Watercolour Smile (44 page)

Maybe I was stupid to have agreed to this, but when all of the options that you have in life are dangerous ones, you can only choose to do something reckless, or turn a blind eye and allow the cards to fall as they may… and I was sick of being blind. For the first time in my life,
I
was the one with the answers, and I wanted more. More knowledge. More power. I didn’t want it for the way it made me feel, I wanted it for the currency it represented.

Weston didn’t know about my bond with his sons. None of them knew about my forecasting, and even the messenger was now helping to keep my pairs a secret. I knew that Jayden was the hypnotist, and I knew that Weston had given the go-ahead to have him tamper with Noah and Cabe’s heads. I had a few decent theories regarding Weston’s ‘Atmá Hunt’, and I knew that there were three other people out there like me. I knew that the messenger didn’t have a pair, and I suspected that the other two ‘subjects’ were similarly without pairs. I knew that Weston couldn’t control his Director, and I knew that Kingsling used to play a little too close to the power lines when he was little; at some point, he’d completely fried his head.

For once,
I
was the one with the answers.

Well, me and the messenger… but he wasn’t an enemy that I was prepared to tackle just yet. He had gotten away with countless acts of violence right beneath the nose of the Klovoda. He had killed one of their precious Atmás; he had broadcast himself almost killing two of the Voda’s heirs; he had surrounded the biggest Zevghéri-run school in the world with explosives; and he had reached his goal of using the hypnotist to toy with Noah and Cabe’s memories—
with
Weston’s blessing, no less. Yet Weston and Jayden both seemed to be clueless to the fact that he was working from right beneath their noses: he was one of their own agents, one of the four ‘subjects’… my twin.

I couldn’t even
consider
taking on the messenger, yet.

Weston was a more reasonable goal, and the way to take down Weston was to use his own power against him. I needed more information. With the right secrets, I could tip the balance.

That was why I was standing in front of a beaten-down boathouse, my hand hovering over the handle of the unlocked door. It was tiny, sagging slightly at the back-end, and ripped almost completely open at the front-end. Truly, if one had wanted to get inside, they might have simply pulled up a few of the loose boards from the outside and walked right in—but Weston assured me that the magic wouldn’t allow them.

“I want to be here,” I said out loud, just as Weston had instructed me to. “I accept your invitation.”

At my words, the door fell away from my reaching fingertips, creaking open to reveal the dusty, abandoned interior. We were somewhere between Seattle and Maple Falls, judging by how long it had taken to drive there—though I supposed we could have been travelling in another direction altogether. The swamp was eerily quiet, untouched by the sounds of civilisation. There were no other structures in sight, no boats passing by on the river that bordered the area. It was utterly unidentifiable.

I had barely taken a step inside before something sounded behind me, forcing me to spin around. They were all still there: Gerald, Weston, Kingsling and Jayden… only, there was an extra person standing behind Kingsling.

There was also a rather large, red stain soaking into the front of Kingsling’s shirt. His mouth went slack, his eyes blinking in horror. He gurgled, clutching at his chest, and everyone turned to watch as he fell to his knees, hovering there for a moment before his face smacked into the dirt.

Silas stood behind him. There was a gun in his hand with a silver barrel-shaped extension attached to the end of it, almost the same size as the gun’s original barrel. He dismantled the extra barrel and tucked it into his back pocket, as calm as I had ever seen him.

I stumbled into the doorway, grasping blindly for something to hold on to. Gerald looked appropriately surprised, but Weston barely flickered an eyelid. He cocked his head at Kingsling for a few moments, witnessing the last few spasms that raced through the dying man, and I thought he might have let out a small sigh, before he dismissed the body and turned back to me.

“Go on ahead,” he said, checking his watch. “Seems Dominic won’t be accompanying you after all.”

“W-what did you do?” I stuttered, a hand covering my mouth.

“Are you talking to the man with the gun?” Weston asked me. “I wouldn’t bother. He’s not very vocal when he’s on a rampage.”

Silas raised the gun again, this time aiming it at Weston.

“You can’t shoot me.” Weston sounded exasperated, leading me to believe that he had said this on more than one occasion.

Silas’s expression didn’t change, but his arm started to turn and rise, until it was notched against his own temple.

“And you can’t shoot me.” Silas’s tone carried a dangerous edge. “If you do, your precious Voda heir will die right alongside me. It seems we’re at an impasse. Again.”

Weston smiled, and it was the same smile that I had seen in the graveyard: a baring of teeth that made you wish to shield your throat, on the off-chance that he decided to lunge for it.

“Not quite,” Weston said.

Silas’s gun began to move again, but this time the barrel pointed at me. His finger tightened on the trigger. I tensed, my fingers digging into the rotted wood of the doorframe.

“I’m sorry,” Weston said, walking toward me and leaning against the boat shed beside my doorway. He folded his arms, turning sideways to watch me. “But you make such pretty collateral, Miss Black.” He tilted his face away from me, focussing on Silas. “Tell me why you killed my Director—not that I’m complaining, by the way—but I am ever so curious. I think you understand how ultimatums work. Speak, or you’ll be the cause of the bullet in her heart.”

I doubted that Weston would actually make Silas shoot me, but it was difficult to hold onto that notion with a gun pointed at my chest. There was also the fact that Weston was armed with the knowledge of me having brought myself back from the brink of death once before. Perhaps he was willing to risk it, just to punish Silas.

“He tried to kill her,” Silas growled. “Is that how the Klovoda works now?”

“You always were one for overreaction,” Weston said with a sigh. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to hunt down the fourth subject and gain her trust. I don’t know how you managed it, but befriending her to keep her away from me…” He chuckled, casting his eyes back to me. “It was the perfect revenge. Until now.”

“You can’t hurt her.” Silas said.

