CHAPTER 53 Empty Chairs
CHAPTER 53
Empty Chairs
L’Ardoise, Cape Breton Island
I do not care.
I slapped the pedal down. Well, if Bryn didn’t care, neither did I. Didn’t matter that the heat pumping out of Willow’s truck was drying my tears into sticky tracks on my cheeks.
Because snot didn’t dry as quick as tears, I wiped my face on my shoulder. Goddamn Bryn.
I squeezed the wheel of a truck that was basically on palliative care, because Willow had begged me to keep the thing running year after year. I might not be as handy with cars as I was with homes, but the core of the vehicle was fine. It was the little things that broke. The little things I could fix.
I eased back on the brake, letting the truck I’d adopted come to an easy stop. I glanced left, right. Only the barren, snowy roads of L’Ardoise’s countryside stared back.
Slowly, I pressed the gas, feeling the tires spin before the tread caught the icy sleet and yanked me forward. A mini piano swung from her rearview mirror, like the one Bryn and I had first kissed on.
The plane ride two days ago had been a sleepless nightmare, only made moderately better by Tye’s silence for once.
I don’t care.
I don’t care about Willow, about your twin.
This is about you not wanting to accept who you are.
I cracked open my window, sucked in the empty and brittle air.
The truck roared down highway seven, the eight pistons firing smoothly despite the months away. It nearly purred compared to James’s Ford.
I swung a wide right onto Devil’s Glen Lane.
It followed L’Ardoise’s river, the iced-over water barely distinguishable from the land. The only indication of the bank were the sparse bits of dead shrubs poking from the snow like an old man’s wiry hair. I passed a faded sign warning to stay off the ice, but it was covered in snow and lost in the haze of satin trees.
The truck bumped over the last bend, knocking my hands off the frozen steering wheel. I’d forgotten gloves, and the heater did nothing but complain that I’d abandoned it. I’d gotten it ready for storage before I left, but you couldn’t leave something for half a year and expect it to remain unchanged.
Finally, Tye’s old farmhouse loomed dark against the sky, the place he’d spent months in L’Ardoise during recruitment.
I dropped the truck into a clanging third gear, gently applied the brake, but the driveway had been shoveled to a thin velvet white and the tires barely skidded.
The house was more barn than residence, with aged paneled-walls and peeling red paint. A chair blocked a portion of the deck that had caved in. Crows circled a chimney that melted a puddle in the snowy roof. A lamp turned the curtains pink.
I switched off the engine.
Birds scattered when I slammed the driver’s door, then followed the trail of footprints to where his roommates’ boots were lined up outside the entrance.
I kicked the snow off my heels, slid the key Tye had given me into the shiny lock, and nudged open the door. Familiar whistles of a hockey game carried into a dated paneled hallway.
“Tye?”
Puddles of melted snow and the reek of yesterday’s pepperoni pizza led to the kitchen, where horses galloped on an out-of-date tile backsplash. A harsh blue light—a clean light—swept through the window, over the sink, and bleached the space of color. Everything was cold, drafty, almost gray compared to Naruka’s rundown warmth. It wasn’t cluttered either, not with Irish knickknacks that James would have scoffed at, or magnets holding this week’s list of groceries.
I glanced at the cow-spotted clock on the wall—four past one. Tye should be back home by now, but…
Meow.
I nearly jumped at the fat orange tabby currently licking himself clean in areas I did not want to see.
Tossing the truck’s keys on the counter, I turned toward the living room to find Tye when he stepped through the doorway, a beer in one hand.
“You’re back early,” he drawled.
“My parents weren’t home,” I lied—I was still working up the courage to face their reluctance of me.
Tye tugged off his hat and chucked it with the keys. “You look a little beat up, Roe. You over the jet lag yet?”
“I’m fine.” I jerked my chin toward the low voices from the living room. “Your roommates?”
“They’re catchin’ the Boston game.”
“Oh.” I angled my head, but Tye blocked my line of sight.
He frowned around the beer. “You wanna talk about what Stornoway did?”
I felt myself blush scarlet. Talk? It was all I could do not to think about it. Had replayed it a few hundred times since I’d left. “What he did? I—well, I—”
“Jesus, not that, kid,” Tye scoffed. “James told me ya pulled some memories from him you ain’t supposed to see.”
