40. Rupture
The drive to Aiden's house was eventful, to say the least. We were divided into two cars; Marco, Diego and Georgina took Marco's fancy estate car while Lexie and I were forced to hang back in Georgina's beat-up Ford with Slater.
I didn't mind the arrangement as much as everyone else seemed to — well, everyone except Georgina, who practically beamed at Marco when he suggested that Slater go with us instead. She had stopped calling him Stiff and started calling him Bond instead, but I doubted he got the reference.
Diego had refused, point blank, to let me out of his sight, which had annoyed me until Georgina pointed out that Slater was a trained bodyguard and hadn't managed to get her killed just yet. He reluctantly relented after that.
Lexie was having the worst time adjusting, however. She had attempted — twice — to jump out of Georgina's car while it was still moving, until Slater finally pulled the car over and stormed around to her door. He wrenched the door open, pulling a set of cable ties out of his pocket and tying Lexie's hands behind her back. Then he flicked the child lock on for good measure, and climbed back into the car like nothing had happened.
I stared at him, a little alarmed, as he started the engine.
"I can see why Georgina is reluctant to spend time with you," I said.
Slater grinned slyly. "She only wishes I'd tie her up."
"I'm sure." I glanced over my shoulder Lexie. She was slumped in the back seat and staring sullenly out the window. I wasn't surprised that she was having second thoughts about selling Aiden out, but to want to jump out of a moving car? I reached over and touched her knee. "It'll be okay."
"He'll find out," she said, her voice devoid of emotion. It was like she'd withdrawn into herself.
"Maybe," I said, "but he'll be behind bars when he does. Away from you."
She sighed and continued to stare out the window, ignoring me.
I withdrew my hand, glancing at Slater. He was playing with the dials on Georgina's old-style radio, playing with the frequencies. He grinned when he hit something that wasn't static and a jolt of surprise shot through me when I realized it wasn't a radio station he'd tuned into — it was Georgina's voice.
"... you can't take him out, Bond," she was arguing. "I'm the only one certified to haul his ass back to the compound."
"It would take him less than five seconds to subdue you," Marco responded in a clipped voice.
Georgina harrumphed. "Spoken like a true misogynist —"
"On the contrary," Marco interrupted, "I have great faith that many women could accomplish the task, having trained quite a few of them myself. You, however, cannot."
Slater snorted. "Smooth talker, that one."
"How did you do that?" I asked, mentally groaning at the layer of awe that coated my voice.
"I rigged his car while he was using the bathroom," Slater explained, like it was no big deal. "You just have to tweak the radio antenna to broadcast over a demonic platform. I call it Hell FM."
I blinked stupidly. "I can barely put music on my iPod."
"Magic," Lexie chimed in. "He used magic."
"Oh. Thanks." I frowned. "Does that mean you're a witch?"
"Nope."
"Oh, that reminds me —" I looked over my shoulder at Lexie. "What did Georgina mean about all the inmates committing suicide? Why do you need to be supervised?"
Lexie barked out a humourless laugh. "What, you haven't heard? There's a reason Aiden keeps me around. As long as I'm alive, he can't die. Not really."
I shot Slater a startled look, but he didn't seem surprised by this development. "What you mean, 'he can't die'?"
"I don't really know how it works." Lexie shrugged. "It's one-sided, to his advantage. If he dies, instead of crossing over to wherever the hell dead people go, he re-appears a few hours later near me."
A lot of things seemed to slot into place at her explanation; why familiars even existed, why they were treated like possessions instead of people. If you had some sort of insurance against death, wouldn't you want to control who had access to it?
But that insurance policy was a person — a human person. Horror surged through me. How many familiars had had their identity stripped, their independence stolen, all because the person they were bonded to feared their own demise?
"I'm surprised you let your little girlfriend out of your sight, Grumpy."
My stomach lurched when I realized Georgina was talking about me. I reached for the dial with the intention of switching it off — this wasn't really something I wanted to hear — but Slater batted my hand away.
"Can't let you do that," he said quietly. "If she gets herself into trouble and I don't hear about it, I'm fucked in more ways than one."
There was no trace of amusement in his voice now and the change from his usual, casual mood was startling. I withdrew my hand from the dial, my brows furrowing.
"Slater promised he'd take care of her," Diego mumbled, sounding displeased.
I bit my lip, an uncomfortable feeling stealing over me. I didn't like this.
"You need to get used to the separation," Marco said quietly. My stomach lurched at his words, but I knew he wasn't saying it to be a dick. His voice was laced with compassion. "The rules —"
"— are there for a reason, I know," Diego murmured. "Believe me, I know."
