"Shane?"
"He's evil. Him and Marcus are bad now. Very bad. You must have known. They’ve been helping my dad and Jonathan with their blood bag places."
My stomach sinks, "What? No. You must be mistaken."
He shakes his head, "No. I saw it. I'm pretty positive Marcus is the one who wiped my dad and made him sinister like them. More winking angels to transport blood whores. Anyway. I'm sorry."
My mouth is dry. The past six months make sense. So much makes sense. Marcus has barely tried to get Hanna. I gasp, "Hanna." I grab Phillip's hand and wink us to the castle. We're outside one of the rooms.
I hear a noise and look back at Phillip, "They having sex?" I whisper.
He nods, "I think that’s exactly what's going on in there." He smiles. I don’t think he realizes any of what is about to happen.
I am about to shake my head and explain how we have to rescue Hanna and fight Marcus, but I catch a smell. It flashes a memory of tutoring Shane and snuggling into him. It's the smell of laundry soap and fresh ocean air mixed with deodorant. I kick the door down. It's the room Hanna always sleeps in. She's on the floor. He's straddled her. He looks up and hisses at me.
"Go get Giselle. Meet at Lydia's." I shout and dive at Shane. I wink when I'm touching them both. We land on the street outside the house. Outside the guards. I kick him in the chest and wink Hanna to the front lawn, within the guards. I leave her in a heap and run at Shane. He squares off.
I point, "You've been smuggling girls."
He scoffs, "Sheep. Sluts and sheep."
My face contorts. I leap at him. I don’t cheat. I don’t suck or wink. I punch good and hard. He rolls us and somehow ends up on my back. He spreads my legs and rubs himself against me, "You have something I've always wanted, Aimes."
I wink and am on top of him. I grip his throat in my arms. He pushes up hard and we leap high into the air. He grabs my arm and pulls me under him. I wink as we land and thump him into the ground.
Giselle is running on my direction, "SUCK HIM!" I shout.
She leaps and plants a kiss on his lips, weakening him. Her kind of poison is instant.
"Don’t kill him." I say breathlessly.
I wink back to Hanna when Giselle has Shane unconscious. She is bleeding out. Her eyes widen when she sees me.
Lydia comes running out the door.
I point at Hanna, "Give her back her memories."
Lydia doesn’t even get onto the ground when the grip, I never even noticed on my shirt, is gone. Hanna's eyes are blank.
"Fuck." Lydia whispers. I have never actually heard her swear.
Sam comes running through the door. His face instantly drops, "Hanna." He whispers.
Lydia jumps up and grabs him, "She's going to come back any second. We need someone with incredible strength. Get Lorri."
Sam is panting and convulsing.
Giselle is crying and dragging Shane's semi conscious body, to the edge of the guards. "Where should I put him?" He was her friend. "Why did I do this to him Aimes? It's Shane. Aimee?" her voice is panicked.
Lorri flashes to us just as I press send on my text. She looks at Hanna and sighs. "Worst day in a thousand years. I swear to god." She turns to see Giselle, holding Shane, sobbing. Lorri looks at me, like I am to blame. "Excellent job Aimee. This really is the shit icing on the fuck up cake."
I point back at Shane, "He's a traitor. Him and Mar…"
A man's scream cut's me off, "LORRI" I don’t get to finish saying his name and he's there. Marcus is right outside the guards. Giselle drops Shane and runs across the guards. I wink to her and put myself between them and her.
Shane lies still on the ground, but Marcus is fuming mad and pacing the line of the guards.
"You give her back. We made a deal." He speaks through his teeth.
I whisper, "Traitors. They're traitors."
Lorri ignores me and stomps across the grass in her big boots, "Fuck you and your deal." She looks at me expectantly.
I jump and blurt out as much as I can, "He and Shane have been helping Jonathan with the blood bags and blood drugging. He's the one who double-crossed us on the brothel with Ari. Shane knew we were going there. I told him in the alley when we thought they would take O. He was pretending to try to win me back again. Marcus is the one who wiped Oliver and made him evil."
Lorri's face trembles with anger, "You killed Dorian with your actions. Dorian." Her words are short and sharp. He winces but still forces a smile across his lips in the end.
"Lorri, it was a bit of fun. You know better than anyone how I feel about the sheep. You know how Dorian felt."
"I DON’T GIVE A GOOD GOD DAMNED ABOUT THAT! YOU KILLED DORIAN WITH YOUR ACTIONS!" Her spit flies from her mouth. She is frothing.
