“I’m at my house,” I say. “Except he’s here too. I … I can’t face him right now. Can I come over to yours?”
“Of course. Sienna’s driving, want us to pick you up?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Can you meet me at the cafe?” It will be warm and busy enough there for the ten minutes it will take her sister to drive over this way.
“We’re leaving right now,” Rayne says.
I walk toward the cafe as my phone starts ringing again, and I don’t even have to look at it to know it’s Mom. I hit ignore again and then open a blank message. The cursor sits there blinking at me as I realize I have no idea what to say. I’m going to have to tell her something or she’ll freak out for sure. Just a short note saying I’m staying at Rayne’s and that I’m okay. It’ll have to do for now. My eyes are on the screen as I bump right into a guy walking the other way.
“Cole!” There’s no mistaking the Italian accent.
I look up in alarm to see Giacomo and Veronique standing in front of me along with another well-dressed couple. “Oh! I, uh…” I can feel my cheeks getting red as I try to figure out what to say.
Veronique’s eyes brighten as she smiles. “Hey! Your timing’s great. I was just telling my friends all about your recital.” She glances down at the splint on my wrist and her smile fades.
All I can picture are the headlights speeding behind us as we raced against time on the motorcycle. Veronique isn’t supposed to be here. She should be far away from here by now. This isn’t making any sense. “Where did you come from?” I finally ask.
Veronique looks confused. “From the martini bar,” she says, indicating a spot up the street. “We met Siobhan and Hamish there after we left your house.”
Now it’s my turn to look confused. “You mean you didn’t drive anywhere after dinner?” I ask. My thoughts are racing. I study her face to find any sign that she’s lying to me. “You weren’t on the Great Highway earlier tonight?”
“No,” she says slowly, her eyes steady on mine. “We’ve been in this neighborhood all night.”
If that’s true, then Griffon lied about the car chase, too. So far, everything I’ve known about him is a lie. But why? What does he want from me? I’ve never felt so alone in my life. I burst into panicky tears. “Excuse me,” I say pushing past them. “I have to go.”
I run toward the cafe, blinded by the hot tears that burn my eyes. I hear the click-clack of high heels on the sidewalk just as Veronique catches up with me. “Cole! Stop.” She puts her hand over mine as I reach for the door handle. “I can’t just leave you like this. What’s wrong?”
Suddenly nowhere feels safe. “I can’t … I have to go,” I say again, pulling at the handle, but Veronique puts her arm around my shoulder and steers me toward the doorway of the building next door.
“At least stay here for a second and calm down,” she says, opening her bag and taking out a crisp white handkerchief. “Take this.”
After a few minutes I manage to catch my breath, certain now my face is bright red and blurry from crying. “I’m sorry,” I say, trying not think about Griffon, knowing that will start the tears all over again. “This is so stupid.” I turn away. I need time to sort this all out. To know if there is anything safe I can say to her. “You should go.”
“You can’t keep this all locked up inside,” Veronique says. She tilts her head. “Obviously something’s wrong.” She pauses. “Is it Griffon?”
I want so badly to confide in her, to tell her what’s going on. To have her tell me what to do. “Yes. Sort of. We … had an argument.”
“Oh, no! Everything looked fine at dinner. What happened?”
I hesitate. Each of us is holding tight to a piece of our past, not ready to let the other one see. Or am I? Besides Janine, Veronique is the only other Akhet on earth that I know. Now, she’s the only one who might be able to help me, to give me some answers. To teach me how to live like this. I watch her face as I answer. One little flinch, one glance away and I’m out of here. “Griffon lied to me. He’s been lying to me for a long time.” I glance toward the street. Giacomo and their friends are talking animatedly to each other and not paying any attention to us.
“Must have been a big lie to get you so upset.” Something shifts in her movements. A decision has been made. Veronique steps closer and speaks more softly. “Is there anything else going on?” She holds my eyes steady with hers. “I have to say, I was really impressed with your Italian tonight. I had no idea you knew how to speak it. And you sounded like a native. Like you’d been speaking it all your life.”
Veronique has opened the door. All I have to do is walk through it. “I think I was born speaking Italian,” I say. I pause, knowing that once it’s out there, I can’t undo it.
“But not this time,” she finishes for me, a glint of hope in her eyes.
I shake my head slowly. “Not this time.”
Veronique’s face shines with relief as the words come out of my mouth, as if something heavy has been lifted between us. “I knew it!” she says quietly. “You’re starting to remember, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Some.” I look around again to make sure nobody is paying attention to us. It feels like everything I’ve kept from her the past several weeks is coming out in a rush. “I already know. About the Akhet. Griffon told me. He told me a lot of things, even though I’m not sure how much to believe.”
Veronique puts one hand up to her mouth. “Wow. That’s a lot to deal with. How long has it been?”
“Not that long. A couple of weeks, maybe.” I feel like I’m on the edge of something big, of figuring out a way to start repairing what happened between us in the past.
Something shifts in her features as I speak. “Did he ever say anything about me?”
“When you guys met that night at the recital,” I say. It all seems so ridiculous now that I can hardly tell her. “He told me that you were a rogue Akhet and that all of the bad stuff that’s been happening to me is your fault. Falling down the stairs that day at the conservatory, an accident we almost had on his motorcycle tonight.” I look at my arm. “He even said that you’d somehow caused the broken window.”
Veronique looks hurt, and I immediately feel guilty for all of the bad stuff we’d said about her. “But you don’t believe any of that, do you?” she asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “Not anymore. He’s been lying to me from the very beginning.” I can feel my stomach flip as I think of him. I glance up the street, ready to see Griffon riding by any minute. I look in her eyes so that she’ll get the importance of my words. “Apparently, he’s been lying to me for centuries.”
She looks surprised. “He’s an old Akhet, then? Iawi?”
“Very,” I say. It’s so weird to hear those words coming from someone else. “We were together back in the fifteen hundreds.” I stop talking, seeing once again the vision of the axe flashing on the scaffold. “He … he killed me in that lifetime.”
Veronique looks thoughtful. “If he’s an Iawi Akhet, then he has abilities to hide things, to manipulate things. I’m sure he’s been telling lies for his own purposes.”
“I can’t believe I listened to him for so long.”
“You need to be careful,” she says slowly. Her eyes dart up and down the street, and I get the sense she’s looking for him too. “Now that everything’s out in the open and he knows that you’ve seen his true essence, Griffon doesn’t need to pretend anymore. If he killed you in one lifetime, then you might be in danger in this one.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Is there somewhere safe you can go?”
“I’m going to stay at a friend’s house tonight. I’m not sure what I’m going to do after that.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
The way she says it reminds me of Alessandra and how kind she was to me. I want that back again. I want her back on my side. “I remember other things, too.” I can’t look at her right now. I don’t want to see her reaction. “About us. At the Pacific Coast Club.”
Veronique doesn’t say anything. The silence is so intense that I have to look up at her.
