Chapter 24
Sebbie
Corbin had called me “little reaper.”
As we drove back home, those words kept flashing through my mind.
Little reaper.
It wasn’t the first time, either. He’d called me that before. In the cult lady’s basement, I thought. I tried to pull the memory back, but it was like taffy. It stretched thinner and thinner the harder I pulled, until it was broken and only that phrase remained in my mind.
Of course, that also ignored the much larger issue at hand.
Fluffy had turned into a hellhound, and then he’d turned into Atlas.
Everyone seemed to know that about him but me.
And he wasn’t the hellhound from my dream, and when I’d said he wasn’t my hellhound, Aiden had told me that I had my own hellhound.
So did that mean Corbin was my hellhound?
Had I somehow known, and that’s why I’d made him one in my dream?
And, okay, but what the actual fuck? Luckily my random thoughts had lasted long enough for us to get back to my house, because Corbin was parking the car when I turned to him. He’d let me think the entire way home, but now it was time to talk.
“Corbin, what the actual fuck?” I asked.
Okay. Not exactly the opening I was going for, but, I mean—what the actual fuck?
Corbin cleared his throat. “Ah, yeah, so… I’m a hellhound.”
“You say that like it’s a perfectly normal thing to say. Like, hi, I like brie cheese, I’m an avid bowler, and I’m a hellhound.”
“But I don’t bowl,” Corbin answered, looking a little confused.
To borrow a phrase from Q—for fuck’s sake. I suddenly understood why he looked exasperated all the time.
“That isn’t the point. The point is that you say that like it’s perfectly normal,” I complained.
“Well, for me it is perfectly normal. I’ve always been a hellhound, as have the rest of the pack.”
The pack. He called his family a pack. Did that mean they were all hellhounds? I gasped, realizing that “the pack” was more than just the Smith family. (Never mind the fact that they were the Smith family—like, could they be any more obvious about choosing an alias?)
“Wait—does that mean that Toby and Josh and Q and Aiden are all hellhounds, too?”
Corbin started to reply, but I cut him off with another gasp.
“Am I gonna become a hellhound? Is it like werewolves? Is that why Q was so mad that you bit me? Because you infected me with your sexy hellhound DNA or something? And oh my god, am I gonna get muscles like you guys? Because I could totally rock a hellhound body.”
Corbin was trying really hard not to laugh next to me, which made me think through the whole Toby, Josh, Q, and Aiden thing. They were not built like the rest of the Smith brothers.
“Okay, so either I’m not gonna turn into a hellhound, or else I am gonna turn into one, but you’ll be stuck with my little body just the way it is.”
Corbin reached his upper half over the middle console, dragging me in for a kiss.
“I love your sexy little body exactly as it is,” Corbin said, giving me another peck to prove his point. “Maybe we should go inside for this conversation.”
I nodded my head, and I realized that Corbin had let out a breath, the tension leaving his body.
Oh. Did he think I wasn’t going to let him come in or something?
I mean, yeah, he was a hellhound and hadn’t told me, and that was kinda sucky, but I’m sure it was like vampires or whatever and you weren’t supposed to just go around telling everyone.
“Ohhh, is there a council that decides who can know? And are vampires real, too?” I asked as we walked up to the front steps.
“No council, and not that I’m aware of,” Corbin answered. He opened the door with his key and ushered me inside.
Yes, he had a key. Yes, I might have accidentally left a spare key sitting out, and I might have accidentally not known where my key was one morning, so I might have told Corbin to go ahead and grab the spare so he could just let us in. And then I might have never asked for it back.
What? Like I hadn’t noticed that the man kept bringing more clothes and toiletries over.
Like I hadn’t emptied a drawer and just thrown his stuff in there to “clean up” one day.
We hadn’t spent a single night apart, and I certainly didn’t want to start.
I mean, yeah, we’d probably have to have the whole moving-in conversation at some point.
But I felt like there were more pressing matters to deal with.
I walked in and sat on the couch, and Corbin came in and sat on the ottoman across from me.
