He let out a quiet hum. “Your father has been missing for some time. I expect that your grandfather is the second oldest of the bodies, your brother the newest. When did your father die?”
His question brought it back in vivid detail, my father's dead mouth open for the yellow grass to pour out, his body sunken and merged with dirt. I told him what I'd seen, and how Gramp had come at a run, my brother with him.
“I don’t know the year,” I answered. “I was small.”
"What were you told?"
"Nothing much then. Gramp said ‘it was coming,’ and he buried him. Later he told us our father was seeing a human woman in town."
"Lies, then," Gregory surmised. I stiffened, angry despite my crushing fear, and he gave me a look. "People are idiots. Do you think there haven't, for all the rules against it, been human-mage couples? It's forbidden, but there's little to be done other than punishment once it's too late to go back. We just try to warn people off before it gets that far."
"Before you have to kill them," I filled in hollowly. He scowled.
"Before we threaten them with a life imprisonment, moved somewhere away from all the human's connections, where they can be monitored. All communications with their old life are blocked. It's a lot of effort."
"That's not what I was taught," I told him.
"It's how things have been for at least two centuries."
I wanted to touch his hand, see if he really believed what he said with such conviction. Knowing what he felt might make me feel better, but there was a good chance it would make everything much worse. Considering his connections, who knew what that move would give away, or if it would finally be the action that brought my death? What if he were inverted, and could sense when I used my meager skills? Lane’s father could make as many claims as he liked about the changes to the Faded. One whiff of a curse like me and I had no doubt that I’d meet the end Gramp always warned.
"Then what of my brother, Geoff?" I demanded, forgetting my fear in face of this madness.
"The fresh body." So cold, no trace of sympathy in his tone. "We weren't responsible for his death, if that’s what you’re asking. How did he die?”
Again, words I had no way to trust. I told him, words heavy on my tongue. It was a painful wringing from my soul. Geoff. My brother. My family in its entirety. He had been the last vestige of any semblance of security I had ever felt, and God if it didn’t hurt just as much today as it had the day I buried him. I felt like I was sitting there again beside the partially dug grave, crying, the rancid smell of burnt flesh and my own vomit thick in my nose.
Lane’s father gave another hum, staring at me with a furrow in his brow and lips twisted into a puzzled frown.
“It sounds like the Faded, I’m not going to lie, but that crime would never have been answered like that. Do you know how many foolish teenage punks try that stunt? One a year is hitting pretty low, and that’s only in this area." He gave me a hard look. “Do you know how many die for it?”
I shook my head, my arms tucked tight against my chest and my eyes locked on him.
“Not one.”
I didn’t want to believe him, not when it destroyed everything I ever thought I knew about my loss. "I don’t understand. The same happened to my father," I pointed out, desperate, "and my grandfather told us it was the Faded."
"Again, a lie. If he believed it, well, that changes nothing. Death is a common punishment for breaking rules, but not that rule."
I leaned forward without thinking and caught his hand. There were waves of sympathy and pity beneath his stony countenance, and a compassion akin to what I often felt in Lane. I flushed, dropping his hand with an apology, but his eyes followed me. Before releasing him, I'd caught a flash of surprise and then a strange knowing feeling.
"I see," was all he said.
He stood and pulled on his suit jacket. I couldn't look away, horrified at the prospect of what I’d possibly given away. The way I’d grabbed his skin made it obvious what I was. I cursed myself for being a fool, any chance of surviving through this dashed against my stupidity.
Still, there was one thing I had to say.
“This is my fault. I’m sorry that Corey is in this trouble.”
"Tell my eldest son to take tomorrow off," he told me, ignoring my words. There was, for the first time since I'd met him, a trace of emotion in his voice. I felt certain it was pity. "Thank you for meeting with me, and I'm sorry that it must have been unpleasant. The past seldom offers much enjoyment for revisiting."
****
I didn’t work, but Lane was busy until later that evening. I had to get out, but where else could I go if not home? Morgan was out there somewhere, and it was the same question I’d lived with for five long years—did I go with the man who hurt me or take my chances with the government I was told would want me dead?
I left food and water for Olive and drove over an hour to the nearest city. I parked alongside the sidewalk and spent the next few hours at an outdoor café, feeding change into the meter and building up a collection of untouched drinks. As long as I gave them orders they let me stay, and I did that, letting the wasted orders pile up around me as the hours stretched. One of the staff took some of them away when I gave her the okay, but other than that they let me be.
Lane didn’t call my cell, but why would he? I’d left him with my little lady, and he knew there was no way I’d leave her. This entire retreat was a pointless escape. Lane would still be waiting when I returned, and what was I really accomplishing other than a brief, unhelpful reprieve?
I wondered if Morgan was nearby, and if this entire flight had been pointless. Eventually I had to go back. I was actually holding a mug when my phone rang. Lane, off work.
I couldn’t believe how much time had passed. Admitting where I was, I told him I'm on my way home. I fumbled with my change when I paid the waitress, and when my fingers brushed her hand I felt an impatience tempered with pity and concern. The pity grated, but the concern was a warm welcome. I tried to hold to that small kindness as I drove home.
