Page 13

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Kade woke up forgetting something.

The dream was already gone. He barely registered the emotions attached to the dream before they slipped away, violent stabs of grief and anger draining from him as he woke.

Must’ve been a bad memory, Kade thought. RIP, my dude.

Then the headache hit. No dreams or memories required, just Kade’s pounding skull and dry mouth and stupid decisions. There was a moment of reprieve—his hangover wasn’t too bad—then dread as he realized that was because he was still drunk. It made the hangover easier now, but there would be hell to pay later.

He groaned, reaching for his nightstand to check his phone…

And immediately knocked over a glass of water. Kade sat up, watching it seep into the carpet. Who set out a glass of water for him? When Kade took water into his room, he made sure it was in a bottle to avoid mistakes just like this. Especially if it was hangover water, which this seemed like.

What happened last night? Kade rubbed his muzzy eyes. He’d gone to Felicity’s party with Theo. Stolen a bottle of vodka from her bookshelf. Found the hunter necklace confirming that the Sloans were going to be a problem. Snapped his ankle on Felicity’s stairs. Limp-chased Theo into the woods. Saw Theo’s sire. Limp-chased Theo through the woods some more, completely wrecking his ankle. Found Theo. Theo healed his ankle…

After that, things got fuzzy. He remembered drinking in the car, Theo telling him to cool it every time Kade took a swig. He sort of remembered drinking straight from the sink. Then…what? He’d gone to bed? He had the vaguest flash of Theo sitting on his bed, talking about something Kade couldn’t remember. Oh god, had Theo babysat him while he was drunk?

He stared down at the empty glass. The water was sinking in, and he didn’t need yet another stain in his carpet.

He pulled himself out of bed, then stopped. What day was it? Was it a school day? He checked his phone. Friday. Shit. He had to be at school in an hour.

Something niggled at the back of his mind. He was forgetting something important .

He tugged on a pair of sweatpants and stumbled to the kitchen. First, he’d clean up his latest mess. Then he’d shower. Then he’d figure out what he was forgetting. Maybe text Theo asking if they’d come up with a new plan last night. That sounded like something Theo would do—except his head hadn’t exactly been in the revenge game after he’d come back from chasing his sire. Kade had expected him to be frothing at the mouth, but instead he’d just been…sad. Angry, sure, and very lost. But not all-engines-go like he’d been the past couple of days, charging ahead without stopping. Which was good. Right? It meant Theo finally took a break. For a few hours, anyway. Kade hoped he’d helped. He doubted it—babysitting a drunk idiot didn’t sound like much of a break. But he hoped he’d said something useful, or made Theo laugh, or found some way to make Theo’s shoulders unclench while he was blackout wasted.

He bent down to open the rag drawer in the kitchen and immediately regretted it. His vision tunneled, his stomach rolling into his throat.

“Oh shit ,” he gasped, lurching back up.

“Having a nice morning?”

Kade turned. Sundance was peering into the fridge, her back toward him. She was wearing real-people clothes, which was a good sign. She’d been bumming around in PJs since she hurt her arm. She was even wearing her best belt, the one studded with tiny whales that Kade had got for her birthday a few years ago .

Kade forced a thin smile. “Having a great morning, Auntie. How’s yours going?”

“Great,” she said, desert-dry. She still didn’t look at him.

Kade’s heart sank. He didn’t remember seeing her when he came home last night, but he had significant gaps in his memory. Maybe she gave him a whole lecture and he forgot. Probably not, though. She saved big talks for when he was hungover.

Sundance eased the fridge door shut and turned to him, holding a bottle of cream in her good hand. She liked to drink it straight out of the bottle.

“Theo practically had to carry you in last night,” she said flatly. She took a sip of cream.

Kade thought about telling her she had a cream mustache. She didn’t, but sometimes that made her laugh.

“Better him than the cops,” he said, trying to sound like he wasn’t still drunk. His voice was hoarse, he smelled like sweat and vodka and, for some reason, smoke. He didn’t remember smoking last night, but—wait, no. The bonfire. The deeply irresponsible bonfire in the middle of a forest during fall. Theo had gotten adorably indignant about it on the way home.

Kade gave her his best ‘aw shucks’ smile. She stared back with a weariness that he would always hate himself for putting there. She was tired before she got stuck with him, sure. But that was job tiredness, life tiredness, the tiredness of being an adult. Not the bone-deep exhaustion of taking care of a kid who seemed determined to screw over all your efforts to turn him into a decent human being.

“Sure,” Sundance said with a sigh. “Always glad I don’t have to shell out another eight hundred bucks for property damage to those neighbors who still don’t wave back at us when we put the bins out. Jackasses.”

She slurped her cream. They were running low. Maybe Kade could grab some on the way home from school today as an apology. One of the endless apologies he owed her for putting up with his shit for all these years.

“I really…” She paused, looking down. That was how Kade knew this talk was going to be brutal. She always looked him in the eyes when she spoke to him.

“I really thought you were getting better lately,” she admitted.

Kade’s stomach rolled. “I am! I am getting better. My grades are up. I know it’s only the start of the year, but no one’s threatened to expel me in weeks! Teachers are pulling me aside after class to ask if I’m cheating, that’s how good I’m doing!”

“What are those?” She pointed at his arms. “You said you didn’t get into a fight!”

