17. Helene
Helene
We’re cursed.
There. I’ve said it. There’s no way around it now. There’s rarely a motive for shitty things happening but Audra losing her mind on top of everything else...
Not only a seizure, but talking full on Norse gods and mystical, world-ending prophecies.
I build my argument with anger and logic, simmering hotter as I work through it.
Another round of you're fine and it’s going to be okay stall before they’re able to escape.
Was this the reason we ran? Why Mom never allowed us stay in the same area for more than a year?
“Wren, let me go.”
The shadowy barrier keeping me from Audra, allowing Nicholas to hold her down the way I should be doing, remains locked around me.
Tears scald and break, scalding paths along my cheeks.
“For fuck’s sake, stop touching me!” I yell.
And Audra stops seizing. Finally she passes out, falling into a restless sleep. I still can’t breathe. I still can’t look away or move or comfort her.
The invisible bindings loosen, and I sag, knocking my knees on the floor. “Kid—”
“She’s sleeping now. She’ll be okay.” Wren gentles his voice like I’m fragile, and I feel it in every nerve and cell.
Fighting trolls is one thing; leaning into instincts from a handful of YMCA self-defense classes. But watching my sister in the grips of something I can’t stop and will never be able to fix is worse.
I collapse against the couch with understanding miles away.
“Shit. Nicholas? A little assistance?”
Wren takes one of my arms and Nicholas the other, moving seamlessly as they haul me to the chair. Nicholas’s hand is cool on my neck. He keeps it there like a compress, its presence underscored by a brush of claws beneath my ear.
“You’re not alone. And you’re not the only one dealing with something terrible.”
I balance on my elbows, head sagging toward my knees. “I suppose you’d know? Being a few thousand years old?”
“Atrocious things do tend to accumulate in all that time,” he says.
His arrival, all of theirs, into my life has been abrupt. Within the space of forty eight hours, three men have barrel-assed into my small, routine existence.
Three dudes, two trolls, and one epileptic episode.
Or I should say three dudes, two demolished town landmarks, and one me desperately trying to get answers that aren’t batshit crazy.
“She’s not taking this well.” Wren doesn’t bother disguising his curiosity.
As though I’m something to stare at, consider, catalogue.
“Would you be?” Nicholas snaps.
Don’t cry. Don’t laugh.
I’ve lived through challenges before. Straightening, I suck in a breath and then freeze when a round of thunder shudders the walls.
Weather batters the windowpanes like it’s striving to get inside.
“Is that another...?” I trail off.
Nicholas’s attention darts between me and the window. “It’s not.”
The gruffness of his voice can’t disguise the worry.
“Then again, there are worse things out there than trolls,” Wren supplies.
“You’re not helping,” Nicholas growls, a starved animal.
“We agreed not to hide anything from her. She’s on the verge of losing it. Which would be better? A neat lie or an ugly truth?”
I shake my head, wrapping my arms around my torso. I’ve had no choice but to hold it all together. Every aspect of my life and Audra’s.
Because who else was going to be the strong one after Mom?
Who else was going to make sure that Audra got the attention she needed when the doctor visits were over an hour drive away from here? There was never a question of moving after she died.
We settled here and took the good with the many bad.
“The truth.” Nicholas snaps fangs at Wren’s shadows. “She’ll calm. Give her a moment.”
Only a moment? A moment isn’t enough after a lifetime spent contorting myself into an acceptable shape. A caregiver. A substitute.
Faltering now hurts more than me and Audra. It affects everyone in our sphere.
There’s suddenly more at stake. My next slow, steadying breath does nothing.
And I can’t check myself in for a nice, relaxing stay at the psych ward, like that’s somehow one of my top five vacation destinations.
Nicholas pulls his palm from the base of my neck, and my hand flies up to grip him by the wrist and keep him there.
There’s no time in our schedule for meltdowns.
Then again, there’s no time to fight trolls or have three strange men with magic powers in my cramped apartment. I’m surprised our combined weight hasn’t broken through the floor.
I’m flabbergasted my cell isn’t ringing off the hook.
The town has surely seen what happened to the bookstore by this point. It’s well past dinnertime. So why isn’t Barnes calling me and screeching out a demand for an explanation?
Wren and Nicholas wait, unease spreading like cancer, until I’ve gotten myself under control. And when I look up, Forest stands in the short throat of hallway between the living room and the front door.
Shame darkens his blue eyes. “I need to go. There’s something I have to retrieve.”
He hikes a thumb over his shoulder. I push up, only for Nicholas to push me back down.
