Forsaken (26 page)

“
Hello?” Alex
answered.

“
You’ve got one of those
mobile phones?” Cormack said in awe, though I didn’t register what
he was saying. I was trying too hard to hear what Emily might be
saying to Alex.

Alex’s face was quickly changing from
serious to grave. I could also detect a hint of anger and
frustration. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t hear what Alex was
hearing from Emily.

“
Pull over,” Alex said
quietly, but continued listening to Emily.

Cormack obeyed and pulled to the side
of the quiet country road. Just as he rolled to a stop Alex hung
up.

“
What is going on Alex?!”
I demanded, my voice shaky and frantic. “What did Emily say? Is she
okay?”

Alex just stared at the dash and shook
his head slowly. “It wasn’t Emily.”

“
It wasn’t…” I started to
ask before cold, sick realization hit me. Tears sprang to my eyes
and I covered my mouth with my hand to hold back the sob. “It was
Cole,” I said in a choked off cry.

Alex nodded and finally looked at me.
“He said Emily is in no immediate danger but he knows we’re coming
for her. He wants to see you Jessica, alone.”

“
How could he possibly
think you’d let me come without you?” I barely managed to
speak.

“
He’s made sure I won’t,”
Alex’s voice cracked slightly. “He’s found my mother. A few hundred
miles away. He said if I don’t get there in the next few hours,
she’ll be dead.”

The world seemed to fall silent as I
understood what Alex was saying. To make sure Alex would leave my
side, he had gone after the one person Alex would do anything for
to find. Alex had never met his mother but I knew how much this
would mean to him. She was the only family he had left.

“
You have to go, Alex,” I
breathed. “You have to find her.”

Alex’s lower lip quivered just
slightly as his steely gray eyes met mine. I knew if it were
possible, there would have been tears there. “I can’t,” he
whispered. “How can I let you go to meet that monster?”

“
You have to Alex,” I said
quietly as I leaned forward and placed a hand on his perfectly
smooth cheek. “She’s your only family.”

“
You’re my family,” he
whispered.

My insides trembled at his words. I
bit my lower lip for a moment to collect myself. “I’ll be fine.
Cole doesn’t know about Cormack.”

“
I’ll protect her,”
Cormack, who had been silent up until this point, said. “Don worry
about anythin’. She’ll be safe with me.”

Alex kept my stare for another long
moment, his hand coming up to his face to lay on mine. He then
turned to Cormack.

“
You’d better keep your
word,” he said, his voice harsh but filled with emotion. “I swear,
if anything happens to her, I will hunt you down and rip your wings
out myself.”

“
Alex,” I chided. It
frightened me to hear him talk like that. It seemed to be happening
more and more lately.

Alex continued his hard stare for a
second longer. He then opened the door and got out. He barely even
slammed it shut before Cormack sped off.

I jerked my head around to catch one
last glimpse of Alex but all I saw was a flash of metallic
light.

I gave a quivering sigh as I sat back
in my seat. I was glad Alex had not given me a kiss before he left.
It would have felt like too final of a good-bye.

After a minute Cormack glanced in the
rear-view mirror at me. “He loves you a lot.”

“
Yeah,” I said quietly as
I wiped a tear away.

It started raining a few minutes
later, making the day feel all the more ominous. The thought that
the day couldn’t get any worse crossed my mind, but then I realized
it could. It could still get so much worse.

When I felt like I had control of my
emotions I crawled into the front passenger seat.

“
So, now that it’s up to
just you, what’s your plan?” I asked as I stared at the road ahead
of us. The female voice coming from the GPS told us to merge onto a
highway.

“
All I have ta do es get
close enough to him to grab him and et won’ be difficult to make
him go back,” Cormack said.

“
What do you mean?” I
asked.

“
Et’s difficult enough
keepin’ ma self in this world. Et takes constant concentration to
keep bein’ here. Et’s not easy for a dead man to stay in the world
‘o the living. I figure if I can only get a hold of the man, I just
have to stop thinkin’ about stayin’ here and it will be done. We’ll
be back.”

“
Wait,” I asked, panic
starting to seep into my veins. “You have to
think
about staying in the world of
the living?”

“
Oh yeah,” Cormack
chuckled. “The afterlife is constantly calling. The pull es strong.
I don know how Alex keeps et up. Or how Cole’s kept it up for this
long. Et’s brutal.”

I slumped in my seat as I took in
Cormack’s words. As they did, someone else’s words came back to
me.

Maybe he knows something
you don’t. Maybe that’s part of the reason.

Sal had been right.

So this was the real reason Alex
wouldn’t propose. He was already being pulled back into the
afterlife. He really could be sucked back at any moment. That was
what he had meant when he insisted all the time that he had no
control.

“
Why didn’t he ever tell
me?” I said out loud, not realizing I did.

“
What?” Cormack asked,
confused.

“
That it’s so hard to
stay. That at any time he might lose it and be pulled
back.”

By this point I had already said
enough and had to explain the entire story to him. I told him about
how I knew Alex was going to propose, how nothing had happened
after Alex had come back. About how he seemed so stubborn and
unreasonable for refusing to ask me again. It all made sense now
and I felt horrible for how I had reacted before.

“
The council agreed ta
give Alex more time with you,” Cormack said as he stared at the
road. “They never said how long they’d give him.”

I cursed under my breath, suddenly
violently resentful toward Emily for being so stupid and eating up
the precious time I had left with Alex. If our days were numbered,
I wanted to spend every second of them with Alex.

“
Please talk about
something else,” I said with a wavering voice. “Anything
else.”

