Shattered Secrets (Book of Red #1) (20 page)

We’d watched the pages write themselves for nearly an hour before moving onto another section, but a picture of Aedan in his home haunted me. He looked so familiar and so
normal
. He wore a charcoal suit, much like an executive from working-class America. His hair was light brown and hung to his shoulders. But Aedan’s black eyes are what bothered me. They were hard, cold, full of rage. If he’d ever been kind in his life, I couldn’t tell.

Hatred controlled him.

I shuddered, and Derick reached under the blanket and rubbed my back, his fingers slowly dragging up my shirt, teasing my skin in a way I’d wanted them to tease for so long.

“You awake?” he asked, his voice caught in his throat.

“Barely. What time is it?” I slid my hand from under my cheek, then made a fist. Pins and needles pricked at my palms.

“7:00 a.m. I think I’ve finally made sense of the Safe Zones.” He curled a strand of hair behind my ear, and I stared up at him. Big, dark circles rested under his blue eyes. He was still beautiful, but how long could we keep up with the late, stressful nights? “Want to hear about them?”

I sat up, pulled myself into a ball, then leaned against his arm for support. “Do I need caffeine first?”

“No. I’ve already done the hard part… and I thought maybe we could spend the day sleeping off the bad night.”

“Sounds like a plan. My head hurts anyway.”

He nodded. “So, no one—not even another Kalóan—can find us here. Outside Safe Zones, our essences give off light and grow brighter every time we use our abilities, allowing other magical beings to track us. Like a sonar system.”

“Our essences? What exactly does that mean?” My eyes hurt too much to try to read the book.

“Yes, our soul—or essence—shines. And when we run really fast or make things invisible, or see through Romancing acts, we glow even brighter. But Safe Zones smother that light.”

“O-kay, but don’t your mom and dad know we’re here?”

“Well, yes and no. From what I understand, that extended trip I took with my parents was the beginning. They used their time here to set protections, like a bubble, over the island. But it seems like now that we’re here, they should somehow forget this place exists.” Derick slid his finger back and forth across the double-columned page, clearly searching for something in the tiny print. “The second key was your desire to be here with me. It says a Safe Zone has to be a place Kalóans can be happy. Mom and Dad know you love the ocean.”

“So we’re safe because we’re happy and this is where we want to be, and somehow your parents knew all this?” Though that last part probably had more to do with the fact his mom saw the future and his dad read minds.

“Something like that.” I heard a smile in his words.

This Safe Zone meant so much for us, a confirmation of our feelings—not that I’d ever needed a confirmation for
my
feelings. Well, not until I read that stupid book in the Crawford’s kitchen.

But maybe the Safe Zone confirmed running away wasn’t such a bad idea, too.

“So no one can ever find us here?”

Derick took a long, deep breath, puffing his chest out. “If we don’t leave and as long as we’re happy.”

Not the answer I was looking for. “We can’t hide forever!”

As much as I loved being with him, I didn’t want to be a prisoner. We’d never see our families or friends again, travel the world, see the leaves change color, the snow fall. Florida made for a perfect vacation destination, but a permanent residence? Forever on one little island?

No way.

“Remember what we read last night?” Derick brought the book closer to us. “The kidnappers’ powers are fading because they are the last of their kind living in this world.”

“Great, so they’ll still be kidnappers, murderers, terrorists, and arsonists, but just less powerful. The fact they won’t be able to track us by our essence anymore won’t exactly help me sleep at night. They want me to open the planes so they can go home.” Actually, they wanted to murder me, return home to get more of their people, then slaughter a bunch of humans.

Humans.
I’m not even classifying myself with them anymore
. Dr. Pavarti’s name floated through my mind. He would certainly prescribe anti-psychotics, maybe even confine me to an institution—

“Would you listen for a minute?”

I glared at Derick but shut up anyway. Apparently all-nighters weren’t for either of us.

“Abby, Boredas and Ruckus are the last of their kind living in this world, and they’re also the only other spirits still here.”

“So…?”

“Once they’re gone, you’re safe, and we can go back to living a
normal
life.”

Coffee. I needed coffee. Getting to my feet, I tossed the blanket onto the couch and headed for the kitchen.

“Where are you going?”

Did he seriously not realize what he’d implied? “Derick, really? Boredas isn’t much older than us. Are you suggesting we wait here for him and his brother to pass away—
hide
for thirty or forty years, quite possibly longer—and then go back to
normal
life?”

Cups.
We have to have cups around here somewhere
.

“Here. Maybe I need coffee too.” Reaching around me, Derick opened the cabinet and pulled out two white mugs and a canister of Hazelnut grounds, then added a few teaspoons of it in the filter while I added water.

“Your idea is confining, isolating, and… and—”

“Idiotic?”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Valedictorian. I’m not letting some spirits—that may or may not be a figment of my traumatized imagination—from some other plane steal my life. Or yours.”

A flicker of something crossed his eyes, a flicker of something I didn’t recognize.

“Derick?” I placed a mug directly under the percolator, then turned his face toward me. “Whoa. What is this? Why do you look like you’re about to cry?”

He clenched his teeth, staring straight through me. “I’m not about to cry. I’m furious with me, with our situation, with my inability to come up with a plan that doesn’t make me look like a loser.”

Loser my ass. Switching out the mugs, I held one full of steaming hot coffee under his nose. “Drink this. Forget about the book—like we were supposed to do for a week anyway—and, please, explain to me what happened yesterday with the ring, when Ms. Anderson was here.”

“Always the voice of reason, aren’t you?” Derick kissed my cheek, replaced my mug with the coffee pot, then nudged me back to the couch. “My explanation may require more of the book, but sections I somewhat understand.”

