Page 25 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

I stirred awake the next morning only vaguely aware of the arms wrapped around my waist or the firm chest pressed up against my back. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept that good and was just about to close my eyes and get right back to it when I noticed something eerily missing from the equation. No humming soulmate bond or purring electricity—the two telltale signs that always let me know when I was in the arms of Trace or Dominic.

But if I wasn’t sleeping with either of them, then who the hell was in my bed with me?

My body stiffened as the unidentified arms tightened around me while sounding off a pleased groan that vibrated against my back. Flustered, I rolled my head to the side and caught sight of my sleeping companion, fully clothed and fully asleep behind me. Thank god for that. But also…

What in the actual fuck is Gabriel doing in my bed?!

Memories of last night came back to me in fragmented pieces before slamming together like iron filings to a magnet, and then I launched myself out of the bed, stirring Gabriel awake behind me. His eyes snapped open with worry and unease, as though the two sentiments permanently lived there, even while he was sleeping.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

he asked, shooting up into a seated position as he examined my person and then surveyed the room with a quick sweep of his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

I shrieked, several octaves too high. “You’re in my bed, that’s what’s wrong!”

He made a face at me like he thought I’d lost my mind before his surroundings finally registered, and then he too was flying out of the bed as though I’d just poured gasoline on it and set it the whole damn thing on fire.

Now that was much more like the reaction I was expecting from him.

“I—I don’t know what happened. I’m so sorry. I must’ve fallen asleep,”

he said speedily, looking wholly embarrassed and completely beside himself about it. I could practically see the shame emanating out of his pores.

Good grief, was there no end to the suffering he inflicted on himself?

Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so freaked out or hysterical anymore. I was too busy feeling bad for Gabriel. The poor guy was never going to let himself live this one down if I didn’t intervene on his behalf right then and there.

“It’s not your fault, really…I fell asleep too.”

Not seeing the self-contempt leave his face, I went on. “It’s really not a big deal, Gabriel. Besides, it was kind of nice. You know, nice and comfortable. Cozy. Like two cozy friends sleeping comfortably together.” Oh, dear lord, please help me to stop talking.

He nodded circularly, as though he wasn’t sure which direction to go with it while I inwardly kicked myself for never knowing when to quit while I was ahead. The two of us stared at each other for a very long, awkward moment before Gabriel finally worked up the nerve to speak first.

“Well, I should go—leave you to get ready for school and whatnot,”

he said, looking everywhere but at me now. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

“Mmhmm. Yup. Sounds good.”

I crossed my arms and watched as he shuffled across my room to the door and then quietly slipped out without saying another word.

Well, that just took awkward to a whole new expert level.

Blowing out a deep, cleansing breath, I made my way into the bathroom and then peered up at my reflection in the mirror. Most of the swelling and open cuts had healed, though there was still some noticeable bruising around my eyes and jaw. Sliding open a drawer on my vanity, I pulled out Caleb’s magic-laced bangle and uttered the incantation:

Caleb Owens is a god.

Just as it had done before, the bruises and superficial damage to my face faded before my eyes, leaving my skin in pristine condition. Between Gabriel’s healing blood and Caleb’s magical bracelet, you’d never know that I had my ass handed to me by both my mother and my Handler last night.

Lucky fucking me.

***

After showering and dressing and then stopping by the guest room to check in on Trace, I made my way downstairs to the kitchen in search of something to eat. It felt as though I’d been doing a lot of that lately—rummaging for food, that is, though somehow, the food never quite seemed to make it to my stomach.

Spotting Tessa sitting on the patio outside with a cup of coffee in her hand, I quickly detoured to the coffee machine to make myself a cup and then went to join her on the terrace.

“What are you doing out here?”

I asked as I shut the patio door behind myself and then pulled out a wrought iron chair at the table beside her. The sun was already struggling to make an appearance as the overcast sky continued to thicken, casting a hazy residue over its rays and making everything look blurry and gray.

“Just thinking.”

She took a sip of her coffee and then turned to face me. “You healed nicely. I take it you had some help last night.” The way she said made it obvious that she knew I’d bloodshared with Gabriel and still wasn’t one hundred percent okay with it.

Oh, well. Too bad for her.

“Thanks for throwing me to the wolves yesterday,”

I answered instead. “It never ceases to amaze me how spectacularly you manage to avoid having my back when it counts the most.”

