39. We’re Off to Steal the Mirror #2
“I don’t know. I guess so.” I can’t hide the disappointment. Another night, another setback, and what is Tezcatlipoca doing with my brother?
Archer takes my hand up. “Hey. It’s just a few more hours.” He pulls it to his waist, where it fits as if it were made to go there.
“I know,” I manage, even though my eyes remain on the floor. “I’m just… I feel like I’m letting him down. I know I’m letting him down.”
“You’re not.” When he takes my face between his hands, I can’t help but lean into him. “You’re the one person in this life who’s still looking out for him. Even now.”
I shake my head. “I just need to be able to…” Again, that list scratches at the back of my mind. Free Jem. Find his body. Have him declared dead. Tell my mum.
My mum.
As if some psychic link was triggered just by the thought, my phone goes off.
I know it’s her.
That bit’s not exactly mystical. Who else would be calling me? Not bloody Gerald.
I step away from Archer, taking the phone to my ear. “Hey, Mum.”
Her voice comes soft over the line, flipping my stomach with how sad she sounds. I’ll take the angry version of her any day over this. “I’m just about to go to work, but I’ve left something in the fridge for you.”
My eyes dart up to the clock. Time for her to start already. Shit. “I’m sorry. I meant to be home ages ago. Some stuff came up, and I forgot you were working the night shift.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about me. I know you’ve got a lot on with this job.”
A lot on. My gaze moves irresistibly to Archer. The only person in this world who has any idea of how much I really have going on.
He’s just casually sweeping around the room, poking into cupboards. Making this all feel normal. Acceptable.
“Listen, um…” Her voice cuts into the brief moment of calm. “Will you be home sometime tomorrow? I need to… make the call.”
My heart stutters.
‘The call.’
I don’t know how I could have forgotten. But then I barely have any comprehension of what day of the week it is right now. Certainly no actual date.
“I’ll be there.” Because there isn’t another option.
All the world stops for the call. All our hopes brimming over every year, so stupid, so ignorant.
Imagining that maybe they’ve had a lead and just hadn’t gotten around to telling us yet.
Or that his case needed this one little push—that this reminder that he has a family waiting will get Jem’s file pulled out of whatever forgotten and dusty desk tray it landed in.
“Thank you.” The line goes silent between us as we both go over all the things we could say, that there is no point in saying, that have been said a thousand times. Eventually, she asks, “Will you be very late?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m coming home…” Archer glances across at me. Maybe he’d hoped that somehow we could spend the evening together. He offers an encouraging smile, even if it doesn’t light the back of his eyes like his smiles usually do. “…in a bit. As soon as I can.”
“Don’t work too hard, sweetheart,” she says.
I laugh. “That’s funny coming from you.”
She laughs too. Then, finally, her voice goes back to sad, and she tells me, “We’ll be all right.”
My heart cracks. Because this time tomorrow, I know we won’t be. I know, the minute she makes that call, we’re back to square one.
She’ll be broken. I’ll have to quit, if I haven’t been fired already.
I’ll be broke again. Useless. And all this with Archer, it will be gone.
Dust on the wind. Because he can’t be expected to wait another six months for me to get out of the house again.
Then, in a year’s time, for this to repeat itself.
I shove back the tears that want to spill, push down the pointless anger and frustration, and manage to reply, “We will be. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Night, Liam. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mum.”
I click the phone off and sit down on the desk, my mind reeling, an abrasiveness rising up in me as I try to steel myself for what’s coming.
The call.
The tears.
The breakdown.
But now, beneath it, the anger. The fury. The swelling rage deep in my gut.
“Archer?” I ask quietly.
His lets a filing cabinet shut itself as he comes to me and sits on the desk by my side, as if what I have to say is going to be of vital importance.
Maybe it is.
“I think… I think I’m going to go and commit some crimes tonight.”
