The Secret (49 page)

Malachi sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry.”

She burst from under the covers and battered him with the pillow. “You. Forgot. To. Lock. The. Door!”

“I’m sorry!” She could tell he was trying not to laugh. “I’m so sorry. I was just… distracted. And there were a couple hundred years when privacy wasn’t an issue.”

She fell back on the bed and covered herself with the blanket again. “I live in a supernatural fraternity house.”

“It’s not that bad.” He peeled the covers away and spooned her from behind. Ava tried to hide her head under a pillow, but he stole it. “
Canım
?”

“What?”

He kissed the back of her neck. “Does this mean you don’t want to—”

“Go back to work before I stun you.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Germany

HE WOKE WITH A START, the face of the child in the front of his mind. He sat up and put his head in his hands. This time when Malachi had caught the small body, the boy hadn’t dissolved. Instead, his eyes had opened and he’d lunged toward Ava, leaping on her and tearing into her throat before Malachi could catch him.

“Babe?” her sleepy voice asked at his side.

“I’m fine.”

“Come here.”

“I’m fine.”

“Come here anyway.”

He lay down next to her and gathered her into his arms.

Maybe it was the winter wind that echoed outside the house, reminding him how it had shrieked through the Stephansplatz. Maybe it was the way the snow fell outside. He hadn’t had a dream of the boy in months.

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

“
Canım
—”

“It’ll make the bad dreams go away. Promise.”
 

Ava smiled up at him, so he kissed her, sinking into her mouth in relief.
 

She was here. She was alive. No one was after her, and Volund was gone.

His hands ran down her sides, cupping her hips as he brought her closer. And while the cold waves crashed outside, he made love to her. Long and slow with deliberate strokes that drew her pleasure out and forced his mind back to the beauty that was Ava and their union.
 

“I love you,” she gasped as she came. “I love you so much.”
 

Her mating marks shone on her skin and he read the words he’d written there.

I am for Ava.

Not for nightmares and death. Not for guilt and recrimination.

“For you,” he said into her mouth. “I love you.”

She held him after the pleasure wracked his body. Wrapped her arms around him and held on.

For Ava.

He was for Ava.

Chapter Thirty-two

“YOU’RE BETTER,” AVA SAID, smiling at her grandmother.

The woman looked more like her sister than her grandmother. The staff didn’t ask questions, but she could see their inquisitive looks.

“A little more every day,” Maheen said.
 

She’d asked Ava to call her by her new name the first time she’d visited after Jaron’s death.

Why Maheen?

Someone called me that once. I liked it.

Ava didn’t ask more. If her grandmother had chosen a new name for a new life, it was more than understandable.
 

She still lived in the hospital. Ava guessed she would live there for some time.
 

“You don’t look like me,” Maheen said.

“No. The eyes. I think that’s the only thing.”

“Grigora are more beautiful than human women,” she said, her eyes drifting. “It’s good you look human.”

Maheen was not an easy person to talk with. Brittle pain leached into the air around her, though Ava could occasionally see echoes of the woman she might have been before her rape and binding to Volund. She hated Malachi’s presence, and it had taken more than a little persuading to let her visit Maheen alone.

Malachi didn’t trust her. Neither, if Ava were completely honest, did she.

The hospital said she hadn’t been violent since the night almost a year ago when she’d started screaming and collapsed. She’d beaten her hands so badly they’d required surgery. She still struggled to hold one of the paintbrushes she was now allowed, but she was healing.

Ava hoped it was more than her hands.

“Is the scribe with you?” she asked.

“Yep. Waiting in the living room downstairs.”

She nodded, rocking back and forth a little in her seat.

“He won’t come up.”

“They were the monsters in the night, you know?”

“Who?”

“Irin scribes. My brothers would tell me stories. If I saw one in the market, I had to run. They never let me go anywhere alone.” She laughed. “Except…”

Ava waited for a long while, but Maheen had drifted again. It was a pretty common occurrence.

“Grandmother?”

“You shouldn’t call me that.” Her head jerked toward the door. “You know they watch me.”

Did they? Ava made a mental note to check. She couldn’t see any cameras, but you never knew. Maheen was highly paranoid.

“Is he here again?” Maheen asked. “Did you bring him?”

“Jasper?” Ava hesitated to say. Maheen had refused to see Jasper the other two times they’d brought him. Ava kept convincing her father to give his mother another chance, but she could see him spiral each time his mother rejected his attempts to speak with her. According to Maheen’s doctor, Jasper paid the bills, but he hadn’t visited since Ava—
Maheen
had attacked him three years before.
 

“Yeah,” Ava finally said. “He… He’s waiting with Malachi. If you want—”

“Not today.”

Not
today
.

Not
no
. Not
never
.

Not today. Which, in Ava’s mind, meant there was still hope. Maybe it was a small hope, but that was better than nothing.

“Do you know anything about gemstones?” Maheen asked.

“Gemstones?” Ava frowned. “Not much.”

“I studied history. I couldn’t go to the university, but my father brought me books. Gemstones have fascinating history. Mythology…”

Her eyes drifted to the wall over Ava’s head. They were sitting at a table having lunch in her room. Though her grandmother was allowed to walk throughout the estate now that her rages and seizures had calmed down, Maheen still preferred to live in isolation.

Her mind was a raw wound.

