Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (17 page)

“And you’re the
one. You’re like me, Ava. We can stand on either side, but there
will always be lost souls who come to us for help, regardless of
what that help may be.”

“You’re…
tainted? Like me?”

She shook her
head, smiling sadly. “No, I’m not of the same heritage as you. But
we face the same problems. You have to decide now if you are going
to help anyone who comes along, or just those who you think are
good.”

“What do you
mean?”

She held my
gaze steadily, even though she had to look up to do it. “Not all of
the children down there are human like Emmett. Some will grow up to
be the things you protect others from. They have been raised to be
dark, even Emmett. Do you understand?”

“You’re saying
the children might be evil? I could be unleashing something
terrible on the world if I set them free?”

“I’m saying
every evil was once defenceless. And that was the easiest time to
kill it.”

I backed away.
“I’m not going to—”

“I’m not saying
you have to. I’m saying this is the choice you make. There will be
many like it. So can you handle it?”

She picked up
the bags and headed into the kitchen, leaving me standing in the
narrow hallway, feeling as though my heart might burst out of my
chest. I caught the tail end of Mrs. Yaga’s conversation with
Emmett when I finally got my act together and followed her.

“So you see,
she’s tainted, too. Just like you. But she uses it to help people
who can’t help themselves. She uses it for good. What will you
do?”

Emmett stared
at her, a look of mild horror on his face.

“Are you
scaring him?” I demanded.

“I’m making
sure he knows the path he’s following if he’s to remain here. We
don’t hurt others in the cul-de-sac. That is the first rule.”

“I didn’t—” he
started.

“Good,” she
interrupted. “That must remain true if you want to stay here with
us. Now I must go. I’m late for dinner. Don’t forget the rent is
due on Monday, Ava.”

She left me
standing there, open-mouthed, as she let herself out. Emmett and I
exchanged a glance, but something in his eyes told me he understood
exactly what she meant. I had to admit that it worried me to think
of what he might have learned in the dark, wherever that was.

Emmett
recovered quicker than I did and went to play outside in the sun.
He relished the light, but I couldn’t help watching him through
different eyes. Could he do bad things? Could the other children be
evil? I shuddered at the thought of what I might unwittingly
unleash on the world.

“Want to play
cards with me?” Emmett asked when he got tired of running around
out back.

“You know how
to play cards?”

“Yeah, one of
the guards taught us.”

“What games do
you know?”

Turned out, he
was better than I was at poker, so he got to decide what we were
having for dinner.

“All right
then, card shark. What is it? Anything you like.”

“Pizza.”

Fifteen minutes
after I ordered, a knock at the door startled me as I washed the
dishes.

“I’ll get it,”
Emmett called out from the living room.

“Wait! Emmett,
no!” I threw the wash cloth back into the sudsy water in the sink
and ran out after him.

He opened the
door as I hit the living room, and Shay stood there for a couple of
seconds, staring at Emmett. Then his eyes found mine, and I
shivered at the anger there. The corners of his mouth lifted in an
unpleasant sort of way, and he turned on his heel.

“Wait,” I
called as I chased after him. “Emmett, go inside for me,
please.”

I grabbed Shay
at the gate. He stared at my hands as if I were on drugs or
something, probably thinking I was stronger than I should have
been.

“Let me
explain,” I said softly.

“That’s him,
isn’t it?” he said. “All this time. What the hell?”

“It’s not as
bad as it looks. We found him the other night.”

“Then why is he
with you?” he spat, the darkness in his eyes scaring me a
little.

“Because Peter
thought he was dead, and now he doesn’t believe it can be
true.”

“Right, you
just find the kid all of a sudden, and now his father doesn’t want
him? And you don’t tell the police? Bullshit.”

