Devlin decided, since we knew how Gavina had achieved Divine Evil, we should switch our attention to the Ark. He did, however, ask Rachel to get the journal Luisah gave us transcribed from Tibetic to English just to be sure we weren’t missing something.
Our focus on the Ark meant we were going to concentrate on the Stewart family for a while. I had to admit, I appreciated the change. I needed to cleanse my mind. Forgetting about Gavina would help me achieve that. However, I was still going to make her pay for what she did.
Sitting down heavily on the front porch, my hand shook as I tried to light my cigar, the flame dancing around the tip. When it finally caught, I pulled heavily on it, letting the apple coat my throat. The smoke curled out into the humid air. I rested my arms on my knees, letting the cigar dangle from my fingertips.
The answers we got at Luisah’s worried me. How had I missed that important piece of information? True, the time she gave me the book, I wasn’t looking for information about an Ark. But if I had paid attention to what I was reading, it probably could have saved us some precious time. Not much, but at least we would have known who to talk to about the Ark in the first place.
The solution to my Set problem wasn’t going to be simple. Ezra had warned me about contacting him again unless he reached out first. And I refused to ask Jordin for help. So, that left doing nothing and possibly getting killed. Or going to see Ezra and possibly getting killed. Either option left me dead.
I took another pull on my cigar. Damn, I was screwed.
My gaze travelled back toward the black Nissan parked a few houses down from us. It had been there when we got back over an hour ago. I could just make out a person sitting inside. I would have dismissed it, but we had a few people currently gunning for us. I thought about going inside to get my gun, but I had my switchblade and a cigar to finish. So, fuck it. If whoever was in the car wanted to come for me, let them come. They could help me break in my knife.
Headlights flooded the street, and Kara’s car came into view. I took another pull on my cigar and blew out a ring of smoke, watching as she pulled in behind Devlin’s SUV. Needing to vent, I’d called her when we got back. Something in my voice must have alarmed her, because she’d told me she would be over and hung up.
Kara got out of the car and her gaze landed on me. “Why are you out here by yourself?” She walked up and sat next to me. “Smoking?”
“Yeah, Madeline can kiss my ass.”
Kara reached for my cigar, and I handed it to her. She took a long pull.
“Smoking?” I asked.
“No sense in you smoking alone.” She blew smoke in the direction of the car. “Who’s Madeline?” She handed me back the cigar.
“The self-help guru handing out shitty advice.” She gave me a confused look. I shrugged. “You don’t want to know.” I ticked my head toward the car down the street. “See that car?”
“Yes. Do you know who it is?”
“Not yet. He does look familiar, though.”
She leaned back on her hands; her gaze trained on the car. “You think it’s Logan.”
“No. The man in the car has hair.”
“Something about Logan seemed familiar.”
“You’ve seen him before that day at the church?”
“Yeah. But I can’t remember where.” She stared down the street, but I didn’t think she was trying to figure out who the driver in the car was. There was strain around her eyes and mouth. She took the cigar from me.
“Why are you really smoking?” I asked.
“I heard from my grandmother today. She’s coming back to the house.” After taking another pull, she handed it back.
“And?”
Kara sighed. “Give me a minute.”
We sat there in silence. Eventually, she stood up and paced in front of me. “I need a distraction for a second. Tell me what happened today.”
“Okay.” I told her about my day. I doubt she was listening. She just kept pacing and growing becoming more and more agitated.
Finally, she stopped and blurted out, “My grandmother took me from my mother when I was two months old.” She paused, then added, “When I was ten, my grandma told me that my mother had planned on killing me.”
My eyes rounded and I stood up. She put up a hand to stop me. “Let me get this out.” She looked at me. “I need to tell you why I was trained to use battle magick.”
“You want to tell me now?”
“I think it ties into my memories of Logan. Something’s there. Maybe if I talk it out, I’ll remember.”
“How long have you been worrying about this?”
She frowned. “Since we saw him at church.” She peered down at the ground. “I just kept thinking. Trying to remember. When my grandma called, it was like something had clicked in place.”
I looked down the street. Whoever was in the car seemed to be content to just sit there. So, they’d have to wait. “Okay,” I said, turning back to her. “Let’s sit back down, at least.”
She nodded and let me guide her back to the step.
After a short pause, she said, “My grandmother said my mother hated that I looked so much like my father, and she didn’t want the reminder of what he’d done staring at her every day. So, she decided to drown me.”
“What had your father done?” I asked.
