Chapter Eighteen
Both of the Salt and Pepper twins had taken to heart what I’d said to them earlier and decided to stay the night with me. What I liked was that neither of them felt the need to ask permission from anyone. They both lived with Tyson and Quinton, but they didn’t need to ask for permission to stay the night somewhere. They didn’t ask Dash if it was okay with him if they slept over either. They simply knew that he wouldn’t care, and they were welcome so they didn’t waste time asking.
It made me feel less like an A-hole for not asking Dash if it was okay with him if I had people stay over at his house. I was already comfortable here enough to invite them to stay because it felt right being here. It felt like home.
There had been a bit of texting going on with their phones and I hoped they were texting Quinton to let him know they wouldn’t be coming home for the night. I knew if it were me, Quinton would care to know. I assumed he was the same way with the rest of them, but I could have been wrong. Maybe he didn’t care what they did at all.
Tyson left, claiming it was too crowded for him to sleep over. I didn’t believe him one bit. He knew the twins were upset about not getting to spend a whole lot of time with me lately and he wanted to give them some space. He was also nosy. I knew he went home to grill his Uncle on what he found out or wasn’t able to find out.
Quinton never returned, and it worried me. It worried me enough that I even went upstairs, plugged in my cellphone to charge and sat up there on the loveseat until it had enough juice to turn itself on.
Then, for the very first time ever, I sent a text message to Quinton Alexander. He didn’t even make me wait long for a response, either.
Ariel: Did you find those books you were looking for? I would like to be kept in the loop on this one, please.
Quinton: Who is this?
Surprised, I blinked.
Quinton didn’t have my phone number? How was that possible?
Quinton: I think it’s the little demon I know who’s disguised as an angel. The one who runs around stealing hearts and pelting people with rocks.
He so totally had my number. Did this mean he thought I’d stolen his heart? Had I stolen his heart?
I wanted to steal his heart because he already had so much of mine.
Ariel: Hmm… No demon here. No angel, either.
Quinton: Liar.
Ariel: Thief.
Quinton: What the hell did I ever steal from you?
Ariel: My underwear!
I cursed silently and almost dropped my phone. Now I’d done it. Without thought, I had taken it in a direction I should not have gone. Would he get mad? I sure hoped not.
It was a full minute before he responded. I knew I had caught him off guard with that one.
Quinton: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Huh. He was taking a line out of my playbook here. When in doubt: deny, deny, deny. I did it better than he did.
Ariel: Who is the liar now? Huh?
Quinton: Shouldn’t you be busy with your other boyfriends right about now?
Now that surprised me. Did Quinton think of himself as my boyfriend? I hadn’t really thought about it before. I considered us to be in a relationship, but I hadn’t thought of him as my boyfriend.
Ariel: I have a boyfriend? This is news to me. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever had a boyfriend before. I’ve gone out on dates, but no boyfriend. I don’t recall going out on any dates recently and yet I have a boyfriend? Very odd.
Quinton: Then you must not be paying attention, baby. FFS, even Damien calls you his girlfriend. And, we’ve been out on a date before. How quickly you forget our moonlight stroll through the forest.
Quinton: I know it didn’t end on a high note what with Ty tackling you in the grass and all, but it still counts.
I choked on a lung full of air and felt my eyes grow as round as they could get, and not because of the choking either.
I read the messages twice more to be certain I had read it correctly the first time. Both re-reads assured me that, yes, I had indeed read the texts correctly the first time around.
I decided to ignore what he’d said about us having gone on a date because it was completely absurd. Him following me into the forest and us watching our naked friends move around a bonfire to be a date. Since I had no intention of getting into that one with him, I focused on the other point he’d made. The even crazier one.
Ariel: Damien has a girlfriend.
Quinton: Yeah, babe. It’s you.
He’d sent me that via text message and still I heard the impatience in his voice and it irritated me. He didn’t get to drop that kind of bomb on me and then get irritated with me when I contradicted him and expect me to take his crap. He had to know better than that by now.
Still, I tried for friendly.
Ariel: That’s not what I meant.
That was about as friendly as I could get.
Quinton: He did have a girlfriend. Then you came along, and he got rid of her. Simple as that.
