The Evensong (29 page)

“Hey,” he smiled at me. He was in a much better mood, and he held a bag from the Swamp Market in his hand. He put it on the table before coming to the couch where I still sat. “All quiet on the front?”

“Yeah,” I said vaguely. He went back to the kitchen to unload his bag, and I followed slowly. I sat down at the table while he put things in the fridge. “Do some shopping?”

“Just for the necessities,” he replied.

“Ah. No sign of Omar?”

He stiffened a little, but quickly shook it off. “No, no sign of him. Which is good and bad.”

I nodded, looking at him from across the room for more similarities between him and Nerio. He was definitely much fairer than him, and shorter. Nerio had to be a good foot taller than him, if not more, and Linden was a head taller than me. I was dwarfed compared to both of them.

“Do you have a brother?” I asked, deciding to be blunt like him.

He didn’t seem to think this question was strange and went on with his groceries. “Nope, I’ve always been a lonely kid.”

“Oh.” I hated to ruin his mood. “Well, apparently your brother was here a while ago. Nerio?”

A glass jar of pickles dropped from his hand and shattered across the floor. He looked at me sharply, and I shrunk down into the chair at the intense anger in his eyes.

“Nerio?” he repeated. I nodded mutely. He started cursing, staring at the ceiling as he put his hands behind his head. His shoes crunched over the broken glass, and I stood to clean it up. The second I was there to help, the jar was suddenly intact again and there was no mess on the floor.

“What did he want?” Linden asked, rounding on me.

“He—he just said he was passing through,” I stuttered. “He didn’t say what he wanted though. He was looking for you.”

“Great,” Linden mumbled, going towards the window. He stooped to look out at the trees, scanning the landscape. I tried to tell him Nerio had gone down the road, but he interrupted when he said he was going outside.

“I’ll be right back, don’t move,” he said, pinning me with his gaze before he went out the door. I watched him from the kitchen as he jogged towards the trees and disappeared within a few strides.

I sighed angrily. What was going on?

INSTINCT

“I have no idea what’s happening . . . I wish I could tell you. One second he’s an only child, the next some guy shows up saying he’s his brother.” I glanced towards the bedroom door as I paused. Linden was in the shower, so I hoped he couldn’t hear me whispering into the phone.

“That is a little weird,” Alysana replied. “Did you ask him about the whole brother thing?”

“Yeah. He said they’re not
really
brothers, but it was an Elemental thing.”

“Huh. I’d be demanding more answers if I were you.”

I sighed as I lay back on the bed. “I know, but I just don’t want to bombard him. He doesn’t drill me when he can tell I don’t want to talk, so I try to return the favor.”

“You’re more noble than me,” she laughed. “I wouldn’t stop talking till he answered everything I wanted to know.”

“Yeah well . . . give it time. Now tell me something that’s not so confusing. How’re you and Aidan?”

“Ha, not confusing. If I forget about my paranoia for a second, I think it’s going well. He’s already been talking about plans for school and stuff.” Her tone was already lifting, like she couldn’t wait to talk about this.

“So does that mean you’ll be officially moving in with him or something?” I asked.

“Don’t jinx it! I have no idea,” she laughed.

I would have gone on to ask her more, but I heard the bathroom door open at the end of the hall. “I have to go. Linden’s out of the shower and he said he wanted to talk about some stuff.”

Alysana paused, and when she spoke again her voice took on a worried tone. “Okay—um, call me afterwards, okay?”

“If it’s not too late I will. Bye,” I said hurriedly, and dropped the phone back to the floor. I rolled over onto my stomach and propped myself up on my elbows as Linden sauntered in. He looked tired again, like he’d been thinking too much.

“Feel any better?” I asked.

“A little. Not much is going to do for a headache though,” he replied, sitting next to me.

“Advil?”

“Doesn’t really work for me.”

“Kisses?”

He smiled, but I caught the sadness behind it. “Yeah, maybe a little.”

I sat up then, sitting right against him. “Okay, so you said you wanted to talk. You’re making me feel like it could be bad.”

“It’s not really bad,” he replied. “But I know you’re not going to like it.”

“You’re being ominous,” I pointed out, watching him from behind his wet hair.

“Sorry,” he said, looking at me apologetically. “I’ll just get to it then. I did talk to Nerio earlier.

“As you said.” He had briefly explained that he smoothed things over with Nerio before. According to him, Nerio was pushy and phone calls weren’t enough. He was on his way up the coast anyway, so he wanted to see Linden in person to get him to go to this reunion.

“Right,” he said. He was quiet for a long time, and for the first time since I’d known him, I thought he was actually stalling. “He relayed to me what Rhys and some of the others have been saying and I—I really need to go back to that reunion. Turns out I really can’t skip it.”

I knew what this meant. It made perfect sense in my head, but I didn’t want to come to terms with it yet. “Where is it?”

“They’re going to one of Rhys’ homes in Rhode Island. It’ll only be for a few days, so I think you’ll be okay. And Alysana promised she and Aidan would keep an eye out for anything weird.”

I frowned at him. “Alysana?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I know you don’t want to go with Aidan, so back at the house seems like the best bet.”

My stomach instantly tightened into knots as I shot to my feet. “You want me to go back to the house?”

“It’s the safest place for you while I’m gone. And if you need to leave there’s always—”

“Why can’t I just go with you?” I asked, my voice breaking.
Damn it, hold it together.

“Riley, I can’t . . . I want to but it’s like your coming of age thing. I couldn’t go to that, and this is generally the same,” he explained softly.

“Okay, but—” Examples of places to stay were going through my head, but I couldn’t voice them. Hotels, whatever house they were staying in, his car; I could just walk around all day while they did their thing,
anything
to just stay with him.

