Endless (3 page)

I
rolled my eyes. ‘Compliments don’t mend bridges. And you forgot the part where in return you got to live happily ever after – until I plucked you out of heaven, that is!’

‘Violet!’ Dad said, abruptly.

I closed my mouth.

‘Wait, what do you mean you “plucked her out of heaven”?’

I pressed my lips together. There was so much to explain, it was hard to know where to start. ‘My angel maker told me she made a deal to give me up to them. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where she went after she died.’ I forced myself to remain indifferent. ‘Phoenix executed a sacrificial ceremony from an ancient scripture in Santorini and part of my blood ended up in the mix. He got his mother and somehow … I got mine.’

We all sat in silence for a moment, digesting.

‘This is …’ Dad shook his head, but then blurted out, ‘What colour was my underwear on our wedding night?’

Evelyn’s lips curled. ‘You weren’t wearing any.’

I think I’m going to be sick.

‘When we drove out to our honeymoon cottage, what happened halfway there?’ he shot back.

‘You ran out of fuel and made me wait in the car for three hours while you walked to the gas station.’ Her smile widened.

‘What was the last thing you ever said to me?’

Her smile faded. ‘I asked you to name our daughter Violet.’

‘The
very
last thing,’ Dad pushed.

Evelyn bit her lip, looking for the first time vulnerable. ‘I love you … both.’

Dad dropped from the couch onto his knees in front of her.

‘Was it all lies?’ Dad pleaded, not moving any closer.

‘No.’

‘You
died …’ he said, a tear sliding down his face.

‘Yes.’

‘And now you’re back.’

‘Yes.’

He swallowed and stood up, still trying to appear indifferent. ‘For how long?’

‘I don’t know.’ And then Evelyn’s eyes seemed to lose their focus and she slumped to the ground, unconscious.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I am not bound to please thee with my answers.’

William Shakespeare

T
hings
weren’t going in my direction.

After Evelyn first came to, she’d continued to pass out intermittently as we tried to answer Dad’s many questions.

After the fourth time she blacked out, Dad had taken her into his room and ordered her to rest.

That was three weeks ago.

She was still there.

I’d tried to explain everything to Dad, sat up with him, night after night, giving him various demonstrations of my power, but logic is a strong counter-agent to acceptance. Eventually I called in Griffin and Spence to help. Griffin had the ability to instil truth in a person as long as what he was saying was in fact true. After a few choice words, it became difficult for Dad to question him.

Spence hammered everything home with a showing of his glamour abilities, morphing into a number of different personas and settling on simply putting his hand on my shoulder and cloaking us both with invisibility. I couldn’t help but
notice during his display that Spence’s power had grown significantly in the last few months.

Finally, Dad knew the truth.

His acceptance was closely followed by a demand to see Lincoln.

They sat across from each other at the dining table, Dad staring at Lincoln in a new – unfriendly – manner.

‘I welcomed you into my home,’ Dad said, threateningly. ‘Let you spend time with my daughter,
despite
the age difference. I thought we had an understanding.’

‘Dad,’ I groaned from my perch on the kitchen bench, but it was useless.

I’d expected Lincoln to be on edge or at least cautious. I was wrong.

He stared right back at Dad, sporting his own steely glare. ‘With all due respect, Mr Eden, I’ve been here many times and seen you very few. For the first two years I knew Violet, we were just friends who worked out together. I never encouraged anything … more than friendship.’

Sadly true.

‘When I first met her, she was trying to put her life back together after the attack, though I only learned about that recently. Her world had been thrown upside down by that bastard.’ His hands fisted on the table. ‘It’s no wonder she was desperate to find a way to get control of her life. I helped give her some of that.’ He glanced at me as I paled, half expecting Dad
to leap up and throw a punch in his direction. ‘And she did the rest.’

Dad flinched and glanced towards the hallway where Evelyn was eavesdropping. She didn’t look happy.

‘That is, in part, true,’ Dad confessed. ‘But I trusted you with Violet and I now hear you happily sent her, with an evil angel no less, to jump off a cliff in order to save
your
life!’

I had to give it to Dad, he did have a way of presenting things in an unfavourable light.

Lincoln’s composure didn’t falter. ‘I was unconscious and had no idea that she’d gone to embrace. I never wanted her to make the choice for me.’ His next words were heavy and slow. ‘I have to live with that for the rest of my life.’

Dad shook his head. ‘And so you should.’

I chose that moment to step forward. ‘Would you rather I was a different person, Dad?’

He broke his eye-lock with Lincoln to look at me.

‘Would you rather I had let him die? Chose
my
future over
his
life?’

Dad was silent.

I glanced in Evelyn’s direction. ‘That’s not something
I
could’ve lived with.’ I walked to stand behind Lincoln, the symbolism not lost on anyone. ‘I’ve made choices. Some I regret, some will haunt me forever. But leaping off that cliff to become who I was supposed to be, to save him – that’s one choice I will never regret.’