He clasped his hands between his knees and looked serious. “So there’s a heaven and a hell, and neither one is really good or bad. There are angels and demons, but there are also other creatures, like hellhounds. A long time ago—”
“Hellhounds and other creatures left hell, and they’re known as first generation, and some of them had kids, and they’re second generation. I don’t know if there’s a third generation yet, because I’m a little behind on my reading,” I answered.
Corbin tilted his head, looking at me curiously.
“Toby’s books? The ones about hellhounds?” I said.
“Toby wrote about…” Corbin trailed off, like he couldn’t quite grasp the whole thing.
“It’s Toby. Of course he wrote about it. He’s a writer—that’s what he does. I bet he got most of it right, too. Not that he’d give away any hellhound secrets or anything.”
“I can’t believe he wrote about actual hellhounds,” Corbin said, looking a little dazed.
“I can’t believe that apparently none of you have read his books. Aside from being a really good writer, why did you think he’s always interviewing and interrogating everyone? Plenty of things I’ve said have ended up in his books. It’s kind of cool, actually.”
A crow cawed outside, although I didn’t think it was Crow. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. It must have snapped Corbin back on track, too, because he focused on me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have. I should have explained everything about myself, and I’m very sorry.” He took my hands in his.
“It’s okay,” I answered.
“Sebbie, it really isn’t,” he countered.
“It is. I think I kind of knew. I mean, I’m shocked, but I’m not that shocked.
And, like, I should be freaking out a little more, right?
But it feels like something I kind of knew already.
Maybe I sensed it, because I have this dream with you in it, and you turn into a hellhound in my dream,” I said.
Corbin looked decidedly uncomfortable. His hands released mine, and he pushed his hair back in a nervous gesture. Corbin was never nervous.
“What?” I asked. Because there was something, that was for sure.
“It’s… Sebbie, that was me,” he finally said.
“What was you?” What the hell was he talking about?
He cleared his throat. “In that place. That was actually me.”
I was just staring at him, because I still had no clue what the heck he was saying.
“The man in black, and Crow, and the river, and dealing with the not nice people, and the guy in the woods encased in rocks. I was there. For all of it.”
Oh.
Huh. Did that mean Corbin was like a dream walker or something?
He was a witch, so I guessed that was entirely possible.
He had told me to act like it was the real him in one of the first dreams he’d shown up in.
He’s also told me to call for him if I ever needed him in my dreams. Not that I needed to call for him, because he was always there.
I was glad he was always there. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
I didn’t know where that thought came from, but this weird sense of sadness flowed over me. It felt like… I don’t know, almost like my life was desolate and full of grief. Like my heart was broken and I was all alone. I had the urge to cry, and I had no idea why.
“Sebbie? What do you need?” Corbin asked, grabbing onto my hands again.
“I feel sad, and I don’t know why. I feel like it was so lonely, but that doesn’t make sense, because I don’t feel lonely. At all. I have tons of friends. Even in my dreams, all these people I know show up, and I’m never alone. But I just… I feel so sad, Corbin, and I don’t know why.”
A tear overflowed from my eye, running down my cheek—I’d hardly been aware that I was tearing up. Corbin moved next to me on the couch, pulling me into his chest and wrapping his arms around me.
“You’re not alone, Sebbie. You’ll never be alone again. You have me, and you always will. No matter what that means, you’ll always have me. Do you understand?”
I nodded my head against his chest.
He pulled my chin up, forcing my watery gaze to meet his eyes. How had I never noticed that he had actual flames dancing in them? It was beautiful.
“You will never be alone again. I have you, Sebbie. Do you understand me?” he asked again.
“Yes,” I answered.
He wrapped me back up in his arms, and I cried.
Soft, sad sounds of grief came from my mouth, and Corbin held me tightly, stroking my back and whispering to me.
I was so sad, but I felt like I was letting the grief go.
I felt like my tears were washing away something, some sadness I’d held onto for so long.
It felt freeing.
I wasn’t alone. I would never be alone again.
I was dreaming of the river again.
