Page 38 of Thorns from the Fall

“Roman, really?” Margot calls from the hallway, admonishing me for bringing up Hale’s mother, the sorceress who’d organized the hit on Gwyn’s parents. “Do you really think now’s the time?”

“Margot?” my brother asks, laughing. His smile lights up his entire face, and I have to look away. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to confront just how much I missed him. He’s the opposite of me in so many ways, and the past year we haven’t spoken, the past few years while he’d been banished, has taken a toll. Like a sailor with sea legs getting used to dry land, I’ll have to figure out the new balance of things.

My friend peeks her head around the corner. “Hi, Remington,” she teases, grinning as she uses the stupid nickname she came up with years ago. “It’s been a while.”

When my brother smiles at her, I want to push away my questions and just enjoy this, but I know I’m not capable. I’m fucking greedy, incapable of leaving well enough alone—especially when it comes to Gwyn. I’m about to say fuck it and start grilling him for details, but he pulls the blanket off himself and hops out of bed. The anti-tear smock goes down to his knees, and he looks a bit ridiculous in it, but Margot doesn’t mention it when he scoops her into a hug. Nearly my height, he towers over her, and he kisses her forehead as he spins her around.

“Thanks for keeping him from killing everyone,” he says. “I know that was probably a lot of work.”

“You have no idea,” my friend says, and I level a glare at the two of them.

“I’m sure you’re both tired,” he continues, lowering her to the ground as he gives me a timid glance. “But I need your guys’ help with something.”

“Let’s get you home first, and then—” Margot begins.

“There’s no time. We might already be too late, as it is.”

“What is it?” I ask, wishing that all the bullshit would just fucking stop. It’s starting to feel like battling a hydra. For every one head we chop off, two more appear.

“You have to help me find Kayla,” he says, dragging a hand through his thick hair. “They took her because of me.”

“Rose’s daughter?” Margot asks, and I’m taken back to the moment I’d found his dead girlfriend’s necklace swinging from Gwyn’s rearview mirror. That’s when I’d known for certain that her family was involved in Remy’s disappearance, and it was the final piece that propelled me forward into kidnapping her to get some answers.

“I thought she was living in Italy with her father,” I say, leaving out the part about Rose’s death. There’s no need to make him think about her overdose on demon blood or his subsequent spiral. It’s probably something he thinks about too often as it is.

“That was nearly a decade ago, Roman,” he says, and there’s a tone in his voice I wish I didn’t recognize. Conviction and obsession had been his closest friends while he’d shivered and suffered away the poison in his blood.

“What’s going on, honey?” Margot asks, sweetly, a hand lifting up to caress his cheek. He closes his eyes and presses into the touch. I sit on the bed, watching them, and wondering if losing my mother’s softness is the reason he turned out this way. And if losing her had manifested in depression and addiction in him, what had it done to me?

Remy takes a deep breath, straightening his spine. “I got a call from an unknown number the summer before last. When I answered, the girl said she was Kayla. I mean, fuck, she’s liketwenty now, so can I even call her a girl? She’s a woman now.” He swipes a hand over his mouth before continuing. “Kayla only got a few words in, and then a guy came on the line. A demon. He?—”

“How do you even know it was Kayla and not someone pretending to be her?” I ask.

“He sent a picture. She…she looks just like her mother.”

“He could’ve found that on the internet,” Margot interjects.

“A picture of her being tortured?” he asks, disconnecting himself from Margot. He sits down on the bed beside me, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. Slouching forward, he stares ahead as his fingertips massage his temples. “They picked her up at Columbia, Roman.”

He coughs out a sob. Hesitantly, I put my hand on his shoulder. He allows my touch for only a moment before he shrugs it off.

“She came back to the states to go to fucking Columbia, and they found her.”

“Why do they even want her?” Margot asks, kneeling in front of my brother.

“Why didn’t they take her before that?” I ask, dubious about the authenticity of whatever blackmail bullshit is going on.

“She was a kid, and these guys don’t deal in kids. ‘Too visible,’” he sneers.

“What the fuck do they want?” I ask, thinking about how much money I have at my disposal now that the coven is mine. I shove away the fact that it can never properly be mine, not with Gwyn still alive. It’s not pertinent to this situation, so I’ll handle it later.

“I owe them,” he says. “Well, Rose owes them.”

“And what does she owe exactly?”

“Her soul. Normally they come to collect it when you’re old and dying, but when she…” he trails off. “I didn’t know shebartered it away. When she died, I didn’t know I needed to contact them. I guess the soul only lingers for a little while, in the body. But since I didn’t know, it moved onto the other side without being claimed.”

“They’re demons,” Margot says, squinting at him in confusion. “Can’t they just go get it from the afterlife or whatever?”

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