Her heart swelled with sympathy for Key. His whole identity, everything he did, was wrapped up in leading his brothers. “This is huge, Jax. Even bigger than my telling him I don’t think it’ll ever happen for us.”
“Nothing is bigger than that, Jordan. But it goes to the heart of the problem, and why you think you’re confused. I don’t believe you’re confused at all. You know exactly what you want, and you’re frustrated and angry because you can’t have it.”
She’d known this wouldn’t be easy. “What do I want?”
“You want Key, but only if he’ll change to be how you want him. We all want an Anabo who’ll like us enough to stay, and we want there to be love because it means we have a chance of Heaven. But as much as anything, we want to be accepted, in spite of what we are. Key has the added burden of what Eryx’s death did to him. He’s always been a loner because he never wanted us to get close enough to know he doesn’t hate Eryx. He let you get that close, and you burned him.”
“Should I have lied? It’s not some no-big-deal thing, like he asked if I think he’s funny, and I said yes so it wouldn’t hurt his feelings. This is who he is.”
“I’m not suggesting you should have lied. But you came back from death, then saved his life because there’s something there you can’t resist. You want that part of who he is, but you can’t accept the other, which is, ironically, the flip side of the same coin. That’s why you’re constantly conflicted.”
“I hear you saying that I just need to get over it, but don’t you think I’ve tried?”
“You’ve been through a helluva lot, ever since those lost souls broke into Matthew’s house, and you’ve been bombarded with an enormous amount of information and change in a very short time. Why don’t you slow down, not fret so much about Key, and enjoy these last weeks with your dad and your friends? Nothing’s going to be any different because you freaked out about it. Key’s not going anywhere, and neither are we. Eryx will do what he will do, people will pledge or they won’t, and nothing you do or say will change that.”
“I’ll try, Jax.” She really would, she promised herself. “And you’re right about Key, but you’re wrong about my being confused. When he’s with me, I’m constantly on edge. When he’s not, everything feels wrong.”
“Oh, that. You’re not confused. You’re falling in love. And it sucks almost as much as it’s amazing.”
“You’re as unfunny as Key.”
“Who’s trying to be funny? I’m dead serious.”
From a dark corner of a dirty, smoky bar in the sketchiest part of Bucharest, Key drank cheap whiskey and watched a waitress in a low-cut blouse and skintight pants serve drinks to very drunk patrons. She danced away from their hands, ignored their lewd come-ons, and somehow managed to keep smiling. He supposed it was difficult, but she pocketed a lot of tips, so maybe to her it was worth it.
She came back to his table and gave him that bright, happy smile. “Can I bring you another whiskey?”
He couldn’t stop staring at her, unnerved by her resemblance to Jordan. “Where do you go after you’re done here? Where do you live?”
She never lost her smile. “In an apartment, with a cat and the mice she’s too lazy to kill. How about another drink?”
Nice side step. “Yeah, I’ll have another one.”
Turning, she walked away, back toward the bar and the husky guy who tended it.
When she returned, he accepted the drink and handed her a hundred-dollar bill. She grinned. “I had a feeling you’re American.” The bill disappeared into her pocket.
He pointed to the chair across the table. “Give me two minutes.”
“I can’t sit down or Gustav will be angry. I’m sorry.”
Her voice was low and sexy, but he didn’t think it was on purpose. She’d been born this way. “I know who you are.”
She laughed and pointed to the name badge she wore above her left breast: MARIAH. “It’s not a secret.”
“I know a lot more about you than your name. You were born in a tiny village fifty miles from here to an older couple who thought they couldn’t have children. Not quite two years later, they had another daughter. When she was four, they were killed in a car wreck, and you and your sister came to live with your mother’s cousin here in Bucharest.”
Her smile had faded as he spoke, and now she was eyeing him apprehensively. “Who are you?”
“My name is Kyros.”
She darted a glance toward Gustav, then said softly, “What do you want?”
“I want to know how your sister wound up at an orphanage. Did your mother’s cousin take her there?”
“My sister died. You’ve got the wrong story, or the wrong person.” Turning, she walked away from him.
He stayed where he was and drank his whiskey while he continued watching her. As it grew closer to two in the morning, the drunks began to shuffle out, headed for home and hangovers. When he was the only patron left, and she couldn’t avoid him any longer, she came to the table and picked up his empty glass. “We’re closing now. You should go, because if you don’t, Gustav will make you.”
“I know she didn’t die, Mariah. She was adopted by a man who became the U.S. president.”
Her face became more pale. “Please tell me who you are.”
“I’m a friend of your sister’s.” He pulled Jordan’s stuffed rabbit out of his trench coat pocket and handed it to her.
Tears instantly filled her blue eyes. “Oh, my God.” She inspected it carefully, running her slender fingers across its stitches and its button eyes.
“I came to Bucharest to find who made it, to have it repaired. It took all day yesterday and most of today, but I finally found a little shop in a village fifty miles from here, and the woman who made this was still there. She remembered your family. All I want to know is why your sister wound up at an orphanage.”
“If you’re her friend, you’ll leave right now and never, ever tell her what you’ve learned.”
