For a moment I didn’t think I moved or breathed as I stared at Mom, dressed in a robe and fuzzy kitten slippers, holding a damn shotgun, and Luc, wearing a shirt that read DILL WITH IT, and there was a pickle underneath the words, wearing . . . sunglasses?
Yep. Sunglasses.
I was still gripping my candleholder. “You know him, Mom?”
That half grin appeared on Luc’s face. “Sylvia and I go way back, don’t we?”
What?
The shotgun in Mom’s hands didn’t shake once. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by for lunch.” He took a step forward. “Was hoping I’d get a home-cooked meal.”
What the what?
“Move any closer, and we all will find out what kind of lasting damage a twelve-gauge slug does to your head,” Mom warned.
My eyes widened. Oh my word, Mom was a badass—a scary badass.
However, it appeared Luc didn’t realize that yet. “That’s not really neighborly. Actually, it’s quite rude. Is that how you normally greet guests?”
“You know better than to come here, Luc.” Mom had said his name again, confirming that I hadn’t been hearing things earlier. She knew him. “And you know damn well you’re not a guest.”
Especially considering guests don’t normally let themselves in.
Peeking over Mom’s shoulder, my gaze met Luc’s. The breath I took halted as his smile deepened. There was a . . . wicked quality about that smile, a secretive twist.
I couldn’t believe I’d kissed him.
Well, I hadn’t kissed him. I was devoid of responsibility when it came to that. He’d kissed me and he’d also tried to kidnap me. I gripped the candleholder tighter.
“You know how I feel when it comes to following rules,” Luc replied. “And you should also know how I feel about having a gun pointed at my head.”
“I don’t care how you feel about that,” Mom spat back.
“Really?” Luc lifted his hand, opening his fingers. Mom gasped as her shoulders jerked. The shotgun ripped away from her grip and flew across the room. Luc snatched it out of the air.
“Holy crap,” I whispered.
Still smiling, as if he were beyond pleased with himself, he wrapped his other hand around the barrel of the shotgun. “Do you know how many people are killed by guns?” He paused as he raised his brows. The scent of burnt ozone filled the air. “That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m honestly curious.”
Mom lowered her arms and her hands formed fists. “One short of how many are killed, I’m thinking.”
He smirked. “I personally don’t have a problem with guns. Not that I have any use for them. I really just don’t like them pointed at me.”
The sharp tang of burning metal caused my eyes to water. Luc opened his hands and the disfigured shotgun fell, clattering off the floor.
The barrel was melted in the center.
“Holy crap,” I repeated, taking yet another step back.
Luc leaned to the side, eyeing where I stood behind my mom. “A . . . candleholder?” He laughed, and it sounded like a genuine laugh. “Really?”
Mom stepped to the side, blocking him from my view. “Don’t come near her. Don’t even look at her.”
“Well, it’s a little too late for that,” Luc replied dryly, and my stomach sunk. He wouldn’t. “I’ve looked at her.” Another pause. “I’ve definitely been near her. Like, really close. You could say, we were so close, there wasn’t any space between us.”
Oh my God.
I didn’t stop to think what about what I was doing. Cocking my arm back, I threw that candleholder like I was winging a blade. It spun across the room, heading straight for his head.
Luc caught the candleholder as a look of shock splashed across his face.
Mom gasped as she spun, facing me. “Evie, don’t.”
I froze, hands at my sides. Considering my mom had pulled a shotgun on him, I figured she’d be proud of me tapping into my inner commando and throwing a candleholder at him.
Apparently not.
“Did you seriously just do that?” Luc demanded, staring at the candleholder for a moment and then throwing it onto the couch, where it harmlessly bounced and then thudded off the floor. He pinned me with a dark stare. “You could get yourself killed doing things like that.”
The robe whirled around Mom’s legs as she spun on a kitten slipper. She threw her arm out as if she could ward Luc off with just her hand.
Luc’s features sharpened as his purple stare shifted to Mom. Something about him looked primal, then, almost animalistic. Pure power flowed from him, filling every nook and cranny in the room. Static charged the air, raising the hair on my arms.
Was he going to go full Luxen? I’d never seen that in person, only on the television. A morbid sense of fascination filled me.
“Really?” Luc said, his voice soft with deadly warning.
My heart lurched in my chest, and then Mom lowered her hand. She seemed to draw in a deep, heavy breath. A tense moment passed. “What do you want, Luc?”
