Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (2 page)

“What do I smell like?” she asked, ignoring his question.

He gave this some thought before answering, “Purple.”

“Purple?”

“Um-hmm.”

“I didn’t know smells have a color?”

“Well, they do.”

“What’s the smell for orange?”

“Cheese.”

She laughed silently against his chest, feeling his ribcage expand and contract beneath her fingertips. He collected her hand and laced his fingers through hers. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“Yeah. I’m ready,” she murmured. Anything louder than a murmur would betray the fact that she was definitely not ready. Today they were headed to Montana to follow up on an Agatha-related lead. Montana itself didn’t sound so bad. It was the people they were going to see in Montana that made Farley nervous. Meeting Daniel’s friends for the first time was a daunting prospect, and she constantly had to remind herself why they were going: Agatha was still missing after their showdown with the Reavers, and they had to find her.

“I can hear them grinding,” Daniel said quietly, as though imparting some great secret into her ear.

“My teeth?”

“The gears in your head. You’re worrying about something. I can tell.”

She sighed. “It’s nothing. I… it’s just scary meeting people you’ve known for so long. And they’re all… like you. Kind of. I’m just ordinary.
Boring.
”

He twisted so that he lay facing her on the sofa, his arm still pillowing her head
. Their bodies pressed together
- foreheads, chests, stomachs, knees and legs all tangled so that she wouldn’t fall off the edge.

“Are you serious?”

Farley nodded.

“You don’t need to think like that. Ever. Okay? Being stuck with the same people decade after decade is nowhere near as much fun as you think. Plus you’re anything but ordinary. You’re extra-ordinary in every way.” His eyes burned in the darkness, focusing on her with an intensity she was only just learning how to handle. “You think being prophesied is normal?”

“No.”

“Well, then. I’m sure they’ll all be green with envy about that one.”

“I doubt it. Being prophesied sucks,” Farley moaned, tracing her fingertip along the line of his jaw. It felt rough where he hadn’t shaved in a few days.

“Exactly. So does living for hundreds of years and not being able to have a proper life.” He reached down and tugged on the blanket at his feet, drawing it up to cover them both. It was far too hot for it, but it made the moment more intimate somehow. Farley left it there.

“This sofa’s really small, y’know?” she said.

Daniel smiled an already knowing smile and kissed her nose. “I
do
know.”

“I can think of a place to continue this conversation that would be much more comfortable.”

“You can?”

“Yep. Why don’t you just come sleep in my bed? There’s only a few hours left before dawn. You’d get a lot more rest if you were comfortable.”

“I
am
comfortable. This is perfect.” He closed his eyes but his smile spread wider, clearly anticipating the grumpy expression that settled on her face.

“Fine. Be that way. I’m going back to my bed right now in protest. Don’t complain in the morning when you have a stiff neck.”

“Okay,” he whispered. But instead of letting her go he tucked his chin over her head and pulled her closer, so that she had to slot her folded arms in between them, like their bodies were a jigsaw puzzle and that was where she fit.

********

“I think she’s drooling on him.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Shall we poke them now?”

Farley cracked open an eyelid. In the small, abstract snapshot of her vision she could see Daniel’s throat an inch away from her face, and over his shoulder was the stuffed moose head, grinning with perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. “No,” she groaned, “no poking allowed.”

The sound of her voice woke Daniel. He winced and buried his face into his pillow.

“They live!” Tess cried. She proceeded to sit on Farley’s hipbone and bounce up and down, making the sofa springs squeal like stuck pigs. “Wow. Nothing interesting could have happened down here last night. We’d definitely have heard about it.”

“Shut. Up. Kennedy,” Farley growled, trying to loosen herself from Daniel’s arms so she could turn around.

“No,” he mumbled. “Don’t look at them. If we acknowledge their presence, they’ll never leave. Play dead.”

“Smell dead, more like it,” Tess jibed.

“Do I smell bad, baby?” Daniel asked into the cushion.

“Like hot pink.”

He broke into laughter, an easy kind happiness that made Farley shiver with the simple pleasure of hearing it. She joined him, only stopping when Tess
shoved a finger into her side.

“You two had better get up and in the shower before I count to ten, or I’m getting a bucket of cold water.”

“I wouldn’t doubt her,” Oliver added. “She’s a woman of her word. Plus we have to drive for, like, eighteen hours today.”

That seemed to sober Daniel up. He propped himself up on one arm, narrowing his eyes at everyone, Farley included. “
I’ll
be driving for, like, eighteen hours today. No one else is touching that car. I’d better go make sure she’s still safe.”

He vaulted over Farley so that her body rolled into the indentation he left behind, laughing when she cried, “Hey!”

“That car means way too much to him. It’s not just me who thinks that, right?” Tess asked.

Oliver raised an eyebrow and said, “No. This level of obsession goes way beyond the normal love any man should have for his car.”

Farley rolled to face them, grimacing when she saw that they were dressed and ready to face the day. Daniel had already disappeared, probably out onto the driveway to make sure no birds had crapped on his new Dodge Viper. She hadn’t even bothered asking how he could afford it. His attachment to the car was surprising, given that only two weeks earlier he was still ‘mourning’ the death of his Charger. He’d had to blow it up as a distraction when he’d broken into the Tower.