This weak attempt at convincing him wasn’t going well at all. I was looking at my hands for some kind of inspiration, as well as trying to hide my absolute misery.

“I guess you couldn’t ignore your instincts for long, right?” I managed to choke out. I whirled around towards the door, hurrying out into the dark hall. It wasn’t that I was mad at him; a little, but I was mostly just sad at the idea of him leaving. He hadn’t said how long he would be gone.

I found myself in the living room where it was darkest. Sitting on the couch, I leaned my head back and sniffled, my fingernails digging into my palms. I wanted to pin some blame on someone.
Nerio.
Would Linden have decided to go if Nerio hadn’t personally come by? Maybe, maybe not, but either way I hated him for it.

Going ‘home’ meant having to be around Rene and everyone else in that house. What happened if Omar decided to come back? He wasn’t a stranger in that house, they wouldn’t lock him out. I trusted that Alysana would do her best to keep a watchful eye, but she could only do so much.

His footsteps were on the stairs within a few minutes. I stayed put, still on the couch and watching the distant lightning bugs in the trees.

“So you heard that conversation,” he said quietly, standing behind the couch. I didn’t reply as I pulled my feet onto the couch, holding my knees. “It is instinct. To keep moving. Settling in one place for a long time isn’t an undine’s usual behavior.” He carefully lowered himself next to me. “But who said I was a normal undine?”

I didn’t say anything, and kept my eyes off him. I was being stubborn, but he could have sprung this on me differently. I don’t know how different, but less painful?

“I don’t want to leave,” he whispered close to me. “I don’t want to leave you here.”

The note of regret in his voice made my throat hitch, but I still didn’t look at him. “When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow, and only for a few days. I’ll drive back the second we’re through.”

A few days. That wasn’t good enough for me; I wanted precise numbers so I could count down the time until I could see him again.

“I would take you with me if I could,” he went on. “But you met Nerio . . . he didn’t exactly respond to you all that well, did he? Some of them that will be there are worse than that when it comes to people like you.”

“I thought it was the other way around.”

“Usually. They’ve had some experiences that didn’t exactly leave them with good impressions.”

And here I thought my kind were the only ones biased. If Elementals could be just as hateful towards witches, I didn’t think I had a chance in the world.

“You’ll be fine while I’m gone,” Linden said, scooting closer and pressing up against me. “I mean, you better be. I can’t be driving around worrying.”

He rested his chin on my shoulder, and I reached up to touch his cheek. It was cool against my palm, and he raised his hand and pressed mine against him. His free arm wound around my waist and held me to him.

“You’re not leaving . . . for good?” I asked, voicing my worst fear.

“Are you kidding?” he asked, looking at me.

I finally met his eyes. “No. Are you?”

He just stared at me for a minute, eyes sweeping over my face in search of any kind of joke. When he didn’t find it, he slammed his lips against mine, our noses bumping so hard it sort of hurt. I couldn’t breathe until he pulled away.

“
No.
I’m coming back here, I swear. I can’t just drop you like that, even if I wanted to,” he said.

Even through his conviction, I worried. Instinct could be a hard thing to ignore, and he’d lived with that instinct longer than he’d known me. Who would win over that internal battle?

He kept on kissing me after that, long, full kisses that had that spark igniting in my stomach over and over again. Like he had asked me once, I wondered if this was some sort of good bye; a permanent one. Would he lie to me? In this instance, I believed he would to keep me from begging him not to go. But as he moaned into his kisses, I mentally slapped myself for disbelief. He had never done anything to make me distrust him.

I’d fallen back onto the couch as Linden’s hands slipped under my shirt. I gasped at the coolness of his hands over my stomach and ribs, wanting more the instant he stopped to lift me back into a seated position.

“You’ve got to believe me, okay?” he mumbled, holding my face in his hands.

“I do,” I said, a slight lie. “I just . . . it will just feel like a long time without you.”

“I’ll do the drive in a day, probably be there for two or three, then I’ll be back. You won’t notice the time.”

I laughed slightly. “Yeah I will.”

“I’ll keep tabs on you then, call you when I can. It’ll be easy.”

Maybe easy for you.
“Okay.”

He took me back upstairs and insisted on sleep. We both needed it, and even though I knew I wouldn’t get any, he was more exhausted than he let on. So I let him fall asleep curled around me while my mind was in a constant storm, dreading the second the gray morning light seeped through the thin curtains.

I dozed shortly after dawn, and I didn’t even feel Linden get up. He let me sleep as he got ready, and I finally opened my eyes when he was taking his bag downstairs. I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes, knowing I had to do the same.

I didn’t have a lot to pack. After I dressed, I brushed my teeth and wrenched my hair up into a lame bun. There was a constant feeling of anxiety in my chest, and my heart had a spasm whenever Linden walked by with something else he’d forgotten to pack. When my backpack was finally full, I trudged down the stairs where he was waiting with his bag already in the car.

“Got everything?” he asked as I walked onto the porch.

“Yeah,” I said, holding up my backpack. He took it for me and tossed it into the back, going back to the porch to lock the front door.

“Hopefully no one thinks there’s anything valuable in there,” he said when he came back. I smiled slightly and sat down in the passenger seat.

The drive was virtually silent as we thumped over the rugged road. His rain had paved new ruts into it and potholes were still somewhat full of water. The morning seemed too quiet to be going up the driveway to my home where I could see a few people in the kitchen. I looked away.

“Does Rene know I’m coming back?” I asked quietly when he pulled to a stop.

“Alysana said she would tell her,” he replied, killing the engine. I still couldn’t believe they’d planned this sort of thing together. After Aly’s long dislike of him, now they were working behind my back.