Lies in Blood (47 page)

I started down the stairs, stopping for a sec to let Emily catch up.

“
Cute, I’m sure,” she muttered coldly.

“
What?”

“
You and
Jase
.” She grabbed my arm. “He likes you, you know—more than he should considering he’s your brother-in-law.”

Blade came up between us. “She knows, Em.”

“
Then why is she even hanging out with him?”

Blade and I made faces at each other—clear astonishment at Em’s bitchiness.

“
So, is that how it goes, Em?” Blade said. “If you know someone likes you, you keep away from them?”

“
Wouldn’t know.” She stormed off ahead of us. “No one’s ever liked me.”

Blade stopped walking and looked at me, pouting for Em.

“
All that effort.” I patted his shoulder. “And she still doesn’t have a clue, does she?”

He started walking again with a bit of a lag to his step. “Guess not.”

“
You might just have to be upfront about your feelings, Blade.”

“
To be honest,” he said, the little laugh accentuating his Englishness. “I’m afraid she might slap me if I tell her.”

I chuckled. “Never know, you might enjoy a little slap.”

“
I’ll give you a little slap,” he said, threatening my bottom.

I elbowed him in the ribs softly and we left the lighthouse behind, but I turned back and caught a wave from the blue-shirt-wearing vampire standing on the balcony before we blended with the darkness.

Chapter
Ten

She opened her eyes, the blue appearing before her lashes even parted, but as an instant smile swept her lips when she saw me, so too did the memory of what just happened. She turned away.

“
Don't look at me like that,” she said.

“
Like what?” I jumped up sat beside her.

“
Like you're really concerned.”

I was really concerned,
I thought, but it wasn’t my thought. I reached across and gently smoothed my thumb down her soft skin, seeing the moment in her mind when that barbarian struck her. It wasn’t a hard hit, it wasn’t even hard enough to change the colour of her skin, but it scared her, shocked her, and in that instant, a part of their friendship died. I could feel that pain. I had good reason to be concerned. She knew that.

“
He hit you,” I said, but the words, the feelings that came with them weren’t mine, either. They were Jason’s.

“
It was a tiny slap,” she said, pulling my hand away. “And I kinda had it coming.”

“
No.” I almost regurgitated the words, gasping them out instead. “You’ve been through enough. He had no right to touch you that way. I will
skin
him alive.”

The anger I felt in Jason then moved me outside his body, but I heard everything, saw everything the way he saw it in what was obviously a dream he was having—all the way down on the second floor, tucked up tightly in his bed. So I watched, because something in this dream felt familiar somehow, like I’d lived it before.

“
I'm okay,” Ara said softly, cocking her head as though she felt sorry for
me
.

It felt strange to have Jason’s voice in my head as if it were mine. It felt kind of disorienting. I sat back a little and just pretended he was telling the story, almost as if I were reading a book that suddenly switched perspective mid-chapter.

“
But you shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t brush this off like it doesn't matter, Ara. He is ten times bigger than you, and he—”

“
I've got bigger things to worry about right now, Jase.” She rolled away, pulling the blanket up over her shoulder. “Just let it go.”

My hands hovered over her body for a second, tight, almost grabbing. I wanted to shake her—just dive into her head and insert all my own experiences and lessons so she’d wake up and smell the damn roses. But I pressed my fingers firmly to the side of her head, sweeping her hair back instead. “I love you, Ara. I won't let this go.” I kissed her face, backing off. “But we’ll talk about it in the morning.” There was no point trying to make her see reason tonight. She was as stubborn as an ox when she thought she was right, and while this was an endearing trait most of the time, it was also downright dangerous. It would take time to make her see that her
so-called
best friend was in the wrong.

“
Jase?”

“
Shh.” I tucked the blanket around her firmly, hoping it’d keep her there, wrapped up safe so I wouldn’t be tempted to lecture her. “Just sleep.”

But she rolled over and shoved the blanket back. “Let it go. Mike didn't mean to do that. He’s…I mean, look what I put him through. This was just the final straw, okay. He clearly can't take any more of, well,
me
.”

Dear God. Her ability to see the good in everything had finally become a hazard. I lowered my head into my hands. “I understand that, Ara, probably better than you might think, but he’s not just your friend anymore. He's the head of security. No matter what you do or have done, he should have more self-control than to have slapped you.” Surely she could at least see that much reason.

“
It was a little tap.”

I looked up from behind my hands. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“
Jase. Go to bed. You look tired.”

A pattern of thought started in her head then. I couldn’t grasp it enough to see what she was thinking, but I knew she was right about my appearance. I hadn’t slept well since the Masquerade. I’d slept even less since I tortured her, and while I was fine with that, since it felt like some kind of penance, the tiredness was affecting my self-control, decision making, even self-respect, making it hard to maintain grasp on this ever-weaving web of lies and corruption going on around us while simultaneously practicing honourable intentions toward Ara.