My blood cooled. “No. I mean, yes. But no, I don’t want to talk about it.” Or think about it, ever.
“Bastard,” Tye muttered. “You needed this week, Roe.”
I scrubbed my face. Yeah, I did, especially because Bryn’s last words had upset me more than the looming possibility that I wouldn’t have much time before the Gate asked me to make the same sacrifice as Kazie.
I paced the kitchen, trying not to look at the cupboards hanging at lopsided angles and the phone loose on the wall. Maybe I should call Bryn? No. No, he’d been in the wrong, absolutely wrong, even if I hadn’t stopped thinking about us in the garden.
“He asked me to stay, Tye,” I said quietly. “Bryn never wanted me to make the Fall. Never intended to trade me for Nereida like you said.” And after all my worries that he did, I’d thrown his confession in his face. Then accused him of not understanding me when the Gate wanted me to make the same sacrifice for Willow.
God, maybe I was wrong.
Tye scoffed. “He’s just playin’ ya, darlin’. He’d say anythin’ to get ya to that Gate with him.”
Except he hadn’t, Tye had been wrong on that account.
I shrugged out of my jacket, tossed it over the back of the chair. “He wasn’t playing.”
Tye grunted, then turned to drop two slices of bread into the toaster.
No, Bryn hadn’t been lying when he’d held the opal ring in his palm and looked at me with such hope that if there was a St. Peter of the Gate, he’d point his gnarled finger in the other direction when I came knocking. That’s what Bryn had been worried about—that Ruhaven would reject him for what he’d done.
“Tye, if we make the Fall, who do we return as?”
His eyes narrowed. “Ya don’t need to worry ‘bout it.”
“I want to worry about it. You said I needed to come back to L’Ardoise to get some space, to think about things. You’re not even giving me the chance to—”
He shushed me. “Alright, alright, alright. Who do you return as? No one. Next.”
“I mean, am I still a Kalista? Will I look like Nereida, or could I come back as Essie, or grass, or something?”
“You ain’t gonna come back at all. It’s Nereida who’ll come back. And yeah, she’ll come back as a Kalista again. Will she look the same? Dunno, can’t imagine she will, ‘cause her old body died.”
“Will she remember me?”
Tye formed his lips into a tight O to pop out, “Nope.”
“And Sahn, he’ll be there?”
“If Stornoway makes the Fall, yeah.” He lit his smoke on the toaster. Bryn had said he’d make the Fall if I went, but I hadn’t thought about what that’d mean for him . Only for Willow—always—it was only Willow that I thought about.
“But he won’t remember me either.”
Tye cast me a pitying look. “Might be he remembers Nereida—but you? Nope,” he said as the cat jumped off the kitchen chair.
Yet he’d loved Nereida for seven years before he ever set eyes on me. And suddenly, the weight of the last days dragged on me, tugging at my shoulders and the space between my eyes. I was so tired of this, of all of it, and mostly I was tired of myself. There were questions I needed answers to, yet I’d asked all the wrong ones.
“You said in the kitchen, back at Naruka, that it wouldn’t be long until I heard the call. How do you know? And how long do I have?”
“Maybe a week.”
A—a week ? “But how can you know that?” And how could I only have a week of this life left? How could the Gate ask me to give up everything with so little warning? How could I ask Bryn to?
The left side of Tye’s mouth lifted in a dimple-less smile. “I know that ‘cause I’ve been watchin’ Nereida in the Gate for some time.”
I felt the crease between my brows deepen. “I haven’t seen you,” I said automatically, baffled. “I thought you were in the Faruthian Mountains?”
Meowwwwww. The cat flicked up his tail and wound between Tye’s legs.
“I was for a little while, back about five years ago. Not anymore. Not since they had to use me to get to Nereida. That’s how I knew we’d be makin’ the Fall soon.”
The sleepless nights must be starting to catch up with me. “Who’s they ? And what do you mean ‘get to Nereida’?”
“‘ They’ are the Inquitate.”
I slowly lowered the hands I’d been scrubbing over my face. “You’ve seen the Inquitate in Ruhaven? And you never told me?”
