Trust Me When the Sun Goes Down (4 page)

Scant seconds later, Rob tugged the tie free, gently brushing the hair away from my face.  “Hullo,” he said softly.

“Hi.” Embarrassed by all the ruckus I’d made, I couldn’t look at him at first.  Everybody on the block must know what we’d been doing.  Part of me didn’t know how I’d be able to face the rest of the house when the sun went down, but part of me didn’t care one bit. 

His thumbs brushed against the moistness gathering at the corner of my eyes.  “Did I hurt you?”

“No, it was just… a lot, you know?”

“Too right I do,” he grinned with male satisfaction, rolling to his back and taking me with him.  “Wasn’t too much for you, was it though?”

I was still too shaky to answer that for sure one way or another, but I kept my voice light, not wanting him to worry.  “It was definitely a creative form of punishment.”

“Don’t mean you can go back on your promises,” he said sternly.

“No, I won’t.  I meant it, even if it was given under duress,” I laughed weakly, so deeply satisfied, I felt like I could sleep for a week, even though it wasn’t all that late yet.  “Still want to go out hunting?”  I hoped like heck he said no or I’d have to seriously consider compelling him to forget about it.

“Naw, I’ve got everything I need here.”  He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. There might’ve been more he said after that, but I drifted off for a while, only to be woken hours later by his questing touch.  It was slower this time, far less frenzied, but just as satisfying as we came together again, neither one of us in a rush or with anything to prove.  The rise of the sun claimed him far earlier than it did me, but I fell asleep happily with him in my bed, something I never thought I’d get to openly do.  Not that I expected all of our problems to vanish completely, but for the moment, all was well with the world. 

“And Bishop truly hasn’t gone after her?” Maggie asked, her hazel eyes wide.  The pretty brunette perched in the window ledge of my office, clutching a mug of tea shaped like a Tardis.  I didn’t mind the chitchat, I wasn’t much in the mood for paperwork and Rob was still passed out in my bed. 

“That’s what he said.  I guess he doesn’t feel like it’s his duty to find her anymore.  He went back to Rome to go play head honcho for the Order again.”

“I wonder how long that will last?”

“I don’t know, you didn’t see his face.  I mean, I think he was in a state of shock, but I believed him when he said it wasn’t any of his business.  He seemed almost afraid to think of the possibility of finding Carys again.”

Maggie grew thoughtful, blowing across the top of her tea.  “It’s got to be quite a blow to think she’s been alive this whole time and he never knew it.  Do you believe it’s true?”

“I don’t know.  That’s the problem, Lodinn was enough of a bastard to either claim she was alive even though he killed her just to mess with them
or
keep her alive in secret this whole time just to mess with them.  Either way, I don’t see how Bishop can ignore it forever.”  Even I was tempted to put out some feelers about finding Carys.   

“Well, Jakob seemed keen enough on finding her for the both of them.  I’ve never seen him so intense about anything.  You’d think he expects to find Carys tied up on the railroad tracks about to meet her immediate doom.  She’s been missing for hundreds of years, I can’t imagine a few days one way or another will make much difference to her.”

“Jakob is nothing if not intense about whatever holds his interests.”  I was just glad it wasn’t me for the moment.  “Do you know if he’s gone already?”  The sooner he left town for good, the easier I’d breathe, but I knew Nelleke had been intent on speaking with him before he left. 

“Yes, about that.”  Maggie set her cup down, a guilt-ridden grimace twisting her features. 

“Uh oh… please don’t tell me he has plans to stop here for one final farewell.”

“No, nothing like that.  Only… he took your jet.”

“Is that all?” I blinked, instantly relieved.  “I couldn’t care less if that’s what it takes to get him out of town.”

“No, you see, I believe he’s appropriated the aircraft for the foreseeable future, not only this one trip.”

“Oh.”  Technically it wasn’t my jet at all, but belonged to whoever was Elder, which currently happened to be me.  But seeing as how we weren’t allowed to deny an
Ellri
anything his heart desired, I didn’t see how Felix or anyone could complain about it.  “Well, that’s fine.  Anything that gets him out of my hair is fine by me.  It’s not like I have big plans to go anywhere.  Where did he take off to?”

“I made reservations for him in New York at The Plaza for at least a week.”

“Good, now I know I can relax for at least a week then,” I grinned.  “With any luck it’ll take him a few months to track her down.  For all we know, Carys will show up on his doorstep on her own now that Lodinn’s compulsions have worn off, just like Gunnar.”  Though their relationship had been tumultuous by all accounts, I imagined one of the first things Carys would want to do would be to find Jakob, if only to explain everything that had happened over the past three centuries. 

