Midheaven (Ascendant Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  She leaned in and hugged me, and a moment later I raised my arms and hugged her back. “Please listen to what he has to share with you Charlotte,” she whispered in my ear. “He loves you.” She pulled back and looked me in the eye. “He always has.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Father's Gift

  The shock made me gasp. Even after hearing Grace’s innocent description of wrinkles and spotted skin, I had not been prepared for the impossible sight that met me when we entered Franzen’s room.

  My mother placed her hand on my back, as if to guide me into believing what my eyes were seeing. Believing that the aged corpse lying before me was the same man who had declared himself to be my real father. The same man who only last year looked no more than forty years old.

  It couldn’t be true. This man was a skeleton draped in a papery layer of skin. I looked to my mother who could clearly read my confusion on my face.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “It’s really him.” She dropped her hand from my back and walked quietly into the room. I watched from the door, afraid to make any sound that may startle this frail, sleeping Franzen. My mother watched his chest rise and fall a number of times, then turned to inspect a series of machines and monitors that seemed to be measuring out what life he had left.

  When she had checked the last readout, she turned to him. “Franzen,” she called softly and touched his shoulder. “Charlotte has come. She’s here to see you.” Her fingers stroked his splotched face and she smiled when his eyes fluttered and then opened.

  I watched, silent as Franzen blinked several times before his clouded eyes started to search the room in confusion.

  “I’m here Franzen,” she explained. “Right here darling.”

  Shaking and with what appeared to be a great effort, he turned his head towards her voice. When he found her, his eyes lit up with recognition and his mouth worked open and closed, as if agitated by the words that would not form properly on his lips.

  “Shh,” she brushed her hand gently across his forehead. “Shh, it’s all right. Charlotte’s here,” she whispered. “She’s safe with us, she’s come home.”

  His whole body quaked beneath the thin blankets draped over his torso and legs. His head turned and his eyes roamed the room, wildly searching.

  “Charlotte,” my mother motioned with her hand. “Come closer, he can’t see more than a few feet.”

  I stepped slowly into the room, watching his face, waiting for him to see me. The aging was impossible and if my mother hadn’t told me it was Franzen, I never would have recognized him. I thought of Grace’s sad expression and her hope that her father could somehow be fixed, how upset she had been by Franzen’s rapid decline. He was my father too, but as I drew closer and watched him struggle to find me with his eyes and sit up straighter, I didn’t feel anything. I watched a stranger with no more than objective pity for his condition.

  Franzen was not Simon to me.

  When I reached the side of his bed his mouth pressed into a smile and he reached a shaky hand towards me. I took his hand, feeling his frailty as if I held a sparrow’s tiny limb in my hand instead of a man’s.

  His mouth opened with a click and I could see he was trying to push words out to me on his failing breath. To help, I leaned closer, the smell of antiseptic and gauze filling my throat as I turned my ear towards his mouth until I felt his air create a chill against my skin.

  “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love…”

  I moved away and looked into his face. He continued to whisper his barely audible chant and his eyes filled with tears.

  I held his hand in both of mine, “Shh. It’s okay,” I said, not sure what else I could do to comfort him.

  The tears streamed from his eyes and his mouth kept working the words over and over. I looked pleadingly to my mother but she had turned away. Her hand covered her mouth to stifle the sobs that were threatening to choke her.

  Helpless, I placed Franzen’s hand gently on his chest and held it there, trying to steady the quake of emotions that railed inside him. “Shh,” I tried again. “I know. It’s okay, it’s okay.” I pressed his lips gently with my fingertips and felt his soft flesh flutter against the pads of my fingers a few more times before he finally stopped.

  I took a deep breath and heard my sigh escape into the room around us. He was my father and he loved me. He needed me to know that.

  But even though I could acknowledge it as fact, it didn’t change the history of my experiences, it didn’t alter my memories. I couldn’t exchange Simon for Franzen. I wouldn’t even want to.

  My head and my heart were already filled up with love for the father I had. The father I’d always had. There was no room for Franzen there and when I looked into his eyes and saw the desperate well of sadness they contained, I could see that he knew this too. This was the fact he knew—and regretted.

  I watched as he raised his arm and extended a crooked finger.

  “Mom?” I looked behind me to try and see what he was pointing to. My mother wiped her face with both hands and came back over to us. She reached behind me and picked up a book on the dresser and handed it to me. “This is what Franzen wants you to know. What you need to know. It is what will help you decide if you will continue trying to solve the puzzle…search out the remaining keys. He tried to write everything down that he would have taught you if you had chosen to come into hiding with us last year.”

  I took the book and looked at her when she brushed my hair from my eyes. “He began writing it as soon as you left…I think he knew…” she hesitated. “I think he knew everything was speeding up.”

  “Speeding up?”

  She nodded her head slowly, “His aging, Emerick’s growth. The need for deeper knowledge and understanding in the world.”

  I held the book against my chest. “But why couldn’t they just tell people.”

