CHAPTER 25
Lunaris had optimistically brewed two cups of tea when we returned, and so must have been disappointed in me when I bypassed them for the liquor under the sink. I pulled out the whiskey and gin.
“G&T?”
“I thought you hated gin,” Kessian said.
“I do. You don’t.”
I’d bought it for him, but I didn’t want to say so, particularly after our conversation in the changing rooms. Might scare him off.
The extra mug, the color of my bedroom door, gin stocked in the liquor cabinet …
I’d held off sleeping with him so long, but the signs I’d already let him in were there.
Presenting him with his drink, I sat across from him in the dining booth. A sip of the whiskey warmed me up and gave me the courage to reach out and link our pinkies again.
He smiled weakly. “You’re going to think I’m a bag of cats.”
“I like cats.”
He took a deep drink and, studying the glass rather than me, said, “I never used to drink, ’cause one time my mum came home wasted and told me she liked her life better before she had me.”
“God, Kessian.”
I didn’t know what to say, and it looked like he might not say more, but then he did. Much more.
“It’s a pattern. I need a lot of personalized attention or I get neurotic and needy, so she left first chance she got.
My first serious girlfriend left me because I was trans, and she wasn’t into men.
Dom left because I was sick and dying, and he couldn’t handle that.
And maybe that’s life. People come and go, things change, or the world changes and you no longer fit in where you used to, but for me it felt like every time I became more myself or more vulnerable, the people I loved stopped loving me back. ”
It broke my heart to hear it put that way. My goodbyes had been many but brief. Apart from leaving Shearwater, I’d never had the time to get attached. I didn’t know which of us was better off.
“But you … you know all those things about me and said I was worth the risk anyway.”
“I didn’t mean you’re a risk because of any of those things.”
“I know what you meant. You were risking your heart. And if I’d known you would, I’d never have let you.”
“Why?”
“They say it’s better to have loved and lost, right? Somewhere along the line, I started to believe no one would choose me for good. So I chose Shearwater. It felt safe. Places can’t leave you, but people can.”
“Then Warwick evicted you.”
He nodded, smiling mirthlessly and taking another drink.
“Every time I think I’ve got something stable going …
Poof. Gone. We haven’t known each other long, but I go one of two ways.
I either never fall, or I fall fast and hard, and I knew you’d be the latter, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.
What if you, after accepting all those vulnerable things about me, found some new reason I wasn’t worth keeping?
Something else that made me feel even harder to love than being disabled, trans, and more high maintenance than a bonsai tree.
’Cause being rejected by someone who doesn’t know me, that’s fine.
But you … I don’t think I could take it from you. ”
I wet my lips. Now came the hard part. I could see where the conversation led, the two of us bound for different destinations. This past week was just the brief slice of time in which our paths intersected.
“I said I’d risk a broken heart. You’re saying you can’t.”
Tears sprang to his eyes again. This time, he didn’t stymie them. “If we survive this, I can’t afford to stay in Shearwater.”
“You could come with me and Lunaris—”
“No, I can’t. I need my independence, Tal.
I was completely dependent on Dom, and it left me in a terrible place when he left.
I had friends in that city, but it’s hard to keep them when you only see each other once in a blue moon.
I don’t want to feel like my entire life dissolves every time I have a breakup or have to move house.
I want to find something with just a shred of plausible permanency.
And I can’t ask that of you after a week, and you can’t promise it to me, either, so … ”
His home had to be a place. I wanted mine to be a person. The Venn diagram of our needs was two circles.
“Oh.” Pain sliced through me, sharper than it had any right to be. We’d only known each other a short time, but it hurt like I’d known him much longer. “I … get it. I think. But …” Fuck, it hurt.
He made a noise like he’d been physically cut, too.
The sound of tearing fabric accompanied it, though. Kessian screamed and grabbed his leg. I jumped up, eyes wide.
Four diagonal slashes had appeared in the leg of his trousers, and between his fingers, blood welled.
Lunaris rattled like an earthquake, cabinets vibrating, as the wraith materialized out of the ether like ink dripped into water.
It had its claws around Kessian’s hip, its head bent over him.
I couldn’t banish it with my talisman, I couldn’t teleport us elsewhere with Kessian in its grip, and I didn’t know how it could appear like this with no warning from Lunaris or without breaking my wards, so I lashed out with the only weapon I had left—my fists.
I wasn’t a trained fighter, but I’d read enough books to know not to tuck my thumb in my fist or I’d break it, and I had enough anger in me to numb the fear of fighting something so intangible.
I put my fist through the shadowy void of its face.
The dark absorbed me, thick and viscous, but through it I struck something more solid.
Once, twice, again. Kessian rolled free from under us. The next strike of my fist sent the antlered head careening into the wall behind it.
While it was stunned, I backed up, grasping Kessian around the waist to support him as we made our way through the narrow hall. The wraith recovered quickly, moving like a spider through the door.
“We have to lure it to the trap.” I scooped his cane up from where it had fallen to the floor. “Can you run?”
His hand came away from his leg stained red. “I’m not proud. If you can carry me …”
I stumbled with him down the steps before scooping him up and running across the green.
Never had I been so glad Lunaris incorporated a personal gym in her revolving door of rooms for me.