“Thank goodness for that, at least.  It’ll be good to have Gunnar home again,” she said with a heartfelt smile.  “All I want is for things to get back to normal as quickly as possible.”

I knew some things would never fully go back to the way they were for her with Marcus gone, but I could understand her pressing need for normalcy.  I had a feeling it would be an ongoing theme in the house.  “I’m thinking Hanna’s right there with you.  Is she awake yet?”  I hadn’t seen any sign of her up and around on the ground floor. 

“She’s up in the attic.”

“The attic?  How long has she been in there?  She didn’t sleep up there, did she?”

“I don’t know, she was already there when I arrived.  I peeped my head in when I heard someone moving around up there, but I didn’t talk to her except to ask if I could get her anything.”

“Okay, thanks,” I replied distractedly.  I wasn’t sure if I should go up and try talking to my sister or leave her alone until she was ready to be among people again.  After everything Lodinn had put her through I could understand her wanting to hole up for a while, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but think it might be better for her not to be alone for the moment.

Maggie rose from her perch, picking up a stack of outgoing mail on her way to the door.  “Ah, I should mention, you’ve received several messages from Aubrey Cantrell tonight.  He would very much like to speak with you.”

“Yes, I’m starting to get the idea.”  It was kind of hard to ignore the eight Skype messages he’d left me on my personal account as well, but I had no intention of talking to the Elder of Vetis.  He could take his phony apologies and go jump.  “Ignore him, maybe he’ll go away.” 

“No worries, I know exactly what to say,” she smiled mysteriously, and I almost called her back in to see what she had in mind.  Right on the heels of that thought, I realized that Aubrey probably didn’t know about the possibility of Carys being alive yet.  Or was that why he was in such a lather to talk to me?  With Lodinn’s compulsion erased, had he remembered something about her?  Was that what his urgent business was with me? 

In the end I decided it didn’t matter.  I didn’t want to get caught up in the Carys drama any more than I already was.  Alive or dead, it made no difference to me. 

Boy howdy, was I wrong about that.  

* * *

I didn’t bother to try and sneak up the attic stairs, even though I could’ve used my vampire skills to ascend them without a creak.  The point wasn’t to sneak up on Hanna, it was to approach her in as non-threatening a manner as possible.  She huddled on a pile of mats that Rob and I used for sparring, dragged to the front window for a makeshift chair (or maybe it was a bed, I got the feeling she hadn’t done all that much sleeping though).  My sister glanced in my direction once, then went back to staring out the window as if she hadn’t seen me at all. 

Her straight blonde hair stuck up in places, as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it yet, and I recognized the same clothes she’d been wearing the night before.  The eye make-up had long ago been washed away by tears, nothing but a few flakes of mascara left to show the many times she’d rubbed at her eyes. 

“Hey, what are you doing up here all alone?” I asked gently, stepping deeper into the attic space. 

“I like it up here,” she said simply, continuing to stare out the window.  So did Rob’s crazy sister, but I didn’t want to say that out loud.  Did I have to worry she was going kazoo?  Her cheeks were dry, eyes clear – there were no more tears for the moment.  Considering that she’d cried a lake of them the night before, I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing, or a bad thing. 

“How are you doing?  I was afraid I’d wake up and you’d be gone.”

“I thought about it, but I didn’t have a way to leave unless I wanted to hoof it.  I don’t have anything with me.  No car, no purse, no phone, nothing but the clothes on my back and these shoes weren’t made for walking.”  Her toes pointed at a pair of high heels kicked into the corner.  

“I can get you anything you need.  Clothes, a car… I can send someone for your purse if you tell me where to go.  Is it, um, is it back at that house in Pacifica?”

“Can you get me a bucket of lye and some steel wool?” she asked with a dry laugh.  “I feel like no amount of hot water is going to get me clean ever again.”

“Oh, Hanna…” My voice broke as I moved to give her a hug, but she flinched away.  I stopped short of touching her, my hands clenching into fists.  I didn’t know what to say, how to help her.  “I promise you, you’re going to get through this.  Lodinn is dead and he can never hurt you ever again.  I know it can’t take away what he did…” Or the fact that he never would’ve come after her in the first place if not for my ties to Jakob. 

Hanna ignored my attempt to comfort, her face twisting into a wry smile.  “You want to know something fucked up?”  There was an edge of hysteria to her voice that scared me, and I sat as close to her as I thought I could get without spooking her.    

