A Matter of Heart (20 page)

We’re still regaling Jonah
with stories about the bar god when we get back to Kellan’s hospital room.
Astrid isn’t there. Neither is Kate. It’s just Kellan and Karl, and they’re
sitting at the table with these confused, troubled looks. Poor boys. They need
some happy drinks.

“Where’s the big guy?”
Callie yells as Jonah gently shoves us into the room. “The guy who thinks my
girl here is a Guard slayer?” She looks at me, frowning. “That’s what he was
saying, right?”

I nod, but ugh, ugh! This
room is spinning, too. I reach out to cling to Jonah, but he’s already across
the room, pouring some water into a cup.

“I’ll kick his ass for you,”
she coos, throwing an arm around my shoulder. She’s so sweet, there’s so much
love in that arm that we nearly fall over. “I took kung fu once, you know.”

“No you didn’t,” Jonah
sighs, handing me the cup. I stare at it, wishing it was a beach drink. Beach
drinks are so, so tasty. And happy. Jonah doesn’t look happy. Callie does,
though. I’m glad for that.

Only, wait. She’s not happy.
She’s mad. “I could have.” She shoves a finger at Jonah’s chest. “I thought
about it once. It counts, you know. It’s almost the same thing.”

“I believe you,” I tell her.
Kung Fu Callie would be
rad
. “And I’d like to see you kick
what’s-his-name’s ass. He’s old. You could totally do it.”

“Are you two drunk?” Karl
demands. He’s so loud I have to put my hands over my ears.

“That’s my Karl,” I tell
Callie once he goes quiet. “He likes to yell at me, you know. It’s his way of
showing love.”

“He’s a yeller,” she
confirms. “Karl! Yell at me, too!”

“What in the hell?” Karl
snaps at Jonah. Woo boy, he looks totally mad, too. These boys need Mai Tais
STAT.

“Me!” Callie is shouting.
“Not Jonah!”

“I found them at the bar on
the roof,” Jonah says. “Apparently, they’ve been drowning in Mai Tais.”

“Mai Tais,” Callie lets them
know, “are very pretty drinks.”

“Steve makes the best,” I
agree.

“Steve?” Kellan asks Jonah.

“Steve,” Callie answers.
“Remember? Two months back? Steve with the black leather pants?” She holds my
face between her hands, squishing my cheeks. “Chloe, you would have
died
.
They creaked when he walked.”

Oh, leather pants sound so
fabulously sexy. “Did you make him walk up and down stairs or do squats?”

“Yes!” Callie says. “Squats.”

“I bet it was beautiful,” I
murmur, lying back on the bed. “Jonah, you don’t wear leather pants for me.”

Karl starts to laugh. I
shoot him a look to shut up from where I’m lying, ‘cause he is so loud, but
this only makes him laugh harder. And Jonah doesn’t answer. Did he hear me?
Maybe I should tell him again. We could go shopping for leather pants. Maybe
he’d like shopping then.

“You know what would be
beautiful?” Callie asks. She lies down next to me. “The superhero-god. In
creaky leather pants. I wish he’d sniff my hair.”

“Superhero-
god
?” Karl
is SO. LOUD. Poor Moira.

Callie and I choose to
ignore him. I lean over and sniff her hair. It’s all coconutty. “I’ll give you
my stuff and then he’ll be sniffing you, too. If we’re lucky enough to find him
again. Oh!” I snap my fingers. “He’s in my class. We’ll get ‘im for you there.”

“You are the best!” Callie
squeals, and we hug each other so hard that we start laughing all over again.

“I’m confused,” Kellan says.
“When the hell did these two become friends? And also, is there a hair sniffing
pervert on the loose?”

“Not if he has any smarts,”
Jonah mutters. And day-um, are they serving anger-ade in here, or
what
?

“Did you know he did that?
In my class?” I whisper loudly. “I think he’s a stalker. It’s kind of sweet,
right?”

“No,” Jonah says, rubbing
his forehead, and no matter how hard Callie and I try to explain just how
awesome the superhero was, none of the guys with us will agree.

“Hangovers suck.”

Jonah hands over a mug of
tea. We’re back in our apartments, having left the hospital shortly after he’d
found Callie and me in the bar. He’d had to wrestle me into bed last night,
insisting what I needed was a good night’s sleep when all I wanted was to
party. Unfortunately for me, I can remember every detail of last night’s
drinking fiasco. “You and Callie seem to be getting along.”

I have to sip slowly,
fearful of my stomach rejecting it. I am never drinking again. What was I
thinking
?
“She’s nice. We have a lot in common.”

He raises his eyebrows, so I
clarify, “Well, not a lot. You, mainly. And your brother. But I can see why you
guys like her.” His eyebrows go even higher. “You know what I mean. She’s
actually sort of fun.”

But Jonah doesn’t look like
the idea of me and Callie being friends is fun.

I set my mug down. “Are we
going to talk about what happened yesterday or what?”

“I think I’ve got the gist
of it. You and Callie got blitzed and fantasized repeatedly about superheroes
and leather pants.”

Shoot me now. “I, uh, meant
about what happened between you all and Jens Belladonna.”

That sobers him quickly.
“Chloe, there are some things that I need to tell you, some things that I don’t
want you to have to worry over because they’re absolutely ridiculous, but you
still have a right to know about—”

I decide to spare him the
awkward attempt at explaining how there are people who think I’m a murderer. “I
already know he thinks I killed the missing Guard.”

