29. ZARA
ZARA
Tilly was already in the kitchen when I got downstairs, helping herself to leftover birthday cake. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned my face.
“You look like…”
“I look like what?”
“Well, you look like someone who’s just had a very, very busy night, if you know what I mean,” she said, waggling her eyebrows at me. “You didn’t sneak someone into your apartment last night did you —oh my gods, did you bang the boss?”
“TILLY! You can’t say things like that. For the last time, there is nothing going on between me and Nero. I would never cheat on Seth.” Even the thought of it made me feel sick to my stomach.
“Whoa, chill out. I was only kidding. Nero did come back here last night though, after everyone had gone to bed.” She pointed to the table where all the half-eaten platters of food we hadn’t had the energy to deal with last night had disappeared and the plates were now clean and neatly stacked, waiting to be put away.
I couldn’t deny that looked like his handiwork.
“Well, if that was him, it was very sweet of him to do it, but I didn’t see hide nor hair of him last night after he’d left.”
“Hide nor hair of who?” Jules breezed into the kitchen looking far too chirpy for it being pre-noon and post-party.
“Nero. Looks like he snuck back last night and did a spot of cleaning up for us,” I said, giving Tilly a warning glare. “Unless you did it, Jules?”
“Not me. I was out like a light the minute my head hit the pillow. But I’m very glad we don’t have to deal with it this morning. Are you okay? You look bushed and you’ve only just got up.”
“I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep too well.” I brushed off her concern, not wanting to talk about last night’s dream with anyone else.
I busied myself starting up the coffee machine as I spoke so they wouldn’t see how flustered I was, because it had just occurred to me that if Nero had come back to do the dishes, then maybe he did decide to check up on me while he was here.
And if he had I really hoped all he had seen was me sound asleep with a very satisfied expression on my face.
“You had a message come through on your phone just now by the way.” Tilly’s announcement was a welcome distraction from worrying about what Nero might have seen.
“It’s from Olly. He said he’s got some information for you.
Something to do with Aleric and the rebellion.
” I glared at her. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because phone messages are private, Tilly. Like letters. We don’t read other people’s unless they say we can.”
“Well if you’re going to set your password to something so easy to guess, you pretty much are saying I can. Have you got any idea how many people use that one?”
Oh for fuck’s sake. Now I was going to have to change it, and I’d probably forget what it was by the next time my phone refused to recognise my face.
“Anyway, I told him to come over whenever he was ready. You’re welcome.” The familiar buzz of a portal opening was the only thing that saved Tilly from being read the riot act. Or possibly strangled. That and Jules begging to know if my password was 1234 or 1111.
“Neither,” Tilly said with a giggle. “It’s 2580.”
Setting myself a mental reminder to change it as soon as Olly left, I opened the kitchen door for him, surprised to see Eilif with him.
“I hope you don’t mind me tagging along,” he said, “I was hoping for a quiet word with you about something– oh, hello Jules, I wasn’t expecting to see you.
” He didn’t look terribly pleased to find her here and I wondered if he was pissed off at her for avoiding him all last night.
Or maybe she was the something he’d been hoping for a quiet word about.
“Hello Eilif.” She shot me a panicked look, and I mouthed the words ‘tell him’ at her behind his back before turning to greet Olly. It had taken me a long time to get used to thinking of him as that rather than Solomon, but I’d finally managed it.
“What did you want to talk to me about, Olly? Tilly said you had some information about Aleric.”
He shot Tilly a questioning look and she mumbled something about needing to get back to Avalon to get ready for work.
“Apparently I need to change the password on my phone,” I told him after she’d left.
“It isn’t 2580 is it?” he said, grinning at my muttered ‘not for much longer’.
“I just hope she hasn’t hacked her way into your laptop too,” Jules said. “I wouldn’t put it past her though.”
I felt the colour drain from my face. I’d deleted ‘that’ video from my phone, but it was still very much on my laptop, albeit with a separate password protecting it. She wouldn’t have. Would she?
“Olly, I’m sorry but you’re going to have to excuse me for just one second.”
I nearly always kept my laptop in my bedroom, and even Tilly wouldn’t have the nerve to go into my apartment and go through my stuff, but I’d brought it down last night to play the music for the party so she may well have seen it as fair game.
I was pretty confident she wouldn’t have had a chance to go snooping through it with everyone around, but I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on whatever Olly had to tell me until I knew it was secure.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I checked the recent files list and saw nothing had been opened.
By the time I returned to the kitchen Jules and Eilif had decided to go for a stroll outside, leaving me and Olly alone to chat.
“So, what did you have to tell me?” I asked once I’d poured him a coffee and cut him a slice of birthday cake to go with it.
“To be honest,” he sounded a bit hesitant, “I wasn’t sure whether to tell you or not, but as it concerns you, I thought you’d probably want to know.
We had a vampire sent to us to deal with a few days ago.
His offences were fairly minor, and he offered up information in exchange for only getting a warning this time.
He claims to know why Aleric was so keen to get his hands on you. ”
“Didn’t we already establish that it was to do with the Prophecy?”
“Well, we did, but we never really understood why, and we didn’t get the opportunity to interrogate him.
