The Ballad of Aramei (31 page)

His eyes and his full attention lock on me now and the pain is straining his face. I lean in and kiss his lips tenderly.

“Don’t do that. Please,” I say.

Isaac kisses me back softly and then he smiles faintly under his grief. “But you’re safe now and this is over.”

I smile back, running the tip of my finger along the side of his neck.

“I think I’m going to let you spend some time with Alex.”

I look at Alex on my right. She’s waiting impatiently with crossed arms and a raised brow. I look down at her wrists and wonder.

“You broke out of them.”

Alex grins hugely and raises both hands in front of her; the chain links left dangling.

“Yeah, I could’ve broken out of these babies a long time ago.”

“Well, why didn’t you?”

“Because then I never would’ve gained your trust, Dria.” She cocks her head to the side.

Isaac reaches in his jeans pocket and pulls out the key to the shackles. “Let me take what’s left of them off.”

Alex holds out her wrists and Isaac removes them, afterwards, kneeling down to remove the ones from her ankles. She moves her wrists and legs around as if readjusting to the comfort of being free again.

“Much better,” she says.

I smile warmly at her. This is real. My sister is home, where she’s supposed to be.

“I’ll see you upstairs later,” Isaac says and kisses me goodbye. I start to stop him because I don’t want to leave him alone, especially not after what happened, but he says in my mind:
“No…I want you to be with your sister. Do that for me.”

I nod and reluctantly let him go.

Once he’s gone, the others from the small crowd leave, too. Sebastian walks out last and I run over to stop him.

“Sebastian—”

He puts up his hand and doesn’t turn around to look at me. “Not right now. Just…,” his hand bobs a couple of times, “…just not right now,” and he makes his way down the dark path and out of sight.

I feel so much sorrow for him and I can’t imagine what he must be thinking right now, how he’s going to deal with knowing the girl he loved wasn’t who she pretended to be and obviously didn’t really love him back. She used him. And I hate her for it. I try to shake the depressing, angry thoughts from my head and turn back to see my sister. But a small, childlike form sitting on the ground where the crowd just stood catches my eye.

“
Cecilia
?”

Seeing that it really is her and she looks to be in a state of shock, I run over to her and lean over, taking her hands and helping her to her feet. “Oh my God…Cecilia, are you
alright
?” I brush my hands across her face as if pushing hair away from her eyes even though her hair is too short for such a thing.

Alex steps up behind me.

“Is she…,” Alex squints at her as though looking at her really close might answer her own question, “…
human
?”

My eyes widen warningly at Alex.

Cecilia suddenly snaps out of her mind and looks at Alex as if the h-word used in such a way is finally what’s going to set her completely over the edge.

“You people are fucking crazy,” she says holding up a finger. She steps away from me. “It’s a crazy-house. And my mom is forcing
me
to see a shrink?” Her hands come up in surrender and she draws her chin back. “I don’t think so. I’m outta here!” She pushes her way past us and hurries toward the path.

“Maybe I
do
need a shrink!” she yells out as she continues to walk away from us. “That’s it! I’m getting on that Thorazine stuff. Yep! I might even get my very own strait-jacket! I hope Hollister makes strait-jackets!” And her shouting voice fades as she disappears.

“I’ll have Harry fix her right up,” I say nervously to Alex.

She nods as if to say, “good idea—whatever that means” and we head into the house.

Chapter 23

FOR ONLY THE SECOND time since I stepped foot inside the Mayfair house, I’m inside Rachel’s bedroom. The first time was months ago when she set me up to witness her molesting Isaac when he was going through his before-full-moon stage. Of course, something like that is the only reason I could believe when he told me he didn’t remember kissing her and that he wasn’t in his right mind. If any regular guy ever said something like that I’d know he was a lying, disgusting pig.

But valid excuses never really have completely wiped that scene from my mind. And it’s why I kind of refused to sit on Rachel’s bed moments ago when I first walked in. I cringed when she offered for me to sit down. And then I felt the need to clean out my ears because I wasn’t sure if I heard her kindness right.

