Page 18

Calisto

It struck me as I stared into the darkness that I’d grown very attuned to Asher, in particular to the way he breathed, if I could see through his pretense to be asleep that easily.

“I know you’re awake,” I said finally when my nerves couldn’t take any more. There was a moment where I thought Asher might continue his charade, but then he rolled over onto his back, both of us staring up at a ceiling too dark to see properly.

“How?” he asked.

“You go straight from being conscious to deeply asleep. You usually snore.”

“No, I don’t!”

The level of disdain in Asher’s voice had me struggling to hold back a grin. That was what he took offense at. Maybe I’d gift that little nugget of information to John. Give him something he could use to really get under Asher’s skin. “What word would you like me to use instead of snoring?”

“Breathe slightly heavily.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said. “Why were you pretending to be asleep?”

Asher sighed. “I wasn’t pretending, per se. I just didn’t want you to think there was any expectation of a continuance of what we spoke about earlier.”

“I think,” I said slowly, “that if I don’t tell you tonight, I never will.”

“Okay.”

“You asked me about Edmund Wainwright.”

“I did. And you made it clear you didn’t want to talk about him.”

“I still don’t, but I think I need to. Because I think it ties into why O’Reilly is so keen to get her hands on me. I’ve been racking my brain to work out how she could have connected the dots when not one person apart from me knows the truth of what happened that day. Well, unless you count Baxter, and I know no one’s been talking to him.”

“You work for the PPB,” Asher said. “You know more than anyone that talking to someone is not the only way to find out stuff. She could have gotten hold of your file from the necromancer council the same way Cade did, and that might have piqued her interest enough to look into it.”

“You think she had a psychic follow me?”

“A psychic. A spell. A voodoo ritual involving a human sacrifice. This is O’Reilly we’re talking about. I hardly think anything is off the table where she’s concerned. Look at what she pulled with the mask. John and Bellamy would both be dead if she’d gotten her way.”

“Yeah.” I suddenly felt very na?ve. Like a child who’d gotten himself involved in something he didn’t know how to handle. It wasn’t a new feeling by any means, but ever since she’d strolled into the PPB building like she owned it and reduced me to a fly in her web, I’d been doing my best to suppress it. Here in the darkness, though, I couldn’t hide from reality any longer. “So… what you’re saying is she could have plucked the thoughts right out of my head?”

Asher reached over and flicked the lamp on, the light flooding the room making me blink. He swung himself round to face me, sitting cross-legged. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. So we need to know what we’re dealing with.”

Feeling at a disadvantage, I sat up, too. “We?” I barely remembered to listen for the answer as I stared at the dips and hollows of Asher’s naked chest, at the silky skin stretched tight over defined muscles. My eyes drifted downward to where a blond treasure trail, so pale I could only just see it, disappeared into the folds of the duvet pooled in his lap. “Are you naked again?”

“I am.” He sounded like he was stuck somewhere between irritated and pleased by my question. “I already told you I sleep naked.”

I realized too late that, although I’d stuck to wearing pajama trousers, I’d foregone the top, Asher not unreasonably taking my scrutiny as permission to do the same, his gaze so heated as it roved over my chest that I fancied I could feel it.

“If what you’re going to tell me,” Asher said, still looking, still admiring, “really answers the question about O’Reilly’s interest in you, then you realize I’ll have to tell Cade.” He jerked his gaze upwards to find mine, spots of color appearing in his pale cheeks. “So it’s your call whether you go ahead. I would strongly advise that you share anything of relevance, though. We can’t beat her if we’re coming from a place of her knowing more than we do.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I let out a breath. “I don’t even know why I’m making it into such a big deal. It was years ago. I was a kid that didn’t know any better. I learned from that mistake and it never happened again. It won’t happen again. That’s why I stayed away.”

“What won’t happen again?”

I swallowed down the nausea stirring in my gut at even having to think about it. “Edmund Wainwright was a family friend who lived a few doors away. He’d never married, and he didn’t have kids, so I think he really enjoyed having surrogate grandkids. Not in a creepy way,” I hastened to add. “The relationship built up over time. It’s not like my mum would have entrusted us to just anyone’s care. He was an engineer before retirement and he was a history buff, so he always helped me with my maths and history homework. He wasn’t bad at other stuff either. I spent hours at his house. It was a home from home where there were fewer kids to trip over. Well, unless we all had the same idea at the same time.” I smiled fondly at the memory. “I recall a couple of occasions where there were more of us at Edmund’s house competing for his attention than there were at home.”

Asher was a good listener, and I appreciated him letting me tell the story at my own pace, rather than prompting me to get to the point quicker. “I always felt like I was his favorite, but I expect if you asked my siblings, one or two of them might say the same. He was in my life when I discovered my necromancer skills, when I was still trying to come to terms with them. I kept saying that I’d never asked to be different, and he kept changing the word different to special. It was sweet,” I said, a sudden surge of emotion threatening to swamp me if I let it. “He helped me look at things differently. I could talk to him about stuff that I couldn’t with my parents.”

