Chapter 30
The beeping of Charlee’s heartrate monitor reminded Miles of one of those bombs in the final act of an action movie, the hero racing to remember which wire to pull as the numbers counted down.
Except Miles was no hero, and this bomb had no timer.
It was impossible to know when the inevitable explosion would happen.
She looked dead, despite the monitor saying otherwise. Wilted against the bleached sheets, lips blue-tinged, sickly purple bruises around her sunken eyes. Miles could only breathe when he saw her chest rise and fall.
He felt trapped in some kind of endless nightmare loop.
Charlee in the hospital bed. Edmund’s colorless, hollowed face.
Charlee’s freckled skin crisscrossed with trailing wires.
The wavy line of Edmund’s pulse on a screen.
Images flashed behind his eyes, repeating again and again. Ruining him again and again.
The door creaked open, and he jumped to his feet as his parents entered. Adam’s expression was grave. Sarah immediately went over to take Charlee’s hand.
“What did the doctors say?”
His dad rubbed the bridge of his nose. “About what you’d expect. They’re freaked out, running tests without knowing what they’re looking for. Your mom and I were talking about what we can do, but…”
But they’d never dealt with anything like this.
In the center of Charlee’s torso where the darkness had pierced her was a ragged black mark. An uneven starburst imprinted onto her skin. Radiating from it, flashing in and out of visibility with each pump of her heart, a river of black lines pulsed under her skin.
She hadn’t opened her eyes since she’d hit the office floor. Hadn’t moved once.
“Is she going to die?” Miles managed to ask.
“The doctors are doing their best to keep her stable. We still have time.”
There was an answer in the way he hadn’t answered. Miles wanted to scream that their best wasn’t enough, that Charlee deserved better.
“We have to do something.” He refused to sit here and watch her fade away. It filled him with a strange calm, his anxiety gone for once.
His dad squeezed his uninjured shoulder. “Leave that to your mom and I. Why don’t you go take care of Gabriel? He’s still waiting in the hall.”
He’d been sitting in one of those sickly yellow plastic chairs, staring blankly at the wall last time Miles checked. When asked, he’d refused to come into Charlee’s room.
Miles had this irrational fear that if he wasn’t watching Charlee breathe, she’d stop, but he couldn’t leave Gabriel out there alone. “Come get me if anything changes, okay?”
It was late, the hallway empty aside from a few nurses in colorful scrubs flitting in and out of rooms and speaking in hushed voices. At the end of the long, sickly mint-green hall, the door to the waiting room was closed.
Gabriel barely glanced up as Miles collapsed into one of the chairs beside him. “How is your arm?”
“Fine.” He’d been right about the shoulder dislocation.
It stopped hurting so badly once the doctor dosed him with pain meds and worked it back into place, but now he was stuck in an annoying sling, with strict instructions on icing and stretching that he couldn’t care less about.
“But Charlee’s not. No one knows what to do.
They’re talking about her like she’s a lost cause. ”
Gabriel’s hand quivered on the arm of his chair before he clenched it into a fist. “She shouldn’t have pushed me out of the way like that.”
“Yeah, well, you can lecture her once we save her life.” Miles was too tired to navigate Gabriel’s guilt. Too full of his own. A pair of nurses in squeaking sneakers walked by, flipping through a clipboard. He waited impatiently for them to pass. “We need to figure out how we’re going to fix this.”
“Miles—”
“I’m thinking we have two options: your mom, or the grimoire. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I think the grimoire is the less risky option. We crack it open, see if we can find a spell or ritual—”
“Miles.”
“What?”
“There’s a third, more logical option that we need to discuss.
” Gabriel wouldn’t look at him. A phone rang on the desk at the end of the hall, the shrill noise reverberating off the shiny floors and paneled ceilings.
“I go to my mother, or the tomb, and let things play out as they’re supposed to.
Perhaps if we set things back on the right course, Edmund and Charlee will get better.
Or I can barter with my mother—their safety in return for my cooperation. ”
The words worked through Miles’s brain, struggling to make sense. “You… what? You’re joking, right? How is that a logical option?”
“It gives Charlee and Edmund a better chance than turning to the grimoire. I may not know your cousin well, but I know she wouldn’t want you risking yourself for her.”
Gabriel was speaking so calmly, so resignedly. Panic rose in Miles’s throat, and he painfully swallowed it down. “Then we’ll go to your mom together, like I said. Confront her, threaten to expose your family if she doesn’t help, whatever we have to do.”
