Forfeit Souls (The Ennead Book 1) (19 page)

I couldn’t refute that; she never would have put that simple ruse past me before. “You’re very distracting when you’re distracted,” I said matter-of-factly.

She just looked back at the wall without a word.

How did I manage to do that… how was it that I so easily caused her to slip into a state of ignoring me? When we were both younger it had been so easy for her to talk to me, perhaps when we were both still alive was a better distinction.

She seemed strange in death, though I was fairly certain I wasn’t any easier for her to come to terms with. She was more poised than she had been, but her beauty was somehow marred by the introspective stupor that seemed to pour from her changed eyes. She was still beautiful, but there was something missing. Something that had been there in life that eluded her in death.

I watched her brush out another braid.

My curiosity had snuffed the deep-seeded desire I had to go and kill. But it was getting worse again. It had been building ever since Gallu had sent me the call for the strawberry blonde who had gotten away with her life. I wondered if it would ever lessen… it was beginning to manifest itself as physical pain now.

I put my head in my hands, resting both of my elbows on the table in front of me. It was like having the worst indigestion ever, and no antacid would help.

“Ellie,” I said with a sigh. “What are you thinking?” I searched her eyes for some sort of clue to her thoughts, but they were as empty of answers as the starry night sky.

“I need to know what you know,” she said apologetically, “I can trust the human Paul… but I don’t know the Asakku Paul.”

“I don’t know how to tell you.” I said, agitated with the truth in the words. The Asakku were monsters. How did I deserve to be trusted when my new kin provided such glowing examples of why she should not?

“You don’t have to say a word,” she smiled as she said it. “Just give me your hand and close your eyes.”

-Joellen-

I didn’t know what to expect as I took his hand. “Think about what you want me to know,” I said quietly and closed my eyes.

At first the memories were jumbled: I saw images of his childhood, a red bike with a shiny silver bell, canoeing in the middle of a lake, Edie and Bob smiling at his Oxford graduation,  the disappointment and anger in my human eyes as I left their house, and the pain that rippled through his chest.

Then Paul was inside his parent’s house, nervously shifting from one foot to the next. The two couples seated mere feet from him were not people he normally associated with, they were his parent’s friends and he was nervous. Nervous about seeing me again, he hoped that my being there would make the evening easier for him.

He heard the knock on the door, and his spirits lifted when he heard his mother squeal my name. “Jo!” she said and he closed his eyes shaking his head at his mother. He knew what she was up to… what she was always up to.

“Glad to see you made it across the pond!” His father said. At least he knew that Bob’s happiness at seeing me wasn’t heightened by devious schemes. “Edie, introduce her to the rest of the gang.”

Paul listened as his mother opened and closed the coat closet, and as two sets of feet climbed the stairs to him. His nerves intensified and I could feel the knotting of his stomach, and he mentally reminded himself to not seem creepy.

I had to smile at that.

He watched as his mother introduced me to the two couples, and then I could feel his hand fall asleep as Edie steered me toward him.

“And you remember Paul,” I saw Edie mouth the word “grandchildren” over my shoulder. And I felt Paul’s immediate annoyance with his mother.

“Of course, how are you Paul?”

And then the evening fast forwarded in his mind. I watched myself go through the motions of a dinner party without interacting in it at all, I noticed Paul’s expressions of embarrassment and shame throughout the night, but no one else saw them, Edie kept all of their attention.

“Well, I’m sorry to say that I have to be going.” I heard myself say in a strained voice. I had tried to be as polite as possible, but it hadn’t come out right.

“Dear, you can stay here tonight if you’d like.” Edie said with a smile and I felt Paul’s urge to tell his mother to just leave well enough alone. “I can make up the spare bedroom for you.”

“No, that’s quite alright. Mrs. Peppery will be upset if I don’t make it back tonight. It was nice meeting you all.” I watched myself flee as Edie called after me

“Alright, if you must. Paul, dear, walk her out and make sure she gets a cab.”

“Good night, and thank you for dinner.” I heard myself call from halfway down the stairs.

Paul followed me sorting through numerous things he might say, but he knew they would never make me stay. He took my coat out of the closet, helping me into it. “I’m sorry. She’s gone a bit overboard tonight. If I’d had any idea….”

I heard myself scolding him about wedding invitations and colors and I watched him apologize and offer to guide me around London.  And then I left, after refusing to let him get me a cab.

