Suddenly the guilt I’d been living with for years, on the theoretical assumption that I could do some good with Noelle’s prophesies, felt like the weight of the world. Now that I knew for sure that I’d failed.
“Why would she tell you to take me?” Sera asked. “It’s not like you were truly rescuing me—no one was shooting at me until you showed up. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Neither does you being in my...Noelle’s journal, yet there you are.” I pointed to the passage again. “And now here you are. Maybe we were meant to meet, exactly like this. Maybe you’re supposed to help us get Kenley back, then hide us while she finishes her work. Maybe I’m supposed to help you avenge your family’s murder. Hell, maybe we’re supposed to adopt a pair of spotted dogs and raise a hundred and one of them, then save them from a homicidal fur lover. I have no idea what Noelle wanted us to do, but I know that I’m going to do it, whatever it is. And I’m going to kill the bastard who killed your family. I swear on my favorite gun.” I pushed the .45 toward her in demonstration, but she only frowned at it.
“So, I was never a hostage? You weren’t going to trade me for Kenley?”
“Of course not. I’m not a bad guy, Sera. I don’t hurt innocent people, I don’t find civilian casualties acceptable, and I’m much less reluctant than my sister is to deliver a mercy killing. Which, for the record, I never even considered for you. I didn’t bring you here to scare you, or lock you up, or hurt you in any way.”
“No. You took me because some ex-lover told you to.” Her words felt like a warning. Like a siren spinning up in preparation to blast at full volume. But I couldn’t quite see the danger through the fog.
“Well...yeah.”
“Why did you kiss me, Kris?”
“I...” I stumbled, caught off guard. There were so many reasons—more of them than I wanted to admit, even to myself. But they were all selfish. Not one of them was fair to her.
“Was that in your book? Did Noelle tell you to kiss me?” She was angry now, and suddenly I could see the approaching storm. She thought I was still taking my cues from a dead woman’s dreams. That I’d kissed her not because I’d wanted to, but because I’d thought I was supposed to.
“No. That was my own mistake, and I’m not going to blame it on Elle.”
“Mistake?” Sera recoiled as though I’d slapped her, and I realized I’d fucked up. Again. Surely I was close to setting a record.
“No.” I shook my head and reached for her hand beneath the table. “That’s not what I meant.”
“So it wasn’t a mistake?”
I exhaled slowly, trying to focus my thoughts. “I honestly don’t know.” In fact, I’d never been so conflicted in my life. “If it was a mistake, it was a wonderful mistake. But it wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry.”
She frowned, confused. “It was a surprise, but that doesn’t make it unfair.”
“It was unfair because you’re grieving, Sera. I didn’t mean to take advantage of that. I don’t want to take advantage. I shouldn’t have—”
“What if it was fair for me?” She squeezed my hand. “What if I want you to take advantage?”
“I’m not sure what that means.” My brain couldn’t process what she was saying, but my body was fully on board.
“You’re a good guy. I wasn’t sure at first, but I am now, and I get that you don’t want to use me. But...people deal with grief in different ways, Kris.” She glanced down at the table, and when she met my gaze again, vulnerability shone in hers. “Haven’t you ever needed to touch someone? To be touched?”
Panic burned deep in my chest, but something hotter smoldered even lower. She was saying all the things I’d want to hear under normal circumstances. Unburdening me of my conscience. But...
But her eyes reflected something fragile and important. Something like a rose petal or a butterfly wing—too delicate to touch without bruising. And I had the psychological grip of an ogre. A brute’s emotional finesse. I wanted what she was offering—I wanted more than she was offering—but I’d been where she was, and I could see how vulnerable grief had made her, even if she couldn’t see it. I knew how our connection would end for her.
In regret.
I would want more, and she would want out.
I pulled my hand from hers as gently as I could. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Sera. That’s not what I’m looking for.” I didn’t want to be something she regretted later. I didn’t want to be the Band-Aid she threw away when the wound healed. I wanted more than that. But she wasn’t ready for more.
Sera’s eyes swam in pain, then when she blinked, all that was gone. She’d closed me out. But when she stood, shoving her chair back with the motion, her cheeks were scarlet.
“Sera. I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled away from me, and that ache in my chest became a constant, painful throb.
“Don’t be sorry. I misinterpreted...things. Good night.” She didn’t even look back on her way into the living room, and I could only listen to her steps on the stairs, while I held a mug of homemade hot chocolate and grotesquely melted marshmallow Peep, trying to figure out how I’d managed to alienate the one woman in the world I actually wanted to be with. The first in six years.
The first since Noelle.
Damn it!
I shoved the table, and it squealed across four feet of ancient linoleum.
Seconds later, the living room floorboards creaked and I looked up to find Kori in the doorway. “What the hell is wrong with you?” my sister demanded. “She likes you. That couldn’t be more obvious.”
I poked my melted Peep with one finger. “Where were you hiding?”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was using Gran’s computer. Mine’s frozen again.” She pulled out the chair Sera had been sitting in and sank into it. “How was I supposed to know you’d pick tonight to demonstrate how little you’ve learned about women since your junior year of high school?”
