The adrenaline was leaving me now, and in its place came the familiar, hollow cold. It wasn't like being chilly; it was as if my blood was turning into thin, grey slush. I looked down at my hands, at the blood on them wasn't mine, but my fingers were already turning that ghostly, translucent white. My heart didn't throb. It just clicked, like a clock that was running out of gears.
" What do you mean by that? To what do I have to answer to?" I asked, looking at Aria intently.
She let out a tired sigh yet once again, before placing her hands on the cookies and meddling with them by gazing at it back and forth for what must be about quite some long seconds.
"Van.. have you ever wondered? About how our first meeting was obstructed by some crazy bastard, or this sudden crowd that nearly swallowed you whole? or maybe...-
The next three words were hard to digest.
-Your father's disappearance? " she said.
The word 'father' hit me like a physical blow to the stomach.
For a heartbeat, the amusement park didn't exist. The broken glass, the scent of burnt sugar, even the girl sitting across from me...all of it vanished. Instead, I was back in that dim, suffocating room. I could see the silhouette of a man walking out the door without looking back. I could hear the sound of my mother's heavy breathing and the silence of a house that had been left to rot. He didn't just leave us. He threw us away like garbage that had stayed too long in the sun.
A surge of heat boiled up in my chest.
I stood up so fast the chair screeched against the pavement, the sound like a dying animal. My hands were shaking, but not from the cold this time. I leaned over the table, my shadow falling over Aria, my vision blurring at the edges, and it took everything to not grab her wrists and pin her down on table just a few inches farther than us and question her day and night, forcing the words out of her mouth by doing whatever it takes.
How did she knew him?
"How.." I demanded, my agitation turning into a cold, sharp suspicion. "How do you know about him? I never told you. I never told anyone. Just who the hell are you, Aria? Are you just someone sent by the sick bastard to mock me? Or are you the one who's been watching me rot all these years?"
My body felt a sharp jolt of chillness as I said the final line.
I was breathing hard now, the air tasting like copper and ozone. Every nerve in my body was screaming. I wanted to run, I wanted to fight, and most of all, I wanted to know why this girl held the keys to the one room in my mind I had kept locked for a lifetime.
Aria didn't flinch. She leaned forward just an inch, not to threaten me, but to bridge the gap I had created.
"I know about your father because his shadow is written all over your soul," she continued softly. "And I know about his disappearance because... well, let's just say that you weren't the only one to be left by him. He was just the first one to be taken."
I tried to breathe in her words, understanding each one of them separately and the dreadful weight behind it.
She let out a small, tired sigh and gestured for me to sit back down. "Sit, Van. If I were your enemy, I wouldn't have used my every last bit of strength to save you from a mirror-image of myself. I'm not here to mock you. I'm here because the clock is ticking, and you're the only one who doesn't realize the alarm is about to go off."
"By whom was this man taken? and how in the world did he do it?"
Her brows raised, and a slight smile appeared on her face, looking almost pleased as if she won the bet by expecting me to say those two lines.
"Glad you asked."
I know.
Her smile turned into a stern one. She crosslinked her fingers into one another and placed her chin upon it.
"Van.. I need your utmost attention here for what I am going to tell you about." She held her breath as she continued. "- The one responsible for all this is none other than the devil, whom 'we' are to refer as 'The entity' ".
I almost laughed.
The entity? seriously?
The title itself carries such rotten schmaltzy. What am I to expect from the guy himself?
" My so called father must be pretty lame to be caught in a mess of someone with a name like his". I scoffed as I moved my attention sideways.
"What do you mean, name? I told you he goes by the title of the entity. That's not his real name"
I felt somewhat confusion take over me, and I squinted my eyes in order, hinting towards Aria to give me an answer.
Well she is even fazing one bit, guess I'll have to break it down to her-
" Vesperis.. His name is vesperis."