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Simon pulled the car back onto the road.
"Do you really not know where we're going?" I asked.
"Right now we just need to concentrate on getting as far away as possible. Once they realize what's happened, they won't waste any time following us. We're headed south because the last thing we want to do is lead them back to Maxwell."
Fear gripped me as I thought about what they could do. "What if my father gets a hold of Sarah? What if he kills her?" As much as I wanted to escape, I couldn't risk the chance that Sarah would become collateral damage.
Simon tightened his grip on my hand. "Don't worry. He'll be too concerned with tracking us down to go after Sarah. I know how his mind works. He's not capable of complex thoughts. Once he realizes he's been duped, he'll be so consumed with finding us that he won't think of anything else."
I sighed and leaned back against the seat, hoping that he was right. "Why didn't you tell me any of this before?"
Simon laughed mirthlessly. "Would you have believed me? Hell, you can probably barely believe it now. I was trying to convince your father that your powers weren't as strong as we all believed and that it was better to move on to other potential seers."
"Why do you call him my father? He's not really my father, although I can't seem to call him anything else."
Simon shrugged. "When we overtake a person, we assume their identity. It's just natural for us to call each other by the labels the human world puts on us. You still think of me as Simon, don't you?"
I nodded my head, not knowing how else to think of him. I swallowed as another thought entered my mind.
"Would you have been okay with my father kidnapping another seer?" I was trying to figure out Simon's moral compass. I believed he loved me, but would he be willing to stand by as others were sacrificed? I couldn't let that happen, no matter how I felt about him.
Simon sighed heavily. "Honestly, I wish I could say yes. I wish I didn't care whether he tortured and killed a hundred seers to try and figure out the key to immortality. But these damn emotions...this sense of empathy..." Simon glanced at me. "We'll figure it out. If it's the last thing I do, I'll make sure he's stopped."
"Is my aunt dead?"
Simon grimaced. "I'm sorry, Caitlin. It was too late by the time I arrived. Your father is getting more and more reckless and he ambushed her without my knowledge or permission."
I pulled my hand out of Simon's grasp. Even though he wasn't directly responsible for my aunt's death, he was a part of this whole scheme, even if he had been trying to fight against it. He had even admitted to being the one who started banding vardogers together to fight seers before he started experiencing human emotions. I started questioning my sanity since I still loved him.
"She didn't suffer," Simon said quietly. "Whatever your father told you, she went quietly. They tried hypnotizing her too often within a short period of time and she just fell asleep during one of the sessions and never woke up."
I couldn't hold back the sound of pain. Despite what Simon said
, I knew how confusing and traumatic being under could be. He couldn't be so sure that she hadn't suffered from what she had seen while under hypnosis.
"What about my mother?"
"I don't know any firsthand information about your mother. The accident happened long before I encountered your father. He's never given me specifics of when he overtook your father's body, but I believe it was soon after your mother's accident. He claims that your mother is dead. That's all I know."
"Let's not talk for a while," I whispered. Simon gave me a concerned look but he nodded, giving me my space.
Almost an hour passed in silence as I was lost in my thoughts. I was confused, scared and anxious, my earlier joy at having Simon returned to me tempered by the fact that despite his current state, he had started out evil. What if his human emotions suddenly vanished? What then?
I finally broke the silence with more questions. I couldn't get past the fact that he had been physically violent with me. Why was all of that necessary? "Why did you attack me at my aunt's house? And in the car after I found the palladium by the bridge?"
Simon's lips tightened. "We were being watched. Your father and I had agreed that I would start pretending that my vardoger was inside of me and that it would surface periodically. He thought it would make you more vulnerable if you were desperate to save me. Make you more pliable once we decided it was time to start trying to use your powers." Simon rubbed his forehead, looking grim. "I never planned on actually carrying out the plan, but your father was getting suspicious so I agreed to it. Then I realized that he was having me watched to make sure I carried through with it. Even though he's my subordinate, he's gaining a lot of influence with the other vardogers so I felt I had to comply."
Simon grabbed my hand, his voice sounding tortured. "I can't tell you how sorry I am. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you. It makes me sick to even think about it. But if I didn't go through with it, you were dead. When you found the palladium at the scene of your mother's accident. I was sure that he planted it there for you to find. I didn't want you holding onto it because I was already starting to suspect that contact with palladium would negate your powers, leaving you vulnerable for an attack." Simon exhaled heavily. "Your father got sick of waiting for something to happen so he grabbed you and decided that it was time to start putting your powers to use. I had no idea what he was going to do until after it happened. And then I was trying to convince him that it was still a better idea for me to get the information from you through coercion rather than force. He's gotten out of control, obsessed with trying to become immortal. An idea I put in his head."
Simon's voice was quiet as he continued. "I've done so many things to you. I've hurt and deceived you so much. I told myself I had to because we were being watched. That if I didn't put up a good enough act, he would kill you. But that excuse isn't good enough." He grimaced. "I've spent so much of my energy trying to bind you to me. But maybe that wasn't the right thing to do. Maybe I should have never bound you to me, because I'm not sure I can be the person you want me to be. The person I want to be."
"Simon, I—"
Simon cut me off with a muttered expletive. He was staring at the rearview mirror so I twisted around in my seat to see what he was looking at. Two headlights were rapidly gaining on us. I prayed that it was just another car but it was coming towards us so quickly that I knew we were seconds away from being rear ended by them. It was pitch black and we had barely seen any other cars on the road. There would be no witnesses for whatever was about to happen.
Chapter Thirty
I started funneling my energy together, preparing for whoever was careening towards us, although there was no doubt in my mind that it was my father. Simon was swerving and trying to make it harder for them to hit us. There were guardrails on each side of the road to protect against a steep wooded incline, so we had no means of an escape except staying on the road.
