13. Spate of Tempests
SPATE OF TEMPESTS
LEV
L ev lifted his teacup from the saucer.
“Are you sure caffeine is wise at this hour?” Silas said from atop the dining room credenza. He’d appeared a moment before, swimming in Lev’s half-buttoned monogrammed pajama top, and nothing else. “You need sleep.”
He had a point. After getting off with Asher in a spontaneous mutual masturbation session that never should have happened, Lev had given up on sleep and turned to painting.
Ordinarily, art anchored him when he felt unmoored, but he’d never felt more lost.
Last night had been one of the most erotic experiences of his life, which was saying something. In the years after Silas, Lev had fucked his way across the continent, burying his grief in the arse of any beautiful man who was willing, and yet, he’d never felt that alive since Silas had died.
Silas feigned a yawn and crossed one bare leg over the other. “Between wanking yourself dry and deciding to become a cartographer, even I’m exhausted. The second-hand embarrassment I had from how much effort you put into that map… I swear, if I weren’t dead, I would have died. ”
Lev lowered his teacup to his saucer. It landed with a rattling clink, and a tidal wave of tea sloshed over the rim.
Silas lifted a single eyebrow, never one to miss when Lev failed to meet Father’s expectations, even if it was something as silly as drinking tea without spilling. Never mind that Lucian Marks had chucked teacups at walls and used the shards for abstract art.
“How do you know about that map?” The collar of his shirt felt like a noose.
“Your defenses weaken with each passing day.” Silas picked at a loose thread on the Marks crest embroidered over his heart. “When will you accept that?”
“Ideally, never. In fact, I think I’d sooner jump off one of Lichenmoor’s cliffs.”
Silas scoffed. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”
“Please. If anyone is melodramatic in this relationship, it’s you.”
“A relationship? You ended that when you killed me.”
“Fuck off.” He took another sip, goading him.
Silas’s nose twitched.
“I’m curious what you thought upon finding your name in Asher’s sketchbook.”
“Oh?” Silas’s brows lifted.
“You did read it, right? I thought you were peeping over my shoulder…”
“I must have missed that page.”
Lev exhaled some of his tension at the confirmation that Silas hadn’t actually penetrated the sanctuary of his room or his mind.
“He’s already matched your name to your portrait,” Lev said.
His lips slanted into a smile. “Has he? What a clever mouse our Asher has turned out to be.”
“Asher isn’t ours ,” Lev said.
“Of course. You’ve always been so terrible at sharing. ”
Silas jumped down from the credenza without a sound and hopped onto the table beside Lev’s plate. Lev looked away. He hadn’t wanted Silas like that in decades.
“What else did he say about me?” Silas kicked his legs at the knee.
Lev almost smiled. Almost . The tragedy of being haunted by the man who’d once been his brother and later his lover, was that there were so many more years of Silas to be missed, the hundred different versions of himself as he grew over the years—in this case the rare kittenish and playful side of himself fishing for compliments.
“He suspects you’re important.”
Silas tipped his nose up. “As he should.”
Lev leaned back in his chair and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t know what to do with him.”
Objectively speaking, canceling the retreat and sending Asher home was the only sensible solution.
Lev had put his hands on the lad when he’d found him in front of Silas’s door. He could have hurt him. He couldn’t hurt him. But Mr. Hyde was always lurking, a raven perched on the branch of a barren tree.
“Well, you can’t punt him back to America,” Silas said. “He’s far better company than you are.”
“At least on that we can agree.”
The pages of Asher’s sketchbook had been elucidating. The poor lad thought his entire artistic career hinged on the mentorship. From a pedagogical standpoint, he’d be remiss not to nurture his talent.
Not to mention, he couldn’t send Asher home when he didn’t know if his home was safe.
Lichenmoor wasn’t safe either, but Lev couldn’t shake the fear that someone in Asher’s life, past or present, Ben or otherwise, had conditioned his exaggerated reactions to loud noises and Lev testing his temperature .
“After you kill him, perhaps he’ll stay and play with me,” Silas said, trailing his fingers around the rim of Lev’s teacup.
“You’re not his type.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Levvy. He’s fascinated by my portrait.” Silas cocked his head to the side. “I do have an idea.”
“Go on.”
“You could draw inspiration from Father’s teaching methods and keep your pretty American at arm’s length under the rigid roles of teacher and student.”
The unearned use of Father still rankled. Lucian had never asked Silas to call him that, nor had he called Silas son.