“It’s complicated. She’s complicated.”
“Bullshit. Noelle was as complicated as they come, and you kept up with her for years, so why is it you can’t master one conversation with Sera?”
“Do you have any constructive criticism, or is this just fun and games for you?”
“This is a fucking tragedy, Kris. You like her. Why the hell would you turn her down?”
“I turned her down because I like her.”
“And, what, now you only sleep with girls you don’t like? Have I missed some new masochistic trend?”
“Kori, I don’t want to be the grief-guy. That guy’s disposable. He’s not meant to outlast the mourning period. I want to be the guy that lasts, and she’s not ready for that guy yet.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” She propped one elbow on the table and scowled at me. “Who the hell are you to decide what she’s ready for?”
“I’ve been where she is. I took comfort from girls who had no idea they were disposable.”
“Well, then, maybe this is karma kicking you in the nuts. But I doubt it. Sera’s not the selfish asshole you were when Elle died.”
Sera was the furthest thing in the world from selfish, but... “She just offered me grief sex. How is that different from what I did?”
Kori rolled her eyes and tossed pale hair over her shoulder. “She wasn’t talking about sex, you idiot. Well, not just sex. She’s lonely, Kris. She’s alone. Her entire family was murdered, and here we are flaunting a house full of siblings, and lovers, and grandmothers, and she’s still alone in the crowd. She just asked you for a human connection during the most difficult time of her life, and you slammed the damn door in her face. You fucking humiliated her. If you weren’t my brother, I’d kick you in the balls for her.”
I stared into my cold mug, trying to reconcile what I’d though
t I was saying with what Sera and Kori had obviously heard. “I didn’t mean to... It came out all wrong.”
My sister shook her head in disgust. “You are a world-class idiot. Fortunately for you, the world forgives well-meaning idiots over and over.” Kori stood and glanced into my mug on her way into the living room. “That’s revolting, by the way,” she said with a gesture at the yellow goo floating in my mug.
“It used to be a Marshmallow Peep.”
“Well, now it’s marshmallow carnage. But to bring my point home, you just turned down the woman who put a marshmallow duck in your hot chocolate. I hope you feel like a real asshole now.” With that she headed into the living room, then turned to look at me right before she headed upstairs. “Fix this before it’s too late, Kris.”
But as I curled up on the couch, under my scratchy blanket, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d already lost that chance.
Thirteen
Sera
The next day, my third day in the House of Crazy, I avoided Kris as much out of humiliation as out of anger. I stayed in my room until I could actually smell and hear breakfast being served. I ate in the kitchen, while he ate on the couch with his sister. I dodged his glances and stayed out of his physical reach, excusing myself to the restroom twice when I didn’t have to go, just to avoid being left alone in a room with him.
I couldn’t face him, after making such a fool of myself the night before, and the worst part was that I’d been totally blindsided by his reaction. He’d kissed me. He’d flirted. We’d shared innuendo, and heated glances, and...hot chocolate. He’d seemed more than interested.
I knew we couldn’t have anything serious—I had to be gone before he found out about my connection to the Towers, and eventually he would find out—but I’d thought maybe I could have him for a little while. A few nights with more than a pillow for company and warmth that didn’t come from an overhead vent. The touch of hands that didn’t want to kill me and lips that hadn’t given the order to fire.
But I’d misread something, somewhere, and in the end, that was probably for the best. I couldn’t afford to get attached, and the last thing I needed was another short-term fling, especially considering how the last one had ended.
I shook off that thought before it could reopen old wounds, determined to focus on my current problems. Unfortunately, Kris was prominent among them. I hadn’t asked to inherit a criminal enterprise from the father I’d never even met, but if he found out that killing me would break most of Julia’s bindings and free his sister from the burden, would he even hesitate to pull the trigger?
Hell, he’d probably decide he was meant to kill me—that that’s why his dead lover had told him to take me in the first place.
I couldn’t afford to trust Kris. I couldn’t afford to touch him. I certainly couldn’t afford to like him. I was on my own again. With any luck, he and his merry band of mafia rebels would help me find and kill my family’s murderer soon, and after that I would disappear, hidden by my own Skill, as I had been most of my life.
The hard part would be getting out of that screwed-shut house without a shadow-walking escort...
But in spite of my determination to distance myself, I couldn’t help watching Kris through the kitchen doorway during breakfast, while he laughed with his sister like I’d once laughed with mine. Ian and Vanessa were honorary siblings—that much was obvious in the way he made them smile in spite of gunshot wounds and missing loved ones.
And his grandmother...
I’d never seen a grown man so dedicated to his grandmother, even when she smacked him on the back of the head and talked to him like he was still sixteen years old, either because she actually thought that was the case, or because with those blue eyes and that pale hair, he looked like an overgrown teenager when he wasn’t scowling or plotting Julia Tower’s destruction.
A teenager with a gun, and a dangerous edge behind his easy smile.
Don’t look at his smile.
After breakfast—another family affair I existed on the edge of—Kris, Van and Ian sat at the kitchen table brainstorming their next move in the search for Kenley, while Kori disappeared through the hall closet.
