Plain Sight

Chapter 1

Bridal suites are bullshit.

Cathedralsare bullshit. Who needs this many people in one spot to worship a god who doesn’t exist in the best case scenario and is purposely dooming his creations to hell in the likeliest one? I run forever just to get to the doors of the nave, and it’s a solid hundred miles to the bridal suite.

I pass a huddle of pink dresses on the way. Lily’s seventeen bridesmaids. Sunshine. My sister. Elise. Her youngest sister Lydia. Her middle sister, Catherine, who isn’t in the wedding. Hades and Zeus and Poseidon’s wives. My main impression is of wide eyes.

The door to the bridal suite is open.

Lily isn’t there.

I knew?—

I knew she wouldn’t be. I didn’t think Remy was lying. I just hoped?—

I hoped there was a god, this time. I hoped that this one time, he or she wouldn’t have taken someone from me in the sickest, most fucked-up joke of my life.

Lily. On our wedding day.

Footsteps pat pat pat on the carpet.

“Jameson,” Remy gasps. “She’s not—I told you?—”

“I know.”

“Jameson, stop. She’s not here.”

“I know, Remy, I?—”

I’m searching for her. Digging through purses and coordinated lounge sets one-handed because Lily’s note is crumpled in my right fist and I can’t let that piece of her go. I can’t put it down for an instant, otherwise I’ll lose her, too.

I know, but I can’t stop looking.

The bathroom door swings open under a push that’s more of a punch, and?—

“Look.” I hold up the purse like I’m proving something.

Remy puts her hand to her chest. She’s still breathing hard, having run all the way up to the front of the nave with Lily’s note and then chased me back down here. My sister’s hair is coming loose from its delicate updo, tendrils hanging around her face. Her eyes go to the purse, then return to mine.

She changes right in front of me. The pink of her bridesmaid dress—Sunshine laughed about how it was called dusty rose—brightens into a bubblegum shirt with ruffled sleeves and a ruffled section at the hem that she loves because it’s like a skirt without the hassle of being a skirt, and she’s not grown up at all, she’s six years old, wearing stretchy capris that look like jeans but aren’t and that bubblegum shirt and saying Jameson, what are those lights? with the hint of a lisp she still had,because the red and blue flashes from the cop car are shining into the foyer, reflecting on the hardwood, and we don’t know it but we only have fifteen seconds before Gabriel shouts Jameson, why are there cops here? from upstairs and thirty seconds before he comes down saying I’ll call you back in a second, there are cops in the driveway, I’ll tell them they have the wrong house to whoever he’s on the phone with—it was always someone like Jacob Chambers, someone who Gabriel loved and who loved Gabriel in the simple way you can love people when you’re not fucked up yet—and one minute before Gabriel opens the front door and I watch him absorb the news that the three of us will need to come with the police officer because our parents are in the hospital and so is our brother Mason because there’s been an accident.

And Gabriel will ask a car accident?

And the cop will say I think it’s best if you speak with someone at the hospital, son.

And Gabriel will turn around and look at me, and he’ll say we’ll talk to them at the hospital, and even then—even though we haven’t walked through the strange emergency entrance of the hospital and followed the cop down a maze of hallways, even though we haven’t been met by the doctor who will look at Gabriel like he’s the only adult left in the situation and Gabriel will become the only adult left in the situation by virtue of the doctor looking at him that way and because I’m holding Remy in her little stretchy capris and her bubblegum shirt and her Velcro shoes and she’s got her face buried in my shoulder, and she’s heavy and terrified—even then, I know we won’t be talking to our parents at the hospital. I know, because the cop wouldn’t be standing on the front porch if they could call.

And I’ll still hope. All the way to the hospital, I’ll hope like a stab wound through the chest. I’ll hope like I’m sure someone will come to save me. For the last time in my life, I’ll hope like a little kid with parents who loved him and siblings who’d grown up in the same brilliant halo and who still trusted the world or god or fate or whatever it was to handle him carefully, if not gently.

That version of me dies in a waiting room with Remy passed out on my shoulder and Gabriel shaking in the next seat and Mason sleeping, not screaming, but only because the doctors had sedated him as heavily as they could without killing him.

