Page 12

Seth Mays

Can you get me some aspirin? The Bayer kind?

Elliot Crane

Does it have to be Bayer?

Yeah. The other shit can have animal by-products.

Will do.

You okay?

Headache.

I feel hung over.

I’ll bring you drugs and caffeine.

And love.

:)

I really hate crying hangovers. I haven’t had a lot of them, but I am filled with intense regret every time.

I should know better than to let myself get that upset—or, at least, than to let myself sob like a hysterical child throwing a tantrum.

I was thirty-one years old, and I really should have my shit more together than that.

And yeah, okay, extenuating circumstances, but I was still both miserable and embarrassed. Just not too embarrassed to beg for pain killers.

I did at least manage to drag myself out of bed, shower, and get dressed by the time Elliot came back with iced coffee and a little plastic bag from Kroger that had both aspirin and a package of Unreal almond butter cups.

I had to swallow around the lump in my throat in order to thank him, but I was not going to let myself make this hangover any worse, so I tamped the emotion down.

Sugar, caffeine, and aspirin did help the headache, though, and I was feeling almost like a functional person when my phone buzzed. I picked it up and looked at it, finding a text message from an unknown number.

Mr. Mays, this is Michelle from Humbolt and Mallard. Are you available at 11am to meet with Mr. Humbolt?

I blinked, then checked to see what time it was.

Yes , I sent back. I still had about an hour.

Great. We’ll see you then!

“I have to go see Humbolt at eleven,” I told Elliot.

“What about?” he asked around a mouthful of ham biscuit that looked and smelled delicious and which I absolutely could not have.

“No idea,” I replied. It was too much to hope that it had anything to do with Noah, though. I had the feeling that if it had been, he’d have called or texted me himself. “Maybe something to do with Momma’s will?”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I could tell he wanted a specific answer, I just wasn’t sure which one.

I knew he’d been keeping up with Shira back at home, as well as updating Henry and the Harts, although I hadn’t personally had enough energy to be involved in any of that.

Maybe he wanted to check in with everyone again.

Or maybe he actually wanted to come with me.

I drew in a lungful of air, then sighed it out. I didn’t want to be alone. “Come to the office with me? You don’t have to come up, though, if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll come up,” he said, quickly enough that I knew the answer he’d wanted was to come with me. That made me feel a little better, anyway. “Should I put on something else?” he asked.

He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt again—different shorts and a different t-shirt, although we were both running out of clothes and would have to use the hotel laundry machines in a day or so if we were still here.

I shrugged. I was wearing khakis and another short-sleeve button-down, striped in salmon, white, and light blue, this time open over a plain navy t-shirt.

“I’m going to wear this,” I said. “I don’t know that he’ll care what you wear.

” Humbolt always wore a shirt and tie, but he didn’t strike me as particularly judgmental.

“You sure?” Elliot asked.

I shrugged again.

“I’ll change.”

Elliot followed me up the stairs to Humbolt’s office, having put on a pair of his nicer jeans, a grey heather t-shirt, and a yellow button-down with the sleeves rolled up.

I opened the main door, and the admin, Michelle, looked up, her eyes creasing over her mask—this one a bright floral pattern—in a smile.

“Mr. Mays. Right on time.”

I forced myself to smile back behind my own plain mask, even though I wasn’t particularly feeling it. “Ma’am,” I said.

“Go right in,” she said to me, then looked at Elliot, who, as usual, wasn’t wearing a mask.

Shifters couldn’t catch or transmit Arcanavirus again, which is why almost everyone who masked did so.

People who didn’t mask were either in serious heath denial or were Arcanids.

Elliot was much more okay with being IDed as a shifter by random people than I was.

Maybe I’d get there someday, but I kept up the mask-wearing habit in public for now.

When I wore one at work, it was for the combined reason of pathogen control and keeping my DNA out of any evidence.

“Are you… together?” Michelle asked, glancing at me.

There was only a little weight to the question, just a little, but I definitely noticed.

“Yeah,” I answered. “He’s with me.”

She nodded. “Go ahead, then,” she said, and while her voice was pleasant, it seemed just a little less cheerful. I pretended I didn’t notice.

We went into Humbolt’s office, and he looked up. “Mr. Mays, and…?” He trailed off on a question.

