by Lissa Kasey
“You should use my shave kit,” I whispered, not wanting to wake Micah. “Make yourself look human.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, but vanished back into the bathroom. The box of pizza was open and the other half gone. Lukas always did like cold pizza for breakfast. I had never been a fan of congealed cheese.
I snuggled back down into the blanket with Micah, breathing in his scent and enjoying the warmth of his body against mine. Still no morning wood. I guess he couldn’t fix everything and make me normal. The thought almost made me laugh. Me, normal. Those words didn’t belong in the same sentence together. I saw ghosts, fire demons, and shadow monsters. Nothing about me was normal. In his arms, that was okay.
Micah sighed and shifted, stretching a little.
“Morning,” I said as he absently reached up to stroke my jaw, fingers tracing my beard and the edge of my lips.
“Hmm,” he grumbled. “Not a morning person.”
“Yeah, me neither.” But I was once again starving and Lukas had eaten all the leftover pizza. Did this hotel have one of those breakfast things? “I need to find some food. Are you hungry?”
He opened his eyes and stared at me, blue gaze soft and sleepy. “I could eat. But coffee…”
And with that suggestion I needed a cup so bad. “Fuck, you had to remind me?”
He gave me a tiny grin. “There should be food in the lobby right around the corner.”
“No one goes anywhere alone,” Lukas said, re-emerging from the bathroom looking a little more cleaned up, but still not scruff-free. I debated getting up and dragging us all out to get coffee, then reached over and grabbed the phone instead, ordering breakfast brought to the room.
“Must not be busy,” I told them. “They said it would only be twenty minutes or so.” Micah was back to his sleepy position, tucked under my chin, eyes closed, arm around my waist. I relaxed against him and watched Lukas move around the room like he had energy to spare. From getting enough rest maybe? Though I knew agitation when I saw it, especially in my brother.
“Lukas,” I called. He continued to pack, like we had somehow unpacked everything when we’d come in last night, though I knew we hadn’t. “Lukas,” I said again.
He looked up, glaring at me. “What?”
“I’m okay,” I told him.
His glare intensified.
“I am.”
“You are not fucking okay. You vanished for a month and show up in another state looking like someone took your skin for a joy ride and left you at the hospital on death’s door. And you are somehow okay?”
I flinched, his words stirring something familiar in my gut, the vague edge of a memory or something. I shoved it down. Not wanting to dwell on the new idea he put in my head. “How about I’m going to be okay? We’re going to be okay.”
“And if it fucking takes you again?” He demanded.
“You don’t believe in that stuff,” I reminded him.
“Until you fucking vanished on camera.”
“Micah said the camera glitched.”
“Yeah, and you were out cold on the bench when it went out, and when it came back on you were gone. You wanna convince me that somehow you woke out of a deep sleep and raced off into the night in less than thirty seconds?”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I don’t remember what happened or where I’ve been.”
“Seems to be a lot of that going around. The ‘I don’t remember’ plague.” His gaze fell to Micah who was wrapped up in my arms. There was anger there. Undeserved.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said.
“I should never have introduced the two of you. I thought you’d help each other heal. Not… Not this.”
“What happened in the garden was all about me, not him. Not his monster, mine,” I said. Let him think I was crazy. That was fine so long as he didn’t blame Micah for something none of us had any control over.
“I thought you don’t remember?” Lukas threw back at me.
“Where I was for the past month? No. What happened that night, yes. Do I understand it? No. But you said I don’t need to.” The expressions that crossed his face then was a play of confusion and then understanding. “I fell asleep in the garden and dreamed of the thing from the desert. In the dream it led me to Micah and Sarah.” Of course there had been more to it than that, but Lukas didn’t need that in his head. “That’s what I remember. My demon, not Micah’s.”
Lukas stopped moving, frozen in place for a minute, silent, thinking, perhaps even brooding. I felt Micah awake and tense against me. His face buried against my collarbone like he could hide from the angry words. How many times had he been in the middle of them? I hated that he had to be there while Lukas raged and threw angry eyes his way.