I didn’t expect him to answer. I honestly expected him to go nuclear like a Luxen could, but he seemed to pull the rippling power back in, sealing it up and stashing it away. “I’m here to do you a solid, Sylvia, because I’m helpful like that.”
Mom waited, every part of her body screaming that she was on high alert.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out something thin and rectangular. I had no idea what it was, and there was a good chance I was close to passing out, because my heart was pumping so fast, I felt dizzy. He tossed it into the air.
With impressive reflexes, Mom caught whatever it was. Her chin dipped. A second later she whirled on me. “What is this, Evelyn?”
“Oh no,” Luc murmured. “The full name just came out. Someone is in trouble.”
“What?” I asked, glancing at Luc while wishing I had another weapon to throw at him. Maybe a missile. That would be great.
“This,” she snapped, holding up my . . . fake ID.
I gaped in disbelief. She was holding the ID that Luc had taken from me on Friday night. I’d forgotten that he still had it.
Luc winked when I turned to him.
I was struck speechless. Literally. No words. He came here, almost got his head blown off and then knocked off by a candleholder just to rat me out? All when he could’ve just given it to me yesterday.
Then his words came back to me. When I said I would see you again, I hadn’t meant today.
He’d known yesterday that he’d had that ID and he hadn’t given it back to me.
I couldn’t even believe it.
This wasn’t happening to me. All I wanted to do with my Sunday was drink my apple juice and watch Hoarders. That was all.
That look hit Mom’s face, the one that said I was seconds from being buried in the backyard and her ending up on some show about when mothers kill their young. “I . . .”
She tilted her head to the side, waiting.
It was Luc who spoke up, because of course he would. “Your daughter left that at Foretoken on Friday night.”
My jaw was on the floor.
His smirk grew to a point that it took everything in me not to jump on him like a rabid platypus, and that would be bad, because a platypus was poisonous. I knew this, because, well, the Internet. “I thought you would like to know she was there. More than once, I might add.”
My eyes were going to pop out of my face. I couldn’t believe he was doing this, especially after he’d made it scarily clear that I better not say one word about what I’d seen at the club.
Luc wasn’t done yet. “She left her phone there Friday night and came back for it yesterday morning. I was kind enough to keep it safe and give it back to her.”
“Kind enough?” I shrieked. “You tried to—” I caught myself at the last moment. If I said he tried to kidnap me, then I’d have to explain why, which involved a horde of illegal Luxen. As much as I wanted to see Mom go all badass on him again, I wouldn’t put those Luxen in danger. Or her. He arched a brow, and I finished with a sad, “You are not nice.”
He pressed his lips together as if he were fighting a laugh or a smile.
Mom didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. I was dead, so dead, and I was going to come back as a ghost just to haunt Luc for the rest of his godforsaken life.
Then she finally spoke. “Is that all, Luc?”
“Are you making lunch?” he asked. “I’d do bad, bad things for a homemade grilled cheese sandwich.”
I gaped at him.
“And tomato soup. That would be an amazing combination,” he added after a moment.
“No,” Mom bit out. “I am not making you lunch, Luc.”
He sighed heavily. “Well, that’s disappointing.”
“Is that all?” she repeated.
“I guess so.” He sighed, sounding bored. He started to turn but stopped. He faced Mom again. “Oh yeah, one more thing. All bets are off now. You feel me?”
Mom stiffened. “Luc—”
“No, no.” He tsked softly. “Don’t think you really want to get into the details right now. So I just want to hear one thing from you, or we’ll all be having a very interesting conversation that will include grilled cheese and tomato soup.”
What in the hell were they talking about?
Mom’s lips thinned. “I feel you.”
“Perfect.” Luc’s gaze met mine and held it for a moment too long. A shiver slipped down my arms, rattling my bones. He turned and strolled back to the door. “Peace out.”
Luc walked out of the house like none of that had just happened, quietly closing the door behind him.
And I was still standing there, half afraid to even look at Mom. My thoughts were whirling all over the place as I inched over to my right and picked up my apple juice. I downed half the glass and then put it back on the coaster.
Mom still hadn’t spoken.
“Um, I didn’t know Luxen could just unlock doors.” I took a step back from her. “That’s actually a really scary piece of knowledge that . . .”
Mom glared at me.
“That . . . um, should be more widely known,” I finished lamely as I walked around to the chair and sat down on the edge. My heart was still thundering.
