“We ain’t done talking about this,” Hindley warns, coming down the stairs and following me into the kitchen. “You can’t just up and take my truck, you hear? You gotta ask first.”
“You said I could use it if I paid the insurance,” I point out.
“Still mine though, ain’t it? Got my name on the title. You ask me every time you wanna borrow it, you hear? And you don’t stay out overnight, ever.” His voice is taut, a wobble of fear in the anger.
That quaver helps me understand what’s up with him. When I didn’t come back last night, he thought I’d left. That I’d gone off on my own.
Which is exactly what I plan to do once I’ve got enough money saved. But I can’t let him know that.
I yank open the fridge, grab two beers, and hand him one. “Hey. You and me, we don’t always get along, but you’re my brother. Family. This is home. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Hindley takes the bottle, his mouth working under his scruffy beard. “Yeah, well.” He clears his throat.
“How’s our patient?” I ask.
“Same as ever, I guess. When you gonna get him on his feet?”
“Soon, I hope. I’ll go see what I can do.”
As I pass Hindley, I keep my shoulders relaxed, my stride easy. He doesn’t follow me upstairs.
Again, like I’ve done a thousand times, I ask myself why I don’t grow a damn backbone, face him down, and refuse to put up with his bullying and bullshit anymore. I guess I’m a coward. I don’t know how to exist without Hindley, his connections, and this house. I don’t have a bank account. Hindley pays me my cut in cash and I keep it hidden in the house. Since I was a stolen kid, I don’t have a birth certificate, a Social Security number, or a driver’s license.How Buckland Lockwood got me into the Kinsale school system, I’ll never know.
Lucky for me, the police are real lax around here. I’ve never been pulled over, so I’ve never had to show a license. It’s a rural community, and lots of folks don’t bring their licenses along when they’re driving down the road or into town. If I ever did get pulled over, I could say I forgot mine. Most of the cops know me anyway, since I’m the one who comes to get Hindley if he ever acts up drunk out in public. Whenever he has a run-in with the law, a donation of Lockwood lager to the sheriff’s private stash usually smooths everything over.
Yeah, I been too scared to get my own identity, to step outside the boundaries of this family. Hindley’s a mess and a mean son of a bitch, but him and the other Lockwoods are all I’ve had for years.
Except now, there’s Cathy.
“Catherine Earnshaw.” I whisper her name into the upstairs hallway, like a charm against the dark.
She and I are the same in more ways than I thought at first. The way she is, her situation—I get it. I understandher, and she understands me.
I head into our coma patient’s room, flip the light switch, and set the beer on the dresser. My back is to the bed, and in the amber glass of the beer bottle, I see something move. Something tall and quick.
I spin around, but there’s nobody, just the motionless figure under the sheet. Ian’s face is the same as always—placid, healthy, and unconscious.
Unnerved, I scan the room. There’s a lot of heavy furniture in here, pieces that wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the house, so they found their way into the guest room. My eyes narrow on the wardrobe, and I cross to it with quick strides, yanking the door open.
Nothing.
I’m exhausted. And I had an encounter with an actual god yesterday. This is probably post-traumatic stress, making me see random shit.
I pull the sheet down. Ian is still in the pajamas I dressed him in—an old flannel set of Buckland’s. Carefully I check his limbs, his extremities, and yeah, his privates. Still no piss or anything. Still no sign that he needs food or water. His pulse is steady, his breathing is light and regular. He doesn’t have a fever. And when I place my hand on his forehead and try to get a read off him, I don’t feel anything. Which means no part of him is stuck in the Vague. He’s wholly here, just…not here.
Swearing softly, I sink onto the edge of the bed, brace my elbows on my knees, and prop my chin on my hands.
“What’s up with you, man?” I say aloud to the unconscious figure. “I need my cut of the payout, okay? I need you to wake the fuck up. I don’t know how to fix you.”
It’s possible Hindley screwed something up on his end of the resurrection. But it’s more likely that I failed to repair some vital part of the brain that controls consciousness.
No…that’s not it. I’ve healed my share of corpses. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I always get this sense of completeness when it’s done. No way I left anything unfinished.
Unless this guy is supernatural. Hindley mentioned something like that. But he didn’t know what kind of supernatural the guy was, so I have no idea how that might affect things.
I partnered in the resurrection of a couple supernaturals back when I was younger, when Buckland was still alive and he was training me. Their resurrections worked the same as any others. If Ian’s didn’t turn out right, he must be way different than anything I’veencountered. And he must not have suspected that a resurrection wouldn’t work right for him, or he’d have given us more details ahead of time.
Unless his brand of supernatural is so terrible he thought we wouldn’t bring him back. I remember the oily, slithering shape of his soul, the panicked sensation I felt, the wrongness.
