The Secret (4 page)

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m whole.”

A wound doesn’t heal just because it stops bleeding.

They were both still wounded, but her love had stopped the bleeding. Malachi knew everything else would come in time.

HE walked next to her in the forest, the trees towering over them and the moon high and full. He could hear the birds. Feel the grass beneath bare feet.

She walked with the dark angel at her side, but he could not hear them. As much as he strained, no voices reached his ears. It was as if the dark one had wrapped Malachi’s mate in a fog, shielding her from him. From the forest around them. From the night.

From everything.

For a heartbeat, his grey eyes met the golden gaze of the Fallen, and a whisper came to his mind.

Thousands of you, Scribe. One of her.

The warrior scanned the forest with newly woken senses. No longer did he reach for his mate wrapped in the fog; he reached outward.

Darkness surrounded them. And though the light from the full moon shone overhead, it did not illuminate the forest, save for the path they walked. A heavy presence pressed against his skin, and at once he perceived the truth.

Do not fear the darkness.

The dark angel was shielding his mate as she dreamed. Hiding her.

But from what?

MALACHI woke when her lips met his. The black night was a cloak around them as she moved over him, covering his body with her own. His magic reached for her but only brushed against the cool of her skin. Whatever barriers fell in the nighttime, she still held her soul back. His
talesm
glowed in the cocoon of their bedclothes, lighting their skin as they moved together.

She was silent as they made love. Their bodies spoke for them.

Kiss me. Hold me. Mend me.
 

Make me whole.

He felt his soul reach out, straining for hers. Ava sighed as he entered her. His breath became hers.
 

Again.
 

More.

Again.

Tighter. Higher. Faster.

When they came, it was together; he felt her pleasure as his own.

She held him over her, her arm wrapped around his neck so their cheeks pressed together. He panted into her neck.

“Ava, let me—”

“No,” she whispered. “Stay. Just like this. Need you. Need this.”

“Too heavy.”

“No.” He was still buried in her. She wrapped her legs around his hips and held him tighter. “Stay. I need to feel you.”

He said nothing more. Only held her. Kissed her. Over and over. Soft lips brushing her cheeks. Her lips. Her eyelids. Her neck.

“I’m here,” he murmured.

“Not a dream.” Her voice had become frantic again.

“It’s not a dream. I’m here.”

“Okay.”

“Ava.”

“Hmm?”

He pulled away just far enough that their eyes could meet. “Let me in,
reshon
.”

Her eyes darted to the moon shining high through the narrow window of their bedroom. “What are you talking about?”

He looked at her for a moment, then he reached up, bracing his arm at her side so that his other hand was free to trail up her body.

Over the curve of her hip. The dip of her waist. The rise of her breast.

His finger settled over her heart and he wrote there, scribing the ancient words she had used to call him back. Dips and swirls of angelic runes over her skin. The incantation glowed gold under his hand.

Vashama canem.

“Malachi?”

Come back to me,
reshon
.

HOURS later, Ava still wouldn’t rest. He wondered if she was afraid to dream.
 

Malachi only dreamed of her.
 

He could see the dawn begin to break. Birds sang in the small garden below them.

“I need to find out who I am,” she said, her voice barely audible in the quiet room.

“What do you mean?”

The first crackle of the muezzin’s call to prayer echoed through the air as Malachi rolled to his side and traced a hand over her shoulder, letting his magic flow over her. Her skin flushed gold as her mating marks came alive. She shivered at the contact.

“Stop,” she said. “Don’t distract me.”

He smiled. “But I’m so good at it.”

She turned toward him, capturing his hand between her own. She laid them beneath her cheek, and he was content.

“I need to find out who I am,” she said again. “
What
I am.”

Jaron. Hiding her in dreams. The Fallen protecting her from… something.

Do not fear the darkness.

“You want to find your father.”

“Yes.”

Chapter Two

“I’M BEING STRAIGHT with you, Ava. Your dad—”

“When are you ever straight with me, Luis?” Ava paced in the living room.
 

Her coffee sat cold on the end table, and Malachi read the newspaper silently in the corner, keeping one eye on her and the other on the subtitles at the bottom of the television screen. The paper he was reading was Arabic. The news was in French.
 

She’d once thought herself fairly adept at languages. She had nothing on an Irin scribe.

“Do I need to remind you that I don’t work for you?” Luis was starting to get pissy. “I work for your father. And his interests—”

“Are your only interests. I get it. I’m not asking for much. I just want to know where he is because I need to ask him a question.”

“Is it something I can help you with?”

She clenched her fist so hard her fingernails dug into her palm. “Is there a reason why you’re blocking me from him?”

“I’m not blocking you. Who said I was blocking you? Don’t you have his mobile number?”

“He’s not answering it.”

“What about e-mail?”

“Not answering those, either.”

Luis was silent. Her father’s manager wasn’t usually this big an asshole. He
was
an ass—he worked in the music industry, after all—but it wasn’t usually this bad. Which meant something was going on with her dad.

She still had a hard time thinking of Jasper that way, but when she learned the news as a teenager, she hadn’t been all that shocked, either. He’d been a part of her life since she was a kid. She just didn’t realize he was her father. Jasper and her mother had remained close, despite their past relationship. In fact, Ava had always suspected that Jasper still held a torch for Lena. She was one of the few constants in his life.

