Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mateo is low-key freaking out as he takes his spacious window seat and buckles in, watching the stream of boarding passengers. Seems like too many people, but no one else looks concerned. He starts counting them but has no idea what a reasonable number is, so he stops.
They should talk to Topher’s dad.
Just, like, interview him. See what’s up.
Because they’d both been drunk, they’d texted this idea directly to Topher and even though it was 2 AM, he’d agreed.
With the obscene powers of a huge bank account and the info from Mateo’s fake ID—Topher hadn’t commented when he’d listed his name as Matthew E.
Borrero—Topher got them a flight. Sobriety had come to Mateo an hour later—another demon-vessel perk.
Ophelia has only really come back to the world of reaping what you sow in the past thirty minutes.
She sits across the aisle, the seat beside her empty, huge sunglasses hiding bloodshot eyes as she checks every compartment around her for free things.
“We switched seats,” Topher whispers beside Mateo, failing at buckling in an impressive number of times before getting it.
“I was going to have an empty seat beside me. Because people too close might be bad with my thing. But I thought maybe she’d like to sleep.
Not that she can’t sleep next to you. I mean, not to imply that you guys are okay sleeping next to each other.
Or not okay sleeping next to each other.
On a plane. Only talking about planes. Where you sleep other times is—” Topher has the sense to cut himself off, eyes wide and desperate.
Jesus, this guy. “It’s okay, I get what you mean. We were up late researching.” Which bars had better tapas. If Topher wants to keep up this awkward chat for the whole flight—curse, demon, and death card be damned—Mateo’s not going to survive.
Speaking of not surviving, there is the matter of Topher’s curse, and how utterly brain-dead it is to get into a plane with him after the tarot pull yesterday.
But he can’t explain to Topher that they’d drunk-texted him, so here they are.
In an attempt to mitigate this bad idea, Mateo hyper-warded Ophelia and himself and, upon pickup, made Topher get out of his ride so he could aggressively rub a damp and perfumed egg all over him in a last-ditch effort to remove more bad energies.
He needs to distract himself but there’s nothing here but Topher and a small pinprick hole in the window he now can’t stop staring at. Isn’t that how the Alien got killed once? Sucked out of a hole? Is that a space thing or an air thing?
“Sorry it’s so early.” Topher’s quiet voice blessedly draws his attention from what is probably a perfectly normal hole in a window that’s going to be in the sky, apology all over his face.
“You texted and I bought the next available flight without thinking. Set the pick-up and drop-off. Reserved a hotel. I almost booked dinner at three different places because I don’t know what you like to eat.
What either of you like to eat, I mean,” he continues, gaze intent but curling a paper menu up into a thin tube between restless fingers.
Now Mateo feels a little bad he’d been getting wasted while this guy stressed.
As someone who’d just recently lit himself on fire while looking for an address book that was only ever going to be so helpful in the first place, he perfectly understands the desire to do.
“I get it. Sometimes it’s nice to do anything that feels a little bit like progress. ”
The wideness of Topher’s eyes diminishes as he nods.
Mateo’s pretty sure that means some concerns have been soothed.
So, in general solidarity with Ophelia on free food matters, he adds: “For the record, neither of us are picky eaters.” The overhead announcement muffles that they’re waiting for a maintenance approval—which is deeply distressing to Mateo.
Not wanting to give power to the cool phobia he didn’t know he had because he’s never been on a plane before, he keeps talking, “How’d things go once you left my place? ”
Topher’s face does something it’s obviously never done before.
It’s like in Bambi when baby-Bambi tries to stand and then walk, but it’s happening with Topher’s mouth in the form of a smile trying to figure out how to exist. “Nothing bad. I got back to the hotel without any accidents. I even ate in the hotel restaurant for dinner, and nobody choked.” Cool to clock another thing he should be wary of.
Shit! Had they solved the curse? Disappointment wars with being a decent human being while this sad guy offers the world his very first smile over not getting people murdered.
But even if the curse has been removed, they still don’t know who cast it, so there’s still a job here.
Remind him. “That’s great. We can set you up with a local place that has all the cleanse ingredients.
That’s important while we don’t know who’s responsible. ”
Topher bobbles, his newborn smile solidifying. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.”
Smiling-Topher might be more alarming than looking-freaked-out-Topher.
Mateo doesn’t know what to do with the raw positivity being directed up at him.
Stringing Topher along aside, if that cleanse really did do the trick, he’s a little pleased with himself.
Not to be petty, but somewhere his mom is hating this for him, so he smiles too.
And Topher smiles even more.
Too much.
It gets weird fast, and now Mateo’s playing smile-chicken.
Luckily, a dead-eyed flight attendant moving through the motions of buckling, oxygen masking, and inflating a dirty yellow vest interrupts them.
It’s rote warnings, repeated since time immemorial, but it feels like it’s a little hard to breathe in there.
Do they limit air in cabins? Is that a plane thing?
It’s okay. He’s fine. Because it would be amazingly unprofessional to freak out on a plane next to your client who you asked to fly you to San Fran—one of three offices the dad could have been at.
Thank fuck he wasn’t a five-hour flight away in New York.
Ophelia catches the flight attendants’ attention as soon as he’s done with his spiel. “I’m going to sleep but I want any and all food and drinks. Just make a pile. Beer.” Message delivered, she slumps in her seat, and the plane starts moving.
Mateo enacts a The Thinker pose, pretending he’s not in a tube about to rocket into the sky. Everyone says you’re more likely to crash in a car than a plane. Except cars can’t fall out of the fucking sky, and most people don’t have a death-causing-curse guy strapped in beside them.
“You can hold my hand if that’ll help. I mean, because sometimes that helps. It might help. When I was little, that helped,” Topher offers, those wide eyes trained on him in concern.
Mateo wants to say that’s not necessary, but then loud hell noises start up and the plane lurches forward, gaining horrible speed.
It’s not a decision so much as a necessity, and Mateo two-hands Topher’s arm like he’s been tasked with keeping the limb in place or dying.
They ascend for approximately ten years before stomach-lurching sensations finally level off.
“Sorry,” Mateo says in a strangled voice, prying his fingers off of Topher. He glances to Ophelia and for once thanks the whole goddamned universe that she’s got her legs bent over the seat beside her, head lolling against the window, dead to the world.
“It’s okay,” Topher whispers.
It’s not lost on Mateo that Topher’s just said the thing he keeps saying to Topher.
And that’s twice now—first time was the Dagger Lady situation—this wraith of a guy has been more together than Mateo in a stressful situation.
It feels out of character, but Topher did seek him out and fly to another state to hire him, which kind of makes him an industrious man of action, as insane as those descriptors are when he’s looking at Topher’s cat-that’s-seen-a-cucumber gaze.
And it’s really emphasizing what a shit job Mateo’s doing maintaining his just-fabricated professional persona.
But at some point, the plane needs to land and there’s a cursed guy beside him, so Mateo might as well make it thrice. “I’m absolutely gonna need to do that again on the way down.”