She’s a totally different Rachel, practically overnight. Okay, not totally. She’s still a difficult bitch with no qualms about speaking her mind, but she now treats me a lot like Zia treated me.

I miss Zia. I really do. But this is something I’m going to have to get over.

“Where are they going?” Alex says about Isaac and his brothers and sisters.

Rachel moves to the window to look out over the driveway. Alex and I walk over to stand beside her.

“To bury Phoebe.”

“What, like to
literally
bury her?” Alex says and it’s the same thing I was going to ask with the same amount of confusion.

Isaac walks out of the house and into the light filtering down from all around the house, carrying Phoebe wrapped in a long, thin black cloth. Nathan, Xavier, Daisy, Shannon, Elizabeth and Camilla follow closely behind. They vanish into the woods single file.

“Well, they’ll bury her afterwards, but…I’ve only seen it once before.”

I turn around at the waist to see Rachel at my side, “Seen it?” I stumble over my words because I can’t decide what to verify first. I settle with what came first. “Wait…they’re going to bury her body here,
in the woods
? After
what
?” I just can’t wrap my mind around either possibility.

“They’ll cremate her first,” Rachel says somberly, “and then bury what’s left of her bones.”

My neck springs back and I feel my eyes blink a dozen times. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah, I think she’s serious, Dria.”

I look over at Alex and then back out the window.

“It’s the Law,” Rachel says plopping down amid her evil, memory-searing mattress. “Try reporting every death that a family like this suffers to the police. Way too much exposure, girl. It doesn’t take a frickin’ genius to figure that out,” she scoffs.

I turn my back to the window and lean against it, looking across at Rachel to let her finish and ignoring her mock comment. That’s just the way she is and how she’ll always be. Funny how I’m already comfortable with it.

“We don’t attend this burial because the one who died is a direct sibling,” she says. “Now if it was Isaac who bit the dust, being Alpha, everyone in the pack would attend.”

I flinch at her words.

Alex sits on the end of Rachel’s bed and kicks off her Chuck Taylor’s.

“You say you’ve only seen it once before.” I walk forward a few steps with my arms crossed. “Who was it?”

“Zia’s sister, Avril. Back before Zia joined the pack.”

A thin silence falls across the room; all I can hear is the sound of my breath.

“I always thought there was something weird about that girl,” Rachel adds, stirring the quiet with her less than sympathetic comments. “She snuck away a lot. I used to watch her like a paranoid meth-junkie.” She laughs all of a sudden. “Now that I know what she was, it totally explains why one day, out of the blue, I trusted her more than I trusted anyone here. I just stopped watching her altogether—she must’ve messed with my head because she knew I was onto her.”

“I imagine she messed with a lot of heads around here,” Alex says.

I filled her in a little on the Praverians shortly before we came up with Rachel to her room.

“Yeah…,” I say absently, looking toward the door and thinking about Sebastian. “She hurt a lot of people.” I try to swallow down the ache I feel for him.

Just then, I see Sebastian walk past the bedroom door carrying a duffle bag. My hands drop to my sides and I run out into the hall.

“Sebastian?” I come up behind him and lay my hand on his shoulder. “Where are you going?”

He turns around and I quietly fold inside seeing the depth of the pain in his eyes.

Rachel and Alex stop in the doorway behind me.

“I’m going home.”

I shake my head in a soft, jerking motion. “Home? But this is your home….”

Sebastian’s robust shoulders slump over and he tries softening his expression for my sake. “Look, I’m sorry, but…this just isn’t for me.” His eyes scan the hallway, lastly falling on the door of the bedroom that he and Zia used to share.

He looks at me again. “I’m not cut out for this. I miss bitchy, shallow cheerleaders and watching football. Hell, I might even try
out
for football—I can run down a whole team now, after all.” He smiles faintly at me and I smile back, trying to hold the tears inside. I reach up and pat him on his shaved head.

But I let my smile fade. “Don’t let her do this to you. You can so easily find another girlfriend.” It was a lame thing to say, but it just came out.

Sebastian laughs a little under his breath, also realizing how lame it was, but he lets it slide. “It’s not about that; what Zia did was—shit, I can’t even categorize it—but she was really the only reason why I was here. No offense to anyone, but I’ve been missing home ever since this started for me. I just want to go back to my old life, y’know? I want to go to college.”

