Angel Reborn, page 37
“Whatever you want to do.”
I took the box over to the table and pulled at the cardboard flaps. The old tape gave way without any resistance, and I folded back the lid and stared at its contents.
There were a couple of tiny outfits, a white stuffed rabbit that had yellowed a bit with age, and a matching sterling silver cup and rattle set. I picked up a sweet bonnet and fingered its delicate lace trim, and then I laid it back in the box and pulled out a small quilt.
“Do you remember any of this stuff?” Nick asked.
“No, but this blanket’s nice. It looks handmade.”
I held up the quilt to get a better look, and as it unfolded, a small, beaded turtle fell out onto the floor.
“What’s that?” Nick asked as I bent to retrieve it.
“It looks like a turtle. What a beautiful design on its back!”
I closed my fingers around it, and a sharp tingle came through my hand and up my arm followed by a sudden numbness. When I stood, the hotel room and Nick were gone.
The turtle was on the wall.
The same turtle I’d held in my hand but depicted on a fabric wall hanging.
It had the same intricate design on its back, made of the same vibrant colors in an identical pattern, but instead of beads, it was woven with threads.
This turtle was larger, and the fabric it was woven upon was stretched tight within a round wooden frame.
It hung from a leather strip attached to a hoop. Three thin leather cords were also attached to the hoop, each with a single round bead on the end.
I didn’t remember ever seeing the turtle in my hand before, but I felt the strangest connection to the turtle on the wall. I was drawn to it, and I tried to lean closer to get a better look, but I seemed unable to move.
Strangely, that notion didn’t alarm me. Neither did the fact that I could hear someone breathing.
I looked down at my hands, surprised to see that I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, but then I realized the limbs weren’t mine.
“Are you all right?” A man’s voice called out from somewhere in the room, but I was too entranced to answer.
I was fascinated by the long, thick, red braid that hung over my shoulder and down my chest, its end curling at my waist.
I longed to pick it up and feel its weight, but the hands that lay palms up on the thighs that weren’t mine were calloused and rough. Foreign and unfamiliar.
“Aria!”
This time I recognized the man’s voice.
“Snap out of it! Come back to me!”
I looked up to find him, and the room became a blur.
I felt like I was being pulled from it, and I turned to look over my shoulder and saw the woman with the red braid open her eyes.
She looked straight at me, straight through me, straight into me.
“Shit!” she gasped, and then she was gone.
I was back in the hotel, and Nick stood before me, holding my face in his hands with wide eyes searching mine.
“There you are.” He huffed out a sigh of relief. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“It happened again, didn’t it? You had another vision.”
“I…” I closed my eyes, trying to commit every detail of what I’d seen to memory, but it was already hazy. The only thing I could see clearly in my mind was the color of that glorious braid. It was a luscious and vibrant red, like the purest, deepest scarlet of a flame.
“Aria?”
“Yeah.” My eyes fluttered open. “I’m okay. I was trying to remember what I was seeing.”
“C’mere,” Nick said, leading me to the bed so we both could sit. “What were you seeing?”
“I don’t know. I was in a room I’ve never been in before, and there was a piece of art hanging on the wall. It was…” I looked down at the turtle in my hands, rubbing my thumb over the smooth beads. “It was this turtle. A woven picture of it. The same colors and same design, but threads. Not beads.”
“Do you remember this turtle at all? Have you ever seen it before?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t remember it, but maybe I saw it when I was a baby. I can’t say for sure.”
“Maybe the room you were in was your nursery. The turtle could be part of a set, like the cup and the rattle. Maybe it was this stuffed animal and then another one hanging on the wall.”
“No. This wasn’t a nursery. It was…maybe like a living room?” Closing my eyes, I tried to recall any other details, but it was like waking from a vivid dream and no longer being able to see where your mind had taken you. “I don’t know. I don’t remember there being any furniture, but I wasn’t able to see the whole room. There was a woman, though. I thought at first it was me. But it wasn’t me. I think maybe I could see through her eyes somehow.”
He took my hand in his and stroked his thumb over my palm. “Do you know who she was? Have you ever seen her before?”
“I don’t think so.” I concentrated my focus on the memory of her. “I can’t see the details of her face, but she had the most beautiful red hair. It was braided. I’ve never seen a braid that thick or that long. She must have one helluva head of hair. I was thinking that it must be heavy, and I wanted to pick the braid up to see how it felt. To feel the weight of it. But the hands weren’t mine. They were calloused.”
“Calloused?”
“Yeah. Like maybe she does a lot of yard work or something. I don’t know. It was trippy. Like, I didn’t know where I was or who she was. I couldn’t move, but I wasn’t scared or anything. The whole thing felt familiar, which sounds so weird, but that’s the only way I know to describe it. I felt connected to her. Connected to the turtle.” I looked down again at the one I held and then at Nick. “It sounds so freaky now that I’m talking about it, but in the moment, I wasn’t scared or weirded out at all. I felt safe.”
