Chapter 27
Bzzzzzzt. Bzzzzzzt.
Miles woke with a groan, patting around his bed for his vibrating phone.
He’d been up late after dropping Gabriel off, then telling Charlee about the game and coming out to his mom.
There had been an embarrassingly tearful few minutes, leaving him to crawl into bed all sniffly and puffy-eyed past one in the morning.
Something hit the floor with a clatter, where it proceeded to buzz louder. Great.
Stretching sleep-stiff muscles, he slung his arm lazily off the bed, groping around until he managed to find his phone. It was still pitch-black outside so the light made him squint, blinking at the notifications. It was six in the morning.
Gabriel—4 missed calls.
Fuck.
Miles lurched up, pressing the callback button with trembling fingers.
Gabriel answered on the second ring. “Miles.”
It was all he said, only his name, but the second Miles heard it, he knew something was terribly wrong.
“What happened?” He threw back his blankets, already scanning his room for the nearest pair of jeans. “Where are you?”
“I’m at home. I—I’m sorry if I woke you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Fear trailed icy fingers down Miles’s spine. Gabriel sounded shattered.
“No, it’s okay. Tell me what’s going on.” He found his jeans and started tugging them on.
“It’s Edmund. He’s—I think he’s dying.”
The room spun. Miles had to sit down, his jeans halfway up one thigh. For a dizzying moment, he couldn’t recall when he’d last seen Edmund. It must’ve been when he took Charlee to the Hawthorne house, right? But that was only two days ago. He’d been fine. Completely fine.
“Is he hurt?” Miles made himself speak evenly. He needed to stay calm. “Do you need me to come and take him to the hospital?”
“Our family doctor was here already.” A small, helpless sound escaped Gabriel that made Miles want to scream. “Can you come over? Please. I wouldn’t ask—”
“I’m getting dressed right now.” Miles steadied himself through sheer force of will and stood, tugging his jeans on the rest of the way.
He didn’t bother changing out of his wrinkled sleep shirt; his jacket was slung over the back of his desk chair.
“I’ll get Charlee’s keys and head right over, okay? I’ll be as fast as I can.”
“Alright.”
Miles stepped into his shoes without bothering to tie the laces and raced to Charlee’s room. He couldn’t stop and process, because if he did, he’d waste time panicking. Gabriel needed him now.
There was no way Charlee was awake, so he didn’t bother knocking before he slipped into her room. It was bathed in a pinkish glow from her salt rock lamp and the fairy lights strung around her window. The mass of blankets on her bed rose and fell with her breath.
Her purse had been tossed haphazardly on her desk, contents spilling out. Miles dug through quietly, but there was no sign of her keys. They weren’t in the mess on the desk either, so he dropped to check in case they’d fallen on the floor.
“What the hell are you doing?” Charlee’s groggy voice demanded.
Miles jumped, cracking his head on the underside of her desk.
“Jesus.” He backed out, skull aching. “Sorry, I was trying not to wake you up. I need your car keys.”
She yawned and squinted at her clock. “It’s not even six.”
“I know, it’s an emergency. Where are they?”
The sleep cleared from her eyes. “What kind of an emergency?”
“Gabriel called, something happened to his brother. He thinks he’s dying.”
Charlee’s lips parted. “Bram?”
“No, his older brother, Edmund.” Miles spotted her keys half-hanging off her bedside table and snatched them up.
“Hey.” She crawled out of bed and pulled them from his grasp. “Give me two minutes. I’ll drive.”
He didn’t argue.
Miles knew death well, had seen it in just about every form, at every stage.
He lived among it, dealt with the dead on a daily basis.
It didn’t faze him much anymore to crack open a casket and stare down at a body, to expel lingering souls.
It had become familiar and monotonous. Easy to wash himself clean of at the end of the night with a hot shower.
But this was Edmund. Someone he knew. Someone he’d just spoken with. Nothing about him dying was that mundane.
Charlee got dressed and led the way downstairs. They passed the open door to Miles’s parents’ room, a quick peek revealing his dad passed out, leg hanging off the bed and snores rattling the bed frame. His mom’s side of the bed was empty; she must already be awake.
Sure enough, they found her down in the living room, nursing a mug of what smelled like fresh coffee. The TV was on, playing a cooking show.
“What’re you doing up?” she asked when she spotted them.
“Charlee and I have to go to Gabriel’s.” Miles needed her to understand that this wasn’t the time for an interrogation, not when Gabriel was waiting for him. “His brother’s hurt, and he needs help.”
