl.”

“Why?”

“It worries me what she might become if she grows up here—among death and royal formalities. She needs to go to a normal school with human kids and sympathise with them as if she was one. She’ll one day rule all of this—” I moved an upturned palm across the sky. “If she has no respect for humans, why would she protect them?”

Mike’s lips arched downward and his brows went up. “Good point.” He flopped back down and we laid in silence for a while longer until he said, “What about David?”

“What about him?”

“Doesn't he get a say?”

“Of course he does. If he wants one. But I think…” I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. “I think maybe it’s over between us.”

“Why?”

“Morg said he’ll always hate me now—”

“She said he
may
. Not that he will.”

“Yes, but, even if he doesn’t hate me, he ended the marriage before that hex ever took place. That night outside his room, and that day he practically tore my wedding band from my finger—that was all him, Mike.
That’s
the real David—the one my doe-eyed schoolgirl self had refused to see. The one I
should
have seen.” I took a deep breath and steadied my voice. “He’s angry and cruel, and the hex had
nothing
to do with that.”

Mike’s tongue clicked and he brought my hand up to his lips to kiss it. “Thing is, I know you’re right. I do. David is a dick at times, and I’ve wanted to shake you just for being with him. He’s … he’s exactly the kind of guy I’d eventually end up arresting when I was on the Force—you know, for spousal abuse. It was always just a matter of time. But…”

And he left the ‘but’ hanging, as everyone around here seemed to do when I was just dying for them to finish. “But?”

“But, jerk as he may be, he loves you, and I am certain, as certain as I am of my own sexuality, that he would never lay a hand on you. He just needs to be taught how to be kind.”

“I see your point but…” I left my own ‘but’ hanging. “He’s hurt me a lot. I love him. I want him back. But I’m kind of afraid, too.”

“Of what?”

“Of how long it will be before I do something else to make him hate me and we end up back here. He can be really cruel when he wants, Mike. I don’t know if…” I bit my lip, and a lukewarm tear rolled down my temple and into my ear.

“If what?” He rolled up onto his elbow again and wiped it away.

“You’ve always been here. I don’t know if I can cope with him treating me like that if I don’t have any family here to make it all okay.”

“Aw, Ar.” He folded himself around me, protectively squashing me into the ground under half his body. “I—”

“No. Please don’t take that to mean I want you to stay,” I said, pushing his chest until he leaned back a bit. “I want you to go. I just … I might follow you.”

“And leave David?”

“I don’t know about that bit yet. I need time. But … I know I’m
tired
. I know I’m the queen everyone wanted me to be and I know I can do this. I
know
I can. But I’m not sure I want to anymore.”

“Well, there are plenty of people in your staff that do.”

My thoughts instantly placed Walt on the throne to rule as regent in my stead. “I know. And, in all honesty I’ve been thinking about all this for a while, so don't think you’re prompting me to do something I wouldn't otherwise do.”

“I know.” He looked lovingly down into my eyes, the warm caramel familiarity of his putting me, and all my crazy thoughts, at ease. He brushed my hair off my face a few times and scratched at a chunk of crunchy flour with his thumbnail before taking a deep breath and rolling away again, tucking my hand under his elbow against his belly. “And you know my mum and dad will be happy to have you for as long as you need to stay.”

“I know. I just don’t know what I’d do for income. I mean … I’ll be a single mother!”

He laughed. “Well, you’re welcome to come live with me and the boys for a bit—go to uni.”

“Thanks,” I said softly, but my heart slowly sunk through my spine and into the ground.

“But … you don’t want to live with me, do you?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“I don’t want to be dependent on you—on anyone. And I don’t exactly want to leave David behind either.”

“So make him come.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“Because, if he ever, by the grace of God, decides to take me back, he won’t follow me to the human realm, Mike. He’d have to go back to killing discreetly.”

“He’ll have to anyway, if you don’t want the baby exposed to all that.”

“True. But, even then, there’s no way I can raise her with David if he can’t change his ways. I mean, a person shows their true colours when they react to a bad situation—you taught me that—and his colours are all blacks and greys.”

“Are you scared he’ll hurt the baby?”

I clasped my hands over my belly. “No. Well, not physically anyway, but if he can talk to me the way he does—be
that
cruel—what might he say to hurt this sweet innocent baby one day?”

“Nothing that he’d truly mean, Ara.”

“It wouldn't matter if he meant it or not. It wouldn't even matter if he were sorry. Once it’d been said, the damage would be done. I don’t want her to cry herself to sleep every night like I do. She needs a dad that loves her and protects her. Like I had.”

“And you don’t trust David to be that?”

I shook my head. “Sometimes, a big part of me wonders if he and Jason were switched at birth, and
David
is the evil twin.”

Mike laughed. “Yeah, see, you say that, but you still love him. So he can’t be that bad.”

“You’re right.” I nodded. “I do love him. I always, always will. No matter what. But I need him to be a better man if he wants to be a part of my life from now on,” I said decisively. “Seeing what he’s capable of last night—nearly taking my life—it shook me up enough to see that loving someone like that, loving them unconditionally, can be dangerous, stupid even. It isn’t just me in the picture anymore. I have to think of the baby.”

“Sounds like you have an awful lot of thinking to do before you speak to David.”

“Not really.” I closed my mouth tight and scrunched my face up in consideration. “I just need to
talk
to him and set him straight—make things clear. Whether he comes back to me or not, things have to change.”

He tucked a wrist behind his head and readjusted himself comfortably. “You seen the painting yet?”

“Painting?”

“Yeah, the one Jason left.”

“So that’s what it was.” I sat up and crossed my legs under me.

“You didn't know?”

“No. He just said there was a gift in my room for me.”