Michael (The Curse) (The Airel Saga, Book 3: Part 5-6) (8 page)

I blinked.
Why? Just so he can kill me again?

“Believe what you want, Airel. Maybe he wants you alive.”

We grabbed a quick bite and then packed up to leave—perhaps forever. I wasn’t sure.

***

MICHAEL LEFT AIREL AFTER lunch so she could go pack.

He ducked into the library, resolved to check on her Book. He told himself that it was out of a desire to protect her, that he wanted to be sure he did all within his power to keep her safe, do whatever it took. But her Book was gone. All that was left was the old quill pen, the inkwell, a few old trinkets standing there on the mantelpiece.

Oh. She already grabbed it.
“Impressive,” he said to himself, and turned to pack up what little he anticipated he would need for their trip.

***

I WATCHED MICHAEL TWIRL a set of keys on his finger. He had found them in the kitchen. I thought that was just far too normal to be possible, but I guessed they were for Kale’s—Kreios’—black SUV. The kidnapmobile.

We found Kim, and then all three of us walked the massive spaces of the house one last time. The enormous ballroom with the waterfall windows, the midday sun glittering through into the space like God’s own disco ball; the impossible kitchen; along the long and dark hallway down which Michael and I had been carried, one at a time, when we were first-date-first-time prisoners. Only this time, it was back out.

Michael went first, climbing the stairs to the weird door that lay on the forest floor, opening it upward. He let it down slowly, wide open on the pine-needle floor of the clearing. Above us yawned a dark portal to the Milky Way, door-shaped, massive ponderosa pines leaning in and up, and stairs leading right up to the edge of it.

It was otherworldly.

“How can it be nighttime?” Kim asked what we were all thinking.

“No clue,” I said.

“Let’s go,” Michael said, gesturing us up the stairs. For a while, we just stood at the threshold of the door in amazement at the night sky turning above us, millions of stars placed precisely in the indigo tapestry.

For me, it was all too familiar. It felt like the very night I had first been taken. I almost wondered aloud if it was. But that would have been too crazy, even for me, after all I had been through. “Let’s get going,” I said.

“Couldn’t have said it better,” Michael replied, shutting the door back on itself. It looked like a discarded random wooden door in the dirt, left by some random prospector, utterly forgotten.

The black SUV sat right where it should have been.

Had it ever moved? “That’s just weird,” I said.

Michael hit the unlock button and began loading our bags in the back.

“What’s that one?” I asked, pointing to a long, hard case. It looked professional, like it was designed to hold guns or sound equipment.

He looked over at me and his eyes sparkled. “Oh, just some protection. I figured we might need them.”

“Them?”

He turned the complicated latches and opened the case. The gleaming blades of three different swords winked at the three of us.

“Holy crap.” Kim said.

The warrior in me smiled at the killer in him as he closed it again, shoving the case farther inside and packing my bag on top.

“Good call, Mister.” Things felt a little dangerous, a little grown up, and I liked that.

“I guess we’ll find out,” he said. He loaded Kim’s bags and closed the doors.

“Does anybody else just feel weird?” she asked. “I mean, here we are basically stealing this dude’s stuff—even his car—I guess because we need it … I just don’t know.”

“Kim,” Michael said, “I guess this is as good a time as any to break it to you.”

“Break what?” she and I said in unison.

“That Airel and I are taking you straight home,” he said matter-of-factly.

Kim came out of her skin. “What?”

“I just think it’s best.”

“I don’t give two eyelashes what you say,” she said. “Who do you think you are?”

“Really, Michael.” I tried to be the voice of reason.

“No, stop, Airel,” Kim said. “This is between me and him. Listen up, Mr. Dad, you’ve got a lot of nerve talking to me like that. How dare you. You’re going to try to tell me how it’s gonna be all of a sudden?”

“Kim, it’s just not safe—”

“How ’bout shut up, Michael.” Her red hair swirled in a frenzy around her animated face. “If you think for one second that you have the right to tell me what to do, you’re freakin’ crazy.”

“Kim,” I tried interjecting, “he kinda has a point here.”

“What?” She was furious. “Airel, how could you? Don’t you see what’s going on here? He’s trying to separate us. I’m trying to guard your back.”