“It’s not like
that!” I slammed the gate closed and pressed my palms against his
chest to stop him from leaving. “The people who had him didn’t like
the questions we were asking, how close we were getting. Moses
hooked us up with a contact so we could do someone we know a
favour, okay? We turn up, and there’s Emmett, just standing there,
except he has a knife in his hand, and… and something’s just not
right about the situation. I tell Peter it’s Emmett─ you see him;
he’s the spitting image of the man—but he can’t hack it, so he runs
away, and now he won’t answer my calls. Nobody will talk to me and
tell me what I’m supposed to do with the kid, and I don’t even care
because he makes me feel like a…”

I stopped and
heaved a breath, shaking my head at how emotional I was becoming.
“Look. There’s nothing dodgy about this. He’s Peter’s kid, and he’s
back because we got close to the truth somehow. Someone’s had him
all this time, kept him hidden, and just let him go. I went back to
Moses, and he’s going to try and make some sense of it. Can you
please just stop acting like a stroppy teen?”

He ran his
tanned hands over his face. “This is screwed up. Do you know how
many people looked for that kid? Searched for him in those first
forty-eight hours in particular? How many people thought he was
buried in the mountains somewhere or that his body would float up
on the shore like driftwood? It’s not possible that he’s
alive.”

“Unless he was
somewhere people couldn’t look.”

He gave me a
strange look. “I’m going to see Peter. I need to hear it from
him.”

“Well, while
you’re there, please give him a smack across the head from me.
That’s if you find him. He’s probably propping up a bar somewhere
while I take care of his kid.”

He grinned.
“You two are like an old married couple some times.”

“That doesn’t
give me high hopes, Shay.” But I couldn’t resist smiling back.

He glanced back
at the house, where Emmet was staring out the window, and shivered.
“Is he okay? Is he hurt, or…?”

“He seems fine,
all things considered. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but the
pictures he draws are dark. He’s healthy, a little small and pale,
but nothing a few bowls of stew and a couple of games of football
won’t sort out.” At least, I hoped so. I couldn’t even take Emmett
to see a doctor, just in case. I could only hope for the best.

Shay still
seemed astonished. “He does look like him, but how do you know it’s
really him?”

“I just know.
Trust me. But Peter could take a DNA test if he wanted. If that
would make him feel better. I tried to contact Yvonne, Emmett’s
aunt, but she won’t answer.”

“Right. I’m
going to sort this out with Peter then.” He made as if to leave,
but I held up a hand to stop him.

“Don’t you ever
work?”

“This
is
work. Just not the paid kind.” He obviously saw the sceptical look
in my eyes because he explained. “There are a lot of things I
regret. Giving up on that kid was one of them. The whole situation
ate at me for years. It was so fresh in my head that I knew exactly
who you were talking about when you turned up at the station that
day.” He shook his head.

“There was
nothing you could have done, trust me.”

“I could have
kept looking,” he said bitterly. “I knew in my gut that it wasn’t
right, and nobody can stay hidden forever. There’s something really
messed up going on in this country, and if you won’t tell me what
you know, then I’ll have to find out for myself.”

“Don’t,” I
said. “Stay away from the crazies. It’s safer that way.”

“You worried
about me, Ava?”

I snorted.
“Yeah, right. I have enough to worry about.”

But as he
walked away, I had to wonder if keeping him in the dark was the
right thing to do. What if he did a Carl and ran headfirst into
disaster? But did I really want to drag another innocent person
into my world? I would let Shay deal with Peter and figure it out
later, but from what I had been hearing, having friends in all
sorts of places might have been the best plan out there.

Emmett was a
little scared after Shay’s mildly dramatic exit, but he soon calmed
down, and by the time he had eaten more pizza than I did, he was
acting like a normal, hyper, little boy. He whimpered a couple of
times in his sleep that night, but there were no screams and no
night terrors. It was as if he had already forgotten his past. I
just wished everything else could be so easy. I didn’t doubt that
Shay would knock some sense into Peter. After all, Peter seemed in
total awe of the older man, but his reaction to his son the next
time he saw him could change everything. I really hoped he wouldn’t
fuck it up.

The following
morning, I realised I hadn’t heard from Esther at all since she’d
left the possible witness to head for the twins. It wasn’t like her
not to check in regularly, and she should have made it to the twins
already.