Kara wrapped her arms around her legs. “My mother always wanted to be a teacher.” She smiled. “I found some of her old college textbooks when I got older.” Kara wasn’t kidding when she said she needed to talk it out. I leaned toward her, offering support. “F, I’m telling this wrong.”
“No, you’re not.”
She looked at me out of tear-filled eyes. “Thanks.” She reached for the cigar, and I handed it to her. After taking a pull and blowing the smoke out, she continued. “My father was my mother’s college professor. Since my grandmother refused to pay for her education, she offered to stay after class and help him grade papers for twelve dollars an hour.” Her eyes hardened. “One night, he decided he wanted more and raped my mother.” She turned to me. “I was the result of that rape.”
She got up again. “My mother wanted to abort me. But my grandmother convinced her to keep me instead. And when I was born, my mother slipped into a deep depression. When I was two months old, my grandmother had come to visit. She found my mother holding me down in the bathtub. She took me from her.”
“Did your grandmother tell you this?”
She shook her head. “No. I read about it in my mother’s journals. The only time my grandma talked about my mother was to put her down and call her weak.”
“What happened to her?”
Kara shrugged. “Sometimes I think about trying to find her. But…” She turned to me. “Then I remember she didn’t want the reminder.”
I’ve always known Kara’s grandmother was horrible. As kids, we rarely spent any time at her house. I couldn’t image what type of mother would force her own child to keep a baby after being raped. That level of cruelty did not make sense to me. But then again, if she hadn’t, Kara wouldn’t be here.
I ground the cigar out. I didn’t know how to feel about what she’d just told me.
“When I was ten, she started training me how to kill,” Kara continued. “My father was my first lesson. That’s where my memories of Logan start to surface.”
Part of me was curious how she managed to kill her father. Another part of me didn’t want the memory of my ten-year-old friend slaughtering someone floating around in my head.
She looked at me. “Marta wanted a family. She even stayed with a man she didn’t love to keep that family. You were always obsessed with magick and tried to pretend otherwise. I think you knew deep down you had more power than what you were led to believe you had. I was trained to kill and have stayed hidden in a classroom full of children so I would never have to use those skills.” She said all this as if she were ticking off a list.
“I’m so sorry, Kara.”
“But one day, I know I will step out of that safe space and become what I was trained to be.” She took my hand. “But I promise you’ll be the first to know when I do.”
We sat in silence for a while. I didn’t know what to say. My best friend had been trained to be an assassin. My sweet, somewhat bubbly friend, who hated curse words and loved sugar could kill at the drop of hat. And now, she was promising to tell me when she decided to start killing. There was no follow-up to that.
“Is working with Devlin bringing it all back up?” I said finally, my voice a little rough. I couldn’t help but feel as if I had let her down in some way. She had to have been struggling during that training. And I was her friend the whole time.
She sat up. “Yes. A memory of her teaching me keeps surfacing. And in it, a bald teenaged boy is talking to her.” She turned to me. “I think it was Logan.”
I remembered what Alek had done to the guard from Tribec. He’d altered the man’s memory to remove Jonah from his mind. I told Kara about it and how Alek had explained it to me; that while the details didn’t change, the understanding of what went on did.
“You think Logan did that to me?”
I nodded. “It sounds like it. And he did briefly seem concerned about your presence.”
The front door opened, and we turned. Alek stood in the doorway, looking down the street. “He’s still there.”
“Oh, so you noticed him, too?” I asked. He gave me a look. “Of course, you did.” I got up. “Should we go have a chat with him?”
He looked at Kara. “As long as you two are done talking.”
“We’re done,” Kara said, pulling a blade from the sheath around her ankle.
“Umm…Kara? What the hell?”
“Where’s your gun?” she asked.
I looked at Alek. “Don’t you dare say anything.”
He laughed and stepped down off the porch. As soon as he did, the car started and, rubber burning, the driver sped by, giving me a brief look at him. His familiarity finally kicked into place, along with memories of his smell.
“That’s the bastard who asked me to give more at church on Sunday.” Everything about what I said sounded wrong.
We rushed down the walkway. Alek tossed me his keys, a clear sign he wanted me to drive, and jumped in the passenger seat. My hand shook as I tried to shove the key into the ignition. Okay. I could do this.
Sweat dripped into my eyes.
Adrenaline coursed through my body.
I gripped the steering wheel to the point of cutting off my own circulation.
I punched the gas pedal, the car lurching forward.
