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Are you sure this isn't a nightmare?
And that we won't just wake up?
Audrey laughed so hard her sides ached, as Bill described a middle school prank gone wrong. "For weeks he had red paint in his hair, nothing would get it out."
"I wasn't nearly as cunning in seventh grade," Duke admitted, leaning back in one of the lawn chairs set out on the deck of the Cape Rouge.
Audrey caught her breath. "Who's day were you trying to ruin, anyway?"
Duke looked uncomfortable with the question."I don't remember—"
"It was Nathan," Bill supplied.
Audrey raised a brow. "You two have been torturing each other since seventh grade?"
Bill snorted. "Way before that."
"Hey, Bill," Duke began cheerfully, "shut up."
Audrey shook her head as the two men bickered. Wind whipped across the deck, swaying her blonde ponytail.
I should have brought a jacket, the thought came into her mind without prompting. She wasn't cold. Which was odd, she always got cold sitting on the Cape Rouge after dark.
But she didn't feel cold.
In fact, she didn't feel anything at all.
This night, this conversation... hadn't it all happened before? She looked to Duke, wondering if he felt the uncomfortably strong déjà vu. But he was gone, along with Bill, and the boat she had been on seconds before. It all spilled away like sand through her fingers...
But then... what had she wanted to ask Duke?
"There's nothing physically wrong with her," Gloria said, her arms crossed as they both watched the motionless Paige. Dust covered the side tables, and the bed before he had shaken out the old quilts. "This is... something else."
Something else was just her way of saying it was a Trouble. Vanishing, telekinesis, unexplainable coma, it all pointed to the same conclusion: the Troubled were back.
Maybe it was because she only spent three months in the barn. That had concerned him the first few weeks, and then he'd just let the fear slip to the back of his mind, wanting to believe they had gotten the happy ending they deserved.
Worried about panicking the town, he had brought Paige to her old apartment. Vickie was downstairs in the closed Gull with James and Aaron.
Nathan wanted to keep James as close as possible, terrified the blonde she-devil would include his son in her revenge. "I looked everywhere. What if I can't find her?"
Gloria glanced at him. "You will."
"Why are you so sure?"
Gloria didn't answer, he didn't need her to. They would find her because there was no other choice.
"Why would an angel be named Manny?" Nathan asked, focused on the least important aspect of Audrey's new favorite show. After Duke told her about the Hunter, she hadn't been able to sleep, lying awake most nights. TV distracted her from the darker thoughts that plagued her mind.
Audrey let her head fall back against the Bronco's seat back. "I don't know. Maybe it's short for something."
"For what?"
"Emanuel?"
Nathan glanced at her, defeat in his blue eyes. "I still think a little variety wouldn't kill you."
No, but she didn't have time to waste on things she might not like. Because the Hunter was coming, along with the barn, and its endless white halls...
White halls... where James died.
Audrey blinked and the world disappeared.
Pink ruffles, embroidered jeans, gold clips in dark brown curls. She was almost a stranger. But her face hadn't changed, the gentle slope of her nose, her pale pink lips... It was all the same.
Duke ran a hand over his face. How had this happened? She had been fine when he left the hospital, spent the day with Nathan as far as he knew.
He had heard Nathan tell Gloria about the blonde woman who had done this. Mara his irrational mind had screamed. But Mara was nothing, not anymore. There was only Audrey. Even if she called herself Paige now.
"You'll wake up," Duke assured her. "Wouldn't want to miss my dramatic entrance back into the land of the living." Once he figures out how that was going to happen. The bouts of communication seemed random. Audrey and Nathan were the mystery solvers, wouldn't it be helpful if he could talk to either of Haven's finest? Duke's fingertips ghosted over her forehead, as he wished he could push the stray curl out of her face. "Got any ideas?"
"Nathan is being weird," Audrey complained to Duke, twisting the toothpick in her martini glass. They were alone in the Gull, closing hour long passed.
"At least something in this town is consistent," Duke said.
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm serious."
He braced his forearms against the bar as he leaned forward. "You always are."
"Not always," she argued.
"It's not bad, you're just... focused."
Focused. That was as bad as when he managed to insult her with the word "nice".
She straightened, her brows pinched in annoyance. "I'm fun."
"Didn't say you weren't."
"But it's what you meant."
