Chapter 15
“So what happens now?” I asked Slayter as we walked down the hallway. No one else was with us anymore, so it was just me and him, which was a little odd feeling.
“Well, you won’t be staying here anymore. Of course you’ll come back to train some days, but you won’t be living here like you have been,” he said.
“Where will I go?” I asked.
“To our house,” he said. “Arianna has already had your room prepared and your things sent over.”
“I haven’t seen her since…”
“She is quite excited for you to be coming,” he said, smiling. He pushed the button for the elevator and the doors automatically opened. When we stopped inside, he pushed the button for the ground floor. I’d never been out of this building in the time that I’ve been here, so my stomach was doing flips.
“How am I getting there?” I asked.
“Kade’s taking you,” he said.
I froze and looked up at him. “I’m not so sure about that,” I said. “He hasn’t been very…”
“Nice to you?” he asked, laughing as the elevator stopped and we walked into the main lobby of Central Headquarters.
Just like almost every other place in there, it was made of complete glass. There were a few sitting areas in the large open space and a big front desk where twelve receptionists sat. Everyone in the lobby turned to look at us as we walked toward the front and out the glass doors.
“You’re still getting used to that, aren’t you?” Slayter asked, a smile on his face.
“Yeah, a little,” I said.
“Now, let me find Kade…”
He pulled out what looked like a messenger, typed on it for a moment, and then put it back in his pocket. Before I knew it, a loud rumbling was coming toward us. And then, coming to a stop on his all black motorcycle, there was Kade. It looked sleek and fast, like it had no trouble breaking rules, just like Kade. He cut the engine and got off to face his father.
“I trust that you’ll see to getting Rayney home safely,” Slayter said to him.
“Yes, Father,” he said. He didn’t look too happy about the job, though. “Mother’s been bugging me about getting her there quickly.”
Slayter smiled at me. “See, what did I tell you?”
I smiled back, another thing that I never would have thought I would have been doing. “I guess we’d better get there then,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “You two be careful. I will see you later at dinner.”
He turned to go back inside while Kade walked back toward his motorcycle. He threw one leg over and started it up. I walked toward him.
“You seriously have a motorcycle,” I said.
“I like to go fast and it squeezes past things better than a car would. And if you’d get on, we could get home that much faster. My mother really wants to see you again.”
“Fine then,” I said, and straddled the back. “Where can I hold on to?”
“It’s not like you can get hurt if we crash, which we won’t,” he said.
“Where?” I asked.
I felt him sigh. “Just put your arms around my waist,” he said.
“No helmets?” I asked as my arms wound around him.
“Nope,” he said, and revved the engine. “Now hold on.”
Before I knew it, we were flying down the road, heading away from Headquarters. I instinctively tightened my hold on his waist and buried my face in his back. But a few seconds later, I leaned back just a little, letting the wind whip through my hair, laughing, and looked around.
We were out of the area with all the tall buildings and toward where the houses and shops were. I turned my interface back on and looked at all of the buildings as they flew past us. The first few shops were just for groceries or clothing. Actually it seemed like most of them were for that.
But before I knew it, we were in the area where the houses were. They were really big, bigger than any houses that I’d seen before. I got all the information on them as we rode by: who lived in the house, the people who were on the staff and the floor plans of it.
We turned off onto what looked like a long driveway. Kade slowed down as we reached was looked like a huge garage. He drove up to it and cut the engine. But right when I started to unwind my arms from around him, his hands came down on mine so I was still holding on to him.
“Kade, we should go in,” I said quietly.
“Just wait a moment,” he whispered.
“Okay, fine,” I said, and held on to him, leaning my cheek on his back.
His hands just held mine for a moment, and then pried them off of him, only to thread his fingers through mine. And then he was holding my hands in his against his body.
I could feel his heart beat against my arms as he brought my hands up to his face. It was beating fast, just like mine was against his back. He held my hands to his cheeks for just a second, and then let me go. He got off the motorcycle and started up a pathway. I just sat there for a moment, and then got off and followed him.