Chapter Eighteen
Lane was waiting on my veranda when I drove up, a travel cup in his hands.
I gave a weak smile, and he instantly was at my side. “What’s wrong?”
“Your father says that you can stay home tomorrow.”
“Da was here?” Lane questioned, startled.
“Yeah.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” He was unable to hide his embarrassment. I smiled and shook my head.
“It’s fine. He’s your family, and it’s right that he worries. It was good of you to try and help me, too.” I took a breath, then added, “He told me about his connection with the Faded.”
Lane stiffened and looked me over, probably searching for signs of panic. I gave a small smile. Luckily, I’d had enough time for it to mostly fade.
Gregory Hunter knew what I was, of that I had no doubt, but he’d made no move to hurt me before leaving. Gramp always said being what I was meant instant death on discovery. If he had been wrong there, might he not have been wrong about other things?
I wanted his words to be true with the same desperate hope that I wanted them to all be lies. I wanted to believe he’d let me live, but what could I believe if all that I thought I knew were lies?
“I know you don’t trust them,” Lane told me, dropping next to me and swinging his arm around my shoulders, “but I promise he won’t hurt you. What did he want?”
I took comfort from his arm, tilting my head until my skin brushed his and let me feel his desperation and concern.
“To ask me some questions.” I hadn’t been able to forget the man’s pronouncement of the bodies in my old basement, and while I didn’t want to talk about this again I’d rather Lane hear everything from me. I sighed. “I guess I should tell you some things.”
It was hard to start. “I don’t have any family. I always thought it was because of the Faded. Them and our own faults. I always thought my father w
as killed by the Faded, and assumed my brother had been, too.”
He got that pinched look he always wore when he was trying to decide how much he could press before I freaked. It would be more annoying if I could blame him. “What happened to your father?”
“Gramps told us that he had been seeing a local, non-magical girl,” I answered, trying for a nonchalant shrug but really only managing a sad little motion. That was what happened when anyone ignored the laws and tried to dilute the blood; the cruelest lessons are often the quickest to learn. “It’s a price paid twice by my family.”
His expression was troubled, and I could tell my words gave him more questions. He was quiet for a minute, mulling over what I said, then his expression turned determined.
“How long ago was your father killed?”
“I was small.”
He nodded, chewing over that. “Who else? You said two people paid that price.”
“My brother. He was killed five years ago.”
He was quiet again, and while I wanted to ask what it was about I figured it was better to let him decide how he wanted to come out with it. Maybe he was finally seeing how much trouble I was. Someone whose entire family was wiped out by the government wasn’t a good bet for company. I had no doubt that, skills known or not, I was on their watch list. Even the danger of Morgan paled in face of that.
What he actually finally said was much more chilling. “That makes no sense,” he said quietly. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to shoot down what you've been taught, but are you sure? Is there no way someone else did it?"
"It's part of the rules I was taught growing up," I pointed out, perplexed. "Your father said the same thing. Gramp warned us, though, that we'd be killed and left to our families if we ignored that rule like our father did. Geoff ignored it and the words proved true. They both died. They were killed. Because of it!"
“My father used to work for them when he was young.” He didn’t need my ability to pick up on the spike of fear those words caused. "Brett, relax, please," he said. "I don't know what happened with your family, but my father isn’t like that, and we’re not going to hurt you. I’ve never heard of that punishment before today. I just don’t understand. I don’t think the government would do that for such a silly thing."
But they had, hadn't they? My entire family line was gone, each one taken out by them—even Gram, though it had been her fear of them that chased her to the grave rather than their hands. If I was to believe Lane and his father, what could I believe about my childhood? My family?
"Did you know anything about me before we met?"
“Nothing,” he answered. Then, seeming to think better, he added, “Well, not really. Kay said you were a mage, and that you were alone, but other than that I hadn’t heard anything. I don’t think Da did, either, until recently.”
“And then he wanted you to leave me.”
“Not … exactly.” I stiffened, and Lane caught my hand before I could move away, pinning it there against his arm. His hold was loose enough that I could get away if I wanted to, but I let him keep me there, feeling his awkward, uncomfortable rumble. “He doesn’t like that you’ve been mistreated. We’ve all seen, too many times, what that can drive a mage to become. It’s how close we are and how fast, I think, that scares him.”
“Probably because your community—the Faded—killed my family, and now I’m sitting here alone and without one of my own. Of course he sees me as dangerous.”
Lane flinched, and I felt a thread of guilt beneath my almost overwhelming desperation.
“You say they killed everyone,” he asked hesitantly. “What do you mean?”
"There were five of us before Dad died. Gram drove herself mad and eventually refused to eat or sleep, dying in the old root cellar after Gramp finally gave up on bringing her back upstairs. He grew angry one day, years later. Started cursing them and raving about their corruption, and the next morning we found him dead by the garden. Only two of us were left—my brother Geoff and I—when they killed my brother. That was five years ago, just over a month after Gramp."
