Now those still missing were Grace, Ben, Horatio and Derek. As much as we searched among the branches of all the neighboring trees, and then headed to the ground to do a thorough search of the undergrowth, we couldn’t find them anywhere.
We couldn’t stall any longer. We had to get the others away from here—to some fresh air.
But now I was in a quandary. If those who were supposed to be in the cave had migrated here, perhaps that meant something had happened there. Maybe they’d been forced to leave. In which case, it made no sense to return there now.
Exhaling sharply, I hissed, “Take them back through the portal to Bermuda. Find a safe spot and do whatever you can to revive them. If you fail then take them back to The Shade.”
I hated the idea of everyone retreating so soon—of being outsmarted by the hunters so quickly—but there wasn’t room for pride in this situation. I was just terrified for everyone’s lives right now. I felt grateful that I had avoided alerting Jeramiah to this mission.
“And what will you do? Are you coming?” Safi called back. “And where is Horatio?”
It was probably a good thing that Horatio had insisted Aisha stay back from this mission, too, or she would be worried out of her mind for her husband.
I exchanged glances with Kailyn. It was clear from her expression that she would stay with me. “We need to stay and find the others,” I replied to Safi.
She nodded before she and the other jinn transported the rest of our people through the gate.
I let out a shallow sigh of relief. At least we had gotten them out of here.
What a mess this is…
Now we had to scour this jungle for the missing four.
Kailyn and I soared further away from the portal. As we passed poison tree after poison tree, I suddenly noticed something I hadn’t before. Something that had escaped my attention due to my brain being primarily focused on searching for the forms of my family among the branches.
The peachy-colored leaves. They looked different. Previously smooth and bloated, they now looked shriveled and wrinkly, as though the fluid had been sucked out of them.
I gazed around to check that we hadn’t just come across an anomaly, but we hadn’t. Every leaf within sight had been altered.
“Oh, dear,” Kailyn breathed. “Whatever this gas is, it seems to be serving a dual purpose…”
Grace
So this wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined my reunion with Lawrence would go—standing tensely at the edge of the room while watching him being dangled up and down by Horatio like a sack of potatoes.
After the jinni had failed to wake him with that method, since Lawrence was still breathing and obviously not dead, I could only assume that his profound sleep had something to do with his recent transformation. Maybe this was normal. But we didn’t have all night to figure it out.
I spotted a mini-cooler beneath a dressing table. I stooped down to it and opened the door. It was filled with chilled glass bottles of water.
After all that shaking, would cold water have a chance of waking him? I gritted my teeth. If I pour it over him the right way it should…
I emptied the cooler of water with the help of my father, and together we hurriedly unscrewed all the lids and placed the bottles on the bedside table closest to Lawrence’s head. I grabbed one of the sheets from his bed and folded it up so that it was just wide enough to fit over the lower portion of his face. Placing it firmly over his mouth and nose, I reached for the first bottle and tipped it onto the cloth.
I hated to resort to waterboarding, but this guy just wasn’t waking up.
The water spilling down Lawrence’s nostrils and blocking his airways finally made him stir. God only knew what spell he’d been under to make him sleep so deeply. As he coughed and spluttered, I quickly shot Horatio and my father a look, indicating that they make themselves invisible.
As they disappeared, Lawrence’s hands moved to his face. I managed to remove my hand just in time before his fingers curled around the wet sheet and threw it away from his face.
I staggered back as he sat bolt upright, his eyes wide and shining, his wet hair licking the sides of his face. The next thing I knew, he had jerked backward. He threw himself off the bed and whipped out a gun from a hidden pocket in the side of the mattress. Kneeling on the floor, he aimed it at me.
“Wait!” I hissed, holding up my hands. I was addressing Horatio and my father just as much as Lawrence. If they manifested now, this would all be over before we’d even started. It looked like it was going to be hard enough to get through to Lawrence on my own, let alone with two strange men in the room too.
“Who-Who are you?” Lawrence demanded. His familiar British voice took on a fierce tone I wasn’t used to.
I knelt before him on the bed. “My name is Grace,” I whispered urgently. “Grace Novak. You know me… Or knew me. I mean you no harm. Please. I just need to talk to you.” I prayed that the earnestness in my voice would get through to him, if nothing else.
His brown eyes raked over my face. “Grace?” he asked in a thankfully quieter tone. “I don’t know any Grace. Who are you, and what the bloody hell are you doing in my room?” His eyes ticked to the wet sheet. “You were waterboarding me?”
He rose to his feet slowly, the contours of his chest clearly visible beneath his wet shirt. He kept the gun steady in his hands.
“Only to wake you up!” I assured him.
“Are you a… vampire?” he asked, narrowing his eyes on me.
Crap. I really must have been looking deathly pale by now for his first guess to be a bloodsucker. I was about to respond when his expression darkened. “Oh, I know. I saw you in that cave. You were among the rebels who kidnapped my father.”
“I was,” I whispered.
I felt the blood drain from my face as I gazed up at him. So clueless. So oblivious. Where do I even start? He doesn’t remember a single thing…
I could only think that, as with all stories, I ought to start from the beginning.