The pathway led up to the front steps of a huge house. It had to be about three stories tall and the front was made of stone. There were huge windows on each level of the house. When I walked up onto the porch, Kade was standing there waiting for me.
“This is beautiful,” I said, stepping up beside him.
He just shrugged. “It’s home,” he said, not looking at me. He turned then, and opened the door.
As we stepped inside the foyer, I looked up at the two staircases that wound their way up to the second floor. To the left and right were what looked like a dining room fit for twenty and a ballroom with high ceilings and a crystal chandelier. There was a large circular table right in the middle of the foyer with a huge bouquet of flowers.
Kade led me around the table and into the living room that looked as large of the common area of Division Sixteen. And off of that was a huge kitchen, where four people were moving around. Three of them had on white coats while the other – the only woman, probably in her mid-forties – had on a silvery-gray wrap dress. And when she turned toward us, her face lit up.
“Oh, Rayney!” she said, and came rushing toward me. And when she was a few feet away, I finally recognized her. It was Kade’s mom, the woman who had been like a second mother to me when I was younger.
She really hadn’t changed since I saw her last, which was about ten years earlier. There were more lines on her face, but other than that, she looked exactly the same. Her light blond hair was straight and cropped to her shoulders. Her dark brown eyes gleamed with tears as her arms went around me. I was about three inches taller than her now, which felt strange seeing as the last time I’d seen her I’d barely came up to her chest.
“It’s so good to finally see you again!” Arianna said, hugging me tighter. She pulled back to have a look at me. “You’ve changed so much.”
“It’s been a while,” I said, smiling.
“Goodness, you’re absolutely gorgeous,” she said, her hand going to my face. “So much like your mother.”
“I’ve gotten that a lot,” I said, slightly smiling.
“You must be tired,” she said, taking my hand in hers and Kade’s in the other. She led us back to the foyer and toward the stairs. “Kade will show you up to your room. Bailey and the others should have gotten it together for you by now. You and Kade are both up on the top floor, so he knows the way.”
“Mother…” Kade started.
“None of that,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “I’m your mother and I’ll tell you what to do.”
See that made me want to laugh. All of the Guards feared Kade. But with his mother, it was like nothing had changed. I wanted so much to believe that, but I knew that it had.
“Now, you take Rayney upstairs and get her settled,” she said, and then looked back at me. “Everleigh will be upstairs with your dress for dinner in a half an hour. I’ll be up then also, so I’ll give you a tour of the rest of the house.”
“Okay,” I said.
When she turned to go back in the kitchen, I looked and Kade was already halfway up the stairs. I ran and caught up with him within the same second. When we got up onto the second floor he turned to his right and went up another flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs, there was another smaller sitting room with two hallways going off of it.
“We’re both down this hallway,” Kade said, going to the one on the right.
“What’s the other hallway for?” I asked.
“They’re just guest rooms,” he said.
“When do you have guests?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said angrily. “But we’ve got rooms for them.”
“Okay, then. You don’t have to get that way,” I said. “I was just asking a question.”
He sighed loudly and continued to walk down the hallway. He passed most of the doors until he came to a stop at almost to the end of the hall. He waited for me to be beside him to open the door and led me in.
“Here’s your room,” he said.
“This is my room? I’m only one person.”
The room looked like it would be able to house about fifteen people. It was almost three times bigger than my room at Headquarters and about ten times bigger than my one at Division Sixteen. There was a huge canopy bed on one wall, a dresser and floor to ceiling mirror along another and a sitting area on the opposite side of the room. And the last wall had about seven windows.
“The bathroom’s through those double doors,” Kade said, pointing to the doors to the right of the bed. Then he pointed at the other set on the left. “And that leads to the closet. Mother had an entire wardrobe of clothing sent over.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you need clothes,” he said, rolling his eyes. He walked over to a screen on the wall and tapped on it. “You can get Everleigh and the others through this. But if you don’t want to, there’s a link for our interface, so you can just send it through that. Same with Conley and the kitchen staff.”
“What exactly do Bailey and the others do?” I asked.