She set her drink on the coffee table with a clack. “Is he okay? What kind of help?”
“I don’t know yet, he just asked me to come.”
He could see the questions pushing forward—and the moment she forcibly made herself sink back into the couch. “Keep me updated,” she told him firmly. “Call if you need anything.”
Miles stopped to give her a hug on the way to the front door.
With Charlee driving and the roads mostly empty, they made it to the Hawthorne estate in record time. Miles pointedly didn’t check the speedometer—the oh shit moment he had every time they took a tight corner told him all he needed to know.
The big iron gate was open, so Charlee drove right up to the front door. She was twitchy about it, glancing over her shoulder as she parked.
“How do we know Felicity’s not here?”
“We don’t.” Miles couldn’t care less. “You can go wait outside the gate if you’re worried.”
“I’ll figure it out.” She leaned over to open his door, pushing him out.
Gabriel was waiting at the front door, a pale-faced shadow tucked against the encompassing gloom of the house.
“Hey.” Miles didn’t know what to say. He looked smaller than Miles had ever seen him before, swallowed up by an over sized black sweater, eyes sunken and dull. “Are you okay?”
Gabriel nodded, paused, then shook his head. “I…” He swallowed, throat clicking. Hesitantly, he leaned into Miles until his head rested on his shoulder. A painful ache bloomed in Miles’s chest like a thorny flower. “I don’t know what to do.”
Miles bit back the reassurances and false promises that rose to his lips. “I’m here,” he said instead, the only truth he had to give. He wrapped his arms around Gabriel, wanting to curl around him until he felt safe. “For whatever you need, okay?”
“I don’t know what happened.” Gabriel spoke into his jacket. “The doctor didn’t do anything, and Mother won’t answer any of my questions.”
“Edmund’s still here?”
“In his room. I’ll show you.”
The Hawthorne house was always empty, always eerily hushed, but it sat differently today. Heavy. Stifling. As they made their way up the stairs, their footsteps seemed to have less of an echo, the sconces dimmer.
Edmund’s bedroom was only two doors down from Gabriel’s. Miles hadn’t realized they were so close. Maybe Bram’s was the room between them.
His room was like Gabriel’s in layout—a four-poster bed, massive wooden wardrobe, and desk with a leather chair, but in surprisingly warm shades of burgundy and burnt orange.
Two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were packed to the brim with records, a sleek turntable sitting between them.
There was a polished piano by the window, bench slightly askew.
Miles hadn’t realized Edmund played, or had such a love for music.
Edmund was in bed. Miles might’ve thought he was sleeping if not for the wires connecting him to the out-of-place machine beside him.
It was mostly screen, wiggling lines on the left side that Miles assumed were pulse monitors, and numbers on the right.
He had no idea what any of them meant, but nothing was flashing wildly or beeping for their attention.
Edmund’s chest rose and fell steadily, and Miles couldn’t see any visible injuries.
Someone had removed his gloves, the skin of his hands too pale, too thin against his burgundy sheets, and shocking in their normality.
“He won’t wake up,” Gabriel explained. “I didn’t know until this morning, but Mother called Doctor Freeman last night. While I was gone.”
“Your mom didn’t say what happened? Did she just find him like this?”
“She’s been closed up in her office on the phone all morning. All she told me was to leave him be, that there’s no point in taking him to the hospital because they can’t help him.”
“And the doctor just agreed?”
Gabriel’s expression darkened. “Doctor Freeman does whatever my mother tells him. He showed up with all this equipment before even looking at Edmund.”
That couldn’t be ethical. Edmund should be in the hospital if he’d dropped into a coma without warning.
“Does Edmund have any sort of medical issues that could’ve caused this?”
“No.” Gabriel twisted the hem of his sweater.
“I think my mother did something. You heard what Charlee sensed in her room—she was upset with him. It’s the only reason she’d be keeping him here like this.
Her finding him last night doesn’t make any sense—she said she found him in his bed.
But she never comes into our rooms. I was gone for days, and she never noticed. ”
Felicity certainly didn’t seem like the type of mom who’d come check out of concern if one of her sons missed dinner.
The way Edmund was lying there, so stiff and unmoving, made Miles’s skin crawl. His eyes were sunken in their sockets, his skin sallow and his jaw sharper, as if he’d lost weight in the night.
“Did you try looking into his mind?”
“Right before you came. There’s nothing but darkness, without any hallways or doors for me to go through.”
Miles desperately tried to conjure up an answer, but came up empty.