Seeking Crystal (32 page)

Yes, that helps!
I encouraged. It was easier this time to catch a thread and pull it with me. Yves was shadowing me every step of the way, waiting to grab.

Crystal, you’ve got to stop! Come back and finish later.
Xav was really really shaken. I could feel him put a tissue to my nose, then dab the corners of my eyes.

Please.
Zed’s plea cut across Xav’s appeal. He had been so patient, helping the others, holding the bond together. I couldn’t back out now.

Sky next.

She had picked up the hint from Phoenix to use her gift and was putting the brakes on her orbiting material as much as she could manage. I saw the faint connection to Zed fluttering, end already loose for me to catch, the colour flaring out to attract my attention. I skimmed away, feeling the strength of my imagined rocket boosters flagging. I wasn’t sure I’d done enough. If the link fell and got tangled up again, I worried that I’d do more harm to her.

I’m here. I’ve got it.
Zed somehow managed to fly alongside and take it from my grasp. I sensed rather than saw the pulse of power that travelled down the connection. The circuit had been repaired; the electricity of their relationship now flowed at high voltage once more.

I’m coming in
, I told Xav
.
But I wasn’t. I couldn’t stop my drift outwards, away from the consciousnesses I had visited. Without power, I was in space freefall, momentum carrying me into blackness.

Xav!

Got you. Not letting you go.

I realized I wasn’t alone in mental deep space; he had always been there and could pilot me home.

What was that phrase they use on TV? Don’t try this at home. That was playing in my head as I came back to my senses. I was lying in my bed. From the long low shafts of light outside, it appeared that I’d missed quite a few hours.

‘Xav?’

‘He’s … er … gone out.’ Diamond sat at my side; she brushed the hair off my face. ‘Here.’

She passed me a damp flannel.

‘What? Why?’

‘You overdid it. Had a bit of a bleed from your nose and your eyes.’

‘Gross.’ I cleaned off the last signs.

‘Xav says you’re fine otherwise. Ordered you to rest.’

‘But didn’t stay?’ I found it hard to believe he was doing the sights while I lay unconscious.

‘He said he needed to unwind. He was furious we all let you go so far. That boy would stop you so much as breaking a nail if he could.’

‘My choice—totally my choice.’

Diamond bent over me and whispered. ‘Between you and me, I’d let him take his mad out on his brothers.’

I smiled. ‘You might be on to something.’ I suddenly realized the thing that I should have gathered immediately on waking. ‘Hey, you’re you again!’

‘Yes, I’m back.’

‘Really back? The link—your memories?’

Diamond sighed happily. ‘Yes, really. So are the others. I had a crushing headache for a time but Xav and some tablets sorted that out. Fortunately, the contessa hadn’t taken anything away, just buried it so deep that I thought I’d never get it back.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘But thanks to you, we did. I don’t know how we can … ’

‘Stop right there,’ I said firmly. ‘I don’t want thanks. I want you to be happy. Have a great wedding.’

‘We will. I know it’s kind of late notice—not to say unconventional—but I was wondering: would you be our best woman?’

‘Really, me? Do I get to lose the rings?’

She laughed. ‘Absolutely, because I know you of all people will be able to find them again.’

There was a knock at the door. Diamond looked up. ‘Yes?’

‘Is she awake?’ Karla poked her head around the frame.

‘Yes, I am.’

Xav’s mother bustled in, Saul on her heels as if he daren’t let her out of his sight for a second. Gone was that terrible vacancy; back was the little ball of fire that was the Benedict boys’ mother.

‘You wonderful, fabulous girl!’ Karla kissed my forehead. ‘We are so, so grateful—words cannot begin to describe. But … ’ she frowned and put her hands on her hips ‘ … if you ever risk yourself like that again, Crystal, I will be very angry indeed. Xav is not the only one to be annoyed with the boys for letting you do that for us.’

I smiled, quite enjoying my ticking off. She was trying very hard not to be too pleased with me. ‘Yes, Karla.’

‘Humph! This silly man here should have known better.’ She looked up at Saul, the decades of love for him shining in her eyes.

Saul took her hand. ‘We’re sorry, my dear. None of us wanted to put Crystal in danger.’

‘So, are you really back to normal?’ I asked.

‘Not quite.’

‘Oh?’ I began to worry that I’d got something wrong.

Saul flashed me a devilish smile. ‘We are better than normal. After nearly losing our bond, we realize how incredibly lucky we are to have each other. So I’ve decided it is time to take our second honeymoon. When the wedding is done, we’re staying on. I’m not saying which hotel we are checking in to either—total privacy,’ he kissed his wife’s knuckles, ‘us old sweethearts, alone at last.’

Karla wrinkled her nose. ‘I am not going on a gondola, Saul Benedict.’ This was obviously an already running discussion. ‘The prices are outrageous.’

Saul tapped his wife’s obstinate chin. ‘Mrs Benedict, you certainly are. You promised to obey.’

‘That was thirty years ago! Before the wedding ceremony caught up with the modern age.’

‘Well, I for one am holding you to that. Gondola for two, in the moonlight, with champagne and roses.’

As the vow to obey went, that didn’t sound too bad.

‘Oh well. If you are going to make such a fuss about it. I suppose I could. Just this once.’

