Betrayal 2012 (10 page)

Yet when I walked out of my room, I was surprised to see Kain waiting for me with a small thermos in his hand.  He smiled and shifted from side to side.

“I made you a drink for your flight.”

“Thank you.”  I was relieved that we wouldn’t leave things on bad terms.  “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”  He pushed the thermos into my hands and looked down into my eyes.  “Please be careful, Eviana.  Jeremiah can’t be trusted and Lucian will be looking for you.”

I swallowed hard, trying to stay strong.  “I’ll be okay.”

The silence stretched between us.  Just before I was ready to give in, Kain reached forward and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Be safe,” he said.

“I will.”  I watched him shuffle back into his bedroom before turning to leave.  It was a nice feeling to know that we were still friends.  I needed Kain’s support more than he’d ever know.

When I opened the door to the hallway, I was met with a pleasant and very sleepy face.  Apparently my cousin didn’t have any pressing thoughts on his mind.  “Oh, you’re ready?” he stumbled.

“Yeah.  Couldn’t sleep,” I said while closing the door behind me.  “Are you coming too?”  Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if there was at least one friend going with me.

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes.  “No, they want me to stay here.  Or in California.”  He smiled weakly at me.  “Sorry.  Can’t do this early morning thing.  Master Forrester’s protectors are going with you.  You can’t get much better than that.”

I placed my hand on my cousin’s broad shoulder.  “Don’t underestimate yourself.  I’d rather have you by my side any day.  Plus, who’s going to train me?”

He snorted.  “Good question.  Although I don’t think you’ll have much free time for physical training.”  I hadn’t told Palmer what was going on so I assumed that his orders had revealed the real reason why I was being sent to a shunned merman’s house.  Instead of discussing it further I sighed.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”  We walked towards the elevator and I was surprised that Troy hadn’t appeared yet.  I asked Palmer about him.

“Oh,” he said with a huge smile.  “Troy’s kind of tied up right now.”  I looked questioningly at Palmer, and he grinned even wider.  Suddenly, I got it.

“Like with a girl?”

“Like with something female.  I don’t know where he finds them, but he sure does have an interesting taste in women.” Troy tended to go for the older ladies; the “cougars”.  I shivered with a bit of disgust.  It was definitely an image I didn’t want in my mind.

The shiny elevator doors opened up to an eerily quiet and empty lobby.  There were two employees behind the desk, apparently getting the graveyard shift.  Graham wasn’t anywhere in sight but when I followed Palmer around the corner I spotted him sitting at the bar.  His back was to me and I could see that he had on a different outfit.  Obviously the cloak had disappeared and he was wearing a normal pair of dark jeans with a black sweater.  His thick brown hair still stood in all different directions and when he turned to face me, I groaned.

The face alone was enough to draw you to him but I didn’t want to be interested.  His eyes glimmered with mischief and I stared as he downed a shot of something and pulled out several bills for the bartender.  Without saying a word, his two protectors seemed to appear out of thin air and the three of them sauntered over to Palmer and me.  Graham made no attempt to hide his perusal of my body and I thought that I saw a small smile twitch at the corner of his mouth.  I wasn’t in my dress anymore, and had also opted for a pair of jeans and cute blue top.  I hardly thought I deserved his attention, nor did I want it.

“Is that all?” he said jerking his head towards my small carry-on bag.

“It’s all that I brought with me.  Someone’s going to send me more.”  I already called my sister to beg her to pack me another suitcase and send it promptly to Virginia.  Three outfits were not going to get me through my time in Jeremiah’s lair.

Graham huffed and began to walk towards the street.  I said a quick goodbye to Palmer, asking him to check in with me every day, and hurried off after my babysitter. 

We climbed into the back seat of the town car.  From the smell of him, I’d guessed that Graham hadn’t been to bed yet either.  Stale cigarette smoke and an excess amount of alcohol drifted off of him causing me to turn my head to the side for the entire drive just so I could breathe.  For all the responsibility he had as a Council member, Graham Forrester really didn’t seem to take life seriously.

We hardly said more than a few words to each other before we arrived at the airport and were sitting in our first class seats.  Doing my best not to show how scared I was, I glued my eyes to one of those human celebrity gossip magazines and pretended to be enthralled.

“Are you still seeing that selkie?” Graham asked out of the blue.

“Excuse me?”

“Well you’re obviously not with Kain so I’ve been wondering if you continued to see the selkie after everything that happened.”  I was so caught off guard the only thing I could do was develop an attitude.

“I don’t really think that’s any of your business.”  Plus, I didn’t really like knowing that the Council was privy to my love life, or lack thereof at the moment.

“You’ll end up with one of us,” he said with a surety that made my heart shudder.  Was he speaking metaphorically or literally?  “It will be the only way for you to live.  He won’t stay with you forever.  He can’t.  Besides, a selkie is too far beneath you.  It’s almost as bad as dating a human.”  I couldn’t help but notice the hint of humor in his eyes.

“You’ve dated a human before?”  It wasn’t unheard of but I hadn’t known anyone who’d actually tried.

“Several,” he said dismissively.  “They’re so easy to control, it just isn’t fair sometimes.”  I watched as he sighed and laid his head back against the seat while a memory consumed his thoughts.  Imagining the worst, I decided to try and concentrate on my magazine for the rest of the flight. 