She inhaled noisily through her nose as a strand of her sleek blond hair fell forward, against her cheek. “What were you doing at Foretoken?” She paused. “The first time.”
“Okay.” I swallowed hard. “I know you’re mad, but I have questions too. Like why would there be a shotgun hidden under the couch cushions?”
Mom’s brows rose.
All right, that might not have been the best thing to ask, but it was a valid question, and I had another very serious question. “And how do you know him?”
Her eyes widened in a way that suggested she thought I might’ve lost my mind. “I’m the one who is in the position to be asking questions, Evelyn Lee. Not you.”
Oh no, now the middle name just came out.
“So, let me ask one more time, and it better be the last: What were you doing at Foretoken?”
“We just wanted to go out,” I said, pushing my hair off my face as I stared at the door Luc had unlocked with his freaking mind. How did I not know they could do that? Well, most Luxen wore the Disabler, so I’d never seen them do anything like that. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I . . . I don’t have a good enough reason.”
“Damn straight, you don’t have a good enough reason.” Mom bent down, swiftly picking up the ruined shotgun. “Where did you get this ID?”
I shrugged.
“Evelyn,” she snapped.
“I don’t know. From someone at school.” No way was I throwing James under the bus. “It’s not a big deal—”
“It’s a huge deal.” Mom tossed the shotgun onto the other chair. “Not only is that club for twenty-one and up, as I am sure you know, it’s not a safe place.”
I cringed. Folding my arms in my lap, I leaned forward. “I know I messed up.”
“You lied to me.” She picked up the couch cushion and then slammed it into place. “That is not okay.”
Feeling like I was about two feet tall, I watched her straighten up the couch. “I’m sorry.”
She plucked up the candleholder and faced me. “Did you see him Friday night? Luc?”
Knowing that lying to her again wouldn’t be smart but telling the complete truth would be even worse, I chose my words very carefully. “I did.”
She closed her eyes as her jaw jutted out. I knew she was searching for a calm, happy place.
“It’s not like I hung out with him, Mom. I just . . . talked to him.”
A moment passed and then she opened her eyes again. Sitting on the couch, close to me, she held the candleholder. “What did he say to you?”
I shook my head, a little confused. “Nothing really. He just demanded to know why I was there and then said I shouldn’t be.” I saw her shoulders relax a little. “Mom, how do you know him? How does he know where we live?”
She didn’t answer as she lowered her gaze. A long moment passed while I waited. Mom always looked younger than her age. She was in her late forties, but I always thought she could’ve passed for someone in her thirties.
Until right then.
Faint lines were etched into the skin around the corners of her eyes, and she looked tired. Maybe those lines had always been there and now, with a weariness clinging to her skin and bones, I could see them.
“Luc knew your father,” she said finally.
That was the last thing I expected her to say. “How? How is that possible? Luc’s about my age, right? Did Dad know him when Luc first arrived here?”
Mom pressed her lips together. “Honey, I don’t know. . . . I don’t know how to tell you any of this. I’d hoped I would never have to, but I guess that was foolish of me. I should’ve known this day was coming.”
A chill skated down my spine. “What are you talking about?”
She was quiet so long, I started to get really freaked out, and that was saying something, considering there were shotguns under cushions and random Luxen roaming into the house, unlocking doors. “There are things you don’t know—things that the general public has no idea about.”
“Like the Luxen being able to unlock doors with their mind?”
Her lips twitched. “Bigger than that, hon.”
I thought that was pretty big.
After placing the candleholder on the ottoman, she angled her body toward mine. “There are times when decisions are made for the better good, and sometimes that involves omitting details—”
“You mean lying?” I suggested.
Her lips pursed. “I know where you’re going to take this, but lying about going to the club is not the same thing as lying to protect someone, and in this case, the entire world.”
My brows lifted. A lie was a lie, but arguing that point wasn’t important. “That sounds . . . serious.”
“It is. Serious enough that people have died to keep certain details unknown.” Stretching over, she placed her hand on my knee. “There are things I’m not allowed to discuss because of my job—because of what Jason used to do and be part of, but . . .” She exhaled heavily. “But if I don’t tell you, then I know he will, and I’d rather it come from me.”
“He?” I straightened. “You mean Luc? I have no intentions of ever seeing him again. Ever. Like, never, ever going to happen.”
Mom pulled her hand back and she looked like she was about to say something but had changed her mind. A moment passed and then she said, “The Luxen have been here for a very long time. For decades.”
I blinked once and then twice. “What?”
