Watercolour Smile (17 page)

“Why Maple Falls?” Tariq asked with a cringe. I tried not to cringe alongside him, not liking the fact that we were talking about Weston’s sexual exploits.

“Hollow Ground College is one of the only Zevg
hé
ri-run schools in the world. Zev families travel from all over to send their kids there. It’s good, because they give a lot of leeway to those of us who need to disappear at short notice for Zev business, and the security is tight. They have so many Klovoda rats filling up the walls of that place, it’s basically the safest place in the country—for a Zev, anyway.”

“Why?” Tariq asked. “Wouldn’t the Klovoda’s… er, rats, have better places to be?”

“Our people have a lot of money. Think about it like this: the Zevghéri people populate the largest, most influential societal sect in all of the western hemisphere. You’ll find Zevs around the rest of the world, too, but they don’t have as much traction within modern society as we do here. We like to work in the shadows, so we don’t have many positions in the spotlight, but consider that we
own
those pedestals; it doesn’t matter, in that case, who takes the title. If they stand on our pedestal, we own them, too.”

Tariq’s mouth had dropped open, and I was trying hard not to imitate his expression. The Zevghéri were
that
powerful?

Weston
was that powerful?

“I don’t think I understand…” Tariq hesitated.

“You understand.” Quillan sighed, seemingly taking control of the discussion by setting a hand on Cabe’s shoulder. “You just find it unbelievable. But Cabe’s right; the Zevghéri people are powerful, and their influence has no limit. There aren’t many Zevghéri senators, CFOs, or army generals out there, but there are plenty of copy-editors, desk-pushers, and front-line soldiers. That’s what we do. We blend, invisible, while the Klovoda control those senators and business-owners and generals that we’re supposedly working beneath. We are a very secretive people, and we seem to have been born with a natural sense of paranoia—which, when mixed with as much money as our people have, breeds overcompensation. That’s why we took Seph to that school: it’s padded with so much overcompensation I’m surprised the walls aren’t bulletproof. Maybe they are—I should find out.”

“Alright.” Tariq nodded, quicker than I would have expected. “I’ll get used to it, I guess.”

“You didn’t want to think about it?” I tugged on my hands and Noah released me. I approached Tariq and reached up to grasp his shoulder. “I don’t think it’s safe here anymore, but I can’t guarantee that the messenger won’t come after me again, and I don’t know that he’ll leave you out of things if you come to live with us. I’m not trying to persuade you not to come. I want you with me, especially now, but I want you be sure…”

“It’s been really lonely here without you. You’re the only family I’ve ever had, Seph.”

I was divided. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was wary that Tariq had been keeping secrets from me, especially if what I suspected was true, and the person who had been trying to contact him was the messenger. I felt that I couldn’t leave him on his own anymore because I needed to keep a closer eye on him. Or at least have him close enough to me that I might be able to notice if he starts acting strange.
Not that he ever acted strange before
… I frowned, examining the earnest face of my baby brother. It didn’t seem possible that he had hidden that information away so easily, but he had told me himself.

What was I missing?

Tariq began to frown back, and I could tell that he was clueing into my thoughts, so I quickly pushed them aside. It wasn’t fair, that intuition he had. He had always seen right through me. It had never bothered me so much in the past, but that was before I realised how well he hid his own thoughts.

“Besides,” Silas spoke up for the first time, and we all turned to look at him. “The people who killed your father weren’t alone. Both of their phones were bugged and I traced the feed back to Northwest Spokane. I could only narrow the area down to a half-mile radius, but I found a cabin by the river. It was abandoned in a rush, by the looks of it. There were still torn edges of maps and photographs that had been stuck all over the walls, and the floorboards had been ripped up. There were bloody bandages in the trash, and an obscene amount of dried blood staining the floor. They had been listening-in the whole time that we were in the house. They know that Gerald has a daughter. I’ve been monitoring the cabin and Gerald’s house all week, and nobody has returned. I even checked the records of the nearby hospitals, but didn’t recognise any names. It’s making me nervous. I don’t know why they went dark, and I don’t know how they knew that I would find their hideout. We’re missing something here.”

