Secrets of the Guardian (Waldgrave Book 3) (31 page)

She looked over at him, as if to assert this fact, but he didn’t say anything. He only smirked again. “I believe you owe me some explanations for my cooperation.”

“After I get him to sleep.” She nodded at Brandon.

Griffin shot her a disappointed, disgruntled look. “No outs. I can still choose—“

“It’s going to take a while, and you’re going to ask a lot of questions. I’d just rather put him down first, and then you have my full attention.” She looked at him candidly, and he went to the bathroom to shower and change into his nightclothes. Lena got Brandon to sleep in the bassinet that had been provided for them and tried to prepare herself with the details…it was a long story, and she wasn’t sure where to begin. Chronologically, with the history of Olesia? Or where her own rabbit hole had begun, with Warren Astley, and the story behind how Griffin had ended up at Waldgrave to begin with?

Griffin came back out, hair slightly damp, and settled onto his side of the bed. He looked at her expectantly.

“So, how much of this do you know already?” She asked.

Griffin stretched out and sat up against the headboard. “This isn’t about what I know. This is about what you know.”

“I’m about to be completely honest with you, and I would like some honesty in return. We’re about to spend the rest of our lives together on an island—I really doubt there will be secrets anymore.” She replied, trying to keep her voice low so Brandon wouldn’t wake up. Griffin glanced over at her and gestured for her to come closer; when she did he reached out and rather roughly pulled her up next to his side. “And I want your promise—and I really, really mean it this time, that you will not hold this against…anyone.”

“We make no guarantees.” He said impassively. “But if you’re talking about Lyle Evans, I already know. Daray never saw it, but that man’s a wealth of information. He knows everything about everyone, and unfortunately, he’s the best in his line of work.”

Lena was confused. “If you know, then why…?”

“You don’t piss off your doctor. And you don’t kill him, that’s for damn sure.” He squeezed his arm around her tighter. “So, from the top.”

Lena turned on her side to wrap an arm around him. “Do you know about Kel…Cheryl?”

Griffin sighed. “Yes.”

Lena paused. Griffin knew that Cheryl was Kelsey Astley, a stolen child?
 That she had been used to blackmail Aaron Collins' friend into giving details of his whereabouts? “How?”

“I wanted her out. Little brat. It’s the only thing that kept her here.” He said darkly.

“So then you know about Astley, Thomas, everything?”

“He told me after you came here while we were figuring out how to stage the fight with Astley—Ow!”

Lena had jabbed him in the ribs, and he grabbed hold of both of her wrists. She scoffed. “How many times have you almost killed me just to further your career?”   

“About as many as times I’ve risked my own life to save yours.” He said. “But yes, Daray was quite possessive of Cheryl, even before she came here. She’s a much more powerful Silenti than he had anticipated, and she started to see things. Specifically, I think she started talking about her family. Her brothers. Humans. I swear to God, that family is going to breed itself out of existence if they keep marrying out, and it’s not a bad thing…”

“How?” Lena asked. “She couldn’t have—she was just an infant when she was taken away.”

Griffin was holding her tightly against him again, now with her arms pinned between their bodies to keep her from attacking again. “Well, I don’t remember a lot of it, but there were a lot of conversations between the doctor and Daray, and he was in favor of just disposing of her, but the doctor insisted he might be able to get her to stop—this, of course, was very pleasing to Daray. It was in our interest to keep her alive so we could keep stringing Astley for the letters from your father. She’s clairvoyant and psychic, but at such a young age, the episodes were confusing and upsetting to her. The doctor started drugging her to control it, and that’s when…I don’t know, exactly. He said she wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Five months later, he sent me to put you on the train.”

Lena froze. She felt a chill on her arms.

“He never told me how he did it, but he claimed he’d discovered a way to see into the future. He had me start taking injections. It made me sick as anything, and I never saw anything, but we kept trying. Even after he had you, he kept up with it for months afterward—you might remember, the day we went shopping and you wouldn’t shut up about my nose bleed?”

“Yes.” Lena whispered. She was still trying to process; Daray had used Kelsey Astley’s gift to kill her father.  She was the one who could see into the future; she saw specific events, and not personal or general trends like most Silenti.

“The doctor said I didn’t have the disposition. Apparently the stuff worked, but I just wasn’t able to remember anything. It’s a latent genetic phenomena to have access to that part of your brain. Daray was very disappointed that I wasn’t able.”