She nodded. “As you know, their world was destroyed. That part was true, but they didn’t come here decades ago to invade us. They came to basically recolonize—to live out their lives peacefully among us. The governments all around the world knew of their existence, and they worked hard to assimilate them—pass them off as humans—and it worked. It worked rather well until the invasion.”
“Wait. I am so confused.” I pushed up from the chair. “You’re telling me that the Luxen have been here forever and no one knew?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” she answered.
“How in the world did they keep it a secret?”
She arched a delicate brow. “Honey, you’d be amazed at what has been kept secret and has nothing to do with aliens from outer space.”
“Like what?” I immediately asked. “What about the assassination of JFK? Oh—what about Roswell? Was that really—”
“Let’s just focus on this, okay?”
I sighed, but I refocused. “I just don’t get how they could keep something like that hidden for so long. It doesn’t seem possible.”
“It didn’t always work. People found out. There were issues, I’m sure,” she said, dropping her hands to her knees. “The knowledge of other intelligent life-forms was—still is—powerful and dangerous. When it was first known that they were here, the decision was made to keep it quiet until it was deemed that society could handle such knowledge. Unfortunately, time wasn’t on anyone’s side. The invading Luxen came before anyone was confident that society could handle the news that we most definitely are not alone in the universe.”
This was utterly unbelievable.
“Many of the Luxen who are here, the ones who registered and are following our laws, are the ones who weren’t part of the invasion. Very few of the invading Luxen survived. Those who did left our planet, and it’s speculated that only very few remained after the failed invasion.”
Confusion swept over me as I started pacing in front of the ottoman. “If some of the Luxen had been here and living normal, nice lives, why did the others invade then? They could’ve been—What did you call it?”
“Assimilated.”
“Yeah, that. They could’ve been assimilated right along with the rest of them. Why did they do what they did?”
Mom tucked a strand of her hair back. “Because the others wanted to take over. They wanted this world for their own. Those Luxen hadn’t come into contact with humans until they came here, and they viewed humans as something lesser.”
Then did that mean Luc had been one of the invading Luxen? Because he definitely wasn’t registered. But that wasn’t the important thing. Anger rose, crowding out the confusion. “This makes no sense.” I threw up my hands. “If people knew about the Luxen, then they could’ve been prepared for an invasion. All of the technology we have now—the Disablers, the weapons? We could’ve already had all of that. Fewer people would’ve died.”
“Hindsight is usually twenty-twenty.”
I gaped at her. “That’s your response?”
The corners of her lips turned down. “Honey, I’m not the one who made those decisions.”
I was still wearing a path in the throw rug in front of the ottoman as I crossed my arms. “But you knew about it?”
“Yes.”
And she hadn’t alerted the world to the fact that crazy-powerful aliens were already living among us? I stopped, facing her. “How did you know, though? You work with gross viruses and—”
“I used to work for the Daedalus. It was a specialized group within the military, sanctioned by the government, that worked on . . . assimilating the Luxen. The department is—Well, it no longer exists.”
My mouth formed the word. “The dao-what?”
A faint smile appeared. “Daedalus. It’s from Greek mythology. He was an inventor and the father of Icarus.”
“Icarus?” I vaguely remembered that name. “Didn’t he fly too close to the sun and his wings melted or something?”
Mom nodded. “Daedalus had built those wings for his son.”
“That’s a weird name for a department in the government.”
“It was more of a code name. That’s how I met Jason. He also worked there.”
I walked back to the chair, then sat down and listened, really listened, because Mom so rarely spoke about Dad.
Mom’s gaze flickered away, settling on the television. “That’s how your father knew Luc. That’s how I met him, when Luc was younger.”
“So . . . he wasn’t one of the invading Luxen? He’d been here?” For some reason, I hoped that was the case. I didn’t want to think of Luc as a homicidal alien hell-bent on killing us, even though he kind of came off as one.
Her expression tightened and then smoothed out. “He was not part of the invasion.”
That made me feel a little better, knowing I hadn’t been kissed by a killer alien from outer space. It was the small things that made one’s crappy life choices easier to deal with.
I shook my head. “So did you guys help Luc assimilate? Or his parents?”
Mom didn’t respond for a long moment. “Something like that.”
That wasn’t much of answer. In fact, it was so evasive, I knew there was more to it.
She tipped her head back as her shoulders stiffened. “Jason . . .” She dampened her lips. “Jason wasn’t a good man.”
