Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“Aditya. Ritika’s younger brother,” Julian provides, as if he’s in my head. “He’ll be taking our car. Ritika will be accompanying us to the safe house.”
“I’ll guess I should add ‘mind reading’ to your list of abilities,” I grumble.
“Julian can do a lot of strange shit, but he can’t read minds,” Aditya says in a voice with a bit more bass than I expect. He swings to him, suspicious. “Wait. Can you?”
“No,” Julian confirms. He tosses Aditya the keys to his Audi, and he catches them, grinning like he’s just won the lottery.
I stand, bewildered, as I try to process what I’ve just observed.
“Hold on,” I say. “They know?”
Aditya shrugs, leaning against the door of the Audi and swinging the keys around his finger.
“What, that your immortal boyfriend has weird dream powers?” he says. “Yeah. It’s sort of a family secret.”
I’m gaping as Julian sighs, grabbing my bag from the passenger seat.
“The Ghoshals have been working with me for generations,” he supplies, throwing our duffel bags over his shoulders and heading for the other car.
“He actually scooped our great-grandparents out of India during the Bengal famine and helped them resettle in the UK. When he decided to move to the States, our parents decided to follow,” Ritika explains.
She barely lets me process the fact that Julian was present during a historic atrocity that I last heard about in my high school world history class when she adds, “Working for him is tradition, at this point.”
“First you have to go through that creepy-ass initiation, though,” Aditya groans.
If I had questions before, I have a thousand more now.
“Initiation?” I ask, stuffing my hands into my pockets to keep warm.
“Not my idea!” Julian yells from the other car.
“He’s right. Our dadu came up with it. He’s very dramatic,” Aditya says with a snort.
“Two lucky Ghoshals are chosen, through some mysterious selection process that definitely has something to do with our SAT scores and how many times we’ve visited him for tea over the years, to adventure with this one.
On our eighteenth birthday, they show us this weird old tapestry with that guy on it”—he gestures to Julian—“then give us an offer we’d be dumb to refuse. ”
It’s cold as sin out here, but I hunker down.
“And what is that?”
Aditya and Ritika simultaneously turn to look at Julian. It’s a subtle, coordinated movement, reflexive, like moths looking to the moon. Julian shrugs, his permission granted.
“We give six months each of our lives,” Ritika supplies. “And five years of paid service managing Julian’s estate. In exchange, we get access to a familial trust. But also, if we reveal his identity, our entire family has license to take us out.”
“Unless you’re crazy like my sis and actually like to work. She’s on year eight,” Aditya says, rolling his eyes. “Or an overachiever like our Uncle Sanjay. Had to show all of us up by going and becoming a big-shot attorney after his service just ’cause.”
The siblings are joking around, but my stomach has seized with horror.
The ritual occurs when the Ghoshals are freshly eighteen, and Julian is an incubus.
I am intimately familiar with his methods, and my reaction comes from not only the realization that he would do that with an entire family, but to what amounts to children—
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Julian, back at my side, says hurriedly. His entire face flushes bronze. “I’ll explain. Um. Later.”
“Explain now,” I demand. “I’m not just going to get in the car with a…a…supernatural pedophile!”
Ritika and Aditya exchange alarmed glances, then turn, grinning, to Julian.
“Whoa, Julian, has your taste changed since we last talked?” Aditya says.
Julian doesn’t look the least bit amused. Instead, he looks like he wants to melt into the earth.
“No, it has not,” he says, opening the trunk of the SUV. “Sean has decided that I’m an incubus. That’s why she’s saying that.”
Aditya gives his sister a confused look, but Ritika looks thoughtful.
“Well, if the shoe fits,” she says, repeating Julian’s earlier words. Then she turns to me and gives me a pitying look. “We don’t have to sleep with him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I cross my arms, annoyed that my extremely serious concern seems to have been reduced to jealousy. Julian catches me pouting and bites his cheek, grabbing the last of our belongings from the back seat.
“We just have to be in physical contact for the transfer. It doesn’t have to be sexual, though as I told you, intimacy and some level of consent makes the process significantly more efficient.” He lowers his gaze. “You know this. You saw what happened at the Corridor.”
The reminder of why exactly we are on the run mollifies me.
“Also, I am obviously not taking advantage of these two assholes, judging by how they’re just standing around right now.” Julian’s irritation is so palpable that the assholes in question jolt to attention. “Ritika, can you, at the very least, open the door for Dr. Sullivan?”
Ritika nods, not at all cowed, and I observe the interaction curiously.
From the brief description of the Ghoshals’ deal with Julian, I would have assumed that Julian would be akin to a minor god or at the very least a patron spirit to this family, but they treat him like an older cousin they enjoy riling up.
After smacking her brother on the back in farewell, Ritika saunters up to the SUV and opens the back passenger door for me.