That version of me claws its way up from the grave with bony fingers and latches them around my throat. Fuck me. Does anything stay dead? Will anything stay in the ground where I put it? I don’t have time to grapple with the nature of hope and cruelty and assorted other bullshit.

“—purse,” Remy says.

Her bubblegum shirt is gone, turned back into her dress. She’s not six anymore. We’re not there.

We’re in the basement of a cathedral in fresh hell.

“What?”

“Lily’s purse,” Remy repeats. “Is that what you were looking for?”

“She would have taken it if this was real.” I hold up the ball of paper, damp from the sweat of my hand. “This isn’t real. She didn’t leave me.”

“No. No. She wouldn’t.” Remy’s hand flutters to the neckline of her dress, then the hollow of her throat, then her hair. “Of course she wouldn’t, Jameson.”

“I’m going to get her.”

I toss the purse toward a table at the wall, but it lands wrong, taking a box to the floor with it. Things crash. Her purse spills everywhere.

I don’t have time, but I bend to straighten the mess out of some ridiculous idea that I can’t leave Lily’s purse spilled on the floor with this?—

With these photos.

Two framed photos and a note from August.

The first one is the group shot, but it’s not the one I remember smiling for, with all of my siblings and Sunshine and Elise and Lydia and Nate and everybody vibrating with the effort of standing still. It’s from just before that, when I thought August was changing his camera settings.

Nobody’s looking at the camera. They’re either looking at each other or looking at me.

They’re looking at me like they can’t believe I made it to the photo shoot, much less to adulthood. They look relieved.

And I don’t see any of it, because I’m looking at Lily.

The second photo is of the two of us, and it hits me like a steel beam plummeting through a burning building.

I’m all lit up, staring at Lily, and I’m about to say I fucking love you.

I do.

I fucking love her.

Nothing matters but getting to her. Nothing.

I shove the things in my hands at the table. The frames go in a neat stack. The rest of Lily’s stuff goes into her purse. I have to go. I have to go now. So when something falls out of my hand and lands on my shoe, I grab for it without looking.

I don’t see the pregnancy test until I’m about to let go of it.

A pregnancy test.

It’s one of the expensive ones. The kinds that have words on the front.

This one has a word on the tiny window.

The word is PREGNANT.

I read it once, then again, then a third time, stopping over every single letter so I can be sure—absolutely fucking sure, no doubt in my mind—that I’m not making this up.

It’s a pregnancy test. From Lily’s purse. There’s no reason anyone else would take a pregnancy test and hide in her purse.

It’s hers.

She’s pregnant.

It’s mine.

It can’t be anybody else’s baby, because I’ve been fucking Lily since I stole her from that parking lot. She’s only been out of my sight for a handful of hours.

It’s mine.

It’s mine.

I don’t have a heartbeat or two brain cells to fire together until somebody says oh, Jameson.

It’s Remy.

“Fuck. Fuck.”

“Jameson.” My sister puts her hand on my arm. “Jameson, we’ll—we’ll find her. It’ll be okay. She can’t have gone that far. It’s only been a little while, and?—”

My fingers open and let the test fall into Lily’s purse without my input. I’m barely conscious of bending to kiss the top of Remy’s head. Her updo flickers into fine six-year-old curls as I stand up, but I spare an extra second to stare it down.

We’re not there. We’re here.

“I’ll be back.”

“Jameson, wait.”

I’m almost at the door. “This was locked, wasn’t it? You said it was locked.”

Gabriel appears in the door, his cheeks flushed. He must’ve run here, too. Elise is with him in a pink dress the same color as Remy’s.

“It was.” Elise leans past Gabriel, her hand on his arm. “It was locked from the inside.”

“Then where did she?—”

“There’s another door,” Remy says.

More voices blur behind me. What they’re saying is none of my business. I follow Remy through the bridal suite to a narrow hallway I didn’t see before. There’s a door at the opposite end. I’m there, shoving my hands against the push bar, in what feels like no time and forever.

