Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (27 page)

“And what of
the war in the UK?” Esther asked, distracting everyone before
people could start backing out because of Fionnuala’s words.

“We’ll meet
again. I tire of this.” Fionnuala left the room abruptly, and the
numbers dwindled until there were just a few of us left.

“I need to get
back,” I told Esther as Eddie approached me. He had been
conspicuously silent throughout the proceedings.

“I’m proud of
you,” Eddie said before I could leave. “You’re making the first
step toward change. I’m excited to see how you will disrupt the
Council in future. Perhaps when the vampires come, you can repay me
one of those many favours you owe me.”

I gulped as he
walked away, feeling as though he had just physically marked me.
Maybe the vampires would never come. Maybe I would wriggle out of
his grasp.

Esther went
home to heal herself fully, and I slipped away before Gabe or Aiden
or anyone else could pull me into an argument. I headed back to
Folsom’s place, knowing full well I was being watched. I couldn’t
stop my hands from shaking, from exhilaration, fear, and doubt. I
had given away a lot of secrets in an effort to make my first real
deal with the Council. And if they succeeded in fulfilling their
part, what would come next? Could I even persuade Lucia to help the
Council? There was only one way to find out.

I was back in
the Féinics before I knew it, expectant faces all around me. I
relayed what had happened as clearly as possible, hoping they
wouldn’t judge me too harshly.

“So that’s the
deal,” I said, looking at the twins and Val. “I didn’t mention Leah
at all, but I asked for protection for the twins and Val. It’s
easier that way. I don’t want Leah to end up in a cell again. Are
you willing to give them info on the BVA, Lucia? Or is that too
much?”

She glanced at
Lorcan, gripping his hand tightly.

“She’ll do it,”
he said. “If it means the market will disappear.”

“What if it
springs up again?” Folsom asked. “Somewhere else?”

“Weeds grow. We
have to keep pulling them out and throwing them away,” I said
firmly. “No giving up. This is just the first step. If we can find
out who’s in charge, it will make everything easier.”

“But what if
it’s one of the Council?” he persisted. “What then? We can’t fight
them.”

“We can do this
one thing. The children are the most important point right now.
After that, we deal with whatever else comes along. You can go live
your lives if you like, but I’m in this for the long haul.”

We agreed to
meet again and soon. I just wanted to go home and shower. I didn’t
say a word to Peter or Carl when I got home. I refused to hug
Emmett. I scrubbed myself for half an hour to get dried hell hound
blood out from under my fingernails. It was vile, putrid stuff,
thicker than normal blood.

I stayed under
the water for longer, just thinking about what had happened. It
seemed surreal once I was back home. I had Val, a part-hell hound
warrior, Lucia, a seer, and Esther, a werebear. I had to depend on
all three in very different ways, but depend on them all the same.
We were about to fight a big fight, and even bigger ones might be
coming. Still, the reluctance of the Council to defend their own
rattled me most. They were willing to sacrifice their own people to
ignore a problem. Worse was the fact they were willing to destroy
an entire nation of people, all to ensure the deaths of a couple of
their targets.

These were the
people I was connected to. These were the people I worked for. What
did that make me?

“Apparently,
they made it back right before Helena died,” I said, taking a deep
breath and looking at my friends for the first time since I began
relaying what had been happening. My head was a whirlwind of
confusion and disaster, as everything new I had learned jumbled
with the old news.

Carl shook his
head. “That’s sad.”

“At least she
got to see them again. I think she was trying to hold on, just in
case. So now I’m going to wait and see if they’ll help me.”

“You don’t
think they’ll keep to their word?” Peter asked.

“It’s not that.
It’s just that this is their first taste of freedom, or at least,
it will be when they actually leave Folsom’s place. They still have
to get over being reunited with, and then losing, their mother, and
they’re in a place a fae who was likely their father managed to
create. I’m not going to get on their backs about it.”

Peter frowned.
“Maybe you need to remind them what the cost is.”

