37. Regroup #2
Archer’s arms close around me. He pulls my head to his shoulder. It already feels like it belongs there. I lean hard against him, ask into the silence on the line, “Can I leave my number?”
“I’ve got your number on my screen,” she replies, and it’s not without sympathy. “Is there a message I can pass on?”
“Yeah. There is.” I take a deep breath in, then stand straight, looking into Archer’s waiting eyes. “Tell Marsden I know exactly what happened to my brother. And that I’m expecting his call. Today. And if I don’t hear from him, I’m telling the whole world what really happened.”
“That’s…” she replies. “Um… Okay… Should we—”
“Thank you.” I click the line dead.
Archer raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re polite to a fault. You know that, right?”
“It’s not her fault,” I mumble, embarrassed. “I was rude.”
The left side of his mouth twitches up in a sympathetic smile, then he drops a kiss on my cheek.
“I’m sorry to you too. I’m sorry I’ve got you involved in this.”
“You got me involved?” he chuckles, a touch of sad humour beneath it. “I’d say that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
I manage a slight smile, maybe a small huff of miserable and exhausted laughter. “You couldn’t have known I had that skeleton in my closet. Or that the thing in your attic had something over me in that way.”
“Nor could you,” he replies, stepping away to take up the kettle that’s just screamed.
“So here we are, both of us with some weird link to the supernatural. With some weird link to Tezcatlipoca. Somehow, for you, it’s your brother.
And for me…” He finishes pouring the water and sets the kettle down, then leans back against the bench, folding his arms. “I guess it makes sense that he’s here, given the ley lines and the gateway.
And maybe because of what I do. But it all feels very coincidental, don’t you think?
Why you? Why your brother? Here? With me? ”
The memory of what I’ve been trying to get out hits me in one blinding flash.
“Gerald has his mirror!” I vomit at him, desperate for him to know before something else interrupts.
“I tried to tell you upstairs before he knocked. I don’t know if that’s why he knocked.
If he didn’t want me to tell you, but it’s too late now, because I can’t not tell you.
Archer, Gerald has it. He has Tezcatlipoca’s mirror. ”
The whole time I’m blathering, Archer’s just standing there staring at me, blank-faced, taking it in. The enormity of it. The bizarreness of it.
“I didn’t recognise it at first,” I ramble on, just to fill the quiet in case he’s mad at me, or doesn’t believe me.
“When I saw your paper upstairs, I didn’t know.
I only saw the thing in person for a second, in Gerald’s office.
And I thought it was odd looking, which is why I noticed it. And then the police came in—”
“What?” He pushes off the bench, standing straight. “You saw the mirror in Gerald’s office?
“I did! Then the police, the day I got this job, they were in his office, asking about a stolen artefact. An-and Gerald paid me one hundred pounds to say I hadn’t seen him—”
“What?” he rasps. “He bribed you to keep quiet about the mirror?”
“Sort of?” I admit, fighting a blush. “But I didn’t realise what it was. I didn’t know it was this big of a deal. I didn’t know it was the mirror. And I was desperate for the money and-and…”
His hands are back on my arms. “Slow down, honey. It’s all right. Just tell me.”
God, when he calls me that. It’s such a sweet endearment. Like he still likes me. Like he still wants me. When I’m admitting to lying to the police on behalf of a man who…
Oh god.
Gerald’s stolen it.
Why has this only now really occurred to me?
“He can’t have stolen it!” I bluster out loud, already defending him. “Not Gerald. He’s so sweet. Kind of. He’s… He’s… He’s a business-owner!”
“You think Gerald stole this mirror?” Archer probes, keeping me on the track I don’t want to be on.
“No!” I argue, half with him, half with myself. “I mean, he has it. But he might have just bought it from a shop, or-or some dodgy guy. I bet he knows a lot of dodgy guys.”
Archer’s head tilts to the side, mouth set in a ‘really, Liam?’ kind of slant. “You don’t think Gerald’s a dodgy guy?”
“Okay, but he’s not that kind of dodgy,” I protest. “Certainly not a criminal mastermind who goes all the way up to Manchester to an archaeological dig, then steals something like this. Why would he do that? It’s not like he could have known what it can do. Or who it belongs to.”
“Hmm.” Archer’s eyes, beneath a deep frown, skitter away first, then he follows their direction.
He turns to the fridge on that short sound, as if he doesn’t believe these excuses at all, which, fair.
He snatches out the milk, pours it, sticks the milk back.
