Unfaithful (14 page)

I tried to extend my arm but a sharp, baffling pain gripped my chest before I could touch her fingers. Seeing my hesitation, her face instantly metamorphosed into the most evil expression of power and mastery my eyes had ever beheld. I flailed in the water, trying to get away, but a jolt of terror forced the last bit of air from my lungs and I lost myself to utter darkness.

“Gemma! Gemma!”

“Evan!” I woke with a start, crying out his name.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, drawing me to him. “I’m here now.”

I hid my face in his chest, shaken and breathing convulsively. I could still feel the need for oxygen and my forehead was beaded with sweat as the memory faded little by little. No—it wasn’t a memory. It had only been a nightmare.

“You really scared me,” Evan said, brushing the hair from my forehead. He looked concerned. “You were tossing and turning like crazy when I got here. I was just about to join you in your dream when you woke up.” The torment hidden in his eyes told me he hadn’t forgiven himself for the time Faust entered my dream and convinced me to run away from him.

“I dreamed I was drowning.” Although I wanted to reassure him, I could still feel the sensation of the water closing in around my throat.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to prevent it,” he said regretfully, stroking my hair.

“What a strange dream,” I murmured, still dazed.

“It’s not so strange. We went to the lake yesterday. Your mind must have combined that information with your fears, your emotions. That’s how it happens. The brain never stops working. While you sleep, logical thinking gets broken up and memories get confused with things that have never happened.”

“I saw a woman,” I said, clinging to the memory that was rapidly vanishing as if it had just occurred to me that the information might be important. “She was waiting for me at the bottom of a lake, or maybe it was a spring inside a cave, I’m not sure. She wore a white gown. She wanted me to follow her.”

For some reason the worried look on my face made him smile. “Calm down, Gemma. It was just another nightmare. It has nothing to do with the real world. I bet it’s already fading.”

I made a face that confirmed his assumption.

“Good,” he said with a satisfied nod.

The fact that Evan was right relieved me a little. It was different when he visited me in my dreams. His being there blurred the line between the dream world and the real world and in the morning I woke up with a new memory—not a faded image created through mere imagination, but an actual memory, crisp and indelible. A real circumstance experienced in my mind together with him.

“You know dreams don’t fade when a Subterranean establishes contact with you.”

The words “Are you sure of that?” escaped me. I was more worried than I’d thought, and still not entirely convinced. For some ridiculous reason, my instinct continued to contradict him. “You’re right,” I said, capitulating to the look on his face before he could answer. “I’m just afraid they—”

“Don’t even say it. They’re not going to find you, Gemma. It’s not going to happen.” I hid my face in his chest and he hugged me tightly, as if by doing so he could hide me inside him. “It’s over now. If they wanted to find you they would have done it already. No one is coming to look for you.”

I heaved a deep sigh at his words, remembering the fear I’d felt day after day, so gut-wrenching I hadn’t been able to breathe. “I hope you’re right,” I said uneasily. A whimper escaped me, revealing the anxiety that gripped my stomach.

Sensing my dismay, Evan cupped my face in his hands and rested his forehead on mine. “I’m not going to let them hurt you,” he whispered against my lips. “I’ll always be at your side to prevent it. Trust me.” He looked at me as though he could enter my very essence. I nodded and buried my face in his chest again.

“I was still thinking about yesterday,” I told Evan as we walked through the school doors.

“About what, exactly?” he asked, curious.

“I can’t figure out why you never told me you were such a good musician.”

He smiled. “I already said I don’t like to brag. You’d seen the piano before in the music room by the garage. The violin’s always been there too. It’s not my fault the only time we went in there you didn’t ask any questions. If I remember correctly, you didn’t feel much like looking around.”

I blushed, remembering his hands on me and how he’d distracted me from everything else. So actually, it
had
been all his fault. Besides, that day was the first time I’d seen Drake, Simon, and Ginevra training in the workout room next door and it had left me shocked. Evan had told me several times that it was the only place they could truly let it all out without all of Lake Placid thinking there was an earthquake, but deep down I knew the real reason: they were keeping themselves prepared.

“Only because you never mentioned you liked playing it. How could I have known?” I shot back, trying not to show how much the memory had shaken me.

“Um, by asking?” He raised an ironic eyebrow.

“After all the insane things I saw you do over the summer, you didn’t seem like that kind of boy,” I said, grinning.

Evan opened his mouth in astonishment. “Well, they weren’t insane enough to make you talk me out of them. In fact, you seem to like all the excitement,” he said teasingly. He stopped and wrapped his arms around my waist, a sly smile on his lips.

“Only in those extreme cases when I don’t know if I’m going to come out of it dead or alive,” I said, entertained.

“Hmm, I have one in mind right now.” He leaned in and kissed me lightly.

“Have I ever told you you’re crazy?” I kissed him back just as tenderly.