It was not as simple as that. Good grief. I wanted to know when exactly this was and why no one had told me about it until now. It had bothered me, thinking Damien had a girlfriend. Not because I liked him overly much or even had the hots for him. It was about him saying he didn’t want me and this whole relationship with all of them would be complicated enough without one of them having a girlfriend. Even thinking it made me feel selfish.
Though, none of it really mattered at the moment. Quinton was stalling, using this as an excuse to not tell me what was really going on. And I was falling head first into his trap, falling for his tricks.
Did I want to know more about Damien’s new relationship status? Absolutely. But, I’d rather know what was going on with the search for Rain. That was more important at the moment. Besides, Abel and Addison were over and staying the night. I could ask them what was going on with Damien and they’d tell me what was going on. They might laugh at me for a while for asking but they wouldn’t try to hide the truth from me.
Quinton wanted the truth from me, but he apparently wasn’t entirely willing to give it back in return. I did not like this.
Ariel: No more bs please. I want to know what’s going on. No secrets. Remember? Not with each other.
This time, it took him a little longer to respond. I almost gave up on him and sat the phone aside. Dash and the Salt and Pepper twins were downstairs in the living room waiting for me. We had ordered pizza for dinner and were just waiting for it to be delivered. I had no idea a place would deliver all the way out here, but the guys had assured me they did because of the hefty tip Dash always gave them.
We were going to eat pizza in front of the television while watching movies the guys had picked out. The Lost Boys and SLC Punk had been mentioned so I didn’t mind them being in charge of what we watched.
They were waiting on me downstairs and I was up here with my cellphone clutched in my hands waiting for the next text message to come in. It wasn’t exactly fair to the people waiting downstairs for me. Despite this, I had an almost overwhelming urge to get in my Rover and drive over to Quinton’s house so I could be done with this nonsense and get to the bottom of what was going on. It would be a whole lot harder for Quinton to hide from me if we were face to face. Or, so I thought.
I ended up not having to go anywhere.
Quinton: No lies, no more bullshit. You’re right to call me out on it.
I let out a sigh of relief at reading his text.
Quinton: Tyson and I have been pouring through books for hours. Your texts have made for a nice distraction, but I will need to get back to it soon.
Quinton: I have no intention of giving the Council members anymore info on you than I already have at the moment. They are keeping something from me. They know more than they are saying.
Quinton: I’m gonna be honest with you, babe. The Council hiding shit about you scares me for reasons I’m not going to get into with you over the phone. It’s worse because they’re still hanging around and have refused to tell me why.
Quinton: Ty thinks he’s found a location spell but it’s not one either of us can perform. It will have to be performed by a blood relative, which would be you.
Quinton: We are going to probably be up half the night looking through my dad’s books. I want to find something that Ty and I can use. I don’t want it to have to be you who performs the spell or ritual.
Ariel: I’ll do whatever it is that I have to do to find him.
Quinton: I know and that’s a little scary.
I frowned down at my phone. That didn’t seem right. It couldn’t be that bad.
He should have been more worried about the Council and less concerned about what I was willing to do.
Ariel: Should I be worried about this business with the Council? I don’t like the thought of them knowing things about me and not being willing to share them with me.
Quinton: I have a feeling you’re going to get your shot to ask them all about it sooner than any of us would like.
Ariel: What do you think they are doing to Chucky?
Quinton: I have to get back to this. I will be over some time tomorrow to see you and go over what Ty and I find here. Enjoy your other boyfriends, babe. Tomorrow, you’re mine.
I left it alone at that. He needed to get back to work on my behalf and I needed to get back downstairs.
I was spacey all throughout dinner and both movies. My mind wasn’t ever far off from what Quinton had texted me. I was worried about the Council. The more I learned about them, which wasn’t exactly much at this point, the scarier they became.
What purpose would they have in lying about me? There wasn’t one I could figure out.
“I’m headed to bed,” Dash murmured as he pushed himself off of the couch, standing. “You don’t have to worry about keeping the noise level down. I take one of those pills and I’m dead to the world.”
He smiled at the three of us softly as the twins called out their goodbyes to him.
I had no idea how much time I had lost while off in my head. I looked out the window seeing that it was full on dark now. It was late. I had missed the entirety of the last movie.
