The Shadows Trilogy (Box Set: Edge of Shadows, Shadows Deep, Veiled Shadows) (43 page)

“Lillian took care of all of that with Mikel. She didn’t tell me how she did it, and remember, she wiped my memory when I traveled to the Other Side. I decided to take on being a doctor because I remember this really nice gentleman who was here a bit longer than the others when I was a kid and he was a doctor. He talked a lot about how much satisfaction he got out of saving people’s lives. It sounded like a very important job.”

Ellie wondered how much Mikel was actually pilfering David’s memories, or how much was memories of Mikel’s own while he was playing the part of David. She wished Lucy was here to help her distinguish between what was real and what wasn’t.

“As for the fact that Lillian would try to kill me, well, let’s just say that I’m not that surprised. I know she cared about me, but Lillian always cared about herself first. She’d have no problem sacrificing everyone around her if that meant that she’d save her own skin. Look, that’s a lot of unpleasant talk. I’ll change the subject. Maybe after dinner I can show you something that I think you’ll really like,” David said, swirling his wine around in his glass. “Something that may help you take your mind off what happened with Martin.”

“What is it?” Ellie asked lightly, although she felt dull inside at Martin’s name.

“I’ll take you down a way line if you’d like,” David said with a conspiratorial smile.

David’s offer took Ellie completely by surprise. “I thought that I could only be here in the waypoint.”

“Well, this is where you are supposed to be, but sometimes things get really boring. If you want to know more about what I did as a kid, well, let’s just say that I started to do a little exploring on my own,” David said.

The idea that there was a way to move outside the house gave Ellie the first tiny glimmer of hope that she had felt since before what happened to Martin.

“I think that would be lovely,” she said, demurely bringing her wine glass to her lips.

David reached over the table and took her hand. She resisted the urge to pull it away. On the cusp of learning something so important, she couldn’t risk letting on that she distrusted David’s motives. She forced her fingers to squeeze a little and she smiled.

“I have such exciting things to show you, Ellie. We can truly be together now. As long as you do everything that Mikel tells you, we’ll be happy.”

Ellie picked up her wine glass. “To happiness,” she said. Inside she felt like her heart was being broken in two.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

For the rest of the meal David chatted more about the different people that he had met over the years and about the games that he would play in different areas of the house. Ellie focused on eating and tried to make the appropriate noises and smile and laugh in the right places. She had to assume that everything she was being told was a lie. Ellie hated liars. So at that moment, she hated herself the most.

Soon their plates were empty and at least her appetite had subsided. She stood to take the plates to the sink when David caught her arm and pulled her into his lap. The movement was so sudden that she didn’t have time to think and she automatically stood back up, moving away.

David looked confused, but she saw something else lurking there; he was watching her reaction very carefully. “What’s wrong? Do I smell?” he joked with a short laugh.

“You just surprised me, that’s all,” Ellie said. She saw that he was measuring her words, but there was no way she wanted him touching her. “Hey, you said you were going to show me the way line after dinner. I’m dying to see it.” She pasted a goofy grin on her face and waited, although she couldn’t keep her feet still. “Whoa, that wine has gone to my head a little bit,” she said, putting her hand to her head and closing her eyes. She tried to see his reaction beneath hooded eyelids.

There was a pause. Then she heard the chair scrape across the floor and as she opened her eyes, she was looking directly into his. He moved to just inches away from her. She knew what was going to happen, and in her mind, she just kept repeating, he’s in there somewhere, he’s in there somewhere. The body was David’s. So by the time his lips reached hers, she had softened her face and didn’t move.

The kiss was gentle at first, which completely surprised her. It was like there was a question there, but as soon as he sensed that there was no resistance, the kiss became more insistent. Ellie tried to think about the first time she kissed David. He was an excellent kisser, but she should have known when this man kissed her that it wasn’t David. There was an urgency and longing in it that didn’t exist in David’s kiss, as if he knew it wasn’t right, but he was doing it anyway.

Despite her mind, her body responded to the kiss. His hands rested on her hips and brought them closer to him. Then he moved up to her hands and took them and wrapped them around his neck. Ellie let it all happen. Her mouth was ravished and for a few seconds she completely lost herself. It was the realization that she was no longer tolerating the kiss, but enjoying it, that Ellie broke away with her hand to her mouth.

David’s blue eyes were filled with desire. There was a vulnerability inside there that unsettled her. He dipped his head to her shoulder and dragged his hands through her hair. “You are driving me crazy, woman.” His breath was ragged.

Who was she talking to? In that moment there was something lonely and sad about him and if that was the case, she was more confused than ever. Mikel was the bad guy. She wasn’t prepared for the idea that there was anything resembling a human being in him. But if he showed the capacity to care about someone other than himself, it was the most human thing she could think of.

They stood like that for several minutes. Ellie knew that if she gave him any cause to think that she was suspicious of him, he wouldn’t show her the way line. And when he was quiet, just holding her, she could easily think that it was David. She was angry at herself for letting herself be manipulated so easily by Mikel.

Finally he took a deep shuddering breath. “I’ll take you to the way line. I’ll show you whatever you want to see. But you have to promise me you’ll never try to leave me here, Ellie. Now that we are here, I don’t ever want you to go.” His face twisted in a grimace as he considered the possibility.

“I want to be wherever you are, David,” she said. Her mind, however, was doing backflips. She could get out of the waypoint. She just had to figure out how, after she figured out a way to separate Mikel from David.

Smiling shyly, he took her hand. “This way,” he said. He led her into the hallway and to the door of the basement. “Think of this like the back door,” he said. Then he led her down the spiral staircase that she remembered traveling down carrying Martin’s body just a short time before.

