Touching Fire (Touch Saga) (21 page)

I stopped and turned. “Where then?”

They were in the library. Ashton, Celia and
a small, round-faced girl. She sat in Ashton’s lap, munching happily on a cookie. I hadn’t seen Lally since the day I arrived at the castle and even then, it had been brief. I took a moment to really study my new half-sister.

She was
a perfect combination of Ashton’s dark hair and Celia’s poetic features. She had her mother’s tawny eyes and nails sharpened to little spikes. When she opened her mouth to chomp on a cookie, her teeth were pointy as well. She was cute the way toddlers were supposed to be … until those golden eyes rose up and met mine. They narrowed and she bared her little fangs at me.

Yikes.

“Fallon.” Celia smiled at me. “How did you sleep?”

“I didn’t.” I stepped deeper into the room, trying very hard not to
clash gazes with Lally again. “I had a lot on my mind.”

Celia nodded. “Your father told me you two talked. You must have a lot of questions.”

“I guess.” I sat on the sofa opposite the happy family. They looked like something from a holiday postcard, all happy and charming. I felt so alone and out of place. “You really like the library, huh?” I said, turning my attention to the room.

Ashton chuckled. “You
seem the most at ease here.”

“We thought it would be nice for the four of us to have breakfast together … as a family
,” Celia added.

I wanted to grimace, thoroughly ashamed of myself and my
earlier thoughts.

“I don’t eat,” I said instead.
“But thank you. The company’s nice.”

Ashton’s head tipped to the side with curiosity.
“At all, or not at this moment?”

I glanced at the platter of cakes, fruit and cheese and shrugged. “I used to eat
food.”

“What do you eat now?”
Celia wondered.

Rather than answer, I looked to Ashton. “What do you eat?”

He looked surprised by the question, but answered, “Normal food.” As though to prove it, he reached around Lally and took up a grape. He popped it into his mouth and chewed.

It was my turn to be surprised. “That’s it? You don’t need anything else?”

He shrugged. “Well, mortal energy. That’s what keeps this place running and fuels our powers, but we can go weeks without so long as we have food.”

I contemplated the wisdom of
revealing my thirst for blood. I had been so certain that Ashton would have the same needs that I hadn’t considered an alternative. Garrison had said the desire had always been in me, but how was that possible when Ashton didn’t crave the same? It certainly hadn’t been from my mom. Mom was human.

“I, uh…” I cleared my throat. “I drink blood.”

I looked from Ashton to Celia, waiting for some kind of reaction, a flicker of something to help determine just how worried I should be.

“
Oh!” Celia gasped. She had gone very wide-eyed, like I’d just confessed to being part alien. “Acheron?”

He stared at me
, his eyes glittering with something I didn’t know how to decipher. “That
is
interesting.”

“It is? Why?” I frowned
warily. “How?”

“Well…” he gave a short chuckle. “It makes sense doesn’t it? I mean, now that you’ve seen what fledglings are. It would make sense for you to share their hunger for … flesh.”

I blinked, having not expected that explanation. “I’m a … what?”

“Not entirely,
of course,” Ashton said hastily.

“Fledgling,” I repeated. “That’s those things we met in front of the coffee shop, right? The ones that were trying to drag Isaiah into the ground.”

Ashton nodded. “They were doing a little more than that, but yes.”

“Fledglings live on mortal flesh
and blood,” Celia explained. “They dig holes underground and take their victims there to … well, eat.”

My stomach roiled at the thought of Isaiah being their next meal.
“And I’m one of those things?”

“No! Of course not,” Celia said at once.

“But it does explain your need for blood,” Ashton chimed.

It did. Garrison had said that it was hardcoded into my DNA, something he couldn’t remove, something I was born with. If I should have been born a fledgling, it did make sense that I would crave blood.
Had he not twisted that need and had not pointed it directly at Isaiah, I would probably be able to drink from anyone. But as it were, it was only Isaiah’s blood I needed.

Then, like any good ADD brain, I thought of something else
.

“You said yesterday that you thought my Rem was coming out, but it was wrong. What did you mean?”

Ashton’s eyes narrowed in deliberation. “You’ve seen me in my Rem form, correct?”

I thought of the afternoon at the park
and how he’d transformed into something vicious and inhuman, and nodded.

“What I saw happen to you wasn’t the same,” he went on. “The characteristics were there, the dark eyes, the fangs and claws, but yours
was…” he trailed off, looked to Celia for answers. But she was also watching him, waiting. So he turned back to me. “Different,” he said finally.

“Different?” I mimicked. “How?”

He shook his head. “I really don’t know how to explain it.” He paused a moment while he gathered the proper words. “We,” he said slowly. “When we turn, only turn partially Rem. When you turn, you are half, if not fully Rem.”

“What does that mean?” I demanded. “What
is a Rem?”

“Rem is what we are underneath
this.
” He pressed a palm to his chest. “It’s our true form. I didn’t think you would have any Rem since your human skin is a dominant thing. I worried about that when you were being born. I wondered if you would come out with claws and black eyes. In our world, that isn’t unusual, but in the human world…”

“So…” I eyed his face warily. “That’s not what you really look like?”

“Actually, it’s not what you—”

“Acheron,
enough” Celia warned him, her tone leaving no room for argument. “You know how I feel about that … talk!”

“Wait,” I argued. “But I need to know—”

“No.” Celia fixed me with those tawny eyes. “I won’t have Lally hearing this nonsense.”

