Secrets - [Guardian Trilogy 01] (31 page)

He slowly followed, but those lovely dimples were nowhere to be seen. I sat on my couch, Holden perched on the arm next to me, and Quintus sat stiffly on the ottoman. Both of them still seemed poised to attack, though the stance was more natural on Holden than it was on Quintus. Holden looked like a tiger, lazy and dangerous, whereas Quintus was like an angry house pet. They were nowhere near being in the same league, and I had no doubt who would win this fight.

“Well, isn't this comfortable?” I said dryly.

“Olivia, what happened? I couldn't find you, your apartment was a crime scene, you show up with
that
. What am I supposed to think?”

The sadness hit me again. I’d forgotten why I was here. How could I have forgotten?

“My best friend died.” My discomfort seemed to soften Holden's stony expression for just a moment, and he frowned with concern, glancing towards me. “
Holden
has been a Godsend. I wouldn't have made it through a day without him. So don’t talk about what you know nothing anything about.” I growled, annoyed at Quintus for being rude to Holden. Just who did he think he was?

“A
demon
,” he said incredulously. “A Godsend … really?”

Holden closed his eyes and his jaw clenched.

“What?” I snapped.
Seriously, they're grown men. There's no need for name calling.

“You didn’t know?” Quintus sputtered, looking truly dumbfounded.

I looked at him blankly. Maybe Quintus was seriously crazy.

I waited for Holden’s mocking laugh to break the tension in the air. Or a witty retort, biting anger—but all that met my ears was silence. A demon? Absurd! Holden was no more a demon than I was a pirate.

Quintus’s eyes widened as if he suddenly understood something. He looked at Holden like he was a very interesting bug. “You didn’t tell her!”

Holden, if it was even possible, looked more withdrawn and sullen.

 “
You didn’t tell her
—what was your plan? She's not for you. You can't have her. Surely you know that.”

“What? Will someone please explain?” I was on the verge hysterical laughter. This was ridiculous, seriously ridiculous. What had I missed?

They ignored me. Holden continued to sit on the arm of the couch, eyes closed now, and Quintus continued to stare at him.

“Holden.” I touched his leg. “What’s happening? Do you know him?”

Holden opened his eyes slowly. He looked tired, so very tired. He put his hand over mine and kissed my forehead, lingering for just a moment, as if he thought it would be our last touch.

“You’re scaring me. Please tell me what this is about.”

He stood up and paced away from me. “No, I didn’t tell her. I didn’t want to have to make that choice. Olivia and I met by chance.”

“I didn’t know. I assumed ... I thought she would know.”

“Well, you thought wrong. I hoped to save her from all this—perhaps you should explain the death sentence. After all, you’re the angel.” Holden’s voice was thick with recrimination and thinly repressed anger.

“I’m not an angel,” Quintus said with such innocence that the contrast between the two men was that much more glaring.

“As much as I am a demon.” Holden practically spit the angry words out.

 “Hello, is someone going to tell me
what the hell
you're talking about? I'm right here, so stop talking about me like I'm not in the room! Obviously, this has to do with me, so I think I have the right to know.” I was starting to feel panicky. “Stop calling each other names and tell me what's happening. Who's going to die?” Now I was standing too, my heart was thumping wildly. I thought I’d either pass out or pummel the information out of them.

“Liv,” Holden said. “Sit back down.
We’ll
tell you everything.” He gave Quintus a pointed look.

I sat back on the couch and waited, refusing to let myself get mushy because he used my nickname for the first time. Holden paced for a moment then started to talk, but stopped. Finally he knelt down in front of me and took my hand.

“I'm not human,” he said.

I would've laughed at the absurdity of his statement, only his face and eyes were so serious that I couldn’t. .
Holy crap.
“Are you a vampire?”
I knew it! I was right. It all made sense.

“No,” he said the same way he would have said stop being ridiculous. He even looked offended. “I'm not going to make it through this if you keep interrupting. I promise you can ask all the questions you want after, but let me get this out.”

“It isn’t a bad guess,” Quintus piped up, and Holden shot him a hateful look. Quintus shrugged.

“I’m a jinni. I was alive once long ago—I made a trade with a demon for my soul. Now, I live on earth and support their cause. Demons can’t permanently reside here, so they recruit others to do their bidding. I don’t really know why there's such an interest from both sides in this ant farm, but it seems to be the big game. Free will and all of that. It’s a battle for the souls of God’s newest creations.” He paused and looked at me. I gave my best stony expression while my mind was screaming,
You have fallen in love with a crazy man. Demons, angels, souls… Christ.

Another part of my mind argued that perhaps this made sense. I knew deep down they were both different. I knew something about them was not like the others. I was willing to believe in vampires, why not demons?

“Jinn influence people by our ability to heighten or lessen emotional responses in those around them. We can inspire people towards any of the cardinal sins: gluttony, fornication, avarice, sorrow, anger, discouragement, vainglory, and pride. Chaos, panic, and disorder all in our bag of tricks.” He sounded very odd as he was speaking, unemotional, and inhuman. “It works best by touching the person you're influencing, but it isn’t necessary. It depends on how susceptible they are and how heightened their emotions are.”

I tried to let my mind process what he had just said. Looking at these two odd men in front of me, his farfetched tale didn’t necessarily seem as impossible as it was. The implication of his words, however, took a few moments to register. “Have you influenced me, manipulated
my
emotions?”

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

“Yes, but it's much harder with you. You seem to see through it faster.”

“Why did you use it on me?”

