Chapter 5 #4
They’re all worried I’ve manipulated them.
They’ve watched me as I burned down the Cataclysm’s compound or had a berserker kneel before me, and then passed through two borders without question.
They think they truly understand me now as I stand before them with the lotto tickets in hand and my bright-violet eyes hidden behind dark glasses. They think I’m fucking with them too.
“That first glass of water,” I say evenly. “That was all you.”
Jewels looks at me intently, trying to meet my eyes through my sunglasses.
“I haven’t touched your threads,” I add, not certain why the fuck I’m justifying fucking rescuing them when I could have just gone home.
“And the ticket?”
“Don’t take it,” I say, almost tauntingly.
Jewels stiffens her shoulders. “I owe you nothing more.”
Angie hisses under her breath.
“You never owed me in the first place,” I say easily, though my raised arm is getting tired. “But your fear will take you only so far on your own.”
Jewels practically bares her teeth at me. Lou shifts uncomfortably. Trixie’s desperation to get away from me is all but leaking through her pores.
“For the baby,” I say without thinking about it. And then suddenly, I understand that the child Jewels is carrying is important to the universe. Perhaps for the most minor of reasons, but that is literally how the thread is woven.
I thought this entire rescue might have been centered around Cal, with the others just along for the ride.
Jewels plucks the scratch ticket from my hand. “Fine,” she says. “I’m … I didn’t like what he was doing to you, but … it could have been worse.”
“Good to know,” I say caustically.
She flinches, opening her mouth to clarify her observations about my imprisonment. Angie squeezes her daughter’s wrist, cautioning her.
Ignoring them and achingly aware that I absolutely don’t want to be in this moment any longer, I hold the tickets out to Lou.
“What will I owe you?” she asks nastily. “I get what you are, what the color of your eyes means. Like, a life debt, right? That’s not a fair trade for a couple hundred or even a thousand bucks.”
“If you were destined to die in the Federation,” I say, not completely answering her question because I don’t actually know, “you already owe me your life.”
“Take it,” Cal snaps from the base of the slide.
Lou flinches, then plucks the second-last ticket from my hand.
Trixie takes a large step back before I even offer her the final ticket. And that’s a choice, isn’t it? So I simply tuck it in the back pocket of my ridiculous cutoff shorts, turning in Cal’s direction. “I’ll buy you a burger.”
He juts his chin out. “What if I want something else?”
I quash a smile. He really doesn’t need encouragement. “Anything I can give you is yours for the taking,” I say, essence threading through the promise.
Lou steps forward as if she’s going to grab my arm. She doesn’t, but her chest rattles with the growl of her beast. A bear, I assume. “We’re leaving,” she snaps, rubbing her chest as if the sound was disconcerting. “Without you.”
“I knew that already,” I say, more amused than pissed now. “We’re headed in opposite directions, after all.”
“Right,” she says, blinking as if she’s just realized how utterly rude she’s being. “We need to keep moving.”
“He’s not coming after you.”
“For Cal, he will.”
“And why is that?” I ask mockingly, interested to see if she’ll drop the pretense about Cal not being the Cataclysm’s kid even though she’s already admitted as much.
She doesn’t. “He can find us, take us, without coming himself.”
“He’s otherwise occupied,” I say. I know it’s the truth because it’s me he’ll be hunting, might already be hunting. “Cal and I have time for a conversation.”
“I’m his guardian,” Lou insists. “He doesn’t need you in his life, or … the brothers that abandoned him …”
I lower my voice. “Is that the vitriol you’ve been pouring into him? To keep him tied to you?”
She jerks away from me, face flushing. “It’s not … that’s not …”
Cal heaves himself off the bottom of the slide as if he’s a road-worn eighty years old, not twelve. “It’s my choice,” he says, looking at me but responding to Lou.
“Yes,” I say.
“No,” she says.
We wait.
Cal jerks his head toward the cafe. “Let’s go, then.”
“You’re going to need a shirt,” I say. “This is California.”
Cal grumbles, swerving back toward the trucks and presumably his suitcase. “Meet you there.”
Lou watches him go, fear edging her gaze.
I understand being attached to the child she’s been caring for — for his sake.
But there’s something about Lou’s fear that’s …
off. As if she needs Cal to survive. Not nefariously, I don’t think.
Otherwise, the universe wouldn’t be giving Cal a choice.
No, if Lou was hurting him in some way, she wouldn’t have made it out of the Federation with us.
“What?!” she snaps at me, then pivots away to join Jewels and Angie. Trixie has retreated into the playground, but her gaze is on me. A hint of regret in the look.
That regret deepens when a tiny gasp comes from Jewels. Her hand is shaking as she stares down at the ticket she’s just scratched.
I turn away, heading toward the diner before Jewels can look up and do something stupid like thank me again.
I know now that she doesn’t really mean any of it.
The comment that the Cataclysm could have done worse things to me is sticking with me.
I can’t fault Jewels for doing whatever it takes to save her unborn child, but I don’t need to inflict my presence on her any longer.
A gorgeously maintained vintage metallic-green Mercedes-Benz 280 SE, its cognac-leather interior visible through the windows and sunroof, is parked in the handicapped spot next to the door of the diner. The sight distracts me from the morbid bent of my thoughts, as it was no doubt intended to do.
Apparently, the universe is delivering all sorts of bonuses today. First the sunglasses and now the car.
I won’t mind driving up the coast in that beauty.
I just hope that whatever I have to do to get my hands on the keys doesn’t take too long.
I’m exhausted. And for the first time in a very long time — maybe the first time ever — I want to be home and surrounded by the few people who actually see me, see me and care for me, as a person.
Not just as the vessel of the Conduit, a means to an end, or one of the nefarious purple-eyed awry.