Hidden Heart (4 page)

Well, cynical as it was, her advice had been right the first time. I’d actually
defied
her icing-on-the-cake warning and given my whole heart to Lad—and look where that got me. I was alone and miserable, and he
wasn’t
here when I needed him.

I do need him.
The thought was arresting. I needed him—and for so much more than my own sake. He was the only answer to the Emmy situation.

Kicking a dirt clod with the toe of my shoe, I watched it roll into a garden stake and break in half. Lad might not want me anymore, but he would
have
to help me. He
knew
the Dark Elves were up to no good with the fan pods. He knew how much I cared about Emmy.

No matter what happened between us, he wouldn’t just stand by while they hurt my friend. Besides, I had nowhere else to turn.

“Well, I’d better get back to work,” I said to Mom.

Her sorrowful frown deepened as she backed up a couple steps and lifted a hand. “Okay, babe. I guess I’ll go get dinner started and give Davis a call. He had a big committee meeting today in D.C. I’ll tell him you said hi.”

“Sure. You do that.” I still hadn’t met the
new
love of her life, and in my present mood, wasn’t in any hurry to.

“I’m going to Altum,” I announced after finding Grandma depositing some rotted tomatoes into the compost bin.

She looked up at me with wide eyes. “You can’t. The High Council could decide to hold you there—indefinitely—on suspicion of involvement in Ivar’s murder.”

“Lad said he thinks I’m safe now—relatively safe. And I
have
to speak to him. He’s the only one who can help me find Emmy and get her away from the fan pod. He’ll help me—I know it—if I can just talk to him.”

And if he agrees to help me, we’ll be spending time together, and he’ll remember he loves me, and…
I tried to squelch the rising hope that this was the answer to finding Emmy and also to getting our relationship back on track.

Grandma didn’t look so sure. “You can
ask
, honey, but I’m warning you—don’t get your hopes up.”

“So you won’t try to stop me from going to him?”

She stepped away from the bin and brushed her dirt-covered hands together to clean them. “No, you’re still to go nowhere near there. I’ll go tomorrow and deliver a message asking him to meet you. You can wait at his tree nest.”

“But if you go to Altum alone…” Was I selfishly putting her in danger?

She shushed me. “I’m immortal, remember? You’re only part-Elven, so there’s no guarantee
you
are. Don’t you worry about your old grandma. Besides, the Council members already questioned me. They know I was with my family in their quarters at the time of the king’s death, so I’m not a suspect.”

*     *     *

We hiked through the familiar woods on her six hundred acre property. The air was extra muggy, though it was early morning, and the smell of hot pine needles permeated the atmosphere. Finally, we came to the huge tree where Lad and I first met as children.

I turned to ask Grandma one more time if I could go with her. “I think I could explain better how much I need him to help me.”

“I’ll get the message across, I promise. If Lad
can
come to you, he will. And if he
doesn’t
come by noontime, you hightail it on home—with or without me. I don’t want you out here alone for long.”

I assured her I understood and watched as her wild white ringlets disappeared between the trees and brushy undergrowth. Climbing the large tree carefully, I made my way to the comfortable nest-like structure Lad had built as a child.

He’d continued to use it as a secret place where he could be alone and keep his most precious treasures. Like the library books he’d been forbidden to have. And the book I’d left behind when I was lost out here as a little girl. He’d used it to teach himself to understand our language.

Gradually, over many years, he’d become familiar with human life and culture through books and newspapers and magazines, making him an anomaly among the Light Elves, who held themselves completely apart from humans.

I pulled my old book out of the ancient chest that anchored the corner of the nest and looked through it then sifted through Lad’s boyhood treasures. Arrowheads, feathers… a picture of me.

My heart contracted with a fierce beat. He must have taken it from the hall table the only time he’d ever been in my house, that day when he’d met Mom and Grandma Neena, the day Grandma realized he was the son of the Elven fiancé she’d jilted forty years ago—Lad’s father, Ivar.

Hearing the scrabbling of feet on bark, I looked up to see Lad swing himself over the edge into the nest. He landed lightly on his toes and fingertips, crouching right in front of me.

