He swallowed. “I want our friendship back,” he admitted softly.
James sighed. “I wish….” His words faded.
Even over the phone, Zach could hear James’s remorse. And his belief that he didn’t deserve friendship.
For the first time since he’d discovered James’s lies, Zach accepted that his friend was genuinely sorry. And that Zach had punished him enough. Too much, if he was honest.
Kay was right all along. James had tried to save them. When he claimed he’d sacrificed his own dreams to keep them safe, he meant it. James had lost Riley, and they meant something important to each other.
James had never been responsible for the blood Shadows. Gordon was. It was Zach’s turn to step up and help his friend back into the light. “God. James, I’m so sorry.”
“What the hell for?”
“I—” Zach hesitated, trying to find the right words. “I should have been a much better friend.”
He should have shown James the same kind of loyalty, friendship, and kindness that James had shown him. He should have been there for him long before everything went so horribly wrong.
“No.” For the first time, James sounded fully awake. “Don’t apologize. Fuck, Zach. This is all on me.”
“It’s not though,” Zach insisted. “It’s all on Gordon. I just….” He swallowed. “I wish you had told me how bad things were. I wish I could have helped.”
James stayed silent. The weight of everything that had happened still hovering between them.
“I mean it,” Zach said firmly. “I’m going to be a better friend. A better brother.”
There was a noise of shuffling, as if James was moving around his room or perhaps, hopefully, getting out of bed. “Thanks, Zach,” James whispered raggedly. “I don’t deserve it but thank you.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Zach promised. “But first, I have to get to Emma.” He explained about the house he was standing outside.
“I’m sorry, Zach,” James said in a low voice. “I haven’t been there. Not that I remember, anyway.”
Hell.
James let out a slow breath. “Go and get her, Zach. Don’t leave her in there alone.” And then, before Zach could say anything, James ended the call.
Zach stood for a moment still holding his phone. There was so much more to say. Once Emma was safe, they needed to have a much longer conversation. Until then, James was right. It didn’t matter who else was in the house. Zach had to get in.
He had to see Emma. He had to know that she was alive and safe. After that, they would figure it out together.
He covered himself in a shifting cloak of swirling Shadows. Then he gathered a long, sinuous Shadow rope and threw it high, coiling it around the gutter of the house next door to Gordon’s.
After a glance to check the street was still empty, he hauled himself quickly up the side of the house and onto the roof. He waited a moment, listening, and then, when no one shouted or called out the alarm, he scrambled across to Gordon’s townhouse.
It was difficult to see from the street, but Gordon’s roof was topped with a massive Conservatory. The roof was green glass and Zach could just make out the upper branches of rows of trees reaching to the top. The walls seemed to be backed by something dark and they reflected his Shadow-covered image back at him. They were also crawling with sticky wards filled with malevolent power, and Zach kept his body well clear of them as he lowered himself to his belly and crawled over to the edge of the roof.
He glanced down and positioned himself over the open window. That would be his way in. Then he spread out a wide web of Shadows, running tiny tendrils into the tiles and around the gutter in a mesh of connected strands. He wrapped the Shadows firmly around his waist, then lowered himself carefully to the window.
It was a classical sash window and, ordinarily, he would have easily slid it fully open and climbed inside. Two things held him back. The first was the malicious pulse from the scrawled sigil smeared across the glass. He vaguely recognized it as the spiky alhaz rune surrounded by a circle, offering power, protection, and supremacy. The second was the sight of Emma busily using a vicious-looking knife—formed of swirling black and mulberry Shadows—to pry the handle off her door.
God, she was beautiful. Magnificent and strong. And she was alive.
She must have heard his groan of mingled relief and concern, the shuddering emotion that clenched at his heart, because she whirled around, lifting the blade as her Shadows swarmed in a rioting mass.
Their eyes met, and they both froze.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
“Zach.”His name fell from Emma’s lips almost silently. She’d been so focused on trying to get the door open, so convinced that no one could find her in this high prison, that when she first heard a scrabbling noise coming from the roof, she assumed it was pigeons. It was the surprised grunt that startled her into spinning around and lifting her new Shadow blade, ready to fight.
