Persuasion Enraptured

  Levi shook his head. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Some things can’t be consented to, Malcolm. Some things, like Top Hat, are wrong.” He turned and walked toward the back door. “I’ll be by the river. When everything blows up in your faces.”

  I stood, slowly, watching him leave. “I’m really confused.”

  “You know Levi has never been right since his possession.” Henry looked at the floor when he spoke. “Less said the better. So who wants to take a walk?”

  I grabbed a sling from the table, and after readjusting the baby, I strolled with the others down the path away from the house. My head hurt. I wasn’t going to complain. I’d spent a week in bed that I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t want to be sent back there.

  I took a deep breath and kissed Abigail’s soft head. She was in a sling in front of me, which freed up my hands while we walked. Block was on my left and Malcolm on my right. Pretty soon, we would cross out of the safe area into where we’d be exposed. Top Hat could find us if he wanted to.

  “So, I said to the guy behind the counter, ‘Look, you can either make the change or I’m never coming back here.’” Peter spoke to Logan and Ross. They were all enrapt in a conversation I couldn’t follow. Pregnancy brain had warped my brain cells. I was having a hard time concentrating.

  Malcolm put his arm around me. “How are my girls?”

  “We’re …” A sudden jolt moved through me. There was a shadow nearby. I knew it like I knew I could breathe. Yet I saw none, and no one around me reacted at all. I raised my hand. “Henry, duck.”

  Fortunately, he responded. I sent a burst of energy from my fingers into what looked like empty air. A shadow exploded, becoming visible seconds before it disappeared into nothingness. I stared at my hand in awe—how the hell had I done that?

  Everyone fell silent, staring at me. Ross scratched his head. “Dude, Kendall, that was badass. I don’t think that was Top Hat, but you made that shadow die in seconds.”

  Abigail cried, and I rocked her, which was convenient because I needed to be soothed as well. “I have no idea. I knew he was there, spying on us, and I knew what to do about it. In fact, they’re all over. Everywhere. At least fifteen of them.”

  I whirled around. I could see the fuckers as though they were visible when I knew they weren’t. Bam. I pushed electricity out of me over and over. Quickly, the shadows were no more, our invisible spies sent, hopefully, back to where the universe stored the terrible creatures.

  My heart raced, and yet my body didn’t seem otherwise bothered by the experience, like it remembered somehow doing it before. Like sit-ups, I might not have done them for a while but I knew how.

  I stared at Victoria. “What did you do to me with that spell?”

  She cleared her throat, her hand coming to her neck. “Must be some kind of unexpected consequences.”

  I’d known that woman in two lifetimes. She’d had my back when I didn’t know we were lifelong friends. Even though everything in me revolted against the idea, I knew one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: Victoria had lied to me. Henry put his arm around her and led her from me while I stood there flabbergasted.

  I stared at Malcolm, who quickly took my hand and led me away. “That was some impressive shooting on top of the fact you knew they were there when we couldn’t see them. Why couldn’t we?”

  “You’re asking me? I am clueless in this, Malcolm. Something is wrong, and Victoria is lying to me.”

  He shook his head. “No, she’s not.”

  “Don’t argue with me. I know what I know.”

  “Maybe she’s nervous. She doesn’t have her powers. That’s what you’re seeing.”

  And Malcolm was lying, too.

  I leaned over to kiss Abbi to give myself a second to recover. Just because they were lying didn’t mean, necessarily, there was something nefarious going on. There were reasons people lied, and sometimes they were good ones. I had a problem with lying. For years, when I hadn’t had my memory, they’d conducted a lot of elaborate schemes to watch me without my knowing it.

  I took a deep breath. I needed to think, but it wouldn’t be here.

  “Please don’t kill me, Lightbringer. Those were some impressive moves. You have shadow all over you. What happened?” Top Hat illuminated in front of me, and my body went on high alert. I wanted to kill him. I was made to do so.