“But…Sebastian,” I hesitate because I have to say this with the right amount of compassion. “…You can never go back to your old life, not being what you are.”

“Yeah,” Rachel speaks up from behind; “what if you hurt someone?” She moves out into the hall now, too. There’s something hidden in her voice and then I realize what it is when she says, “I tried that once. I went home. I almost killed my mom.” She’s holding back her true feelings on the matter, making herself sound faintly amused by it when really I think she wants to either hit a wall, or break down and cry. “I had to find another pack after that—no way in hell I was going back to Ashe and his rabid family.”

I notice Alex and Rachel share a look of agreement.

“I appreciate the concern,” Sebastian says, shouldering the heavy duffle bag, “but I just can’t stay here.” He looks only at me again. “Tell Isaac I said thanks and if you see Harry again, let him know I’m alright and not to come looking for me.”

I didn’t even see until now that Sebastian has lost more than his girlfriend; he has also lost his best friend. Harry, the guy he grew up with, was never even human. It’s not like he really has Harry left to go back to, either. Harry’s life has changed in unimaginable ways.

My attempts to keep Sebastian here have been thwarted. I know that nothing I can do or say is going to change his mind.

Rachel steps in front of me and props her hands on her hips. “I say you stay,” she demands.

Alex and I pass each other a look, both with a raised brow.

Sebastian smiles, shaking his head. “Thanks, but…I’ve gotta go.”

He raises two fingers and waves at us as he moves down the hall.

“Don’t even think about it,” Rachel hisses pointing at Alex with a warning look on her face. “That hot piece of ass is totally mine.”

Alex and I barely hold in our laughter and we slip back inside Rachel’s room behind her. I shut the door.

“
What
?” Rachel says all cock-eyed.

She plops back down on her bed, crossing her bare feet at the ankles below. Her toenails are painted red and she wears a gold ring on each pinky toe.

We can’t wipe the smiles off our faces. “Oh, nothing,” we say melodiously at the same time.

An hour passes in which we spend talking about more human things and I sort of feel a little bit human again. It almost feels like the time Alex and I hung out with her friend, Liz, one night when Brandon was out of town. We gossiped and laughed and did all the normal things teenage girls do. But things are different now. We’re not so much teenagers anymore. And our gossip consists of stuff about how certain girls in the house are still delusional about being with the Alpha—yeah, ummm, he’s taken, thank-you-very-much.

There’s a rhythmic knock on the door and since I’m closest to it, I look to Rachel first since it’s her room.

“What?!” she shouts.

“Are you naked?!” Xavier says on the other side.

Rachel rolls her eyes.

Xavier lets himself in, peeking his blond head around the door. “Not like I haven’t seen it before,” he says grinning and steps the rest of the way inside.

Alex recoils from his presence with aversion and intolerance. I’m proud of her for that. I just want to slap that grin off his face. He is gorgeous; I’ll give him that, but he’s way too much of a slutty douche bag to be talking to
my
sister. I sneer at him, but he doesn’t even notice me. He walks right over next to Alex and sits down on Rachel’s vanity chair, leaning his back against the wall and splaying his legs out into the floor.

“Shouldn’t you be in mourning?” Rachel says with a sneer and goes back to inspecting her fingernails.

Xavier, for a brief second, looks crestfallen, but he quickly wipes away how he’s really feeling and smiles. “So,” he says, folding his hands casually on his lap, “when are you going to go out with me?”

Alex’s head snaps around. “Umm. Never?”

Xavier smiles a crooked smile. “How about tomorrow night?”

Alex’s mouth falls open and cavernous creases take shape in her forehead around her eyebrows. I’m as revolted as she is.

“How about
never
?” she says.

Xavier glances over at Rachel and nods his head toward Alex. “Tell her I’m not so bad—not what she thinks I am, anyway.”

Rachel puts up her hands. “Don’t drag me into this.”

“No, I’m sure you’re exactly what I think you are,” Alex interjects. “An uncompassionate sex junkie who uses people and is full of himself.”