“Um…” He takes a moment, looking pointedly around the office. “We’re already committing crimes, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we are.” I nod solemnly. “But I think I’m going to add a few more items to my perp sheet. Um… maybe… down… at the police station…”
Archer nods slowly. He doesn’t yell at me, or try to argue, or… anything.
So I ramble out, “I think you should go home. I’m going to… Um, listen, if I get one phone call in the morning—”
“Liam, can we pause here and think—”
“No. We can’t. Not anymore. That was Mum on the phone. And she just reminded me that tomorrow is the anniversary of Jem’s disappearance.”
I can feel his eyes on me, his breath tight, waiting for me to explain.
I do it as briefly and as basically as I can manage, like pulling out a long row of stitches.
“Every year she calls Marsden on that day. She calls and asks what he’s got.
And every year, five years running, she gets the same answer.
Sorry. No leads. Trail’s gone dead. So every year, just when it feels like we’re getting somewhere, emotionally, that gaping black hole opens up again and swallows her.
And me with it. And I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.
Not this year. Not knowing what I’ve learned today. ”
“So what do you want to do?”
My eyes flick over to find his as caring and patient as ever.
“I want to make him tell her the truth. That he’s dead.
And, whatever the fallout of that is, I just think…
she needs to know. She needs to know once and for all.
And if she falls apart, then I’ll be there.
I’ll pick her up. But maybe this time, if we stop reopening this wound, every single year, maybe she can finally start to heal, you know? ”
He draws my hand up, toying with the tips of my fingers. “What’s your game plan? You’re going to go over there, and you’re going to threaten him with some kind of blackmail unless he gives you all the details about your brother’s case?”
“Yeah.” God, it sounds so weak. Even I can see that. “I know what happened,” I argue. “Maybe I can say I have a source. A criminal source. And that they’ll speak. Or that I’ll go to the press. Or some kind of tribunal. Something like that.”
He runs those little circles around on my fingertips, as if the movement is helping him meditate on these ideas. “It’s a dangerous game, Liam. You could be threatening to destroy his whole career.”
“And why shouldn’t I? He has no right to be doing that job.
People like that, they… they can’t just set people up.
They can’t just use him like he’s nothing, just because he got himself into some trouble.
Fuck, he was so young. Just a tough, stupid, troubled teenager when he fell in with that lot, and they set him up.
They used him, and they left him like that, on the floor all night.
And did they ever catch those guys? Did they?
I refuse to just sit here and let them—”
“Honey—”
“No, I don’t think you understand—”
“Oh, I understand perfectly,” he says, still maddeningly calm, still running those little circles.
“I know you’re doing this for your mum. I know you are.
But it’s not just that, is it? You want more than that phone call.
I know you do, because when we had that séance today, you told him what you’re after. ”
Our eyes meet in the meagre light seeping through Gerald’s horizontal blinds, and for the second time today, it feels like he can see straight into me.
“You want justice,” he says. “You want the truth out there. But you also want revenge. Revenge for the dead.”
My breath catches. He put it into words better than I ever could.
He doesn’t pause to let me attempt a reply. “That’s why I’m coming with you. That’s why, I’m going to be by your side every step of the way doing what I do best. And, while I’m at it, stopping you from getting arrested.”
“I wasn’t planning on getting arrested,” I slightly joke, even if it was actually quite high on today’s self-destructive to-do list.
“And now you definitely won’t.” Archer stands, drawing me up in front of him.
“This isn’t your fight,” I protest halfheartedly, because I do secretly want him there, with every fibre of my being.
Thank goodness he sets me somewhat at ease by replying, “This has been my fight since Tezcatlipoca took up residence in my attic. Since he drew you to me. However this happened, whatever his reasoning was, we’re in this together now.”
Archer’s lips press mine, silencing any argument I might have sweetly and far too seductively.
He pulls back and wraps my heart tight around his finger when he whispers, “You’ve got me in your corner now. And if there’s one thing I’m very good at, it’s dead vengeance.”