The other was Luis.

“Luis…” She rubbed her eyes. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing is going on. Your dad is in the middle of a tour, and you know how stressed he gets about that.”

“Bullshit. He loves performing. The bigger the venue, the better.”

“It’s tiring, Ava. I imagine he’s exhausted.”

“You imagine
nothing
with him,” she bit out, her patience at an end. “You are in his business every single day. That’s why you have very nice houses in LA
and
Maui. So you know where he is. You know why he’s avoiding me. And you know what he’s been doing.”

Luis said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Ava had paced over close to Malachi, and he put out a hand, absently hooking a finger in her waistband and running his thumb across her skin. The small contact soothed her, and she took a deep breath.

“Ava—”

“Is he using again, Luis?”

“You know he—”

“Dumb question. He’s always using. Is he
crashing
?”

Luis was silent again. Ava took another deep breath and sat down on the couch. Malachi reached out and took her hand. She clutched it and could think again.

“Okay, I’m taking that silence as a yes. Where is he?”

“I can’t tell you that, honey.”

Luis only called her honey when he’d taken off his manager hat. Just like her and Jasper, she and Luis were still figuring out the boundaries of their relationship. He was her father’s right hand, but according to Lena, Luis had been the one to discourage Jasper from having a relationship with Ava when she was a child. For her sake or for Jasper’s? It could be argued either way.

The man had no life outside her father’s career. And Jasper would say he’d be useless without Luis herding him. He respected Ava. Respected her role in Jasper’s life. But her father was still the man’s first priority, and nothing she said would budge that.

“Has he hurt anyone?” Her voice was rough. She wished she didn’t care so much, but she did. She’d always loved him. Even before she knew he was her dad. It was like her mother always said—
There was just something about Jasper.

“Has he hurt himself?”

“No. Nothing like that. Just… a little worse than normal. He’ll be fine.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Not the best thing right now, Ava.”

“It’s important. It’s about…” She racked her brain. “It’s a health thing. I have some questions about family stuff on that side.”

Luis paused. “He’s not going to be able to give you much. You know that, Ava. Besides, your father’s healthy as a horse.”

“Other than the drugs?”

“Despite them.” Luis’s voice dropped. “Listen, I don’t know what deal he made with what devil, but the man has never been sick a day in his life, other than the shit he ingests himself. I’ve seen guys do… a
tenth
of the shit he’s done and ruin their bodies. What’s going on with your health? Lena said you were staying in Turkey with friends the last time I talked to her. Are you sick?”

Malachi must have heard the question. She kept forgetting that his
talesm
gave him enhanced senses when he activated them. No doubt he’d been listening the whole time.
 

He frowned and shook his head.

Luis hadn’t earned their trust.

Ava decided to go with attitude because being reasonable wasn’t working. “Like I’m going to tell you what’s going on with my health when you’re not even willing to tell me where my own father is.”

“Don’t be like this, Ava. If he hears that you’re sick—”

“He’ll be pissed. We both know it. So why are you keeping me from him?”

More silence.

“He’s going to hear one way or another, Luis. And I don’t think you want to be the one standing between him and his only kid. Do I need to call my mom?”

It was her one trump card, and Luis still wasn’t budging.

“Yeah, why don’t you have Lena call me, Ava?” His voice was frosty. “She’s not an immature little girl throwing a tantrum. Your mother knows what Jasper’s limits are.”

“His limits?”

“I’m done with this conversation. I’ll call you next week.”

Ava hung up her phone when Luis’s end went silent and resisted throwing it against the opposite wall.

“So,” Malachi said, “that went well.”

“Asshole.”

He raised a single eyebrow. “Is he always like that? I do not like the way he talks to you, and I’d be more than happy to make that clear.”

“Luis?” She huffed out a breath. “He’s usually pretty cool. But he’s in protective mode right now, which tells me my dad is holed up, trying to see just how many drugs he can ingest without killing himself.”

Malachi folded up the paper and pressed his lips to her knuckles. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s the way he is. The way he’s always been.”

“But you don’t know where he is?”

“No.”

“Where was he last seen?”

Ava turned on her phone and pulled up the app she used to keep track of her father. The mobile application was fan-created and borderline creepy, but it had become a convenient way to keep track of Jasper and his schedule. “He had that concert in Vienna on the twentieth of last month. Then another in… Budapest. Then it looks like he went under.” She scrolled back up the page and mentally counted down. Four weeks. Six…

“Yeah,” she finally said. “He was due.”

“Due?”

“It’s just the way he is. Every eight weeks or so, when he’s touring, he’ll crash. Luis works it into his schedule. His next show isn’t for three weeks.”

“He takes a three-week vacation to get high?”

“Among other things. It’s better when he’s recording. Seems to work some of the energy out for him to be creative. I can relate,” she muttered. “I was kind of the same way before we met. Not with the drugs, but…” She shook her head. “He’ll be fine for a while. Using but functioning. Then every now and then he’ll go off and get really wasted. It varies how bad it is.”

“How bad does this seem?”

“If he’s not answering my calls or e-mails? Pretty bad.”

“Drugs?”

“Drugs. Vodka. Lots and lots of women.”