  Malcolm squeezed my hand. “When the time is right, I’ll kill you, Top Hat. Kendall, keep it together. Don’t exert yourself right now. We’re ready to deal. What do you want?”

  Top Hat touched his hat, which I found sort of funny. Knowledge washed over me. It was never a hat. It was part of his body. Like, an addition to his head. Levi thought he had an unpronounceable Viking name, but maybe it was different. Maybe he wasn’t exactly human. Nausea rolled through me, and I ignored it. I needed Ross to look at me when we got home.

  “Well, first off, I want you not to kill me, ever.”

  Malcolm shook his head. “No dice. But we won’t kill you while we’re doing business together. Beyond that, I make no promises.”

  Top Hat, in his shadow form, cocked his head to the side. “Fine. When I’ve given you The Master, I want to go back to the Shadow Dimension. I have no stomach for this place anymore. I want to be in the Shadow Dimension without The Master and his cronies.”

  He’d move on to somewhere else, causing havoc on someone’s else’s world, someone else’s place where there was no Michael, Gabriel, or Rafael to train anyone to do anything about it. He’d be unstoppable.

  I took a deep breath. Was that my problem? I’d been charged with one job, and I was doing it—or at least I was trying. Was I responsible for the fate of the entire universe?

  “Fine. That’s a deal. We’ll get you sent back.” If Victoria couldn’t, I’d find someone who could. The truth was, I was lying to a shadow and I didn’t care. I might explode him when we took out The Master. I didn’t care if I broke my promises. I’d never promised to be a good person, just to get the shadows off Earth.

  I don’t know why I knew he smiled. But he did. “Then I’ll tell you where The Master is. He lives the high life in the Driskill Hotel. But they’ll be leaving there soon. New digs. They have the penthouse. They’re wreaking havoc, and no one is the wiser because anyone who complains gets possessed. Soon, they’ll have taken over downtown.”

  He stepped away. “Don’t forget your promise. I want to go back. I don’t want to be killed.”

  I wondered why not. If I killed him, he’d likely end up in the Shadow Dimension. Seemed a pretty decent way to get him there fast. Maybe it hurt for him to die? What happened to a shadow when it died?

  Ashes …

  My head pounded now. With a quick grace I couldn't repeat if I tried, I passed the baby to the still silent Chase, then turned over and puked all over the ground. Over and over again. Hands came quickly, grabbing my hair, and words were spoken that I paid no attention to at all.

  What had happened in the kitchen? Where was my missing week? All I knew, beyond the lying and what had to be a conspiracy because there was nothing else to call it, was something was very, very wrong with me.

  I needed help.

  Unfortunately, I had no earthly idea where to get it.

  * * *

  I was supposed to be resting, but I couldn’t turn off my thoughts. They wouldn’t leave me alone. How was I to make sense of anything when the two people I trusted more than anyone in the world were deliberately misleading me? I preferred that word to “lying." Chase wouldn’t look at me, and the events of the afternoon took on a much darker light when I looked at them through the filter of everyone avoiding the truth when they were around me.

  My imagination went all kinds of places. I wondered if I’d died. Had I lost my life? They’d brought me back, but something was wrong?

  Movement caught my attention outside. My ex-husband fished with the boys. Molly sat on the grass, her dolls in hand. Malcolm and Victoria weren’t the
only ones I trusted. For years and years, Levi had been everything to me. I had a hard time believing he would be part of a conspiracy against me. We were many things—some of them good, some of them bad—but in the end, we’d learned the hard way how to have each other’s backs.

  I walked out to them, wariness crossing Molly’s eyes before it went away. The boys turned to look at me and then quickly back at the water. What was wrong with my family? Why were they afraid of me?

  “Hi,” I called out, and they all replied in kind. I made my way toward them until I was shoulder-to-shoulder with Levi. “Can I speak with you?”

  He nodded, strain on his face. “Boys, take Molly. Go in the house. Get out the Monopoly board. I want to play, and maybe Mommy will join us.”

  “Gladly.” Malcolm had Abbi, and he’d give her a bottle if need be.