I slammed on the brakes, and my chest rammed into the steering wheel.
Alek reached over me and yanked the seatbelt around me.
Once I heard the click, I peeled out, trying to make up the lost time.
My hands ached, my grip on the steering wheel too tight. Alek’s magick flared, filling the car. He hummed a dark, familiar melody as I wove in and out of traffic.
The man in the Nissan swerved into traffic. Horns blared as he clipped two cars trying to get away from him. I kept my foot down on the pedal by sheer will and prayed to whoever was listening that I didn’t kill us.
The scene before me was like a fast-moving train wreck.
“Nicole, watch out!” Kara yelled as we barely missed the car merging in front of us.
Alek continued humming. It was that same tune he hummed when we were ambushed in Perry. Alek’s power seemed to cut off the oxygen. I sucked in a breath, blinking hard as I jerked the steering wheel back and forth.
“Fuck,” Alek yelled.
The Nissan merged onto the highway. Car horns blared as he weaved in and out of traffic. He clipped a car when he changed lanes, sending it into a spin. I yanked the wheel to the left, barely missing him.
“We need to control the situation,” Alek said.
“And how exactly are we going to do that?” I said, inching the car up to ninety miles an hour.
An orange light filled the car. The Nissan cut across traffic, making its way toward the exit. “Get closer!” Alek yelled.
I would have flipped him off, but I needed to keep both hands on the wheel.
The Nissan took the exit too fast, running the red light. I slammed on the breaks just as a semi passed in front of me.
“Kara, drive. Nicole, in my lap.”
Before I could protest, Alek unclicked my seatbelt and pulled me in his lap. Kara scrambled over the center console just as the light turned green. She punched the gas, going from zero to fifty in less than a second. She should have been driving in the first place.
We caught up to the Nissan just as it turned down another residential street.
“Where are we?” Alek asked.
I looked around. “Tulare,” I said.
“Are there any abandoned areas up ahead? Alleys?”
I thought about it for a minute. Tulare had most of the tourist attractions with a small residential population. It also had a ton of strip malls. “A few streets down, there’s a strip mall.”
Alek nodded then looked at me. “I need you to reach out and touch his soul.”
“What?” I asked, turning to him.
He cupped my face. “You can do it. I need him afraid so I can send him down that alley.”
“If you’re going to do it, I suggest you do it now,” Kara said. “We’re almost there.”
Okay. So. No pressure. I turned toward the Nissan. Alek had started to hum again, filling the car with his magick. I tuned it out, focusing on trying to see the man’s aura first. The car posed a problem. My mind kept telling me there was no way I could see past metal. And I was having a hard time pushing that thought down.
“The car’s in the way,” I announced.
“Concentrate,” Alek said. “Look through the back windshield.”
I blew out a breath and let my gaze go distant. Staring through the windshield, I was able to see a pale gold light that looked almost yellow emanating around the man in the car. Faith magick. I pushed past that to the small ball of light pulsing in the center. I reached out with my own magick, just as he passed the last street before the strip mall.
A cold, slippery feeling encased my hand. I was tempted to look down at it but kept my eyes on the back of the man’s head. He jerked, and the Nissan slowed. When I flexed my hand, squeezing, he yanked the car toward the curb.
Kara pulled up behind him.
“Are you holding it?”
I nodded. When I had tried this on Alek weeks ago, I had only been able to run my finger across the energy. Now, I was able to feel pieces of it on my hand.
Alek’s magick surged, and the man pulled away from the curb and turned down the alley. Kara followed.
Alek pulled his phone from his pocket and called Devlin. “We have the man who was watching the house. I put him to sleep,” he said. “What do you want to do with him?” Alek put the phone on speaker.
“Where are you?” Devlin asked.
“In Tulare.”
“Take him to a motel and text us the address. We’ll meet you there.”
Alek hung up and looked at Kara. “Any cheap motels in the area?”
“Yeah, near the border of Brunswood.”
Alek cupped my head and turned me to him. “You okay?”
“Ask me that later. Are we really taking this man to a motel to question him?”
He nodded, studying me.
Was I disturbed by what we were about to do? I’d like to say yes, but I also knew this man had been watching us for a reason. And we needed to find out why.
“Since I assume we’re taking his car, too, am I riding with you or Kara?”
“Your choice,” he said.
In the end, I rode with Kara. And not because I didn’t want to ride with Alek. I needed to pretend for just a little while that we weren’t kidnapping a man to question him.
Sadly, it wasn’t working.