Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (41 page)

Farley followed him through to the apartment, brushing the tears from her cheeks. It wasn’t going to do much good: she was still going to look like she’d been bawling, but maybe if she pretended everything was fine no one would mention it. When Daniel hit the answer button on the wall, the elevator doors rolled back to reveal Cassie chewing at her fingernails on the other side. Daniel let out a long, “Uggghhhh.”

“What do you want, Cassie?” Farley demanded. “I thought I said you weren’t welcome here.”

The bruises under Cassie’s eyes had turned a dirty shade of yellowish-green. They looked terrible. She held out a newspaper that Daniel took from her.

“I thought you might want to see this,”

Daniel unfolded the front page, his eyes immediately widening. “Oh, crap.”

“Yeah,
oh crap
. What were you thinking?”

Farley pressed herself to Daniel’s side so she could see what the fuss was about. On the front cover of the paper was a large, fuzzy photo of a blacked-out figure shooting what appeared to be bolts of blue light from his hands. There were smaller pictures under it; one was of a dead Immundus lying in the sand, his black trench coat flaring out behind him like a cape. The other photo was of Anna. It was clear it had been posed for, and her nose was very, very broken, which meant it had been taken at some point last night after they’d abandoned her on the beach. The story filled the whole front page. The tagline
- Girl Survives Multiple Homicide at Illegal Malibu Beach Party
- was in towering block capitals. Farley’s stomach lurched.

“We should never have left Anna there.”

Daniel frowned, leaning closer to the paper as he poured over the story. “There’s no way we were bringing her back here. We weren’t to know she’d go blabbing to the media. I didn’t think she was that stupid.” He scrunched the paper together in his hands and threw it angrily onto the kitchen counter.

Cassie shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Look, I know you guys hate her right now, but I might be able to fix this. I could talk to her.”

Farley didn’t trust herself to respond. She was likely to start screaming irrational things about the fact that Cassie was Anna’s friend, and that made her an accomplice to her stupidity in some way. That wasn’t going to do anyone any favours. Daniel pulled his lips into a tight line.

“Kayden!”

Farley blanched. She hadn’t seen Kayden since he offered to let her cut him into little pieces. She had been utterly cruel to him. She had no idea how to react when she saw him. At Daniel’s second call, Kayden appeared in the corner of Farley’s eye, standing at a respectful distance. His hands were shoved so deep in his pockets it looked like he might have pushed right through the bottom of them. “Hey,” he greeted them quietly.

Farley gave him a hesitant smile. “Hey.”

He regarded her with uncertainty. “How you feeling?”

“You mean aside from the body-wide ache courtesy of being partially drowned? Just peachy.”

He smiled softly and prodded the toe of his sneaker against the lip of the rug. “Grand. Danny did a stellar job of fishing you out of the Pacific. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Farley did a double take. She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “What?”

When she looked at Daniel, he was doing his best to crack his knuckles, but it looked like he might end up breaking his fingers instead. His cheeks were a vibrant crimson. Farley reached out and stopped him before he did any damage.

“You pulled me out of the ocean?”

He gave a small nod, burning into her with the intensity in his eyes. Cassie’s face twisted like she might start crying. She backed away from them, the muscles in her neck working overtime.

Daniel hadn’t told Farley how she’d ended up safe back on the beach. Truth be told, she hadn’t considered once who might have come to her aid. That it was Daniel seemed so perfect and yet equally devastating. He was probably traumatised.

“When this nightmare is done, we’re all going to group therapy,” Farley muttered. Her words earned her the briefest smile from Daniel.

Cassie’s small chuckle only sounded half-forced. “No amount of head shrinking is going to make you lot normal. So, what do you say? Shall I try and talk to Anna? She’s my friend. This is partly on me. You have to let me help fix it.”

Daniel looked to Kayden, thinking. “Did you see the paper?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “she was giving television interviews this morning about how she fought off a group of superhuman freaks on the beach.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Do you know where she is?”

“She’s in the Tower. For some reason they let her back in. I’ve been following her around all day, glamored, of course. She’s spent a lot of time standing in front of mirrors pouting at her shattered nose. I don’t think they’re going to try and use her to get to us again.”

“No,” Daniel agreed, “that wouldn’t make sense. What else did you see?”

A troubled look passed over Kayden’s face. “Is Tess here?” Farley shook her head, no. “Good. I saw Oliver. He’s… I didn’t exactly get to talk to him, but things don’t look good.”

Awesome. First Simeon, now Oliver.
Farley wrung her hands. “How do you mean?”

For a second she didn’t think Kayden was going to tell her. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “He’s been venting all his power into the Immundus. Like, non-stop. There’s a queue coming out of the Great Room that almost laps to the West Quarter corridor. Simeon…”

“What about Simeon?”

Kayden kicked at the rug some more. “Simeon’s a grade A wacko. He keeps screaming about finding the Soul Child, and no one’s listening to him. He’s stalking around the Quarters terrifying the children. He keeps talking to his invisible friend and tearing the place apart looking for his wife.”

It was just like Agatha had said it was back when she was a kid; they’d told the children scary bedtime stories about Simeon coming to get them if they didn’t behave. And now Simeon, in all his paper-skinned, terrifying glory, was wreaking havoc there for real.

“What do you mean, no one’s listening to him?” she asked.

“Exactly that. The Immundus are fighting in the hallways, literally killing one another to get ahead in the line for Oliver’s handouts. They act like they could care less about Simeon. It’s bedlam down there and it’s only going to get worse.”

Farley rocked back on her heels. She hadn’t had chance to mention Simeon’s theory about the Immundus, and now it seemed like it wasn’t so much a theory as a cold, hard fact. She had to tell them right away. “That’s because the Immundus are just regular people.”