“I did have your back.”

I gawked at her like she’d just sprouted a massive male appendage right out of her forehead.

“You summoned your Time Manipulation ability, didn’t you? How else were we going to help you do that?”

“Seriously, Tessa? I could think of a hundred different ways!”

“Yeah? Name one,”

she challenged.

My lips popped open several times before coming up empty and aborting the launch altogether. The truth was, I had no idea how I had used that ability in the past and up until yesterday, I hadn’t been able to summon it since that night at the church with Engel. Regardless, their method seemed unnecessarily cold and archaic.

“You really need to work on your apologies,”

I grumbled out instead.

Tessa laughed, but it was dry and humorless. “If you’re expecting me to be sorry for trying to prepare you in the only way I know how to, you’re going to be waiting around for a really long time, Jemma. There’s nothing warm or soft about the hand that we’ve been dealt and that’s under normal circumstances.”

And by normal, she meant not being the literal daughter of the Devil himself.

Having zero rebuttal to that, I took a sip of my coffee and stared out at the dew-kissed landscape. A part of me knew she was right and that as brutal and animalistic as their approach had been, it was necessary in order to force me into drawing out an ability I had zero control of or understanding. After all, at the end of the day, it had worked.

But it still wasn’t sitting right with me.

“So, what now, O-sensei? I managed to summon one measly ability, but I still don’t understand how I did it. Aren’t we pretty much back at square one?”

I asked, meeting her tired, war-torn eyes.

“Then we do it over and over again until you learn how to summon it at will.”

I gaped at her. “Are you seriously telling me you plan on beating me to a pulp every day until?”

“If that’s what it takes. Obviously, we’ll have to keep changing it up to make sure the fear response is there,”

she answered clinically, as though we weren’t talking about brutalizing me for the sake of science.

“You really are crazy,”

I said, shaking my head at her. “I think you’ve been doing this for too long.” I mean, honestly? The girl had clearly lost all sense of humanity.

“Maybe, but I’d rather be crazy and prepared than sane and dead.”

She placed her cup of coffee on the table and shifted her body around to face me. “You’re going to need every morsel of arsenal you have inside that pretty little body of yours if you stand any chance of going up against Lucifer’s consort and her herd of demons.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

she asked, doubt clouding her icy gray eyes. “Because the only other option here is signing your life away and becoming the Fourth Horsemen. Is that what you want? Because it’s what the Order wants.”

Just hearing her say the words sent a fissure of fear through my stomach.

“Jesus, Jemma. Don’t you get it?”

she asked, her voice softening as a ting of desperation rang out through her words. “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to keep you alive. There’s no room for love or leniency or mercy here because I promise you, dear sister, they won’t be showing you any of those things when the time comes.”

I slumped back in my chair as a heavy breath escaped me. Because I knew she was right. She was so right that it almost hurt to hear. No one was going to show me a lick of compassion, certainly not Nikki or her army of demons. If Tessa, Gabriel and Jaqueline didn’t train me with the same kind of merciless ferocity, I would never be prepared enough or strong enough to face any one of them.

“Alright, I get it. You’re right,”

I finally conceded, though I really wasn’t happy about it.

Tessa picked up her coffee and relaxed back in her chair, not even bothering to gloat about it.

“So I continue training and getting the life kicked out of me until I learn how to summon and control my abilities,”

I summarized, mostly to myself since I really needed to start getting comfortable with the idea.

“Basically.”

“And what about Trace?”

I asked, trepidation pooling in my stomach at the thought of not being able to spend every waking hour trying to figure out how to bring him back. Of course, I was worried about Dominic too, but at least I had a plan in that regard and so long as Gabriel and I continued bloodsharing, everything would remain right on track.

“Let me be the one to worry about Trace and you focus on your training,”

she said as she took a small sip of her coffee. “If there’s something in the books about this, I’ll find it.”

“And if there isn’t?”

An empty numbness pressed over me as I thought about the worst-case scenario. It wouldn’t be the first time our books and scriptures had let us down. Frankly, we were playing in an entirely different ballgame and there didn’t seem to be a rulebook in sight.