My brands stung
more than usual, which was probably why the twins’ situation was
high on my priority list, and I chanced ringing Gabe about it.

“She hasn’t
made contact with us yet,” he admitted. “None of the Guardians who
were sent over there have called us.” He didn’t bother trying to
disguise the worry in his voice.

“What’s going
on?” My stomach churned with anxiety. What if they were all
dead?

“We don’t know.
Aiden’s threatening to fly over there, but so far, he’s been kept
on a leash. How do you feel about flying again?”

“Fuck you,” I
said, panicking. “I can’t leave right now.”

“Oh,” he said
softly. “Does that have something to do with a new house
guest?”

“No.” I hung up
immediately. Holy crap, did the entire world know Emmett was with
me?

I moped about
all morning, barely paying attention when Emmett and Dita played
together out back, their little tiff forgotten.

“Are you okay?”
Emmett asked as they surrounded me with childlike concern.

“I’m fine.”

“You shouldn’t
lie,” Dita reprimanded, folding her arms.

“Leave her
alone.” Emmett’s forehead creased into a frown. To my surprise,
Dita fell silent instead of arguing with him.

“I’m okay,” I
insisted. “I’m just a little worried about a friend of mine. She’s
missing, and nobody’s heard from her. But don’t worry, she’ll be
fine. You two go and have some fun.”

Dita ran off,
Emmett following her slowly, but he seemed distracted, letting Dita
win every race. I watched them without seeing, too busy thinking of
a million and one reasons why there might be radio silence from the
Guardians.

A while later,
a solemn Emmett came back over to me. “I might be able to help your
friend,” he said in a quiet voice, somehow sounding more
mature.

“How?”

“The woman that
visits you. Maeve. She comes here a lot, just not for long. But she
can move to different places; she can probably even talk to others
like her.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see them that often before.
That’s why I was worthless in the dark. I was going to work there
when I got bigger. As a guard.”

“They make the
kids work there if they don’t get sold?”

He nodded. “I
don’t think the things I see can go to the dark. But sometimes I
saw them in the light, when they brought me up to test me and stuff
like that.”

“Test you?”

He shook his
head, frowning. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I hesitated,
wary of pushing him too hard. “What is Maeve anyway? A ghost, a
spirit, what?”

“She’s like a
ghost. She’s dead, but she’s not spooky. Someone has her trapped
here, so she can’t move on. He makes her do things, and he pulls
her back when she does something he doesn’t want her to do. She can
move around and see things we can’t, but she’s not… not free.”

I sighed
heavily. “I don’t know if she can help me, but maybe you could ask
her next time you see her.” I smiled weakly.

He puffed out
his chest. “I will. I’ll make sure she helps us. I can do that,
too.”

“Do what?” I
asked.

“Make them do
things. Dita told me it’s more polite to ask nicely, though.”

I stared at
him, but he was all innocence and light. He had more use than the
market owners thought.

“Dita’s right,”
I said. “And maybe we should keep this to ourselves.”

“Another
secret?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s okay.
That’s what she taught me, too.”

“Who?
Dita?”

He shook his
head. “The teacher. I don’t want to talk about it.” He fidgeted
nervously until I patted his shoulder and told him to go play. He
drew instead, and again, the drawings were dark and bloody, except
a singular face shone through in each picture.

Peter came that
evening with Carl. Both of them stood on my doorstep, looking like
bold little boys about to get into trouble. I crossed my arms and
stared at them, waiting for something. I wasn’t quite sure
what.

“I want to see
him,” Peter said.

“Why?”

He looked
startled. “Because he’s my son.”

“I told you
that the other night. You punched him.”

His cheeks
turned red. “I’m not… I didn’t know what to do. How was I supposed
to believe he was Emmett?”

“Are we going
to be getting into some kind of paternity testing situation here?
To prove he’s your son?” I asked, trying to keep my voice
steady.

“Ava, you sound
like… he’s not
your
child!”