Page 20

Chapter 20

I bit down on my lip to stop any noise escaping, but even my breathing sounded too loud. The man, in his late thirties and sporting a red moustache speckled with grey, took a further step into the hallway. He looked up and down it as if expecting to see something new every time he looked in a new direction.

Oh crap. Hecate.

I strained my eyes to look for her, but she had disappeared. Hopefully, she had found a dark shadow to hide in.

Asher and I however, sprawled on the floor like starfish hidden under a thin layer of sand, had no such luck.

The man rubbed his head, scratching the bald spot there as he pottered a little further toward us.

Gods man, go back to bed, I thought, my heart beating that little bit faster with every step he took in our direction.

He couldn’t see us, but I didn’t want to risk him hearing us if we moved out of his way. If he was going to bugger off, his suspicion needed to die in the silence.

My face scrunched, the pulse in my neck hammering as his bony foot stomped down next to my hand, the breeze brushing my fingers. I curled my fingers into my palm as he shuffled around on the spot.

“We’ve got rats,” he muttered. “I know we’ve got rats. Don’t care what dad says.”

He strode off back to his room with only the smallest pause to look both ways down the corridor again before he shut the door.

I didn’t dare release my breath until several long seconds had passed, and even then when I scrambled onto my knees, Asher whispered, “Wait, will you?”

“ You can wait. I’m getting out of here,” I muttered.

Although I couldn’t see him, I heard Asher get up beside me and Hecate slunk out from under a chaise lounge under the window. That had been a close enough call without hanging around.

But just as I dusted myself off, the bedroom door flew open again, and the man darted out. He caught sight of Hecate who hissed and batted a paw in his direction. A burst of magic shot from her claws and knocked him over onto his backside.

I opened my mouth to scold her but slapped a hand over it instead. But my attempt to keep silent did nothing as Hecate’s magic slammed into an electric candle fitting in the wall. It burst into real-life flames and the metal fitting toppled onto the floor with a clang that reverberated down the corridor and through my very bones.

The moment the magic touched the wall, tiny fragments of crystal lit up, rippling across the stones until the whole corridor was alight with magic. A wailing sound pulsated through the air and I covered one ear with my hand to block out the piercing noise. It scrambled my thoughts into an ungodly mess; we had to get out of here.

Before I could act, Asher tugged me down the corridor at a run, almost jolting my arm out of its socket. Hecate ran after us as we hurried back the way we had come, down the corridors and stairs to the ground floor.

"Slowly, slowly," Asher whispered, as we reached the bottom of the staircase.

Hecate jumped onto my shoulders again, making me flinch as we stepped onto the stone floor, on which anyone nearby would easily hear our less than careful footsteps. We picked our way across the floor toward the door that led into the corridor where our escape route lay. But two people, an older man and woman, dressed in fine red dressing gowns with initials emblazoned on the front, hurtled through them.

Asher pulled me underneath the stairs, where a door stood.

"We have to hide," Hecate said, her paw brushing my cheek.

She jumped down from my shoulders and reached for the lock on the door, pressing her paw to the keyhole. With a click, it opened and the three of us dashed inside. I closed the door carefully behind us.

"Genius move, Hec." Asher released my hand and glared at her. "You couldn't have just pretended you were a rat, could you? You had to attack him."

Hecate hissed at him, swishing her tail indignantly.

I was going to tell Asher to shut up, even if he was technically right about Hecate's recklessness, but the contents of the room caught my eye. We stood in a circular room, the stone floor spiralling in on itself until it contorted in the very centre into an altar. A symbol carved out of red crystal stood atop it; the sigil of Sagittarius.

Apparently, the Franklins were religious to boot.

But the altar didn't hold my attention for long. Instead, I stepped further into the room to investigate what bathed us in a shimmery blue-white light. Ornate stone shelves embedded in the walls glowed under the light of the dozens of jars that sat atop them. What looked like fluid swirled around inside them, but every so often it jerked and stuttered as if it ran on lagging internet.

"What is all this?" I asked, craning my neck to search for the tops of the shelves, but they stretched on up so far that I couldn't see where they ended.

"Bea, I don't think this is our priority right now," Asher said, following me across the room to one of the shelves. "We need to think up a plan. Maybe we..."

But his suggestions turned into static in my ears as I leaned in to get a closer look at the jars.

When I looked closely, I realised the contents of the jars weren't liquid but like dark, shimmery clouds with bolts of lightning jutting through them. And with each jolt of lightning, an image appeared for a few seconds before fading back into its cloudy consistency.

