Page 3 of Feathers From the Sky

I snatch the phone off the table, Sasha grunting in annoyance because she cannot see it anymore. I snort when I realize he proposed to her in front of the Eiffel Tower, his sandy hair catching red in the sunset. Right as I am about to give Hale back his phone, I notice where her other hand rests. My mouth goes dry, and my heart pounds in my chest, conflicting emotions battling for dominance in my mind.

“She’s pregnant,” I say, passing the phone to Sasha. “Look.”

My sister is silent as she studies the picture before swiping to the next one. They are kissing, his arm wrapped around her and his ring on her finger, and they hold a tiny onesie with the word “Bonjour” printed on it between them.

“Do you think she had this idea pinned to her ‘Live. Laugh. Love.’ inspiration mood board?” she asks, and I laugh so hard it takes me by surprise. Sasha knows everything about me, and most importantly, she knows exactly what I need to hear in the moment. I take my phone and clear out all the messages of people asking me if I’d seen the news. The same nosy offenders who wait in digital purgatory for a response are the ones who asked me how Dad and Angela died. As if they didn’t see the goddamn articles. They didn’t get an answer then, and they won’t get an answer now.

Vultures.

When another message lights up, I almost groan in annoyance before seeing what it is.

“Alright,” I say, sitting up straighter. “Clarke messaged me again. It’s time.”

“Are you sure?” Hale blurts, sitting up with his elbows on the table. “Didn’t you just say the other day you weren’t ready? Proved it with Maya last night?”

Sasha says nothing, just watches me, and it is her I address. She is the one I don’t want to disappoint. Hale will come around to any of my ideas eventually. But Sasha—if she doesn’t approve, I can’t go through with it.

“I think it’s time to put all the past behind me, don’t you?” I ask, hoping she will agree.

“If you’re certain you can do this,” Sasha says, adding, “By yourself, I mean. I can come with you.”

Smiling, I lean back against the booth. “I don’t think the poor guy would be prepared for two women at a matchmaking photo shoot. Besides,” I hedge, “I don’t need my sister seeing me in lingerie.”

Hale laughs, though he eyes me with worry as I reply to Clarke’s email.

“To new beginnings,” I say as I down the entire glass of water in front of me.

2

“I found her.The hunter. I found them,” Remy says, sounding exhausted. My brother is never tired. He is boundless energy, and I wish he’d just fucking come home.

“Where?” I ask, ready to haul him in. He won’t listen to me. He doesn’t have to do it alone.

“Shit, I have to go,” he says, but there is something in his voice that plants a kernel of worry in my chest. “This won’t take long. She doesn’t even know what she is, and Bill is already dead. Father won’t keep me out forever.”

This won’t take long.

I shake the memory away. It is six months after that call, and I am staring at my phone in my hand, my thumb twitching over the red disconnect button. I have not heard my brother’s voice since that call, and now, I will never hear it again.

“Roman?” Margot is unusually quiet.

Pressing my thumb down, I disconnect the call and pull up the GPS app to see where Gwyn is. She is still at the restaurant, and I have all the time in the world.

My life is irrevocably changed, and I am breathless. My brother is dead—the blood is still fresh. The delivery had been packaged professionally, the courier gone before anyone could find them to ask questions. It is all sterile and tidy, and it is so goddamn wrong. Remy is chaos and unrest. He is good intentions and late nights, and now he is dead. He was precious and rare. I failed him, and now he is gone.

This is no longer a search for my brother and is now a search for answers. An explanation for how over a gallon of his blood just ended up on my father’s doorstep. The human body can lose something like a sixth of its blood and still live. A vampire body can lose even more—but not a gallon.

A wet nose presses into my hand, and I flinch away, storming across the small living room. I can hear the dog get on the couch, and I’m surprised there is room for it. There is no clean laundry being ignored, no box of Hale’s art supplies balanced precariously on the arm of the sofa. It is oddly tidy for once, and it pisses me off. It should be disordered hell. Gwyn reminds me of Remy in that way; they are both tragic disarray, with little room in them for cleanliness. It has been odd finding comfort in her storm while I’ve been searching for him—especially since she is the reason he was even here. I am half-tempted to throw shit around, and I doubt she’d even notice. But her roommate would. Hale is one of those slobs who knows exactly where everything is, and if I made a mess, he’d know. At this point, I don’t know if I care.

Though I want to trash the place, it’s rare I find this apartment empty, and I won’t waste it. Especially now. But I can’t focus and won’t be able to until Remy’s face and voice are out of my head. This is my father’s fault. Remy’s banishment led him to this reckless end. My little brother is dead, and I should have done more to save him. Should have done more in the past three years. I should have found the hunters myself. But that’s clearly not what killed him; Gwyn hasn’t had the chance, let alone the ability. Her skills as a hunter are not honed. She is, for all intents and purposes, utterly useless. So what happened to my brother in the last six months since he found her?

I think of his eyes and see my mother’s. They aren’t focused, unseeing because she is dead. Two sets of green eyes meet me when I close my eyes, both accusatory in their gaze. Shame and guilt pulse through me over my inability to save them. I am on my knees, and I can’t control the sound pouring from my lips. If I’m going to find out what happened to my brother, I’m going to have to leave all this emotion behind. So I let it out. I sob, but there are no tears. He deserved better. A better father, a living mother, and a brother who would have protected him when he needed it.

I don’t know how long I’ve been on my knees when Gwyn’s dog rubs against me, his body slamming into me. I pet him absentmindedly as I begin to plan. It didn’t take too long for the German Shepard to grow used to me, and it’s not surprising her guard dog is as hopelessly unprepared as she is. When she moved out of her father’s house and the crumbling wards revealed her to me, it should have been a warning. It still irks me that I didn’t find her until she made a mistake she didn’t even know she was making. When I’d finally found her, it hadn’t even mattered since Remy was nowhere to be found. It had been two months since I’d heard from him by that point, and finding her hadn’t brought me any closer to my brother.

I am fisting the dog’s fur in my hands, and it nips at me. When I let go, not intending to hurt him, I sit on the couch and stare at the wall, trying to make sense of everything. Uncertainty is not something I’m familiar with, and I convince myself that is the emotion I’m grappling with, that is the reason I can’t stop shaking and it feels like my lungs are unable to inflate. I bite down on my tongue, my fang piercing the muscle, and I relish the pain. Forcing my tense muscles to relax, I wait for the puncture to heal, and by the time my phone rings, I’m calm enough to answer.

“Yes, Margot?” I ask, and my friend lets out a breath.

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