He wandered off even as he still spoke, and I watched, surprised as he got into his car without a backward glance.

Quillan cleared his throat, looking rapidly from Silas’s car, to us. “Alright then. That settles it,” he said, already jogging after the car. “We’ll see you all back at the house!”

Quillan barely made it to the Jaguar before Silas pulled out of the lot, and I pressed my lips together tightly, hoping to hide my concerned frown. It should have warmed me that Quillan seemed to be toting some kind of brotherly instinct, but instead, it
warned
me.

I sighed, scuffing my shoes against the dirt. It seemed there was still much to learn about Silas. About all of them.

Noah led the way to the BMW, pulling me into the backseat beside him and leaving the front for Cabe and Tariq. I touched my shirt to make sure the blood had dried and then I leaned into Noah. He lifted his arm and pulled me into his side. The itching feeling was back, but subdued enough that it didn’t really bother me, so I tucked my hands into my lap and let my eyelids flutter closed. I drew in several deep breaths, finally allowing the tension to drain out of my limbs.

“How did Weston find us?” I asked.

“He’s aware of our movements at all times,” Noah answered. “When we left him, it wasn’t that he didn’t know where we were, he just wasn’t allowed to approach us. We threatened him with—”

“Things,” Cabe interrupted. “We threatened him with things.”

“Right,” Noah continued. “But those
things
clearly weren’t enough. He broke his promise today.”

“Why?”

“Because we followed you. I’m sure he’s been hearing rumours this whole time, but we didn’t really prove our relationship with you to be so suspicious until now. He would have known about the messenger’s pranks, since half the school knew about them, so he might have assumed—correctly—that we took you away to keep you safe. But following you back here? That’s different. That’s stalking.” He smirked.

I bit my tongue so that I wouldn’t laugh. 

“You were amazing today,” Cabe said suddenly, “you know that? How did you calm him down so quickly?”

I met Cabe’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and then diverted my attention to the door handle. “Truth or dare,” I murmured.

“Is that a question?” Noah’s mouth hooked into a smile. “Or you actually played truth or dare?”

“Well, that’s what we did the other time,” I managed as Cabe glanced in the rear-view mirror again. “It’s how I calmed him down last weekend so I assumed it would work again.”

“Crazy.” Noah laughed. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“Well it was also the valcrick, I guess. I mean, it was
much
harder to do last weekend without the valcrick.”

“I saw his face…” Noah mused. “Miro’s too… what exactly was the valcrick doing?”

“Want to see?” I jumped back in the seat, excited.

His brows inched up. “Okay…”

I grabbed his hands and closed my eyes, but a hand pulled at my shoulder.

“Hey!” Cabe was reaching around the seat with his eyes still fixed on the road. “None of that sparkly shit in the car, it’s too distracting.”

I leaned forward to rest my chin on his shoulder. “Lucifer…”

“Don’t give me that look,” he said firmly, glancing to the side and then re-focussing on the road.

“Lucifer.” I reached around the seat and set my hands on his shoulders, making my expression as miserable and pathetic as possible.

He glanced in the rear-view mirror and groaned. “Little ghost… don’t do that—” I released a tiny zap of valcrick into his shoulders and he jumped in his seat— “
Arrrghh
!” The car leaned a little to the left and he quickly righted it, laughing. “Noah, control her before she gets us all killed.”

Noah grabbed my wrists and pulled me back, tucking me into his side again. “You can show me when we get there,” he promised, a glint in his eye. “And then I’ll let you have your revenge on Cabe.”

Cabe drove to Gerard’s house and we all got out as Tariq disappeared inside to pack his stuff. I didn’t particularly want to set foot inside the house again, not after what had happened with Silas. Not after seeing my father dead in his bed, watching the television like he had just dozed off by accident. Not after having to remove all of the broken furniture and dust down the unused dining chairs, or having to box up the frames so blurred out by dust and grime that the faces in the photographs were trapped in the same dirty, shadowed existence as their living models. Especially not after having to remove his smoky, bloodstained mattress. Instead, I moved to the garage and retrieved the hidden key, unlocking the door and pulling it up. Everything was exactly how I remembered, which was a strange feeling since I hadn’t seen it in so long. I walked among the paints and jars, the lines of brushes and the racks of butcher’s paper and canvas. Quillan himself had donated most of the art supplies; he had fostered my talent right from his first day teaching at my old school, giving me everything and anything that I ever needed, mostly before I even asked for it.

