Chapter 46. Eloise
Eloise
My knees are pulled under my chin in the front seat of Grayson’s car as he peels out of his driveway. I can’t stop crying. My head spins, everything feels wobbly, and I’m pretty sure my world just ended.
“Was it real, Grayson? You have to tell me. Please. Was it real?” I say, my pride a distant thought and my heart tattered and raw.
“It was just an illusion,” he says, but I can’t believe it.
“But how can you know? How can you be certain that wasn’t a memory being played back?” I ask as he flies through an intersection without stopping. Someone lays on their horn.
“Because if he already killed your family, he has no one to manipulate you with later,” he says bluntly, and I pause.
“But what if he just killed my mom?” I ask. “There’s still my sister and Gran.”
He exhales. “He drugged you. He did that to throw you off, to make you believe something that wasn’t true.”
I stare out the window, desperately wanting to believe him but unable to shake the feeling that the earth slipped out from under my feet.
Grayson screeches to a stop and I look around me, confused why we’re still in town instead of at the University. The slurring syrup has already started to lose its grip on me and my head is beginning to throb.
But before I can ask him why he stopped, he uses a wind spell to speed around his car and open my door. He offers me his hand, but I shake my head.
“I’m fine,” I say, lifting myself up.
“You’re not fine,” he replies. “We need to get you something for that headache.”
I close my door and the noise sends shooting pain through my temples.
“Come on,” he says, leading me into Kelly’s Café.
He pulls open the door and a little bell chimes. I cringe. How much slurring syrup did they give me? It feels like knives have taken up residence in my head.
An older woman behind the counter smiles at Grayson, then looks at me and gasps. I’m sure I’m a mess, cheeks blotchy and eyes puffy from crying, but it’s hard to care in this moment.
She waves us behind the counter and Grayson doesn’t hesitate. It’s a small shop, with just two tables for sitting and a huge display of pastries and fresh baked bread. She guides us through her kitchen and into her dry ingredient storage room filled with ceramic jars with cloth lids.
As the door closes, Grayson immediately throws up a soundproof bubble to keep us from being overheard.
“What in the name of Saint Patrick happened, Grayson?” she says in a tone of concern that makes me take a better look at her. Who is she to him?
“My uncle gave her slurring syrup and showed her an illusion of her family dying,” he says, and now I’m staring at him like he’s the illusion. Did he just tell her the truth?
Her cheeks redden and she harrumphs. “That man isn’t fit to govern his own shite much less the wards,” she says, and now my head is really spinning. But not from the slurring syrup.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to shock ya none, lass. It’s just that in all the years I’ve known this boy he’s never once brought anyone to my door. And if he trusts you, then so do I.” She straightens. “But enough of that fer now. I need to get you some calming brew before you try to rip out yer own eyes.”
Normally I’d object, because calming brew’s ingredients are expensive. Only the rich can afford to disappear their hangovers.
“Whatever it costs, I’ll pay you double,” Grayson says.
Without missing a beat she says, “You will not. I’ll not have it.”
Then the very lovely Mrs. Kelly bustles out of the storage room and closes the door, leaving me and Grayson alone.
“Who are you and what have you done with the guy who trusts no one?” I ask, but even that simple statement hurts my head.
Grayson rushes to get me a stool, and this time I don’t refuse his help. “There will be time to give me hell, Claws. Let’s just get that head taken care of first.”
Mrs. Kelly, as Grayson calls her, returns quickly with a hot cup of calming brew that I gulp down so fast I burn my tongue.
But it’s well worth it, because even as Grayson’s telling her we can’t stay and she’s shoving sandwiches at us and refusing payment, my thoughts are starting to clear and the pain is subsiding.
However, the moment the pain passes, my fear skyrockets, quickly followed by despair. My family. I need to know if my mom is okay.
Grayson stiffens, and I remember that my emotions aren’t private with him. But instead of stopping at his car and opening the door like I expect, he walks right past it.
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk in the woods,” he says, and I stop in my tracks.
“No,” I say bluntly. “Take me back to the University. I need to talk to Maggie. I need time to think. I—” I don’t know what I need.
He turns around. “I know I’ve lost your trust—”
“More like you tore it up and lit it on fire,” I say, far too hyped up. I honestly don’t know how I feel about Grayson in this moment. Utter betrayal and extreme gratitude all wrapped in one.
“Just the same, I need you to follow me,” he says.
“Why on earth would I do that?” I fire back.
“Because I’m trusting you, Claws. I’m trusting you with something I’ve never trusted anyone with.” He hesitates. “This is something that could get me killed. And I can only hope that you won’t completely hate me for it.”
Whatever I thought he might say, that definitely wasn’t it. Grayson’s trusting me with something that could get him killed? I can’t even imagine what that could be.
I take a deep breath and nod. Then I walk across the street toward the trees. He hands me one of the warm mozzarella, tomato, and pesto paninis and we walk in silence side by side, the only sounds belonging to the forest.
When he does speak, his voice is quiet, subdued in a way I’ve never heard it. “My brother Liam wasn’t like the rest of my family,” he starts slowly. “He was kind and caring. He was also my shield, weathering the storm of our family so I didn’t have to.”