“Whatever you have to do,” I said, wishing my eyes were like Superman’s and I could make
History of Kalós
catch fire. Stupid thing did nothing but bring me frustration.

“My mother is a Cognizant, and my father is a Romancer. Do you remember how he said you’re a Guardian just by being alive?”

I nodded, sipping my will-have-to-replace-Starbucks-while-I’m-pretending-to-be-a-
real
-adult drink. Budgets and all that. Not that I had a clue as to the amount of dollars at our disposal.

“Well, no matter what Mark would have
you
believe, my natural abilities don’t get me all the ladies. As you’ve noticed over the years, I don’t exactly get around.” He waved his hand, clearly frustrated by Mark’s previous insinuation that Derick had me fooled.

I’m pretty sure at some point almost everyone I knew had me fooled in one way or another.

“Romancer abilities allow me to change a scene, a setting and the objects in it, in order to smooth over possible dangerous situations. I Romance what people see, not the person. My dad taught me only a few basic ways to control how and when I use the power. But you shouldn’t be able to see through my act.”

“So you’re telling me I would have unknowingly played along with a charade that we’re
married
and would have no recollection of it later?”

“Yes—or I think so.”

“And this is a natural ability? Something you have very little control over?”

“Yes.”

This explains so much
! “Now I know why Mark is jealous. He thinks you’ve been unknowingly using your Romancerness on me all these years, changing how I see him. What about the charm and good looks crap you mentioned earlier?”

Derick set down his mug and yawned, reaching his arm across my shoulders. “Crap?”

Chump move but not one I cared to protest. “You know what I mean.”

“Apparently, in tense situations, or in situations where I’m nervous, excited, or my emotions are otherwise stimulated, I have a tendency to speak and act a certain way to make people swoon, if you will, over me.”

Great. Just great. So maybe Mark’s words held truth—I didn’t want to think about that.

“You’re wrong.”

Does he read minds, too? “How do you know you’ve never done something to influence how I feel about you?”

Derick leaned back and propped his feet on the table, crossing his legs at his ankles. “I already told you. You can see through my act—like you saw the ring and realized something was off. If you were anyone else, you would have gone along with the scene as if nothing was unusual.”

And what he did to the State Trooper.

“But what if that’s a secondary ability?”

“You’re a Guardian. You see some door that no one else
anywhere
can see. I’m sure seeing through what I do is part of who you are.”

Please be right. “What about your secondary abilities? You made yourself and the car invisible. How? And how do you control them? And what about the emotion we’re connected to? Do you know what ours are—?”

“Slow down. I don’t know about you, and I barely know about me. I didn’t want to believe any of this at first, but stuff kept happening that made it impossible not to believe.”

“Like walking in the front door and no one being able to see you?”

Derick snorted, and we burst out laughing, doubling over and gasping for breath. Exhaustion makes everything seem so much funnier, even when you’ve run away from home, are hiding from maniacs, and have no idea what the future holds. Laughing like this with him reminded me of simpler times, back when we’d sit next to each other on the bus and secretly watch YouTube videos of cats yowling, the driver glaring in his humongous rearview mirror, just daring the culprits to break the ‘no electronics’ rule again.

Derick caught his breath and propped his feet back on the coffee table. “You know, the invisibility thing is actually cool. I just imagine myself somewhere else and I disappear.”

I smiled, big and cheesy, my heart warming from his words, his little confirmation of how he felt about me.

“What?” he asked.

Dork moment. “Where were you imagining yourself the night we kissed, when you walked in your parents’ house?”

Derick glanced sideways at me, his face tight from suppressing a grin, his eyes happy and twinkling. He leaned next to my ear and whispered, “I imagined us lying under the shade trees at Lunga Park, no one else around for miles, me kissing you, you kissing me back.”

And just like that, he was gone, leaving me squirming alone on the couch! “Holy shit, Derick! Where’d you go? I can’t even feel you!”

His form reappeared from the outside in, as if someone created a fading effect in Photoshop and hit the play button—or something. But now, Derick’s expression held a hunger to it, a longing, something I easily recognized, something I’d felt since our kiss at The Griffin, and maybe even before. He held my gaze, his lips parted, his breathing slow and even.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he said, picking at the seam of the sofa cushion. “I wanted what any guy our age wants—to kiss you every day, to call you mine, and to make all the other guys jealous—but when
that
happened, I freaked.”

I swallowed hard. “You hurt me. A lot.”

“I know,” he said, abandoning the cushion to draw his thumb across my bottom lip.

“But I’m here now.”

And I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Derick served as the one constant in my life, the one person I could trust with
anything
, every piece of me; he’d be gentle, loving, loyal, everything I needed him to be.

Derick nodded, removing the blanket from my lap; he tossed the thing to the floor with a swift flick of his wrist. “You are.”

Heart fluttering, I licked my lips and moved closer to him until our thighs touched. “You can make it up to me.”

“I plan to.”

Derick pressed his soft, warm lips to mine and gently moved my mouth with his. He slid one hand to the back of my head and the other trailed down my arm, making me ache for more of him, more of us… a
bed
.

But just as quickly as the thought formed, he pulled away.

“Mmm. I give up on making any sense of this. One week. No books, no news, no responsibility. Rich high school drop-outs on vacation.”

Heaven. “More kissing?”

“More kissing.”

I leaned forward—

“I know I’m probably breaking every teenage guy’s code or something, but sleep first.” He jumped to his feet and then dragged me by my hand into the bedroom.

My heart had never beat so hard, never rejoiced so much, until he got in the bed and fell asleep. Then, my metaphorical love monitor felt betrayed.