“Did you tell him about Baxter?”

“No,” I said, frowning as I thought back to that time and tried to recall why, when the old man had been such a confidante to me, I hadn’t broached the subject. “I think… I wasn’t sure that Baxter was real myself at first. It was only when I realized how weird it would be for an eight-year-old to have an imaginary friend who was a grown man rather than a child that I admitted it to myself. And by that time, Edmund was already gone.”

“Gone?” Asher questioned.

“Dead. He slipped and fell down the stairs. Broke his neck.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been traumatic for you.”

“It was.”

“But he wasn’t dead, was he?”

“He was dead,” I admitted. I dropped my gaze to my hands, noting a tiny cut on my finger and absently wondering where it had come from and how long it had been there. “I was extremely upset.”

“Of course you were. Any child would be if they’ve formed a close bond with someone and that person is no longer there to talk to.”

I cleared my throat, the story reaching the part that was most difficult to talk about. “I broke into the funeral home.” I lifted my gaze to find Asher’s eyebrow slightly cocked. “I notice you’re not trying to tell me that most children would do that.”

“That would be a lie,” Asher said smoothly. “I don’t lie.”

“No?” I filed that tidbit away for further scrutiny, to… well, to work out whether Asher saying he didn’t lie was in itself a lie. “It was the middle of the night, but I had a compulsion to see him. And then once I did, that wasn’t enough.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to bring him back. I think I wanted to apologize for not being there when he fell. If one of us had been there, maybe we could have called an ambulance, and they would have gotten there in time.”

“Maybe,” Asher said.

“You don’t sound too convinced.”

“You said he was old. There aren’t many old people who could survive a tumble down the stairs.”

I shrugged. “Anyway, he’d been dead too long. The spirits told me that, but like most adolescents, I didn’t really want to listen to them, so I followed the voices.”

“You followed the voices?”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “It was still early days of me getting to grips with my necromancer powers. No one had really told me how it was supposed to work. They’d been far more interested in lecturing me on not misusing the skill. Which I’d apparently chosen not to listen to either. The voices took me to that place.”

“The same place you went to today?”

I nodded. I thought hard, trying to recall what it had been like. “It was less foggy than it was today. I don’t know what that means. Maybe they have weather like we do. I guess it’s not important.”

“What happened next?”

“Baxter was there. He helped me find Edmund.” I laughed at the memory of how surprised Edmund had been when I’d strolled up to him. “He knew he was dead.” I frowned. “Baxter told me today that people only stay if they have unfinished business, so I don’t know why he was still there days later.” I shook my head. “I guess that’s another thing that doesn’t really matter.”

I found myself trapped in Asher’s gaze, unable to look away from those pale blue eyes of his. Such a pretty color. “I was still determined to bring him back. He was right there in front of me, so I didn’t understand why I couldn’t.” I laced my fingers together to halt the tremble that had started up. Spotting the motion, Asher reached over and lay his fingers over mine. The touch was tentative, like he fully expected me to snatch my hands away. When I didn’t, he tightened his grip.

I said the rest in a rush to get it out as quickly as I could. “To this day, I still don’t know exactly how I did it, but I grabbed his soul and threw it back into the world. No magic words needed. No begging someone to release it. Just pure physical will and the need to rectify something I saw as wrong.”

I swallowed, my throat dry. “He was sitting up when I got back. He knocked something off the table and it made such a racket that I panicked. I really wanted to talk to him, maybe even to hug him, but not enough that it was worth the risk of being discovered in a funeral home in the dead of night when I was supposed to be home in bed. My mother would have grounded me for years just for the sneaking out, never mind the rest.”

Asher had a little crease over his nose, and I fought the urge to reach over and smooth it away with the pad of my thumb. I understood his confusion. So far, the only strange thing was me being able to bring back a soul that wasn’t supposed to be possible. If only it had been that simple. I took a deep breath in and prepared for the worst part, my heart thudding in my chest. “I had school the next day and there was no getting out of it. Once the bell rang, I was so excited to see him I ran all the way home. Stupid really,” I admitted. “I should have known they’d keep him in the hospital. It was another week before I saw him.”

“And?” Asher prompted when I fell silent.

“It wasn’t him,” I said dully. “I don’t know whose soul I’d grabbed, but it wasn’t Edmund’s. That’s what happens when you don’t know what you’re doing, but you do it anyway. He looked like Edmund. He talked like Edmund. He even smelled like Edmund, but it wasn’t him.”

“How could you tell? Maybe the trauma of it all had been too much for him.”

I shook my head. “No. When I looked at him, I could see it. There was someone else behind his eyes.” I let out a slightly hysterical laugh. “And whoever this man was, he didn’t like kids. I brought someone else back in Edmund’s body.”

There was something liberating about saying it out loud after all these years. I thought about it almost every day, which is why if O’Reilly had hired someone with psychic abilities, it was easy to believe she could have made herself privy to those thoughts.

