16. Sebastian
16
SEBASTIAN
A noise from downstairs woke Sebastian. He didn’t know what it was. Was someone there? Had more people broken in to kidnap him? His heart pounded and he didn’t know what to do.
Then he remembered he was at James’s house and the person moving around downstairs was probably Eli or Parker.
He let out a long breath, trying to calm his panicked response. Sebastian reminded himself the whole town didn’t hate him. A few bad people didn’t mean he wasn’t welcome here. Then he shook himself. Did it even matter? He was probably doomed to go down with the veins and here he was still trying to settle into his life.
Would he ever get that little house on a plot of land he’d envisioned last night?
James stirred next to him, groaning as he began to wake up. An arm wrapped around Sebastian’s middle, and James pulled Sebastian close as if he was James’s first thought and holding him was a desire that ran so deep James didn’t even need to be fully awake to express it.
“Morning, sweetheart,” James murmured in his ear, kissing his neck .
“Morning.” Sebastian laced his fingers between James’s, and they stayed like that, holding each other like nothing else mattered.
James kissed Sebastian’s neck once more. “Ready to get up?”
“Sure.” Sebastian wanted to stay in bed and hide from his problems, but it had gotten to the point that he wasn’t sure anything, even James, could distract him properly.
He and James met Eli in the kitchen. Thankfully, coffee was already waiting. James had bought some powdered creamer for Sebastian, who couldn’t stand the taste of half-and-half anymore. He smiled as he spooned it into his mug, even though his preference for the powdered stuff was a lingering Storm House habit.
“Parker is on the breakfast shift,” Eli informed them as they sipped their coffee. “Would you guys come out to the vein intersection with me to get my data?”
James nodded. “We should check on the hole as well.”
Sebastian put his mug down. “What if there are shades? We saw that hand, and after the one stealing Eli’s backpack, we can’t assume there’ll be none around.”
“We’ll be on our guard,” James promised. “But we can’t let the shades keep us stuck inside doing nothing. Once we check things out, maybe we should see about getting another fuel cell to link to the curse. We can do the transfer spell again. Even if we can’t recreate Selma’s original spell, maybe it will help stabilize things.”
Sebastian and Eli agreed. They might as well try.
An hour later, James pulled up to the Storm House gate. Sebastian spent some time with Miss Moo before heading to the clearing, James and Eli joining him rather than going ahead. The cow seemed happy enough out here by herself, even if she was overly excited to see Sebastian. Still, he’d be happier once he had a house with enough land to move her onto so he could see her more often.
No shades floated around the main part of the property, but that didn’t stop Sebastian from bracing himself as they entered the trees. He didn’t relax the whole walk through the woods.
James stepped into the clearing ahead of Sebastian and Eli. “Um, guys…”
Eli pushed past, looking worried by the tone of James’s voice. Sebastian stepped forward and paused, taking in the scene before them.
The hole was bigger, almost double what it had been last time. Sebastian swore something shimmery sat in the middle even though the hole was still dark as ink. It was hard to be sure, but the shadow at the center seemed to flicker.
There was nothing else in the clearing. The fuel cell was still by the path, but that was it. All of Eli’s mechanisms were gone.
“The hole isn’t big enough to swallow all my equipment.” Eli spun to face him and James. “The mechanisms were all right along the edge, and that ground is solid. They were warded.”
Sebastian had sympathy for Eli’s frustration. Shades may have broken Parker’s wards in town to smash the lights but everything out here had been left alone until now.
“Look.” James pointed across the clearing where one of the blue tarps that had been covering the crates had been discarded at the base of a tree.
Eli rushed forward, but James grabbed him. “Careful.”
They walked along the trees surrounding the clearing, a safe distance from the hole, until they reached the tarp.
Eli picked it up. “Why would the shades break through Parker’s wards now? Did they decide to steal my bag and ruin everything all at once?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry, Eli,” James said.
Sebastian spotted something glinting farther into the trees. He went to investigate and, upon reaching it, found a small piece of metal, then another a foot away.
He brought them back to the others and handed them to Eli. “Looks like pieces of a mechanism. ”
“They snapped it. Look.” Eli’s cheeks were red and his face twisted in fury. “Those black tendrils must be back. They seemed like the only things that could break wards.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that humanoid shade could break them as well.” Sebastian grimaced at the thought. “Neither being back is good.”
Eli threw the tarp on the ground, looking as frustrated as he was angry. “I can’t have these kinds of setbacks. I need to be able to work to figure anything out.”
Sebastian couldn’t help wondering if it really was so much of a setback. They didn’t necessarily need to monitor the energy flow in the veins anymore. It wouldn’t tell them how to fix anything, but he didn’t want to say so in case Eli took offense. He was only trying his best to help.
“If shades are trying to stop us from examining the veins, we must be on to something,” Eli continued, his eyebrows pulled together like he was thinking hard.
“Or they’re being territorial.” Sebastian looked back toward the clearing. “That must be why they’ve always acted possessive around Storm House. They were guarding their gateway and must not have wanted me messing with it any more than they wanted you studying it, Eli.”