“Only a couple times.”

“Clearly not often enough. At first I thought you were trying to kill me, you know. That you regretted saving me and wanted to get rid of me. Confess!” I said with a grin.

“Okay, you got me.” He laughed, but a trace of seriousness flickered in his eyes. “I don’t know what sense it would make to keep you in a glass case when I know nothing can happen to you when you’re with me. Emotions should be lived to the fullest, Gemma, or you run the risk of them fading away. And there are some sensations you can never experience unless go you out and look for them. The important thing is to be in control of them instead of letting them overwhelm you.”

“Fading away?” I asked, amused, casting a sidelong glance at him.

“I mean the spark. That charge that makes little kids throw themselves headlong into things before fear puts the brakes on their impulses. Few people still have that spark by the time they’re adults.”

“Oh, you mean irresponsibility,” I teased, even more entertained by the conversation.

“I mean courage.”

“You’re forgetting that my time is up.”

Evan squeezed me against him more tightly. “And you’re forgetting that you have an Angel to protect you.”

I freed myself from his embrace and looked at him. “No. I never forget that.” Rising onto my tiptoes, I rested my head against his for a moment.

“Feel like going to my place?” he asked me point-blank.

“Now? But what—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll ask Drake to fill in for you at lunch with your folks.” He smiled. “He owes me a favor.”

I glanced at him, curious. “What did he do to deserve such a punishment?”

“Him? Nothing! I saved him from Simon and Ginevra. And then, let’s just say something that wasn’t on the program came up.”

“What sort of something?”

“Something that’ll keep him in our debt for a long, long time.”

“Hmm, that doesn’t sound bad. But poor Drake! I feel a little sorry for him. I wonder if Irony will ever get used to him.”

“He’d better!” Evan laughed at what seemed like a private joke.

I chuckled and nudged him with my shoulder.

“I think I’m about to explode,” I told them. The food was always sublime when Ginevra was the one taking care of it.

“At least warn us first, sunshine, and give us a chance to duck for cover,” Drake joked from the living room where he was lounging on the couch watching a documentary about arachnids.

“I thought I just had,” I shot back.

“You’d better get to Gemma’s,” Evan told him. “You’re already late. Make yourself useful instead of loafing around.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Drake winked at me. “I definitely like this Evan better than the gloomy version of him back when he had to—Well, you know.”

“Shut up, Drake!” Ginevra threw some food at him, smiling. “Pass me another slice of pizza, hon,” she said to me. We all turned to stare at her in disbelief. “What?” she retorted, a puzzled look on her face.

“How many have you had already?” Evan asked, aghast.

His sister shrugged and glared at him. “It’s authentic! It came all the way from Italy!”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I’ve always said so but nobody ever believes me,” Drake said.

Among all of Ginevra’s abilities, being able to pig out on anything without gaining an ounce was the most incredible of her magic powers—not that I’d ever worried about my weight, but who wouldn’t love to be in her shoes?

“You’re just saying that because you have such a jaded palate,” Ginevra told Evan, making me curious.

“Wish you did?” he shot back.

Something in their exchange must have gone over my head because Ginevra cast Evan a far-from-reassuring look. “I guess my palate will just have to settle for this delicious, flavorful, piping hot slice of pizza,” she teased him, biting into it with a theatrical gesture. I couldn’t really tell whether their usual kidding had actually been replaced by veiled insults.

“What does she mean, ‘jaded palate’?” I asked Evan under my breath. “So you
do
eat, after all?” He’d never mentioned it to me.

His expression softened as he looked into my eyes. “It’s based more on need than pleasure, although the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“You never told me you
needed
to eat,” I said, still surprised.

“I don’t need food as you know it. What I eat is—Well, it’s a pretty thorny topic, to be honest. We’ve never really discussed it.”

I started to wonder how many other unexpected details would crop up. “You can’t always use that as an excuse!” I said acidly. I was suddenly shocked by the tone I’d taken with him.

Evan turned to me and lowered his voice reassuringly. “We’ve never talked about where I come from.”

His answer caught me off guard. “I thought you were forbidden to talk about it,” I said, almost accusingly.

“No, it’s because you’re discreet. You never asked me about it and I didn’t want to force you. I thought you didn’t feel ready to know more yet. You’ve already had so much to handle.”

Evan’s explanation made me decide to drop it because I honestly couldn’t blame him. He’d always been one step ahead of me. By reading my emotions he could perceive with perfect timing what I needed even before I realized it myself. Sometimes I had the impression my subconscious revealed as much to him as it hid from me.

For seventeen years I’d known a world that now seemed so distant. It felt like it had totally disappeared, eclipsed by Evan’s world. Angels, Witches, heaven, hell . . . If I stopped to think about it, it all seemed so insane that part of me was still terrified—the part that Evan had access to whether I liked it or not.