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, but I’m here to listen to anything you want to say.”

“Here’s the kicker, the nifty twist that makes it all so much more special.”  She took a shaky breath, hands fluttering before she clasped them tightly together.  “I know exactly what he did to me, I know why, and I know it has nothing to with me or my self worth or any of that stuff.  I’m not fearful of walking down the street or being attacked again, and he never hurt me physically.”

“There are ways to hurt you that have nothing to do with physical abuse,” I started to say and she waved my point away.

“The thing is, I know all this stuff on an intellectual level, you know?  I know the reasons behind what I’m feeling, but I can’t stop feeling them.  The rage, the disgust, the shame – I can’t make them go away.”   

“Hanna, you have nothing to feel ashamed about.  Not a single thing.”

“Don’t I?  The things he did to me…” She blanched, swallowing uncomfortably.

“Cripes, what did he do?  Do you need to see a doctor?”  My voice was barely above a whisper, imagining the worst.  It hadn’t occurred to me that Lodinn might’ve done anything torturous, he’d seemed rather fond of her.  Then again, he was a sicko – who knew what passed for fun time in his bed?    

“No, it doesn’t even matter what they were.  The point is he made me
want
those things.  He didn’t just invade my life or my body, he took a piece of my soul and he corrupted it.  And the thing that scares me the most is, I don’t know if I’ll ever get that part of me back.”

“He didn’t change you, Hanna.  You’re still the same person.”

“Am I?”  She blinked away tears, her gaze riveted to the window again. 

“Yes, you are,” I answered with complete confidence.  “He compelled you, and now that compulsion is broken and eventually all this hurt will fade.  I know it sounds like a stupid platitude, but it’ll get better with time, I swear it will.” 

“The worst thing about it is that I actually miss him.  How sick is that?  Yes, he compelled me and yes, it’s worn off, but some of it must’ve been real because part of me wishes… I can’t help feel like some of it was real.”

“Maybe some of it was,” I allowed.  “I’m sure he wasn’t all bad, but please don’t romanticize any part of this, Hanna.  What he did to you was wrong.  Maybe he did care about you and maybe not all of your time with him was terrible, but it was wrong to take you in the first place and it was wrong for him to compel you into feeling anything for him to begin with.”

“I told you it was fucked up,” she said with a short bark of laughter that turned into a sob.  This time when I reached for her she didn’t pull away and I held onto her while she cried, the way she’d comforted me when I was a little girl and had a nightmare about mud people.  I didn’t try to say anything to make it better, I just held her, rocking her slowly from side to side until her sobs turned into snuffles and then faded away. 

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I reached for it to ignore the call, changing my mind when I saw Mason’s goofy mug on the display.  “Hey, it’s Mason, do you want to talk to him?”  I held out the phone and she recoiled like I’d offered her a plate of live snakes.  Instead of taking the call I hit the red button, slipping it back into my pocket.  “What’s the matter?  I thought Lodinn’s compulsions had all faded.  You don’t still hate Mason, do you?” 

“God no, but… Anja, how can I talk to him?  How can I even face him after how I treated him?”  She shook her head.  “I just can’t.”

“Oh Hanna, you saw him last night, he doesn’t care about any of that.  He knows it wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t know the kinds of things I said.  I don’t see how he could forget them.”

“He still loves you, that’s how he can forget them.  He’s never stopped loving you once, even if he did want to wring your neck a couple of times,” I smiled faintly at the memory of Mason’s frustration.  “Hanna, nobody expects you to go back to the way things were lickety-split, but you still have feelings for him too, don’t you?  Lodinn couldn’t have erased them completely.”

“I don’t know what I’m feeling. I only know I can’t face him, not yet, it’s all too much.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.  This is officially a Hanna-tastic weekend, whatever you say goes.  If you want ice cream for breakfast, you got it.  You want to go around and tear all the tags off the mattresses?  Knock yourself out.  In fact, I’ll even let you borrow my Soft Kitty jammies if you want.”  I tried to get her to laugh, but the best she managed was a faint smile.

“I don’t know, maybe I need to get away for a while.”

“Oh.  Well, that’s okay too.  Do you want some company?  I seem to have lost my jet, but anything else, consider me your genie with unlimited wishes.”

“That’s really sweet, An, but I think I want to be alone for a while.  It feels like ages since I was in my own apartment, alone with my own thoughts.”

“That works too.  I can have one of the guys drive you back, or you can borrow one of the cars if you like.”