  With the kids out of earshot, my ex-husband turned to me. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not crazy. I refuse to believe it. Everyone is lying. Something is wrong. What is going on?”

  He turned away and stared at the water. “The smart move here would be to keep my mouth shut.”

  If he said nothing else, at least he’d confirmed it.

  Chapter Three

  My ex-husband kicked a piece of dirt. “We’d been told to stay away. You’d been gone for a week. The kids were really anxious to see that you’d gotten home again.”

  I didn’t follow his beginning. “Where had I gone?”

  “You threw yourself into a hole to stop the shadows from coming through. Ended up in the Shadow Dimension. Michael had told Malcolm the timeline would be off. He didn’t know how long you’d be there in comparison to how time moved here. Victoria got busy. It took a week. In the meantime, I took the kids, and we went on vacation. Weirdest vacation ever, dodging shadows and watching Molly clear ghosts, but we did it. New Mexico has some beautiful mountains.”

  I could picture it, but that didn’t seem relevant right now. “Go on.”

  “No one called to tell us to come back. I assumed it was okay. When we got home, you were all in the living room. You looked … so different. Harder than I’d ever imagined you being. Angry. Detached. Somehow you were both of those things. You stared at the kids like they were strangers, threw Molly off of you when she hugged your leg, like she was a dog biting you.”

  I gasped. Tears rushing to my eyes. “What? That’s not possible.”

  “Apparently you came back from the shadow place changed, altered almost to the point of being unrecognizable. You were there a very long time.”

  Nothing he was saying even rang a bell. How could any of this be possible? It suddenly dawned on me. How could I not know any of this? Well, there was an easy answer. “Chase.”

  Levi nodded once. “I was against it. Vocally so. Malcolm was for it. You know how he loves you. I think this was about your pain. Also I’d imagine, his guilt you got stuck there in the first place. And his concerns for Abbi.”

  My head pounded like I’d suddenly become concussed. “I don’t need you to explain Malcolm to me.”

  He nodded. “Chase wouldn’t do it without your consent, and you weren’t giving him any.”

  I pointed to my head. “Then how did this happen?”

  “Grayson and Dexter. They were so angry with you. Screaming at you. I don’t even know how they understood what was going on. All they seemed to get was that there was a chance you could be better, and you weren’t taking it. Something seemed to click. You were silent, and then you told Chase to do it. I’m still against it. Whatever time you spent there, whatever damage was done there, you earned your life.”

  The world buzzed around me. “Even though I was terrible to the kids?”

  “I can keep you away from the kids. I can take them and go. Or you could get better. Someone comes back from war, you don’t take their memories of it away. They earned their pain. Maybe you needed some time. All of you in there—you’ve been fighting an unwinnable war for so long.”

  I didn’t follow his logic. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You think there’s no time, that there’s no hope. You have to run. You have to do it now. You have to get it done before it all ends. Kendall, there is nothing but time. Endless amounts of it. They didn’t give you any. Maybe you’re better; maybe you’re not. They underestimated you, regardless. You’ve hardly woken up with no memory of that time, and you’re already noticing them lying.”

  I touched his arm. “I don’t know what to do, Levi.”

  “Sometimes there are no good choices. There are no excellent outcomes. The happily ever after is dull at best. Or there isn’t one. We still have to live. You want my advice? Go in there and make Chase undo what he did. It’ll make him happy, regardless. He hated doing it.”

  The door to the house opened and shut. Even though there was a ton of us living in the house together, I knew it was Malcolm without turning around. He always affected my body like a light switch brightening a room.

  Levi lifted his head, presumably to meet Malcolm’s gaze. I didn’t have the energy. The whole weight of the world pressed on my shoulders. Did I knowingly live now with the understanding I was missing an incredible piece of myself, or did I insist on retrieving memories that would make me the kind of person who would reject my children?

  “I have to go talk to my daughter.”

  Malcolm rocked back on his heels. “The really tiny one is out cold.”

  “No, the one I hurt when I threw her off my leg.”