I took advantage of their distractions for a chance to circumspectly look for what I’d come to think of as the escape hatch. There had to be one. I remained convinced that he would never leave his Gran—a woman with no Skill or obvious defensive abilities—alone in a house she couldn’t leave.
But the house wasn’t that big, and all the windows and exterior doors were screwed shut. Frustrated and desperate, I even searched the closet in Gran’s room for hidden panels covering a secret exit. Yes, that would be crazy. But screwing the exits shut wasn’t exactly sane.
Alas, the closet hid no secrets, so when I emerged, still trapped in the House of Crazy, I took a millionth look at Gran’s bedroom window. From the start, it had seemed like the obvious one to leave open, so Gran could escape if a fire started in the middle of the night. But a glance the day I’d arrived had shown me that it, too, was screwed shut.
However this time when I looked, I noticed something I hadn’t before. On the sill itself, along with bits of sawdust from where the screws were forced into the wood, I saw tiny curls of rubbery shavings. I pinched one between my fingers and realized it was dried paint.
Kris had said some of the windows were painted shut, but someone had scraped paint from the opening in Gran’s window. Why bother, if it was screwed closed?
Hopeful, I gave the window a tug, and it slid up with little effort and no noise, despite the countersunk screws. And that’s when I noticed these screws were different. They were shorter than the others, so they hadn’t penetrated the wood. They were just for show.
But why? Who was the show for, if Kris hadn’t gone to the Tower estate intending to kidnap and imprison someone?
Half an hour after she left, Kori returned with Olivia—the bloodhound—and a tall, well-built, dark-haired man who could only be Cam, her significant other.
His significance was obvious in the way they stood close together, and sat close together, and kept touching each other for no reason at all, as if any distance put between them caused actual pain.
To my surprise, they’d been in the House of Crazy less than five minutes when they took seats on the couch, facing the arm chair I’d claimed for myself when all the friendship and togetherness started to close in on me.
“Sera, this is Cameron Caballero,” Liv said, one hand on his thick left biceps. “Cam, this is Sera.”
We shook hands, and when Cam started talking, I realized they’d come to talk to me.
“So, I understand that you have some information for us to start with,” he said, and when I looked up, I found Kris watching us from the kitchen doorway. He’d obviously passed along part of what I’d told him, but I couldn’t tell how much.
“I can give you a description.” I forced the syllables from my throat with enough volume to suggest confidence. A lie floating on honest words.
They didn’t need to know the parts I’d left out.
Cam smiled. “There isn’t much Liv and I can do with a description, but if that’ll help Van find his name...well, then we’ll be in business.”
Oh, yeah. Cam was the name Tracker.
“We want anything you can tell us about him,” Olivia said, and I hated how soft her voice was, as if any real volume might startle me. As if she was a counselor in a fancy office.
They definitely knew I’d been there. That I’d seen what happened to my family.
I spared a moment for thanks that Kris had had no other information to give them.
“Dark hair,” I said, and Liv started scribbling in her notebook with the stubby remains of a pencil. “Kind of long, and very curly. Light eyes. Pale skin. Freckles.” I swallowed and closed my eyes, then opene
d them almost immediately. With my eyes closed, I could still see him. When the room got too quiet, I could still hear him. The sounds he’d made between my sister’s screams...
“Anything else?” Cam asked when I’d been silent for at least a minute.
“He’s lean, but strong. Tall. Six feet, or more. He doesn’t look like...” A killer. I didn’t know how to finish that without saying the words. “He looks like a college kid. Clean clothes. Hiking boots. And he smiles a lot. Like he’s having fun.”
Olivia blinked, and something unpleasant flashed behind her eyes.
I knew what they were thinking. My description was too detailed. I’d gotten a good, long look at the monster who’d slaughtered my entire family. I hadn’t just glanced at him as I’d fled the house.
They wanted to know how I’d survived, when everyone I’d ever loved had died.
“Okay. That’s good,” Liv said, but there was nothing good about what I was telling them. “Did you notice anything else? Tattoos or birthmarks? Scars?”
I shook my head, trying to mentally detach myself. To rise above what I’d seen and heard. “His height and hair are his most distinguishing features.” My voice sounded cold. Clinical. As if I’d actually been able to divorce myself from the memories long enough to describe him. But that was another lie.
“Did you hear him speak? Did he have an accent?” Cam asked, and I realized that all discussion from the kitchen had ended. Kris stood in the doorway, quiet rage blooming in red splotches on his cheeks and forehead. Vanessa sat in a recliner, clicking away at her laptop, while Kori perched on the arm of her chair, alternately looking at me and at Van’s screen.
“No accent. He sounded normal. Educated, but not pretentious. His voice is deeper than you’d expect from such a thin build, but it’s soft. Quiet and controlled.” Even in the middle of...bad things.
I’d never spoken about him in such detail, but I’d relived that night so many times that I couldn’t forget any of it. Ever. No matter how hard I tried.
“Okay. I’ve got all that down.” Olivia met my gaze with a steady one of her own. “But, Sera, it would really help us out if you could tell us where this happened. My range is pretty good, but I still have limits, and we’ll need a starting point.”