“Will you sit down?” I asked quietly, realizing that I would find this a lot less intimidating without him towering over me. I was feeling so damn weak, so lethargic, since my last bout of tremors, it felt like a strain to hold my head tilted at this angle.
Lawrence hesitated. Then, keeping his gun aloft, he moved round the bed toward my side until he was standing behind me.
“Stand up,” he commanded me.
I acquiesced.
“Remove your backpack.”
I shrugged the bag off my shoulders and pushed it aside on the floor.
He strode in front of me, his brows deeply furrowed. His hands reached out and closed around my arms. His touch sent tingles down my spine as his palms traveled to my wrists before returning to the upper half of me. He continued to run his hands over my clothing, searching my back, chest and sides through my clothes. After inspecting my legs, from my thighs to my feet, he gestured to the mattress with a nod.
“I’ll give you a minute to explain yourself,” he said in a low voice. “Talk, Ms. Novak.”
I sank back onto the mattress, while he seated himself a safe distance away from me. His gun remained pointed at my chest.
The coldness in his eyes, the indifference, sent a chill stealing through me. Bracing myself, I ran my tongue over my cracked lower lip before beginning, “Have you ever heard of The Shade?”
He nodded. “Home to rebels with little to no respect for the work of the IBSI.”
I smiled bitterly. You got that right.
“Well, you lived among us ‘rebels’ once, Mr. Conway,” I said. “And you got pretty comfortable on our island, too. You even begged us not to give you back to the IBSI when they came to reclaim you. You literally preferred to die than be handed back.”
His mask cracked, his jaw twitching. I could tell that I had unnerved him, but there was still no sign of actual recognition in his eyes.
“We found you locked up in an underground bunker,” I went on, “in The Woodlands
. You had been heavily drugged, and lost all memory of your former life. Y-You looked about as sickly as I do now… I became your caregiver.”
He cleared his throat, his right hand loosening and repositioning around the gun’s handle. “I suggest you give me a strong reason to believe a word you’re saying.”
“For a start, I know your mother’s full name. Georgina Susanna Conway.”
His brows raised, but he didn’t look too impressed. “That’s hardly sufficient credibility for your story.”
I was seconds from spitting out, And I know she was murdered. By your cold-blooded brute of a father. But somehow, I didn’t think this was the right time to spill that yet. Lawrence was having enough trouble trusting my story as it was. He’d been so thoroughly brainwashed, I doubted he had it in him to believe his father could have been responsible for her death.
“I visited your grandparents,” I proceeded. I figured my only option at this point was to keep hitting him with little pieces of information, keep planting little niggling doubts at the back of his mind that would eventually eat into his reason, even if any single piece of evidence I could offer him wasn’t strong enough. It was agony to think how much easier this would have been if I’d just had a photograph of the two of us with me. “Lovely folks. Spencer and Angela Hulse. They own a pub called the Old Fox and live in Bristol, England. When was the last time you saw or spoke to them?” I asked, hoping to overwhelm him with my knowledge.
His lips cracked apart. Disturbance flashed in his eyes.
“You… You’ve been stalking my family?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“Yes,” I replied, reluctant. “I guess I have.”
My words had backfired on me. Instead of considering my message, the reason why I was telling him about my visit to his grandparents, his brain had gotten stuck on taking objection to a strange—apparently vampire—girl, stalking his family… which I guessed was fair enough.
His right hand clenched again around his gun and he rose to his feet.
But even as he stood armed before me, somehow, I still couldn’t bring myself to feel afraid of him. But maybe that was just stupidity on my part. God knew, I had been known to be stupid before.
“Please, Lawrence,” I urged, trying to keep my tone even, “will you just hear me out—”
He shook his head. Whatever window of openness I had seen in his eyes a few minutes before slammed shut. “How did you get in here?”
“Law—”
“Answer my question.” It turned flat, uncompromising. Despite the difference in accents, it suddenly reminded me chillingly of his father’s.
“The trap door, above the kitchen,” I murmured.
“You need to leave,” he said.
His forefinger glided over the trigger as I moved to appeal. “Leave,” he repeated, glaring at me. His voice dropped deeper. “Before I change my mind about letting you leave at all.”
He stepped backward, his left hand reaching for the door handle.
My desperation triggered a light to switch on in my brain.
“Wait,” I breathed. “Just. Wait.”
I rushed around the edge of the bed to where I had dropped my backpack to the floor. My notebook. Why didn’t I think of that before?
Grabbing the pink notebook, I moved back to Lawrence.
From the look on his face as I had whirled on him, it seemed like he had been expecting me to withdraw a weapon. His eyes widened as I brandished the notebook.
“Take it,” I hissed, shoving it toward his free left hand.
He clasped it. Staring down at the book, he hardly breathed.
Does this ring a bell in your head? Do you recognize it, even in the slightest?
“I want you to read it,” I whispered, even as a bitter ache gripped my chest. I recalled the night we’d spent in that old abandoned castle—the last night we’d spent together—when I had been so hesitant to let him read what I’d written in this journal. Now here I was, urging him to take a peek.