“There will be,”

she said with the kind of certainty that made zero sense to me given the circumstances. “Nikki can’t be the first idiot in the history of Anakim to reanimate someone and do such a piss poor job of it. There has to be something, somewhere, and if there is, I’ll find it. If there isn’t, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

I nodded, feeling somewhat reassured that my sister was actually going to help me for once—that she understood how important Trace was to me and that she was going to do everything she could to help me bring him back from wherever the hell his mind had gone.

A knock sounded against the bay window. Tessa and I both turned to see Gabriel signaling for us to go inside. We shared a quick look and then collected our coffee mugs before making our way inside.

“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,”

said Tessa as she closed the patio door behind herself and then set her mug on the kitchen table, her eyes still fixed on Gabriel in a jeering way. “Did you sleep well?”

Gabriel’s guilty gaze shot to mine before returning to Tessa. He cleared his throat and then answered, “I did. Thank you. And yourself?”

“Oh, yes. Very well. Funny, I noticed you didn’t sleep downstairs,”

she went on casually, still staring him down. Her tone may have been light and indifferent, but her eyes were anything but. “Unless I missed you.”

This was going to get ugly, fast. Must. Leave. Now.

Being the coward that I was, I rushed to the sink and dumped the rest of my coffee down the drain, pretending to be busy rinsing and washing while leaving Gabriel to face the firing squad that was my sister all on his own.

“No. I didn’t sleep downstairs,”

he answered—his voice low and bashful.

“That’s what I thought,”

she said enthusiastically and then paused. “So, where did you sleep then?”

All the blood drained from my head as I continued vigorously scrubbing out my mug.

“Tessa.”

Gabriel’s voice turned regretful, almost pleading.

“It’s a simple question, Gabriel.”

A long stint of silence descended on the room, and I finally turned to witness the car wreck with my own eyes.

His gaze darted to mine, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. “I feel asleep in Jemma’s room,”

he admitted softly before I could work up the nerve to intervene on his behalf.

Her eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. “Really? Well, isn’t that snug.”

“It’s not what you think,”

I cut in, finally finding some semblance of my backbone. “I needed a lot more blood than usual to heal last night. Gabriel was just helping me, but he was spent by the end of our session and we both passed out. Don’t be upset with him. It’s as much my fault as it is his.”

She turned her icy grays on me. “And why would I be upset with either of you?”

My lips parted to answer that very obvious question, but nothing came out. Was she messing with me or was that an actual question? “I mean…I think it’s…pretty obvious.”

My brows drew down together. “No?”

Her back stiffened into a board. “The only thing I’m concerned about is that Gabriel stays focused on his task. If you’re referring to that, then yes, I guess it is obvious.”

Mmkay. I so wasn’t referring to that.

“I assure you I am focused,”

he said with a bow of his head.

Tessa’ gaze slid back to him easily. “Good. Where are you with the bloodbond progress-wise?”

“I believe a connection is beginning to take form, though we haven’t fully tested it as of yet,”

he answered mechanically, like he was answering to one of his superiors.

“Okay,”

she said and crossed her arms over her chest. “Let’s see it then.”

Gabriel and I shared a confused look.

She rolled her eyes and then said, ever so slowly as though we were both complete idiots. “Try to compel her, Gabriel.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.”

He scratched the side of his face and then looked over at me, waiting, as though asking for my permission to proceed.

I shrugged and then walked around the kitchen island to join him where he stood. Rolling my shoulders in an attempt to relax myself, I took a deep breath and then looked up into his eyes.

He stared back at me for a moment and then asked Tessa, “What should I compel her to do?”

“Does it matter?”

she snapped, clearly out of patience. “Compel her to stand on one foot for all I care.”

He nodded again, looking like a scolded puppy and then peered down at me, his jaw muscle feathering. “Take off your jacket,”

he commanded, his voice low and gravelly.

I could feel the command just at the peripheral of my mind, almost as though it were knocking and politely asking to come inside, but it was far too weak to get through my security system.

“Actually, I think I’ll keep it on,”

I answered regretfully because it was obvious it hadn’t worked.

Gabriel released a heavy breath, and for the faintest of moments, I thought I saw a flicker of relief on his face.

“Well, you have a lot more work to do,”

said Tessa, not impressed with the whole display. “It’s just as well seeing as Jemma’s going to need a whole lot of healing by the time she gets done with Jacqueline’s training.”

Oh, goody.

Like I said, lucky fucking me.