He fought with the knowledge that I needed my space and the danger of the London streets before pulling on his own coat and following after me. I had managed to gain a sizeable head start and he ran off in the direction he knew I’d headed.

The street lamps flickered and went out and he was chasing after me in the dark, but he was no longer sure of which way I’d gone. After several minutes of running through the dark he stopped, deciding to give up, when he heard someone call out. “Jo!” and he ran toward the sound. But before he could get to the person who had called out, he felt a sharp knife as it plunged into his neck and then a flash of red before he fell to the pavement.

Darkness enveloped me and then I saw the six months he had spent in the basement, his Asakku brethren, and Gallu, cruel and disturbingly beautiful. There was no order to his memory, blips of his child hood mingled with what had occurred in the past six months, and I strained my thoughts trying to move past the blips that didn’t matter, but I had no control over these thoughts, Paul was in control of what I saw, but he could not hide his emotions from me.

And then we stopped on a memory that I knew from my own past. The time our families had spent together in Hawaii when I was seventeen.

The warm sun of the memory was comforting. That had been the best part of my entire junior year of high school. This memory was more organized than his others; he had spent more time thinking of this memory. I could feel that he had enjoyed it just as much as I had.

He slept through the flight, and woke just as they were landing over the sugar cane fields at Kahului. The drive through the interior to Kihei on Maalaea Bay he remembered as uneventful, Edie chattered most of the time. They spent the first day in Kihei, Edie sifting through the offerings of the local’s tourist traps while Bob and Paul followed and offered the occasional solicited opinion. His thoughts rushed through this first day, dismissing it almost as though it hadn’t happened. The second day they got in their rental car and drove around the southern part of the island to Lahaina, where my family had booked our hotel.

I watched a memory that I too held, but from a different perspective as he walked across the pool deck towards us. I pushed my freckled little brother, Todd, into the pool while he was distracted, and quickly jumped in too. Paul’s memory focused on me, in the pool, and didn’t leave me for the rest of the week that we spent there. He only said a few words to me here and there, but I had never heard the guarded nature of his words, until I felt the caution in his thoughts now.

It became increasingly apparent that Edie wasn’t the only one in the family that had considered a match between Paul and myself. Bob had offered the suggestion in their hotel room half way through the trip, and Edie had been gushing about it long before they had arrived in Hawaii.

We spent our last night in the tropical paradise at a Luau in Ka’anapali. Paul sat as far from me as possible and I saw the annoyed glances his mother cast in his direction. But he spent the entire evening watching me. I watched in embarrassment as my mother and I got up with several others and did a very poor rendition of the hula, and felt a smile come to my lips as I watched the enormous smile that formed on my brothers face as he shoveled chunk after chunk of pineapple onto his plate.

It was a good memory, a happy memory for us both, but it left me with so many questions.

I dropped his hand, opening my eyes and we were on that beach. I must have brought us here while we were in his memory.

Ka’anapali had been one of the most peaceful places I had ever been and it remained so now, even as the sun was rising over the green mountain of the West Maui Forest Reserve behind us.

I tore my eyes away from the water to look at Paul; his face was turned down in embarrassment. “Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.

“Think about it, Ellie.” he said with a small laugh. “The age difference was a bigger deal back then. Besides, you still had to finish high school, and I was heading back to Oxford…” He shook his head and sat down in the sand. “It wouldn’t have worked on any level.”

I had nothing to say then, so I sat too and looked out over the water. The fragrant smell of plumaria wafted through the salty smell of the Pacific, and I closed my eyes, taking it in again.

“I was going to fill your room with these,” Paul said, interrupting my reverie.

I opened my eyes and looked to his outstretched palm. He held the small pink flower in his hand and I took it from him, the soft petals quivered as a sea breeze passed over the beach.

“But you weren’t there. I thought of your last name and it took me to your grave.” He sighed and I saw his shoulders cave forward. “I’m so sorry I let you leave.”

“Paul,” I said in a slightly more condescending tone than I had intended to. “You and I both know that there is no way that you would have kept me from leaving. I’m far too stubborn a person to have ever considered staying after what your mother put me through.”

“Well, then I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything, and just let her keep on like that. It wasn’t fair, and maybe then you wouldn’t have left.” His shoulders rose a little. “But the idea of being with me can’t really be that bad, can it?”

