Exhale (30 page)

Her head spun. Nausea clamped onto her stomach and bit hard. She swallowed three times in quick succession.

Breathe,
she told herself.
Just breathe.

Dry puffs of air staggered in and out, in and out.

“Wait, you’re her father?” Gavin moved to Zoe’s side and folded her hand in his. He gave it a long squeeze.

Okay. Better.

Decades of Daddy resentment had filled her coffers with plenty of ammunition to put the building panic attack in the ground. And having Gavin there to keep her steady helped a ton. She lifted her gaze to Jack’s.

He gaped at Gavin. “My
daughter
is the piece of ass you’ve been after all this time?”

Gavin stiffened, his back ramrod straight. “Well, look at her,” he sputtered, half-gesturing, half-shrugging. His face lost a couple shades of tan. “She
is
a piece of arse.” He turned to her. “I mean that in a blokey way, love. Not to be insulting.”

“Would you two shut up?” Zoe glared at both of them and snatched her hand free of Gavin’s. She stalked over to the door and slammed it shut, then whirled on Jack and Gavin. They stood side by side like two stooges. Their matching I’ve-Been-Cracked-with-an-Idiot-Stick expressions would have been comical had she not been seething with venom for the sperm donor before her, who’d just tossed out the genetic card that earned him a free Dad license.

“How dare you come here after thirty-two years of silence? What gives you the right?”

Jack shrunk back.

Gavin snapped out of open-mouthed staring mode long enough to say, “You’re thirty-two?”

She pointed a finger in his face. “You, shut it.”

Hands hitched to her hips, she turned to Jack. “Answer the question. Where have you been all my life,
Pops
?” She spat the word.

Both men froze, but her huffing continued. She closed her yap to quiet herself.

Tears gathered at the corners of Jack’s eyes, and his nostrils widened. He pulled a thick wallet from his pocket and opened it with shaking hands. He removed pieces of yellowed newspaper and worn photographs marred by wrinkles that came with old age. One by one, he held them up for her inspection and laid them in her trembling palm.

The world collapsed around her.

Her birth announcement. School pictures. Graduation photos. A recent clipping from the
Gloucester Daily Times
about her volunteer work with the disentanglement team.

Jack Weaver, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Absentee Father, replayed her entire existence from past to present before her disbelieving eyes.

Tears fell and fell and fell as the fractured mirror of her life reassembled itself, shard by shard. Her life without a father. The only life she’d ever known. Until now.

She swept fingers under each eye, but she couldn’t stop the flow. The tears bled from a deep, vicious wound, dead-set against mending, refusing treatment.

Through it all, Jack stared at her as if she were a ghost. Because surely that’s what she was to him. A ghost of the past he wanted to forget. She’d heard the stories from Mother. He never wanted to be a dad, and Zoe had learned to be fine with that.

But why keep these mementoes of a daughter he didn’t care about? The images spanned every decade of her life. Why the hell would he save them?

Gavin cleared his throat. A throb drew her attention downward. He was crushing the ever-loving shit out of her hand. She embraced the pain. He was all she had to hold on to as everything she ever believed folded in on her and crushed the oxygen from her lungs.

“I should give you two some time alone,” Gavin said. His eyes held the weight of the world within them.

Jack nodded at him. “Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea—”

“No.” Hot all over, she faced Gavin. “No, if there’s anything he has to say to me, he can say it in front of you.”

He lowered his head. “Jack’s a good bloke, Zed. Give him the benefit of the doubt before you—”

“Not. Without. You.” She squeezed his hand, and in doing so, regained her loose foothold on reality. If she could just climb the rest of the way up…

She focused on his eyes, blue and calm like the ocean on a windless day.
I’m here for you
, they said. Her racing heart steadied. The clamoring buzz of panic beating on her eardrums and rattling her brain slowed to a crawl. She exhaled. “Please stay, Gavin.”

Uncertainty crept into his face. He shifted his gaze to Jack. Thank God he didn’t let go of her. She would have fallen if he had.

“How about I make some tea while you two talk?”

Release. Her muscles loosened. The sweating subsided.

Gavin glanced at Jack and disappeared into the kitchen. Clunking and bumping ensued. Water ran from the faucet.

Jack stared at her.

