Watercolour Smile (39 page)

I walked a little closer, and someone touched my blanketed shoulder.

“Stay back, please.” The fireman waited until I moved a few steps back before he left me, but then the cop took his place.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asked, holding out a pad and a pen.

“S…” I tried, and it seemed like my throat had to work overtime to produce any sound at all. I swallowed, winced, and tried again.

“What’s wrong with your voice?” He turned away from me as soon as he had asked the question, motioning over the male paramedic. The woman was still on her cell phone, her brows pulled together as she spoke quickly.

The male paramedic helped me over to the ambulance, where he commenced a thorough examination of my throat, holding it open with wooden dental sticks while he shone a penlight inside, asking me to swallow, cough, and any number of other painful experiments. The torture lasted until the female paramedic was off the phone, but I didn’t get to hear the diagnosis, as the glow of headlights lit up the spot where we were huddled together at the back of the ambulance, drawing our attention.

Two more police cars had arrived, veering slightly off to the side so that the car following them could pull ahead, parking between them. It was a dark grey Mercedes, the windows tinted so dark that I couldn’t see inside. A man got out and walked toward us with the two police officers that had just arrived. These officers were older than the one who was already here, with meat on their bones and flint in their eyes. One of them had a beard tinged a rusty red colour, and the other had a thick, peppered moustache. The man in the middle was dressed in black fatigues with a heavy leather vest encasing his torso and a gun belt hugging his hips. He was young, with brown hair swept beneath a cap that had been pulled low over his face, throwing his features into shadow. As they approached, I focussed on the younger man, entertaining the odd premonition that he was familiar in some way. 

“Dimitri, Officer Wise.” The cop beside me spoke, shaking the hand of the man with the beard first, and then the one with the moustache. 

“Nichols,” Dimitri answered. “Thanks for holding off the questioning. Headquarters wanted to bring in Crassus to handle this one.” As he spoke, the younger man stepped forward and pulled his cap off, revealing one blue eye and one green eye. 

“I’m agent Crassus,” Jayden said to me—as though I didn’t already know who he was. He hunched down with his hands braced on his knees. “What’s your name, Miss?”

Nichols answered for me. “There’s something wrong with her voice.”

Jayden nodded and stood again. “You must be cold.” His statement made me realise that the other officers and paramedics were all bunched into thick jackets, and even Jayden seemed to be huddling against the wind. Beneath the blanket clutched around my shoulders, my skin felt like it was on fire. I nodded anyway. “We can sit in my car,” Jayden offered. “Is it alright if I ask you a few questions?”

I nodded again, and he muttered something to the one called Dimitri before backing up and motioning for me to follow him. He opened the passenger door of the Mercedes for me before getting into the driver’s seat. As soon as the doors were closed, he started up the engine and turned on the heater.

“Can you really not talk?” he asked.

I nodded, my painful rasp of breath barely audible over the rush of air from the heater.

He rubbed his hands together as he stared at me. “I’ll ask you yes or no questions then. Do you know what happened?”

I shook my head.

“Did you heal yourself?”

I shrugged.

“Let me see.”

I pulled the blanket apart and his eyes widened, the shift in his expression so slight that I almost missed it. His attention dragged from one scar to another, beginning near my hipbone and cutting up across my stomach. I pulled the blanket closed again as his eyes inched higher, remembering my marks just in time. They were mostly blotted out by blood, but I didn’t want to risk it. Jayden could assume that I was anxious about my nakedness, instead.

His breath rushed out in a puff of air, misting up the cold glass of the window behind his head. “You should be dead.” His tone was an unfamiliar medley of begrudged admiration and surprise—almost like he had known tonight would happen, but he wasn’t sure that I would have been able to heal myself.

I opened my mouth to deliver the accusations that my voice would not have carried across to him, but he was already opening the car door.

“Be right back,” he said to me, slamming the door.

I watched as he approached the police officers, and then I watched as their expressions went slack, their features wiped of all human emotion as he—and I was sure that this was what he was doing—manipulated their minds. He was probably erasing their memories, as he had done with Quillan and Webber. He finished with the police officers and moved behind the ambulance where I couldn’t see him anymore, but where I knew the female paramedic stood.

Quillan had told me to trust Jayden, but I was beyond trusting people just because they said so. It only ever led to pain. Besides, there was only supposed to be one Zevghéri in the world who could manipulate memories, and that was the hypnotist.

I didn’t waste anymore time—I forced my battered body over the centre console and pulled on the handbrake of the car, letting it roll backwards without giving it any gas. Luckily, Jayden had left the keys in and the engine running—probably so that I wouldn’t be cold.

How thoughtful of him,
I thought, as I put the car into first and hit the gas, spinning it around to face the other way. I was already halfway down the road before one of the police cars started to follow me, but I was briefly distracted by the sudden appearance of headlights in the trees off to the side of the road. The light washed into the cab of Jayden’s car, illuminating my stunned face, before I shifted the Mercedes into sixth gear and flattened the accelerator pedal to the floor. The car that had been hidden in the trees shot forward just as the second police car passed the spot where they had been parked, and I shouted out a soundless warning as the police car spun out and disappeared off the other side of the road, tumbling into a gully.

What the hell
?

The unfamiliar car was now speeding up behind the first police car, which was quickly gaining on me, and I cursed the fact that I had to slow down to go around every corner instead of skidding around the bends like the police car was doing. I figured that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with my current plan, so I went with my unformed Plan B. That is, I jerked the wheel to the side and forced Jayden’s car off the road, blindly hoping for the best.