“Just think of them as maids that do everything,” he said. “Everleigh’s head, and then there’s Bailey, Spencer, Gillian and Erin. Rhys and Cole work in the kitchen with Conley.”
“Okay,” I said. He started to turn back toward the door. “Wait.”
He turned back and looked me in the eyes. “What?” he asked.
“I wanted to ask you something else,” I said.
“Go on,” he said, his eyes cautious.
“What…what happened out there…when we got here?” I asked.
He looked back toward the door. “Nothing,” he said quietly, and then walked out.
“That was something out there,” I said. He probably could hear me, but I wanted him to.
I turned back to my room, a room that I felt I didn’t need. I walked over to the screen, but I didn’t call for Everleigh or the others. Instead, just like I did that first night in Central Headquarters, I looked at the cameras of Division Sixteen.
When I looked at the camera of the common area, there we’re that many people there. I switched to the weapons room, but I only saw Slade and Dane. After I looked at the other hallways, I switched to the control room. And there everyone was.
I could see Luke, Eli and Grandma standing near the screen and the others, including Rowan and Nash, sitting in the chairs behind the computers. They were talking about something, but I couldn’t tell what about. I zoomed in on the screen to see what Division they had on, but right as I did, I heard footsteps coming down the hallway toward my room.
“They’re sending us off after the gala,” someone said. It sounded like Roth. “They’re giving Rayney an assignment.”
“Do you know what the assignment is?” another asked. Kade.
“No,” Roth said. “But we’re going to be leaving the morning after the gala next month. Somewhere between Divisions Four and Twelve. I think we’re going to Division Four first for some reason. Probably to refuel so we can leave right after.”
“When are they going to tell her?” Kade asked.
“I think Slayter’s going to tell her about everything after the gala,” he said. “We’ve still got a little more than a month and a half…”
They continued talking, but I wasn’t listening to them anymore. I turned back to the screen and where everyone was still discussing the Division they were going to…which just happened to be Division Four. And I saw the date they were planning on going, which just happened to be the date when Roth said we’d be going to the same place.
If we were going there that day and so were they…that meant we were going to be there at the same time…which would mean danger to them.
I quickly turned on my interface and went to the messenger. Once the code for Division Sixteen’s control room screen and the message I wanted to send popped into my mind, I immediately sent it. And a few seconds later, it appeared on the screen in my room as it looked on the screen of Division Sixteen.
Don’t go to Division Four. We’ll be there, my message said.
Rowan, who had been sitting down, stood up and walked toward the screen. Luke had turned around to Adem, who was behind one of the computers, and yelled something to him. Adem turned to the computer and started typing something.
I sent another message. Stop trying to track the message, I sent. You won’t be able to.
The screen that they were all looking at displayed the message. Grandma’s hand covered her mouth. Luke said something else to Adem, and then he started typing on the computer.
Who are you? he sent.
I was tempted to write back, but I cut everything off before my temptation won. I turned back toward where Kade had said the bathroom was and walked toward it. I opened the double doors and walked inside.
It was almost exactly like my bathroom back at Headquarters, with the large Jacuzzi tub and shower beside it. There was a double sink with large mirrors over them. I went to one and turned on the faucet. I cupped my hands and splashed cold water on my face, trying to make everything in my head disappear.
There was a knock on my bedroom door. I walked out of the bathroom just as the door opened and a dark headed woman came in. When she saw me, she jumped.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said. “I didn’t hear anything, so I thought you weren’t here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was going to answer the door.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. She walked over to the bed where she laid a dark red dress down. “I’m Everleigh. Mrs. Slayter wanted your dress pressed for tonight’s dinner, so I was just bringing it back up.”
“My dress?” I asked, walking up beside her.
“Yes, this is to be a very formal dinner. All of the leaders and their families will be here. That is why everyone is so busy in the kitchen. Bailey will be up here shortly to do your hair.” She looked back at the dress. “This is what you’ll be wearing. Mrs. Slayter picked it out.”
“And when will this dinner be?” I asked.