Kade tugged his sleeve down, like his Garfield T-shirt could even start to cover all the scabbing cuts.

Her jaw flexed. “Did you?—?”

“I didn’t hurt myself,” Kade said, rushed. “ God , Sundance. I don’t…I don’t do that anymore. I promise. I ra n through the woods and got torn up. You can ask Theo.”

Sundance looked him up and down. Trying to tell if he was lying. Kade hated that. More than that, he hated that she was right to do it. Kade couldn’t be trusted with most things, especially not with his own wellbeing.

Whatever she saw, it made her sigh. She slugged the rest of the cream and tucked her thumbs through her belt loops, rubbing the leather distractedly. It was an anxious tic, but with the whale belt it made it look like she was petting a whale. It was one of the reasons Kade brought it in the first place.

“You said I wouldn’t have to see you like that again,” Sundance said, voice low and serious.

Kade nodded, the movement making his head swim. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Your dad was sorry too.”

The kitchen fell silent. Nobody moved.

Kade thought, bizarrely, of the water soaking into his carpet right now. A water stain on a pile of water stains from all the glasses he’d knocked off his nightstand over the years. Stains on top of stains on top of stains, just like his entire family tree, which Sundance had always said—always promised —he could free himself from. That he wasn’t doomed.

“Wait,” Sundance said. “I didn’t mean that.”

But Kade was already moving. Not toward his room, to clean up what he could from the carpet. But toward the door .

“Kade,” Sundance tried.

He shook his head. “I’m going for a walk.”

She started to move like she was going to put herself in front of him. Like he was so bad he couldn’t even go on a walk without needing supervision.

“I’m fine,” he whispered. “I promise. I’m just going on a walk.”

Then he barreled out the door, feet still bare, no phone, not even his headphones. Just him and his sentient-lasagna-eating-Garfield-shirt, his sweatpants, and his spinning head. He considered sneaking in his bedroom window to grab the rest of his vodka—he was still drunk, why not keep it going—then thought about Sundance catching him and kept walking until he reached the woods.

His mind reeled. She’d finally said it. She’d sworn she never would, but she’d basically told him he was doomed to the same swirling-drain life his family had been living for generations: addiction, divorce, assault charges, prison, an early death from something stupid and preventable. Sundance had promised him otherwise, but he’d known, deep down, that she knew. She knew the same way he knew that he was never getting a happy ending.

He walked deeper into the woods, eyes burning, hands shaking. Dead leaves crunched under his feet. A twig cut into his toe. He swore, shaking the blood off.

He should’ve brought shoes. Music. The goddamn vodka . Some days you woke up and everything went to shit before you even had time to brush your teeth, and on those days he wanted to do something really destructive. Get into a fight. Day-drink and trash the sewing machine he spent months saving for. Screw school. Everybody expected him to ditch anyway, what was one more day? Kade was destined to spend his life alone in his room, working on his dumb little projects nobody cared about and destroying everything around him until he got annihilated in the crossfire. He knew it, his aunt knew it, most of Lock knew it by now.

Even Theo knew it. He told Kade he wasn’t doomed, but that was only because Theo didn’t want to be the one to doom him.

Kade arrived back at the house twenty minutes later. Sundance was gone and his alarm was going off.

Kade sighed and slumped toward his room. He’d turn the alarm off, then find his vodka. Text Theo he was going off the grid and to not antagonize any sires until he got back.

Something niggled again at the back of his mind as he pushed his bedroom door open. He tried to focus on it, but the alarm was making his head throb.

He reached for his phone to tap the alarm off.

Then he stopped. This wasn’t his school alarm.

“ Put the fun back in funeral, ” he read. “What the hell?”

He stood there in drunk silence. Then it hit him, and he yelled .

Friday. The funeral. Had Theo invited him? He must’ve, if there was an alarm in Kade’s phone he didn’t remember putting there.

He strained, sifting through the previous night’s memories. Theo on his bed. Theo biting him. Theo asking Kade if he was sad. Why the hell would he ask that? What did they talk about last night?

Kade ran through every room in the house, yelling. “Sundance! Aunt Sundance, I screwed up! I need the car!”

No answer. Kade called her. Her phone vibrated on the couch. She never took it with her on walks.

Kade screamed at the ceiling. He wasn’t allowed to drive without a licensed driver in the car. He definitely wasn’t allowed to drive drunk.

He ran to the bathroom mirror and sucked in a breath.

“Okay,” he told his reflection. “How to deal with this like a non-idiot-screwup.”

He could wait for Sundance to come home, then get her to drive him. He sighed and shook his head. He’d be waiting ages if it was one of her long walks. If he ran to the graveyard it would take an hour.

“Let’s be real,” he eyed his reflection. “Two hours. You can’t run for shit.”

He grabbed his phone and hovered his thumb over the Uber app. Maybe their shitty town’s one Uber driver wouldn’t be busy or asleep right now.

“Wait, shit,” He realized. “That guy moved. Shit ! ”

His reflection stared back at him, haggard and sweaty. All his options ended the same way: Kade jogging up after the wake was finished, full of useless apologies.

Except one.

“Option three. Steal Sundance’s car.”

A memory flooded back: Theo sitting on his bed, his face soft and miserable in the dark.

I want you there, he’d said.

Kade ran for his keys.