Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
“Here.” Carlos handed her a mug.
Eliana tucked her feet under her on the couch and leaned back, holding the tea between her hands. Empty pizza box on the table between them. “This couch is amazing. I feel like I’m getting sucked into it.” The dark fabric wanted to envelop her.
“I think that just means it’s old and sagging.”
“Or you’ve just about got it broken in.”
He smiled, settling beside her on the other side of the couch.
Acting like they were almost friends. Certainly not family members who only saw each other twice a year, at the holidays, and didn’t speak the rest of the time.
He might not have found any needle marks, but maybe something injected into him the day before had made him nicer.
She should confront him about how he was acting, going from pointing out her supposed deception at the Shrine to inviting her over to his place for pizza.
She should confront him about their ugly history.
Tell him he had to apologize for shredding her heart to pieces, as if there wasn’t this giant gaping thing between them that they never mentioned.
Eliana looked around the small living room, which had a door.
The square single-story house had to be old, maybe even historical.
Out in front, there was a huge shade tree that shed its leaves on the roof, and the exterior had been painted a dark red.
The bathroom down the hall had a legit clawfoot tub with a shower curtain in it, along with a cracked sink.
Meanwhile, out here the floors looked new and everything was neat and clean.
“You know,” he began, “when I was at your place, I didn’t make it obvious that I was looking around.”
“I’m not being judgy. I’m actually intrigued.” She didn’t want to say “impressed” because this wasn’t about him needing to meet a certain standard. “How long have you lived here?”
“I moved in six weeks ago.”
She sipped her tea. “Why didn’t you call me when you got to Chicago?”
He didn’t answer right away. He was drinking yet another cup of coffee, which made her wonder if he drank anything else. “Nearly did a few times.” He looked at the TV unit, above which hung his ginormous flat-screen TV. “Thought about coming by the museum.”
“How did you know I worked there?” She followed that up with, “I mean, I know I don’t keep much from anyone in our family. I’m surprised Maizie didn’t know you were in Chicago, even without GPS on our phones.”
He looked at her, confusion tugging his brows together.
“You knew where I was, though.”
He set his mug down on the old-timey trunk that he used as a coffee table. “I knew you were in Chicago. Your mom told me about the job.”
“I know they don’t want me to know about Dominatus.” She winced over the mug. “I refused to talk about it. I packed up my life and came here because I can’t pass up the chance to have my questions answered by someone other than them.”
There was a fine line between protection and control.
Between strong boundaries and taking away someone’s freedom.
The more she’d thought about it, the more her life chafed against the way they’d wanted to raise her, the more she edged toward something other than appreciating what they’d done for her.
Rather than think how they told her to think, she wanted to learn and grow in her own right.
Make her own choices. Basically, the opposite of how Carlos had lived his life.
Maybe they weren’t compatible and never had been.
He half smiled. “I was talking to my dad about moving here because it would help us find Luci. He can’t travel because it’ll put too much stress on his heart.”
She nodded, her mind a turmoil of duty to her parents and living her life as an adult who got to make her own choices and might not want to do whatever she was told.
“My dad said your parents mentioned to him that you were in Chicago, and that I could pull double duty coming here. Look out for you and find Luci.”
At least he hadn’t said it was to protect her. Though she’d rather he said he wanted her help finding his sister. “And the Shrine?”
He shook his head. “Your parents haven’t said anything to me about it. Just that you were in Chicago, relayed through my dad.”
Eliana set her mug on the trunk and got up so she could pace. “I shouldn’t care. I should be an adult who can make her own choices and do her own thing, but I guess I do care. Maybe I always will.”
“Or you feel guilty that you didn’t discuss it with them.”
“It’s not like I lied. I just withheld information because I didn’t want to argue with them.”
Carlos said nothing, still seated on the edge of the couch. Forearms on his knees.
“Ugh.” She rolled her eyes. “Can’t I just live my life?”
“I don’t know,” he said gently. “Can you?”
Eliana rolled her eyes. “I’m trying!”
“How is it going so far?”
She went back to the couch and flopped down, letting out a frustrated sigh. “This is ridiculous. I should have figured it out by now. I’m twenty-five!”
Carlos shook his head and sat back. “You care what they think. You also know for a fact they probably won’t be happy that you’re here, doing whatever you’re doing at the Shrine.”
“Just ask me.”
“Maybe what I’m doing is what they’re doing. Waiting for you to offer the information rather than me having to dig for it and making you mad.”
“Maybe I want to be asked. Maybe I want someone to demand something of me. To give me a goal to hit rather than the sentiment that I can do whatever I want. I don’t want to have to think of everything myself and make all the decisions.” She ran her hands down her face. “Does that even make sense?”
“Depends if you’re going to join a cult like the Reverence Sisters so you don’t have to think for yourself, or you just mean you want the people in your life to have expectations that you’ll amount to something.” He eyed her, and she wasn’t sure what to make of his expression.
“A career in the military or police might’ve been good for me.”
“Still could be.” He shrugged. “If you like structure.”
Eliana blew out a long breath. “How is it that I feel like I missed something key, and maybe I’ve blown the point of my life?”
“And you’re here looking for an answer to that question.”
It did sound a lot like trying to solve a case. The case of Who is Eliana Hope Banbury Jaxton?