“Oh my God…” Lena whispered again. “Why did they stop? Griffin, he was using Kelsey to do it. While we were on the trip she was taking all kinds of…of…pills! Sleeping aids and allergy medication and caffeine pills and vitamins…She was still doing it—it had to be something in one of those pills. But when she got off her schedule, she started remembering and seeing it all again. She foretold Brandon!”

“Don’t be stupid, Lena. You’re asking why they stopped?” He shook his head. “She was a little girl when they started, but the doctor always warned that she wouldn’t be as easy to control when she started entering adulthood. That, plus the fact that she was here on the pretense of being a servant. Could you imagine if she went around just telling the future? Howard would have had a heart attack! There would have been all kinds of investigations and she would have been returned to her family, and all of this would have come out. The doctor got her on a regular regime to keep it subdued before she came here, but Daray didn’t want to kill her in case we needed her talent again in the future. He had planned to kill her at the first sign that she was refusing her medications or seeing things again.”

“She 
belonged
 with her family.” Lena said, shaking her head. “Okay, so I guess this is where my half begins. I met up with Warren Astley when you lost me back in Texas. He told me everything, and that’s why I left, to take Kelsey back to him. That’s where she is now. But…well, while the doctor was treating Devin, he gave me an address and said some of my distant relatives—Olesia’s sister, he said, lived there. That’s where I was going after dropping off Kelsey.”

She felt Griffin give an involuntary twitch. “She’s back with Astley?”

“Give it up, Griffin, I wouldn’t have let you—“

“Lena, we have nothing over him anymore! He could come out and tell everyone—“

She hoped his fears were unfounded. All during the meeting earlier, she had only ever felt that Astley was treating her far too kind. He knew, and he was grateful. It wasn’t an emotion Silenti expressed except through an alliance. “They’re good people, they’re Christians! That’s why he picked them to begin with! They’re not going to do anything in retaliation!”

“Lena!”

“Olesia was Edward and Melinda’s daughter, she set the fire, escaped it, and now she’s running a bed and breakfast in South Carolina!” She said in an urgent but hushed tone, looking desperately over at Brandon’s sleeping form.

Griffin went silent. Lena looked over, and saw that he had fallen just short of speechless. “What?”

The story went on from there. He kept her up for most of the night asking questions, and everything came to light.

Towards dawn, just as the sun was beginning to graze the tops of the mountains outside the window, Griffin finally settled down, looking at her incredulously. “He mentioned the echoes, but I never believed him. He never…I never knew it was actually happening, I mean, this is big. This is huge, Lena. I mean, you know what this means? The answers are all here—do you know what’s going to happen next?”

But Lena only smiled weakly. “I don't think the future is set. Maybe I was supposed to die in that cabin, like Ben. But I didn’t, because I’m not Ben. Even Kelsey said she didn’t know what was going to happen to Devin, because it hinged on what I did with Brandon. No one knows. This, what we’re doing now, it’s never been done before. This our story now, and I think all we can is try not to screw it up the way everyone else did.”

It was the truth. Lena was perhaps in the best position to predict the future of the Silenti, and she didn’t know what was going to happen. But she knew she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes everyone else had. She knew she had Griffin, and Brandon, and Howard and Rosaleen, and the Masons—and she was going to do the best job she could. She knew she had a destiny, even if it wasn’t set in stone, and she wasn’t going to run from it anymore. She knew her life hadn’t been perfect, and it was likely not going to become perfect, but she also knew that it wasn’t just about her anymore. She had to fight for Brandon now, and maybe his life would be better. And if it was, then the rest of it might be worth it.

That day they signed the papers, giving over possession of the Waldgrave property to a trust of human-borns, and as was his station in life, Howard agreed to manage it for them until a permanent system was devised. Lena was a little sad that he wouldn’t be coming to Greece with them, but he promised to visit as often as he could. Lena signed a pardon to end the exile placed on Warren Astley, and true to his word, Griffin signed one to forgive Eric Mason. The truth about Kelsey Astley remained a secret to Howard for some years afterward, until she appeared before the Council to make her own disposition, and the truth came out; no one else ever knew. Cheryl had, after all, only been an unnoticed human-born up to that point.

The move from Waldgrave to Lenore’s Island went smoothly according to all public records, and Griffin managed the transport of most of Daray’s relics. The house on the Island was considerably smaller than Waldgrave, but it was big enough for four. Griffin and Lena took Darius with them, to give Brandon a brother. Griffin commissioned some alterations to store the relics they had brought with them, including the digging of a partial basement. He also had some extra rooms added to accommodate the inevitable guests; Howard and Rosaleen aside, the house on the island became a typical vacation destination for many Old Faith families seeking favor and a chance to spend time with Brandon.