On a square patch of lawn next to the cathedral, a row of security guys stands back from what looks like a heated argument.

August signs at the speed of light, but he’s not signing to his brother. He’s signing to Hades’s brother Poseidon, who’s windblown again even though we were all standing at the front of the cathedral five minutes ago.

“But—” Julien says from off August’s left shoulder.

August shakes his head. He signs something—fingers in Vs, one hand over the other, palms knocking together fast and irritated, followed by a sharp pinching motion. He does that three times in a row, then picks up his camera and spins it so the screen on the back is in Poseidon’s face, still signing with his left hand.

“Okay. Okay,” Poseidon answers. “Calm your tits, Augie. I fucking heard you. What I’m saying is?—”

August signs something aggressive-looking directly into Poseidon’s face.

Poseidon signs back with big eyes.

Very fucking distantly, I’m impressed. Poseidon’s taller than August, with more tattoos and more muscles. I’d put money on him doing some real ocean-style pirating. So either August knows him exceptionally well or he’s just extremely ballsy. And I didn’t know Poseidon could sign.

I’m almost level with them, charging away from the cathedral with no plan except vengeance, when Poseidon catches me by the arm. Gabriel jogs up next to me a second later.

“I’m going after her,” I shout at all of them.

August’s hands are moving in my peripheral vision.

“Not without a crew, you’re not,” Poseidon says.

“Yes, without a crew. I don’t give a fuck?—”

“Jameson.” Gabriel. “Jameson, come on. We have to figure out?—”

“We can figure it out later. I’m going to get her.”

“You don’t know where she is.” Gabriel’s trying his best to sound calm. I cannot believe how sunny and warm and perfect it looks outside when Lily’s not here. When someone stole her out of the bridal suite, which should have been impossible. Mason has guys everywhere. “You can’t afford?—”

“I can’t lose her! I can’t!” My shouting has reached an unhinged level, but what the fuck? Why would they try to stop me? Why are they wasting precious seconds when I could be finding her?

August steps into my line of sight, his hands moving slow and crisp like he thinks I’ve lost my mind.

Who the hell knows? I probably have. My tux feels like it’s melted into my skin. My heart has merged with my ribs and my whole fucking rib cage pounds. There’s a sound like somebody’s slapping my ears over and over and over.

I have to find Lily. Standing here isn’t finding her.

“One of the men on the security team didn’t belong,” Julien says. He sounds strained. August gestures at his camera. “I have a photo, but he’s left the property, and he can’t be questioned if he’s not here.”

“That bastard.” Poseidon sounds like he’s using a term of endearment, which makes no sense until I follow his gaze to an access road for the cathedral. Hades strides across the asphalt, dragging a man in a dark suit by the collar and moving too fast for the guy to keep up. The man’s tie is loose around his neck. The blade flaps around while he fails to get his footing.

If I wasn’t dying right now, I’d probably have more room in my brain to appreciate how effortless it looks. Hades could be tugging a helium balloon along behind him and not a full-grown man.

He drags him all the way across the sidewalk surrounding the cathedral, then jerks him upright with his fist still in the man’s collar. The guy just barely has his toes on the ground. He dangles like a fish on a hook.

“So?” Hades says to August.

August gives him a very definitive nod.

I should probably let them handle this. Hades and his brothers are taller and stronger and they have a weird aura around them like they could take anything that crossed them. And I’m out here with Gabriel and Remy and a bunch of useless security guys who deserve to get fired for what happened and Lily’s ten thousand bridesmaids, who didn’t know she was being taken, otherwise they’d have stopped whoever it was. They’re not less dangerous because they’re wearing pink dresses.

But what I should do is never the first thing on my mind.

I’ve got my hands in the asshole’s lapels before anyone can say Jameson, let us talk to him.

I’ve got my face so close to his that I can see a broken blood vessel in his eye. I watch his pupil dilate with animal fear.

“I didn’t—” he starts.

“Where the fuck is she?” His head snaps back and flies forward again, which is my main clue that I’ve shaken him. “Answer. You have to the count of three. If I get to four, I’ll kill you.”