Kessian wasn’t big, nor was he light, and though I’d parked as close as Lunaris could get to the hut, it didn’t feel close enough with the screech of the wraith gaining on us and my gait staggered while I adapted to Kessian’s weight in my arms. Looking over my shoulder, he went pale.
“Almost there,” I said.
The hut was in sight, but a thought occurred to me as I sped toward it. The sigil inside occupied the entire floor. If we ran in hoping to lure the wraith in with us, we would be trapped in there with it.
I had to hope we could squeeze into a corner and that once we were confined, it couldn’t harm us.
The ground vibrated with the weight of the wraith galloping behind me. My lungs burned. I put on a burst of speed when I felt a breath of cold on my neck and Kessian hid his face in my shoulder.
We reached the hut. The back-left corner was the largest outside the sigil, but still not large enough with Kessian in my arms. I dropped his legs. A cold wind touched my back as I crowded him into the corner. I braced for the sting of claws raking my back.
Blinding light filled the hut with an electric explosion. Blue sparks hit the wall above Kessian’s head. He looked past my shoulder, eyes wide, chest rising and falling rapidly.
“It worked,” he whispered.
Slowly, carefully, I craned my neck to look over my shoulder.
Shadows filled the confines of the sigil. They roiled and curled against the invisible prison, prompting a punishing burst of sparks. The darkness recoiled as if shocked.
At the center of it all was a figure darker than the shadows, its head held low so its antlers didn’t puncture the ceiling, its focus solely upon us.
Kessian’s hands squeezed my arms. “How do we get past it?”
“Break down the wall?”
The wraith tilted its head like it was listening.
Kessian looked at the scant few inches of ground between the circumference of the sigil and the wall of the hut. Experimentally, he reached with one arm, hand flat against the wall. The wraith’s focus followed his movements.
“Quickly. Like putting your hand through a candle flame,” he said.
The second he moved, the wraith lunged, throwing itself at the perimeter of its prison like a rabid animal. Kessian recoiled back into the corner for safety. I caged him in, one hand to either side of his head.
“Okay. That didn’t work. Maybe you should try and talk to it.”
I looked at him incredulously. “Talk to it? It’s barely human.”
“It’s a part of you. Maybe a part of us. It’s got some connection to all the people who’ve died. Isn’t that how it works with ghosts? You soothe them by making right whatever wrong led to their death in the first place?”
In our position, I’d try anything, but—“You’re the one who’s good with words.”
“They’re not my family. And you’re a lot better than you think. If I’d died this way, I wouldn’t want tact. I’d want honesty. Nobody ever has to worry about you lying to them.”
Our argument from the changing room still fizzled between us then, but he meant it as encouragement.
Carefully, tucking myself as far away from the edge of the sigil as I could, I turned to face the creature.
I’d never appreciated its size until now. It towered like a plume of smoke to the ceiling.
“What do you want?”
I didn’t expect it to answer. It had never spoken before. Smoke boiled from the place its mouth would be, but the sounds it emitted were not human.
“I’m trying to help,” I said. “I’m trying to find the one who poisoned the strid, who killed my grandad. Can you tell me who that is?”
Its smoky breath fumed, and something glowed in the place its heart would be. It gave its head a shake and slammed a claw against the barrier of light. More sparks flew. I jumped and Kessian’s hands steadied me.
The wraith seemed frustrated. Well, the feeling was mutual.
“It would be a lot easier to help you if you stopped killing all the people I love. Why do you do it? What purpose could it possibly serve?”
The shadows leapt. For a moment the wraith seemed to split, like two frames of a film overlaid, and the glow at its center magnified, pulsing like a beating heart.
“Keep talking. You’re getting through to something,” Kessian said.
I hardly needed the encouragement. I’d kept all of this bottled up.
Now it poured out of me. “I hated living alone! Because of you, I’ve had no one for years.
I was never the best with people, but I still liked them, and I only got worse at talking to them without practice.
I miss my dad. I miss Laurelie. I miss Amelia.
Because of you I’ll never have them back, and now you won’t even give me a single, solitary fucking clue how to fix this so I can finally come home! ”
The shadows rattled and burst apart around something emerging from the glowing hole in the wraith’s chest.
It was a hand, dripping with umbral ichor and grasping toward us. It was—
It was human.
The wraith flickered again, and this time the two frames were markedly different. The wraith in one, a human figure in the other, tearing free of the wraith’s body like its ribs were a cage.
Heedless of the danger, I reached out and grasped the hand. The wraith screeched and reared its head, sparks flying from around the sigil.
I kept pulling, but I needed more room for leverage. “Kessian! Can you sneak past it now?”
Kessian waved an arm through the sigil, but the wraith was too occupied in my tug-o-war with it. He limped as quickly as his injured leg allowed, holding on to the wall for support.
From the doorway, he said, “Now you.”
Holding on to the arm protruding from the wraith’s chest, I swung my weight to the right, around the sigil, until I was halfway out the door.
My grip almost slipped, but I reeled back, put a foot against the doorjamb, and pulled.
The wooden shed creaked ominously, then the figure trapped in the wraith burst free in a pool of liquid shadow, which melted and fried in the sigil like bacon fat.
The figure was a girl judging by its shape.
I dragged her the rest of the way out of the hut to safety.
She raised her head, the darkness bleeding away from her face, soaking into the earth and revealing her. I recognized her face.
It was Amelia.