Page 48 of Lost and Bound
Arik hadn’t moved, but he’d opened his mouth like he meant to retort.
Nope, he’d said enough already. “I know everyone’s tired tonight, but tomorrow I want to sit down and talk about what’s next,” I said, trying to project more confidence, more authority, than I really felt. Fake it ’til you make it, right? “You’re going to be able to figure out how Hawthorne staged my death, right? You’re a shaman, and it sounds like you’re a necromancer, too. Fake bodies ought to be right up your alley.”
Arik sighed and propped himself up against the wall, crossing his ankles and also crossing his arms over his chest. The t-shirt he wore showed the tattoos on his arms, and I didn’t know a ton about magic, but…yeah, shaman. Those swirling runes and arcane patterns couldn’t indicate anything else.
“I haven’t told Matt this yet,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. “I probably should’ve talked to him about this first, since he’s my mate and the pack leader and everything.” He rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “Anyway. You have a huge fucking chip on your shoulder. I get that. More than you know. And your shitty attitude’s tempting me to walk out and not say anything, by the way—”
“My shitty attitude? The fuck? I’m the one who—”
“Oh, shut up and listen for a second, will you?” he snapped. “Gods, you Armitages are so irritating sometimes. I know how it feels to be misplaced. Out of place. FUBAR. You know, fucked up—”
“Beyond all recognition, yeah, I know the acronym. Get to the point.” My heart had started pounding, my hands shaking. I ended up crossing my arms too, so that it didn’t show. Whatever he wanted to tell me…I was afraid to find out.
He seemed to understand, and he didn’t snap in his turn—although he did narrow his eyes at me in a way that told me to really shut up this time, or else.
“The point,” he said in an insultingly patient tone, “is that it’s a lot easier to create a dead body than a live one. From a necromantic perspective, anyway. From any other perspective, either one would be close to impossible. But necromancy is fucking cool.” He flashed me a bared-teeth grin. I didn’t dare to disagree, and I didn’t have the breath to even if I’d wanted. Because it sounded like he was saying…
“Bottom line,” he went on, “I think the likeliest possibility is that you’re you. Or…most of you. You missing a spleen? Or maybe your appendix? It’s possible to make something out of something, but something out of nothing, not so much. Especially since the body convinced Ian and Matthew. Matthew’s not stupid, and Ian—uh, Ian has good instincts.”
“Ian’s not stupid either,” I said with automatic loyalty, even as my vision blurred a little.
He thought I was me.
“Sure,” Arik said. “Whatever you say. The source is suspect.Anyway. I’m going to want to do a full examination on you, check for missing parts. And feel your spark, the life in you. You can’t duplicate life and make a copy, unless you’re an amoeba. And Jonathan Hawthorne was the lowest form of life there is. Not nearly evolved enough to be a fucking amoeba.”
“No argument here,” I breathed. “I’m—finding out he’s dead, and not out there somewhere. Felt like a two-ton weight off my shoulders.”
The bathroom door opened, and I jumped. I hadn’t even noticed the shower turning off, or the sounds of Calder moving around in there, though he must have made some noise.
Arik’s face turned toward him like a sunflower at dawn. I turned too, and found Calder looming in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, barefoot and with his hair dripping little dark spots onto the shoulders of his shirt. He looked almost normal. But I could see why he hadn’t had a shirt on since I’d met him. The shirt had yet to be made that could fully contain his biceps. This one was making a valiant effort, though, and both it and the jeans had to belong to Luke, since he was the only one in the pack with measurements anywhere near Calder’s.
“Arik,” he said, that softness back in his voice—as soft as he could get, with that rasp that always underlaid his tone. “I’m glad to see you.”
“Yeah. Me too. You have no—” Arik cleared his throat. “I’m—look, I’m having trouble believing…this feels too good to be true. Like some kind of trap. A trick.”
I felt abruptly out of place and incredibly awkward. They were staring at each other like I didn’t exist, and like they were about one second away from another goddamn hug.
“And I’m fucking pissed!” Arik said, abruptly and too loud, his face going red. “You weren’t in that place for fifteen fucking years!” He sounded choked, like he was about to cry—like a little kid yelling at his dad, hurt and abandoned and lost.
Calder’s face set, deep grooves around his mouth. The way he’d probably look in twenty years. “When I left, I had to go without you. I was in too deep. If I went voluntarily, without killing as many of them as I could before they took me down, they agreed to leave you alone. And they did, right? I made them take a blood oath.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, not specifically, but I could imagine the possibilities. The supernatural world had as many gangs, criminal organizations, and underground shit as the human world, and it went even deeper and darker.
“They left me alone,” Arik whispered, hugging his arms around his chest. “But so did you.”
“But you survived,” Calder argued, taking a step forward, one hand out like he was pleading—reaching for Arik and praying for Arik to reach back. “I taught you what you needed to know, and you learned and survived. And I’m so fucking proud of you.” His voice broke a little. Calder. Breaking down. After everything he’d been through, this was what broke him, and it made something in my chest crack in sympathy. “I’m sorry. If I’d have tried to take you with me, or come back for you, you’d have ended up dead.”
Arik took his own faltering step, and that was enough. Calder crossed to him in two quick strides and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in, leaning down to rest his chin on Arik’s sleek blond head. Arik turned his face into Calder’s chest and closed his eyes—and I was pretty sure I saw a tear streak down his face.
Gods. I shouldn’t be seeing this. I’d been jealous at first, when I saw the way Calder ran to Arik at the house in Oregon—when I saw the way he reacted to Arik’s presence. Yeah, I could admit it, because the feeling might as well have been a big neon sign beating me over the head, and I didn’t have much choice but to acknowledge it existed. Why should Calder and this stranger, who’d already taken over my family, get a big happy reunion when I got suspicion and mistrust?
Maybe envious was a better word, because I wasn’t jealous of either of them, obviously. I just wanted what they had.
But seeing how wary Arik had been of Calder after his first overwhelming burst of joy, and how Calder had obviously been suffering for it…okay, no. I was done. Done being a petty, selfish asshole. That had gotten me into my current predicament.
And also? It sucked. For everyone around me, and mostly just for me. By the time Hawthorne had kidnapped me—and it sure was fucking nice to have hope that was the right description for it, instead of ‘killed and duplicated me’—I’d hated myself.
Because of bullshit like being pissed that two other people had gotten one decent break in what sounded like two lifetimes of even more unbearable bullshit.