“How do you know they aren’t one and the same?” Lukas finally asked.
I processed that for a moment. First that Lukas was acknowledging that he believed. Not in our stories and the broken mindset of two men who had survived trauma, but that something was really lurking beyond what he could see. And second, how did I know they weren’t one and the same? The noises, the time lost, the stalking in the garden? Instinct really. The familiarity of the thing from the desert was something I couldn’t describe to anyone. It was like meeting an old lover you’d thought you’d forgotten, but seeing them reignited that visceral memory of your time together.
The thing that had awoken us at Micah’s place felt… different. More playful perhaps? Not as defined. Maybe that was only because I had yet to actually meet it. My demon, if that was what it was, specialized in terror, almost seemed to feed on it. The horror and terror of that day in the desert, the bone chilling black-eyed child in Micah’s garden, all to assert its power over me. Mine it had said before saving me from the shadows, or death curse, or whatever it was. A scary thought that it considered me its property. And the idea that I couldn’t remember the past month because something else might have been at the helm… not that giving him that explanation was going to ease his worry. Hell, it made mine worse.
Which was better? To be lost in an unknown world, or to have something else take over your body and live your life? I wasn’t sure.
“I know it wasn’t. It felt different,” I gave him lamely. “I’m not sure how to explain it to you—” without terrifying everyone in the room.
“Great. So there are two somethings out there. Shadows or whatever. Stalking you both. Ready to rip either of you out of this world at any time?” Of course he would put together the gist of it without my help. There were probably more than two. The fact that Micah and I both seemed to have some other being following us around was more coincidence than by design, I thought. Sarah had been taken too. Jared had seen something. Part of the curse of whatever had been on that ring? Or another shadow thing? I wasn’t sure we would ever know.
“If we run will it follow?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure what it was. “Run where? I first met it in the desert of Afghanistan, now it’s here, do you think it can’t find me anywhere?”
“We could go home to Mom and Dad.”
“No.” Those were memories I didn’t need to return to. A life that was no longer mine. And he was suggesting he leave his job? His apartment? Sky? And for me, Micah? “No.”
“Running never helped me,” Micah whispered.
“And you haven’t vanished again,” I pointed out. “Maybe it was a one-time thing. Besides, you guys don’t know I didn’t have a concussion and spent the past month not knowing who I was.”
Lukas gave me a droll stare. “And you happen to forget the past month when you remember the rest of your life? Oh and never mind that they did a CT scan on you when you collapsed in the ER and found no trace of head trauma.”
I sighed, too tired to fight, too happy nestled in Micah’s arms to even think about arguing with Lukas. “I’m not sure what you want me to do.”
He growled and paced. “I’m not sure what to do. I can’t protect you.”
“I don’t need you to.”
I got another glare for that remark.
“Seriously. I love you, Lukas. I didn’t realize how lonely I was when I served until I came home. Not for a relationship, but for my best friend, which is you, you moody jackass. So how about you sit the fuck down and wait for breakfast with us, then we’ll head home? Solve the world’s problems another day?”
We had a bit of a glaring contest then, him angry, me determined. That too was familiar and made me smile remembering stuff we’d done as kids. He’d always been the overprotective big brother, didn’t matter that we were the same age and had mostly the same build growing up. His sense of responsibility was a huge part of his personality. “Food and then home, yeah?” I prodded.
“Fine,” he agreed, begrudgingly throwing himself onto the unused bed and picking up the TV remote.
“Do us a favor and answer the door when food comes, okay?” I asked him.
He turned his head my way, giving me the ‘are you kidding me?’ look that I’d seen enough times in my life to have memorized. It made me laugh.
“Please,” I said. “I’m sort of warm and snuggly and don’t want to get up until there’s coffee to be had.”