Eli made an indignant sound. “So are we just going to let them have it?”
“No, they can’t have the gateway.” James placed a steadying hand on Eli’s shoulder. “We need to access the intersection to hook up another fuel cell or whatever we end up doing to try and calm the imbalance. But maybe if the shades think we’ve stopped monitoring the veins, they’ll back off a bit.”
“Maybe,” Eli agreed reluctantly. “I guess we should clean all this up. I’m sure pieces of my mechanisms are all over the place.” He bent to pick up the tarp he’d tossed on the ground.
Sebastian and James helped, picking through the trees for the rest of the torn-apart equipment .
As he hunted around in the dirt, Sebastian’s mind wandered. He tried to imagine what taking a piece of the vein would have looked like. How on earth had Sullivan and Nelson managed it? The vein was underground. Had they dug down to it? Could you even dig into a vein?
With the strange hole currently occupying the clearing, it was hard to imagine what the veins were like when they were whole. He’d always thought of energy flowing through the earth as a non-physical substance, not something you could see with the naked eye, but maybe the veins looked like a void similar to the hole.
When Sebastian had connected to the vein in town he hadn’t had any sense of what it looked like, just that it was part of him and that he was in the earth.
The smell of decaying leaves and dirt suddenly overwhelmed Sebastian. His head pounded and he closed his eyes against the sun’s glare. The earthy smell intensified, making him disoriented. Was he just hyperaware of the forest around him, or was this strange sensation something else?
James appeared at his side. “You okay?”
“Headache,” Sebastian replied, voice strained, blinking against the light. “I was thinking about the veins and connecting to them, and it’s like my memories triggered the pain…or triggered something.”
“You’re not trying to connect to them now, are you?”
“No.” Sebastian was horrified at the thought. “Even if I’m the missing piece’s stand-in, I don’t think I’m supposed to harness the veins’ power, or it wouldn’t hurt so bad. I’m afraid of what connecting to the veins again might do to me.”
“Me too,” James confessed.
Something snagged in Sebastian’s mind. He looked at the ominous hole in the clearing. “I had a funny vision when first connecting to the veins.”
James cocked a brow. “You did? ”
A swell of emotion rose up in Sebastian, making his heart ache in the worst way. “When I thought I couldn’t save you, I lost all hope. I didn’t think I could go on without you. It was too much. The shade had you and I’d failed. Everything was lost. It was over. I imagined myself dead and buried in the ground like I belonged there, and that’s how I finally connected to the veins.”
James’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “Buried?” he choked.
Sebastian nodded, something even worse than remembering his hopeless wish to die turning his insides cold. “What if it wasn’t just a random vision or me giving up?”
James’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“What if I pictured being in the ground because I should be. What if I do belong. What if I’m enough of a stand-in for the missing piece to complete the veins.”
James shook his head. “No, that’s not… How could that be? You’re linked to the veins already, and that’s clearly not enough.”
“I know, but what if I have to go back into the ground for it to be enough?” Sebastian whispered, the scent of decaying leaves washing over him anew.
James stood silent and Sebastian could practically hear his thoughts whirring as his frown grew even more severe. James eyed Sebastian like he’d never seen him before.
“ Back? No, you were never there, Sebastian,” James said at last. “I don’t see how being in the earth would help. You’re tied to the veins. Where you are physically shouldn’t matter.”
“I’m not so sure.” Sebastian didn’t want it to be true. He didn’t want his vision of himself buried and no longer living to be some sort of premonition. But it felt right. It fit. This way, they could return the missing piece. It had been destroyed, but a new piece had been created. Except, the imbalance had never truly been solved because Sullivan never returned to the veins, never went into the ground to put it all back together.
“Sebastian.” James grabbed his arm. “That can’t be the answer. You aren’t actually part of the veins. You’re connected to them like a unit, but you aren’t actually one . Going in to join them wouldn’t do anything. The missing piece was made of natural energy. Your magic isn’t the same. It doesn’t add up the way you’re thinking.”
“Maybe not.” Sebastian allowed himself to be relieved. “I honestly felt like I was losing my mind the night you were captured. Everything I was thinking was a mess. It just feels like it could all add up, you know?”
James gripped him harder. “We all want a neat solution, but that doesn’t mean we’ll get one. You’re blood and bone, not pure magic. You’re a stand-in only. We can’t put the veins back together completely with you or anything else. This isn’t the answer.”
Sebastian nodded. He knew James didn’t want to lose him any more than he wanted to lose James, but James’s disagreement was more than him being in denial or getting caught up in wishful thinking. James had a point. Sebastian felt sure he’d figured it all out just now, but he had nothing to back it up other than gut feeling and conjecture. He told himself that meant he was wrong.
He wanted to be wrong. If he was right, that meant nothing good was ever going to last. For real, this time. Completing the veins would mean he’d lose everything, and he couldn’t have that. He deserved good things. This curse wasn’t allowed to take his life from him.
But the fear that it would creeped back in. He’d always felt doomed, hadn’t he?