“That ain’t what I said.”
Meowwww.
My gaze shot to the cat again, its back arching with a lazy yawn before stalking a floating piece of dust. It pounced, skidding on the tile floor, then scared itself stupid.
The toast popped out of the toaster with ringing clarity . I knew that cat.
My heart trilled, a bee with one wing left buzzing in circles. The saliva in my mouth dried to dirt.
“I…”
The cat.
I jerked when it brushed a bushy tail up my calf before sauntering between Tye’s legs and rubbing its calico fur on his jeans. Tye bent down, scrubbed it absently with one hand, his cigarette in the other, then straightened.
I rubbed my throat, swallowed.
“Hermès?” I called quietly, voice hoarse.
The ears twitched in my direction, then it turned, licked a lazy paw.
And two bicolored eyes met mine.
Oh no.
I took a step back, then another. My spine bumped the hard rim of the kitchen table. An empty beer bottle fell over, rolling, rolling, rolling until it hit the floor with a loud crack .
Tye watched me. “Somethin’ wrong, Roe?” Smoke drifted from the end of his cigarette, obscuring his face.
The panic bleating in my heart grew louder, nearly audible, as something pounded on the still-blossoming thread between Bryn and me. I pressed my palm to it, felt the heat of the connection brush my fingertips.
“No, no, nothing’s wrong,” I murmured.
But something was very, very wrong. And I didn’t need Bryn’s panic—which I could somehow feel even here—to tell me that.
Because this was not Tye’s cat. It was Patrick’s.
The little tabby with the bicolored eyes he’d loved enough to pose with in the photo that hung in the lounge, to bring with him from Naruka to Marseille, where he’d lived for six months before the Inquitate had found him.
“I think, maybe, I’ll try to see my parents after all,” I said, my tongue tasting like cardboard in my mouth. “They might be home now.” I made a show of glancing at the clock. Four past one. “Yeah, I think maybe they’ll be home now and we’ll get dinner or something. Catch up, like you said. Maybe go out.” I was rambling. I knew it, Tye knew it.
Why the hell was the cat here?
There was no explanation. No possible explanation for Tye to have Patrick’s cat in a farmhouse in L’Ardoise, not unless he’d been in Marseille, when the Inquitate had—
My head snapped up. Four past one.
Oh no. No.
Bryn’s panic was an alarm in my head, but I didn’t know if it was his fear or mine that flowed in an icy trail along my spine.
The Inquitate were here.
I gripped the edge of the table as Tye continued to stare at me. In the next room, the game clicked off, the faint blue glow from the TV retreating.
“Roe?” Tye said, voice quiet. “What ya thinkin’ ‘bout?”
An eerie calm settled over me, softening the tightness in my shoulders when I realized a reassuring truth—James and Bryn weren’t here. Now, they would know through the thread to be safe, enough that they’d escape whatever happened next.
I lifted my chin. “I forgot something in the truck,” I told Tye.
He scratched at his nose. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“Cigarettes.”
“You don’t smoke anymore.”
“I started.”
His eyes never left mine as he slowly pulled out a pack from his pocket, held it out in the kitchen between us. The thread gave a hard flicker. “Then take one.”
I stared at it, then him.
A little smirk tilted the lips under his beard, twitched his nose. “Don’t ya want the smoke, darlin’?”
I backed up another step, sliding around the table and chairs. “Thanks, but I’ve got something I need to do.” Like keep the Inquitate away from James and Bryn. When my spine bumped the wall, I flattened my quivering hand against the peeling wallpaper.
And glanced at the clock again.
Tye tracked the movement, his slow grin terrifying.
“Roe?” he said softly. “I don’t think you forgot no cigarette.”
I steeled myself. “No,” I said, surprisingly calm. “I didn’t.”
Suddenly, a lot of things made sense at once. Not just my impending death, but the months Tye had spent provoking Bryn—and learning his trigger. When it worked, and when it didn’t. He’d even timed it. Five seconds from the woodshed , he’d mocked.
Because he’d needed to know how far Bryn could be away from me when I was threatened and still turn into Sahn. But what did I matter? Or maybe this was about Nereida—or Willow.
You are disconcertingly curious of my trigger, Tye.