“Mmm,” Micah mumbled against my skin, his breath warm and waking up parts of me I thought should still be sleeping. “Coffee.”
“Drug of choice,” I agreed.
Lukas gave us an irritated huff as he began flipping through channels. “Fine. Assholes.”
The drive home was uneventful. After they’d fed me enough to nourish an army, Micah and Lukas took turns driving, not letting me behind the wheel. We even stopped at a grocery store on the way out of Atlanta, picked up a small cooler, and filled it with cold cuts, fresh fruit and veggies, and lots of water.
The entire seven-hour car ride had been a careful dance of not speaking about anything important. No questions about where I had been, or why Lukas looked like crap, or what had happened. Was all this because I’d disappeared? He’d lived without me for years while I’d been in the service, not hearing from me for months at a time. I wasn’t sure if it was the idea that some paranormal thing took me, or something else he left unsaid.
Instead I’d filled the tense silence on the drive home with my horrible singing voice as I danced along to the radio. Lukas tried to be annoyed with me, but it never lasted.
When Lukas pulled up in front of his apartment, I wondered a few things. “Who’s looking after Jet?” I asked Micah.
“Sky,” he answered as we got out of the car and started unloading bags. There wasn’t really all that much. Lukas hadn’t brought more than a backpack, but Micah had a small suitcase which had both his and my stuff, which was a good thing because there was no way Lukas’s clothes were going to fit me now. My own clothes hung on me, loose and oversized. “She’s been staying at my place.” So Micah wasn’t alone. I understood that. However, with the way Lukas’s shoulders tightened at the mention of her name, I wondered what I’d missed.
When we entered his apartment, I knew. Apparently my brother had come apart at the seams. The place was a mess. Books everywhere, dirty dishes in the sink, bed unmade. And there was a bit of a smell. When was the last time he’d emptied the trash? Everything needed to be cleaned. I frowned and glanced at Micah who shared my expression of concern. Obviously he hadn’t been in here either since I’d vanished.
Lukas brushed by us, heading into his room with his bag and moving around the apartment like he was suddenly embarrassed that we were seeing it this way. “Give me a few minutes to clean up,” he said.
Micah held up his phone, flashing me the screen and a text to Sky. I nodded, understanding. Something had happened.
Standing in the mess that was his home, I thought maybe there was more that had happened and wondered if I should have pushed harder.
“Maybe Micah and I should go to his place?” I suggested.
“No,” Lukas said hotly, like the discussion was closed.
I shared a glance with Micah, then went to the kitchen to begin cleaning. He began in the living room, stacking up books, stripping the cover off the couch, and throwing away fast food containers. I filled the dishwasher, wiped down the counters, and swept the floor. Micah took many trips to the bedroom to put away books. Apparently Lukas had spent the entire time I was gone reading everything he could get his hands on about the paranormal. I didn’t know if that should worry me or not.
“Was he not working?” I whispered to Micah as Lukas stuffed what looked like every piece of clothing he owned in his washer.
“On leave,” Micah said. “He was too much of a mess once we saw the video of you in the garden. I tried to call and stop by, but he would never answer the phone or the door.”
That wasn’t good. Idle Lukas was an unhappy one. “And him and Sky?”
He shook his head. “No idea. I know they have barely spoken in the last month. Sky has been putting in full-time hours at the shop to help out, and Lukas hasn’t come in once. Even when I ask him a business-related thing. He refers me to his accountant.”
I frowned and took out the trash, thinking we’d need half a dozen air fresheners to ease the stink of the apartment. By the time I stepped back inside, Lukas was in a tizzy, yelling at Micah about letting me go outside.
“Stop,” I demanded, pushing Micah behind me and getting in Lukas’s face. “I took out your fucking trash, since you couldn’t see fit to do it. I’ve gone outside by myself a million times in my life. Even served my country halfway across the world. I’m fine.”
He glared at me, then glanced at Micah. “I think you should go home.”