Grabs the biscuits, walks over to the coffee table and sets them down, already artfully arranged on a plate.
Gets the tea. Takes it back over. Sits. “Liam?”
“I’m sorry, Archer.” I glance over the spread with some mixture of guilt and confusion. “I don’t… I don’t think I can stay for tea. Tezcatlipoca has my brother, and he wants his mirror, and Gerald has his mirror, so I—”
“Please sit down for one minute,” he says calmly. Weirdly calmly. Like a school teacher. “We have something important to discuss, and I’m not sure how you’re going to react to my thoughts.”
I make my way over to him cautiously, settling by his side. “Archer, I need to go.”
He keeps that look of deep thought, deep concentration. “This is… some level of madness that I just didn’t see coming. I wish I’d known about this earlier.”
“Are you angry with me?” I don’t think I’d realised how close to my chest the concern was until it spilled out of me.
Archer takes my hand, kisses it, settling me immediately. “I don’t think that’s possible.” Which is super sweet, until he adds, “And that’s exactly what’s worrying me.”
“You’re worried I haven’t pissed you off?
” I ask. “Because I guarantee you, I can. I piss a lot of people off. In fact, I’m not sure I’m very likeable at all.
I took this job I shouldn’t have taken. I basically lied to you about my experience, through omission.
I didn’t tell you any of this past of mine when I… I—”
He cuts my rambling short by placing my hand on his chest, right over his heart.
“All it does is make me like you more. Because I understand you. Or I believe I do. And I believe you understand me.” He pauses a moment, worry in the deep lines between his eyebrows, then he pushes forward, slowly, too-seriously.
“What I’m feeling for you, it’s… fast. It’s maybe something you don’t want to talk about right now because we have other things to discuss, and I don’t want to be weird or make you feel uncomfortable, but I’m taking this chance because… ”
Archer presses his lips, then sets his clear and determined eyes on mine.
“Because what are the chances that you, Liam, who has been grieving a missing brother for five years, just happened to walk into the office of the ExorSquad, find employment with a man who deals in the dead, who just happens to have stolen a mirror that belongs to a god, a god who keeps the dead, who also just happens to be haunting the home of a necromancer, who just happens to have the power to speak with the dead, and… and…”
I wait, bated breath.
He finishes with, “And who just happens to have fallen head over heels for you in a matter of days.”
“Uh…” I try to get my brain to skip over that last bit, concentrate on all the other really important stuff he’s just said. “That seems…” A lot. It’s a lot. But I only ask, “Really?”
Head over heels. Actually, really head over heels? For me?
“Yes, really,” he concurs with a frown. “It is a lot of coincidences.”
“No, I mean—”
“It’s really more like…” His knees swivel around to press against mine, then he snaffles up my other hand and holds them both in some pose that almost feels like he’s about to propose.
And as mad as it is, I wonder, would I even say no?
Especially when he tells me, “This—you and me—feels like fate.”
My heart skips several beats as I stare back at him.
That’s very romantic. Super romantic.
The most romantic.
But he’s right. It’s not the time for that sort of declaration.
Not that I’m complaining. But I am sitting here saying absolutely nothing like a turnip, so I’m relieved when he continues with, “You in my home, by chance, when you’re the one who needs help from someone like me, doing exactly what I usually do on my own, without a god stepping in to make it happen. ”
“Yeah,” I admit. “That is weird.”
“It feels exactly like that mirror belongs to the god of fate, Liam, and because Gerald unearthed it, it allowed Tezcatlipoca to move along the ley lines that surround this area, to come into reality, right here at the epicentre of it all. The widest gateway he could have found from that world into ours. Where he has what you want, and you have what he wants, and whatever is happening here between us…”
“We’re perfect.” The words are out before I can stop them. A protest and a confirmation. And I wish I could cram them back in. It’s too soon, too open.
But Archer says, “We’re perfect. Like two perfectly fated people. Fated to meet, fated to have these puzzle pieces slide into place. Primed and ready to do exactly what he wants, because he knows I’d do just about anything for you. Already. Because he orchestrated this.”
“Orchestrated?” I repeat breathlessly. All of this? How? How is this possible?
I slip away from him, the room swimming as I pace beneath the chandelier that crushed Raul three days ago. Which feels like a lifetime ago. Like I’ve known Archer forever already. “No, there’s no way. How could he have done this?”
“He’s a literal god, Liam,” Archer says, as if I needed the reminder. “He built the world, according to the Aztecs. He can make or break us. He can fuck with whatever he likes.”