Shaking her head once more, Cadence pushed herself up from the table. “Aurora, you wanna come over around 7:00 tonight, and we’ll go over some things?”
“Uh, how about you come to my apartment?” The nerves in her voice couldn’t be missed, and Cadence realized she was avoiding Aaron.
“Okay,” she replied thinking the location probably made no difference as far as content was concerned. “My kid sister still in the gym?” she asked Elliott who usually had a pretty good handle on where Cassidy was.
“Yep. Shane should be about done with the sims though.”
Cadence glanced at the time on her IAC and saw that he was right. Cassidy would be forever indebted to her if she made it over in time to pull her out of any of her training session with Shane, but Cadence knew how close Cass was to being released from training altogether and decided to let the Guardian finish up. She only had one more observation to go—which was ironic since she’d already been involved in so many hunts—but Cadence had decided not to break protocol so that none of the other Hunters would think that she was showing favoritism to her sister.
She waved goodbye to Mrs. Carminati, the human receptionist who sat behind the desk outside of the office Cadence shared with Aaron. The kindhearted older woman was there even on days when the office was empty, doing Cadence didn’t know what, but she always looked busy with papers, something Cadence had no place for in her world. The elevator took Cadence to the bottom floor, and she stepped outside into a cool spring morning.
Weather had little effect on her anymore, but the crisp air felt good in her lungs, and the flowers Juan Diego and the other maintenance crew members had recently planted livened the place up a bit. Cadence didn’t know much about flowers, but she thought these yellow and purple ones with the streaks of black and dots of white were pansies. They smelled good, and almost made her keep walking in the direction of the gym, despite what looked like an emotional interaction between Aaron and Hannah about a hundred feet to her right, closer to the apartment buildings.
She couldn’t ignore it, however, and with a deep inhale, she approached. “You guys all right?”
Hannah looked exasperated, an expression she rarely wore. “Yes, fine. Just… at an impasse.”
“I can’t imagine.” Cadence muttered the statement without thinking, and when she saw Aaron’s eyes narrow, she realized now was not the time to remind her beloved he was often difficult to negotiate with. “What’s going on?” she finally asked. He looked at her but his expression didn’t change.
“I’ll… give you some space,” Hannah said, fading back a few steps before she rushed off.
He had his arms folded and leaned against the raised planter behind him. “Something’s about to happen, Cadence, something… not good. But I can’t quite put my finger on it, and it’s driving me crazy. Crazier.”
“Don’t,” she said harshly, her finger pointing at him of its own accord. “You drive us crazy—that doesn’t make you crazy.”
He pursed his lips, drawing them to one side of his face, but said nothing for a moment. “I feel like we need to be still for now, just wait and see what she’s got up her sleeve, but everyone wants to do something. I’m not sure acting is our best bet right now. And I definitely don’t want you out of capacity for a day or two for no reason.”
“So you don’t want me to do the procedure?” She tried to keep the heat out of her voice. He hadn’t said she couldn’t, only that he didn’t want her to.
“I think it’s a bad move at the moment, but I know I can’t convince you otherwise.”
The idea that she was mule headed was almost as annoying to her as the idea that he was a perfectionist was to him, and the fact that he’d brought it up probably angered her as much as the earlier comment she’d made about his inability to be flexible had him. “Are you sure this bad feeling your having doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I want to do the procedure?”
He was shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so. But… I don’t know.”
“So, maybe that’s all it is. Maybe once it’s over with you’ll feel better.”
“And maybe once it’s over with, something will be very different, not just about you, but in the world, and you’ll have slept through it. Or maybe you’ll die and not come back.”
Her eyes widened. “Is that what it is? You know Jamie won’t let that happen to me.”
“No, it’s not. I don’t think so.” He ran his hand through his hair again, and this time, Cadence noticed some of the light brown strands clung between his fingers when he pulled them away. She’d never seen that happen before. Things were worse than she imagined. “I don’t know. Just… we’ll talk about it later.”
She agreed now was clearly not the time to finish the discussion. “Okay.” She glanced over her shoulder at the direction Hannah had disappeared. Never in the almost two years that she’d been a member of the team had she ever seen Aaron and Hannah have even a slight disagreement. “What was that about?”
“Hannah?” he asked, like he wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “She made a suggestion I disagreed with. I’ve never seen her get that upset before.”
Cadence might’ve said “angry” instead of upset, but she didn’t correct him. “What was the suggestion?”
Again, he hesitated, running his hands down the length of his face before refolding his arms. Behind her, Cadence heard Jamie, Elliott, and Aurora exit the building, knowing them only by their footsteps, not their voices as they were all quiet. She waited. “She just said she thought maybe I should let her handle more so that I could… relax a little bit.”
Her head bobbed up and down. “And you insisted you’re fine, and she said you’re not.”
“Pretty much.”
A tear formed in the corner of her eye, and Cadence realized this was worse that she’d even believed it to be if Hannah was willing to argue about it. “What if she’s right?”
He shrugged. “What if I can’t do that?”
“You know she can do it. You know she’s capable.”
“Cadence—this is the biggest threat we’ve ever had to handle, in the history of the world. I can’t just decide to take a few days for myself as the Ternion crumbles around me.”
Part of her wanted to argue that he could, and he must, but the rest of her knew that her words would fall on deaf ears. “Okay,” she said quietly, wondering if there was something else she should do instead. Was there a way to contact the Guardian Area Leaders and ask them to work around Aaron, to direct their inquiries and reports directly to Hannah for a while? She thought that probably wouldn’t work since he would inquire straight to each of them if they didn’t report as directed, and if they all said everything was just peachy all of a sudden, he’d know that something was up.
The tears somehow stayed in her eyes, though she was sure he could see she was on the brink of an emotional breakdown, that he could sense it. It was his gift, after all. Jamie could heal, Elliott could deceive, Hannah could calm, and Aaron could read emotions. So she really didn’t need to tell him what she had to say when she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. But she did it anyway. “I love you.”
“I know,” he said quietly, squeezing her a little too tightly. He didn’t say anything more, but in her head, she picked up on the subtle tone of his statement, the question he didn’t ask--why or how. Why did she love him? How could she love him when he was so… unlovable, and she squeezed him almost as firmly.
He pecked her temple and let her go. “Try not to put too much on Cass,” he said as he turned to head toward their apartment building. “She’s starting to get overwhelmed.”
The irony was evident to both of them such that Cadence didn’t feel like it was necessary to point out the kettle was calling the pot black. “Okay,” she said for the millionth time that day. He managed a weak smile and a small wave, and Cadence turned to head toward the gym, wiping at a few wayward tears who refused to be contained.