Micah blinked and then nodded, gathering up his stuff.
“Wait,” I begged him. “Fuck.” I grabbed Lukas’s shirt and made him look at me. “I’m fine. I’m here. I’m safe and alive. Can’t you be happy for that?”
“Thrilled,” he said hotly.
I flinched as if slapped by the sarcasm in his tone, and let him go. “Wow. I’m sorry to be such a burden on you.” I glanced around at Micah’s bag and the few things I knew were mine. “I think maybe I should go.”
“You’re not going anywhere. Hell, if I could ship you home to Mom and Dad right this minute I would. Maybe I should have left you in the psych ward.”
“Fuck you! You don’t get to say what I do and don’t do,” I threw back at Lukas. Why was he being such a jerk? “I’m not five. What’s wrong with you? I was gone so you become an asshole? How is that an excuse to treat your friends like shit when they are trying to help you?”
Lukas grabbed me by the shirt and shook me. Micah reached for him, but I put a hand up to stop him. Lukas wouldn’t actually hurt me.
“I thought you were dead. Everyone told me you’d jumped into the river and we hadn’t found you yet. Do you have any idea how many times they told me I should have left you in the mental hospital where you were safe? How many nights I spent unable to sleep, walking the river shore, looking for any sign of your body. It made no sense that you would get up and leave Micah’s garden to go off and kill yourself, but neither does some unseen boogeyman taking you. Easier for everyone to believe you offed yourself. And do you understand how fucking hard that was for me? I spent years worrying about you. Wondering when someone in uniform would show up at my door to tell me you were gone, only for you to come home and die on my watch? Could you stop fucking chasing death for a while?”
I blinked at him, letting the words sink in. Of course they’d treated him like shit, giving him worst case scenarios so he’d expect it when they found my body. Only he’d been down this road before. Maybe it was more intense when it was your brother instead of a guy you barely knew, but he had seen how everyone treated Tim. I’d only heard and read about it.
“I thought you believed in me,” I said absorbing his anger and pain and letting it pass. “You knew I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Do I? Micah had vanished. I pushed you together. Didn’t think you’d get attached that fas
t, but when he was gone from the cemetery you fell apart. You offed yourself before we could tell you he’d been found. That’s what everyone told me. And I tried to rationalize that it wasn’t my fault for steering you into that relationship, but if that’s why you were gone, it was my fault.”
“I’m not so fragile that I’m going to jump off a bridge over a little heartbreak.” Okay so I had entertained the idea, but only for a minute or two. Lukas didn’t need to know that.
He let go, hands gripping the air for a minute before he reached for me and wrapped me in a huge hug, his face buried in my neck. I felt tears, hot and warm on my collar bone. “I knew. But everyone kept telling me otherwise. How many times do you have to hear it from everyone until you believe? It was endless. Even Mom and Dad were prepared for the worst.”
I hugged him back and met Micah’s concerned eyes. He shook his head. This was a familiar road for him. His phone chirped with a text and a moment later he went to the door, quietly opening it to let Sky in. I rocked Lukas in my arms and let him cry. There was nothing else I could do to reassure him I was back and going nowhere again willingly. I didn’t have the answers he wanted, or even the words to say to help him understand.
Stroking his hair and his back I gave Sky a look that I hoped conveyed a lot. Lukas wanted me to have someone to focus on, to give me a purpose, but I think he needed that more than I did. Would I always be here? Who knew? What was important was that Lukas wasn’t alone even if I wasn’t.
While I didn’t know all the details about what had happened with Sky previously, I knew he was super protective of her. The idea that he’d pushed her away to maintain some fantasy that he was somehow responsible for my death made me so pissed at everyone. Couldn’t anyone give him some fucking hope?
Sky approached cautiously, and I turned Lukas a little so he could see her. He flinched and shook his head.
“It’s okay,” she said, reaching for him.
“It’s not. I can’t even protect my brother. How am I supposed to protect you?” He demanded.