  I have to give my husband credit. He didn’t even flinch. Knowing Malcolm, he’d probably assumed we would eventually end up in this moment. He actually yawned. “Couldn’t wait to tell her, could you? Been biding your time? We’ve hardly gotten through a day.”

  Levi laughed, a long, cold sound. “Asshat, she came to me. Knew something was wrong.”

  “And you couldn’t play along? Come see me? Help me work this out? I did this as much for your children as Abbi. She did this for them. Nothing about what happened to Kendall should have prompted you to involve yourself at all.”

  Levi lunged at him. “My kids are not your business. I’ve only ever cared about her and them. If it wouldn’t cause Kendall pain, I’d drown you in the river.”

  “That so?” Malcolm shoved Levi back. “Go ahead, try.”

  “Stop it.” I shoved myself between them. I’d thought we were long past this kind of reaction between the two of them. But clearly, I’d underestimated the tension brewing beneath the surface. They separated, and Malcolm’s gaze finally fell on me.

  The anger he’d leveled at Levi flared in my direction. “Why did you go to him instead of me?”

  “Because you lied to me. I knew it. I could feel it over and over. I knew Levi wouldn’t.” I guess my own pissed-off state resonated around us because a loud boom sounded in the air above us, as if to accentuate the moment. An exclamation point coming to life …

  I pointed upward. “You think I wouldn’t notice that? My fingers vibrate and sound reverberates through the lawn? I’m not stupid. Victoria is talented but not that much that her healing me would do this. How did you expect to get away with this?”

  “I was hoping we could deal with The Master and go from there. Get rid of him—one, two, three—and then afterward figure out how to tell you what happened to you.”

  I squatted. This day was too much. “Bottom line, honey. We don’t do this anymore. We have a baby together. Isn’t it enough? Haven’t we kept enough secrets?”

  “You consented to this. You wanted it. Levi tell you that, or did he conveniently forget?” A chair flew across the back of the yard and slammed into a tree. Malcolm so rarely lost control. It was odd to see it happening and yet apropos at the same time. This was who we were. For better or worse, we could throw things with our minds.

  Levi shrugged like he wasn’t terrified to be around us. Had he really been the man who didn’t believe I could get rid of ghosts?

  What had happened to us?
Was Levi right? Did we rush things? Push them? Believe we never had time because that was what we’d been told? Should we all just stop?

  “I told her it was consensual. I don’t think that matters when you can’t remember it. See the problem? Hard for her to process she chose this when she can’t remember it.”

  Malcolm pointed at him. “You didn’t see her. You were with her for ten minutes. Total. You didn’t see her in that place. With the demons all around and the shadow creatures outside of her little cabin? She was gone, Levi. Worse than death. I’d rather cease to exist—hell, I’d rather she ceased to be in this world, and you know how I love her—than see her there again. I don’t believe she could come back from that.”

  Levi threw his hands in the air. “Aren’t you people all about fate? You’re fated soulmates. Maybe she’s supposed to be that way, and you’re supposed to learn to live with it.”

  “Enough.” We all turned at the sound of Michael’s voice.

  Malcolm threw his hands in the air. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

  “We talked about this.” Michael shook his head. “We all knew—including Kendall—that there was every chance Kendall would figure this out. Step two has to happen.”

  Malcolm put his head between his knees like he wanted to catch his breath. Whatever step two was, it must be really bad. I wanted to kick him for lying to me, even though it was hard for me to imagine. I loved the man. He drove me crazy, and I adored him as much as I ever had.

  “What is the second plan or whatever you’re calling it?” I was tired of being in the dark about my own life.

  “You come with me. We do boot camp, basically. We get you reset. Then you come back.”

  I knelt down in front of Malcolm. “Why are you afraid?”

  He lifted his head to meet my gaze. “I’m never afraid.”

  “Okay, bad word.” I had to remember his ego. I gritted my teeth. “Can we keep this on subject and you deal with your—whatever—later? Why does this bug you?”