She resisted any attempts to learn shielding, explaining to Ava that she was used to the voices and it let her know when someone was approaching. The shield Jaron had forced over her at times had been stifling. She said it felt like a prison, and she didn’t want another.

“Do you think you’ll ever want to leave here?” Ava asked.

“I’ll have to someday.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been preparing myself for months now. I’ve been here five years. I can only be somewhere for six or seven before they start to notice.

“You have time.”

“It might be better…”

Ava waited, but Maheen was staring out the window now.

“No one’s going to force you out,” Ava said. “And there are places you can go if you want to leave.”

Ava was thinking of the various scribe houses and libraries that had begun to open to Irina who wanted to rejoin Irin society, and a few
kareshta
who had found their way to them. She didn’t know if her grandmother would be open to it, but she could try.

Maheen shook her head. “Not now. Not yet.”

“Okay.”

Their eyes met over the pot of honey-sweetened tea Maheen had requested.

“Thank you,” her grandmother told her. “I know I’m not the easiest person to visit. I didn’t even bake cookies.”

Ava saw one of those rare glimpses in that moment. Fire and intelligence and humor. The spark of life that had woken an archangel and drawn the lethal attention of a predator.

“I know,” Ava said. “You’re really falling down on the grandmother thing.”

Maheen barked out a short laugh. “I was a horrible mother too.”

Her smile fell.

She didn’t talk about Jasper.

“What do you do,” Ava asked, “when you don’t have visitors? Do you paint a lot? I like your canvases.”

Maheen waved to a row of them stacked against a wall. “Take them. As many as you like. I run out of room.”

“Thanks.”

“I paint.” Maheen nodded. “I read. I can enjoy music again. But mostly…”
 

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, an expression of utter peace falling across her face.

“I sleep.”

JASPER took a deep drag from another cigarette as they sat at the cafe in Toulouse. His coffee cup was empty. Ava was just glad it wasn’t a wineglass. After all, it was only ten in the morning. Spring had come early, so they were enjoying the morning sun as Malachi talked on his phone in the small park nearby. Talked and paced. Paced and scanned the streets.

“That guy ever calm down?” Jasper asked.

“Kinda.” She sipped her café au lait. “Not really.”

“I’m starting to think he’s more paranoid than Carl.”

“Old habits are hard to break.”
 

Jasper grunted. “I’m not complaining if it keeps you safe.”

“It does.” She nudged the ashtray with her own cup. “Is this all you’re doing lately?”

“It’s… ah, hell.” He looked sheepish. “I’m trying. Whatever your man said to Luis sent him on some kind of crusade, but you know me, baby girl. I ain’t ever gonna be father of the year.”

“I just want you healthy.”

He was. He would be for a long, long time, as far as any of them knew. Orsala had said nothing in Irina oral tradition spoke of humans with as much angelic blood as Jasper carried, and Rhys couldn’t find anything in the archives either. The glamour Jaron had placed over Jasper had disappeared, leaving him looking more like her brother than her father.
 

He didn’t ask questions. Mostly, Ava thought, because he didn’t want to know the answers.

“How was she this time?” He scratched at the stubble on his chin.

“She’s better,” Ava said. “Thanks for coming. Again. I keep hoping—”

“It’s cool, Ava.” He nodded. “Yeah, you never know. I’m glad she’s better. Is the uh…?” His finger lifted to tap at his temple. “That any better?”

“Not for her. Not yet. But I’m better.” She glanced at Malachi. “A lot better.”

Jasper could pretend they were normal. For now. But that wouldn’t and didn’t stop Ava from speaking the truth.

Words, she’d learned through experience, had immense power.

He’d have to learn eventually.

For now, they could drink their coffee and watch the flowers break open on the trees. Watch new life starting again and ignore the quickly passing years.

“I love you, baby girl.” Jasper slid an open hand across the table. “Best thing I ever did in my life.”

Ava put her palm in his. “Love you too, Jasper.”

He wasn’t much of a father, but he was hers. And Ava had realized he was the only part of her old life that would last into the new.
 

Malachi. Jasper. Maheen.

They would be her family.

She saw the car pull up and Luis step out, eyes flicking nervously between Jasper and Malachi.

“Do not know why your guy makes him so nervous.” Jasper stubbed out his cigarette and patted his pockets. “I’ve seen Luis scare dudes twice Malachi’s size, and yet that guy…” He shook his head. “No idea.”

“Oh, you know,” Ava said, trying to suppress the nervous smile. “It’s probably the tattoos.”

Jasper stood. “Ava, he’s in the music business. Tattoos are like cardigans to us.”

Ava threw her head back and laughed. Jasper took the opportunity to haul her to her feet to he could wrap his arms around her and squeeze. She hugged him back and relished the small kiss he planted on her head.
 

“Okay.” His voice was rough when he let go. “Back to the studio.”

“I’ll see you in a couple of months.”

“You better.”

He was patting his pockets again. “I know I put it in here…”

“What?”

“Ah.” He plucked a small USB drive out of the pocket on his chest. “There it is.”

He handed it to her, bent down and kissed her cheek before he walked toward the car.

“Jasper?” She looked at the drive and took a few steps toward him. “Dad!”

He turned, grinning. Mischief lit his eyes. “What?”

“What is this?”

The smile turned wistful. “I finally got it right.”

“Got what right?”

“It’s for you, Ava.” He slipped on his sunglasses. “It’s your song.”

Ava gripped the precious piece of plastic in her hand and watched him drive away.