Chapter 13
Thirteen
For once, no well-meaning yet overbearing man was making a move to stop me. I sat up on the loveseat. My head no longer hurt, nor did my ribs or leg. I splayed my arms out in front of me, inspecting them. All the soreness and disorientation I’d felt moments before was now gone, and I felt like myself again. Well, mostly. Benny had really fixed me up.
There was the small matter of the anxiety snaking through my stomach as Nikolai made his way into the room and sat on the stool Benny had just vacated. He stared at me silently, his piercing blue eyes meeting mine, cold and nearly devoid of feeling like always. I’d never been able to get a line on him. Was he really that cold and unfeeling, or was it a carefully constructed front? He’d given me a knife for my protection when I’d only known him a day or two. And he was here, wasn’t he? All signs pointed to the fact that he did care.
And now I was pretty sure I knew why.
Phillip, Jamie, and Benny were in the corner of the room, talking. I could make out snippets of what they were whispering about—something to do with Shank and the location of his body, and the cops, whose sirens I could hear fast approaching —but it was hard to concentrate on that right now. The dream I’d had when knocked out was still at the very forefront of my consciousness, and I couldn’t do a single thing until I confronted it.
Phillip was craving a cigarette, and badly. I could feel it, could feel his need, his weakness overtaking him. The magic was strong right now, probably because of what Benny had just done. “Phillip,” I said, and all three men turned to me. “Don’t cave and smoke. You’ve done so well; you can’t give up now.”
“I won’t,” he said, turning to look at me from across the room, his face equal parts embarrassed and annoyed. “Goddamit.”
“Can you guys give Nikolai and I just a sec?” I asked. “Maybe go get Phillip some Nicorette?”
Phillip hesitated, then nodded. “I’m going to go out and greet the police. I’ll…spin some kind of story. Figure something out to explain all this.” He turned to Nikolai. “You guys make it quick, okay? Can you make sure Stormy gets out and meets me in the parking lot?” Nikolai nodded, and Phillip, Jamie, and Benny left the room, shutting the door behind them.
Nikolai chuckled as he turned back to me. “You sure know how to command a room. Give it another day or two and you’ll be running the Wolfden. Benny doesn’t know what’s in store for him.”
“God, that’s the last thing I’d ever want. They’re only being nice to me because I just got hurt,” I said dismissively. “Benny will always be the one in charge.” I shuddered. “I don’t even want to know what it looks like out there.”
“Not as bad as you’d think,” he answered, running a hand through his long hair. “Shank’s in the back—we all thought we’d better not move him—and there’s a bunch of trash and debris back there too, but the front of the bar is fine. Everybody exited out pretty calmly after the explosion. It was very organized and really fast. I guess shit like this is par for the course these days and people know how to get themselves to safety efficiently.”
“That’s both depressing and a relief,” I said, and he nodded.
“There’s very minimal damage to the venue, from what I can tell,” he went on. It occurred to me that he seemed nervous. His hand, still wound around his blond hair, was trembling a little. Phillip’s had been too. Everyone was more rattled than they wanted me to know. “I don’t think the venue will have to petition their insurance for too many repairs. We really lucked out.”
“We?”
“Yeah, ‘we,’” he answered, looking at me strangely. “Haven’t you figured out that we’re all in this together?”
“I guess I’m still getting used to that.”
“You’re one of us now,” he said kindly.
“Thank you,” I said, touched, then, unable to put it off any longer, “Nikolai, are you my brother?”
His cold blue eyes widened, and he looked away for a second. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his pale throat, then looked back at me. His eyes, usually so emotionless, had softened. His shoulders softened too, as though he was losing a tension he’d held onto for a long time. With the slightest, almost imperceptible nod, he said in a very soft voice, “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I tried, but I lost my nerve.”
“Back at the Wolfden? When you gave me the knife?”
Nikolai nodded. “Yes. That knife was—is—a family heirloom, passed down from my mother, and I wanted you to have it. I know you aren’t blood related through her, but it felt…significant… to me that you have it now that she’s gone. That knife has female energy; it’s meant to be wielded by a woman.” He sighed. “I wanted to tell you then, but you were in a hurry to get going with Roberta and Benny and I just…chickened out. I was afraid, I guess.” He sighed again, more deeply this time. “I’ve been holding it in for so long, I just got used to the feeling.”
“I’m sorry about your mother,” I said softly.
“It’s alright,” he said. “Every day it gets a little easier.”