“Yes I can,” Weston replied, a second before the sound of a gunshot rang out.

Pain tore through my shoulder, and I screamed, the whiplash forcing me into a rotted wooden skeleton of something—possibly a bench, or a boat trolley. It caved underneath me, and I pushed away from the mess of wood before I hit the floor, trying to avoid getting impaled by anything. Unfortunately, I landed on my bad arm, and my next scream was dashed against the musty ground.

I heard a thud as Weston’s body hit the outside of the boathouse.

“
Where’d that come from
?” Gerald shouted, sounding afraid.

“Don’t… move…” Weston sounded strained, his voice laced with pain.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Silas grated out. “Now tell your hypnotist that he needs to go inside and get Seraph. Tell him to take her back to the road and leave her there. If you or Dipshit over there try to stop him, my snipers will take you all out. If he tries to hurt her, you will all die. Understand?”

“I might not be able to kill you, boy, but I’ll take you to the brink every single fucking day until you’re
begging
for me to dash your head against the wall until it cracks, do you understand? I won’t let you go now, not even for my sons. Not even for your mother. You’ve overstepped. I’ll make you pay for this.”

“I’m aware,” Silas replied simply. “Now do as I said.”

I released the breath that I had been holding, and it came out as an agonised groan. Time seemed to suspend as blood mixed with moss and rot, wetting the boards beneath me. Weston apparently didn’t know that I had been having trouble with my valcrick ever since the accident. I tried to draw on it as I lay there, but it didn’t so much as flutter in greeting.

Weston’s breaths rattled out, as painful as mine, and I managed to turn my head enough to glimpse out of the doorway. He was slumped on the ground where he had previously been standing. He was clutching his stomach, somehow bleeding less than I was, though it was obvious he had been shot as well.

“
Go
,” he finally growled.

Jayden strode into the boathouse and his eyes passed over the mess of broken wood behind me, before finding me on the ground. He knelt down beside me, his eyes narrowing on the spreading puddle of blood beneath me.

He lifted me to his chest and the movement had me crying out again as pain rocked through my shoulder, tingling numbness down to my fingertips and aching all the way into my chest. I was beginning to feel faint, and my head rolled backwards as Jayden strode out of the boathouse.

He made to move past Silas, who was standing with his arms hanging by his sides, his fists clenched into white-knuckled tension. His whole body seemed to be vibrating, and I knew that Weston was still controlling him.

“Wait,” he said, causing Jayden’s step to falter. “I’m sorry.” He croaked the words and finally turned his eyes to mine. He wasn’t in the midst of an episode, as I thought he would be. Instead, his eyes were full of agony. “I’m really sorry, angel.” He turned away, his head hanging.

“No…” I whispered, realising what was happening. “No!” I tried to fight against Jayden, causing a near-overwhelming roil of nausea to rise up and choke me. Dark spots flashed across my vision, and I struggled to cling to consciousness. “Silas, you can’t do it! Don’t do it, please don’t!”

He avoided looking at me, and Jayden started moving again.

“
Silas you can’t do this!
” I screamed, fighting with every vestige of strength.

“Stop moving,” Jayden said calmly. My body immediately stilled. “Stop screaming.”

“He can’t,” I sobbed quietly. “I won’t let him.”      

“That’s the funny thing about this situation, Seraph. You don’t have a choice.”

He carried me back to the roadside where Quillan was waiting: a large, fancy-looking rifle slung over his shoulder. It had something resembling a telescope attached to the top of it. He was standing beside a black Range Rover that I had never seen before; Noah and Cabe jumped out, alighting on the ground beside him. They all watched as Jayden approached.

“Why isn’t she healing herself?” Cabe asked, apparently confused.

Jayden didn’t answer. He passed me to Quillan, whose jaw was clenched, taut with a reaching tension that had driven demons straight into his black eyes.

“You let him,” I realised out loud. “
How could you let him do that?
We need to go back. We need to save him. You can’t leave him there,
Quillan, you can’t let him do this
! Weston will ruin him! I didn’t need saving, his life is over now… Weston will never let him go…”

Quillan didn’t reply and eventually my desperate attempts to be heard died out. He grimaced at Jayden and jerked his head at Noah and Cabe, who got back into the Range Rover. He buckled me into the front passenger seat, and I cursed him the whole time. Eventually, I got frustrated at Jayden controlling my body, so I turned my curses his way. Jayden closed the door, cutting off the litany of words that Poison would have been proud of. He got into the driver’s side and pressed a button to roll my window down.

“Thank you,” he said to Jayden.

Jayden nodded, his mismatched blue and green eyes were burning with an emotion that I didn’t recognise. For just a moment, he became human. He stepped up to my window and reached out a hand, catching my cheek.

“He’d kill me for this,” he said, “but you should remember. You should know.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and then everything rushed back. The memories flowed into my mind with an ease that betrayed the crease of frustration marring Jayden’s forehead. They swam into the cracks that I hadn’t even realised were empty, completing something in my mind that I hadn’t even realised was broken.

I
remembered
.

The boy was older than me—he seemed taller than the boys at the high school that I had just been enrolled in. It wasn’t the first time that I had dreamed of him, but it was the first dream in which he had seemed so
real
. His hair was as dark as mine, cut short at the sides in a practical sort of way, and flopping forward in disarray to obscure his eyes. He flicked it back and wiped a hand over the back of his mouth, leaving a smear of red on his skin. This movement revealed his eyes to me, and I felt a lurch in my chest at the sight of them. They were the kind of dark that didn’t stem from colour, but from experience. They burned hotly, and the fire seemed to scream from within. I imagined people becoming victim to that fire, tripping and falling into it. Their screams would mix with his. He seemed to have that power; the particularly violent capacity to collect pain. He licked at the blood seeping out of the side of his mouth and laughed.