Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (70 page)

“Read minds,” I said, and his hand reeled back.

He looked at David. “I could read minds?”

David clearly didn’t want to, but he admitted it with a nod, and a very cold stare at me.

Jason moved back a few steps then and sat down, breathing out into his hands.

“Are you okay?” I knelt down on the floor beside him. “Are you remembering something?”

He shook his head. “Your world is too big—too complex for me.”

“What do you mean?” David asked, sitting in the chair beside him.

“I know I was a part of it before, but… I’m different now. I can feel it.” He tapped his chest. “I don’t want to be a part of something I don’t remember—don’t understand.”

“And no one will make you.” I laid my hand over his knee. “This is
your
life, Jase. You get to make the decisions.”

“Then take me home.” He looked up from the floor between his feet. “I don’t want to stay here any longer. Please. Just take me home.”

I looked at David and he looked at me, and we both decided in that same moment that what the IVRS wanted with Jason didn’t matter one little bit anymore. It was time. He’d been here for six months and they’d made no progress, and this young, nineteen-year-old boy had a life to live—a new world to discover—outside of the complexities of the supernatural world.

“Fine.” David stood decisively, and Jase’s face lit up. “Pack your things. I’ll let the board know.”

***

Jason took the world in with a sweet kind of boyish wonder. I watched him through the side mirror, his eyes enlarging around the quaint little houses and dancing shadows under the summer foliage as we neared the street where he would now live—where David and I had been living peacefully for four months.

“There’s this whole world out here,” he said, turning sideways in the seat to look out at something we passed, “and I feel like I’m only just waking up to it.”

“In a lot of ways, you are,” I added gently, getting a bit excited now to be so close to home—to my baby. It’d been less than twenty-four hours since we left, but I missed her as if she were my air, and I couldn’t quite breathe without her. I just wanted to wrap myself around her twice and squeeze so tight my lungs popped.

“You thinking about your baby?” Jason asked, looking back at me from the front seat.

“I was. Why do you ask?”

“I know I’ve only known you for a few hours, but I pick up on things pretty quick. And you get the same look on your face when you talk about your baby. So—” He shrugged, “I just figured that’s what you were thinking about.”

As he turned to face the front again, I could feel David thinking the same thing as me—analysing this new version of Jason. He might not be able to read minds anymore, but from all the years he had, he’d learned things about people—faces, gestures, expressions. Jase had this mad skill that he didn’t even know he had.

We made the last turn toward home, and David pointed up ahead. “See that house on the corner—the big white one?”

“Yup.”

“That’s our home.”

“Nice,” Jase said dismissively. “And I won’t recognise anything, will I? Since I’ve never been here before.”

“You’ve been there,” I said. “But only to visit.”

“Does anything look familiar?” David asked, and when Jason shook his head, I saw the visible relief in David. I was beginning to think he liked this young and naïve version of his brother and he not only wanted to keep the horrific abuse buried, but the darker vampire side, too—the side that did horrible things to me.

“Hey… bro?” Jase said in a seemingly hesitant way.

“Mm?”

“S’there something you don’t want me ta know?”

David pulled the car up in the driveway and leaned forward to look up at the window of our room, where we could just see a bit of movement inside.

“Bro?” Jase prompted.

“What?” David asked, distracted, as if he hadn’t heard the first question.

“Why do you do that—why do you look relieved every time I tell you nothing’s familiar?” He stared him down for a moment, but David refused to look at him. “I thought the point was to make me remember.”

“It is,” David said simply, and pushed the door open.

Jase sighed and undid his seatbelt.

“Jase?” I said in a pretty small voice—hoping David wouldn’t hear.

He stopped just as the door opened a crack, and turned to look back at me.

“Some bad things happened…” I swallowed hard. “Both
to
you and
because
of you.”

“Like what?” He closed the door fully and sat back, facing me. “Tell me, Ara. I can handle it.”

“David doesn’t think you can.”

“No.” He leaned a little closer to whisper. “
David
can’t handle it. But whatever it is, it happened to the other guy—the other version of me. And it’s better that I know, so I’m prepared for it when I remember.”

He had a point. A very good point. “I’ll talk to David about it, but you’re
his
brother. It’s up to him.”

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s my life. It’s up to
me
. Now tell me.”

I was a little taken aback by this assertive and determined version of him, but not enough to stupidly go spilling all the beans and end up having David pissed at me for the rest of our lives. “Say that to David,” I muttered, and opened the car door.

“You’re really beginning to shit me,” Jason said, slamming the car door as he got out after me. “Both of you.”

David looked up in surprise and his eyes followed Jason as he moved around to the trunk of the car to get his things. “Problem?”

“Yes,” he said, slamming the trunk shut as well. “If neither of you are going to tell me what the hell happened to me, at least have the decency to give me my journals—the current ones.”

“I’m not—”

“Sam!” Vicki’s voice cut David off. She ran out onto the porch after him as he stormed down the steps in much the same mood as Jason. “Samuel get back here now,” she called again.

“Forget it, Mom,” he said, walking faster. “I’m not staying under the same roof as that sicko!”

“Samuel!” she shrieked.

“Did you tell him?” Sam stopped by David, towering over him a little now with his continually growing legs. He glared at Jason, his face scrunched up. “Did they tell you what you did to my sister, you sick piece of shit!”

“Samuel Thompson, I am not kidding,” Vicki demanded, her hand on her hips. “You stop this right now. That boy doesn’t remember a thing.”