My breath caught. “I don’t understand. Dad was—He was a hero.” There was actually a statue of him in the capital! Well, not really a statue of him. It was a weird monolith-looking thing, but still. “He was awarded the Medal of Honor.”
Her eyes yet drifted shut. “Honey, awards aren’t a true reflection of a person. There have been many, many people highly awarded and acclaimed throughout history who were, in the end, very bad people. Oftentimes people who were so convinced that they were doing the right thing, they were able to overlook all the terrible things they were doing in pursuit of the greater good.”
“But . . .” I trailed off as my heart banged around in my chest. I didn’t know what to do with that piece of knowledge. I had never been close to Dad. Not really. He had never been home, but . . . “But you’ve told me he was a good man. You told me all the important—”
“I lied,” she cut in, opening her eyes again and meeting my wide-eyed stare. “I lied because I didn’t want you to know the truth about him. And yes, it was a necessary lie, one I hoped you would never have to learn was a lie, but with Luc here, I’d rather you hear it from me than him.”
“What . . . what does Dad have to do with him?”
Mom rubbed her hands down her face. “Jason wasn’t very kind to the Luxen he worked with. He could . . . often be very cruel to them.” She paused, and I thought perhaps she was telling a lot by saying very little. “He and Luc had a past. It’s not a good one.”
What Luc had said to me in the club rose to the surface. He’d said I didn’t belong there. I thought maybe he was just being a jerk, but what if it was bigger than that? What if he meant I shouldn’t be around him, because of whatever my dad had done to him or his family?
But if that was the case, then why had he kissed me?
I scooted to the edge of the chair. “Mom, what did Dad do?”
“He made sure that Luc lost someone very dear to him,” Mom answered, and I jerked at the unexpected response. “And that is something Luc will never forget nor forgive. Because of that, Luc can be very dangerous.”
My heart started thundering again. “Because he’s obviously not a registered Luxen?”
“Because I used to fear that Luc would seek retribution for what Jason had done to him.”
My eyes widened. “Retribution? Holy crap. Dad is—He’s dead. What did he do to Luc—”
“Jason was responsible for a lot of things and he made a lot of enemies and he . . . made a lot of bad choices,” she said quietly, almost as if she were afraid she’d be overheard. If Dad had enemies, then I guessed that was why we had shotguns under couch cushions? “None of that matters. I just didn’t want you to learn from someone else that the man who so many people look up to wasn’t a very good person.”
My head felt like it was going to implode. “Should we be worried about . . . Luc coming after us?”
Her gaze held mine. “I said I used to fear that. The truth is, if he’d wanted to hurt you or me, he would’ve already done that.”
“Wow. That’s reassuring.”
“It’s not meant to be,” she replied. “It’s just the truth. If he wanted to use me to carry out some sort of vendetta, it would’ve already happened.” She rose, fiddling with the sash on her robe. “Luc would never hurt you.”
I opened my mouth, but my tongue got all tied up. That didn’t make sense. Luc didn’t know me, and if my dad had done terrible things that involved Luc losing someone, I doubted he wanted to be my best friend forever. It didn’t require a leap in logic to assume that “losing someone” meant someone dying. “Are you sure we’re safe?”
Mom smoothed a hand over her forehead. “Oh, honey, we are,” she was quick to reassure me. “It’s just always good to be prepared.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed her. “Are there other methods of being prepared stashed around the house?”
Another smile formed as she placed her hand on my knee. “I wouldn’t mess with the pillows too much in the window seat upstairs.”
“Mom.” I drew in a deep breath. “Are there any more people Dad might’ve pissed off who we’ve got to worry about?”
“We are safe, but just like anyone, we have to be careful. There are bad people out there, Luxen and human, you don’t want to draw attention from. The same kind of rules that applied before the invasion, you know?”
I nodded slowly. “Stranger danger kind of stuff?”
“Yes.” She moved over, sitting on the edge of the ottoman so she was directly in front of me. She picked up my hands. “What are you thinking?”
A lot of stuff. “I never should’ve gone to that club.”
“Glad we’re in agreement on that.” She squeezed my hands. “Right now I’m more concerned about what I told you about Jason. I know that’s a lot to process.”
It was.
She brought my hands up. “I’m going to be really honest with you. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“I’m not sorry I lied about who Jason really was. You deserve to believe what everyone else does,” she said, her eyes searching mine. “Sometimes the truth is worse than the lie.”