Not just curious, as Bryn had said, but planning, preparing.
I pivoted toward the door.
“I don’t think ya wanna do that, Roe.”
I couldn’t stop my shudder at the warning delivered through flat eyes.
“Do ya know why the clocks stop?” Tye asked conversationally. “No? It’s ‘cause the Inquitate are so damn wrong, so corrupt, that even time is revolted by them. That’s why Tallah don’t want them anywhere near. Too imbalanced.”
His words hit me like the thump of a closed coffin.
“What do you want from me?”
Tye stabbed his cigarette in the sink, let the sharp fizzle of it fill the kitchen as he tilted his head. “Ya know, I think I’ve been pretty damn clear about that, Roe. I wanted ya to stay right fuckin’ here and not make the Fall. But you didn’t wanna listen to me.”
I took a deep breath that stretched the tightness in my chest. If I could control my nerves, I could face this, I could handle whatever was about to come. But the frozen clock over the counter was like trying to ignore a dead man swinging on a rope.
“I won’t make the Fall,” I lied. “I was thinking about it, that’s all.” If the Inquitate were here, then James and Bryn were safe, and that was all that mattered.
“That’s why I knew I had to get ya out of there. Away from Naruka. And—no, don’t go takin’ another step,” he warned when I inched toward the door.
Maybe it was better to stay and get answers that Bryn might hear through the thread.
“Why don’t you want me to make the Fall?”
Tye pulled the toast away from his lips with a crunching sound. “Haven’t ya figured it out yet? Goddamn, Roe, this ain’t rocket science. Even I can keep up faster.”
“Well, it looks like I can’t, so why don’t you tell me?” And explain in explicit detail why the Inquitate are here so James and Bryn will know how to prepare themselves.
His bottom lip protruded while his mouth contemplated. Then he huffed a breath, but the sound was more resignation, dismissal. “I know you’re gonna see me as the bad guy here and I’m gonna accept that, because eventually, you’re gonna know the truth. That I was the only goddamn one wantin’ to keep you alive.”
Is that what he thought this was? Dragging me to L’Ardoise, to a house where the Inquitate must be nearby? Or was he one now? But he sounded too much like himself, with that drawl and scowl that no illusion could imitate.
He crossed the kitchen with a lazy ease, like the cat watching from the corner. The vibrations of his boots hummed up my calves.
I flattened my spine as Tye neared, stopped, stared, his breath a cocktail of toast and beer. He narrowed eyes both greener and sharper than blades of grass. “Don’t ya recognize me?”
Recognize him? Was he an Inquitate after all?
His dimple blinked in and out, then Tye squirreled a finger into his ribs. “Ya got me pretty good right here. Don’t ya remember?”
“Tye, I didn’t punch you there. I…”
Then it hit me, and I felt the blood drain out of my face. He was right—I was stupid.
It wasn’t in the gate lodge that I ‘got him.’ Not here on this planet at all.
In the Gate.
But then—that would mean…no. It wasn’t possible—James had made that clear all those months ago in the kitchen.
Not possible.
Because they didn’t come through the Gate. Were never in the book.
Tye nodded as the haunting realization must have settled over my face. “Now ya understand, don’t ya?” he whispered, breath stirring my hair.
The panic under my ribs had grown to a full-blown assault. And now—now I understood why.
“You’re a—you’re a—a—”
Tye finished the sentence for me. “ Drachaut.”
The word dangled between us on imaginary wires.
The pounding in my chest grew louder, like I had two hearts instead of one, and maybe I did, because someone was screaming at me, inside me.
“Does James know? If James—”
Tye’s fist crunched through drywall.
Dust rained down on my shoulders. The cat hissed, bounded off the counter with a thump, and took off into the living room.
“Forget James. Forget Naruka. Forget Stornoway for one goddamn second. Look at me , Roe.”
Breath whistled through Tye’s nose, his eyes went to twin green slits, sweat beaded on his upper lip.
Behind him, the clock remained frozen.
My voice shook. “I am, Tye. I am.”
“Good.” He bared his teeth. “You understand who I am now?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Say it, darlin’. I want to hear it from your pretty lips.”
I stared at the clock.
“You’re my Tether.”