“No.”
“Well, that’s not too surprising. It’s a bond that you created, after all. A bond that you created through Silas. If I was to hazard a guess, I’d say that the feeling settled down while Silas was captive here because he was weakened to the point that you weren’t able to funnel the bond through him anymore. Now it’s probably a more natural bond.”
“Oh…” I managed. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Anything else?” he asked, a twitch to his lips.
“Can I borrow your phone?”
He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, handing it over, and I quickly dialled Tariq’s number.
“This better be a call to tell me that you’re safe,” he answered after only one ring.
“How’d you know it was me?” I managed, pulling the phone back to stare at it for a moment in shock.
“Please,” Tariq scoffed, but there was an undercurrent of fear in his tone. “You disappear, leaving your phone behind in Miro’s car, and then one of Jayden’s people turns up at home to let us know that Silas is in the hospital, and then a few hours later I get a call from an unknown number?”
“Right,” I managed. “I’m sorry, Tariq. I hope Poison explained everything to you.”
“She did, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve been expecting this, it was only a matter of time. I’m not angry at you, but your boyfriends are furious, and apparently they don’t hate you anymore, so somehow that makes them extra furious.”
“How bad is it?”
“Maybe it’s a good thing you aren’t in Maple Falls right now.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow, but I have to live at Weston’s for a while.”
“Does that mean you got the collar off?”
“Yeah, the Klovoda helped.”
He was silent for a moment, and then he let out a resigned sigh. “Do you think they’ll help with the messenger?”
I glanced to Jayden, who was silently listening to every word that I spoke, but I doubted that there was anything that I could say that he wasn’t already aware of, so I went with the truth.
“I don’t know who to trust yet,” I told Tariq. “I’m sure I could discover his name if I tried hard enough, but I wouldn’t be able to do it without alerting him to the fact that I’ve figured him out. That would force his hand, and I don’t want that to happen until I’m ready. But I will be ready, and soon.”
I would have to be. Soon, the messenger would figure out that I had formed the bond, and he would come for me.
“You will be,” Tariq confirmed, his words quiet but strong. “We all will be.”
“On that note…” I hesitated, gripping the phone a little harder, hoping that I was making the right decision. “I want you to come and stay here with me. I could ask the Klovoda to put you up somewhere, but that’s too exposed, the messenger could easily get to you. I don’t think this place is so easy to spy on. I know the guys will look out for you, but I have a feeling some of them will come back here with me too, now that I’ve been…disarmed.”
“You want me to stay at Weston’s? With… Weston?”
“I’m not going to force you to do anything. Everyone would be happy for you to stay where you are. I just want you to be safe, and I think the safest place is with me right now.”
“Okay then,” he agreed quickly. Maybe too quickly, but that was Tariq. He never resisted for long when I asked something of him. “I’ll pack up my stuff. Can you pick me up from home after school tomorrow?”
“Sure. Thanks, Tariq.”
“Wait—don’t you need to ask Weston first?”
“He told me to treat this place as my home. Home isn’t complete without my little brother.”
He breathed out another sigh, and I could hear a smile in the sound. “Okay then. I’ll see you tomorrow. Stay safe, Seph.”
“You too.”
I hung up the call and handed the phone back to Jayden, my expression pensive. “Can I ask about Eva? The other test subject?”
He busied himself tucking the phone away while he considered a response, and then he finally folded his arms and nodded, once. “What do you want to know?”
“What’s her ability?”
“She was given an Elementalist ability, like you, but hers is water. In Zev terms, we call it flux; the ability to create water out of nothing, and manipulate any existing body of water.”
“That’s a nice power.”
“Don’t let it fool you. She’s vicious with it. I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side. She’s a nice enough girl, but Dominic and Weston have asked too much of her over the years… she’s a little damaged now.”
“Damaged?”
“She’s bat-shit crazy. They had to lock her up in an institution.”
I felt a deep-seated uneasiness, and I couldn’t believe that Jayden was as careless about it as he looked. He had said, earlier, that I was one of his own, and if my newly-reinstated memory was to be trusted, he and Eva had been even closer in their youth than he and I had ever been.