“
I am tired,” I said simply.

“
Did you sleep at all last night?”

And there it was: the thought she’d started but hadn’t finished. It came to life in her mind like a memory; me, the screaming, the night she came down the corridor to see Arthur leaving my room after administering some hefty drug to stop the night terrors. She’d imagined me in there—imagined herself beside me, holding me. She wanted to be there. But if I let her in, if I let her know I was suffering for what I did to her, she wouldn’t let this go. She wouldn’t let me suffer for that.

“
What would make you think I hadn't slept?” I asked, planting the idea in her mind to just drop this.

“
You know already, Jase, you can read my mind.” She touched my arm, yanking me back from the invasion on her brain. “How long have you been having those night terrors?”

I studied her carefully, wanting to let her in, knowing she could help, but at the same time knowing I didn’t deserve it. Then again, she wouldn’t drop this. She’d lay awake all night, worrying, and probably end up coming to my room in the small hours, getting caught by Falcon then having David breathe down her neck because he doesn’t trust her. She wouldn’t let this go unless I either talked to her about it or did something to her brain, which I didn’t want to do. “You…so you
did
see that dream?”

She nodded.

I sunk back, exhaling, as if I didn’t know.

“
Are they always that bad, the dreams?” she asked.

“
Yes.”

“
I'm sorry.”

I sat up, feeling my heart come away from my chest in a hot spill of blood. “Ara, please don't—just…don't say you’re sorry.
I'm
sorry. I'm the one who—”

“
No.” She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her chest, right over the silver locket my brother gave her as a representation of his love. I wanted to pull away, but she’d never held me like that before. “All of that’s in the past,” she said. “I know what you did for me. I know it was to protect me, Jase, I forgave you a very,
very
long time ago.”

And she had. I’d seen that in her eyes, her thoughts. It was one of the first things I noticed when we met in the field the day I returned from the dead. “I know.”

“
No, you don't. It hurts me for you to feel such deep regret. You’re punishing yourself for something you had no control over.”

She was right. But it wasn’t just the torture at Elysium that bothered me—it was the pain I’d caused when I
did
have control. I drew my hand away. “I just…”

“
Jase. It’s. In. The. Past,” she said, slowly and deliberately. “Stop dreaming about it.”

“
To do that, I’d have to stop sleeping.”

She rolled her eyes. “How ‘bout you come visit me in our sleep again instead. We’ll make some nice dreams for you.”

Instant reaction? Lay her down and enter her head right now. Common sense reaction? “I'm not sure it’s really appropriate for us to be alone like that, Ara.”

“
I know. But I can't have you reliving that torture every night. I won't.”

All very well, but what was
she
going to do about it?

“
Not to mention,” she continued. “If I'm slipping into your dreams somehow, I don't really want to be seeing that every time I close my eyes, either.”

I laughed. It wasn’t really funny, but she was right. She and I, we had a connection like no others in this manor. What I suffered, so too did she. I guess, in that sense alone, I owed it to her to be all right again. “Okay. No more nightmares then.”

“
Good,” she said in a businesslike tone, and I just wanted to kiss her. She always had a way of making me feel better. “Now,” she added. “I have question for you.”

Oh no. “Shoot.”

“
The mind-links?”

“
Mm?”

“
Did…” She tried not to smile. “Did you visit me in our dreams while you were supposedly dead?”

The smile I started by seeing hers grew. I knew what she was about to ask. “Maybe. Once or twice.”

“
I knew it.” She slapped the covers, and her mind went from our adventures in the field to the night I came to her room and danced with her. “So…the yellow dress?”

I wasn’t sure if I should admit this. “Yes, I…” I shrugged dismissively. “I figured I owed you a new dress—since I ruined the blue one.”

“
Ha! I can't believe
you
just said that.”

Neither could I.

“
And, what about the memories?” she said. “Did you leave mind-blocks in place, or were you actually in those dreams with me, showing me all those things yourself?”

“
Many of those were memories of things we did before…” The pictures of my childhood—the things she’d asked me about, things I’d shown her in our life together before I let her fall into Drake’s hands came to mind, so clear, so intense with the love we have for each other that I almost forgot I was talking. “I never placed mind-blocks. I
erased
those things, but only enough to hide them from a human mind. As you grew stronger, your brain lifted the sheet.”
You were never supposed to find those memories again,
I added without saying it.

“
Sheet? But you said you erased them.”

“
Nothing can ever truly be erased from a mind. It’s like a hard drive—unless you have some pretty high-tech equipment, there’s always an imprint left behind.”

“
Right. So, all those things you showed me about your childhood—”

“
You asked. I answered.”

She nodded. “Did you want me to hate David?”

I laughed. Of course I did. I just didn’t want her to learn the hard way what kind of man he was. “It’d be nice if you did. But, no. I did and
do
want you to know what he’s like, though.”