Chameleon ✔️

26 memories

Quick note: I added something pretty major to chapter 25, and if you haven't read it I'd advise you to go back or some things in this chapter might not make sense. The addition starts on the bottom page 16 of chapter 25 and goes through page 27.
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          The U-Haul wasn't in Ian's driveway. That should've been the first teller. Sol's truck was. That should've been the second.

I barge through the door headfirst, not worried that Damian is in there but that my dad and best friend are in there with him. But the kitchen is empty. As is the dining room. The living room is, too, save for a strong, male figure with curly blond hair sitting motionless on the love seat. Dad.

I run to him, but he doesn't budge — not when I sit next to him and not when I put my hands on his face and scream at him to open his eyes. Ian stands in the doorway. "What are you doing?!" I scream at him, too. "He's unconscious! You've gotta find Damian! He probably has Eli! You've gotta help them! You've gotta help me!"

Ian frowns. He comes into the room and takes the rocking chair across from the love seat, dragging it to the far wall of the room. His movements are not hurried; his aura is not worried. The only concern he shows is for me, not for the others. I drop my hands from Dad's stubble to his shoulders and listen. I hear nothing. Nothing but the hum of the refrigerator and the whirring of the A/C in the vents. I feel no other auras. There is no one else here.

I make eye contact with the man who sits before me, the only other man I've ever truly trusted besides my own father. The reality sets in. The trust had not been earned. I'd given it without thinking twice; I'd been so thirsty for answers. I stand.

"There is no Damian Ford, is there."

"Oh, there's a Damian Ford, alright," Ian says, frown still present. "He just goes by a different name now; that's all."

I hear a thud and my head shoots to my left, to the door on this side of the kitchen. The knob comes equipped with a key-sized lock. My eyelids shoot to the rocking chair. Ian opens his palm atop his lap, showing me the lock-sized key.

My hands form fists at my sides. "What do you want."

Ian pockets the key and lifts his hands in mock surrender. "I just want to talk." Another thud. "Please, have a seat."

If Eli is tied up in that room, the only way I'm going to get him out is to comply to Ian's wishes. I sit.

"Good. I have a few questions for you."

"And I, you."

"That's reasonable. Would you prefer if I go first?"

"Please." I can't imagine what he could possibly have to ask me.

"What are you doing here?"

Definitely not that. "What am I doing here? I'm here because you brought me here."

"Not here in my home. Here in York."

"I feel like you should already know the answer to that," I say. I may have decided to comply, but I never decided to be nice about it.

"Hm." He folds his hands in his lap. "Your mother always showed me where you were; every time you moved I had another dream. But what she never told me was why."

I now know he has lied to me about several things — Damian, in particular — so I can't be certain that he's not lying right now, as well. So I'd better take everything he tells me with a grain of salt. "Why would my mother show you every time I moved?"

He shrugs, and his aura is nothing. "That's what I was hoping you'd tell me."

"I've never lied to you," I counter. "Practically my whole life has been spent running from the man who killed her." I'd been so sure Gray was real. But now, sitting on Ian's love seat, I am not so sure any more. The only thing I am sure of is that Ian is not a bad guy. Maybe Dad was right. There's only one way to find out for sure. "...Did you kill her?"