Chapter Three #2
Declan turned away and started walking. Antonio didn’t follow him. But he watched him, like he shouldn’t have, until he couldn’t see him anymore. Then he closed the door, picked up the toy Camaro, and climbed into the gutted Pontiac, resting his head on the wheel. Steel, leather, and oil.
Safe. He was safe.
He wasn’t fucking safe.
Another gift, right there on Antonio’s bed. A crystal ring, just Antonio’s size, surrounded by calla lilies. And a letter.
One Antonio read and reread, trying and failing to change the words purely through will.
Three days before Calloway came for him. Three fucking days. All the bullshit along the way, and none of it had prepared Antonio for this. For “my beloved, soon we shall be wed.”
Antonio was supposed to be the crazy one. He hadn’t seen the wisp in eighteen years. You didn’t ghost someone for eighteen years and then decide you were getting married.
Married, just like they’d promised.
And they had. Twelve years old and clinging to his best and only friend, the boy he worshiped and adored. Terrified of losing him. Knowing he was about to.
Stupid, twelve-year-old Antonio had asked for the only thing he thought he wanted. To stay with Calloway.
“We could get married. And then no one would say that I can’t stay with you. No one will think I’m just a pet.”
Calloway kissed him. Antonio’s first kiss. Soft and sweet and a memory that’d haunted Antonio for years, after.
“Soon,” Calloway promised. “I’ll come back for you soon.”
And then he hadn’t.
Eighteen fucking years and the bastard thought he could drop off a pile of cheap trinkets and drag Antonio back to Faerie.
No. Didn’t think. Would.
Would because Calloway’d always chosen the games and made the rules, while Antonio hurried after.
He wouldn’t listen. Antonio could lock himself in his iron bunker and the wisp would walk through the fucking walls, call it all a new game they were playing, and take him back to Faerie.
Antonio crumpled to the floor, the letter still gripped in a white-knuckled hand.
Faerie, where he was a game people played. See if you can enchant the Hollow. Change his shape. Change his mind.
Faerie, where creatures of impossible, ethereal beauty, all delicacy and floating gestures, spoke in mannered phrases about whether a Hollow bled different, and wouldn’t it be fun to find out.
Antonio bled as red as any human, much to the disappointment of some.
Faerie. Where he was a toy. A pet that Calloway occasionally remembered to feed.
Where nothing he’d built for himself would matter, and if he ever escaped, saw his family again, they wouldn’t believe him.
Institutions and drugs that made the world soft at the edges, but never changed what was and what wasn’t.
If there were a pill that made the fae go away, Antonio would’ve already been taking it.
This, he recognized distantly, was a panic attack. The ragged breaths and the shaking. The race of his heart and the tingling in his fingers. The unshakable knowledge that it was over. All fucking over. Done. Climb into his Mustang and hook a hose to the tailpipe.
And leave his corpse for one of his nieces to find?
No. Drive somewhere else first. Somewhere far the fuck away.
He had three days. He’d have to leave a note.
He knew what it was like to wait and wonder.
So did they. Too many disappearances his family had already weathered. But what did you even say?
“Turns out you’re right. Tio Tio’s a crazy, selfish bastard. Kisses to the girls.”
Maybe a river would be better. That’d been the kelpie’s curse, that he’d drown. Might as well use one fae to stick it to the other. Didn’t they say drowning was peaceful? It hadn’t seemed that way, with the kelpie growling in his ear.
No. The car was better. Go out surrounded by iron. Make it a final fuck off to Calloway and the rest. The kelpie. The banshee with the cat. The murder punk sluagh with his pained smile and his ten not-so-special bonds.
Declan.
Declan who’d made his offer and walked away.
Burnt petals. Spilled ink.
Calloway had been terrified of sluagh. Even his shitty, puffed-up cousins had been. Genuinely, turn tail and run terrified.
Terrified…
And Declan, he’d at least listened. Backed off, when Antonio asked him to. It was more than Calloway would ever do.
Still shaking, but at least able to breathe, Antonio stayed on the floor, thoughts spinning instead of spiraling.
How the fuck did you find a sluagh? Fae were never around when you needed them.
This was a stupid plan that wouldn’t work. But if it was going to work, it would only work now, before the sluagh made a pact with someone else. Like Declan had said, Antonio was only special to him if he said yes.
Shit. He’d have to say yes.
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
Then what? Calloway? Suck on a tailpipe?
“Declan?” he tried, tentative and hoarse, because who knew, maybe the fae was watching. Calloway sure as hell had been. “You listening?”
No gaunt, bone-winged fae materialized from the shadows. No black lips twisting in a thin, sad smile. No odd, lilting rasp, vibrated deep through Antonio’s chest.
Fuck, this wasn’t even a stupid plan. It wasn’t a plan. Just Antonio talking to himself in a dark room.
Poor crazy Tio Tio.
He didn’t know how you summoned the fae. He didn’t want to know how to summon the fae. That was more of a Bo thing. The kelpie fucker had a summer house in Faerie.
Bo. Had a summer house. In Faerie.
Antonio had Bo’s number.
His phone was right there, sitting on the floor where he’d dropped it. He should think this through, but there wasn’t time. He picked up the phone instead and scrolled down to Bo’s name. Two months since they’d last talked, apparently.
Fuck it.
It rang long enough that Antonio started to rehearse a message, and then Bo was on the line.
“Antonio, hey. What’s up?”
“Bo?” Did he sound as shaky as he felt? “Shit, man. I need a favor.”