He laughed and I did too. The thought of being with him wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what I wanted. I searched for a way to tell him that without being too harsh.

“Paul, I…” I began, but his arms quickly wrapped around me as he pressed his lips to mine. They were oddly warm, and seemed strangely soft. I could have pushed him away, but I didn’t, and I couldn’t answer my thoughts that demanded I tell them why.

When he pulled away I was left confused, but I knew that I couldn’t lead him on. “Paul, I…” this was much harder than I had expected. “I don’t feel that way about you.”

His mouth had been turned up in a smile, and it only slightly lessened. “that’s okay.”  He looked out to the horizon, “we have an eternity for you to change your mind.”

He didn’t seem smug, and I was curious as to his expression. I had just rejected him, and he did not seem let down in the slightest.

“What are you thinking?” I asked, trying to search his black eyes for some sign of sanity.

“I’m just wondering how long it is going to take you to get tired.” There was a laugh in his words.

“Get tired of what?” I asked, it was like pulling teeth with him.

“Of the bloke with the melancholy expression back in the Lilitu’s hide-out.” he answered.

“It’s called Zephyr,” I informed him, feeling the contempt in my own words. “And what does Demetrius have to do with any of this?”
And why had the mere mention of his name brought up this strangely protective feeling.

“I saw the way he looked at you Ellie.” The laugh in Paul’s voice was more of a sneer now, “I’m not an idiot, but even if I was I could have seen that he’s infatuated with you.”

I started to object, but he cut me off, raising a finger. “An idiot might not notice the way that you look at him, but I did. There’s something there Ellie, even if you’re not willing to admit it.”

We sat there for quite a while, as I pondered what he’d just said, and he watched my face. I didn’t think I was that easily read, but I had never been a good judge of my own weaknesses or strengths.

Was there something in my face that told Paul what my mind knew was false? For now I would just assume that it was  jealousy that was giving Paul these ideas. I decided that it was easier for Paul to think that I liked Metri than to try to explain the strange collage that was my emotions right now.

“We should get back to Zephyr before they think I’ve kidnapped you,” he said absently.

“They aren’t worried about you hurting me,” I said with a laugh.

“Why?” he asked suddenly, as though his manhood had been challenged.

I just smiled at him, knowing I’d lie through my teeth. “They worry about you around the others, but our previous connection, in life, makes Lilith secure in allowing you to be alone with me.”

“She thinks I won’t hurt you because I know you?” he asked, seeming skeptical of my explanation.

“Something like that, yeah.” I said as I stood up. I could hear the sand as it slid along the taffeta of my dress and suddenly regretted my decision to rest on the beach.

“Here,” Paul said as he took two steps towards the water and then turned back, “Take this.”

He placed a large sand dollar in my hand. It was almost perfect, there was only one small hole in it.

“It’s so strange to think that this was once a living creature,” I said with a sigh.

“It’s strange to think that we’re a lot like that shell now,” Paul said with an agreeing nod.

It was true, we were the skeletal remains of our living selves. we somehow continued on in death. And yet somehow, even in death and with all of our imperfections, I was certain that there were those who felt that we, too, were more valuable now, than when we had been with the living.

I sighed, took his hand again and closed my eyes. I felt myself breaking apart; it seemed to mirror the fragmentation in my mind. Paul had brought up some very strange thoughts, and I couldn’t ignore them. Paul might still feel the way that his past told me he did, but I did not return those feelings. I felt closer to Paul than anyone else in my life now, but only because he had been present in my actual life. And at the moment, the most that could be said for Demetrius was that I felt a certain camaraderie with him. He was the only other of my kind that I knew of, and I couldn’t trust any feelings I had towards him in light of that.

I opened my eyes and we were back in the room with the chess boards.

“Wait here,” I said with a reassuring smile. “I’ll be back shortly.”

I left the room, and walked down the hallway, walking wasn’t as fast, but I wanted the time to clear my head, and I sorted myself out by the time I reached the giant black doors.

They were all where I had left them.

Carla still seemed livid, she turned her nose up at me and then proceeded to pretend to ignore me; Earl just shook his head, probably annoyed by her behavior.  Billy and Lizzie both stared at me inquisitively, and Nate and Christi didn’t seem to notice me; at least they didn’t look up from their game.