“In about an hour. The guests will probably get here a little early, though,” she said. She stood straighter and looked at me. “Call if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” I said, and watched as she walked out, closing the door behind her.
I didn’t know what to do with the time that I had between now and when Bailey was supposed to come and help me get ready. I walked over to one of the chairs on the other side of the room and sat down. Why did I need help to get ready, though? I mean, I was a big girl – almost twenty – and I could do stuff on my own.
And what were Roth and Kade talking about? A gala? Was there supposed to be one at sometime? And why hadn’t I been told about this?
I sighed just as I heard light footsteps coming down the hallway. I rushed toward the door and opened it just as I heard a hand go up to knock.
The girl standing behind it jumped back when she saw the door swing open. Her violet eyes were wide as she took me in, her dark brown hair swished from the breeze of the door opening. She looked about my age but was several inches shorter than me. After she took a quick look at me, a small smile formed on her lips, even though her eyes were still wide.
“Um, I’m Bailey,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
I’d already gotten everything about her from her description. She’d been employed at the Slayter household for two months, so she was still new. She was, just as I suspected, my age. She didn’t have parents, though. Apparently they died in Little Rock when the Directrix took over. There wasn’t anything more information on her after that, just that she’d come to the City about a year ago.
“I’m supposed to help you get ready for dinner,” she said.
“I know,” I said, and stepped back to let her inside. “Everleigh told me.”
She didn’t say much as she picked up the dress off the bed and walked into the bathroom. I followed her and saw her put the dress on a hanger on one of the walls. She then opened up a small closet door and pulled out a chair, setting it in front of a mirror. She turned back to me and looked at the chair.
“So what are you going to do to me?” I asked, sighing, as I sat down in the chair.
When I saw myself in the mirror, I still didn’t realize it was me, not that I’d changed that much on the outside. But once I saw the color of my eyes – even with the red line going to the right one – and my scar, I realized I was still me, even if they’d changed quite a bit.
“There’s nothing much to do other than put you in the dress,” she said as she pulled the top half of my hair back and grabbed a pin to hold it. “Your hair doesn’t need anything but to be pulled back like this. I mean, the curls are perfect.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. “So that’s it?”
She pulled a can of something out from under the sink and sprayed it all over my hair. I coughed and waved my hand in front of my face. “What is that?” I asked just as a new round of coughing started.
She sprayed me again and then spoke. “Hairspray,” she said. “Have you not seen it before?”
“I have, just not in a really long time,” I said, coughing once more.
“Now,” she said, and walked toward where she hung the dress. She took it off the hanger and unzipped the back. “Get undressed and I’ll help you into this.”
“Ugh, just shot me now,” I said, and started to take off my clothes. “I hate dresses. I always have, even when I was little.”
She laughed. “Well, you’d better get used to them, because you’re going to have to wear one for dinner here every night,” she said.
“What? Why?” I asked.
She put the dress over my head and helped slide it down as she spoke. “Because the Slayters are always formal at their dinners, even when it was just the three of them. Kade, though…he dislikes it just as much as you do right now.”
I snorted. “He doesn’t have to wear a suit, does he?” I asked.
She laughed. “No, just a dress shirt and pants. He’d probably kill someone if they made him even wear a tie,” she said. She turned me around so she could zip the back of my dress up.
“And why do I have to wear this dress? It’s like it’s sucking the air out of me,” I said.
The dark red dress was tight and only went down to the middle of my thigh. It was sleeveless and, when I looked down at myself, it cut pretty low, showing a significant amount of my chest.
“I think you look gorgeous,” she said, standing back to look at me. She put her hands on her hips. “You know, I don’t know why everyone’s afraid of you. You seem just like a normal person to me.”
“Well, you’re the first one who’s thought of me as normal,” I said, shrugging.
“Now,” she said, and started toward the door. “We’ve got to get you some shoes.”
“The only shoes I’ve ever worn were boots,” I said, following her out and toward the closet. When I walked in, I stopped dead. “What in the world…?”