I placed my fingers on the edge of the nearest shelf and leaned in even further, my nose almost to the glass, waiting for the next image to flash. Then it came; the perfectly clear image of one of Penny's professors. I had seen them talking once after a class and Penny only had good things to say about him. He was a portly man with formal fashion style, with one pair of glasses balanced on his red nose and another perched on his bald head.

But in this vision, the professor looked a far cry from his usual bouncy, jovial self. In fact, he had quite the startled look on his face when Troy Franklin punched it square on the nose before the vision vanished.

"Are you seeing this?" I asked, interrupting Asher mid-rant.

Hecate jumped up next to me and batted the jar with her paw. Electricity danced around against the glass inside where she pressed her toe beans.

"What?" Asher asked, leaning in next to me to get a look.

The press of his arm against mine made me feel safe, despite our precarious situation.

Hecate waved her paw in our direction and we both held out our hands so she could lay her paw on both of our fingers at the same time to communicate.

"They're memories," she told us. "Stolen from their owners, most likely against their will."

My first instinct was disgust. There were few reasons that anyone would want to steal people's memories and that was to keep quiet anyone who threatened the Franklins. No wonder they were so good at covering up their crimes.

But then, hadn't I sneaked in here to steal something of Troy's? No, that was different. I took dangerous powers from people too stupid or too malicious to wield them properly. The two acts were different in too many ways for me to feel any guilt.

"Wait," I said. "If these are all memories..."

I looked up at the endless shelves all stuffed with jars. There had to be thousands of memories in here, if not tens of thousands; centuries worth of stolen moments that didn't belong to the Franklins.

That was how they kept such a tight lid on all the crap Troy pulled.

"We can't let them get away with this," I muttered. This went way beyond Troy's stupid recklessness with his powers. This was corruption on another level.

Asher grabbed my shoulders and whisked me around to face him. His stare bore into me so intensely that I felt it deep in my soul.

"We are not getting involved in this," he said, his tone dipping so low that his voice reverberated between us. "I supported you breaking in here because of what it means to you, but we can't meddle in something this dangerous. There's no coming back from something like that, but if we get out of here now, we can escape and they'll never know it was us."

His eyes pleaded with me, and I couldn't help but allow the feelings to wash in. The need to make him feel heard, and to keep him safe overpowered any pride that demanded a place at my decision-making table. He was right. I couldn't put him in danger like this all because I wanted to go full-vigilante on this stupid family.

"Yeah," I said, trying not to let anything I felt leak into my voice. "Okay. So what do we do?"

Asher let go of my shoulders and turned around, grabbing a handful of his hair like he did whenever there was a riddle he hadn't quite solved. But as I looked over to check on Hecate and watched her batting a jar toward the edge of the shelf, an idea struck me.

"They would probably be pretty concerned if they heard their precious memories shattering, wouldn't they?" I said.

Asher turned back around, his face a blank slate.

"Hec, can you break a few while Asher and I wait next to the door?" I asked. "If you break enough to get their attention, then they could come running in here and give us a chance to sneak out of here before they realise."

"That's not a bad plan," Asher said.

Of course it wasn't, it was mine.

"Can you do it, Hec?" I asked. She was the one taking all the risk if we went through with it.

Hecate swished her tail and thrust her head in the air. "Who do you think you're talking to?"

"I'll take that as a yes, then," I said.

As Asher and I headed for the door, I offered him my hand, which he took without hesitation. After tonight, I would miss it.

We pressed ourselves to the wall on one side of the door and waited. The siren continued wailing outside, the memory room a pocket of silence in which I could hear myself think. But as we waited, I realised that a low hum reverberated throughout the room, almost so low that I couldn't hear it. Were the memories making it?

If this didn't work, we would end up buried underneath this place along with a bunch of other skeletons of people who had pissed the Franklins off. At least I might get to haunt these assholes if that happened, though.

A jar flew off the shelf and smashed on the floor, sending the cloud of memory spilling across the stone. It rolled around like an incoming storm until it dissipated into the air, with only a few crackles of lightning left to pepper the atmosphere before they vanished, too. When I thought about it, I wondered how much energy a pent up memory stored, especially if it had been given time to stew in a jar.

Another several went flying, smashing all over each other, and two of the memories collided in a cascade of sparks. They rolled into each other, almost as if they were wrestling until they melded together into one larger cloud.

Oh hell yeah, this was about to get interesting.

Hecate, as usual, didn't do this task by halves and knocked at least two dozen jars off the shelves before a whole group of people either dressed in robes or pyjamas flooded into the room. Just in time to watch several of the memory clouds join the first two and expand into a raging ball of lightning the size of a trampoline that hovered in the air.