Though it had been only a day since I’d last seen him, the vision of his beautiful face, his powerful body before me, shocked me with a jolt of pleasure that was almost violent.
How could I miss him so much already? 

“What are you doing here?” he snapped in an agitated tone. “I asked you not to come to me.”

And there went all the good feelings. “
Sorry
to
bother
you.” My tone sounded as hurt as I felt. Was he really completely over me, so fast, so easily?

He huffed an impatient breath. “What is it you need to say, Ryann? I don’t have much time. I was in the middle of something.”

Ouch.
I’d hoped he might be at least a
tiny
bit pleased to see me, that maybe yesterday’s conversation had been rooted in his pain and he’d had second thoughts about us.

Right. Well, hurt feelings or not, I still needed his help. I had to convince him.

“Fine—I’ll try not to
waste
too much of your time. I’m here on business. Emmy has disappeared. A Dark Elf came to get her early to take her to her new fan pod, and I didn’t have a chance to stop her from going. I don’t have any contact information for her. Her family doesn’t even know where she is, and they’re not worried about her.”

His eyes revealed a flicker of concern, but it didn’t reach his voice. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be.”

“Are you serious?” I gasped. “You
know
I should be. You know what’s going on with those fan pods.”

He shook his head. “Not really. We don’t know
what’s
going on with them, only that they’ve been increasing rapidly in size and number recently. My father is… was concerned about them, but there’s no
proof
there’s any harm in them.”

His nonchalant demeanor was ticking me off. Were the Light Elves really so above-it-all? And did my former “rebel” boyfriend suddenly think exactly like the rest of them? My blood pressure was rising along with the volume of my voice.

“No harm? They’re going to glamour her brains out! Emmy will do and say whatever Vallon Foster tells her to, and she’ll think she’s happy about it. She won’t be
Emmy
anymore. And what about what happened to that girl Allison Douglas? They did an autopsy, you know, and couldn’t find any reason she died. She was nineteen years old, Lad. And my mom said the body looked totally normal when it arrived at the funeral home. Nineteen-year-old girls don’t drop dead for no reason. They
did
something to her. Her family said the police out there aren’t even investigating—I’m sure the detectives were glamoured, too.”

He held up a hand to stop my rant, the expression on his face torn between regret and annoyance. “I’m sorry about your friend, Ryann—I am—but I can’t do anything to help you.”

“What?” I was having a hard time believing what I’d just heard. Did he not care at all? What happened to my sweet, open-minded, open-hearted boyfriend?

“I can’t help you,” he repeated, confirming that the Lad I’d known and loved had apparently died right along with his father.

“You mean you won’t,” my voice was choked with the threat of angry tears.

“I’m sorry. I can’t leave Altum. I can’t afford to give any of my time to this. Even if I could, I’m not sure how much help I could be to you. I had a very limited relationship with the Dark Elves before. And now since my father’s—after he called off the wedding and what happened afterward—our relations with the Dark Elves are even more strained.”

“Wait…” A new suspicion hit me like a poison-tipped arrow. “Do you blame
me
for what happened to your father? Do you think his murder was related to the cancelled wedding?”

He hesitated before answering, giving a long, slow blink. “I’m not sure what to think right now, Ryann. That’s one reason I’m so busy—I’m trying to discover who’s responsible for his death. But no, I don’t blame you. I didn’t want the marriage. I was only too happy to walk away from it when Father told me I could.” He paused. “I have only myself to blame for that.”

But if his father had been killed because of reneging on the marriage contract, at least some of the blame
had
to fall on me. I was the reason for it. If Lad had never met me, he probably would have been happy to marry a beautiful Elven girl of royal blood, even if she was the daughter of the Dark Elves’ leader. The union had made political sense to all of them, and in the brief moments I saw her, she certainly seemed to be in favor of it.

“Have you spoken to Vancia since then?” I asked in a small voice.

Lad’s entire body went still. His eyes softened for a moment as he fixed them on mine. And then they turned back to glistening green stone and held something that looked a lot like pity.