“I hope it doesn’t rain today,” Silas had said one morning. He’d been ten, one year younger than Lev’s eleven. “Father, what does the paper say?”
Wendell had already gone upstairs. Perhaps Silas was unaware? Surely he would never have been so presumptuous as to call Lucian Father , even if Wendell and Lucian had been playing house for years.
Ever so slowly, Lucian had lowered his newspaper. “Silas, there’s no need for such formal language. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?” Then he’d retreated behind his newspaper again while Lev could only stare.
Father’s chilly treatment and gentle reminders had done little to discourage Silas over the years thereafter—reprimands were a privilege reserved for blood heirs, apparently.
In the end, Father had affected a very rare form of highly selective hearing loss, lest he offend Wendell.
Lev had been furious. Silas already had two parents. How dare he ask for another when Lev had lost his mum ?
When their relationship had later turned romantic, Lev put his foot down, but Silas had replied, “It doesn’t matter if I call Lucian Father when you treat me like a brother.”
Lev’s insistence that they avoid sexual intimacy until Silas was of age was a frequent point of contention, but it was one boundary Lev refused to cross.
When Wendell died, Lev had been grateful Silas had carved out a back-up family, and grateful he’d never betrayed Wendell by sleeping with his son.
All the bloody good that did in the end.
“Father’s methods could backfire,” Lev said.
“You need to trust me.”
Lev snorted.
As if he could ever trust the walking unreliable narrator of a man. Inviting Asher to Lichenmoor had been Lev’s idea, but Silas had encouraged him, and that gnawed at Lev.
Silas always had a motive, usually self-serving. What was in it for him?
“All in due time, Brother.”
Lev rubbed his temples with his fingers. “I don’t have the time to learn the truth breadcrumb by breadcrumb.” He lifted his teacup.
Silas lunged for Lev’s wrist with the unsettling speed of cockroaches scuttling away from light. Lev couldn’t feel him, but his intentions were clear.
“You need to sleep.”
“I have to walk the shoreline.”
“My body isn’t there.”
Lev buried his face in his hands. “What if it is? ”
“It isn’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I think it’s safe to assume that my decades-old remains haven’t washed ashore on a Sunday.”
“But the storm…”
“The storm was a sneeze compared to the spate of tempests we’ve had since my death.” Silas moved behind Lev’s chair, draping weightless arms down Lev’s front, lips hovering near his ear. “Rest your head.”
“It’s not like you to take care of me,” Lev said.
“I know. I hate myself already.”
Lev folded his arms into a makeshift pillow on the table and lowered his head. “I don’t deserve your care.”
“No. You do not,” Silas said, almost fondly, and began to sing.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Don’t stray too close to the edge.
Or little gray wolf will grab you by the head.
Drag you into the woods, and to your death.
Now sleep, sleep, sleep.
Go to bed.
It was a sinister version of an already macabre lullaby, sung in a tinny doppelg?nger of the living Silas’s voice, hollow like a music box with the lid open, a cracked porcelain ballerina forever pirouetting in a frayed tutu.
Silas used to sing the original when Lev couldn’t sleep after he’d lost his mum.
A silent tear slid down the side of Lev’s nose and onto his forearm. He closed his eyes and pretended that the old Silas was with him, not the Silas who’d died and come back all wrong, or the Silas he’d become before he died.
Perhaps if he tried long enough, he could fool himself into believing that Silas had never died at all.
The half-moon shadows beneath Asher’s eyes were even darker than the night before.
“Alright there, Blakely?”
Asher nodded and claimed a seat across the table between Julian and Theo.
Hm. Lev had expected at least a snarky Yes, sir, if not a shy smirk.
Was Asher well? He’d arrived several minutes after the others, and upon closer inspection, looked a bit pale. Was he embarrassed about last night, or unnerved to find his sketchbook slipped under his door with the map of Lichenmoor?
Maybe Lev should have hidden the sketchbook where Asher would find it, or held onto it, but he hadn’t wanted to risk someone else taking it, or Asher searching for it.
Asher selected a piece of toast and spooned beans onto it, then folded it in half like a taco. Lev smiled, pleased to see him eating with more gusto. Now that all were present, Lev tucked into his muesli-dusted yogurt.
Between spoonfuls, Lev surreptitiously studied Asher so he could draw him later, memorizing the way his fingers blanched around his glass, the way he avoided eye contact unless roped into conversation, the way his mood dimmed when no one was looking.
Lev wiped his mouth with a napkin and tossed it onto the table. Silence fell at once.