She bit the inside of her cheek and nodded to a chair. “Why don’t you sit down?”

He startled, spotted the chair, and sat. “I spoke with your mother before I came here. She told me you’d be in Oz. I thought it was time I introduced myself. Just didn’t plan on it being now.”

That would explain Mother’s mysterious voice mails asking her to call. “What was another month after decades of silence, right?” She dropped her butt on the couch, pulled her feet up, and hugged her knees.

Jack leaned toward her. “I was gonna finish my Sentinel work here before I met you. I didn’t want any distractions.” He looked to the window, sighed, and shook his head. “Your mother never told you about me, did she?”

“She said you left us high and dry when I was a baby. I figured that pretty much covered what I needed to know.” She smoothed her long hair and checked the ends for splits. It was easier than looking at him.

“Ah.” He rested elbows on bent knees. “So nothing about my
reason
for leaving?”

The teapot whistled from the kitchen, and Zoe turned to the sound. She needed Gavin beside her. She needed him to hold her.

“Mother said you were a crackpot. That you went off your rocker and skipped town.”

His eyes narrowed. “You believed her?”

“Didn’t have any reason not to.”

He stood up and wandered the room. “Candace and I, we loved each other. I thought we could make it work, but Sentinels and Wyldlings can’t stay together for long. Gavin told me you wake up tired when he sleeps with you.”

Heat snuck into her cheeks. She faced the kitchen again. Gavin’s shadow darkened the entryway, and he came out with two steaming mugs. He handed one to her and the other to Jack, then sat beside her on the couch. He shrugged out of his jacket and slid an arm around her shoulder. There was the warmth she needed. She closed her eyes for a couple seconds.

“Sentinels block a Wyldling’s ability to dream. So, when you wake up grouchy and exhausted, it’s because of him.” He nodded to Gavin, who set his jaw and inclined his head, avoiding her gaze.

Zoe straightened. It made sense. She dreamed just fine when she slept alone. Gavin had lain beside her on the nights when that big-ass white door prevented her from getting into the Dreaming. She set her mug on the table.

She didn’t like where this was heading.

Gavin rubbed her thigh.

“The same was true with your mother.
I
was the reason we didn’t get along. You know how driven she is. When sleep deprivation took its toll on her, it started interfering with her work, her research, her ability to care for you. I told her the truth about me, and she threw me out. Said I was a lunatic, and there were no such things as Sentinels or the Dreaming. She warned me to stay away from her and you. Even got a restraining order against me.

“So, the reason you had an absentee dad was because your mother deemed it best. I paid her child support and kept up with you from a distance.” Jack stopped his pacing and sat down at the far end of the couch.

“It killed me not to be there. To think you probably hated me for all the wrong reasons. You might not have known it, but I was at every piano recital, every science competition, and every speech you gave. I clapped when you walked down the aisle to get that fancy PhD from the University of California.” Tears collected at the corner of his eye. He looked away.

Zoe glanced at the coffee table where the clippings and pictures from Jack’s wallet lay scattered. How different her life would have been if he had been there. If she’d had a kind father to balance out her mother’s coldness, she might have been happily married with kids by now. She might have had enough of a backbone to get out from under Randy long before she did. She might have already made Vice President at CRN. As it was, she had little to show for herself, aside from her work with the whales.

“I’m not sure if Mother told you, but I have Triple X Syndrome. Guess how we found out? I was a guinea pig in one of her experiments. She took a blood sample to use as a demonstration for one of her undergrad genetics classes. Imagine her surprise when she spotted that extra chromosome. Suddenly, all my difficulties made sense to her. I had embarrassed her for so long, she finally felt vindicated that at least there was a genetic explanation for all my…flaws.”

Tears returned. Gavin’s arm tensed around her.

“She hated that I was so dumb. And I hated myself for being such a disappointment. I overcompensated to please her. I stayed up late and woke up early every day to practice my reading. I busted my ass to be a mediocre student. But the one good thing Triple X gave me was determination. I fought for every passing grade and won.”

Jack scooted closer and touched the back of her hand with warm fingers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you, Zoe. I wanted to be. But I think Triple X gave you another gift you may not be aware of.” The lines in his face smoothed, and she recognized some of herself in the shape of his eyes, the slope of his nose. For a second, it was almost like looking into a mirror. Eerie.