Kayden, Daniel and Cassie all stared at her.

“How are they just regular people?” Daniel asked.

“Because Simeon would never kill any of them by taking their souls. He doesn’t control any of them. He managed to influence them for a while by hooking them on his power, but now Oliver’s on the scene they don’t need Simeon anymore. It sounds like Oliver’s not asking anything of them, so as soon as they get their hit they’re just re-joining the back of the line again for round two. You see?”

Daniel’s body sagged. “No one’s manipulating them from the inside? That makes a hell of a lot of sense.”

“So what are we going to do?” There was no way she was going to let her brother live out the rest of his days down in the Tower, even if he had gone to the other side.

Daniel picked up his leather jacket from the back of a bar stool and threaded his arms into it. “We have to get Oliver back. Sounds like without him around the Immundus are going to go crazy. Kayden, you’re not going to be able to transport him, are you?”

Kayden shook his hair out, so very blonde it was almost silver. “No chance. I’m on lockdown. The Quorum are monitoring everything I do. If it’s not directly related to keeping Farley safe, it’s a no-go zone. I was only able to go down there earlier because they sent me themselves.”

“Typical.” Daniel sucked his teeth. “Okay, we’ll have to figure something out.”

“I have an idea,” Farley offered. It was a pretty sketchy idea, but still. “You could get Cassie to leave a message for Anna. She could pretend she’s angry with you and tell her that she wants to come across to the Reavers too. We could let slip that we’re going to try and storm the Tower in order to get Oliver back. The access point we feed Anna will be wrong, though, and while the Immundus are in one place trying to protect their drug supply, we can sneak in from another access point and snatch up Oliver.”

Farley held her breath. She’d never been a great strategist before, but then again she’d never needed to be. She watched Daniel and Kayden eye each other, considering her suggestion.

“It might work,” Daniel said eventually. “But there is no
we.
I’d be going alone. There’s no reason for anyone else to come. I can overpower Oliver if I have to. Getting him out will be easy.” He looked to Cassie. “You think Anna would believe you?”

Cassie shrugged. “We’ve been friends for a long time. I think she’d believe me. I’m not sure how I feel about lying, though.”

Daniel pulled an incredulous face. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get over your moral outrage if it means you can help us get Oliver back, right?”

She huffed loudly. “Right.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

Daniel told Cassie what to say in her message to Anna, and she actually followed his instructions without complaint. She snapped her flip phone shut and placed it down on the counter. “I hope you know what you’re doing. It doesn’t sound like Oliver’s going to be too thrilled by the rescue attempt.”

“I can handle Oliver.” Daniel zipped up his leather jacket. “I’ll have to leave now if I’m to make the window we just created.” He came and pressed a kiss onto Farley’s forehead. “Please stay here. I won’t be long, I swear, and when I get back, I’ll have Oliver.”

Farley nodded her head, conscious of the fact that she was only half lying if she didn’t form a promise into words. There was no way she was going to stay locked up here in the hotel, especially when she was doing exactly what Simeon had suggested she do: using the Immundus’ lack of control to her advantage. Because if Oliver was going to be somewhere down there on his own, that meant crazy Simeon was, too. She needed to be down there at the same time as Daniel. She needed both the power of the Talisman inside him combined with her own body in order to kill Simeon. Daniel would never suspect she’d follow him, and once she was down there it would be too late. He’d have to help her.

Cassie slipped into the elevator alongside Daniel. He gave her an agitated look that bordered on hostile. His scowl made Farley unreasonably happy. The look disappeared when he turned back and gave her a small wave as the doors closed.

That left just her and Kayden. When she turned around, he was watching her with a disapproving frown. “That really isn’t a smart idea.”

Farley felt pinned to the spot, like she’d been busted stealing. “What? What do you mean?”

“Don’t give me that crap, Farley. I told you once already, you’re an open book, remember?”

He had been pretty good at calling what she’d been thinking that day on the basketball court. But this wasn’t the same. He’d have to be a freaking mind reader to guess what she was planning now, and he swore up and down he wasn’t. She locked her jaw. “No, Kay. I
really
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kayden threw up his hands, walking towards the kitchen. “Okay.” He rifled around behind his back, extracting a folded bolt of cloth from the waistband of his faded jeans. He set it down onto the counter next to a phone-
Cassie’s
phone. “All I’m saying,” he mused, “is that, should you be intending to pick a random access point into the Tower to mess with Daniel’s plans, it’s not going to end well. But perhaps,” he tapped the folded square of material, “you could come up with another plan that might be more likely to succeed.”

He stepped away from the counter and stood before her, squinting his eyes. It reminded her of the time he’d shone the reflection of the sun at her with the blade of his knife and she’d been blinded by it. Except now it looked like
he
was blinded and she was the one who’d done it.

“Are you still mad at me?” he whispered.

Farley suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to cry. She shook her head and stepped forward to fold herself into a hug. Kayden kissed the top of her head and squeezed her tight.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

She didn’t say anything for a while, just buried her face into his shoulder. When she eventually looked up, it was to catch sight of his tattoo. She absentmindedly traced her finger across the back of his neck. “What is it?” she whispered.

Kayden tensed. “A contract. My contract. It’s called a Catena.”

“What does it say?”

“What I did. What I have to do now.”

“Why can’t I read it?” Even as Farley said the words, Kayden’s tattoo shifted slightly, the black spirals of the characters twisting in lazy swirls.

“Only I can. I’m the one that needs reminding.”

She blinked. “Of what?”

He sighed, long and sad. “My guilt.”

Farley didn’t want to say anything; he didn’t seem to need her to. He drew in a deep breath and held it, like he was considering saying something himself. Eventually, he exhaled, “Y’know… if things were different…”