Page 61 of The Reveal
It’s October now, but it was still winter when I glimpsed him from afar, in a huddle down by the river, looking deeply unhealthy. He’d been wearing clothes that didn’t fit him, his always impressive cheekboneslooking like switchblades, smoking cigarettes with people who looked just like him. Desperate and twitchy.
He looked gaunt then. Weathered in that way addicts get when they live outside, one with the elements but not in a good way, and have given up worrying about things like laundry. I watched him as long as I could—until a nasty-looking thing that looked like it wanted to be a great bird but got stuck shifting ran at the truck, then started squawking loudly when I brandished my weapons at it, which drew way too much attention.
I pounded the steering wheel so hard all the way home that my hands were bruised for weeks.
I remember going up to my room and lying there, breathing too fast. I remember thinking,We’re really going to lose him.
Part of me thought we had, it’s been so long.
And this isn’t better, these circumstances we’re now both in, but he’s not dead.
He’s not dead.
Though I wait a moment, holding my breath, until I see his chest move. Proof of life.
Only then can I take in the rest of it. He’s been stripped naked. There’s an iron manacle around his ankle, connected by a tough-looking chain to an iron clamp in the center of the cell. There are no facilities to speak of—not even the minimal toilet and sink that used to be the only amenities in prison cells, according to the weird docudramas Augie and I used to watch while our parents were fighting.
I don’t really like what any of this suggests about the way he’s been treated here, but it does allow me to see the full state of his health.
And I ... don’t know what to make of it, because he’s lying there spread out on the floor like a starfish, his phoenix tattoo gleaming in what light filters in from the torches on the walls, but that’s not the wild part. The wild part is that he looks ...
It can’t be. He can’t look thishealthy. He looks likemyAugie, my twin. He looks like he’s taking a peaceful nap, possibly on the couch in the study like he used to do when we were in high school and Granwanted us to do yard work. His hair is blonder than I remember, but then it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it clean. He has a full beard, though it no longer looks scraggly.
He lookscleanin more than one sense of the word.
He looks like the brother I had, not the tense stranger I lost.
“If you’ve come to taunt me some more,” he drawls, though he’s still lying there with his eyes closed and his limbs outstretched like maybe he’s on a lovely beach instead of a cold stone floor in a cell somewhere deep underground in a vampire lair, “I still don’t know anything. You’re still wasting your time. I don’t know how many times I can tell you that.”
And for a fierce, jagged sort of moment, I’m glad he hasn’t looked over yet. Because that means he won’t see me cry. The tears spill over even though I don’t want them to, because he sounds ... normal. He sounds likehimagain.
My twin. The other half of me.
My broken heart beats hard. Painfully hard.
I wipe my cheeks ferociously because I know better than to let him see me cry over him.
Few things make him angrier, probably because few things make himfeelwhen clearly, what he’s wanted all this time is to stay numb.
He heaves a sigh, lying there on the ground. Then he jackknifes up, turning his head and opening his eyes.
And then it’s another eternity, both of us frozen in place. The two of us on either side of a set of bars, identical indigo eyes locked together.
“Augie,” I whisper, “what have you gotten yourself into?”
But his reaction is bigger.
He leaps to his feet and slams himself against the bars, reaching out a hand—
Though it’s not clear if he wants to grab me or try to bend one of those bars before him.
“Winter,” he growls, and he doesn’t sound the least bitbeachyany longer. He sounds pissed—which I know is Augie’s first sign of terror. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
15.
This is definitely not the tender reunion I might secretly have hoped for, but at least that part feels a little more normal. It’s still an upgrade from no contact.
“It’s good to see you too,” I say. Pretty sharply for someone who definitely wasn’t crying a moment ago. “After all, the last time I saw you, you were wearing a tarp like a jacket.”