I wondered what had happened to her, but now wasn’t the time. “I had a dream,” I said instead. “When I was knocked out. Daddy introduced us at the wrestling match, back at the flea market, when we were kids. The first time I ever saw Benny—the Black Wolf. His first ever match. It was the same day.” I closed my eyes, remembering how vivid that dream had been. I could still taste the cloying sweetness of funnel cake and see the wedge of watermelon, dotted with Tajin. “He introduced us, and I think he was planning on telling me you were my brother, but he wussed out in the end.”
“Runs in the family.” Nikolai chuckled, but then his face turned serious. “That really did happen. Just like you described. I was about eight years old, I think. You would have been about five.”
“What happened after that?” I asked. “I don’t…I don’t remember.”
“He didn’t tell you,” Nikolai explained. “And Mama was pissed. That was the last straw for her; he’d let us down so many times. She was just done, I guess.” He shook his head, apparently lost in memories. “For a long time, Mama and me lived a few doors down from you guys in the same trailer park. It was a total cluster fuck. As you can imagine, your mother wasn’t exactly thrilled with our father moving his mistress and son in right under her nose. All three of them fought all the time.” His mouth was downturned, his eyes sad. “You and I had a good time, though, for a couple years. We’d get out and ride bikes together, play catch, sneak down to the creek and catch frogs, ignoring our mothers screeching in the parking lot.”
“I don’t remember much of that at all,” I said. “But I’m hoping it’ll come back. It sounds nice.”
“It was. Both Roberta and Jamie moved to the trailer park around the same time I did, and we’d all play together. We had a lot of fun…for a while,” he said. “It was around then that Roberta’s dad Elvin started tinkering with all us kids that my mom and your mom came to blows.”
“They did?” I wasn’t surprised to hear it.
“Yep. Mama gave as good as she got, and they both ended up with black eyes. The battle might’ve been a draw, but Laureen ended up winning the war. She told our father she was going to leave him if he didn’t end things once and for all—with both of us.”
“She told him not to see his own son?” I asked, incredulous.
“Yep.” Nikolai nodded. “That she did.”
My mother had done a lot of things in her day, but this made me feel far more ashamed than I’d ever felt of her before. “But you’re older than me. Which means that you were born long before Daddy and my mom were even dating, much less married. What reason would she have to keep him from his own son?”
“Jealousy, probably,” Nikolai answered. “I guess Laureen didn’t believe his excuses that he’d only had us move to the trailer park so he could spend time with me. She wasn’t stupid; she knew they were still carrying on. She was right not to trust him. He’s garbage.” Nikolai’s face was red. “From what I understand, Laureen just finally got sick of pretending she didn’t know what was going on. She issued an ultimatum, and well, I was collateral damage.” He twirled his hair with a finger. “So we moved out. It sucked. I missed you, and I missed our father, too, even if he was a drugged-out bastard. But at the same time, I was kinda relieved to be away from Elvin and that scene. The things he was doing, messing with all our heads…It scared me.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was still getting all those memories back, and thinking about how Elvin had forced me to go along with his weird spells and hypnosis chilled my blood.
Nikolai continued. “I wanted to protect you so bad, but there was nothing I could do. I was just a little kid. Jamie and I used to hide from him all the time. And then he went and wiped your memories…I’ll never forget the time Mama and I came back to the trailer park to get some of our stuff we’d left behind and I saw you on the front porch, swinging on the porch swing. I came over to see you, and you just stared blankly at me like you’d ever seen me before.” To my horror, Nikolai’s bright blue eyes filled with tears. “I never tried to see you again after that. It was too hard. All of it was too hard. Before, when you didn’t know you were my sister, that hurt. But to have you not know me at all…that was too much.”
“I’m so sorry.” I got up from the loveseat and kneeled over him, pulling him into a clumsy hug. His blond hair was soft against my face. “I’m sorry about all of it. My mom, Daddy, Elvin…all of it. It must have been so hard for you.”
“It was harder for you,” Nikolai said, his voice muffled against my shoulder. His arms closed around me, warm and familiar. “I’ve been so worried about you for so long. You’ve always been my little sister, even if you didn’t know it.”
“You don’t have to worry about me anymore,” I said, cradling his head against my shoulder. “And you will always be my brother.” We stayed there for a moment, just hugging, enjoying the familiar-yet-unfamiliar feel of each other, making up for lost time. I took a deep, long breath, relief washing over me, filling an empty spot inside me that I didn’t know I had.
Then the door opened, and Roberta stepped inside, out of breath. If she thought anything weird about the two of us embracing, her face didn’t show it. “Guys,” she said breathlessly, gesturing toward the door. “You’d better get out there.”