“She and I are a lot more than friends, and I can’t keep something like this from her. I’d like to keep it from everyone else in the world, but not from her. She’s going to want answers, and there’s no doubt she’ll want to see you, but for now, I just want to know why she was in an orphanage.”
She took a step closer. “How did you get the rabbit? Did you steal it when you stole her? Did you have something to do with her kidnapping?”
That surprised him, and he blinked, answering automatically. “I rescued her.”
“You’re a liar. She was left in Hyde Park by her captors.”
“That’s what the world believes, but that’s not what happened. You tell me about the orphanage, and I’ll tell you the real story of her abduction.” He intended to erase her memory of him before he left, so he’d tell her anything if it would make her open up.
She glanced at Gustav again, then turned and whispered, “I took her there.”
“Why? How? You were six.”
Gustav’s voice boomed across the bar. “That floor’s not going to mop itself, Mariah.”
She handed the rabbit back to Key and said in a hurry, “I’ll be done here in an hour. Meet me outside, down at the corner.”
Key got to his feet and walked out of the place, glad to breathe some clean air. Leaning against the building, he looked up at the night sky. His theory that Sasha and Jordan were born of angels was shot to hell, but he still wondered if M had asked God to provide more Anabo. The woman in the shop had told him Jordan’s parents were in their forties when they had Mariah, whom the doctors had called a miracle because her mother had been told she couldn’t have children. When she got pregnant again about a year later, she had actually been written up in a medical journal because it was so incredible. They were warm, generous, kind people, delighted beyond all reason over their beloved daughters.
If God in his infinite wisdom were to handpick parents for an Anabo, wouldn’t he choose people like that? Not only kind, but older, so when and if t
heir daughter was discovered by the Mephisto, if she left real life, it wouldn’t be so long for them to grieve the loss.
Except a car wreck had ended their lives too soon, long before Mariah and Jordan were grown. The shopkeeper hadn’t known what had happened after the couple died and their daughters went to live with other family members.
In the grand scheme of things, what happened after that didn’t make any difference, but he was compelled to find out. Jordan would want to know. He wanted to know. How had she wound up in an orphanage? Why had she been separated from her sister?
He’d called Brody, sworn him to silence, and asked him to find out what he could about Mariah. When he called back and said there was an eighteen-year-old Mariah Ardelean in Bucharest and her work records showed she was employed at a place called Gustav’s, Key got the address and went there first, hoping she was working tonight, hoping it was the right Mariah. He’d taken one look at her and had no doubt. Her resemblance to Jordan was still blowing his mind. She was taller and curvier, and her blue eyes were a shade darker than bluebell, but she had the same dark hair, and her features were uncannily similar.
As promised, Mariah was done in an hour, and when she stepped outside, bundled in a ratty-looking coat and an old scarf, she looked up at him and said, “Let’s walk.”
He fell in step with her as she went down the street, impatient for her to tell him what he wanted to know.
At the corner, while they waited for cars to pass, she looked up at him again. “Is there any way I can convince you not to tell my sister about me?”
He shook his head. “Not a chance. Why don’t you want her to know? Wouldn’t you like to see her?”
She focused on the top button of his coat. “It’s just that I want her to be happy, and nothing about any of this is good. I thought that someday, when we’re older, when she’s settled and not living in the White House under a microscope, I’d see her and explain. She’d want to know. But she’s still so young, barely seventeen.”
“Barely? She’ll be eighteen in three weeks.”
Mariah raised her gaze to his. “She was born on Christmas Day. She just turned seventeen. I turned eighteen last February.”
“Did the orphanage not know how old she was?”
Mariah shook her head. “They didn’t know anything about her. Either they made up a birthday for her, or her adopted parents did.”
“Please tell me what happened.”
She studied him for a bit. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Does it matter?”
“How are you here? And why? No guy I know would come so far to get a girl’s stuffed animal repaired. There must be a million places you could have gone to in the States.”
She was extremely suspicious, which said a lot about her. Mariah wasn’t the least bit naive. Or trusting. What had happened to make her this way? Why was a girl so young working in a dive like Gustav’s?
He could see that he had to do something to win her trust. So he lied. “I’m here for a family funeral. Jordan’s rabbit was torn up because of me, an accident, and she’s so attached to it, I thought it’d make her happy if I found where it had been made and took a picture. I didn’t expect to find out so much, but now that I know, I’d like to have the whole story.”
Mariah dropped her eyes to his button again and sighed. “My mother’s cousin, Nadia, was married to a horrible man named Emilian. We’d been living there only a week when he broke my arm. He’d get angry and lock me in a closet and wouldn’t give me any food for days at a time.”
Clenching his fists, Key felt an overwhelming need to choke the life out of Emilian.
“It’s said that very young children who are abused don’t know it’s not normal, because that’s all they know. So maybe if our parents hadn’t been so loving, I wouldn’t have understood how wrong it was. But I knew he was evil, and as much as I hated what he did to me, I couldn’t bear watching him torment Viorica. She was so happy, so sweet, and I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to her. So I took her and ran away.”