“What?” I was shocked. “What for?”

“Seriously? You’re joking, right?”

“Aw, Kim. I thought we’d been through this already.”

“Ladies, please…”

“Shut up, Michael.” Kim said. “After all you’ve done.”

“Enough.” I said. “Kim, you’re crossing the line.” I glared at her.

She glared back. “Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be.” She turned to get into the kidnapmobile. Over her shoulder, she said, “But guess what, lovebirds. You’re stuck with Little Miss Third Wheel. Kimmy ain’t goin’ nowhere but wherever you two are. End of story.” She climbed in and slammed the door.

“Michael,” I began.

“I just think she’s really scared,” he said.

“Uhm . . .” was all I could manage.

“No big,” he said, grabbing my hands. “I should know better than to try to control Kim, but it was worth a shot.” He opened the passenger side door and helped me up and in. “I’ve got you now.”

Massive waves of déjà vu swept over me and I couldn’t help but be transported back to our first date, that night, how he looked at me, how we had made such innocent plans, and how they had been so cleanly blasted away. Perhaps this was the perfect opportunity to start over, forget the past, move forward?
He had compared me to Audrey Hepburn.
A smile crept into my heart and spread across my face as I came back from that moment. “Well, Mister, are we going or not?”

He smiled and nodded. Mr. Smooth was here. As he closed my door and walked around to the driver’s seat, I couldn’t help but imagine all kinds of delicious and fantastic things that were destined to happen between us. But maybe that was just the irrational little girl speaking.

CHAPTER XII

Boise, Idaho—Present Day

“REID HERE,” GRETCHEN SAID as she picked up the phone. The voice on the other end belonged to an overworked Boise P.D. detective, and it didn’t take much to be able to tell. Gretchen Reid had been around the block long enough. She listened as the fatigued voice told her about a case he was handing off to her; BPD was basically asking the FBI field office for help. “This is a first,” she said.

And it was a first. They usually saw her as a threat; they didn’t like to share, much less volunteer brand-new cases. She told herself they hated her because she was young, feminine, and attractive, that she headed up the local FBI field office. Part of her just loved rattling the local authorities any chance she got. Jurisdictional pissing contests, nine times out of ten, were won by the FBI.

“Okay, secure fax me the docs and I’ll have a look. Meanwhile, I’m going to need the case file number at least, via email, so I can start my own file.” Gretchen nudged her new assistant and kept talking. “Okay, thanks, Detective Vukovic. Good day.” She hung up. Turning, she said, “All right, Harry, BPD is faxing us a new one.”

“What is it?”

“Missing persons.”

“Cold case?”

“No way. This one hasn’t even had time to get lukewarm.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” she said, bustling through the empty office toward the mailroom. She wore a gray pantsuit and short heels that hit the floor in little staccato cluck-clocks that struck terror into the hearts of every admin drone ever to have the misfortune to do a tour in the Boise Field Office, Special Agent Gretchen Reid’s domain and undisputed kingdom.

“Must be important,” Harry said, tailing her like a pet. He was the new guy, just learning the ropes.

She didn’t respond. “Okay, Harry, when this is done coming in, you make copies for yourself and get the originals straight to my desk. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good, Harry. You’ll do well here. Just keep doing as you’re told.” She looked at him. “It’s not too late for you, is it? You didn’t have plans for tonight, did you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good, because I
can
replace you—it’s just inconvenient for me right now. I don’t want to have to wake up agent-next-in-line and wait for him to drag himself back to the office.”

“It’s fine, ma’am.”

“Good, Harry. I like the way you think—not bad for a rookie. I want to get on this ASAP, like right now.” Gretchen moved to take her leave, noting that it was after midnight but deducing that the parents of the missing girl would probably be up fretting anyway, so no worries.

“After that—”

“Get to work on whatever they’re giving us via email. Compile. Collate. Fix their screw-ups. Research. And call me if you find any leads.” She waggled her phone at him. “I’m going to interview the parents right now.”

“Victim’s name?”