“Night,” I mumbled as Dash walked out of the living room. I wasn’t even sure if he heard me.
I sunk down further into the couch. I was a jerk. Who offered to spend time with you then promptly ignored both you and what you were doing, and for hours no less? Me, I guess.
“Hey,” Addison said quietly as he leaned into my right side.
“Hey,” I whispered back shyly.
From his place on the floor, Abel laid his head on my knee. “Hey,” he said as quietly as his brother had. Even though he faced away from me, I had heard him just fine.
I rolled my eyes as the corner of my lips tipped up. They were letting me know that they didn’t care I had spaced out during the movies.
Sometimes, I think all they really needed was to be in your presence for a while to be good. They needed to know you were there. They needed to see you. They did not like being left alone at all. I didn’t think they’d always been like this until after their parents had died.
They had abandonment issues. I didn’t mind. I had spent all of my life lonely and that meant I had a whole lot of time to make up for.
Abel wrapped his arm around the backs of my legs and pulled them close to his side. He’d been on the floor for both movies and while we’d eaten. I think he’d done it so that Dash and I both would be able to sit on the couch. But he’d stayed close to my legs the entire time.
I was on one end of the couch with Addison to the right of me. Dash had been seated to the right of Addison. Neither of the twins had touched me while Dash had been in here. Not a minute after Dash had gone to bed and now they were touching me.
Were they like me? Were they not into PDA? I didn’t think so. I didn’t think they would care as much as I did. So why had they not touched me until Dash left the room?
Addison wrapped his arm around the back of the couch. His fingers trailed over my shoulder and down my arm. Very gently, he trailed them back up again. Then back down.
“What’s going on with you?” Addison asked. “Everything okay?”
I shrugged, hating it when people asked me if everything was okay. Normally, no one ever really wanted you to answer that question honestly. You were expected to say everything was fine and then go your separate ways. It was like asking how someone was doing. If you answered that question truthfully, the person who’d asked would likely never make that mistake again.
Addison expected me to answer the question truthfully and that was the problem. Rarely, were things A-Okay in my world and everything was never alright. I also didn’t enjoy listing off my problems for others to hear. If I said it out loud it seemed to take on a life of its own, to get bigger, harder to handle. If I said it out loud, then it became real.
Abel’s head twisted to the side and his green eyes squinted back at me.
“Ariel?” He asked hesitantly. “You know you can tell us anything, right? We’re family now. No matter what you say to us it’s never going to be so bad that we will want to leave you.”
I sighed. This sucked. Either I told them about my concerns or they would be worried they were doing something wrong. Or, worse, that I didn’t trust them enough to tell them.
“It’s this thing with the Council,” I told them honestly. “They make me extremely uncomfortable.”
Addison’s fingers stopped trailing up my arm and his hand pressed in to my bicep. He curled his fingers in and gave a gentle squeeze.
“If I were you, they would make me uncomfortable as well,” Addison said in his gravelly voice.
My lips parted in surprise at his answer. Everyone had been trying to sugar coat these elder people. Even Quinton sometimes.
“You’re a girl,” Abel said, and the way he said it made me feel like he thought that explained it all. “You know how rare that makes you.”
I did know. Because they had told me five thousand eight hundred and forty two times. I was beginning to wish I had been born a boy instead of a girl and this was something I never, ever thought in a million years I would feel for even a second. I liked being a girl.
“Let’s say,” Addison said, “that you burned down Quint and Ty’s house on purpose and one of us were in there and we died.”
I flinched at this, not even wanting to pretend such a thing would ever happen.
He ignored my flinch and continued. “Now, you might not have killed one of us on purpose, but you did burn down the house on purpose. You’d still be at fault for the death, right? If you were a man, the Council would come down hard on you because you killed another witch and that’s a big no-no for us. Punishments vary for the crime. But they are all harsh. They could take away your eyesight and lock you up for the rest of your life. They could castrate you, making you into a eunuch. Eunuch’s are usually forced into the rolls of servants for the Council. They can get really creative with their punishments. So much so, you’d more than likely wish you were dead. But death is never a punishment. Like everything else, it’s different for girls. They don’t hurt girls ever. They’ll keep you in confinement for a while and hope you’ve come to your senses and want to be a part of a coven. Their ultimate goal with females is children. We’re a dying breed, Ariel. They want our females to breed and they always wish and pray to whatever they believe in, sometimes they will even use fertility spells on the females. They see females as a hope for a brighter future. So, like I said, you could accidently kill one of us after purposefully destroying our property and the worst you would get is a year of confinement. And that confinement likely wouldn’t be a dungeon or a cell but a really nice room with servants who waited on you every day. But you wouldn’t be allowed out until they were ready to let you out.”