“I know. And that’s the problem.” He stared Jason down, who shrunk slightly, not knowing why Sam was so mad with him. “Everyone here is willing to just sweep everything under the rug—forgotten, like it never happened.” He leaned closer to Jason, tapping his own head. “But I won’t. I won’t ever be able to forget the way she cried herself to sleep every night, or how pale she was when she spoke about what you did to her. I sat there and watched her day after day after day trying to recover from the physical damage, the wounds, the breaks, the rehabilitation, and her body healed, bur her heart never did. Her mind
never
did!”

“Sam.” I walked forward and stood slightly between them. “Don’t—”

“Don’t defend him, Ara!” His voice squeaked with rage. “What he was doesn’t make what he did okay, and I’m tired of this supernatural world that allows bad things to happen to people because it’s just how it is. It’s
not
okay.”

“I know, Sam, but there’s more to the story—”

“No there’s not. He hurt you. He—” He covered his mouth with a fist, trying to control his voice. “He brutalised you and threatened to rape you—”

“Whoa.” Jase stepped in, dropping his bag to the ground. “I did
what
?”

“Jase, it’s a long story,” I said, putting my hands up against his chest to keep him back. “There’s this whole other side to that story and—”

“Ara.” He released my name like an apology, eyes hollow with shock. “Whatever I did to you, I want you to know that I… this person I am, who I… who I
think
I am, I would never—”

“Jase, you don’t need to explain,” I said, my own voice breaking. “It was a long time ago and I forgave you—”

“Why would you do that?” Jase backed away from me. “Ara, that’s sick. I…” He folded over and put his hands on his knees. “I’m
sick
.”

“At least one person around here has sense enough to see that,” Sam said. “Even if it is the mentally retarded one.”

“Right. That’s it!” Vicki said, and stormed down the porch steps toward Sam. “You will take your sorry butt upstairs right now, Samuel, and you will spend the rest of the afternoon in your room, until you are ready to come down and apologise to Jason!”

“Apologise to him?” He shouted, pointing at Jason. “I won’t do it. He doesn’t deserve it. He should be in
prison
, Mom! He should—”

“Sam! Go. Now!”

Sam looked at Vicki’s pointed finger, aiming in the direction of the house, then at her cold, steely eyes, and turned on his heel, following orders.

When the blue front door slammed shut, Vicki looked sadly at David as he wiped a hand down his face. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “He should never have behaved that way, and I—”

“You don’t have to apologise, Vicki.” David moved past her to Jason. “What’s done is done.”

“Is this what you didn’t want me to know?” Jason asked as David pulled him aside by the arm, leading him away from the house. “Is this what you tried to hide from me?”

I let them walk away, closing my eyes for a moment. I couldn’t go with them and help David explain everything. I’d lived through that with Jason once and I just couldn’t do it again. I hoped David had the same idea that I did: just erase it all—lock it up again until he was ready to deal with it. Much later.

“He loves you,” Vicki offered. “Sam. He just loves you and he’s angry still. It was hard on all of us watching you go through that.”

“I get that.” I nodded, opening my eyes. “I’m not mad at him. He’s fiercely loyal to his family, Mom—that’s a good quality.”

Vicki nodded to herself, but I could see the guilt eating her up. She hadn’t been in Jason’s court since she found out the truth about who he was to me from the beginning, but I know that she felt sorry for him—for everything he’d been through—but that was only because she had the full story. She’d been told the things I couldn’t tell Sam for fear of tainting the image of his father even more. But it was time to tell him. He had to know what his dad did to Jason—how he tainted his mind and started that whole mess.

***

David tucked the blanket around Jason’s shoulders as a cool summer breeze swept in through the den windows, bringing the first signs of a storm. It had taken all afternoon, but he finally managed to settle Jason enough to convince him to come inside and, as soon as Jason sat down, he fell asleep.

“Poor thing.” Vicki cocked her head, considering the sleeping boy. “A long journey here and then an emotional recall. He must be exhausted.”

“He’ll be okay in the morning.” I knelt beside him and pushed a thick lock of dark hair away from his temple. “I’ll talk to him about it all.”

“I’d rather erase it,” David said, waiting for me in the doorway, his arms folded.

“I thought that too, but… now, I dunno. I think he can handle it.” I stood up and looked past David to Sam as he came down the stairs. “He said to me in the car that he needs to know about his past—to be prepared when the memory hits him.”

“
If
it ever does,” Vicki corrected.

“He
is
right, though—in a way.” David dropped his arms as he sighed. “Maybe we
should
give him the current journals, and if he remembers Hans, we erase it.”

“Hans?” Sam said, clearly a little edgy about stepping into the room.

“Hans molested him, Sam,” I said, pulling the blanket up a little closer to Jase’s chin.

“A man?”

“Yes,” I said. “Repeatedly.”

I saw this new information hit Sam in the gut so hard his face went blank. “Really?”

“Yes,” David said flatly, and wandered into the kitchen, leaving the blank-faced Sam with a clear view of the ex-vampire, who really was just a kid, sleeping on his couch.

“He’s been through a lot more than you know about, Sam,” Vicki offered. “You need to cut him some slack.”

Sam just nodded, swallowing hard as Vicki passed him and followed David.

“So, I know you hate him and all,” I added, “and I understand that, but are you gonna come help me clear out my old room so we can put Jase in there, or are you going to let me do it all myself?”

“I’ll help,” he said with a nod, his eyes staying on Jason.

“Good. Because we need to talk.”

“About?”