Despite what Lena had predicted, the secrets and shadows that had followed her family for years persisted. The names and the places changed, but she feared her life would always be a little too interesting and exciting.

The Council kept a stranglehold on them for almost five years, stationing guards to be sure no one ever left or gained access to the island without permission, checking their mail at random (though they rarely checked the ones Lena sent to the Astleys, and no ever took much notice of the correspondence to some of the doctor’s distant relatives in South Carolina). Eventually, the Council decided it was wasted effort. Lena and Griffin continued to gracefully be the center of the universe, abusing the position as little as possible and trying to keep the peace for the sake of keeping their family together.

The Council, though still turbulent at times, was at least manageable given this arrangement.

From that point on, they spent more time together because there was nothing else to do on the island. It was a happy time, and after some years, there was hardly any thought given to the artifacts packed away in the basement.

The End

*****

(also known as, “A story for another time…”)

“You’re sure you can handle them?” Lena asked, giving Hesper a concerned look. “I mean, Brandon shouldn’t give you any trouble, but you know how Darius can get. You’ve got to watch him.”

Hesper hoisted her son a little higher onto her hip. “We’ll be fine…You just go.”

Lena smiled. “You’re telling me you were fine last time? With the fire and the puking cat and the missing silverware?”

“We were fine…” She said reassuringly. “I told you, most of that was Laney. It’s the same at our place the rest of the year. Thanks, though, for taking the cat this time. Did they ever tell you where they hid the silverware, incidentally?”

“Has Laney told you?” Lena said, walking to the kitchen window as a scream ensued from outside.

“Well,” Hesper said, trailing after Lena, “Not directly, but you might want to check that cliff down by the bay. It’s got to be somewhere they weren’t supposed to be.”

“You’re sure? I mean, there’s four of them now with Jayden, and they’re not kids anymore…” Suddenly, Lena slammed the window open and leaned out of it. “Darius Corbett, put the hose down and leave your brother alone! Don’t make me—“ She slammed the window shut again just in time, and a jet of water splashed across it. She grabbed the sprayer off the sink and through the window open again, spraying in the direction of the most boisterous of her two children. He dropped the hose and dove behind a bush.

The first few years had been a difficult adjustment; normally, it was just the four of them on the island. They were one of the only families rich enough who didn’t use human-born labor to run their household; it was part of an agreement they had made with the Council to allow approved family friends to watch Brandon while they were away at Council. He had never left the island before, and it was doubtful that he ever would except to attend Council meetings when he was older. While the situation was very troubling to Lena, Brandon had never expressed any desire to leave—the island was all he had ever known, and he was content just to live there with his family and the visitors who stopped by to see his parents.

Lena closed the window and turned back to Hesper. Hesper shook her head understandingly. “Daisy and Rose are coming in two days, and we’ll be fine. Three adults is more than enough to handle four kids.”

Lena smiled sardonically. Griffin walked into the room with Eric Mason in tow. “The boat’s ready. It’s time.”

“And you’ve got all the paperwork?” Lena asked. “I don’t want to have to have it faxed again—“

Griffin cut her off. “I’ve got the paperwork, so just grab your stuff and head down to the dock. They’re waiting. I’ll be there in a moment.”

Eric gave Hesper a quick kiss and then walked Lena out of the room as she called some quick goodbyes to the children. Griffin grabbed the last of the bags they had packed off the kitchen table, and then turned to his sister. “Don’t let them—“
  

Hesper rolled her eyes. “In the basement. Right. You say it every time, I’m not stupid. Seriously, Griff, what do you think is going to happen?”

Griffin cracked a wry smile and nodded to Jayden, just under a year old, sucking on his thumb on Hesper’s hip. “You wait until he gets older. But seriously, there are some artifacts down there and they’re not allowed around them.”

Hesper shrugged. “Fine…fine! Just go! We’ll be fine!”

Griffin was out the door, and Hesper started boiling water for pasta to the continued screams and screeches outside the window.

“Laney! Wait up!”

But Laney didn’t slow down. She turned around and stuck her tongue out at Brandon and then kept running, blue-tinted hair waving in the breeze.

“Laney!”

Brandon, just shut up and keep up!

But he couldn’t. The youngest of the group, he was also the smallest. With mousy brown hair and a gentle demeanor, he was almost a full head shorter than Darius, and at least three inches shy of Laney. Clutching the stitch in his chest, he stopped and sat down on the grass to catch his breath.

Brandon…
 The disappointed tone was unmistakable.