I shivered in unease. Yeah, none of that sounded creepy in the slightest.
“The younger generations care less and less about their females being witches and have been breeding with normal women without magic. And, I can’t say that I blame them. You have your coven and the family you were born into, but no one wants to live their life without a partner to share it with.”
“Our parents taught us different,” Abel said in a quiet, sad voice.
I cocked my head to the side and studied Abel. He’d turned his head so his eyes were no longer staring at me but instead on his brother. He’d shifted around so that one of his legs was wedged between my legs and the couch and his other leg was stretched out in front of him, covering my feet. Both of his arms were wrapped around my legs and his head lay on top of my thighs.
I reached out with my hand and ran my fingers through his soft black hair. He let out a contented sigh at my touch and a smile crossed my face at hearing it.
“How did your parents teach you differently?” I asked him. I wanted to hear more about their parents. They didn’t talk about them unless asked first. I didn’t like asking because I didn’t want to cause them any pain talking about their parents might bring them. When you loved your family very much and they were taken away from you in a horrible plane crash into the Ocean, one of them dying in the initial crash and the other surviving only to be killed by sharks, well, I didn’t imagine talking about them to be much fun.
I continued running my fingers through his soft hair and he closed his eyes. He didn’t answer my question, Addison did. I didn’t take my eyes off of Abel.
“Our parents believed in love and they wanted that for us. They never liked anything the Council said or did and they were very vocal about it, never hiding how they felt. Our mother didn’t have magic, not like Julian’s mother did. But our father loved her and wouldn’t have traded her or the love they shared for anything. It’s a rare thing. Usually, the men hide it from their significant others and the children they create together. It’s frowned on to share our secrets with anyone who isn’t born into our world. Our father hid nothing from our mother and she embraced our world and what he was with open arms. But he would leave her home with us when he had to attend to the Council or anything their coven did that involved the Council. People said nasty things to her when he wasn’t around to hear it. But he found out about it anyway, not that she’d ever told him. They tried to keep us away from the Council as much as possible and they tried to keep us in the dark on the ways of the Council. But my twin and I are sneaky and didn’t like being left in the dark. We snuck around and spied on our parents when other coven members showed up as much as we could get away with. We also spied on our parents as often as we could get away with, which was a lot. We heard the horrible things they’d said about our mother and our father for being with her. They thought he should have knocked her up, stuck around long enough to see if his children had magic. Then, if we did, the Council thought he should have taken them away from her and never had anything to do with her again. They see anyone without magic as weak. And they didn’t think children with magic should be raised with anyone but a coven of witches who had magical abilities.”
“We grew up not wanting one damn thing to do with those people,” Abel picked up when Addison stopped speaking. “Any answer you get from us about the Council will be colored by our feelings towards them. And our feelings towards them aren’t exactly pretty.”
There was a lot of information there to digest but I thought it best to go through it when I was by myself. That way my facial expressions wouldn’t give away my feelings. I liked to be alone when I digested things for the first time, especially when they were important things.
“Huh,” I said stupidly in an attempt to take away from the heavy mood that had descended upon our cozy little bubble in the living room.
Abel’s eyes shot open and he grinned at me happily.
“Huh, indeed,” Addison said in a teasing voice.
He was making fun of me, but I didn’t care. His voice had changed. The gravel had smoothed out a bit when it took on the teasing tone and it made me happy to hear it. We needed more happy, and less heavy. If that meant they were happy at my expense, then I could deal with it. Just this once, though.
“You’re a little nutty, pretty girl,” Abel told me in serious voice.
I nodded in agreement.
“You are not wrong,” I said.
Addison barked out a laugh. I winced at how loud it sounded in the quiet house. I knew Dash had said not to worry about how loud we were, but I couldn’t help it. He hadn’t been gone for very long and I worried about that if we were loud he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep.
