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“I knew it. I was right!” Daniel looked crazed, the whites of his eyes showing. “I knew they were real. They took Ellie from me. From us.”
Hearing her mother’s name on her father’s lips made Skye flinch. When was the last time he’d spoken that name out loud? If he only knew... She couldn’t say it. She swallowed, and tried to reason with him, “Dad, Hunter saved me. I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for him.”
Daniel faced her. “Dead? Why? No, don’t bother telling me, I already know. Dead because of them, yes?” his eyes narrowed at the look on her face. “I knew it. So one of them stopped another of them. He shouldn’t have had to.”
“But he did. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Doesn’t that...matter to you?”
His face softened a little at her small voice. “Skye, you mean everything to me. Which is why I forbid you to pass one more second of your life in the presence of them.” He pointed a trembling finger at Hunter.
“Forbid?” The word was so foreign to her. So wrong.
Beside Hunter, Rowena looked disturbed and bewildered, her eyes darting between Skye and Daniel. Mike frowned, his mouth a grim line, and his gaze upon his brother.
“I can’t do that, Dad,” Skye shook her head.
“Skye, they are a plague. They deserve to die. I never want to see you near him again. I love you,” he urged, “but you can’t be with him, not if you loved your mother, and not if you love me.”
His words were like a knife. She searched his face for any sign of Happy Dad, any glimpse of reason, but saw only wild hatred. Carefully and deliberately, she stepped away from her father towards Hunter, the sense of completeness feeling so right even though her heart felt like glass powder was being ground into it.
She turned to face Daniel, a chasm yawning between them. “If you had the power to keep someone you loved alive, or let them die, even if letting them live could cost you what mattered most, what would you do?” Her voice trembled.
Her father stared at her, a creeping knowledge dawning in his eyes. He swallowed. “I would let them live.” His voice was hoarse.
“Would you?
“Yes...” his voice cracked. “Anyone but them. If it was someone I loved.”
“But you didn’t.” She could barely see him through the tears blurring her eyes.
“What?” he whispered.
“I know about Mum’s necklace.”
“Her necklace,” he blanched, horrified, “No, Skye. It was them. I didn’t know. They did it. They knew. It was their fault. They killed your mother,” his voice rose to a shriek.
“No, dad,” she could barely get the words out over her sobs, “You guessed enough to take her safe passage back to them away. You hid it from her. You did it.”
Morgan, frozen at the coffee machine, covered her shocked mouth with her hands
Her father reeled backwards clutching his chest, gasping for breath. Rowena and Mike rushed to catch him before he fell.
Daniel’s look of utter self-loathing and despair made her wish she had cut out her own tongue rather than say those words. She stumbled back and was steadied by Hunter’s strong arms. But even this safest of places could never feel right again after what she’d just done.
Mike’s oaths and Rowena’s distressed questions died away and everyone became still. Her father’s gasps were the only sound.
“Skye...” he stammered through his heaving breaths. His eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t know. I feared...I... I was frightened, and weak. It was my fault.”
She crossed to him in seconds and fell into his arms. “Dad, I’m so sorry. I should never have said –”
“Hush,” he soothed, his cheek pressed against the top of her head, “Hush, honey. I’m the sorry one. You were right. But Skye?” He drew back to meet her eyes.
“Yeah?” she rubbed her wet face with her sleeve.
“I mean it. You can’t see him. And also...you are so grounded.” His attempt at sounding light and rational made his broken state even more glaring.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Mike stepped closer. “That’s about enough for today, I think,” he said grimly. “For everyone. You’re coming home with me right now, Skye, no arguments.”
“But...” she looked at Hunter, panic gripping her.
“Hunter can take care of himself,” Mike cast a sharp look towards Hunter. “But Rowena? I think while Daniel’s here, it’s better if he isn’t.” He nodded in Hunter’s direction.
“But Mike! Rowena, that’s -”
“Sorry, Skye,” Rowena cut her off, strained but firm, “I’m with Mike on this one.” She looked at Hunter, her eyes guarded, “Hunter, I know we’ve set you up in the studio, and the welcome is still there –” she hesitated at an involuntary start from both Sebastian men, “...At least until I know a bit more about all...this. But meanwhile, I’d really appreciate it if you could give the family some space.”