“Elliot Crane,” Elliot said, stepping forward and holding out a hand.

Humbolt stood and shook it over the desk. To his credit, he didn’t seem to hesitate at all. “May I ask your interest in Mr. Mays’s situation?” he asked politely.

“He’s my boyfriend,” I replied quickly. I knew Elliot was inclined to be open about who and what he was, regardless of what others thought or did about it.

But he also knew I wasn’t as willing to share parts of myself with the world.

In situations like this one, he usually let me decide what to say—or not—about our relationship.

But I also knew how much he hated when I hid the fact that I was a shifter or that I was gay. I could only imagine how much he’d hate it if I pretended we weren’t together. And I couldn’t do that to him. Wouldn’t.

Fortunately, Humbolt didn’t seem to mind.

The lawyer nodded once. “And you’re comfortable discussing possibly sensitive matters with him present?” he asked me. “Including financial matters?”

“I am.” I couldn’t think of anything more sensitive than what I’d already told Elliot. More sensitive than anything I’d discussed with Humbolt.

Humbolt nodded again. “Very well, please have a seat, gentlemen.”

There were two chairs on this side of Humbolt’s desk, so we sat, Elliot to my right, casually crossing one ankle over his other knee. If I’d tried that, my knee would have fallen off—well, not literally, but it might have been preferable if it had.

“The Sheriff’s Office has informed me that they have finished the investigation at your parents’ house,” Humbolt told me.

“I thought perhaps you would like to go out to the property. If nothing else, it might be good to specifically lay claim to the items listed in your mother’s will for you and your twin.

The parcel of land will be more… complicated, but individual pieces of property are much easier to claim. ”

My throat closed. I hadn’t been prepared for the idea that I’d actually have to set foot in the house where I’d grown up today.

Of course it had occurred to me that it was likely at some point, but then Noah had been arrested and I’d been held overnight, and the steeling myself to go back to the homestead had gone right out of my head.

“This afternoon?” Elliot asked, noticing that I’d gone too quiet.

“I’ve cleared my schedule after a lunch meeting—that will be done around one—and would be happy to take you out there.” He cleared his throat slightly. “Both of you, if you wish.” The last was said with a pointed look at me.

I nodded, still not really able to speak.

“Can we follow you?” Elliot asked. “Or is there some rule about us needing to be driven?”

“Oh, no, you’re welcome to drive yourselves,” Humbolt assured him. “In fact, you may wish to spend some time out there.” He smiled at me. “Revisit old memories.”

Like hell did I want to revisit old memories. But I wasn’t going to tell Humbolt that. It wasn’t his problem and it wasn’t his business, either.

“Sure,” I half-croaked.

Elliot shot me a look, but Humbolt seemed oblivious. Or maybe he was just really polite. “Excellent. Would you like to follow me, or shall we simply plan to meet out there at two?”

Elliot looked at me. I swallowed, twice, before I was capable of answering. “Two is fine,” I said.

Humbolt smiled again. “Excellent. Now, I have some additional paperwork I’d like to go over first…”

The lunch that Elliot had essentially forced me to eat sat in my stomach like a rock as we drove past a church as Beverly Street crossed Wilson Parkway and turned into country highway.

Staunton wasn’t my favorite place in the world, but as Elliot drove out of it, I felt a surge of affection for it, simply because it was the opposite direction from where we were going.

Swoope, and then the Community of the Divine Transformation. The house where I’d spent my childhood wracked by terror and guilt.

There was literally no place on earth I wanted to go to less.

And yet, here we were. And there we went.

Elliot’s warm hand came to rest on my thigh right above my knee. “Deep breaths, baby.”

I nodded, but taking a deep breath wasn’t physically possible. Short and shallow was the best I could do.

“Is it because it’s where your mother was killed, or because it’s where you grew up?” he asked me, his voice soft.

“Where I grew up,” I told him.

Even if my mother had loved me—and Noah—enough to want to leave us something, I still resented her for not having taken us and run.

For letting my father do what he did. The clinical, abstract part of my brain that understood domestic violence all too well knew that it wasn’t fair of me to place any blame at her feet.

That when you’re in that situation it seems impossible to do anything but put your head down and try to survive.

I know, because I’d been there. Because I’d done that.

Because, at one point, Noah and I had chosen death rather than continue to endure the life we were being forced to live.