Viorica. Jordan’s birth name was Viorica. Romanian for bluebell. “Where did you go? Where did you plan to go?”
“As you said, I was six. I had no plan. I just knew I had to get her out of there. Emilian was already pinching her hard enough to leave bruises. I sometimes wonder if God led me, because I took refuge inside a church that happened to have an orphanage. I hid there for two days, trying to decide if I should ask the priest for help, but I was afraid he’d call Emilian and we’d be sent back. I’d been watching what went on at the building across the street, the children in the play yard, and the nuns who looked after them. I realized those children lived there, that they had no parents, no family. So I took Viorica late in the night and left her on the doorstep, rang the bell, then hid to watch, to make sure the nuns took her in.”
The cars had long since passed, and she stepped off the curb.
“Why did you leave her? Why didn’t you stay, as well?”
“I knew if I didn’t go back and make up a story about Viorica, Nadia would search for us, and she might look where orphans live.” She walked with her head down, her hands in the pockets of her coat. “So I went back and told her I had gotten lost when Viorica and I followed a dog down the street. We couldn’t find our way home, and when we were in a crowd of people, a lady picked up my sister and took her away. Maybe because Viorica was such a beautiful child, Nadia believed my story. She made a halfhearted attempt to find her, but I know they were glad to be rid of her.”
“Didn’t they call the police?”
She glanced up at him. “Emilian wouldn’t let Nadia call.”
“What about neighbors? Didn’t anyone ask what had happened to your sister?”
“If anyone noticed one of us was missing, they must have assumed she’d been visiting or something. We’d only been there two months when I ran away. And even if they were curious, no way they would have knocked on the door and asked. Emilian and Nadia never spoke to their neighbors and had no friends. You really can’t imagine what horrible people they were.”
“You’d be surprised. I’m kind of an expert on evil people.”
Her eyes were assessing. “You seem … different. How do you know my sister?”
“It’s a long story.” As they turned a corner, he asked, “Didn’t Emilian and Nadia recognize Jordan when her adoptive father became president and she became a public figure?”
Mariah’s speed increased just a little, enough to clue him in that she was nervous. “Nadia died from cancer before he was elected president, but yes, Emilian knew it was Viorica, and he had big plans to demand money in exchange for not taking her back. He also wanted to extort money for his silence. How would it look if the American president had adopted a child with legitimate guardians? That President Ellis didn’t know wouldn’t have made any difference, because there would be people who’d insist he did know. Emilian would have threatened to go public and play up how Viorica was stolen from him. I was so afraid for her. She didn’t know any of this, and having that slime crawl out of the gutter and come after her family … I couldn’t let it happen. By then, I was almost fourteen, and after all that time, after what I did to save her from Emilian, I wasn’t going to let him screw up her life.”
“How did you stop him?”
Her steps became more brisk. “It turned out I didn’t have to do anything. He died when his house burned down. He was a drunk, and a smoker. He passed out with a cigarette, and that was that.”
She was extremely anxious and scared, which made him wonder if Mariah had had something to do with the fire. “When did Nadia die?”
“When I was twelve. After she was gone, Emilian started … everything got worse.”
Key wished he didn’t know it could get worse than what she’d already described, but he knew all too well the unimaginable things humans were capable of.
Watching her, seeing how afraid she was, knowing all the grief and h
orror she’d endured in her life, he felt like a stone had settled in his heart. And yet, in spite of what she’d lived through, there was goodness in her, so powerful he could feel it. “After he died, what did you do?”
“I lived with the woman across the road, who wasn’t unkind, but she expected me to work for my keep. I cooked and cleaned, and when I was old enough, I went to work for her son.”
“Gustav?”
She nodded. “He’s gruff and hard, but generous, and he makes sure none of the customers get out of hand. About six months ago, his mother passed on, and he sold her house. That’s when I got my own apartment.”
“Are you … with someone?”
“No. I’m never going to be with someone. I don’t even date.” She shot him another glance. “I don’t like men.”
“You mean, you’re—”
“No, I just don’t like guys. You saw, in the bar. You know. And after Emilian …” She sighed. “So are you going to tell me how you met my sister, and about her kidnapping, and who you really are? Because I’m pretty sure you’re not a regular guy.”
“What makes you think so?”
“There’s something about you, a little bit spooky. No offense.”
“None taken. As soon as we get to your apartment and you get your cat, I’ll tell you everything.”
“What do you mean, get my cat? Do you think I’m going somewhere with you?”
“I’ll explain when we get there, and you can decide if you want to go, or not.” He’d already decided to take her to Colorado. He and his brothers had always discussed whether or not to recruit someone as a Lumina, but this time he wasn’t going to wait. He wasn’t going to ask. Jordan’s sister was as close to Anabo as any human could be. He could feel the warmth of her soul, knew as well as he knew his name that she needed to be with them. She needed Jordan. Maybe she wouldn’t agree to stay and become a Lumina, but he had to ask.
“Just so you know, if you didn’t have her bunny, I wouldn’t be taking you to where I live, and I wouldn’t have told you anything. I don’t ever talk about her with anyone.”