Brandon looked up. Fifty feet away, Darius and Laney had stopped running and were standing there, watching him. Darius, a younger and slightly darker haired image of Griffin, shoved his hands in his coat pockets.

Brandon, get up! It’s not that far.
 Laney called.

From his seat, Brandon only watched them. A new voice broke the calm.
 
Maren Delaney Mason! Not out by the cliffs!

Brandon turned around. Off in the distance, Hesper was standing by the back door, one hand supporting Jayden and the other firmly planted on her hip.
 
You get back here now!

Brandon turned back around to see Laney put her hands on her hips in a gesture very reminiscent of her mother—at eleven years old, she had already decided she was in charge. A tense stare down ensued, and several minutes later the three youths were trudging back to the house. Brandon never would have admitted it, but he was happy Laney had mouthed off; it meant they would probably spend the rest of the day inside, where it was warm. The incident with the hose earlier had left him damp to dry in the slight October breeze.

They went inside and settled in front of the television.

“I’m not staying inside. It’s boring!” Darius called.

Hesper stuck her head out of the kitchen. “You’re not going out by the cliffs. You’re not allowed.”

“Well…Can we go out by the beach, then?” He asked desperately. “I just want something to do!”

“No beach. It’s too cold and it’s too far—I can’t watch you while you’re out there.” Hesper yelled.

“It’s a friggin’ island! What do think is going to happen—it’s not like we’re going anywhere.” Darius collapsed onto the couch. “We never get to go anywhere…”

“Maybe we could just find something to do in the house…” Brandon suggested. “Mom got us those new books and games and stuff.”

That’s so like you.
 Laney rolled her eyes. 
Brandon, you’re so boring.

“Laney!” Hesper came out of the kitchen again. Brandon was looking at his feet.

“Laney, ease up. He’s just a kid.” Darius said quietly.

Hesper sighed. “Okay…Look, here’s the deal. You swear you’ll behave the rest of the time your parents are gone, and I’ll cut you some slack.”

Darius and Laney exchanged looks. Still slightly wet, Brandon looked pleadingly at Hesper.

“No more outside stuff today.” Hesper said. “I want promises that you will not break, burn, rip, or otherwise ruin anything, you will not touch anything that looks dangerous, and you will leave everything exactly as you found it. Capisce?”

The three nodded. Hesper turned to go back in the kitchen. “Go play in the basement for a while.”

Brandon’s eyes went wide. “We’re not supposed to—“

“As long as you don’t screw it up, I’m not saying anything.” Hesper called.  

Brandon looked at Darius, who had developed quite a smirk, and then over at Laney, who cocked an eyebrow.
 
You know, Brandon, that’s where they hide the bodies.

“Laney!” Hesper yelled threateningly.

With trepidation, they descended into the basement. It was a dusty, moldy place—no one had been down in years. There were aisles and aisles of boxes and books hidden in the shadows.

“What the hell are these?” Laney asked.

Laney! Language!

Laney rolled her eyes. She held the book in her hand out to Darius, who took it.

“I dunno. Are they all blank?” But looking over his shoulder, Brandon could read it clear as day.

“It’s not blank.” He said. “I can see it.”

Laney rolled her eyes again. “Wow! What the hell is 
that?
”

Laney!

Brandon and Darius turned around and looked behind them, where Laney was pointing. It was huge—probably eight feet wide and four feet tall. It was the largest traveling trunk Brandon had ever seen.

“That’s
 where they hide the bodies.” Darius whispered.

“Don’t!” Brandon said, shifting from foot to foot anxiously.

“Brandon, just chill out! There’s nothing down here. It’s just an old box, so stop being such a baby.” He said.

“I’m not a baby!” He scoffed.

“Yeah, stop being such a baby, Brandon!” Laney said, walking past the two boys and toward the trunk. When she reached it, she turned around and crossed her arms, looking directly at Brandon. “I dare 
you
 to open it.”

Brandon could only stare at the old box. He looked back up at Laney.

“Go ahead, Brandon—unless you’d rather be upstairs with Jayden and my mom.”

His heart pounding, he swallowed his fears and walked up beside Laney. He put his hands on the lid of the massive box. What if there really were bodies in there?

He closed his eyes, and cast the lid open.

*****

Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking the time to read the Waldgrave Book series.  I feel truly honored every time someone connects with these characters to such an extent that they want to see them through to the end of their journey. 

I do plan to publish more Waldgrave books in the future, so please check my blog or send me an email to inquire
([email protected]).  For now, please read on for sample chapters from
The Spider Catcher: Redemption Book 1
, the first book in another series I am writing.

Happy Adventures,

A.L. Tyler

*****