“Was anyone else there?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I thought there was a man there, but then I realized the voice I heard was you.”
“I was worried. You went rigid, and then your eyes went back, and your eyelids fluttered. I was scared you might faint like you did before. Are you sure you feel all right? You’re still putting off an insane level of energy.”
“Yeah. I feel fine. I’m just confused. What did that mean? When I had the vision with the arrow, I knew where I was and what I was looking at. But this was…I have no idea where I went. Zeck said it happened before because I touched the arrow and was channeling its energy.” I held up the turtle. “Do you think that’s what happened with this? Like, somehow that was the turtle’s energy?”
Shrugging one shoulder, he stared at the turtle with a frown. “It must be, because it happened as soon as you picked it up. May I?”
He held out his hand, and I laid the turtle in it. He bounced it a little, feeling its weight. “It’s lighter than it looks.”
“Yeah, it is. It looks like it would be heavier with all the beads”
He flipped the turtle over and ran his finger down the hand-stitched seam running the length of it. “I wonder what it’s stuffed with.”
Turning it at a different angle, he bent to look closer.
“What do you see?” I bent my head next to his, and he pointed to a tiny area of stitching by the turtle’s right back leg.
“I don’t know. It looks a symbol of some sort. Maybe something to signify the person who made it?”
“Turn it around the other way,” I said, waiting as he did. “From that angle, it almost looks like the outline of a shield.”
“You’re right. It does.”
“Hmm. Bizarre. I have no clue. I just touched the turtle, and it was like what happened before. A shot of electricity ran up my arm, and it went numb. Then, I was somewhere else.”
“Do you think it would happen if you touched it again?” He held up the turtle in his palm. “Do you wanna try?”
“No,” I said, standing to put more distance between me and the turtle. “I don’t. I think she saw me.”
“What?” Nick’s brows rose.
“Yeah. It was when I was leaving, when I was coming back to you. Her eyes opened, and she looked right at me. But then, I came back here.”
I shuddered, remembering the depth to which I’d felt her stare. It had seemed intrusive, but it hadn’t felt threatening. That didn’t mean I was anxious to go back, though.
“You think she could tell you were there?” Nick stood, turning the turtle back over in his hands.
“Oh, yeah. We made eye contact, and she cursed. She definitely saw me.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of the memory. “We should go. I’m ready to be home. I want to see Sage and have some time with her before she goes back to school tomorrow.”
“What do you want to do about this box?”
I stared at the tiny outfits and the silver rattle and felt nothing. No nostalgic connection. No memories. No warm feelings. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to throw it all out yet, either. “Let’s just bring it with us, and I’ll go through it at another time.”
“If that’s what you want to do.”
He laid the turtle in the box, and I picked up the quilt and handed it to him.
“Here. Wrap him in this so he doesn’t get messed up.”
I watched as Nick folded the turtle inside the colorful quilt, and then he closed the flaps of the box and tucked it under his arm.
I’d come to Pensacola certain I would find answers, but instead, I had more questions.
There was a part of me that wished I could run away from this like I’d run away from other difficult things in my life.
But there was no place I could go, because I was the problem.
It wasn’t like I could ignore the issues and pretend things were normal either. I couldn’t ignore that I could melt metal with my bare hands, that I’d interrupted some stranger meditating in her living room, or that I’d suddenly learned there was a dark mystery surrounding my birth.
None of that was normal, and pretending wouldn’t keep the ones I loved safe from me the next time I got overwhelmed and lost control again.
One thing was increasingly certain. I couldn’t solve this on my own. I needed to ask for help. Even though every instinct I had rebelled against the notion.
“I think I’m ready to talk to your mom,” I said to Nick on the flight back to New York.
“Okay,” he said, leaning forward to place his hand on my knee as we sat facing each other. “If you’re sure that’s what you want to do.”
Resistance flared in my gut and in my chest, but I gritted my teeth against it.
“It’s not about whether I want to or not at this point. If Gwen’s willing to help and she has the knowledge no one else seems to have, then it’s foolish not to talk to her.” I laid my head back against the seat and took in a calming breath to dispel the uneasy feeling. “I’d agreed to talk to her before, but then my mother called, and I wanted to wait and see if what she had to say would answer anything. But it didn’t.”
“I wouldn’t say it didn’t answer anything. We know now that there’s a possibility that didn’t seem viable before. One, or likely both, of your biological parents had to be supernatural, which means it’s possible that you could be a chimera like Noelle suspects.”
“And your mom has done research on that, right?”
“I haven’t confirmed that with her yet, but Noelle’s professor mentioned my mother as someone to contact, which is not surprising. Mam has always enjoyed digging into the challenge of a rare condition.”
I mulled over what he said and tried to feel hopeful. If Noelle was right and my condition was chimerism, and Gwen was knowledgeable about that, then I shouldn’t feel reluctant at all.
But what I should feel and what I actually felt were two entirely different things.
Nick leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees.