He defeat in his voice, the way he acquiesced to Marco's authority so quickly — it reverberated inside my head for a few seconds before the realization dawned on me. My fingers curled in distress as comprehension rocketed through me — in that split second, I knew exactly what his plan was.
Last night hadn't changed a thing.
I had been pleading with him to live, and he'd been...
Collecting his last memories, I thought.
Because he was still going to get himself killed... and he was banking on the fact that I wouldn't even remember his existence.
"Pull over," I croaked.
Slater shot me a concerned look. "What?"
"Pull over!" I shrieked. He studied my face for a moment before he pulled the car up along the edge of the road. He barely had it parked before I was scrambling out of the front seat and stumbling over to the row of hedges lining the tarmac.
My stomach heaved and I threw up, pain lurching through my body.
Of course he wasn't holding out for an, I love you; he wasn't holding out for anything anymore. Whatever I gave him between now and the full moon, none of it would matter. Nobody would remember what words were spoken, whose skin was touched, what kisses were pressed to whose body.
I wondered how one second could mean everything and yet be so completely and utterly meaningless.
I emptied my stomach into the bushes, a numb feeling stealing over me. Slater appeared at my side with a handkerchief and I took it from him with shaky hands, unable to meet his gaze.
I climbed back into the car silently, my eyes burning with unshed tears.
I wasn't sure how to feel, how to react. I had never been placed in a situation so utterly helpless before; even in the past... there had always been hope, the dream that one day things could change. That things would change. And in a way... they had.
But this?
Even if Diego could overcome his depression, if he somehow found help... he'd put my safety and the welfare of his subjects before himself each time. No matter what way he swayed emotionally, the ending was always the same: he'd be gone.
Both physically and in my memory.
"You good?" Slater asked me, a wary look on his face.
"Yeah," I said. "Drive."
He re-started the engine for the third time and directed the car back into traffic. It took less than ten minutes to reach Aiden's house after that, but it felt like a lifetime. When we finally pulled up outside the black, wrought-iron gates, I had managed to quell the urge to cry but I felt...
Empty.
"What now?" Lexie asked nervously.
"Now we wait," Slater said. "You can't be seen, so keep your head down. The others should be inside by now." He jerked his head toward a sleek-looking estate car parked across the road. Marco's car.
I hunched my shoulders a little, too tense to settle into my seat properly. I watched as Slater took out his cell phone and played around with it for a bit. There was no sudden flash of light or anything — nothing 'magicky' that I noticed — but after a few minutes, the crackle of static filtered through the speaker. A few seconds later, I heard Georgina's voice.
"... then you won't mind if we search the premises, will you?"
There was a long pause, before the sound of an explosion burst through the speaker. I flinched, my eyes darting toward house and, sure enough, there was a cloud of green smoke rising from what looked like the front of the building. It was difficult to see anything but the second floor from our vantage point; trees lined the inside of the walls and the driveway behind the gates curved in toward them, shielding the entrance from view.
When no other sound came from the phone, Slater swore. "I knew this was a fucking bad idea."
He was out of the car a second later, sprinting toward the gates.
I didn't even consider not following him. I shot Lexie and apologetic look and climbed out of the car, slamming the door shut behind me. Worry and fear twisted in my chest as I ran toward the gate. My eyes widened in shock as Slater curled his hands around the bars and pushed them outward, the metal glowing red and almost rippling as it moved.
It looked like he was... melting them.
A second later, he was bolting through them, sprinting up the winding driveway.
I squeezed through the gap he'd made, a little shock jolting through me as I touched the re-hardened bar. It was freezing to touch, at odds with the bright red it had burned only seconds ago. I continued up the driveway, following the gentle slope to a detached garage around the side of a large, white house.
Plumes of smoke rose from the front door and as I approached, I could hear coughing and the sound of Georgina cursing.
"The little shit blew himself up!" she was shouting. "And he ruined my Manolo's!"
"Go back and wait in the car," I heard Slater bark. "He could have the house rigged to blow too."
"You've got to be kidding —"
"GEORGINA. CAR. NOW."
To my utter surprise, a sooty-looking Georgina actually stormed out of the house, wafting smoke away with her hand. She glared at me as she stomped past in her bare feet, her shoes clutched in her other hand.
"Maybe he'll get himself blown up and save us all some misery," she muttered.
I walked up the front steps, waving away smoke with my own hand. The plumes were starting to dissipate now, but the stench of burning flesh lingered in the air. I pinched my nose, grateful that I'd already emptied my stomach before I arrived.
The marble hallway was destroyed. Part of the stairs had been blown apart and the floor was black with scorch marks. A dark, slimy substance clung to the walls and though I didn't really want to consider it, a part of me knew it was... well, it was Aiden. Or what was left of him, anyway.
"We should start in the basement," I heard Marco say. "And work our way up."