  My mother smiled and nodded. “You mean now, or back then? They have and they did, as much as they could, through the works of both Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. And some have understood, believed…some of the greatest people in history have been influenced by the descendants of Francis Bacon. But you forget, people in the sixteen hundreds and throughout history were not, for the most part, capable of the giant mental leaps necessary to understand what they had to teach. Not to mention they would likely lose their life for openly believing in such teachings. There wasn’t the freedom to just say anything, Charlotte. Which is largely why Francis Bacon published his works under the name Shakespeare. There was hardly any freedom at all. But now, now it’s different. Franzen feels it’s time for the secret knowledge to be shared with all of mankind, and for that, you’re going to need physical evidence. A touchstone for the world to lay its hands on. Because we have the potential to be free, but we squander it.”

  Suddenly, I was exhausted. I wanted to leave the room and everyone in it. I felt like I was getting carried away on a giant wave and with every word my mother spoke, I could see the shore that was the reality of my life slipping farther and farther away. What I wanted right now, more than anything else, was to go lie down and not think about any of this. I didn’t want to read what Franzen had written in the book clutched to my chest, I didn’t want to acknowledge his failing emaciated body, I didn’t even want to see or speak with my mother anymore. All I wanted was to lie down and forget.

  I wished I’d never found the puzzle.

  “I’m really tired,” I said. “The flight…everything…”

  My mother gave me a sympathetic look, reached out and cradled my face in her hands. But the gesture didn’t comfort me. I could feel the press of what she wanted from me, the need she had for me to say yes. Yes, I will do what you want me to. I promise to find the other keys and solve the puzzle even though I don’t understand any of this. Her eyes bore into me, begged me to take up where Franzen had left off.

  But how could I? If all of this was true then Franzen was one of the greatest minds to have ever lived—and lived for ove
r one hundred and fifty years. In comparison, I was practically less than nothing. Just because he was my father didn’t mean I had his gifts.

  “Of course,” she said. “You should go rest…” she trailed off.

  I waited, afraid of what could possibly be coming next.

  My mother closed her eyes, a pained expression pulled at her features. “I have to leave,” she whispered so Grace couldn’t hear.

  I couldn’t have heard her correctly. “What?” I breathed.

  “I wanted to see you. To hold you again. I needed to make sure Grace was safe here, with her uncle, at my home. I wanted to make sure Franzen was…settled, safe until…until he passes. But it’s dangerous for me to be here.”

  I couldn’t believe she was leaving again. “Why?”

  “You know, Franzen told you? About…about my parents? About Lilith?”

  I froze. Yes, I knew about Lilith. About how she had possessed my mother and killed my grandparents. The murder investigation had been reopened, Emerick had seen to that. “If the authorities find you here—”

  “Yes, there is the danger of that. But much, much worse Charlotte is the fact that, without Franzen’s help, every day it becomes more difficult for me to hold Lilith back. She brutally murdered my parents…I can not bear to imagine what she would do to my children.”

  My arms hung limp at my side. I glanced at Grace playing with a cabinet door on the far side of the room. “When are you leaving?”

  “As soon as I say goodbye to you.”

  “And Grace?”

  My mother shook her head, “She thinks I’m going on a short trip, a couple of days.”

  “You haven’t told her?”

  “She’s three, Charlotte.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know. Out of the country. Members of Eastern Star have agreed to hide me, to try and help me hold Lilith…for now.”

  “So that’s it. You vanish…again.”

  Her breath was sharp, like I had slapped her, and then she broke. Tears streamed down her face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said and started to cry.

  She shook her head and clutched me to her, Franzen’s book pressed like a brick between us. When she pulled away, she wiped first my face and then her own. “I love you Charlotte. I always have. I always will. No matter what happens now, you must remember that. All I ask, is that you please make sure your sister grows up knowing that as well.”

  “You sound like you’re never coming back.”

  My mother let me go, walked across the room, and picked up Grace. “From the moment I leave, I will be doing nothing else other than working to get back to you both.”

  I watched as she kissed Grace goodbye, the weight of Franzen’s book felt like an anchor in my arms.

  I dragged my body through the dark halls of the first floor. When I reached the library entrance, I saw Caleb reading on the sofa under the glow of a nearby lamp. I stopped and he looked up, we hadn’t been alone since I arrived.

  His eyes held mine and as I walked towards him he placed his book face down on the sofa’s rounded arm. “Are you okay?” he whispered.

  My throat tightened and I shook my head. The tears started again and I could see worry spread over his features. When I fell into the sofa beside him, he wrapped me in his arms.

  “It’s okay, Charlotte. Everything will be okay,” he soothed.

  But I didn’t believe him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Pulled Apart

  He’s here. I feel him, sense his presence like a cord vibrating through my core. He is a pull I don’t want to stop.

  “Hayden,” I whisper.

  “Charlotte,” his voice is so clear, so immediate. His presence moves through my mind like a force. He should be right here, right in front of me.