I was standing on the shore, as I so often was now. I looked next to me, and Corbin was standing there, Crow perched on his shoulder. I reached over and took his hand, and he looked at me and smiled.
“I guess we fell asleep,” I said.
Corbin hummed noncommittally, and Crow cawed, tilting her head at me.
“I’m so glad you can be here, too, beautiful girl,” I told her.
She cooed at me and tilted her head again, and I reached over and gave her a scratch. I continued to rub at her neck, gently sliding my fingers against her feathers.
“You like him better than me,” Corbin muttered to Crow. “Not that I blame you. I like him better, too.”
Crow cawed at that—right into Corbin’s ear, which made me laugh out loud. She flew off toward the forest then, landing on a branch at the beginning of a path. I didn’t think the path had been there before, but I noticed it now.
Corbin did as well, and he sighed.
I had that funny swoopy feeling in my stomach again, and I sat down on the ground. Corbin plopped right down next to me, and it made that swoopy feeling a little better.
I wasn’t alone. Not anymore.
But… “I’m missing something, aren’t I?” I asked him.
He took my hands again, answering, “You’ll remember when you’re ready. Or you’ll know when you’re ready. I’m not sure which it is, exactly.”
“You know what I don’t,” I said, suddenly sure that Corbin had a few more pieces of the puzzle than I did.
Corbin nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I knew.
The man in black told me not to, and I believed him when he said you needed to figure it out on your own.
I would never keep anything from you, Sebbie, but this wasn’t really my secret to keep.
It’s yours, and I didn’t want to force you to talk about it before you were ready.
” Corbin blushed. “I did keep the hellhound thing from you, but to be fair, I sort of forgot you didn’t know.
You know here, and here is as real for me as anything else. ”
Huh. That made a weird sort of sense. Maybe some part of me did know he was a hellhound, too. Why else would none of it really shock me?
“You being here isn’t my secret,” I said, which kind of didn’t make sense.
“I know it isn’t,” Corbin answered.
I thought about that for a moment. I thought about this place, and the time I’d asked Corbin where we were.
A pocket dimension, he’d said. Or part of the underworld.
He’d mentioned Styx and Acheron, and although Styx had been familiar at the time, I hadn’t really thought about it.
It had sort of skated across my mind. But I knew that name.
I knew it from mythology. The River Styx was where dead people crossed over.
It was like puzzle pieces sliding into place.
My cloak and my staff. My boat. The loved ones on the other side to greet my passengers.
I always dreamed of dead people. I had never, not once, dreamed of someone who was still alive. Aside from Corbin, everyone here was dead.
“How are you here and not dead?” I asked Corbin.
“I’m not sure,” he answered, and then Crow cawed from the trees. Corbin looked at her, tilting his head. “Sneaky daimon,” he said. He turned to me. “Blood. Crow had our blood mix together somehow, and it enabled me to come here. For you to bring me here.”
I stared out across the water. I loved the river. I loved my job. I was never sad about death. It was only a new beginning, after all. I knew that. I’d always known it.
“I ferry people across the river,” I said.
“Yes,” Corbin answered.
The cloak, the staff, the river. “I’m a ferryman.”
“Yes,” Corbin said again, shifting until he was next to me so he could wrap his arm around me.
“I don’t feel as shocked as I should. This place has always been a part of me. It doesn’t feel like it’s that big of a deal. And I help people. I like that.”
“Good,” Corbin answered. “I’m glad. And I love you, and nothing can change that.”
Crow cawed again, and I looked over at the forest. It was dark—darker than it should have been. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” I asked.
Corbin hummed in agreement next to me.
“Something is in the forest,” I said. “I don’t want to go in there.”
“Then don’t. I’ll go, and I’ll deal with it,” he answered.
I turned and smiled at him. My sweet hellhound. He really would, too. He’d deal with anything for me. I stood up, brushed myself off, and took a deep breath. Corbin stood as well.
“Thank you, but I think I need to deal with this.” I looked at him. “Come with me, though?” I asked.
“Always,” Corbin answered.