             
“I’m making you breakfast. Get ready,” Tess ordered and stalked into the kitchen, her crazy hair disappearing from view. It was no wonder she was the most eager to leave; Tess was paranoid she was going to run into her mom, who lived three blocks away. No amount of persuasion had been able to get her to go home or even contact Mrs. Kennedy. Not when Oliver was leaving with Farley and Daniel. Her response to Daniel’s gentle hint that she might like to go back to school had been, “I’m eighteen years old. I can do what I want. And if I want to flunk out of high school and traipse around the country with my boyfriend, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

Oliver didn’t really have much say in the matter, but even if he did he would never have sent her away. He loved her way too much. He hung back for a split second following Tess’ departure, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, before giving Farley an apologetic shrug and hurrying after his girlfriend.

It had been well past dark when they crossed state lines into Montana. Tess and Oliver spent the day sleeping intermittently with their heads resting at awkward angles as the view outside the window turned from an arid, pale red moon-like landscape to bushy scrubland, and then into some green, vibrant world Farley didn’t recognise.

The smell of this new place was alien. It rested heavy at the back of her nose in a complex combination of earth and musk and hidden memories- a smell too difficult to translate into words. Instead, it described itself to her in images: running fingertips over tree bark, crinkled and unyielding, stained with sticky sap; standing with rolled up trouser legs in ice cold water that rushed around bare ankles, the water blurring like a photo with the exposure cranked high; the sky, the endless, uncontainable vastness of the sky, too big to even encompass in outstretched arms with fingers splayed wide. Everything crisp. Everything in focus.

And then there were the mountains. In LA, the mountains were the earth’s naked bones, ridged spines of some long-decayed creature, laid to rest for a thousand of years. Here they were living things, covered in deep, endless forests where all kinds of creatures lived: moose, elk, black bears, and wolves. Snow still capped the very highest of their peaks even in the unusually hot July the state was experiencing. If you closed your eyes and focused, it was almost as if you’d be able to taste the cool freshness of that snow on the tip of your tongue.

All that changed with the dark. The mountains lost their identities and became looming, undefined shadows that seemed to press in on either side of car, and the tree line morphed into brooding lines of silent warriors, waiting impatiently in the darkness for the order to attack.

“You awake?” Daniel murmured, pulling Farley out of her thoughts. She turned and looked at him, blinking like an owl as her eyes adjusted to the gentle glow cast by the dashboard dials. The blueness of it threw his face into relief, all shadows and highlights, reminding her of the other times she had seen that sort of blue-white light dance on his skin before. Mostly it reminded her of the time three weeks ago when he had used his power to save them in the Tower, destroying three of the Reavers: her father, her grandfather and her great-grandfather. That power looked like nothing more than brilliant light, when in truth it was the souls of a thousand people, long dead. It made up the second part of a prophecy that she
, herself, had been foretold in-
the same prophecy the Quorum had required her to die to fulfil. Their wishes hadn’t mattered in the end. There had been another way to combine her soul with Daniel’s power in order to kill the Reavers, and neither of them had had to die.

Farley pushed the painful memories aside. Daniel’s eyes studied her, reflecting the neon dashboard like they were tiny pools of dark water.

“We’re nearly there.”

“And where is
there
?
You feel like telling me yet?”

Daniel had refused to tell anyone the name of their final destination. He’d used the words
city rats
and
unappreciative of the great outdoors,
which led her to believe they were heading to the back of beyond.

“I suppose it’s too late for you to Google it and make me turn around,” he said. “The place is called Gun Creek. We’re going to be heading past the town and up into the mountains a little ways. That’s where the cabin is.”

“Cabin?!”
Tess exclaimed groggily from the back. “You never said anything about a cabin. I hope for your sake it has electricity, Montisauri, or there’ll be hell to pay. You do
not
want to know what my hair looks like if it doesn’t get blow-dried.”

Daniel hid his smile by sucking on his bottom lip, but it could still be seen in his eyes. His expression made something flip disconcertingly in Farley’s stomach. When she’d met him, he had been so distant and cold. A smile on his face would have been about as likely as pigs flying.

Well, okay, he
had
smiled once or twice, but it had been bitter and twisted. Not happy at all. Now…it was unnerving how different he was now, and how easy it had been to fall into this life they had together where he was the sweetest person imaginable. Sometimes it felt like she was holding her breath, waiting for something to snap and take this new Daniel away. For that Daniel to have been the real version of him all along, and this one to slowly disappear until there was nothing of him left.

“I don’t like your silence, Daniel San. Please tell me they have all the essentials?” Tess demanded.

Daniel straightened his face out and attempted serious. “That depends on what you consider essential.”

“Wireless internet?”

He cleared his throat.

“Daily newspaper delivery?”

He pretended to squint out of the window, searching for something up ahead.

“Running hot water?!”

Nothing.

Tess howled on the backseat, finally waking Oliver out of his death-like slumber.

“Jeez, woman, what’s up? Hey, are you two trying to kill my girlfriend?” he grumbled.

Farley gave Daniel a glance, catching the slight tick at the corner of his mouth. It was the only thing that gave anything away in the deadpan look he’d so absolutely perfected. “Don’t freak out, Tess. He’s just playing with you.”

“He’d better be,” she said. “What’s the exact population of this town?”

“Hmm, low hundreds if I recall correctly,” he told her.

“That’s not big enough to warrant a Starbucks, is it?”