Duke tossed the dishrag he had used to clean the bar into the sink. "If I meant that I would've said that."
"You never say what you mean. Sarcasm is your native language."
"True, though I'm also fluent in jackass and bullshit."
Audrey snorted. "Flippant too, apparently."
Duke paused, dark eyes studied her with something like curiosity. Abruptly he walked over to the radio, switched it on and turned the dial until the speakers quaked with a song she didn't recognize.
"What are you doing?"
A smirk was his reply as he ambled back to her, and held out his hand in a silent invitation. After a moment she slid her hand into his and let him pull her away from the bar.
"Your problem is you worry. About everything, Nathan, your past, complete strangers..." he told her as he spun her slowly. It was surreal, the fast-paced song mixed with the slow steps, the way the lights blurred as she spun...
"Is that your grand advice?" Audrey asked, once she faced him again. "Don't worry?"
"Do you know why you worry, and are so damn serious, when I'm not?"
"Because you're fun?" she guessed, only half teasing.
"Because you're a good person..." he tilted his head as he smiled darkly. "And I'm not."
If only he knew, she thought sadly, about everything he would do and sacrifice, for Nathan, for her, for complete strangers...
She would have told him, but he was already gone.
Aaron giggled as he tottered across the floor towards Jimmy. He got to the corner of the blanket Vickie had set across the bar floor before he tripped, Jimmy caught him with a "Whoa! Too fast!" which caused Aaron to erupt into another bout of giggles.
Vickie smiled as she watched them, James laid on his tummy nearby and struggled to lift himself up on his hands and knees. With an irritated gurgle he gave up and grabbed the nearest toy he could reach.
A stack of fresh wedding sketches were in her bag, but Jimmy was keeping Aaron entertained and Vickie was too anxious to talk about the wedding. Gloria hadn't told her much, just to pick James up from the babysitter and come to the Gull. But there was something ominous about it all, Gloria's vagueness and Nathan's grim expression when he greeted her.
She reminded herself the worst possibilities weren't the most likely anymore. Think horses not zebras, she thought wryly.
"What's going on?" Dwight asked as he walked into the Gull. "I got a 911 text from Gloria and then she didn't return any of my calls."
A sinking feeling started in the pit of her stomach. Nathan, Gloria, Dwight, add in McHugh and the situation would spell disaster.
"Audrey, I'd do anything you need me to. I'd hunt down your past. I'd fight your future." Audrey had never heard Duke speak with such sincerity. It wasn't just a reassurance, or a promise, it was a confession.
Suggestive comments and flirting she had grown used to, but this was serious. He meant it.
"The past is gone, and the future... thank God, it is not here yet," she said, finally ready to let go of things she couldn't change. "All we have is..." This. Now. A man who would do anything for her.
On an impulse she lurched forward to kiss him, as her lips met his the world crumbled.
There was no fade into darkness, or a new rerun of a day long gone. Memories began to flash and blend together.
Silver eyes...
Bullet holes in Nathan's dead body.
Black tears dripped down her best friend's face.
A cloud wall that made her feel like nothing more than a rat in Croatoan's cage.
Duke voice was a broken reflection of his usual playful tone, too sharp and harsh. For the first time she felt truly hopeless as she genuinely feared one of the people she loved most.
Croatoan appeared so human. If Audrey had met him under different circumstances she never would have guessed he was capable of causing so much suffering, of turning people against each other, of making Nathan feel inhuman, of turning Duke into something she didn't recognize. He was just another person, with reasons like anyone else, and she hated him.
"I'm Duke Crocker. And I really just want to be a pirate again." The words echoed around her as he stilled, and the light went out in his brown eyes. It was worse somehow than the silver or black, to see his real eyes and for them to be completely empty.
Audrey stood in the armory door and watched Nathan walk away, and take with him her dreams of a real life. But they all made sacrifices, and she couldn't let it all be in vain.
They all made sacrifices, and now she would make hers, willingly...
Her eyes opened as her breath caught. It was a familiar sight, the dusty wooden beams above her bed, the soft afternoon light.
Footsteps sounded, and Nathan appeared beside her. "Paige?"
"Parker," Audrey breathed.
A\N
Thanks for reading! The song in the Gull when Audrey and Duke dance is In For The Kill by La Roux. The quote is Alexandra Bracken.