Gretchen stopped and thought for a moment, looking up and left. “Actually, two. Both Borah High students. Amy? Ariel the mermaid? Something like that. Missing for about twenty-four hours. Suspect is male, about the same age, driving a late model white 4x4 pickup. I need to talk to the first girl’s parents—apparently they know about both of these girls.”

Harry nodded and turned back to the fax machine and watched as page after page came in.

There was more than the usual swarming of discordant thoughts in Gretchen Reid’s head as she walked to her plain brown wrapper government Ford sedan. She had been on the phone with Timothy Darden in Portland about a couple of unusual blips that had come up on the wire. That was the reason she and Harry were working late in the first place.

Both incidents were in the region: one in Portland’s Pearl district, a bar fire; the other way out in the sticks somewhere. But that was a fire as well, and both sites were looking like arson with unknown chemical accelerants. And anytime there were ways to link events together, she indulged herself for a while, working like mad to try to prove herself wrong. In the end, if she couldn’t do that, she knew she was on to something.

And she was on to something here. It was more than Detective Vukovic’s exhausted voice over the phone. It was more than what he had told her—that the dad was just about homicidal himself. All of that was possibly understandable, if all was as it seemed. But she had a feeling—a gut reaction—there was something different about this one. She had to find out, dig deeper, see the root cause with her own eyes.

CHAPTER XIII

Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho—Present Day

“LOOKS LIKE KIM’S OUT cold,” I said.

Michael looked over his shoulder. “No kidding,” he replied. “Maybe you should get her a drool cup.” He smiled wickedly in the dark.

I rolled my eyes. “That’s my Kim.”

“You think she’ll ever forgive me?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Yeah. In time. But she’ll fight it, make you think she’s still mad at you. Just how she is.”

“Good to know.” He paused. “What about you?” He cringed as he asked.

“Huh. Michael, my forgiveness for you was total before I … before I drowned in the water.”

“What?” He looked genuinely surprised.

“It wasn’t hard to do. I was just looking up at you and saw you for who you are. It’s never hard when you can see things—see people—for who they actually are.” I touched his shoulder. “You’re … I mean …” I was stumbling for words. “You’re amazing, but I’m a girl, and sometimes what I really believe and what I feel may not be the same. I know. It sounds crazy even to me, but it is what it is.”

Michael nodded as if he understood what I was saying. “About all this, the fight, the killing, and you … I want to fix it, to make it better.”

I wasn’t sure about any of that. Part of him honestly repulsed me when he acted like that. It was like when he just kept apologizing over and over. I just wanted him to get over it. “All right, dude,” I said, trying to change the mood a little bit. “Tell me something.”

“Uh-oh.”

“When did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That I was different; one of the—what do you call them?”

“Them? The Immortals.” He paused for a moment, eyes on the spray of light made by the headlights as we drove along the twisty two-lane road. “I was suspicious when you fainted at football practice. On our date, I put it together. The kidnapping, too, pretty much gave you away.” He smiled.

I kept on. “And when did you decide to not kill me? To betray your father?”

Michael sighed. “I thought I would be able to clear my head when I left. You know, when I disappeared?”

“When Kreios let you go, you mean?”

“Sure. Stanley was furious, though. He got me to tell him where you were. But when he left to go after you, I knew that I couldn’t allow him to do what he wanted to do anymore. I had to resist him. On some level, I knew that it would require force. I knew that there would be consequences. I just never knew how deep it would go.”

It was hard to hear him talk about it, but I needed to process. “Well, I’m … I’m sorry you had to kill him.”

“He was dead already, really.” Michael’s eyes were narrow, piercing the darkness as it came at us over the hood, smacking the windshield, rushing around the doors and swirling into and through the wheels as we sped on through it. “The Bloodstone took over his mind. It will eat you from the inside out. It’s just too much. Too much power.”

I reached out and found his hand. He interlaced his fingers with mine and everything felt right again. I could feel my pulse quicken with his heartbeat through his hand, as if we had the same heart.

I thought about asking how many people he had killed before me. But I didn’t. I wasn’t ready for what he might say, I decided. I didn’t know if I would ever be ready to hear that. “This is all so much. I don’t understand even what I am. I mean, I have pieces of the puzzle. But so much is dark. Hidden somewhere. I don’t know where to look.”