The closet was just as big as the bathroom. On two of the walls, there were only formal wear, most of them like the dress I was wearing. One of the other walls were cabinet doors that opened up who knows what and the other had shelf after shelf of shoes, from flats to high heels.
“And what am I supposed to wear those to?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Bailey said, heading for the wall of shoes. She pulled out a pair of black heels that looked to be about four inches high.
“I’m not wearing those,” I said, putting up my hands.
“Mrs. Slayter specifically asked for you to wear these,” she said, handing them to me.
“I won’t be able to walk in them,” I said, but put them on anyway. When I stood straighter, Bailey was even shorter compared to me.
“Have you even tested out what they did to you?” she asked. “You’ll be fine.”
“Ugh,” I said, and leaned my head back to look at the ceiling.
There was a knock on the bedroom door and Arianna came in. “Oh, good,” she said, smiling, as she saw Bailey and I walk out of the closet. And when she saw me, her eyes widened. “You look fantastic, Rayney!”
“Thank you, I guess,” I said.
She had changed from her wrap dress to a black dress that was tight at her waist and flared out. And when I looked down, she had a large velvet black box in her hands.
“I’ve been keeping this for you ever since they brought you in,” she said, and set the box down on the table in the sitting area. “I put it in this box the first day and hid it so no one would find it.”
“What…?” I picked up the box and opened it. “Oh,” I whispered, looking down.
Inside was my sapphire necklace. Ever since I woke up, I hadn’t even thought about it. When I was in my room at Headquarters that first night, I had wondered what had happened to it, along with my knives. Did they just toss them at Division Sixteen? Or did they get rid of them here?
But there my necklace was, just as I remembered it.
“You should probably keep it in here now,” Arianna said. “It wouldn’t quite go with that dress.”
“You’re right,” I said, still running my fingers over it. I looked up at her with gratitude in my eyes. “Thank you so much for keeping it for me, until I woke up.”
She smiled brightly. “You’re very welcome,” she said. She stood up from where she sat and clapped her hands together. “Now, Kade’s waiting for you in the foyer. He’s going to take you to visit with Roth and the others before dinner starts.”
“Is everyone here?” Bailey asked. “I should go down and help with dinner preparations.”
“Now, Bailey, I feel that I need to reassign you,” Arianna said.
“Reassign?” she asked, looking worried.
“You and Rayney seem to be getting along well, so I’d like for you to be her personal aide. Just help with whatever she needs. Can you do that?” she asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Slayter,” she said, smiling.
“Good,” Arianna said. “Now, Rayney, if you’ll follow me, the two of us shall go find Kade.”
I followed her down the stairs and to the second floor. There, leaning against the railing looking down at the foyer, was Kade. He was dressed in khaki pants and a blue dress shirt with a dark blue jacket over it. He stood straighter when he saw us coming. And then he looked at me.
“Doesn’t Rayney look gorgeous, Kade?” she asked, smiling.
He didn’t say anything, though. She looked back at me, but my eyes were still locked on Kade’s.
“Well, why don’t you take her down with Roth and the others?” she asked, walking past him to the stairs.
Kade cleared his throat and turned toward the stairs. He waited until I was next to him and threaded my arm through his to descend the stairs. He felt stiff at my side and I looked at him as we walked down. He jaw was clenched and he kept his eyes at anywhere but me. I sighed when we reached the bottom.
Arianna headed into the ballroom and Kade and I walked back into the living area where Roth, Orion, Fynn, Ace and Loryn were. The guys were all dressed similarly to Kade and Loryn had on a dress, just like I did. Hers wasn’t as form fitting as mine was and was light yellow.
Everyone turned when Kade and I walked into the room.
“Damn,” Fynn said, his eyes wide, just as Orion and Ace whistled.
“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment, even if it is coming from you three,” I said, smiling.
“Call it whatever you want,” Orion said as his eyes roamed over me.
“Cut it out, Orion,” Kade said through his teeth.
He smiled. “Just appreciating the view,” he said. “Since you seem to not be able to.”
I felt Kade pull away from me just as Conley came from the kitchen. “Dinner is ready,” he said.