“I’m letting
them mourn, Peter,” I said, surprised by his coldness.

“I know. But
the Council is going to form a group soon. You need to be ready to
find the slave markets. You need to be ready for everything.”

“I’ll figure
out a way. With or without them. I
have
to do it. They
don’t.”

“You made a
deal,” Peter began, but Emmett and Dita trooped in, defusing the
tension.

“You two doing
okay?” Carl asked, ruffling Emmett’s hair.

“Just getting a
drink.” Emmett led Dita into the kitchen.

Carl laughed
abruptly.

“What?” I
asked, confused.

“They look like
a miniature version of you two. Him leading the way, her trotting
after him.”

I stared at
Carl for a few seconds in amazement. His laughter died away, and he
cleared his throat.

“I’m going for
a walk,” I said. What a dick, I thought.

Yvonne arrived
as I was leaving. We both kind of stood there looking at each other
for an awkward moment.

“I want to see
my nephew.” She tried to brush past me.

I caught her
arm, and she shrugged me off indignantly.

“I have a right
to see him.”

“Why are you
still working for Daimhín?” The question had been burning for a
while now.

“I don’t know,
because I like it? Maybe the pay is good.”

“She knew he
was back, and she didn’t even tell you.”

Her eyes
narrowed, and I saw something in her that I had seen in Peter many
a time—a thirst for revenge. She made a show of buttoning her coat
and smoothing her perfectly blow-dried brown hair.

“Why would a
queen even think of something like that?” she asked primly.

“Don’t do
anything stupid,” I said before turning abruptly to leave.

I only intended
to stretch my legs, but Yvonne’s presence at my home called for my
absence, and I found myself heading toward my grandmother’s house.
She wasn’t there, so it didn’t matter, but I called her at the
hotel and asked her what kinds of things she needed from home. She
rattled off a list as though she had expected my call.

The
neighbourhood hadn’t changed much over the years. More mature
families, maybe, and once again, I wondered how I had hidden in
full view for so long. Leah was running around everywhere, ducking
her head to escape attention, while I acted like a normal kid in
many ways. The more I thought about it, the more I realised someone
had helped hide me. There was no way an ordinary woman could have
kept me hidden.

I should have
gone to the twins. Peter was right. It was better for everyone if
they remained firm in their desire to end the market. I didn’t fear
them backing out, but if they did, I would respect their decision
because I cared about them. But the more I cared, the harder
decisions became. I felt as though I were being torn in several
different directions, but if I had to pick one thing I wanted to
do, it would be to join Emmett and Dita in my back garden to forget
about everything else.

I still hadn’t
thought about what would happen if war really did break out, or if
the vampires really did unleash an army of beasts on us. Could we
even come away with a chance? For all my bravado, I knew we were
severely under-armed. Our country was too separated, too unwilling
to help each other for nothing because of a few old deals and
loyalties and betrayals.

I hesitated
outside my grandmother’s house, breathing heavily as I prepared
myself. Anyone could have been there, watching and waiting, but
really, I was more concerned with the memories her house always
unleashed in me.

I moved around
the rooms quickly, feeling like a child all of a sudden, trying to
find everything in as little time as possible. But then I found
something important.

Looking under
her bed for a pair of shoes, I pulled out a box. Inside was some
paperwork, a forged birth certificate for me, for one. But at the
bottom, peeking out as if it wanted me to see it, was an old
photograph. Two figures were standing next to each other, a man and
woman. My parents, I realised with a sudden pang. I couldn’t
breathe, and my eyes watered, making the picture swim before me. I
blinked rapidly, trying to clear my head. Nancy had told me she
didn’t have any pictures of my mother, so it was a huge shock.

I could only
see the side of my mother’s face because she was staring up at my
father and laughing, but she was beautiful. My father, the plainer
of the two, looked as though he couldn’t believe his luck, and in
his eyes was a look of pure adoration. I didn’t resemble either of
them, the only obvious similarity being my mother’s impossibly red
hair. When I squinted, I thought his eye colour might be a similar
blue to mine, but other than that, I didn’t recognise them. There
was nothing familiar about them at all.