He stood, obviously preparing to leave. “I have to go back, Ryann. I don’t have time to deal with your… insecurities and jealousy. I know your concern about your friend seems like a very big thing to you right now, but I’m sure she’ll be fine.” His lips rolled in to form a tight line. “Don’t send me any more messages. It’s hard on both of us to meet like this, and… I won’t come next time. So please, just—don’t.”

He disappeared over the edge of the nest, leaving me standing with my jaw hanging open and my heart in tatters. Insecurities. Jealousy.
What a jerk
.

I’d been too stunned to interrupt, and he’d given me no chance to reply, but his callous words now played through my mind in a continuous loop.
I know your concern about your friend seems like a very big thing to you.

Furious tears erupted and ran down my face. If he’d wanted to ensure I never came looking for him again, he’d succeeded brilliantly. Who
was
this guy? Certainly not the Lad I’d fallen in love with, the sweet, sensitive boy who’d been my hero in so many ways. Now he was truly his father’s son.

*     *     *

I trudged home, alternating between states of fury and despair. There was no part of me that wanted to go out tonight. Shay and I had planned to take Emmy out in Oxford for a last hurrah, but of course that wasn’t happening now.

When I called to give her the news about Emmy’s early departure, Shay didn’t seem all that surprised or worried. And she still wanted to get together. I finally agreed to cruise the Sonic and the ballpark with her for a while. She was hoping her new crush Lance would be around. And maybe seeing her would help—I might pick up a clue or two that would lead me to Emmy.

She had certainly been more receptive to hearing about Emmy’s big plans these past few weeks, so she very well might have more information about them than I did. Maybe Emmy had even mentioned something to Shay about where she’d be staying in L.A. or how to reach her.

I took Grandma’s car into town and pulled up to Shay’s house, a gingerbread Victorian that had to be at least a hundred years old, like the rest of the houses on her street. She must have been watching from the window because she came out the front door, crossed the porch, and ran down the steps to where I’d parked on the street.

Opening the passenger door, she slid into the seat in a whoosh of energy and Viva La Juicy perfume. “Hey girl!”

“Hey. You look cute,” I said. She did look adorable, as her pageant-girl self always did. She was only saved from universal female hatred by her consistent niceness. You just couldn’t not like her.

“You, too,” she said. “Hey, what’s the matter? You seem bummed.”

I started the car and began the short drive to Sonic. “I’m fine. I’m… I’m worried about Emmy, I guess.”

“Well stop worrying—she’s partying her ass off in La La Land right now. I’m sure she’ll call us this weekend when she gets settled.”

“So… you don’t have a number for her? Or an address?” I glanced over at her in the passenger seat.

“No. Do you?”

My shoulders sagged as the hope leached from my body. “No. I have no idea how to reach her.”

“Well, she just got there—give her time. Anyway, we can ask her mom.”

“Yeah.” I sighed, already aware of how useless that tactic was.

When I turned the car into Sonic, Shay sat up straight in her seat and practically wiggled with excitement. “There’s Lance with his friends. You wanna get out and talk to them?”

“No, you go ahead. I’ll stay in the car.”

“You sure?”

I pulled into one of the diagonal parking spaces. “Yeah. I want to order something.”

Actually, I wanted to just get through the evening. My last hope for information about Emmy’s whereabouts was gone—Shay knew nothing. I already knew Emmy’s parents were clueless. Lad wasn’t going to be any help. I was completely on my own.

I couldn’t even begin to solve the problem tonight, though. I had plans to drown my sorrows in microwave popcorn and a Vampire Diaries marathon as soon as Shay got her Lance fix and said we could leave.

              A knock at my window startled me, causing me to jump. On the other side of it, Nox stood smiling and gesturing for me to roll the window down. I glanced through the windshield at Shay, who was in full-flirt with Lance, leaning against the hood of his car.
Dang it.
I couldn’t just drive off and leave her.

              Heaving a heavy sigh, I rolled the window down. “What are you doing here? I thought you had gone out to L.A. with your band to get ready for a world tour or something.”