“I’m sorry to ask, I know it has to be hard to answer—I have no idea how to even imagine something happening to my shit of a brother—but what exactly did your brother do?”
“He played a few tricks for some bar-hoppers. Sparks, floating. They weren’t much older than he was, maybe mid-twenties.”
Lane shook his head, resolute. "They wouldn't have killed your brother for just that. Not your grandfather, either. Old men rant, it’s the way things are. How old was he?" Lane asked.
There was nothing in his words that made sense. There had only been the four of us, five if you remember Gram, who was a distant haze of quiet worry on my earliest childhood. Four did not make a clan, and who would have been being warned? Gramp, an ancient and bitter man already riddled with paranoia? Two children barely old enough to cast a spell?
I felt bereft all over again. What in life could I trust?
"I'm not sure,” I said in answer to his question. “He was over the mid-nineties, but he wouldn't tell us anything more. 'I’m the dust in the yard', he'd say."
"Maybe it was murder, but why kill someone so old? Are you sure it wasn’t just old age?"
Gramp’s death had been a clear message. There was no question of that. “He was killed. They left him with burns that ripped his skin, and he bled out into the garden. We have no idea if it was the burns or the bleeding that killed him, but he never could have died that way on his own.”
“And you thought it was the Faded.”
"I didn’t know anyone else who would care," I sighed, wishing for a drink. “Your dad also says there were bodies under Gramp’s house, dozens of them."
Rotting in the ground beneath where I had slept, some older than I and others placed there during my lifetime. I had no doubts my nightmares would start reflecting that new knowledge. I felt enough shock through my touch that I knew he hadn’t already known. Now, when I imaged Gram huddling down there, shaking and wailing and waiting, I wondered if she knew.
He stared, mind working. "Do you think they were put there by your brother or your grandfather?" He asked. "Could it have been both?"
Geoff was angry, but a killer? Gramp had ordered us to keep our heads down, and while I had no doubts the old man's words had meant little more than challenges to my brother, I had trouble seeing him as a killer. He was the one always mussing my hair, fighting with me, tackling me. He was overprotective, reckless, and just … Geoff.
Gramp, though, was also hard to see. I could easily imagine him killing, as the ease he had burying my father was ingrained in my mind, but almost every word out of his mouth had been orders for us to keep low profiles. We weren't to draw attention, or involve ourselves in anyone's conflicts. “Keep to your own backs and your mouths shut,” had been his way of putting it.
My father, maybe, but he was long gone before the end, so the newer bodies couldn’t be his doing. Gram, too, though her fear made it impossible to see her as the killer. Her frailty, too.
"I don't know," I told him honestly. It kept racing through my mind, but I couldn't see any answers.
“I'll talk to Da. If he’s already asking these questions then at least we can see what he finds out.”
I didn't want that, but what mattered at this point?
“Thank you.”
I prayed I wouldn't regret it, but if I did there was little likelihood I'd be around to regret for long.
****
Lance’s father showed up at my door again the next day. I wondered how he knew I was there, but figured I was better off not knowing. I invited him in, and when he refused coffee I sat out there on the veranda and waited for him to do the same.
He sat, his gaze pinning me in place.
"Lane said you both had some questions. Good timing, too. My own questions have been getting attention. A man who knew you called me yesterday. He'd infiltrated your ex's group. I told him you were dating my son. His reaction said
you’re trouble, but not by your fault.” He frowned at me. “He likes you.”
The idea of any of Morgan’s men, even a false plant, liking me boggled my mind.
“Anyway,” the man continued, “it seems your boy just packed up and left with barely a word. He's here on his own."
"That doesn't make him any less dangerous." Morgan had never needed assistants, just sycophants. I wondered who could possibly fool Morgan long term. “He said he knew me?”
"My questions are catching attention. Should we know anything about this guy?"
What should they know? Most of it they must already, but I’d give him the best I could.
"Morgan is a sick bastard. You're not going to find anyone eager to betray him. They know what he'll do to them if he finds out."
"Maybe, maybe not. What is it his group is trying to accomplish?"
That was easier, at least. "They want to replace the existing government with their own representatives, and take more territory under his control.”
He scowled. Still, I didn’t feel like he held any actual aggression towards me, just Morgan and the situation. "Any end goal other than power?"
I shuddered. "I wouldn't want to be any part of one.”
Lane’s father considered that, then sighed. “Morgan’s well connected,” he said.
"I knew they had connections, but he never talked a lot about that in front of me. He was more interested in his own power, less in that of his connections."
And he always had other thoughts on his mind when it was just us.
There was something more I had to ask, though, loath as I was to bring it up.
"You thought I put some of the bodies there, didn’t you?"
Lane’s father stared back, giving nothing away. "I did,” he answered. “Until our talk the other day. Now I'm sure you didn't."
I started. "How?"
"You're not the kind of cold you'd have to be for one of your kind to do that," he told me bluntly. "It could be a good act, but then your ex would've been long dead, too. From the stories I was told yesterday, more is the shame you aren’t a killer. He would deserve it."
Upon the River Shore Page 15