My sleep had restored me to something like my ordinary self, so when Saul and Karla left, I got up. The flat was emptier than the morning: Steve and Lily had gone back to their hotel, taking most of the press pack with them. Yves, Phoenix, Saul, and Karla had returned to the Calcina. Zed and Sky had stayed behind and were chatting with Will, Sky sitting on Zed’s knee as if nothing was going to get them apart again in a hurry. Victor and Uriel were playing cards at the kitchen table. Trace looked cute in an apron, chopping vegetables with a surgeon’s precision.

‘You know, the restaurant across the way does great take-out lasagne,’ I mentioned as I came out of the bedroom.

‘Now she tells me!’ sighed Trace.

Diamond pushed past. ‘Ignore her. We are doing Nonna’s recipe. Nothing tastes better than real home cooking.’

I popped up behind her, mouthing ‘liar!’

Trace swallowed his laugh. ‘You bet, darling.’

Diamond kissed him on the cheek.

As I turned to the others, I could feel that they were about to embark on a round of thankyous so I cut them off at the pass. ‘Anyone know where Xav’s gone?’

Uriel picked up the trick he had just won. ‘He wanted some quiet time, he said. Shall I ask him?’

I pulled on my jacket and boots. ‘No need.’ I tapped my forehead. ‘Homing pigeon in here.’

‘You OK to go out?’ asked Will. ‘You looked really rough when you passed out.’

I guess I had looked like something out of a horror movie. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You pushed it too far. You shouldn’t take the same risk again.’

‘Says the guy who got shot.’

Will laughed. ‘I now know why fate linked you with Xav. You are going to tease each other unmercifully.’

Victor threw down a card. ‘Might make the world a little safer for the rest of us then.’

‘Unless they turn their powers jointly on us,’ suggested Sky, her old sparkle back in her eyes.

The Benedict brothers groaned in unison.

‘OK, I’m outta here.’

‘Dinner at seven. Mama arrives tomorrow, don’t forget,’ called Diamond.

It looked as if this was the last free time I would have for many days to sort things out with Xav. ‘I’ll be back, but in the non-Terminator sense, of course.’

I shut the door on Will’s chuckles.

I found Xav sitting on the steps in the Piazza San Marco—the exact same spot where we had shot our scene for the movie. My heart did its little flip in my chest on seeing him with the backdrop of the bell tower and the water-filled square. The buildings were mirrored in the flood brought by the high tide, but I guessed that it wasn’t his own reflection that he was studying. His thoughts were turned inward; his hands were held loosely over his knees, head down. I sat beside him.

‘Hey,’ I said softly.

‘Hey.’ He looked up, eyes warm but no greeting smile.

‘Something the matter?’

‘Just … getting my head around what happened. You wouldn’t stop.’

‘I know.’

‘I thought you were going to have an aneurysm on the brain or something.’

‘I’m OK.’

‘Just. I had to patch up a few blood vessels, you know?’

Ouch. I touched my forehead. ‘I didn’t. Thank you.’

A tour party walked behind us, the guide waving a scrap of red material on his stick like the kind of toy you use to tease a cat. His pussycat followers gambolled after him, cameras rather than bells round their necks.

‘I’ve been sitting here and deciding that you put me in the position of someone linked up to a soldier in a war zone. I hate sending you into combat but I know you had to go.’

I was relieved he wasn’t outright blaming me. ‘Thank you. This gift—it won’t always be like this.’

He gave a huff that sounded full of scepticism.

‘I’m learning my moves right now. I’ll try really hard not to put so much of myself out there on the line next time.’

‘So there will be a next time?’

I tapped my feet on the step. ‘Yes, well, I did promise Alberto the butler that I’d go back and try to do something for him and his people.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Jeez, Crystal, I’m not sure my heart can take much more of this.’

‘Do you want me to break my promise to them?’

‘No. That’s the really, really annoying thing: I’m behind you one hundred per cent. I just don’t like it.’

That was OK then. I leant against him. ‘My advice? Don’t walk behind.’

‘Good rule. Not to say the view isn’t mighty fine from there.’

I grinned. ‘Walk with me. It looks like I need you to patch me up.’

‘I can see I’m going to have my hands full, particularly when you have this tendency to bolt ahead and get into all kinds of trouble.’

I picked one up from his knee and draped it on mine. ‘Consider yourself fully employed.’

We sat for a while just enjoying the sunset painting the ancient stones a blushing pink. It was a magical city, polished like the intricate mechanism of an old ornamental clock, out of date but still ticking away. Until time ran out for it, that is.

‘How many lovers have sat here, would you say?’ he asked, gesturing to the square with the sunken entrance to the basilica, the Doge’s palace and ranks of waiting gondolas bobbing on the lagoon.

‘Too many. We are in danger of becoming a cliché.’

‘I don’t mind; do you?’

‘Not a bit.’

He held my hand, warm palm to my cold one.

‘Your brothers are worrying we are going to forge a united front and turn our teasing upon them.’

‘Sounds a plan.’

‘But I’ve rumbled you, Xav Benedict.’

He arched a brow. ‘Am I so simple to see through?’

‘For your soulfinder. You’ve carved out a role for yourself in the family as the joker but, oddly enough you … ’

He smiled. ‘You’re saying I’m odd?’

‘If the cap fits, mate … Anyway, as I was saying:
oddly enough
, you might be one of the deepest thinkers, certainly the most compassionate. You use your humour, like Diamond does her peace-making, to defuse, to heal if you can.’