“I … you…” He sighed and I knew he felt my new surge of disillusionment. “Most recently because you've been so sad. I was trying to help you not think about Juliet.” So he used his ability to help me, I couldn’t really fault that. And he was being honest—that was good too. But then he continued. “At first though, it was because of the dreams. You were too intrusive. You saw parts of my mind. . . . I couldn’t risk you finding my secret and exposing me. I had to stop it. You understand, right?” He clasped my hand in his. “You were the biggest threat I’d ever encountered. You had the power to destroy all I had worked for. In a matter of seconds, you turned my world upside down by appearing uninvited into my subconscious. I really had no choice.”

“What exactly did you do to me?”

“After the first dream, I was going to ignore it. Dismiss it as a fluke. But once you came a second time I knew I had to take care of it. It would be a problem. So I found out who you were. I went to your show telling myself I only wanted to observe you, learn more about you so I could better defend myself against you. But I wasn’t able to just observe, I was pulled in once again. It became clear that I wasn’t as impartial to you as I should have been. I had every intention of killing you that day at your mother’s. You separated yourself from the group. It would have been the perfect time and so easy. I used my power on you then—you were putty in my hands— but I couldn’t do it. I came to the cemetery to try again.”

The ease with which he talked about wanting to murder me sent chills down my spine. The coldness in his voice wasn’t without cracks, however, and through the cracks I heard defeat. This was the first time his own pain was betrayed by his otherwise calm voice. “But I couldn’t follow through. For the first time since I became a jinni, I couldn’t follow the rules.”

“There are rules that say you have to kill me?”

He hung his head, but nodded. “Yes. The rules are simple and clear. There are three choices once you are exposed as a jinni. First, you can kill the person and eliminate the problem. Second, you can forfeit your own eternal life and go to hell. Or third, you can convince the person to make their own deal.”

“So I can die, you can die, or I become like you?” I wanted to throw up. I wanted to get as far away from him as possible. And as for him? Well, he looked as attractive as ever to me as he clutched my hand, willing me to believe him—but it was all lies. Lies. Every touch, every word, every moment … a lie. How was I supposed to know what I really felt and what he made me feel?

“Those are the choices, yes.”

His face was so sad. I wanted to touch it, but anger and pride kept from doing so. My mind was trying to wrap around the enormity of everything he just said. My apparent close calls with death—a threat that I was still not entirely in the clear from. His betrayal. This whole world I’d been completely oblivious to. I was beyond shocked.

And how did all this change my feelings? Were my feelings even my own?

I’d completely forgotten that Quintus was in the room until he spoke, breaking the deafening silence as my world spiraled further out of control, out of my grasp. I thought Juliet had been rock bottom, but obviously it could get worse.

“I'm here for you,” he said simply “You have a destiny. You're meant to be one of us.”

I couldn’t really listen to what he was saying. My head was still spinning. I put a hand on my temple and tried to steady my breathing.

“Give her a moment,” Holden told him from further away than he’d been moments earlier. I looked up and saw that he’d paced across the room, but I could still see concern in his eyes.
Lies,
I reminded myself. I ignored Holden and looked back at Quintus.

“And ‘one of us’ is what exactly?”

“Guardians,” he said, like the word was supposed to mean something to me. When he saw that it didn’t, he went on. “It’s like what most people think of as angels, but really, angels are a separate race and are rarely on earth. Guardians are normally around when people have extraordinary luck or fortune. We help, we guide, and we inspire. Many people who lead good honest lives and die before their times are made into guardians—a more rare variety are those that were born guardians.” My eyes widened. I couldn’t do any of that, he had the wrong person. I shook my head and but his words kept coming. “The latter variety are very powerful and destined for greatness—and you're one of them. If you think back, you never really fit in did you?”

I grunted in grudging acknowledgement that he might be right.

He nodded. “You were always just a little too different from other people. You saw too much when you watched them, and they sensed that. You're comfortable with silence, just observing those around you. You, Olivia, are the first guardian to be born in over two thousand years. Your importance cannot be stated with words. Under normal circumstances people are not told about their destiny. They're just observed for a few months before the transition takes place to make sure everything goes smoothly. You're special. We've been watching over you your whole life.”

“When do you become this guardian thing?”

“When you die.”

I rolled my eyes with relief. “So why are you here now? I may not die for fifty years.”

Quintus shook his head. “You will die in two months, eighteen days, four hours, and twenty three minutes.”

My jaw fell open. This was literally the last thing I needed. I already couldn’t deal with everything I’d just heard—but to drop a death sentence on top of it?

“That's your time,” he continued a little too brightly considering he just told me I had less than three months to live.

The sound of Holden pacing stopped, “What?” he said.

Quintus and I both ignored Holden.

“That’s it? You just tell me my life’s done in less than three months, and I don’t have a say in any of it? I don’t have a choice? I could go stand in traffic and I'd be fine?”

“No, people often die before their time, but not many live after their time has come.” He made a pointed look at Holden who did not look happy about any of this.

“How?”

“I don’t know. Your friend, did she commit suicide?”

“She would never kill herself,” I snapped.

“Feels like them.” He looked over at Holden accusingly.

Holden made a growling noise at Quintus, but didn’t say anything.

“He was with me,” I supplied, defending Holden on reflex.

“It's their way, you know,” Quintus said conversationally, though I could see anger in his eyes. “They like to make people commit suicide. It's less messy. No cops to deal with.”

“Wait, back to this guardian business. What if I don’t want to be a guardian? Then what?”

“You wouldn't be forced. It's ultimately your decision.”

“Would I still die?”

“Yes, just like your friend.” Quintus shot Holden another hateful look. I knew he said it to dig at Holden, but his words tore at me. It wasn’t right to use Juliet as a weapon.