“Good, you’re learning,” the young man sneered, then shook his head. “Sometimes I forget how clueless the fully Divine can be. Between Gabe and nowyou, I’m getting emotional whiplash from how callous you are. Mortals havefeelings, not just those shallow imitations you have.”
“I have?—”
“Maybe, but you’ll never understand theintensityof mortality. Everything means more when you could lose it in an instant. However much you ‘hurt’ or how ‘bad’ you feel, it doesn’t compare; it just can’t.
And half of me is like them. The part of me that came from my mother still remembers her smell, her laugh, the way herhair was like a waterfall of honey… That part of me isstill grievinglike it was yesterday.”
Silence descended between them, and Luce’s fingers tightened around the stem of his glass. Pain coated his son’s words, so visceral it was almost tangible in the air between them.
Foster had a point that Luce tended to dilute his emotions. All Divine beings did, because it was one of the few things that maintained their sanity across the millennia. Even then, not everyone had the same level of success.
It was always harder for the Risen Divine, who had to first teach themselves distance from their human past and the sensations that came with it. It was all too easy to lose yourself in pain, in anger, even in love or joy, when you had an eternity to sink into those spirals.
“Because ofyou, I have to live without her. The part of me that learned distance and moderationbrokewhen she died. I can’t turn off the anger. I know I can’t, because I’ve tried! I tried for years to separate from the pain and all it did was make me bitter. And it all comes back to one day, and one choice.”
“Foster—”
“You could’vesavedher!” Foster shouted, pounding a fist into the table so hard, a spiderweb of cracks spiraled out beneath it. “You knew she was dying, and you knew what she meant to me! She was mymother!You loved her once, but youlet her die!”
There was so much Foster didn’t know about that day, or the circumstances that led to it. There were still things evenLucewasn’t sure of. How could he even begin to explain to his son that it wasn’t for lack of wanting to save Angela, but rather that he simplycouldn’t?
“It’s not that simple,” Luce pleaded. “The ritual wouldn’t have worked.”
“That’s why I’m so furious with you,” Foster seethed. “You just make that claim; you didn’t care enough totry.”
“Foster, please?—”
“No.” He slid abruptly from the booth, turning his back on his father. “No, I said my piece. I don’t care whatever stupid defense you have. We both know what happened. The difference here is that you think you’re blameless and I can’t accept that. SoI’mdoing something about it, like you should have.”
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
Foster didn’t respond, because at that moment a man came rushing at them. He braced for the impact, but it never came. Gabe skidded to a halt mere inches from him, eyes wild and hair disheveled, foreboding wafting off him like a bad smell.
Foster’s pulse quickened as he demanded, “What?”
“Your apartment is on fire.”
Chapter Seventeen
Foster went very still while his brain took a moment for the words to sink in. The idea was simply too ridiculous.Hisapartment? The apartment no one knew about, that was warded more heavily than the oldest grimoires? Impossible.
Time slowed to a muddy crawl. The noise in the bar dulled to a muffled roar, as if someone had stuffed his ears with cotton. When he felt a touch on his elbow and turned to look at Gabe’s panicked expression, it was like moving in slow motion. He felt detached from himself. Then he blinked and took a breath before Gabe shook him roughly by the arm.
“Foster! Did you not hear me!?” the other man implored. His voice had the same muffled quality as the music, and Foster slowly realized it was from the rush of blood, his pulse hammering in his ears, blocking out all the sound. “Your apartment ison fire!”
His apartment, in all its disarray and disrepair, was his home. His safe space.
It had everything he needed: food, shelter, a place to work his spells, his gourmet coffees, and the last few connections he had to his mother.
Abruptly, he came back to himself. The world spun with a whoosh that rocked him back as if he’d been punched in the gut, and sounds returned with a bang. His heart dropped into his feet and his chest tightened.
His mother.
The Gospel, the rituals,her photo.
Luce could see the devastation slip over Foster’s face, and it stirred something in him that he didn’t have a name for, some primal urge to grab his son and fold him into his chest and protect him from the horrors of the world. He needed to hold him, to feel him warm and alive in his arms.
He was reaching out unconsciously, just barely grazing his son’s sleeve, when Foster yanked his arm free of Gabriel’s grip, shoving through the dancefloor with a single-minded focus on getting out and getting home.