Before he even finished, Gabriel was shaking his head. “She’ll never give in to us. You know that.”
A short man passed them, a bouquet of cheerful, artificially colored daisies clutched in his hand. The sweat beading his forehead gleamed beneath the harsh fluorescent lights.
“We’ll make her. I’ll hold the grimoire over a fire, or call the other families and have them—”
“Miles.” No one had ever said his name so gently. Miles hated that it was now, that it was because of this. “I’ve made up my mind. I think it’s time we stop indulging a fantasy and accept fate.”
Hot tears pricked at Miles’s eyes. He couldn’t handle this right now, not on top of everything else. “You’re giving up because you’re scared.”
“Yes. In the last two days, we’ve lost two people we care about because of our actions. That should scare you too. Who’s going to be next? Bram? One of your sisters? Your parents?”
“Stop it. And stop talking about Charlee and Edmund like they’re already dead.”
“They will be if I don’t do something. And you might die too.
” Gabriel let out a shuddering exhale. “My brother is dying because I kept the truth from him. Charlee is dying because she tried to save me from a problem I dragged to her doorstep. I can’t bear to have another person’s blood on my hands. Especially not yours.”
He couldn’t be serious. Didn’t he hear himself?
“So, what, this is a noble self-sacrifice?” Miles barely recognized his own voice. A masked nurse wheeling by a diagnostics cart gave him a curious glance. “You’ve decided your life is worth less than ours? That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“I’m tired of fighting this. Of letting other people get hurt for me. Whatever came for me tonight, it’s not going to stop. Our time is up. We need to stop being selfish.”
His words rocked Miles. Selfish. Was that what this was? Was it selfish to want to change fate? To try and save someone he cared about?
No. He couldn’t believe that. Not with Charlee barely clinging to life in the other room. Not with Gabriel so defeated that he was willing to roll over and die.
“Maybe it is selfish, but so is what you’re doing. What about everyone you’re going to hurt? Charlee, Emily, your brothers… you’re going to do this to them after they’ve shown up for you every step of the way?”
“No, Miles. They’ve shown up for you. This quest became theirs the moment you cared about it, because they care about you. It’s never really been about me.”
“Don’t say that when you know it’s not true.” Gabriel couldn’t act like it wasn’t real. Like he’d just gotten caught up in Miles’s bubble, cared for by proxy.
An exhausted smile curled the corner of Gabriel’s mouth. “Fine. Then that’s yet another reason I need to do this. All of you put yourselves at risk to help me. It’s past time I return the favor.”
“That’s bullshit too.”
Gabriel didn’t bother arguing. When he reached over and took Miles’s hand, brushing warmth across his knuckles, Miles knew whatever he was going to say next would break him.
“I want you to know that even if this was all just borrowed time, being with you was the best thing that ever happened to me. Even if you couldn’t change my fate, you changed my life.”
No, no, no.
“I’m not going to let you do this,” Miles choked out.
Horrible fondness filled Gabriel’s eyes. “While I admire your stubbornness, you don’t have a choice. You can’t stop me.”
Miles wanted to take that as a challenge, throw Gabriel over his shoulder and lock him up, toss him in the car and drive them both far away. He could stop him. He was bigger, stronger. Desperate. He could find a way.
But Gabriel’s choices had been taken away from him his whole life. Miles couldn’t bring himself to do that to him, even now.
Miles had to change his mind.
“I’ll hate you if you do this,” he declared, wet despair spilling from him.
There was a box of tissues on the table beside him, sitting on a stack of ancient magazines, but he couldn’t make himself reach for one.
“I mean it, Gabriel. I’ll regret the day I ever met you.
” He didn’t know if the words tasted so rotten in his mouth because they were spiteful, nasty things, or because they might actually be true.
Gabriel’s cool fingers found his cheek, catching a tear. “Knowing you hate me in my final moments,” he said gently, “would be a small price to pay for knowing you’ll live.”
Misery crashed over Miles. He wanted to curl up and cry. It wasn’t fair. He’d tried so hard to do the right thing, and in the end, it didn’t matter at all.
Robin came through the door at the end of the hall, striding forward a few steps before suddenly whirling back the way she’d come. She repeated the movement again, wringing her hands while two nurses watched on in confusion.
Gabriel followed Miles’s gaze, twisting in his seat. “Has she been in to see Charlee yet?”