Neither twin noticed my wince.
“Do you want to sleep down here or up in your room?” Abel asked me.
Sleep down here without my dreamcatcher? Only for the twins would I be willing to do this. Which was a lie because I would have done it for Julian also. I was feeling out of control with these boys.
But we couldn’t sleep in my room.
There was no light in my room once I turned out the ceiling light. If I left the door open and kept the bathroom door open with the light on, then it would light up the hallway but not any part of my bedroom. Abel didn’t like sleeping in the dark. They had glow in the dark stars covering their entire bedroom at the Alexander house that made their entire ceiling glow a neon green color.
If we slept down here in the living room then the tv would make it so we weren’t submerged in darkness and Abel wouldn’t have to wake up in a dark room sometime during the night and panic.
“We could sleep down here, if you want to?” I asked tentatively. “I’m not ready to sleep yet and I could watch another movie. I might fall asleep half way through it, but I could go for that.”
“See,” Abel said, “you really do need a television in your room.”
I shook my head, silently disagreeing with him.
“If it were just me, I’d watch something on my laptop,” I told him. “But with the three of us, the screen would be too small.”
No way was I telling them the real reason behind not wanting to sleep up there with them tonight. I would need to get some kind of nightlight before they stayed over again.
They got down to the business of gathering sleeping bags, blankets and pillows. A lot of sleeping bags, blankets and pillows. I expected them to each sleep in their own individual sleeping bags. I should have known better. The bags were unzipped, spread out and laid one on top of the other in front of the couch. Two, thick comforters were laid on top of the three sleeping bags they’d laid down. A black sheet was spread out on top of it all. And, last, the comforter from my bed had been dragged down the stairs and put on top of the pile.
Guess that meant we were all sleeping together on our mountain of blankets. I was fine with this. I had slept in-between them before. As weird as it sounded, I sometimes wondered if they slept in the same bed when they were alone together. Not in a weird way, just a side by side so there was someone always there, kind of way.
I ran upstairs quietly and changed into a pair of jammies while they got ready for bed. My pajama pants were soft and a solid black. My tank top, the same. No cute picture this time and no amusing saying. I was too tired to go digging for something cute to wear. And, who cared? We were going to sleep, not a pajama party and I wasn’t getting graded on my outfit. You could never go wrong with black.
By the time I got downstairs after making a pit stop in the bathroom to brush my teeth my comforter had been pulled back. Abel was already under it and I wasn’t surprised to see he’d taken the side closest to the television.
My eyes grew wide when I noticed he had the comforter pulled halfway up his bare chest. I sure hoped he had something on under there. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if he didn’t.
Something warm pressed into the small of my back, gently pushing me further into the room.
“You need to get in so that I can get in,” Addison said from behind me and I rightly assumed the warmth that had been pressed into my back was his hand.
The heat made me shiver and I wondered if I would ever get used to it. I kind of hoped not because I liked the way it felt now.
I walked to the edge of the blanket bed and dropped down to my knees on top of it. I crawled towards where the pillows were on my hands and knees. Abel held the blanket open for me and I crawled under it. I caught a glimpse of his bare stomach and the dark line of hair that trailed down into his boxers. I had never been so happy to see someone in their underwear before.
Addison crawled in behind me as I got myself situated and fluffed my pillow.
Once we were all settled, Addison reached over and grabbed the remote control from where it had been left on the couch.
“Movie or tv,” he asked as he aimed the remote at the blue television screen.
He was nuts if he thought I was crawling out from between them to put a movie in the DVD player. I would have to crawl over them to get out and I’d have to do the same to get back in. It was likely Abel would be stuck with that job and he needed to keep his half naked body under the blanket.
I looked over to Addison and was relieved to see he at least had on a thin black t-shirt. If he had a shirt on, it was a safe bet that he had some form of bottoms on as well. I didn’t have a problem with their bodies, they had beautiful bodies, I was just not used to seeing all that skin on display. And there were two of them. Maybe I was the prude Quinton had called me. Then again, maybe it was like everything else about them. Something that would simply take time for me to get used to.
I was okay if it was the first. I was more than okay with it being the latter.