Something ripples under her skin. Something scary. I look back at Lydia. She nods her head towards the house. I take a step back from Lorri and Marcus.
Marcus points, "Give her to me."
"NO."
"Give her over or I will go home and get Henry and he will BLOW YOUR MAGIC HOUSE DOWN!"
I take a step back.
Marcus's eyes land on me, "You little bitch. I saved Shane for you. This is how you repay me? You steal the one thing that soothes my heart and heals me and makes me almost human again?"
I lower my gaze.
Lorri shakes her head, "She didn’t make you double cross us and work me and Jonathan against each other. You always were just out for yourself. All along you've been the same selfish little prick you were when Ethan went bat shit crazy."
A loud rumbling fills the moment of silence between the bickering.
Marcus's eye gleam as a wicked smile crosses his lips.
Lorri's head drops as a sigh leaves her lips. I close my eyes. The rumble turns into a groan and then a moan and then a gasp. I turn my head and look back. Hanna looks like she is having a seizure on the ground. She is trembling and twitching and vibrating.
I bite my lip and glance at Lydia again. Terror crosses her face.
"Ophelia." I say quietly.
Sam vanishes from where he was standing.
"She'll cross the guards, there is nothing you can do about it Lorri. She'll cross and destroy shit and none of us is strong enough to stop her when she does." His voice is filled with humor and joy. He knows Hanna will need him now.
A grin crosses my lips, "I know something you don’t." I smirk and wink home. Well, to my hometown.
I wink into his bedroom by mistake.
"Aimee, what the fu..? How did you do that?"
Alise screams.
I grab him off my sister with one hand and grab his bathrobe off the floor with the other. I wink us both to where I am praying to god Aleks is. The place he talks about.
He is. The muted sunlight and the fresh mountain air are majestic. I take a deep breath and smile. I look over at Blake, who is heaving spaghetti all over the rocks. I grimace and walk away. Quickly.
"Hey." I say it softly. I want to shout it and tell him to hurry the frig up, but I can't. He's broken and it's my fault. His red-rimmed eyes look brutal.
"Hey."
I look down and nudge a small stone with my boot, "I'm sorry. You know that right? I never meant for him to die and for me to live. I didn’t even know what was going on. I didn't know he loved me. I don’t think I've ever known it."
He shakes his head, "He was such an asshole to you. He was so good at it. You never would have guessed it was all an act. A despicable act. A way to spare himself the pain of you not choosing him and sparing you the choice."
"I feel like Harry Potter I swear. The whole Severus thing blew my mind equally."
He looks confused.
Blake coughs and shouts, "Aimes, what the hell is going on? Where are we? Why did we come to a mountaintop to talk about Harry Potter? How the hell did we get here? Are we really here?"
Aleks looks past me and waves, "Hey Blake."
Blake's face gets red like when he rants, "Hey strange guy, I don’t know sitting on the mountain." He looks at me and holds his hands out, "What is going on?"
I sigh, "I don’t have time for this. I'll get the girls to give you back your memories when we get back. Just stop being a tard. Think Dr. Who."
His lips lift, "For real? Awesome." He tightens his burgundy robe and doesn’t even think about the fact he's barefoot and it's freezing.
Aleks laughs and stands up, "I need you." His words are soft.
I don’t have an answer but I know what my heart is telling me. The place around us is familiar. When I look past him at the graves, I feel like throwing up. I feel weakened and sick. I feel like jumping into his huge arms and letting him crush me into him.
So I do it.
I step into his huge embrace and let him wrap it all around me. His warmth and smells crash against me. His lips meet mine and it's heaven. His kiss is hungry and crazed. My body responds. I jump up and wrap myself around him. I could die smelling him. He pulls back and looks at me. My lips almost keep kissing the air. "Why did you come?" He asks.
"Uhm. I don’t….oh yeah. Oh my god, we have to go. Hanna is back." I jump out of his arms and drag him to Blake and wink us all to Marcus's house. We are standing in the hallway.
"Why are we here?" He asks.
I put a finger to my lips, "Henry, remember. You stay out here and keep watch for him." I wink myself and Blake inside. "Blake, if we steal these notes can you make a cure from them. It's for a friend who is a rage monster Hanna? Uhm like the Hulk."
Blake scowls, "What? Am I in a coma? Are we dead?"
I drag him to the notes I noticed the last time I was here. I flip open the book and show him the formula.
He reads fast. He shakes his head, "What is this? This is craziness. Aimes, this is to make the monster worse. See here. Notes on adding rage."