I turned to the first page for him, remembering that my notes all referred to “Josh”, rather than Lawrence. “I referred to you with a different name on these pages,” I explained quickly, worried that he might immediately discount my notes. “I refer to you as Josh. Josh was the name you gave—”
“Josh.” The name expelled from Lawrence’s lips in a soft breath.
Hope surged through me as I searched his eyes. There was no sparkle of recollection within his irises as I had wished I’d see. Instead his eyes glazed over, as he whispered again, “Josh…”
Lawrence
“Josh.” My mother’s brown eyes looked deep into mine as she spoke. “You’ll remember that, won’t you, darling? That’s what we’ll call you after we leave next week. But only for a little while. Just until we meet up with Deirdre.”
I nodded, nestling deeper beneath the covers of my bed.
“Dad is busy on his trip, so he won’t call before I return. Linda will be here to look after you.”
I nodded again.
My mother leaned closer and planted a kiss over my forehead. Then she eyed her watch.
“Well, it’s past your bedtime,” she said, smiling. Mum’s smile always made me feel warm inside, but somehow tonight was different. It didn’t seem like she was… really smiling.
“Why can’t I come with you?” I asked.
“Sweetheart, it’s only for a week. It will be gone in no time. Linda’s got lots of exciting plans lined up for you. She’s going to take you sledding tomorrow… Oh, and she’s going to make your favorite crusty roasted potatoes for lunch.”
I nodded, though, like my mother’s smile, it didn’t feel like I really meant it.
My mother kissed me again, on either side of my face. Then she rose from the edge of my bed and headed to the door. She pulled the door behind her so that it remained slightly ajar, creating a crack of light just how I liked it, before her footsteps disappeared down the hallway.
My breath hitched as my eyes refocused on the bright pink notebook in my hands.
The memory had washed over me, so searing and vivid, it was as though my mother’s departure had happened only yesterday. That was the last memory I had of her—the last time I’d ever seen her before the accident—and I couldn’t even recall the last time it had surfaced from the depths of my subconscious.
Josh.
The name this odd, pale girl had called me. That was what had brought it about.
Then something else tickled at the back of my mind. Another dusty memory, rising to the surface…
My father stood in the doorway of our home, where I had been expecting my mother to be standing two days earlier. He looked serious and tired as he clutched a pink, silk shawl in his hands. It looked just like one of my mother’s shawls, one that always smelled of her perfume. But this one was ruffled and torn, frayed at the edges. That can’t have been Mum’s.
Surprised but elated by my father’s unexpected visit, I left Linda’s side and hurried toward him. He wasn’t supposed to have come all the way to Scotland from America. Definitely not before Mum returned, and she and I had visited Deirdre.
He stepped in from the rain and bent down, gathering me to him as I wrapped my arms around him. He smelled of damp and cigarettes.
“How come you’re here, Dad?” I asked.
I felt him gulp against my shoulder. He was being awfully quiet. He hadn’t even said hello yet.
He carried me to the kitchen and sat me down in a chair. He seated himself next to me at the table. He was still holding the shawl tightly in his hand. His head dropped down. He looked sad. Sadder than I had ever seen him.
“Where’s Mum?” I asked worriedly.
He still didn’t talk.
I slid off my chair and tugged on his sleeve. “Dad? Where’s Mum?”
Finally, he stopped being a statue. He looked at me with his sad eyes and replied, “You’re going to return with me to America, Lawrence… Mom won’t be coming back here.”
/> I was barely even aware of the girl in front of me anymore. Or the room around me. My surroundings became invisible as my past washed over me.
After the first two memories—some of the earliest memories I possessed—I started remembering other things that I hadn’t recalled in a long time. For some odd reason, my brain started ticking over the years that had followed my father’s and my permanent departure from our second home in Scotland—a small renovated coastal castle—to America. I remembered how he had sold the place weeks after, how I had been forced to accept that we would never go back. How, in the weeks that followed, my father had finally told me what had happened to my mother. That she had been in an accident. There were blurs in my memory after that, during my pre-pubescent years. I supposed that grief and depression accounted for much of it. But one recollection remained with me: the persistent absence of my father after my mother’s death.
My next most vivid memory was the year I started Creston Academy. My father had made an appearance on my induction day as he’d promised he would the last time I’d seen him, a couple of months before. I remembered the way he took me aside in the Academy’s lobby and told me to work hard. That there would be brighter days ahead for me, for both of us. That I would see more of him as I got older. That we would become closer. He said that, once I had graduated, we could work together, and he was counting the days until that happened.
I moved into the Academy’s accommodations and spent the next string of my teenage years doing exactly as my father had advised me to do. Those were, indeed, brighter days. I became a happier person in that Academy. I was surrounded by more people my own age—no longer homeschooling, as I had been prior. The work was challenging and demanding, both physically and mentally. I threw myself into my study, and was second to none in my class. Whereas Creston Academy was a torture to be tolerated for many students, a place they looked forward to leaving every vacation, for me, it became a haven. My father visited me every few months or so—mostly we just spent an evening together, went out to dinner. One year leaked into the next until I was ready to graduate.