In Ashton’s lap, Lally reached for another cookie off the platter. She plucked one up and chomped on it like she was envisioning my head.

“But…”

Ashton put up a hand. “It’s fine. We’ll discuss
that
at another time.”

I wanted to argue.
They couldn’t just drop this stuff into my lap and then not explain it. But Celia was determined and Ashton didn’t look like he was ready to go against her. So I reluctantly let it go.

“What were
those fledgling things doing at the park?” I asked instead.

“Like the
sluaghs, they were probably drawn to the power surge I was causing,” Ashton said with the smallest grimace.

“So those things are born from humans?” I ventured, not really seeing how that was possible.

“That’s the result of us mating with humans,” Ashton corrected. “Had I not found Terrell, you would have been one of those creatures right now.”

I shuddered. “I almost want to say thank you.”

Ashton smiled briefly. “Terrell was supposed to make you as human as possible.”

“
I guess he failed,” I said. “I mean look at me. I’m not human. I’m not a mutant. I’m not Rem. I have no idea what I am.”

“
You are my daughter, Fallon.” The gentleness in his tone made me look at him.

“
Is that why you went to Garrison hoping to remove pieces of you from my DNA?” It was a little snider than was necessary.

“The only reason I turned to Terrell in the first place was because we wanted you—your mother and I
, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her why I was unable to have children with her.” He shook his head, shame twisting his features as though he were in pain. “I was too afraid of losing her. I would have done anything to give her … give us, the family we wanted.” Ashton raised his head, eyes pleading. “Do you hate me for wanting you not to be a flesh eating monster? Was it so wrong to want you to be … normal?”

My laugh came out forced and humorless. “Good job.”

“But you are a miracle, Fallon,” he said. “You have no idea how important you are and how long I have waited for this moment.”

Celia shot him a sharp, warning glance that he didn’t seem to notice.
He was too focused on me.

“Your existence will be the key to changing both our worlds,” He was on the edge of his seat now. Lally was practically clinging to him to keep from sliding off his lap. “You are the beginning of everything.”

It was so close to what Garrison had told me, I shuddered.

“I don’t want to be the beginning of anything,” I murmured. “I just want to be normal.”

Ashton sat back. “But you’re not normal and you never will be.”

“But that’s what I want!” I cried.

“But you can’t, Fallon,” he argued. “You are Rem. You are the daughter of a sin. That blood—my blood—will always be inside you. There is nothing in that world for you. You belong here, in Luxuria, with your people.”

“What about Isaiah?” I looked from him to Celia. “You said he couldn’t live here. That he didn’t belong.”

“He doesn’t,” Ashton said simply. “Isaiah is human and belongs with his own kind.”

“But you helped make him!” I exclaimed. “
Do you have any idea what Garrison did to Isaiah? The kind of torture he put Isaiah through? And then you, you just swooped in and used him all over again.”

Ashton sighed heavily. “I care for the boy,” he said.
“He’s done a wonderful job keeping you safe, but it’s time you took your rightful place.”

I shook my head. “What’s my rightful place?”

“Being here with your family,” Celia answered for him.

They didn’t understand and I wasn’t about to get into a fight over it. They would never accept Isaiah, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get my other questions answered.

“What do you know about Amalie?”

The crease in
Ashton’s brows said it all. “Who?”

“Garrison’s daughter.”

His eyes widened. “I haven’t heard that name in years. Terrell never spoke of her.”

“Never?”

Ashton shrugged. “I heard stories here and there about how she … passed—”

“She killed herself to get away from him.”

“How do you know?” Celia asked, looking more curious about that than what I just told them.

“I just
do.”

With the help of Amalie’s diary. But that was a secret I wasn’t ready to share with anyone. I’d had the diary in my
possession for over a month, buried at the bottom of my duffle, too afraid to open it. Part of me was hoping Amalie would return in my dreams as she had every night for nearly a year, but since recovering the diary, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her.

Ashton
set Lally down on the sofa and rose to his feet. He crossed to the fireplace to stare at the empty grate. “He never said…”

“Did you ever see a picture of her?”

He turned to me. “The only thing I know of her was that she was young when she died.”

So, he didn’t know. He didn’t know that Garrison had used his own daughter’s DNA to create me, to make me a mirror image of her in a twisted need to immortalize her to the world. The Amalie
Project would mark the end of man … and me.

“Did he ever mention the Amalie Project?” I asked the question without ever looking away from him.

He seemed to be a million miles away. “I can’t say I have. What is it?”

I shook my head. “Just something Garrison mentioned.”

“None of this matters you know,” chirped a soft, girly voice. “You’re going to die anyway.”

We all looked at the pipsqueak
on the sofa. She seemed content with her cookie, like she hadn’t spoken.

“Lally, that is not nice,” Celia reprimanded sharply. “Apologize.”

Those feline eyes met mine. “You told me to always tell the truth, Mommy. She
is
going to go die.”

“Lally!”
Celia’s wide, horrified eyes swung to me. “Pay her no mind, Fallon. I am terribly sorry.”

I didn’t want an apology.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Lally likes to
tease,” Ashton said like that answered my question.

“
I’m not teasing,” Lally said evenly. “I can see things. Mommy says I have a gift and I see you dying … horribly.”

“That is enough.” Celia shot to her feet. “You are being inexcusably rude, young lady. I think it is time for your nap.”