Chapter 33
Dustin woke to the smell of bacon.
For one disoriented moment, he was sixteen and late for school and Cathy was going to yell at him for sleeping through his alarm.
Then his shoulder throbbed, the road rash pulled when he moved, and the last forty-eight hours came back in a rush that left no room for nostalgia.
Greg was sitting on the edge of the bed.
He was already dressed. The clothes Dustin had given him to sleep in were folded on the nightstand beside the climbing hold.
Of course.
The bowl was gone too. So was the towel.
Dustin sat up. “How long have you been awake?”
“I don’t think I slept.” Greg held his clipboard in his lap, both hands flat against it. “I was thinking.”
“About?”
“Many things.”
Dustin watched him for a moment.
“How’s the, uh.” He gestured vaguely. “Situation.”
“Resolved.”
“Yeah?”
“I washed the towel.”
“You… what?”
“In the bathroom sink. It’s drying on the radiator.” Greg paused. “I did not want your mother to find it.”
Dustin stared at him.
Then he dropped his head into his good hand and laughed quietly, because Cathy was downstairs and the walls were thin.
“Greg.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a good man.”
“I’m not a man.”
“You’re a good whatever-you-are.”
Greg considered this. “Thank you.”
The laughter faded. Dustin grabbed his shirt from the end of the bed and wrestled it on one-handed. The sling was a pain in the ass. Everything was a pain in the ass.
Greg watched him with an expression Dustin couldn’t quite parse.
“You said you were thinking,” Dustin said.
“I don’t know how we keep the system from claiming your mother.
” Greg’s thumb ran along the edge of the clipboard.
“In all the cases I found, it never tried to work around the deal or find a loophole. It simply eliminated the contract holder. Almost like punishment for interfering with the natural order.”
“So the system won’t help.”
“No.”
Dustin cursed under his breath. It felt good.
“Okay,” he said. “But if the system never looked for a loophole, that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.”
Greg blinked. “Where would we look?”
“The demon.”
Greg stared at him. “You want to negotiate with a demon?”
“It’s my life he’s protecting. He shouldn’t get to do that against my will. It’s rude, actually. He and my mother made decisions about my life without consulting me, and I’d like to give him a piece of my mind.”
“Don’t,” Greg said, eyes widening. “He might actually take one.”
“Don’t be so literal.”
“He will.”
“Fine. I’ll be careful.”
“But how will you find him?”
Dustin shrugged, then immediately regretted it when his shoulder flared. “I was hoping you could help with that.”
Greg went quiet.
Too quiet.
“Greg.”
Greg licked his lips. “Cathy would know. The demon would have given her a way to reach him. It’s standard procedure.”
Of course it was.
Dustin stood. The floor was cold under his bare feet. Through the closed door, he could hear Cathy moving around in the kitchen. Pans clattering. Bacon hissing.
“I can convince her,” he said.
Greg stood too, clipboard against his chest. “Dustin.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry you have to do this.”
His face was open and completely sincere, because Greg didn’t know how to be anything other than exactly what he felt.
“Yeah,” Dustin said. “Me too.”
Cathy had made eggs, bacon, and toast.
“Coffee’s ready,” she said without looking up when they entered the kitchen.
Dustin poured himself a cup and sat in his brother’s chair.
Greg sat across from him with a glass of orange juice that he sipped with cautious interest. His clipboard rested on the table beside his elbow.
Cathy set plates down. Greg’s was loaded like she thought he needed feeding.
“Thank you,” Greg said politely.
They ate.
The kitchen clock ticked. Sunlight hit the counter. Outside, a neighbor’s sprinkler started up.
Normal morning sounds for a morning that was not normal.
Dustin watched his mother cut her bacon into pieces without lifting the fork to her mouth.
His appetite was about as great as hers.
He put his fork down. “Mom.”
Cathy didn’t look up. “Mm?”
“We need to talk about the deal.”
Her knife slowed. “What about it?”