“Do you trust yourself to wander the streets, bird brain?” Wren chuckles.
“Tend to your battles, and I’ll handle mine.” Lifeless in the gloom, Forest storms to the door.
It shuts softly behind him.
My heart gives a hollow thud. “Is he going to be okay?”
“He’s fine. It always takes him a bit to grapple with the memories when they come. And we never know which ones are going to hit him first,” Wren says.
I drag air into my shrunken lungs like I’ve broken the surface after diving too deep. There’s a measure of relief in it, but there are still too many variables loose and swinging for said relief to land.
“Memories?” I ask. “Does he not know who he is? Like some kind of amnesia?”
Didn’t Audra say something about a memory keeper?
“I’ll head out, as well.” Nicholas finally pulls his hand free.
I reach for the touch, missing it instantly, and in the space between confusion and longing I still have no room to understand why.
Wren looks up, his arms resting across his chest, and asks, “Off to make sure Birdie doesn’t hurt himself?”
“To ensure nothing else is creeping.” Nicholas slips out, soundless, solemn. “To see if this has happened before.”
Their departure doesn’t help the apartment breathe again. And why is Wren the one who stayed?
At least I’m not watching Audra alone.
Wren, like he senses my gratitude, makes a low noise in his throat. He steps to the edge of my vision, and his shadows thrust my now lukewarm coffee into my hands. “If you want something to hold.”
“What did he mean, to see if this has happened before? If what’s happened before?”
“The Norns speaking through a Seer. I’m sure it has. Although normally when those three broads make an appearance, they do it themselves. They relish showmanship. They rarely have a need for a mouthpiece.”
He nods toward Audra, and I glance at her, still a little surprised she's still asleep.
“My sister isn’t a mouthpiece. Don’t call her that.”
“If it makes you feel better.”
“It does.”
“You want answers. I’m doing my best to provide them for you. Keep an open mind. You’re not crazy, love.”
Metal screeches against the floor. Wren doesn’t move, but the chair from the kitchen is. It drags closer, over the uneven threshold, and he stands, moves, settles on the seat. Considering me.
The air around the back, around his legs, is cast in gloom, a storm inside the apartment, shadowy forms twisting like blackened knots on a burned tree.
I hadn’t noticed their shape before but from here, their designs are obvious. “Those belong to you?”
Shadows coil and drape his shoulders, brushing his skin like cats, until they sink within of him and disappear.
“They do. Do you like?”
I grunt. Without scope for a better explanation, I sip my coffee. Wind howls against the corner of the Victorian, tearing the last of the loose slate shingles from the roof.
“So, a dark Fae, a vampire, and a raven shifter go into a bar...”
“Poe never even dreamed of such a combination. Did he?” Wren’s smile should be infectious. “Perhaps a dirty limerick would do us more justice.”
Everything about him, and about this quiet moment, smooths over the rough edges in my chest.
“And you know me. All of you.” It’s not a question.
Wren shrugs and shifts to cross one leg over his knee. “Bird brain has some trouble. As you’ve seen. It’s part of his...curse, you’d call it.”
I shudder at the use of the same word I’d thought minutes earlier.
“Yes, we know you. We’ve known you more than twenty-eight years.”
My legs tremble. Ignoring the shadows, we’re two people having a conversation, Audra resting on the couch. And I want to throw myself out the window. I glance at her again, fingers curling around the cup.
“You’re lying.”
Something hideous twists inside me, forcing me closer to madness. But I knew one thing with certainty: Wren told the truth.
“Do you want to make this quick or talk in circles, monster?”
“It’s not possible.”
“It absolutely is. It’s real. It’s life,” he says.
“Then why don’t I remember you?”
Wren looks to be in his late twenties, early thirties, his face unlined and the earrings giving him a roguish edge. Right now we stand on the boundary of the universe. The one I know, and the drop off into the unknown.
He tips his head to the side and his eyes track up to mine. “Each new life wipes the slate clean. You’re born into a different body without memories of the past. But since none of us can die, we remember.”
“Sounds heartbreaking.”
“Oh yes. Heartbreaking. Bird brain has it the easiest, though. He’s cursed to forget.”
I shiver. “Doesn’t seem easy when he remembers.”
A flash of thunder illuminates the sharp angles of Wren’s cheekbones and catches the metal glinting along his ear.
Black shadows plume from his hands and circle the room, cloaking the decay from sight.
It feels wrong to talk to him when Audra needs me. When I should be watching her.
As though this conversation will hurt me.
“My mother believed in all that stuff.” She’s somehow a safer subject. Or a more familiar pain. “People thought she was crazy.”