Slater approached the door to the basement, peering inside. "This is the only room warded, as far as I can tell."
"Warded?" I asked as I followed him.
Diego appeared in the doorway, a dark expression on his face. His clothes were sooty, like Georgina's, but there was also more of that... substance... on his jeans. "Go back outside," he ordered. "You —"
"You don't get a say in what I can or cannot do," I scowled. All at once, anger burst in my chest. My earlier revelation tumbled through my head and I was so furious, my body trembled with the force of it. I looked at Slater and repeated, "Warded?"
"To keep intruders out," he explained, his eyes flicking warily between Diego and me.
"Can you remove it?" Marco asked, ignoring the tension.
"Yeah." Slater started down the stairs to the basement, the wood creaking beneath his boots. He seemed to reach an invisible wall halfway down and when he reached out, a giant bubble seemed to form in mid-air. A rainbow sheen coloured the front curve.
I gasped in surprise.
"It's just a MagiNet," Slater announced. "High-grade demon technology. It should take too long to disable."
"We haven't got long," Diego practically growled. "If the witch re-materializes before Lexie has been moved to a secure —"
"Growling at him isn't going to help," I snapped irritably.
Diego directed a look that managed to appear both angry and confused at the same time, but thankfully, he didn't say anything about my attitude. His allegiance with Marco was tenuous at best, especially when he was king of an organisation Marco's kind were supposed to be taking apart. If Marco found out... well, I wouldn't want to be in Diego's shoes.
I leaned against the wall and watched as Slater took out his cell phone. He held it up against the filmy bubble and the screen lit up, but he was too far away for me to see what it said. He played around with the buttons for a few minutes before Marco shifted impatiently.
"What's taking so long?" he demanded. "Why can't you disable it with your own magic?"
"I've only got so much juice," Slater admitted. "I'm kind of... on probation."
Diego snorted. The sound was so un-Diego-ish that I jumped, startled, and jerked my head around to face him. "What did you do, fold your clothes the wrong way? I thought angels were too angelic to break the law?"
Slater grinned slyly over his shoulder. "You must have come up with that theory while you were running around on four legs and peeing on things. Woof."
"Touché."
"You're an angel?" I blurted out. A memory flashed through my mind; the night I had gone to Crawler, and the man who had been at the bus stop when Diego and I arrived. I shivered as I remembered his eyes — white, and iris-less.
"Their eyes go white like that when they lose their souls."
"Angel on probation," Slater answered, like I was supposed to know the difference.
I squinted at him, taking a renewed interest in his back. He was wearing a leather jacket over a t-shirt, but the jacket was tight and I couldn't see how he was hiding a pair of wings under there — unless he didn't have any. Wings aside, he still didn't look particularly angelic. He just seemed kind of... normal. Well, normal for the third dimension. Out of the three men, Marco probably would have commanded the most attention and respect.
"Not that I'm complaining," Slater said, his eyes on the phone, "but if you're going to keep checking me out, babe, you might want to wait until your boyfriend isn't around."
I blushed so hard it felt like my cheeks were on fire. I coughed and looked away hurriedly, refusing to look at anybody, never mind Slater. My first inclination was to deny that Diego was my boyfriend — especially not now, after the little epiphany I'd had less than an hour ago — but I swallowed that urge and asked, "What did you do?" instead.
"What?"
"What did you do to, you know, end up on probation?" I clarified.
Slater punched another button on the cell phone and the bubble suddenly exploded. The four of us were sprayed with a filmy substance, like water laced with washing up liquid. I gasped in shock as the freezing liquid hit my skin and tried to clean off my face with the inside of my sweater, utterly disgusted.
"Thanks for the warning," Diego grumbled.
"Anytime." Slater grinned at him. "Shall we?"
I didn't escape my notice that he hadn't answered my question, but I let it drop as we followed him down the stairs. Marco was the only one who seemed to take the bubble explosion in stride; even with his hair and clothes soaked, he still managed to look like he was leaving for work as the Crown Prince of a European country.
Diego scraped a hand over his face and shot me a wary look. "You don't need to be here for this."
I scowled at him. "Well, it's not like I can trust you to tell me what's down there."
He paused on the steps and faced me fully. The others went on ahead, studiously ignoring us. Even three four steps below me, he managed to stand taller than me, a hurt look burning in his eyes. I wanted to feel sorry for him, to scold myself for being so harsh with him — but my anger was too strong, too unyielding. The thought of what he planned to do ate at my insides like a virus and I hated him for it.
"What...?"
"I know," I said simply. "I know what you're planning."
He swallowed uneasily. "It's for the best."
"Well," I said sarcastically. "Thank you for consulting me on it — you know, since it affects my future just as much as it affects yours. However non-existent that future happens to be."
