Page 129

“Whether or not to tell his mother,” Taavi answered.

“Hoo, boy. Playing with fire, there, Val.”

“She’ll completely lose her shit and probably cancel tomorrow,” I replied. “And as much as I want absolutely nothing to do with tomorrow, it would crush her.”

Elliot exchanged a look with Taavi as he helped me get into the passenger side of the truck.

“What?” I demanded.

“It’s your life, man,” Elliot told me.

“Not a word. Either of you. Please.”

Taavi got in the back, and Elliot started up the truck. “You sure?” Elliot asked me.

“Fuck yes, I’m sure. She’s already losing her mind about the whole thing.”

“Her son gettingstabbedbecause he stupidly decided to jump out of a truck and into a violent mob, you mean?” Clearly, Taavi was still salty about that. I can’t say that I really blamed him.

“Yes,that,” I snapped back, feeling more than a little salty myself.

“I’m not going to say anything,” Elliot told me. “Although, for the record, keeping things from your mother is like trying to keep them from the NSA.”

“Taavi? Please?”

“I won’t say anything as long as it gets better.”

That was fair. “Thank you.”

He snorted. Elliot shot me a sideways glance. “Merry Christmas, Val.”

I let my head fall back against the seat. “Fuck me.”

22

Not only didwe make it back before my parents, but Taavi got me tucked into bed and medicated, then put the antibiotics into the little drawer on the nightstand so that my mom wouldn’t see them if she came in to check on me. Which of course she did, because my mother has no boundaries.

At least Taavi had also cleaned up our dirty clothes—well. My dirty clothes. He never left his on the floor to begin with because he’s clearly a more responsible adult than I am, despite being six years younger. Taavi’s more responsible about a lot more shit than underwear on the floor.

Like groceries, making sure meals were balanced, always being on top of his half of the bills, even though I tried to convince him he didn’t have to give me money for any of that. I’d been paying it all myself just fine before he moved in, after all.

But Taavi is actually a responsible adult, not an overgrown elf-child pretending to be an adult, so he paid his half of rent and utilities, did more than his share of the housework, and generally reminded me that I could absolutely get my shit more together.

Which I did not do on Christmas. It took every ounce of my willpower to just get through the day.

From the glances I shot in Elliot’s direction, he wasn’t doing much better. Relative after fucking relative telling him how sorry they were, asking him how he was doing, saying how much they missed having Gregory at Christmas.

No fucking shit, people. Elliot misses him a lot more than you do.

I was sitting on the couch in a living room packed with people, trying not to move too much and worrying about the fact that I didn’t know where either Elliot or Taavi was, when my Aunt Rose came to sit beside me. Like half my relatives, she was wearing a Christmas-themed sweater that had more sequins than thread. Hers depicted a fox in a snowy woods, bordered by a snowflake pattern. “Are you going to tell me what really happened?” she asked me.

“Happened?” I tried to play innocent.

“You’ve barely moved all day,” she pointed out. “And you’re not old enough to have your bones ache the way mine do.”

I sighed. “Work-related injury,” I replied. Dad and I had managed to convince my mother that nobody wanted to talk about Arcanid rights at Christmas—God fucking knew I didn’t—so I should keep the hole in my side to myself. And Taavi and Elliot still hadn’t told my parents about the infection—Taavi’d dosed me with both antibiotics and acetaminophen as directed to keep the fever down and combat the infection itself.

One of the reasons I like my Aunt Rose is that she doesn’t push for answers when it’s clear you don’t want to give them. “Bad?” she asked.