“The Shrine holds the information my parents would never tell me. The things they purposely kept out of my life to ‘protect’ me. Which is fine. Parents should protect their children, and if half the stuff Zeyla told me is true, that was a good idea, because what the actual heck? But it left me with this massive hole of unanswered questions. I don’t know what to do.
” She looked at him. “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. ”
Carlos put his hand over hers, and she curled her fingers and held on. “It could be that you spend your whole life figuring out the answer to that question.”
“Everyone else seems to already have the answer.”
“And you think the Shrine will give you yours?”
Eliana shrugged, still holding his hand.
“At least it will fill some of the holes. I know the basics of my mom and dad fighting against them, and how they captured her when she was pregnant with me. That’s one of the reasons she didn’t want me having anything to do with them.
They made her in a test tube and impregnated her mother.
What if they did something to me then, or now? I need to know.”
“What happened to us yesterday is scary, but you aren’t wrong or broken.” Carlos squeezed her hand gently. “I think everyone has a time in their life when they believe that about themselves. You know who you are in Christ.”
She nodded. “But I can’t ignore the human part of me and just be spiritual, happy, and peaceful. I need something to do. I need a reason to go out and get stuff done.”
“You need a purpose. Like finding people, or bringing justice to the world.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s not so abnormal to not find your ‘thing’ until later in life.”
Eliana squeezed back, then let go because it was weird to still be connected.
She sat back in the couch seat and let the silence hang between them for a moment.
She did need the peace and the reassurance.
The knowledge of who she was would always be important—but a foundation without a structure on it was just a slab of concrete.
She needed to construct the building that was her life—but didn’t know where to start.
“Sorry I was whining,” she said.
Carlos shook his head. “I want to know how it’s going. The frustrations and setbacks are part of it.” He took a breath like he was bracing to say what he needed to say. “I wanted things to be good with Bethany, so I ignored when it wasn’t.”
“I feel like all I have right now is the not-good stuff. The harder parts of life, where I’m trying to figure things out.” What she wanted was to find some good. Not dump all over him.
“Eventually, she got sick of me not ‘engaging’ with her and she left. Filed for divorce. The whole thing lasted two years. Which when you’re twenty is basically forever.”
For Eliana, his marriage had lasted for what seemed like forever, as well.
Which meant she was still nursing her feelings for him.
Always would. Carlos was a good guy—one of the best she’d ever met—but he’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t feel that way about her.
So they would remain friends, cousins, or siblings almost. If she was going to have him in her life forever, she couldn’t be hung up on him all that time.
She smiled. “Her loss.”
“We, uh, should do some research into the Reverence Sisters. See if we can figure out where they’ve gone.” He got up and disappeared for a second, and she tried not to read anything into that.
When he came back, Eliana decided to set aside all the angst she’d been feeling.
Luci’s safety mattered more than getting an answer to what she was supposed to do with her life.
Carlos hadn’t told her she made the wrong choice.
He hadn’t told her she should leave the entire issue of Dominatus and how it connected to her life alone.
That didn’t mean he thought she was doing the right thing, or that she would find what she was looking for.
But to her, it said that he at least supported her choice, which meant a lot.
He opened his laptop and clicked through screens. “Oh, good. I got a response.”
She wanted to sit forward and lean the outside of her arm against his. Doing so would shift this to something else entirely, so she stayed where she was. Right around when she got comfortable with him being in her life again, he’d meet someone and she’d have to let him go.
It would be much safer to keep this thing firmly in the friends and family zone and keep her heart from getting shredded again.
Who knew. Maybe she would be the one who met someone.
He looked at her. “I asked the FBI what they had on the Reverence Sisters, just in case they have a file. They do. The ‘Mother’ is on a watchlist, but no one has been able to identify her.”
“Like they seriously have no idea who she is?”
He turned his laptop slightly, showing that all they had was a gray outline of a person where the photo should be in the square. “As yet unidentified. But the group has been in existence in Illinois for twenty years at least, and they only ever have twelve or so ‘Sisters.’”
“How do they know that?”
“It’s based on people who’ve gone missing. Interviews done, and witness testimony. Most of that came from Faith after she escaped.”
“Do they have any other locations—houses or camps—like the one we visited?”
He smiled slightly.
“What?”
“You are good at this, you know.”
She shook her head, clueless as to what he was talking about.
“Investigating.” He held his breath for a second. “Maybe your parents were wrong to keep you out of police work. Though I don’t think you should become a private investigator. You need more structure than that.”
Eliana sighed. “Let’s just find Luci. Then I’ll figure out what to do.” She wasn’t interested in rehashing the whole conversation.
He nodded. “They’ve flagged a house outside Oswego and have it under surveillance. With the investigation into the community we found, and what might’ve happened there, it’s possible the surveillance will be scaled back. But hopefully, we’ve given them something to move on.”
“Like the blood on that gown?” And what had happened to her and Carlos.
“Exactly. If the clothes were worn and the cups were drunk out of, they might find DNA evidence. But that’s if the person is in any of the systems we can check against. And the tests will probably take weeks.
” He closed the laptop. “I’ll make an appointment with the FBI to find out what they’ve learned from the house they have under surveillance.
Maybe she’s there. It’s not nothing. Eventually, we’ll find her. ”
Meanwhile whoever had subdued them and stuck them with needles was still out there.
She felt fine right now, but how long would that last?