“I need to find the demon who made it.”
That stopped her.
She looked at him. “No.”
“Mom—”
“You heard me.” She set her utensils down. “There’s nothing to discuss.”
Dustin’s temper flared. “There’s a lot to discuss.”
“The deal is keeping you alive. That’s all you need to know.”
It was the tone she’d used to end a thousand arguments when he was a kid.
It wasn’t going to end this one.
“The demon gave you a way to contact him,” Dustin said. “Didn’t he?”
Cathy went still.
Her eyes moved to Greg, and Greg—who couldn’t lie, couldn’t hide, whose face was a billboard for every thought he’d ever had—looked down at his orange juice.
“You told him that,” Cathy said.
“I told him it’s standard practice,” Greg said to his glass.
“Standard practice.” Cathy’s mouth tightened. “For demons.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
For a second, she looked like she might correct the ma’am. Then she turned back to Dustin.
“I’m not helping you undo the only thing standing between you and a grave.”
“Mom.”
“No.” She pressed one hand flat on the table. “You don’t get to walk back into this house after two years and ask me to hand you back to death.”
Dustin flinched. “That’s not what I’m asking.”
“Then what are you asking?”
“I’m asking you to help me save your life.”
Silence.
The sprinkler clicked through its rotation outside. The refrigerator hummed. Greg’s fork froze halfway to his mouth.
“My life,” Cathy repeated.
“Your life.”
Dustin tried to keep his voice level. He wanted to leave the kitchen and drive until the road ran out, the way he always handled things too big to sit with.
But the road had run out.
“Greg found files,” he said. “People like you. People who made deals to protect someone they loved. The system found them and killed them.”
Cathy’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
“When the contract holder dies, the system collects the person they were protecting.” Dustin swallowed hard. “Both of us die, Mom. That’s how this ends.”
Cathy looked at Greg. “Is that true?”
Greg met her eyes. “Yes.”
Something moved across Cathy’s face. Not quite fear, but close.
“Your deal won’t save me,” Dustin said, rougher now. “It won’t save either of us.”
“Stop.”
“I’ll still die.”
“Dustin.”
“Tyler, the deal, the last three years—it’ll all be for nothing.”
“I said stop.”
Her voice cracked on the second word. Just barely.
She picked up her coffee and drank. When she spoke again, her voice was controlled. “He said to come back to where we met.”
Dustin’s chest went tight.
Where they’d met.
Tyler’s grave.
“What’s the phrase?” he asked.
Cathy was quiet for a long time, hands wrapped around her mug. Then she looked up at him, her face raw in a way he’d never seen, as if she’d been stripped down to her essentials.
“I have more to lose.”
Dustin stared at her.
“That’s what you say.” Her mouth thinned. “It was true enough for me.”
Something cold settled in his stomach.
The thing she’d had to lose was him.
“You say it at the grave,” Cathy continued, steady now in the way she got when she was holding herself at arm’s length, “and he comes.”
“Okay,” Dustin forced out. “Okay.”
Cathy looked from him to Greg. “You’re going today?”
“Yes.”
She gave one sharp nod. “Don’t you dare die at your brother’s grave. I will never forgive you.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“Promise me.”
Dustin held his mother's gaze. She was dry-eyed and iron-jawed, but terrified. For the first time in three years, she didn't bother to hide it.
But this was what Dustin had wanted, no? To see her. To know she was in there, under the calm, under the clipped sentences and the unshakable calm.
He just hadn't wanted it to cost this much.
“I promise,” he said.
Cathy looked at him for a long moment.
Then she picked up her fork and went back to her eggs.
The conversation was over. She’d given him what he needed, and now she was putting herself back together the only way she knew how.
By continuing.
By eating breakfast like the world hadn’t just tilted.
Dustin picked up his own fork. The eggs were cold.
He ate them anyway.
There was nothing left to say over breakfast, so they finished in silence.
Dustin, his mother, and the reaper at their kitchen table.