TWENTY-FOUR
It took Aiden an hour to reach her parents’ house. Hamish had explained to him that the portals outside the compounds worked the same way as those inside: he only had to concentrate on his destination and the portal would carry him to whatever portal was closest to his desired location. Simple as that. The reason nobody using the portals within the compounds had accidentally stumbled upon the portals that Hamish now called lost portals, was probably because nobody had ever tried to concentrate on a location other than the known portals. However, he was nevertheless baffled how their existence could have remained a secret for so long.
He was glad to have had an excuse to leave. The knowledge that Leila’s action had put her in danger again, had sent bolts of fear through his body. And had made him act irrationally. What had happened wasn’t her fault. It was his.
He should have taken better precautions and explained the ground rules to her. This could have been avoided if he’d used his brain instead of letting another part of his body inform his actions.
And maybe he wouldn’t even be so pissed about this fact if he wasn’t so emotionally involved. There, he’d admitted it to himself: he cared about her. When she’d pressed herself against him when they were in the portal and allowed him to kiss her, he’d thought for a moment that everything would turn out fine between them. Unfortunately he’d just pushed her away again with the way he’d yelled at her, when really, the fury he’d unleashed was aimed at himself for not protecting her sufficiently.
With a sigh, he perused his surroundings.
The house was a two-story Edwardian with a large front yard and an even larger garden in the back. Ivy grew on its façade, and the hedges around the grounds needed trimming. These were the suburbs, but the fancy ones. No doubt, the family had money.
Night had already fallen, and lights inside the home were ablaze. Aiden walked past the old station wagon that was parked in the driveway in front of the two-car garage. Did the Cruickshanks have visitors?
There was an easy way to find out. A familiar tingling went through his entire body as he dematerialized and passed through the front door, sneaking inside the cozy foyer a moment later. Remaining invisible, he walked along the wallpapered hallway with all the stealth he’d been taught.
The house smelled homey, the scent of freshly baked cookies drifting into his nose. He could almost picture Leila as a little girl, running down the stairs and toward the kitchen to collect her treat. Odd that she appeared in much softer terms to him now, when in the environment he’d met her first—her lab and her apartment—none of that softness was evident. Maybe he was simply imagining it.
A female voice came from the back of the house. He followed it and reached an open door. Halting there, he peered into the kitchen. It was spacious, with a large island in the middle, and a dining nook near one of the large bay windows.
A middle aged woman, presumably the housekeeper, stood at the island and cut bread into slices. At the dining nook, an elderly couple sat, waiting silently. The woman was probably in her mid to late sixties, and the man possibly five to ten years her senior. Those two had to be Leila’s parents. In fact, now that he entered the kitchen to take a closer look, he recognized similarities.
Her father had the same ocean blue eyes as his daughter, yet they lacked the sparkle and passion he’d seen in Leila’s. There was a dull sheen over them as he stared past his wife, almost as if he was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn’t really see her. Well, maybe after being married for several decades, that was what relationships turned into, for his wife didn’t look at him either. She played with her napkin, folding it first that way, then the other.
Somehow, the scene didn’t look like the companionable silence he’d occasionally observed with his own parents. It felt awkward. Had they quarreled?
“The soup is coming,” the housekeeper said in a cheerful voice, the same one he’d heard from the corridor earlier. “Mmm, you’ll like it. I made you pumpkin soup today, fresh with lots of cream, just the way you like it.”
Aiden turned to the woman, surprised at her tone. She sounded as if she were talking to a child. He got out of her way and moved to the other side of the table when she carried two bowls with steaming hot soup and set them in front of the couple.
“There,” she said. “How about some fresh rosemary bread with that?”
Leila’s mother nodded. “And butter. Don’t forget the butter. You always forget the butter.”
Aiden caught how the housekeeper rolled her eyes. “I never forget the butter, Ellie. Don’t you remember how I put it on extra thick this morning?”
“You didn’t give me bread this morning,” Ellie protested.
Her husband shook his head. “I didn’t get bread this morning either.”
Ellie tossed him a chiding look and waved the housekeeper closer. In a whisper, she spoke to her. “Do I have to always eat with him? Nancy, why doesn’t he go home?”
Nancy sighed and sat down on the empty chair. “But, Ellie, that’s George. You know George, don’t you? Your husband?”
Ellie’s eyes darted toward him, looking him up and down. Then she bent closer to the housekeeper once more. “I don’t think that’s my husband. He’s old. I married a handsome young man named George.”
George only grunted and started eating his soup.
Aiden watched the exchange with surprise. Something wasn’t right here. Was there a chance that the demons had already gotten to Leila’s parents and somehow distorted their sense of reality?
“Why don’t you start your soup, Ellie, and I’ll get you your meds, huh? Maybe you’ll feel better afterwards.”
Nancy lifted herself from the chair and went over to the kitchen counter where an array of medicine bottles and containers took up an entire corner. She took two long plastic containers, which were embossed with the days of the week and Ellie and George, and went back to the dining table.
Aiden didn’t follow her. Instead, he stared at the medicine bottles and read the labels. Since he wasn’t a doctor, he didn’t know what any of them were for, however, he needed to find out. Something he couldn’t explain compelled him to. He pulled out his smartphone, switched it on in silent mode, and entered the name of the first medication. A few second later, search results were back. He clicked on the first, read it. A knot started forming in his chest.
He entered the next one, and more results came back. Again, he read the first, and again, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He perused the bottles, noticing that both Leila’s parents took almost identical medication.
Shocked, Aiden stalked out of the kitchen and fled into the front of the house where he found the living room and let himself fall onto the couch.
Both Leila’s parents took medication for the treatment of Alzheimer’s.
Now everything suddenly made sense: the determination Leila showed in her research, the single-minded purpose that reflected in her private life or the lack thereof, her devastation when she’d found her research destroyed. She did all this for her parents. She wanted to save them.
She wasn’t looking for the recognition of her peers and humanity at large to become the inventor of the first Alzheimer’s drug that would halt the disease. All she wanted was to cure her parents and reverse some of the damage the disease had done to their minds.
Aiden felt shame radiate through him. He’d callously demanded that all copies of her research be destroyed, would have destroyed them himself had somebody else not beaten him to it. And all the while, her dreams destroyed, her hopes squashed, Leila had kept her true pain hidden from him.
No wonder she hated him and his kind. It was a miracle, she hadn’t tried to give him any more resistance, or tried to escape a second time. Now that he knew what was really at stake for her, he wouldn’t even blame her if she tried. Wouldn’t he do the same? Wouldn’t he try to do everything to save his parents if he had the means to do it? Would he care that by doing so, he would jeopardize the entire human race?
Could she be so selfless in the end to put humanity’s needs before her own? If she could do that, if she could look beyond her own desires, all he could do was admire her for it. Because it would mean she wasn’t weak. She was strong, stronger than any human or Stealth Guardian he’d ever met.
A woman he could fall on his knees for and wish for things he’d previously believed impossible.
If she ever forgave him.