The members of the Franklin family held up their hands to shield their faces as lightning burst from the brand new vortex of memories. Voices shrieked and muttered in the air, echoing around the room as the memories took on a new, audible dimension.

As distractions went, this was good.

I grinned to myself, taking one last look at the mayhem gathering traction before darting out of the room, dragging Asher along with me. Hecate trotted out after us, her distraction sufficient even for her to make a casual exit.

I picked her up in one arm and pressed a kiss on her head. Even if she had technically gotten us into this mess, she had done a good job.

“Let’s get out of here before you get into any more trouble,” Asher muttered.

I gritted my teeth, wanting desperately to argue with him that my plan would have gone down without a hitch without him. But as the warmth seeped up my arm from the touch of his skin, and into my core, I couldn’t help but feel grateful.

With that, we dashed off toward our escape route, with Hecate digging her claws into my shoulder as she bounced in the crook of my elbow.

I didn't drop the invisibility until we couldn't see the Franklin house any longer. As soon as I did, I let go of Asher's hand. Rather I do it than him.

Asher and I didn’t say a word to each other for the rest of the walk back to my bike. I kept his face in the corner of my eye, analysing every change in his facial expressions.

He didn’t look angry, not that I cared. But he had a touch of concern that occasionally travelled down to his jaw, which would clench as he chewed his tongue, a bad habit he had tried to shake for years and failed.

Hecate and I got on my bike once we were on the other side of the teleportation portal we had taken, and Asher took his car. As I kicked the bike into gear, I realised he had parked up right next to me, almost as if to make a statement.

Once we had got home and entered the house, I went into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. All that stress had me needing to hydrate.

Hecate paced around on the counter top as I lit up a cigarette and opened the window in a poor attempt to justify smoking indoors. Nobody liked it, which I understood, but I was in no mood to give a damn.

As expected, Asher followed me into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, watching me as I filled up my glass from the tap.

“Bea…one of these days, you’re going to end up in a jail cell,” he said, easing his head from side to side as if trying to relieve a neck ache.

“That’s my problem,” I said.

“That’s really selfish of you.”

“How? I’m trying to leave you out of it, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“That’s my point. Why don’t you care that we care if you get into trouble?”

I snorted. This was usually the time I would ask him how much he could really care given all he had done recently, but the argument felt sour on my tongue. I had said it so many times, to death even, but he didn’t ever rise to it. It didn’t even seem to faze him.

Time to take a different tact.

“If you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to do something important,” I said. “Important to me, anyway.”

“Then it’s important.” Asher slid further down the counter until he was standing next to me. “But I just wish you’d let people help you. Even Edward of all people thinks you’re isolating yourself and if you really need to go down this path of finding out what your prophecy is, why can’t you let other people in to help you?”

“Who’s going to help me?” I took a generous swig from my glass. “Talk me out of it, maybe.”

“Did I?”

“Before you realised why, yeah. But I don’t need help, anyway.”

“Everyone needs someone watching their back.”

I tapped a finger against the glass, my other hand grasping the sink in a vice grip. I couldn’t figure out Asher’s motives. We had always had each other’s backs when we were together. I didn’t need to worry about anything because if anything went sideways, he was there, and me for him. Was he still trying to do that now, and if so, why?

Didn’t exes usually leave each other behind and never look back?

“I’ve got Hec,” I said, and took a long drag off my cigarette.

“And a fat lot of good that did you tonight.”

Hecate hissed and batted at Asher’s arm but he didn’t even flinch. Instead, he grabbed my glass, set it down, then snatched the cigarette from between my fingers, extinguishing it in the water glass.

"Excuse you -" But my protest died in my throat as Asher grabbed my hips and whirled me around to face him.

Our bodies pressed against each other, and the heat emanating from him permeated deep inside me, resurrecting a fire that I had to put out every single day he was around me. I looked up into his eyes, utterly vulnerable, like putty in his hands, and Asher gazed down at me, fondness and concern creating an uncomfortable mixture in his eyes.

“You were trying to quit,” he said. “Remember?”

“Quitting is for losers.”

Asher snorted. “I guess that makes me the biggest loser then, huh?”

My heart and my brain had lost their connection, neither able to make sense of what was going on. With neither able to get a grip, my body acted of its own accord.

“A huge loser.” I seized him by the collar and he didn’t resist, so I yanked him an inch closer.

But Asher closed the gap, and my heart hit its head on my ribcage as he pressed his lips to mine.