  But I can’t see him. Everywhere, people surround me, they jostle and rush past. “Hayden,” I call. “I’m here,” my voice is swallowed by the collective drone of everyone pushing around me. Their weight presses from every side and I feel our moment, our chance, begin to slip. Their collective will becomes clear to me—they don’t want me to find him.

  “Charlotte, here,” Hayden’s voice is desperate and reaching. He’s trying to find me too.

  “I’m here!” I scream but no sound comes from my mouth. “I’m here,” but it’s only in my mind.

  “I hear you, I hear you Charlotte.”

  “Where are you?” I beg. And then I see, a sliver in the crowd. His black hair shining in the sun. “Hayden.” I push and shove, and as I strain to make my way to him, his hand suddenly thrusts through all the bodies and reaches towards me. “Charlotte.”

  “Almost,” I cry. “I’m almost there.”

  The crowd surges, like a collective wave, and his hand is snatched away. I feel the cord between us stretch and the pain of it barrels down my spine. I see him, it’s nothing but a moment, he struggles and pushes back. “NO, NO, NO.” His eye catches mine. “Charlotte!”

  She steps from the crowd. Her sad expression brings me no comfort. “Mother, please.” I beg. But she only shakes her head.

  “Hayden!” I cry. Paralyzed as they push us away from each other. “Please, not again.”

  I watch, helpless while their hands claw first at his clothes, then his beautiful face. “No,” I plead. “Leave him, please.” The crowd rises before me. A wall of faces and bodies. “Please,” I whisper.

  They roll and shift, and then I see what will happen.

  “Mother!” I scream. “Mother, please!”

  They crash down, dragging him away. A black wave recoiling into a fathomless expanse of space.

  “Hayden!”

  The bodies crush and roll. They pull him away and down until the mass is so distant it is only a black dot in a vast expanse of time. The stretch between us now so tight and far, the vibration feels like my mind will break at any moment.

  “Charlotte.”

  I gasp. It’s only a whisper, but still I can hear him. A silent link hidden deep inside. Ancient, ageless, he is finding me in the secret way they will never touch.

  “I’ll find you Charlotte. I’ll come back for you.”

  My mother eyes me carefully. She’s listening, or trying to. “I’ll be here,” I whisper.

  “I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait for you forever,” the certainty of this brings relief like a cold stone grasped between my palms.

  On the edge of the horizon, my mother begins a slow twirl. Her white dress catching the light rays until she is nothing but a continuous strobe of light and dark. Faster and faster she spins until, beginning at her head, she slowly disappears from my view until all that is left is the iridescent whip of her skirt’s hem. Catching the last rays of light, her delicate slippered feet dance into the darkness.

  I do not follow her, I do not call after her. I let her go into that dark void.

  A warm breeze swirls the dust up in my landscape. My feet are still, my mind unmoving. This is where I’ll stay because next time, next time I might catch his hand. I might feel the sweet relief of his presence, solid and real, entwined with my own. I will find this space and time again and I will wait for Hayden.

  He will come for me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Choices

  Morning light blared through the open bedroom window and, from my pillow, I stared at the tall Poplars swaying outside in the distance. An emotion nagged at me, a longing I couldn’t place. It was the dream I’d just had. I struggled to remember it, the details, even as every waking second that passed pulled it further and further from me. Being awake made it less real, less of anything I could firmly hang onto in the morning light. But the feeling—I wanted it. The feeling in the dream was like being close to whole.

  I pushed myself up from the crisp cotton sheets and watched the Poplar leaves dance and shimmy in the breeze. I couldn’t remember the dream, but I recognized this emotion. I had dreamt, again, of Hayden. I took a deep breath, pulled my knees
to my chest and tried, once more, to capture the images, to remember the details of the dream. And even though I knew I shouldn’t, I wished I could go back, back to sleep, back to him.

  I wanted to see Hayden.

  Annoyed with myself, I threw back the blankets and got out of bed. What was my problem? Hayden? The guy who cared almost exclusively about himself and himself alone? The guy who, in a jealous rage, beat Caleb to a bloody pulp?

  The cold of the room rose the skin along my legs and arms into taut gooseflesh but I didn’t care. I shivered against the cold and welcomed the mind clearing discomfort. In front of the window I pushed my pile of loose hair up on top of my head and tied it into a sloppy bun. These dreams of Hayden had to stop. Every time I woke from one they left me feeling sick and alone, like being lost. And to make it worse, all I ever wanted was to get back to the dream, the feel of being so near to him. But in the waking world, it felt like my mind had betrayed me.

  Hayden was dangerous. How could I possibly want someone who would, in the real world, only try to harm and damage everything I held dear? Including myself.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled the sharp morning air streaming through the window. No more. No more Charlotte. You need to forget about Hayden. I opened my eyes, “You will forget him,” I whispered.

  A shudder racked my body—I needed to get dressed. When I moved from the window my eye caught sight of Franzen’s book lying on the dresser where I’d left it last night. Ignoring it, I began digging through my bag in search of jeans and a long sleeved shirt. Franzen’s book felt like an assignment, a huge one, and I wasn’t ready to go there just yet. Right now I had other plans.