Then they were facing the stone pedestal again. But this time, David took her hands and led her around it and she saw a symbol on the floor. It wasn’t the same symbol that she remembered from her dream, and it hadn’t been there when she was in the room with Lucy. She carefully watched everything that he was doing as he scooped up some dirt from the floor and then dropped it inside the inner circle of the symbol.

“What is this?” she asked.

“It’s an ancient rune symbol,” he replied. “Think of it like a map to any time or any place that you could possibly think of. Then it’s just a matter of adjusting the map to tell it where you want to go.”

“Where are we going?” She was afraid she didn’t want to know.

“It’s a surprise,” he said as he knelt down next to the circle. His eyes twinkled. There was nothing menacing in his face at all. She wished she had a way to be able to tell for sure that David wasn’t involved in part of their conversation. David wouldn’t let anything happen to her, she was sure of it.

“So how did you figure out how to read the map?” She knelt down next to him. “I’m sure that Lillian didn’t want you gallivanting around the Afterlife or Other Side unsupervised.” She was teasing him, she realized as she watched his expression turn to one of amusement.

“Never heard of teenage rebellion?” he replied wryly. “I was busy studying these symbols before I could even walk. Call it preparation for worst case scenario.” As he spoke, he placed more dirt in the circle and then said a few words that Ellie didn’t recognize. The dirt started to swirl slowly close to the ground and then gathered into three different symbols on the ground. Knowing that so many things in the Afterlife keyed off the number three, Ellie wasn’t surprised.

David pointed at the symbols. “Person, place, and time. The more specific you can be the better.”

Ellie thought of all the infinite possibilities for every person in the world with just those three criteria to consider. She felt overwhelmed considering trying to learn enough on her own to be able to use the way lines, if she was even able to use them.

Then David took her hand, and since she was studying the symbols on the floor she missed the next part that resulted in a sharp stab of pain on her palm.

“Ouch!” she gasped and saw that the line where she had cut herself earlier had been reopened.

“Sorry about that,” David said, holding her hand firmly over the circle. Ellie watched several drops of her blood fall into the circle.

The sharp retort on her tongue fell away as she watched the ground beneath the circle begin to glow and pulse. Behind her the pedestal started to vibrate and then a fat white line about a foot wide shot straight out of it to the symbol, connecting the two.

“Just like that. It’s ready,” David said, standing up and helping her to her feet.

Ellie said nothing. Her mind raced as she tried to think where he was taking her.

“Trust me,” he whispered into her ear as if he had read her mind. Ellie didn’t trust anyone anymore. But she needed to know more. Finding that out meant putting herself in this man’s hands for the moment. She made a mental note to ask Lucy the next time she saw her for a spell to be able to see who it was she was actually in the company of because the man with her now seemed more and more like David all the time. Maybe Lucy was mistaken about Mikel’s ability to control him.

He took her hand again and stepped into the circle, pulling Ellie along with him. For a few moments the only thing that Ellie could see was blinding white and silver light. She couldn’t see David at all, but her hand in his remained a reassuring grip on reality. The edges of her vision started to clear, and as the light faded, a sight that she had not seen in twenty-five years came into view. Flickers of light danced around her eyes and then were finally gone, but Ellie didn’t even notice.

She was standing in front of the house she lived in with her parents until they died. She held her breath, expecting it to disappear, but it didn’t. It looked just the way it did when they lived there. Ellie had driven past the house a few times over the years, but the new owners repainted it, changed the landscaping, and fixed the front porch steps that her father always said he was going to do but never did. That last time she had seen it, it looked like a completely different place. But this house, this was the house from her memories. It was her home.

“Is this real?” she asked out loud. “How can it be real?”

“As real as you or me,” David said. “I thought it would make you happy to come here again. I picked a random day from your past just about a year before your parents died.”

Ellie slowly walked up the path and heard the creak and groan of the old steps as she moved onto the porch. She listened to see if the noise would bring someone to the door. Her father joked that they didn’t ever have use for the doorbell since the porch steps announced every visitor. But she heard nothing from inside the house.

“I guess nobody’s home,” she said absently. The idea that she could see her parents again, alive and in person, made her heart beat faster. Never in her wildest dreams would she have ever considered the possibility that her foray into this dark journey could bring her here, literally to her parents’ doorstep.

“What do we do?” Ellie asked. She was uncertain of the rules here. “Are we really here? Can someone see us?”

“Only if you want them too, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” David replied. “Think of this like a three-D version of a photo album. You can revisit happy places and memories of your past but you shouldn’t interact with them. That’s why there are only a very select few in the Afterlife who are allowed to travel the way lines. It’s simply too dangerous to everyone to let people traipse around at will. Besides, when you enter the Afterlife, you are supposed to be letting go of the past and embracing what happens next. It isn’t healthy to be too hung up on what happened before.”

She wasn’t certain, but she thought there was an undertone of a lesson being reiterated with the last statement. Ellie knew that she had lived a great deal of her life depressed and angry about what happened to her in her childhood, and later with her marriage. But that seemed like a lifetime ago.

“If it’s so important to move on, why did you bring me here?” she asked.

“Because I thought it would make you happy,” he said. It was a simple answer, but Ellie knew that there had to be another reason that Mikel, in David’s guise, would have allowed her to come here. At that moment, though, it didn’t matter. He was right. Just being there made her feel calm and relaxed. She would have given anything at all to be able to sit on the front porch swing and forget about everything else that was going on.

“I’d like to go inside,” she said, placing her hands on the doorknob. “Will you wait for me out here?”

She saw that he wanted to go with her, and for a moment she thought that he would disagree. But then he nodded. “Of course. Take your time. Oh, and Ellie, you don’t technically exist here, so no need to worry about using the door.” He winked.

She shrugged but turned the doorknob nonetheless. Just as she suspected, the door swung open. That memory proved true then; her parents had never locked their doors. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.