“Gavin tells me you have an affinity for whales. Have you ever experienced something…otherworldly when you were with them? Something you couldn’t explain?”

“Daily. Why?”

Jack closed the distance between them on the couch, and Gavin’s grip on her shoulder eased a bit. “Like what?”

She sighed. How to explain without sounding crazy? Oh, wait. These two fought Elementals in the Dreaming—a place that couldn’t possibly exist, if science had any say in the matter. Her story would probably be tame compared to theirs.

“When I’m on the boat and sometimes in my dreams, I hear them. They…talk to me. I guess. Not like actual words, but I understand them. Their songs make sense to me.”

Gavin and Jack exchanged looks.

“Sometimes they’ll do as I ask. Simple stuff like rolling over so I can determine their sex or whatever. I just ‘get’ them. That’s all.”

Gavin removed his arm and turned to her. “Jack thinks you’re a whale translator, Zed. And that may be the real reason the Wæters want you. At first I thought I was called to the Dreaming to help you find the key to open my necklace, but now I believe the Dreaming has bigger plans for you. If a whale is meant to be the next Archelemental, then the Wæters need a way to communicate with her. You’re it.”

“And guess what all translators have in common?” Jack tilted his head.

“Females with Triple X Syndrome,” Zoe said. Could the plot get any thicker? Freaking Mississippi mud. This was too clumpy to digest without a lot of chewing.

“Bingo.”

Gavin leaned forward and picked up the pictures from the table. He fished out a goofy photo of a nine- or ten-year-old Zoe with a missing front tooth and grinned. “Your little girl looked just like you, Jack.”

She snatched the picture, then shoveled the rest into a pile and turned them over to Jack. “I think we’ve seen enough of these.”

Gavin pouted. “No, I wasn’t finished—”

“I’ll show ‘em to you later.” Jack winked at him.

Zoe sighed. Double teamed by her dad and her lover. No telling what Gavin had inadvertently told Jack about her.

“If I’m supposed to translate for…
her,
then we need to find her. I’ve been on the lookout since I got to Hervey Bay. Haven’t a clue where she could be, but I know she’s here somewhere. I saw her and Yileen in the Dreaming the night the Fyres attacked.”

Gavin snapped his head up. “Yileen? Are you sure it was the night of the attack?”

“Positive.”

The corners of his mouth turned up slowly and relief washed across his entire demeanor. “So, Yileen’s spirit is still around. I
did
hear him in the Dreaming.”

Jack nodded and clapped the back of Gavin’s arm. “You can kill a Sentinel’s body, but not his soul. He’s in the Dreaming, waiting for his next life to arrive.”

Gavin half-smiled.

“The Fyres got to Yileen, huh? I only met him once” —twice if Zoe counted the time when the old man gave her the little wooden falcon, but there had been enough revelations tonight— “but he seemed like a really nice guy. I’m sorry to hear he didn’t make it.”

“I doubt you’ve seen the last of him,” Jack said. “As for the Wæters, after we close this Aer Elemental deal and find the door to the Dreaming, the Fyres won’t pose much of a threat anymore. We’ll have plenty of time before the equinox tithe next month to put the right candidate in place for the Archelemental position.”

Zoe tilted her head. “What happens at the equinox?”

“Elementals have to tithe a portion of their Element twice a year,” Jack said. “The Archelementals deliver massive quantities of the Element to their respective gods on the equinoxes to see who—if anyone—will control the Balance for the following six months.”

Zoe nodded slowly. “So, as long as we get the new Wæter Archelemental settled soon, we should be okay. You mentioned something about an ‘Aer Elemental deal.’ Does that have to do with Iri? He wasn’t here when we got home, but his stuff still is.”

“Yeah, about Iri,” Gavin said. “Jack and I need to go to Sydney for a few days. Seems Scarlet put Iri up to spying on you, and he’s willing to turn the tables against her if we help him find his missing daughter.”

“Scarlet?” That bitch. “Again? What does she want with
me?
I don’t know anything. This is your scene, not mine.”

Gavin shifted and avoided her gaze as he continued. “Scarlet can change her appearance to look like anyone. Iri says she’s trying to get back with me by posing as you. He was feeding her information about you all along.”