Noah and Cabe poked around just as I did, pulling out half-finished paintings and retreating outside to see them better in the sunlight that was gradually chasing away the rain. I cleared off a space on the workbench and jumped up onto it, crooking my finger at Noah. His smile twisted instantly and he dropped the roll of canvas he had been looking at, coming to stand before me. Cabe also abandoned what he had been doing and moved beside me, resting his hip against the bench and folding his arms. I held out my hands and Noah touched his palms to mine, his fingers curling gently over my wrists. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, focussing on the familiar smell of acrylics, turpentine, and the damp garage.

Throughout the years, the garage had been my sanctuary. I used to sneak out at night or get up several hours earlier in the morning just to be in here. I’d keep some of Tariq’s old sweatshirts in a box in the corner and would wear them over my clothes, leaving only my sneakers to play victim to the inevitable paint splatters. The musty smell and the feel of the rough wooden bench beneath my thighs were all familiar and comforting, but it wasn’t enough, because there was still an undercurrent of fear in my memory of the garage. Fear associated with Gerald. I pushed out the smell and recalled something else instead; the day I decided to paint again after almost giving up. The day Noah almost hit me with his car. I thought about my first glimpse of them, and the hand on my desk, preventing me from running away from Cabe. I thought about them cornering me, again and again, and I started to smile. I remembered thinking that they were opposite on the inside to how they were on the outside; with Cabe’s darkly handsome exterior and his sunshine interior; and Noah’s angelic looks to contrast his more pensive personality. I knew now—that wasn’t entirely true; Noah had a soft heart, and Cabe was more than a little devilish.

The more I thought about them, the warmer I felt on the inside, until I was almost squirming in the pleasant haze of my
other
sanctuary…

My friends.

I clung to the joy of Cabe’s smile and the brilliance of Noah’s eyes, and I pushed it all into my valcrick, releasing the electricity. This time I opened my eyes to watch. The same web of light was there; but it was crawling now, like it lived. It slowly covered Noah’s hands, and then reached up his arms and clung to his shoulders, dipping over his chest and then tapering off, like it had simply wanted to drape over him. Noah’s eyes were brighter than usual, and had flown wide as he watched the net. He made a sound like a breathless laugh, flexing his arms. The net flexed with him.

“It’s… so
happy
,” he whispered, tilting his neck back and closing his eyes.

I wasn’t watching the valcrick anymore; I was watching him. His golden hair fell back from his forehead and his eyelashes fanned against his cheeks, the valcrick covering him like a cloak of finely-woven, golden light. He really was an angel.

“Wow…” he squeezed my hands and then pulled away, just a little bit.

We both watched as the net strained. It seemed to want to hold him there, and when he moved his arms even further, it snapped. The web began to disintegrate and the light died, falling in grainy pieces of brief radiance to the paint-splattered ground.

“Fascinating.” Noah shook his head. “You can’t do it without being in contact.”

“My turn.” Cabe nudged his brother and Noah easily fell to the side. “Do your worst, pretty devil.”

“I thought I was a ghost.” I grinned.

“You’re both. Too evil, and too quiet for your own good.”

I laughed and held out my hands for him. He knocked my hands away and pushed the skirt of my dress up slightly, settling his palms against my skin, just above my knees.

“Let’s see if you can channel it without your hands,” he said.

I swallowed, closing my eyes and trying to focus. The itching feeling was beginning to poke holes in my concentration, and it was too difficult to reach for the simple joy of a memory with my body at war; my instinct to be uncomfortable—or to pull away—at complete odds with the bond’s encouragement that this was normal.
Essential
. I blanched before I could stop myself, and my unease surged, chasing away the remnants of easy bliss. In a last ditch effort, I grappled with a different memory—a memory of Silas’s freak-out melting away before me. Of the familiar wildfire in his gaze flaring to life, drawing me close, until his hands were on me… until his mouth was tracing over the line of my collarbone.