Not that I blame Jed for ending him after what he did.
From what this vampire told me, it sounds like Aleric had somehow managed to discover a little about both your prophecy and the one about the vampires and thought it was all part of the same one.
That the ‘being of great power’ was you and that you were going to be the key to vampires finally having control of their own destinies.
To his mind a great wrong being righted meant them taking what he saw as their rightful place in the mortal realm of course, not his half-brother finally regaining his freedom.
So by his reasoning, if he had you, the success of the rebellion was guaranteed. And if the guardians had you…”
“It wasn’t,” I finished. “You don’t think he was right, do you?
” We’d all assumed Lucien was the being of great power, but I’d been doing some pretty impressive tricks myself recently as my siren powers were starting to emerge.
Not that making lightbulbs explode was particularly useful, but I had managed to save Eli.
And Taryn had said it was very unusual for me to be a dream walker and to have the battle cry as well.
I couldn’t help recalling how Raquel had told Terrah I needed to explore my powers.
Could Aleric have known more about this than we were giving him credit for?
He’d certainly gone to great lengths to try and take me, even after the rebellion had been crushed.
Maybe that hadn’t been about revenge after all, but a last ditch effort to turn things around.
Olly was looking at me like I’d run mad, so I set about putting his mind at rest. “Just kidding.” Kind of. “I think one being of great power’s enough for us to contend with, don’t you?”
“Definitely. And from what Seth eventually told me about the Prophecy,” – still sore about being kept out of the loop for so long then – “your powers started to manifest long before the whole fates aligning thing. It doesn’t really matter now why he wanted you anyway.
I just thought you might like to know. Tie up a few loose ends so to speak.
” Or unravel a few I’d thought were already neatly tied off.
“I suppose I’d better head back to Four now I’ve filled you in.” He didn’t sound particularly enthused at the prospect, and I wondered if he resented having to spend so much of his time there when all the other guardians were here in the mortal realm.
“Eilif came with me because he wanted to ask you if you knew what was going on with Jules, but it looks like he’s getting the chance to find out for himself. I’ll go and wait for them outside.”
Once he’d left I did my best to shake off my niggling sense of doubt.
I might have some abilities I needed to explore but I couldn’t compete with a Watcher in the power stakes.
And besides, like Olly had said, the being of great power was supposed to rise after the rest of us came together.
My siren powers had started to manifest long before Jules came into our lives.
There was one person who would be able to put my doubts to rest once and for all though. And after what Jules had told me last night, I was pretty sure she would know exactly how I could get in touch with her.
“Is it okay if I put the kettle on while I’m waiting for Dad to come and get me?”
“Don’t you dare ring him yet.” Jules had just returned from her conversation with Eilif looking a little flustered and there was no way she was getting out of here without a full debrief. “How much did you tell Eilif and what did he say?”
“I told him the truth. That I find him very attractive, and I’m not averse to taking things further, but I’m into someone else too and I don’t want to have to choose between them.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He said he’s not interested in sharing, but he’s not bothered about us being exclusive either.”
“So… by sharing, you mean both at the same time, like…?”
“All three of us together. It’s a shame, but if it’s not his thing, it’s not his thing.”
“And you told him who the other person is?”
“Well, not exactly.” Honestly, getting information out of her today was like pulling teeth.
“What do you mean by not exactly?”
“I just said there was someone. I think he assumed it was another man. To be fair, he didn’t ask for details. Just said what I did when I wasn’t with him was up to me and he didn’t need to hear about it. Then he kissed me and I forgot all about Raquel.”
“That good?”
“Very impressive for someone who’s been locked up for hundreds of years. I can’t help thinking how good he’d be if he’d had all those years to practice. It’s criminal really. We’re going to meet up for a drink next weekend and take things from there.”
“And what about Raquel? Are you seeing her soon too?”
“Maybe. Why the sudden interest in my love life? Are you just living vicariously through me, or are you asking for a reason?”
“I need to talk to her. When she visited me before she said she’d come back but she hasn’t, and I need to ask her about some things. Can you help me get hold of her?”
“I might be seeing her tonight. I’m not sure yet. I don’t mind giving her a message if I do, but whether or not she’ll want to answer your questions is down to her. It might help if I could tell her what you want to ask her about.”
“It’s just something she said when we first heard about the Prophecy. About my siren abilities. You can tell her I promise not to try and annihilate her this time if it helps.” She paused with her mug of tea halfway to her mouth.
“What the fuck did you do to her last time?”
“My siren powers got a little excited, that’s all. A few light bulbs paid the price, but I didn’t hurt her.”
“Okaaay.” The way she drew the word out made it clear she was undecided whether it was okay or not.
“I’ll tell her you want to talk to her. But if she comes to see you again, please try and remember that she’s not the villain in this story.
I know she’s not the hero either and I hated her at first when I found out she’d kept me from my dad, but she had her reasons for doing what she did. ”
Maybe she had a point. Although Raquel had manipulated us all into following the destiny the Prophecy had set out for us, she hadn’t been the one who’d created it on a drunken whim.
And Jules and Eli probably had more cause to resent her than any of us, so if Jules could forgive her, perhaps she wasn’t beyond redeeming herself.