“I know you’re worried you’re gonna become a science experiment, but asking my mother’s advice doesn’t commit you to do anything you don’t want to do. We’re just gonna talk to her.”
“You say that now, but you and I both know your mother’s first priority is her work. If I really am some kind of supernatural unicorn, then let’s not kid ourselves that she isn’t going to want to analyze my blood and gather as much information as she can. It’s fine. I’ve accepted that this is what I have to do to find solutions and get on with my life.”
I turned to look out the plane’s window, ready to dismiss the topic. I could feel my irritation growing, and the energy within me was becoming more disturbed the more aggravated I got. I’d gotten better at managing it, but it was best to change the subject so I didn’t risk losing control while we were zipping across the sky in an airplane made of metal.
“Speaking of Mam,” Nick said, sitting back against his seat. “She’d like for us to come out to the estate to swim and have dinner one night this week.”
“Ha,” I scoffed. “I don’t know that Sage will ever go back in that pool after I scared the bejeezus out of the poor kid.”
“We wouldn’t have to swim. Mam said she wants to get to know you and Sage better, and she offered to have the chef make whatever Sage likes.”
“Is this something you want to do?” I asked, watching his face for any clues his expression might give. “You want us to go and have dinner with your mom?”
He clasped his hands in his lap as he looked out the window at the clouds, and then he looked back to me with a slow nod.
“I think it might be nice. She and Sage seemed to hit it off the other day, and I quite enjoyed watching the two of them delight in each other. A different side of my mother, that’s for sure,” he said, grinning with a shake of his head. “What about you? Is that something you’d be willing to do? Would you be okay with it?”
Inwardly, I shuddered at the thought of my sweet child being surrounded by vampires at that creepy old castle, but I knew that eventually this was an issue I would need to face.
Gwen was Nick’s mother, and though she’d been absent for my entire marriage, now that they’d reconnected, she’d obviously want to be a part of his life. A life that included Sage and me.
Gwen had said on several occasions that we were family now, so it made sense that she’d invite her family over for dinner. Especially after Sage had come right out and asked if she could call her Granny.
Like Nick, I’d been surprised by Gwen’s reaction to Sage. She’d never struck me as someone who gave off warm and fuzzy grandma vibes.
In fact, I imagined dinner at her house being an uppity, formal affair with rows of ridiculous silverware, separate courses that dragged on all night, and rules about when children could speak at the table. I couldn’t picture trying to keep my curious and precocious child quiet in an environment that begged to be explored and questioned.
And on top of all that, there was the not-so-minor issue of Gwen and her entire staff being vampires. Not exactly the kind of company I wanted Sage to keep, especially after I’d been attacked at Gwen’s party. Though to be fair, it wasn’t a vampire who shot me.
“I get it if you don’t want to go,” Nick said, and I felt bad that I hadn’t answered as he rushed to continue. “I didn’t commit in any way. I already told her we’re busy and that we have a lot going on.”
There was a hint of sadness in his eyes, and his mouth was slightly downturned. He did want this, but he was willing to forego it for my sake.
Was it fair of me to keep him from having this experience?
Whether I felt like Gwen was family or not, if it was important to Nick, I needed to be willing to support him with just as much commitment as he’d always shown in supporting me.
I knew he’d do whatever was needed to make Sage and me safe at the estate, and it wasn’t like Gwen was going to harm either one of us.
“Let’s go. Let’s do it.”
“Really?” Nick asked, his eyes brightening. “You’re sure?”
When I nodded and said I was sure, his frown lifted into a brilliant smile.
Rising to come and kneel in front of my seat, he laid his hands on my thighs. “Thank you. Thank you for giving me the experience of having a daughter. Thank you for sharing Sage with me, and thank you for allowing me to share her with my mother. I didn’t realize it would mean so much to me for them to know each other.”
“You don’t have to thank me for any of that.” I leaned forward to kiss him, and we both smiled.
“What night would be good for us to go?”
“That’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I’m planning to go back to my classes at the university this week. I’ve missed so much already, and I feel like I’m falling behind. I know we have a lot going on, and I know it’s not ideal for me to be out in public right now, but I don’t want to have to drop out.”
“No way are you dropping out.” Nick frowned. “You’ve worked too hard to get this far, and you’re so close to finishing and getting your degree. I’ll talk to Zeck and pull a small team together to be on campus with you.”
Thirty-Nine
Nick
Aria and I had been home for about an hour when the guard at the gate called to say that a courier had dropped off a package from my mother.
I hadn’t talked to her since before we’d left for Florida the day before, so I had no idea what she might have sent.
“What’s this?” Aria said as I brought the tall, narrow box inside.
“I don’t know. It’s from Mam.”
“Is it a present?” Sage asked, looking up from the picture she was coloring at the table.
“We shall see.”
I grabbed a knife from the utensil drawer and cut the tape on the box, and inside was another box, slightly smaller, wrapped in a glossy white paper and tied with a thin gold ribbon.
Sage clapped her hands in glee. “It is a present!”