Closing my eyes
tight, I tried to imagine them with a child, and I couldn’t. I
couldn’t place them as my parents. I ached inside for what I had
lost. Something I never had. Something I would never have. No
matter what I did, I would never know them.

Two people in
my life knew them. Gabe had already told me everything he could
about my mother, but there was still my father. The importance of
parentage seemed to be weighing heavily on me of late, and I
realised I had never really asked about my father. Maybe because he
was human, maybe because I assumed he would be like my grandmother,
but she could tell me things… tell me what she remembered of
him.

I quickly put
everything Nancy wanted in a bag and shoved the photo into my
pocket. I spent the journey to the hotel trying to pluck up some
courage to ask her questions about things that would obviously
cause me some kind of pain. But maybe I had to know, to understand
who I was, to understand who I could be.

I sat with
Nancy for at least ten minutes, trying to figure out how to handle
my questions for her. Her knitting grew agitated, and I knew she
was waiting for me to speak and worrying about what I might
say.

In the end, I
showed her the photo and watched as the knitting needles trembled
in her hands.

“She was
beautiful, wasn’t she?” she said after a few minutes, pushing the
photo aside.

“Tell me about
them,” I pleaded.

“I didn’t know
much about her, Ava.”

“Him, then. He
was your son. My father. Surely you can tell me something about
him.”

The knitting
slowed, but I feared she might never speak and the moment would be
lost forever.

Finally, she
set the knitting aside and looked at me with determined eyes. “Yes.
I’m sure I can. It’s… he… I’m not sure where to start.”

“Take your time
then.”

She stared out
the window at the river, a shiver running through her. “I never
talk about him. Never. Sometimes I forget. What he looked like,
what he liked to eat. Sometimes I forget he’s gone and call out for
him. It’s strange. Sometimes I feel like he really is still around,
still hovering the way he used to.”

She smiled and
sat back, her face brightening. “He wasn’t the smartest boy, but he
was so polite that it was impossible not to feel proud of him. He
volunteered at a dog rescue, walked dogs because I wouldn’t let him
take any of them home with him. For most of his life, it was just
me and him.” Her face hardened. “Until
she
came along.”

“Nancy,” I
warned.

She waved her
hand. “He liked to do the right thing. He had all of these ideas
about doing good in the world, leaving his mark by changing lives
in some way. He was the boy who got a black eye defending a smaller
child from a bully, even though he was small himself. I couldn’t
tell you how many times he would come home with a boy in the year
above him at school, one who was neglected at home, just to share
his dinner. Little things that nobody else noticed. He had this way
of helping without you realising what he was doing until it was
over. I liked that about him. I thought he should get more credit
for his actions, but that’s the way he was, on the sidelines, never
expecting a thank you.”

“I think… I
think I would have liked him,” I said, hesitantly.

“You’re just
like him,” she said, surprising me. “You make this face that’s
exactly like him. Something about the eyes, or some kind of facial
expression. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s like waking up to a
memory. Sometimes, it would chill me, especially when you would be
a reminder of her two seconds later. It was like they were haunting
me. The pair of them.”

She shuddered,
wrapping her arms around herself. “But you would have acted like
him had I let you. You would eat half of your dinner and sneak the
rest outside to feed the wild kittens, thinking I didn’t notice. Do
you remember the time you knocked a child unconscious?”

I shrugged.
“Vaguely.” The punishments had been a tad harsh.

“It all started
because a group of children picked on one. You had to get in the
way. You’ve never changed, have you? Always sticking up for the
underdog. You’re your father’s child in that way.”

“Then why did
you hate me if I was so like him?”

“You were too
like
her
,” she said nastily, and I knew it was time to go. I
had asked my questions, gotten some answers, and for the first
time, I had an actual photograph of both of my parents together. It
wasn’t a good picture, but it would do.