He glanced over at me, sadness and
another emotion warring in his eyes. It almost looked like
jealousy. “I grew up in Scotland, as I’m sure you’ve already
assumed. I was an only child. It was always jus ma mother ‘n me. Ma
father ran off when ma mother was still carrying me, too young and
not ready to be a parent. That was the excuse ma mother made for
him anyway.

“
Money was a constant
struggle for the two of us and I grew up pathetically poor. I
didn’t mind most of the time though. I felt sorry for ma mother.
She worked herself ta death but could never seem to get ahead. I
wanted to drop out of high school to help support her but she
wouldn’t allow it.

“
A few years after I
finished school she fell ill. The doctors weren’t sure what was
wrong and we couldn’t afford to get any further testing. I worked
as much as I could and spent the rest of my hours taking care of
her as she slowly decayed away. She passed the day after my
twenty-fourth birthday.

“
While I would miss her
terribly I couldn’t be to terribly sad. It was painful ta watch her
waste away, eventually forgetting my name and even her own. I
didn’t want her ta have ta live like that. And besides, she was
exalted,” he said with a smile.

“
Soon after she passed, I
decided I was ready for a new life. A fresh start. America seemed
like a good place for that. I got all my papers, all that stuff
taken care of and moved over. Got a job at a large corporate office
working in the mail room. Didn’t pay much, but when I needed extra
money I worked a few hours as a bouncer at a club. Never woulda’
guessed I woulda’ meet my end behind one.”

“
I’m so sorry Cormack,” I
said quietly, watching his flawless face as he spoke. “You’ve had a
pretty rough life.”

“
Yeah,
had
,” he said with a chuckle.
“That’s alright though. It wus a good one. I’ve got no complaints.
Except for the being shot part an’ it all ending.”

I admired Cormack’s attitude. He was a
good man. Before, when I had thought of him as Adam, I guessed he
would be exalted come his own judgment time. I had no doubt now
that I was right.

“
Cormack?” I said quietly
as I looked out at the road ahead of us. “Why haven’t you been
judged yet? You said it’s been eighteen years. That hardly seems
fair.”

“
Little the council does
outside of judgment es fair,” he said as he looked over at me. “I
would think you would know that best.”

I could only nod at this. He was
right.

“
I’ve never been told why.
Given recent events, I can only guess that they wanted to keep
somethin’ over ma head. They guessed they would need someone like
me later.

“
An’ I’ve always wondered
if there was something left I was supposed to do. Ma life wus cut
short, maybe there’s somethin’ I need to take care of.”

I looked over at Cormack as he fell
quiet. I hated the council all the more in that moment. Nothing was
fair.

The gas station we pulled into was
small and nearly empty. I had never seen a station with only two
pumps before. While Cormack filled the car, I went inside and asked
to use the phone.

It had been nearly two hours since
Alex had left and my insides were an emotional storm. I was anxious
about having Alex gone but I knew what finding his mom would do for
him. I also felt sick to think what Cole might have done to Alex’s
only remaining family member. My fingers were barely even able to
punch the numbers into the ancient phone. I waited with nervous
anticipation as the phone rang. After four rings it went to his
voicemail.

I went back outside to find Cormack
showing the attendant a map, pointing to where Cole’s family’s
legacy was supposed to be. He didn’t seem to trust the “talking
box”.

“
You’re only about twenty
minutes away but I don’t know what you’re expecting to find there.
The area’s been deserted for as long as I can remember. No one will
go near the old Emerson place. Bad things have happened there.
People say it has been haunted lately. You’d best just stay
away.”

My skin crawled at his words. Cole
really was back. I’d be seeing him soon.

“
I’d stay away from that
place if I were you,” he said as he started walking back
inside.

“
Okay,” Cormack said as he
walked around to the driver’s side. “That creeps me out a
bit.”

“
That terrifies me a bit,”
I said as I slid into the passenger side.

My pulse seemed to pick up another
beat with every minute that passed as we got closer and closer to
the former Emerson estate. My palms started sweating and I couldn’t
quite sit still. “You’re sure this will be easy, making him go
back?” I asked nervously as my hands twisted around each
other.

“
Once I can get to him et
will be easy. I never said et would be easy getting’ to
him.”

I really, really wished Alex was there
with me.

Thirty-three… thirty-four…
thirty-five…

Since Alex’s disappearance I had
started counting again. The fear was coming back in an all too
familiar way.

“
I won let him hurt you
Jessica,” Cormack said as he placed a hand over mine for just a
brief second and gave it a squeeze. “I’d really rather not have
Alex rip ma wings out. Don think that would feel too
great.”

I gave a nervous chuckle, grateful to
Cormack for trying to lighten the mood.

The voice from the GPS announced we
had arrived at our destination as we pulled off the decaying main
street and onto what was little more than a path of gravel that
used to be a cobblestone road. Mature trees lined what had once
been the road leading onto the property. Through them I could see
several smaller buildings I could only guess were servants’
quarters and out-buildings, a barn, a carriage house, a
shed.

I thought my heart was going to hammer
out of my chest as we pulled to a stop in front of the decayed
mansion.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

JESSICA

The building before us was massive.
Different wings spread out over the property with balconies
supported by pillars, arched windows were scattered across the
face. I had never seen a bigger house. Or one so un-structurally
sound looking. The middle of the roof sagged; a section of the
massive front porch had caved in. It looked as if every window had
been broken in, shards of glass shining in the gray light. I could
only imagine how the place looked in its days of glory.

Cole had hinted that his
family had been wealthy. I felt I had greatly underestimated
how
wealthy they had
been.