Graham was only a few years older than me but it seemed as though he had lived several more lifetimes.  Not only was it disturbing but it also made me feel young and immature and I refused to let him ruin this trip any more than it already was.  It was bad enough that he’d said he had to babysit me.  Taking my hint, Graham pulled an eye cover over his face and was asleep before we were in the air. 

We drove through the elaborate iron gates at the entrance in the early afternoon.  The sun was high in the sky and I welcomed the warmer temperatures and constant sea breeze.  Especially since there was a deep chill in my bones at the reminder of where we were.  Kain, Carissa, and I had visited Jeremiah as our first stop in trying to find the selkies that attacked Brendan and stole his skin.  It was the incident that set the stage for everything else that followed.  My parent’s death, discovering my powers, and Brendan leaving all occurred because I had run away from home.  And now I was coming back to train with a man who embodied everything I vowed not to become.  Someday I hoped that I would finally make the right decisions that led to a better path.

“I see he still has the fountain,” Graham said while bending forward to look through the front window.

“You’ve been here before?”

“A long time ago,” he said without looking at me.  I wanted to ask more but the sight of the fountain sent a wave of dread through me.  Would Jeremiah be angry about Abhainn?

“I stole his sprite,” I blurted out, thinking that maybe if I confessed the fear of facing my punishment would go away.  It didn’t work.

Graham chuckled.  “You what?”

“I stole his water sprite.  From the fountain.  Jeremiah trapped him here and I felt bad so I stole him and then set him free.”  The look on Graham’s face was priceless.  It was a mixture of shock and pride.

“Nice going.”  He sat back in the seat and looked at me with an intensity that sped up my heartbeat.  “I never would have pegged you for the kleptomaniac type.  I’m impressed.”

A small smile spread over my lips before I could stop it.  Why was it so important that Graham liked me?  I needed to stop acting like a stupid school girl right now.  “Thanks, but I’m sure Jeremiah’s going to have something to say about it.”

“I’m sure he will,” Graham replied before opening the car door.  I hesitated another moment then climbed outside.  The three men were almost on the front porch before turning around to see where I was.  Without saying anything, I hurried to their sides and waited to face my wrath. 

To my pleasant surprise, one of the human staff members opened the doors and ushered us inside.  She immediately directed us upstairs to our guest rooms and told us that we were to meet Mr. Williams for dinner promptly at six.  He was apparently out and about, so that gave me a few hours of reprieve.  It was nice for a while, but after thirty minutes I was bored out of my mind.

Graham and the protectors had disappeared somewhere behind the numerous bedroom doors in the upstairs living quarters.  The house was a mansion and I had already counted at least ten bedrooms on this floor alone.  Jeremiah had once been a famous Hollywood actor and probably still lived comfortably off of the royalties and endorsements he’d managed to negotiate before being shunned.

My shoes clicked on the wood stairs and the sound echoed through the open foyer area.  I could sense the water coming from the indoor pool Jeremiah had built in the back of the house, but I certainly didn’t want to go there.  Too many bad memories.  There was no one around, so for lack of any other ideas, I went out the front door and walked over to the large fountain.

There were three small concrete ponds interconnected to a larger, higher one in the center.  The water constantly trickled out over the fourth pond and sprinkled down against an array of lily pads and faux boulders like a magical landscape.  I sat on the edge of the closest pond and ran my hand through the water, letting the microscopic droplets seep through my fingers like sand. 

I suddenly missed Abhainn, which made me miss my friends, which made me not want to be here at all.  Not knowing what was in store for me was not a feeling that I was accustomed to anymore.  I liked having a plan and I liked being the one in control of that plan.

Deciding that my thoughts were too depressing, I changed my focus.  I remembered our practice session with Abhainn and decided to try again since I didn’t have anything else to do right now.  Looking out over the property in front of the house, I made sure that no one was around.  This was something that I really didn’t want to anyone else to see.

Shifting so that I was completely facing the water, I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a few water balls.  Abhainn had done that part for me last time but I was hoping that I was strong enough to do it on my own now. 

In my head I envisioned three glistening globes of water rise from the pond and hover over my hands.  Although when I opened my eyes I was only partially satisfied.  There was one ball of water and it had barely breached the surface.  At least it was a start.

For the next twenty minutes or so I tried to move that water with my own commands.  I managed to get it to circle around my hand a few times before plummeting back into the pond, and forcing me to start all over again.  By the fifth or sixth try, I had two balls of water and they were hovering at eye level.

I wanted to do so much more.  Having control over water could mean so many different things.  For me, it meant that I could probably hold my own in a water fight, but for someone like Kain who seemed to be a natural, he might be able to control an entire fountain or even the rain.  Then I realized what kind of damage someone could do if they really could control and dictate water flow.  It was such an important element to so many.  Directing water away from nature could be devastating.

The water splashed in my face as the ball fell back into the pond.  I certainly wouldn’t be disrupting the natural balance of water and earth anytime soon.  Controlling this element was definitely not my forte.

But since I was alone with nothing better to do, I kept on practicing.  I don’t know how much time passed before I thought that I was finally getting the hang of it.  A small column of water had risen up before me and I squealed in delight as the formation moved from side to side in time with my hand.  I drew circles and waves and squiggly lines through the air and watched in fascination as the water mimicked my every move.  When it shot straight up out of the pond and began to form a tiny tornado, I hesitated to believe that this was of my doing.