When Grayson told me his uncle killed his brother, my first thought was to reject it, to say that it had to be some horrible accident. But today convinced me.
“Then one night Liam called the Key,” Grayson says as he looks ahead at the trees.
“We were in our living room trying out spells and suddenly there it was. I remember being awestruck, super proud that no one had seen the thing in a hundred years but it was my brother who called it. And to top it off, he was still an Academy student, only in his third year.”
I glance at Grayson. Part of me wants to reach out and touch his arm in comfort.
“While I was celebrating, Liam was confused and nervous,” he says. “And when I asked him why, he told me to shut up. Liam never snapped at me and I remember being surprised, hurt even.”
“Suddenly, we heard my uncle in the foyer,” he says on an exhale. “Immediately, Liam shoved the Key in his pocket. He told me to get out. Only this time I wasn’t upset, I was scared. Because Liam had that look, the one he always got before our family did something awful.”
He turns my way, giving me a sad smile.
“He grabbed my shoulders and looked me right in the eyes. He told me he loved me and that he was sorry. He said he had no time to explain, but when things got to be too much, I should go into the woods behind the house and find the red maple surrounded by spruces.”
I step over a fallen branch, wondering if that’s what Grayson is taking me to see—the red maple.
“Then he sent me to my room and told me to stay there. I was so used to listening to him, I did it even though I didn’t want to. I was twelve. It was late at night, and when Liam didn’t show up in the next hour, I passed out.”
My stomach drops, because I can sense what’s coming next and it breaks my heart.
Grayson exhales, looking up at the sunlight through the canopy of leaves. “The next morning Liam was dead. And my entire world fell to pieces.”
“Oh, Grayson, I’m so sorry,” I say, my heart aching for him.
“My uncle said Liam was poisoned—that it was a targeted attack by the Lawless. But I knew my uncle wanted that Key. He’d been obsessed with it for as long as I could remember.
And my brother had just called it. Liam would never have given it to him.
I knew immediately that my uncle killed him for it.
All while I was sleeping. I didn’t even try to stop it. ”
“Gray, that’s not your fault. You were a kid—”
“Twelve,” he says gruffly. “I was old enough.”
I’m about to argue but he says, “Don’t,” so quietly that it sounds like a plea. And so, I don’t.
“That day I promised myself,” he says, his voice resolute. “That I’d never let my uncle get that Key. And that I’d pay him back for what he did to my brother. It took me weeks to find the tree. But when I did, I discovered something else.”
He stops walking and gestures at an enormous maple, one surrounded by spruces. “We have to climb it. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, of course,” I say, the words feeling out of place and stilted. I want to tell him I’m sorry ten more times, that I understand now why he hates his uncle. But I’ve never seen Grayson vulnerable like this and I don’t want to overwhelm him.
He climbs the handholds on the tree until he’s about fifteen feet in the air, then he pulls himself onto a thick branch. I scale up after him, and he reaches down for me.
But when I stand up on the branch, he continues to hold my hand as he walks in front of me.
“I got it,” I say, not unkindly.
“No offense, Claws,” he says over his shoulder. “But I saw you on that high beam. And that was when you weren’t recently drugged by my uncle. I’m not having you fall out of this tree.”
“If this were literally any other moment in time, I’d kick you,” I reply.
He laughs, and I feel relief at the sound. I had no idea how much pain he carries.
We stop five feet down the branch and I feel a noticeable pop. A second later Grayson turns to face me.
“What was that?” I ask.
“We just left the wards,” he says, and I stare at him like he can’t be serious.
“We just—no, Grayson, what? There’s no way we left the wards because that would mean…”
“There’s a tear?” he says. “There is.”
My eyes double in size. “But—” I start and stop, my mind spinning. “That’s dangerous. Who put it here? What if the Lawless—oh, god, we have to tell someone, Gray.”
“One thing at a time, Claws,” he says. “I didn’t bring you out here to debate why the tear is here or even to tell you what I know about it.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“I brought you out here to ask if you want to run,” he says, and the shock is so intense I almost stumble and prove him right.
“Run? What are you even—”
“My uncle gave us two days to call the Key. Forty-seven hours now before he takes over. What he did to you today? That was only a preview. He’ll put you through hell and back to pull that Key from you.”
My gut twists. “But if we call the Key—”
He shakes his head. “Even if we do manage to call it in two days, I’d die before I let that man have it. Giving him access to the Archive Room and whatever it contains is not something I can justify, no matter the consequences.”
I stare at Grayson, warring with my emotions, with my logic, and even with my sense of right and wrong. Yesterday, not giving the Key to the Chancellor seemed impossible, and today I can’t help but agree that handing it over would be wrong.
“But just because I’m willing to put my life on the line, doesn’t mean I’ll risk yours,” he continues. “So again, I ask you, do you want to make a run for it?”
“Gray,” I say, struggling to make sense of it all.
“I can’t run. And even if I could, even if you have some way for me to live outside the wards without the Lawless finding me, my family would be in danger.
I’d never get to them before the Chancellor.
” There is a part of me that still believes his uncle hurt them, that I’ll never hear my mother’s laugh again or have her smooth the flyaways around my face.
“Okay, then … here,” he says, and pulls a cell phone out of his boot, not the one he texts his friends on, one I’ve never seen before.