“Hunter,” Skye tried to cross the room to him, but her father gripped her arm.
“Best get going, mate,” Mike said stiffly.
Hunter didn’t speak. He simply held her gaze, his own burning, then turned and left the café.
“Hunter,” she wailed, struggling to break free from her father’s grip, fresh sobs ripping through her chest.
“Let him go, Skye,” her father urged, “it’s for the best.”
Rowena brushed past Mike, and lightly touched Daniel on the arm, giving him a calm but warning look. Daniel let Skye go, and Rowena placed her hands on Skye’s shoulders.
“Look at me, Skye.” Skye blinked through her tears to meet Rowena’s fierce green eyes, so like Morgan’s. “Do you trust me?”
Skye hiccupped, nodding.
“Then let Hunter go.”
Skye couldn’t read everything Rowena’s eyes were telling her, but she looked at the faces of her uncle and father. Daniel looked wrung out, exhausted, close to the state he’d been in when he’d been pulled from the waves on Ciarlan Cove. Mike looked the angriest and most worried she’d ever seen him. Whatever else Rowena might be thinking, she was right. Now was not the time to keep Hunter close.
She sagged into Rowena’s embrace and closed her eyes, feeling the missing part of her splinter as Hunter moved out of her life. Beside them Mike helped Daniel to sit. Her father covered his eyes, his shoulders shaking.
But even as Rowena held her, a revoltingly familiar sense of something, someone that had no part of her, no place in her, shifted inside. She gagged.
Like noisome mist billowing over stagnant water, the oozing sense of another rose to the surface of her being. Skye struggled against Rowena’s embrace, as if fighting free of the stolen and spent life. Startled, Rowena released her and Skye stumbled backwards, knocking into a table, catching her foot on a chair, and staggered towards the window.
The other looked out through Skye’s eyes, images from the dying soul’s past superimposed for them both against the café. Among them, streets and buildings that shouldn’t have been familiar to Skye, but were. She had traversed those streets at the bottom of the ocean. Faces of strangers, an onslaught of emotion, love, and loss flared and faded, until together Skye and her possessor stared at the café window.
But with the café lights on, against the evening darkness outside, Skye faced her own image. She and the other stared at her dishevelled refection like a ghost on the glass.
Around her, the reflected café added to the rising terror of the one who shared her sight. Behind her, her friends and family, arranged like sculptures, all stared. At them.
Skye sensed the other’s desperate struggle to comprehend, their helpless scrabbling for autonomy. And then as if responding to a call beyond, the attention of the other shifted, and the presence lifted off. Skye leaned, shivering, against the cold window glass.
She heard footsteps running, and gentle arms closed around her. “Are you okay?” Morgan sounded frightened.
Someone rubbed her back. “It’s all been too much,” Rowena murmured beside her. “Memory coming back like that, and then this awful scene.”
“I’m okay,” Skye tried to sound certain, and failed. She swallowed, tried again, gently extricating herself from her best friend’s embrace. “Really, I’m okay. Just a...a panic attack.”
There was a short, intense silence, then collectively everyone galvanised to action.
“I’ll get Skye home now, Rowena” Mike said. “I’ll come back and we can discuss...” he glanced at Skye and frowned at his older brother with obvious concern, “...things.”
Dazed, Skye accepted the gentle parting hug from Rowena, tried to acknowledge her father’s hoarse farewell, and managed to take the paper coffee cup that Morgan, ashen-faced, retrieved from the counter and pressed into her hand.
“Be strong, Skye-bear,” Morgan whispered.
And then she was outside, Mike closing the passenger door of his station wagon for her, starting the engine, and then they pulled away.
Her eyes were so blurred with emotion and horror that it was only the feeling under her ribcage that told her Hunter was near. She rubbed her eyes clear, searching the street for him as the car turned onto Marine parade. In the dark shadow of a tree, she saw his long form, and her heart raced as she twisted in her seat to see his beautiful face.
Hunter stepped from the shadows and deliberately pressed his hand to his chest, marking the place where distance between them was an unbearable presence. Mike turned off Marine Parade into a side road and Hunter was hidden from sight. But she understood his message as her hand crept to press the same aching place. They were joined. Nothing could alter that.