I couldn’t see Lincoln’s face, but his body was very still.

Dad eventually cleared his throat and stood up. He was far from ready to forgive and forget.

‘I
hear what you say, Violet. But I can’t help but feel you’ve been forced into this world for the wrong reasons.’ He glared at Lincoln.

Lincoln stood up. ‘I understand your feelings, Mr Eden. I look forward to changing your mind about me one day. But until then, I can only give you my word that I value Violet as both a person and a Grigori. And …’ he looked at me briefly, ‘I’d do anything for her.’ And with that, he made for the door.

I followed him out to the lift. I’d expected him to be angry, ranting that Dad had lost his mind. But he was silent. Too silent.

I pressed the lift button. Lincoln didn’t look at me.

‘He just wants someone to blame. It won’t last,’ I said quietly, wishing I could be there for Lincoln the way I wanted.

He tried to say something, but closed his mouth again, as if he couldn’t speak, and shook his head.

‘Linc?’ I reached out, the tips of my fingers grazing his hand. The contact sparked the usual influx of soul-crushing hurt.

Lincoln gripped my hand and suddenly, without warning, pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me so tightly it was as if he was trying to weld us together.

It was a rare display of raw emotion and an even rarer display of physical need. I held on to him just as tightly, neither one of us saying or doing any more. Just holding on. I breathed him in – sun and melting honey – my soul only craving for more.

We stood like that until the elevator doors slid open. Lincoln sighed and pulled away from me, his hand moving to my jaw as he did, his thumb smudging my cheek in that way I loved,
his emerald-green eyes piercing into mine. Wordlessly, he stepped into the lift.

The moment the doors closed, my knees gave out and I dropped to the ground in literal agony. I gripped my chest and stomach as, from somewhere within, the magic that bound our souls was torn apart.

I didn’t even hear the door open behind me, but suddenly Evelyn was there, crouching beside me. I felt a tentative hand on my back as I tried to hold back the tears of pain.

‘Are you hurt?’ she asked, her voice sharp and fast. I could feel her tension as she looked around for an enemy.

‘No,’ I managed to say.

‘Then what?’ she continued, looking me over. ‘I don’t under–’ she broke off, looking at me, then the lift. ‘Lincoln? This is–’ she stopped again. Then, sternly, she grabbed me by the shoulders, hauling me to my feet.

‘Tell me that you two are not involved!’ She shook me. ‘
Tell
me you are
not
in love with your partner!’

I tried to swallow back the pain, the punishment for touching him. I started to shiver.

‘Answer me now! Are you sleeping with him?’ Evelyn said, giving me one more shake, forcing my head up to hers. Her eyes were blazing and boring into me.

‘No,’ I said, tears streaming from my eyes, partly from physical pain, partly from my heart. I knew why she was asking – it was forbidden for Grigori partners to start relationships – it caused some kind of negative response in our angelic components and the results were dangerous; at best the Grigori’s powers are weakened, at worst they are lost. But Lincoln and I were quite the opposite.

We
were soulmates.

Our powers would become greater if we were together … But there would be other costly consequences that neither one of us wanted to bring about.

She kept her eyes on me as I tried to gain control. ‘But there is something, isn’t there? Between you two, something you’re not telling me.’

Her demand gave me what I needed to pull myself together and step out of her hold.

‘You know what,
Mother
, if you’re so clever, figure it out yourself!’ And with that I stormed passed her into the apartment.

Evelyn had made herself comfortable in our home, with Dad now sleeping in the living room and despite my efforts, she didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

It didn’t take a genius to see Dad was falling in love with her all over again. I tried to make him understand how awful she was – and he actually agreed with what I said, part of the time. Evelyn had lied to him for their entire relationship and he hadn’t forgotten that. But even so, his eyes tracked her around the apartment constantly.

The day after Lincoln’s visit, I spent the morning avoiding home and trying to run off some of the residual soul-ache his touch had left behind. I always felt a little better after a good workout.

When I got home I grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchen and noticed yet another cut-up newspaper in pieces on the bench. I held it up to Dad and shook it.

‘Has
she explained why she keeps massacring these yet?’ I asked, joining him on the sofa. She had been destroying our newspapers daily and I kept finding international ones stuffed into the rubbish.

‘I don’t think it will go on for much longer,’ Dad said with a smile that spelled trouble. ‘I’ve shown her how to use the internet.’

Great, that explains why I can’t find my laptop.

‘We should just send her to a hotel or something. Griffin could arrange it.’ I’d offered this solution a number of times to no avail, but I was determined.

Dad just shook his head and gave his usual response. ‘She’s too weak. Whatever happened to her in the transition back … here – she can’t be on her own.’