Anxiety flashed in his eyes. "Paige, there is no other way. No way that both of us don't end up dead — or worse. At least if Marco takes you in to get your memory wiped..."
Tears blurred my vision. "I'll forget you."
"It won't hurt," he said quietly. "Trust me, Paige; you don't want to feel that kind of hurt."
"I have felt that kind of hurt," I whisper-yelled at him. "When are you going to see that you're not the only person in pain here, Diego? The only difference between you and me is that I picked myself up and I got on with my fu-freaking life! So don't you dare act like you're doing me some sort of favour."
Diego's brows rose, a hint of derision touching his features. "You cannot tell me that you'd rather be in pain if there was a way to avoid it."
I laughed humourlessly. "Well, it's not like you gave me the choice, did you?"
And with that, I brushed past him, my footsteps heavy on the wooden stairs. The stairwell opened up into a large room lit with fluorescent lights. It looked exactly how I imagined a laboratory to look — nothing like the witch's lair I expected. There were no cauldrons or weird herbs, only a long lab table and rows of cabinets.
Marco and Slater were pulling small crates out of a fridge at the back of the room and piling them on top of the table.
I wandered over to them, acutely aware of Diego following right behind me. Even angry, my body was so attuned to his.
When I reached the table, I tugged the nearest crate toward me and peered inside.
"Careful," Diego warned in a low voice. "Some magic solutions don't react well to containment."
I nodded once to indicate that I'd heard him and used the sleeves of my shirt to pull back the metal lid. Twelve vials stood on a rack inside and as I pulled back the lid, wisps of vapour wafted upward. I moved back slightly, watching as the vapour glittered under the lights. The effect was unusual — I couldn't imagine any 'normal' substance ever shimmering like that.
"What is that?" I murmured, my eyes following the vapour as it dissipated into the air.
"Incoendium in vapour form," Slater said without looking up. "It's a psychotropic supernatural drug, but it's harmless when it's stored like that. It's only effective in powder form."
A weird feeling settled at the base of my spine. "Powder?"
Slater glanced over his shoulder at me. "Yeah. Why?"
I ignored him, my eyes on the vials stored inside the crate. Beneath the vapour, tiny crystals were collecting at the bottom of the glass, sparkling as the light hit them. A memory flickered in the back of my mind; a tanned hand unscrewing the bottle of gin and tipping a pinch of shimmery-looking powder into the mouth.
Could it be...?
I swallowed. "What does it do, exactly?"
"It's supposed to be a mood stabilizer," Slater explained, "but depending on the caster, it can come with a host of other side-effects. Paranoia, manic depression, that kind of thing. Incoendium produced by demons is stronger — I've heard of users being able to fly on it — but the come-down makes them suicidal."
"Is it available to humans?"
This time Marco answered. "It's unlikely. The SCC are strict about substance control when changing dimensions, especially with something as dangerous as wildfire."
"Wildfire?" I repeated, the sensation at the base of my spine expanding into full-blown anxiety. A few things started to come together in my head but I had no idea how to reconcile them. I remembered, last year, when Lexie had broken up with Darren because he started doing drugs.
"Yeah, wildfire is its street name," Slater said.
"Ugh, I don't know. He started trying some new drug — wildfire, or wild-something. It makes him crazy."
Then, a memory from a few weeks ago — the night we had gone to Georgina's shop to get ergot.
"I don't have what you're looking for. So fuck off, Darren."
Had Darren gone to Georgina — someone he knew was part of this supernatural world — looking for wildfire before? If wildfire was the same powder as the drug my father had given my mother... did that mean my father was part of this world too? Or did he just have connections to it, like Darren?
I slid the crate away from me, my stomach in turmoil.
"What?" Diego demanded, his eyes roving over my face.
"I think I need some air," I whispered, stepping away from the table. When I reached the stairs, I took them at a run, picking up speed until I was clear of the hallway and stumbling down the front steps of Aiden's house. My head was spinning so fast I could barely keep up with my thoughts, but as the fresh air hit my face, a coherent plan started to formulate in my head.
Something told me that things weren't as simple as my father getting his hands on a supernatural drug accidentally. He had always been so controlled, so careful, so powerful in my head. There was no way he could just 'happen' upon a supernatural drug dealer — if it wasn't part of his plan, then he never would have found him.
I forced myself to cycle through memories I'd suppressed long ago, analysing each scene as it flitted through my mind for clues that my father was anything but what he appeared to be... but there was just the powder.
The powder that shimmered in the light like no other drug I had ever seen.
I needed answers.
I needed answers from the only person who could give them to me — and the only person I had hoped never to see again for the rest of my life.
I needed to find my father.