The car slid into the gully, loud bangs and cracks telling me that the underside of the car didn’t appreciate the large rocks that I was forcing it to drive over. The police car must not have been expecting my sudden dive into the gully, for it had skidded to a stop some distance ahead of where I had suddenly disappeared. The tires screeched as it came back, and I saw the headlights over the top of the slope. The headlights weren’t moving. They had gotten out of the car.

I realised why, when the Mercedes screeched to a halt, the tires spinning uselessly. The front of the car was wedged between two tree-trunks.

I shut off the lights, jumped out of the car, and took off at a punishing speed as the bobbing of flashlights announced the arrival of my pursuers. Jayden must have forced the officers to run after me with his ability, since there wouldn’t have been any other reason to chase me if he had indeed been wiping their memories.

The gully continued downwards, the scattering of trees by the roadside thickening into a thatch of forest, becoming denser the further down I travelled. The foliage now closed in around me, buffeting at my arms, tangling about my ankles and tugging at the blanket that was falling loose around my shoulders—but the suffocating sensation only served to comfort me. The flashlights that sought me were no longer visible and even my own footsteps were muted by the slippery moss that carpeted the ground. Just when I thought I might be able to slow down, however, the trees started to thin out again, and I found myself by the side of another road.

Damn
.
That was a short forest
. The road must have curved around the gully, cutting into it.

I blinked against the sudden onslaught of headlights, throwing my forearm over my eyes. The car had appeared so suddenly, I almost suspected that it had been sitting just around the bend, waiting. I had nowhere to hide. The doors opened and two men appeared. I was on the verge of turning and running back into the gully, but something about them made me pause.

I watched them come closer.

“You’d better get in the car,” Noah said. “They’re going to come out of that gully any second now.”

I didn’t even pause to acknowledge my astonishment—I was running toward the car before he had even finished speaking. We took off just as my pursuers spilled out of the gully, and I turned in my seat to catch the expression on Jayden’s face. 

He was afraid.

What was that supposed to mean
?

“We were stupid to trust him,” Cabe spat out as Noah drove. They were both facing the front, wearing identical masks to shield their features from examination. “He was about to snatch her from right under our noses. It’s obvious now, Jayden is a double-agent, even after everything Kingsling has done to get him on our side. We should have known—the hypnotist can never be trusted. That kind of power, it goes to their head, makes them think that they can control every person, every situation.”

Jayden
was
the hypnotist!

But wait...
How did they know
that
?

“You think he was working for Weston? Or the Klovoda?” Noah asked, his tone low with confusion and anger.

His question didn’t make any sense at all. Wasn’t Kingsling the director of the Klovoda, and Weston the head of all Zevghéri society? Weren’t they all on the same side?

“All I know for certain is that we can’t trust anybody,” Cabe replied. “Silas and Miro have been acting weird where the girl is concerned. They’ve been communicating with Jayden, too. I think it was a good idea not to tell them about tonight.”

“Yeah, well... maybe tonight would have changed their minds. I know I was having my doubts, until she crashed that limousine and killed Kingsling’s men.”

I... what?

I opened my mouth, intent on interjecting and demanding answers, but only a hacking sound was released from my throat. Noah and Cabe ignored me.

“Better call him and let him know we have her.” Noah spoke as he pulled his phone out of his pocket, passing it to Cabe.

Cabe punched in a number and then put the phone on speaker, holding it out for Noah to speak into it.

“Kingsling.” A man answered on the second ring, his voice gravelly and deep, with an edge to it that sent immediate shivers down my spine despite the heat that still clung to my skin.

“Dom.” Noah’s hands were relaxed on the steering wheel as he smoothly navigated the car. “We’ve got the girl. Should we bring her to you?”

There was no reply at first, and then Kingsling filled the silence with full, unabashed laughter. “My boys! What an unexpected turn of events. Please, bring her to my home, and you must tell me how this came about.” He had suddenly adopted the persona of a jovial grandfather figure, but one glance at Noah and Cabe’s faces told me that they hadn’t found the sudden switch to be suspicious.

“We followed her tonight. We didn’t interfere, since we recognised your men, but then she blew up the limousine.”

“Ah,” Kingsling replied. That was all.

“You should know,” Cabe butted into the phone call, “Jayden is a double-agent.”

At this, Kingsling laughed again. Cabe and Noah shared a look, and I silently rejoiced at the confusion in their expressions.
Finally
, the oddness of this phone call was beginning to pierce whatever false reality the messenger—or Jayden—had forced them into.

“What an exciting night.” Kingsling sounded overjoyed. “Bring the girl to me, we will talk more once she arrives.”

Healing myself might just kill me—but it was necessary. There was no way that I was going to be able to convince Noah and Cabe to turn the car around until I could speak. I tried several times, putting my hand to my neck and willing the valcrick to the surface, but it would not obey. I had also tried opening the doors—intending to dive out—but they wouldn’t budge.

I felt broken, and I was more exhausted than I was willing to admit to myself. It wasn’t right that my eyelids were drooping, especially with the imminent danger that I was in, but my body had been pushed to every possible limit, and now it was failing me. After countless attempts, a spark finally ignited, and Noah immediately pulled the car off the road. He jumped out, almost yanked my door from its hinges, and pulled me out with a rough hand on my arm.

“Don’t,” he seethed. “Don’t even
think
about it.”