what suddenly made her want to know, but she couldn’t stop the words leaving her lips. “If you were on the council, how would you have voted?”
He hesitated, his voice shaking slightly when he finally answered, “I’m not sure about that answer anymore.”
TWENTY-FOUR
It took Aiden an hour to reach her parents’ house. Hamish had explained to him that the portals outside the compounds worked the same way as those inside: he only had to concentrate on his destination and the portal would carry him to whatever portal was closest to his desired location. Simple as that. The reason nobody using the portals within the compounds had accidentally stumbled upon the portals that Hamish now called lost portals, was probably because nobody had ever tried to concentrate on a location other than the known portals. However, he was nevertheless baffled how their existence could have remained a secret for so long.
He was glad to have had an excuse to leave. The knowledge that Leila’s action had put her in danger again, had sent bolts of fear through his body. And had made him act irrationally. What had happened wasn’t her fault. It was his.
He should have taken better precautions and explained the ground rules to her. This could have been avoided if he’d used his brain instead of letting another part of his body inform his actions.
And maybe he wouldn’t even be so pissed about this fact if he wasn’t so emotionally involved. There, he’d admitted it to himself: he cared about her. When she’d pressed herself against him when they were in the portal and allowed him to kiss her, he’d thought for a moment that everything would turn out fine between them. Unfortunately he’d just pushed her away again with the way he’d yelled at her, when really, the fury he’d unleashed was aimed at himself for not protecting her sufficiently.
With a sigh, he perused his surroundings.
The house was a two-story Edwardian with a large front yard and an even larger garden in the back. Ivy grew on its façade, and the hedges around the grounds needed trimming. These were the suburbs, but the fancy ones. No doubt, the family had money.
Night had already fallen, and lights inside the home were ablaze. Aiden walked past the old station wagon that was parked in the driveway in front of the two-car garage. Did the Cruickshanks have visitors?
There was an easy way to find out. A familiar tingling went through his entire body as he dematerialized and passed through the front door, sneaking inside the cozy foyer a moment later. Remaining invisible, he walked along the wallpapered hallway with all the stealth he’d been taught.
The house smelled homey, the scent of freshly baked cookies drifting into his nose. He could almost picture Leila as a little girl, running down the stairs and toward the kitchen to collect her treat. Odd that she appeared in much softer terms to him now, when in the environment he’d met her first—her lab and her apartment—none of that softness was evident. Maybe he was simply imagining it.
A female voice came from the back of the house. He followed it and reached an open door. Halting there, he peered into the kitchen. It was spacious, with a large island in the middle, and a dining nook near one of the large bay windows.
A middle aged woman, presumably the housekeeper, stood at the island and cut bread into slices. At the dining nook, an elderly couple sat, waiting silently. The woman was probably in her mid to late sixties, and the man possibly five to ten years her senior. Those two had to be Leila’s parents. In fact, now that he entered the kitchen to take a closer look, he recognized similarities.
Her father had the same ocean blue eyes as his daughter, yet they lacked the sparkle and passion he’d seen in Leila’s. There was a dull sheen over them as he stared past his wife, almost as if he was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn’t really see her. Well, maybe after being married for several decades, that was what relationships turned into, for his wife didn’t look at him either. She played with her napkin, folding it first that way, then the other.
Somehow, the scene didn’t look like the companionable silence he’d occasionally observed with his own parents. It felt awkward. Had they quarreled?
“The soup is coming,” the housekeeper said in a cheerful voice, the same one he’d heard from the corridor earlier.