He studies me for a long
moment before chuckling. “That laptop. It was a listening device, wasn’t it?”
When I nod, he says more seriously, “Kate was pretty explicit with me about not
upsetting you. I didn’t want to hide from you that Jens Belladonna lost his
mind and started accusing you of murder with no evidence, but I also didn’t
want to risk upsetting your recovery. So I took care of it.”

I think about the
conversation that I’d overheard. “You got him fired.”

He sips my tea. “Yeah, I
did. And I’m not sorry for doing so.” He sets the mug down and takes my hands.
“I couldn’t stand by and let somebody go after you, especially when you were at
your most vulnerable.”

“This is all just so . . . I
just can’t believe it,” I say quietly. “Why would he think these things? He
doesn’t even know me.”

Jonah sighs. “Shortly after
you and Kel were brought back, Jens came to me asking for my brother’s memories
of the events so they could start searching for the three missing Guard. I was
able to hand over everything pertinent, but Jens was upset over the gaps.”

It makes my already queasy
stomach even more tremulous to ask, “Did you leave stuff out because of what me
and Kellan did?”

Surprise fills his blue
eyes. “What? No. Honey, I have to be honest, that wasn’t even a thought at the
time. There legitimately were gaps in Kellan’s memory that were either blank
due to black-outs or filled with really intense hallucinations.” He pauses,
squeezes my hands. “There’s something about Jens you need to know. Something
about his family past.” His words are cautious and quiet. “One of his ancestors
was murdered by a Creator. I don’t know all the details yet, but I guess it’s
stuck with the Belladonna family for a long time.”

I don’t even know how to
address this other than to say, “But I’m not whoever that other Creator was!”

“I know. So when he started
accusing you right away, especially in light of Kel’s hallucinations—”

“Wait. What about Kellan’s
hallucinations? Was I in them or something?”

He squeezes my hands again.
“Are you sure you want to know?” I am impatient with my answer, but he takes
his time telling me. “Please remember this was a hallucination and nothing
more. My brother was, as you are well aware of, extremely tired, over-taxed
Magically, and dangerously dehydrated and hungry.”

“Jonah. Just tell me!”

He closes his eyes for a
good second before opening them to look right into mine. “He thought you
stabbed him in the heart at one point, with some kind of red sword you created
while he wasn’t looking.”

WHAT? “He . . . he . . .!”
is all I can manage.

“If it’s any consolation,
the next thing he hallucinated was that he was surfing in Idaho, and the waves
were bigger than any we’d ever seen before.” He shakes his head. “There were
potatoes in the water.”

STILL!

“He honestly doesn’t
remember any of that, so it isn’t fair to be angry at him for things that were
beyond his control. You thought you were best friends with a rabbit—”

And the hits just keep
coming. “I
what
?”

Jonah chuckles. “All I’m
saying is: cut the guy some slack. He had no control over what he saw, just
like you didn’t. And he certainly couldn’t ever know that Jens would take a
couple of minutes worth of hallucinations as some kind of proof that all
Creators are inherently evil. But to answer your earlier questions, when I put
my foot down and insisted Jens cease his ridiculous accusations, he dug his own
grave by going against protocol and defying a Council member’s orders. That’s
why he sent Karl in, hoping that I’d somehow back down and let Karl take your
memories.”

“And the meeting you went
to?”

“I’d warned Belladonna that
if he continued, I’d make sure he paid. Astrid and Kate called a special
Council session to discuss Jens’ breaking of Guard protocols. When he dared to
accuse you of murder on the floor, I had him stripped of his position.”

I have to close my eyes.
Everyone knows. All of my colleagues heard this lunatic accuse me of who knows
what, and I wasn’t even there to defend myself.

“I won’t apologize for
trying to protect you,” Jonah says flatly. And it’s almost funny, because
normally he is so good at reading the nuances in my emotions.

“I’m not upset about that.”
I open my eyes. “I would’ve done the same for you.”

“I know you would,” he says,
and it makes me really happy to know he truly believes that.

“Those people,” I tell him,
and it hurts to even think about them. “Earle. Nividita. Harou. They’re still
missing, and I feel awful—
guilty
, I guess. Because here I am, sitting at
home with you, safe, and they’re not doing the same with their loved ones. I
couldn’t protect them, Jonah.” I swallow the large lump in my throat so I can
admit the horrible truth to him. “When push came to shove, I made sure Kellan
was safe. Nobody else.”

“It wasn’t your job to
protect them. It was their job to protect you. And they did, Chloe. Those three
made it so Kellan could get you out of there.”

My eyes sting. He can think
that, say that, but the truth is, three people are missing because of me. And I
may not have been the person who did the actual deed, but if in fact something
did happen to them, I am the reason why.

Maybe
Jens has a point after all.

Later, Jonah tells me that
there is a last minute Council meeting scheduled to select a new person to run
the Guard. “It’s not the entire assembly,” he explains as he gets ready to go.
And then I’m given a meaningful look, one far too easy to interpret.

“You don’t think I should
go.”

He bites his lip. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Jens will be there; he’s
appealing the process, even though he has nowhere to go. I’ve made sure of it.
Also . . .” He looks apologetic. “The subcommittee meeting requested you not
attend out of fear your presence might incite more accusations and distract
others from the task at hand.”

Oh. So it’s not just Jonah
who doesn’t want me to go. I feel oddly numb by all this.

He shoves his wallet in his
back pocket and pulls a coat out of the hall closet. “Besides, Kellan is on his
way over here so you two can hang out. Which, you’ve got to admit, is more fun
that Council business, right?”

“I’m sorry, what?” I say,
positive I’ve misheard him. Because, I know we all agreed that Kellan and I
were going to be friends, but . . . But am I ready for this? Are either of
them?