Asher’s grip on my hands tightened even more as my shaking increased in intensity. “The worst thing was the not knowing who I’d brought back. He could have been anyone. A psychopath. A serial killer. A rapist. I monitored him for years, scared he’d get caught committing some dreadful act, and it would be my fault. As far as I know, he never did, but I had school, and then work, so I couldn’t watch him all the time.”

“Did you never consider simply asking him who he was? Or rather, who he used to be?”

Unshed tears made it a struggle to focus on Asher, his model-handsome features swimming in front of my eyes. I dashed a hand over my face to wipe the moisture away. “How could I? That would have been an admittance that I knew what had happened. And then people would have put two and two together and discovered my part in it. I might have been a kid who’d acted impulsively, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew what the ramifications were of me being able to do such a thing.”

“Which were?” Asher said evenly.

“I would have made myself a target for unscrupulous people. People who ensured I developed those skills and put them to good use.”

“And now…?”

I laughed. “And now I’m a target for O’Reilly. I suppose there’s a certain irony to it.”

“So your plan was to just forget it had ever happened?”

“I couldn’t risk fucking up again.” Asher nodded slowly. “You think I was wrong? How can you, of all people, think that when you did the same with your precognition skills?”

“It’s not the same,” Asher pointed out, letting go of my hands in a gesture I took to mean I’d pissed him off. “It’s not like I didn’t tell anyone. It was just on a need-to-know basis, and there were few people I felt needed to know.”

“Well, I’m not you.”

“No, you’re not.”

Asher ran a hand through his hair, the muscles in his arm bunching in a way that had me making sure the duvet still covered my crotch. “Anyway,” he said. “It’s good that you told me. Thank you.”

“Is it good?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it answers the question of what O’Reilly wants with you. She thinks you can bring her daughter’s soul back in another body.”

“Another body?” I laughed, the sound lacking humor. “Whose body?”

Asher’s smile was tight. “I imagine that for someone like O’Reilly, sourcing a suitable body isn’t that big a problem.”

“I imagine you’re right.” I took a moment to think through what Asher had said. “Which means she won’t give up. She’s going to keep coming after me. And she obviously doesn’t care that she’s trying to get me to do something I’ve never done successfully.”

Asher took a deep breath in and then let it out again. “I expect she’s a big exponent of the saying ‘if at first you don’t succeed, then try again.’”

“Jesus!” The scenario Asher had conjured up was a horrific one. How many people would O’Reilly murder before I got it right? And what would she do with any failures? Send them on their merry way? Or have them killed? I couldn’t say that either of those choices appealed, and whichever way it panned out, there would still be blood on my hands.

I swung my legs off the bed. “I need to…” Instead of finishing my sentence, I pointed at the en-suite bathroom, Asher giving me a nod. Truth be told, I needed nothing except a moment alone. And perhaps to splash some cold water on my face.

I got as far as the door before Asher called after me. “What happened to him? Edmund Wainwright, I mean. Or should I say, the man who wasn’t Edmund, but who ended up wearing his face?”

The way Asher worded it added another layer of creepiness to the whole thing, which was impressive considering the circumstances. “He died when I was twenty-two and Edmund’s body was nearing ninety. It was a relief.”

“I can imagine.”

When Asher said nothing else, I continued on my way. My dream of being alone ended the moment I pulled the cord to illuminate the room and found Baxter leaning against the sink with his arms crossed. I closed the door and locked it before rounding on him. “What are you doing here?” I hissed.

He rolled his eyes. “I miss you, Baxter. Please come back, Baxter.” The whiney voice he put on sounded nothing like me. “And now I’m here, you want me to go away again?”

“I meant… what are you doing skulking in the bathroom?”

“I’m not skulking.” Baxter waved a hand at the closed door at my back. “You were having a moment in there, so I thought it best I wasn’t there.”

“And your version of ‘not being there’ is to come in here rather than go elsewhere, so you can still listen to the conversation.”

Baxter grinned. “Yeah, exactly. Good job, by the way.”

“Good job with what?”

He stepped away from the sink as I went to turn the cold water tap on. “Finally telling someone after all these years. Funny that you chose him.”

I stuck my hands under the cold water and then lifted them to my face, the coolness feeling like the best thing ever against my heated skin. “Is it?”

“I’ve never seen you trust anyone that quickly. Not even that guy you dated when you were nineteen. You know, the one who was one step away from sainthood. The one who’d considered becoming a priest, but then decided that he liked cock too much and couldn’t give it up, and that God would just have to respect his choice.”

I turned the tap off. “It wasn’t quite that straightforward. There was a great deal more agonizing than that.”

“I remember. He used to instigate sex and then cry afterwards.” At my sharp look, Baxter held his hands up. “I didn’t see. You told me.” He watched me dry my face. “Do you feel better for telling someone about Edmund?”

“Not really. All its proved is that this entire thing”—I waved a hand at the bathroom, my gesture intended to represent the house and all the people in it—“is pointless. She’ll just wait us out.”

“So what’s the alternative?”

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. “I only wish I knew.”