Return to Darkness

by Rebecca Royce

  I didn’t like the cigarette smoke permeating the air or the holes in the sofa. The dirty dishes in the sink. It was depressing as hell.

  Aaron closed and locked the door behind me before stopping. “I just can’t believe you’re alive.”

  “I can’t believe I’m not. The whole time we fought Erdirg, I thought it was the darkness inside me that would undo us, but it turned out that was what saved us.”

  “You don’t seem so dark.” He studied me. “You seem lighter. Like you were happy.”

  I had been. I’d had them. And they’d had happy lives. “We’re going to get there again.” I wouldn’t allow any other outcome. “Shit. I’m so fucking mad at your father!”

  Aaron’s face split into a grin. “You sound like Oliver.”

  “Ha!” He didn’t even know. “When I left him, he was complaining about your dad. And now look at me, I’m doing the same thing.”

  “Are you hungry?” Aaron asked me. “Tired? The bathroom is right through there.” He pointed to a dingy looking door.

  “No,” I replied. “But I do need to do something.” I took a breath and let it out. “I need you to call Oliver. Have him come over. Will you do that for me?”

  Frowning, he put his hands on his hips and stared down at the floor. “That could be a huge mistake. I don’t know how he’ll react.”

  Fair enough. But we weren’t going to be able to do this without all of us working together. I had been the hot mess when we first met, and now they were, but we’d succeeded. For crying out loud, we were ten years older, a lot wiser, and didn’t have a demon to deal with in this reality. We could handle a little time travel.

  “Just call him. We’ll deal with the mess after we make it.”

  Aaron huffed a laugh and pulled his phone from his pocket. “Okay. But I warned you.” He was silent after dialing. “Ol? Can I come get you? I need your help.” He’d had a little pucker between his eyes as he spoke, but whatever Oliver said made his face clear. “Really? Okay. Great. Be there in fifteen.” He hung up the phone, lifted his gaze to mine, and raised his eyebrows. “So. Yeah. I’m going to get him. Do you want to come? Or wait here?”

  I thought it was probably a better idea if we sprung my undead, time-traveling self on him inside the apartment. “Here.”

  “Okay.” He took out his keys and jiggled them. “Stay here, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I won’t.”

  He stopped to look at me. “So you know Oliver, too? In this future time. The thing we were sort of starting to do, it happened? All of us dating you?”

  He’d clued into that. I’d been dropping hints, certainly not hiding it when I’d referred to us. I swallowed. “In my time, I put Erdirg to sleep and took off. Long story. I was sort of delirious. Went to Alaska. You guys found me there after ten years.”

  His eyes widened. “Oliver and me?”

  “Thorn and Colton, too. The four of you cultivated a relationship that had nothing to do with me. Became family when it came down to it. Now I’m back in the midst of it, and somehow it’s working.”

  He winced. “Really? With Thorn and Colton, too? Oliver, I can wrangle, but I have no way of getting in touch with the others unless we accidentally stumble upon them.”

  I could. I ran a hand through my hair. It wouldn’t be the easiest thing to do, but in this scenario, they’d gone to California and come back for me. That had still happened. Running into me when I should have been dead would still get their attention.

  And if Colton was working with his dad, I knew where those stables were. Still, I’d let Aaron get Oliver first. One step at a time. I had to figure out what I was going to do.

  Aaron and Oliver were the ones who were supposed to know what was going on. Not me. I was the one who had to deal with the paranormal that wanted to mess with my life all the time, but I wasn’t the member of our group who knew how to do research or to use magical objects. I tended to throw myself into scenarios and hope that it turned out okay.

  I guessed I was going to be doing that again.

  This time dragging four guys who I wasn’t yet sleeping with into the fray with me.

  Good times with Lacey Madison. I should start a blog. Call it that.

  Aaron left me standing in his apartment, and after he left, I cracked a window, hoping to air out the cigarettes. It was too much like my grandmother’s. I had no good associations with that scent. My stomach grumbled, and I made my way to the fridge to see what he had. The answer proved to be not much. Looked like he drank a lot of Diet Coke and beer. In terms of food, there were frozen dinners and some Chinese food that he really needed to throw out because if the smell was any indication, it had seen better days.

  It would be wrong to clean his house, but… he was doing me a favor, so maybe I could return it by at least washing the dishes.

  I went about cleaning his house like Snow-fucking-White, minus the humming. By the time I heard keys jingling in the door, I’d put the dishes away, aired out the house, dusted, and straightened. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be pissed.

  “Now you just need to trust me,” Aaron was saying as the door opened to reveal Oliver.

  His dark eyes met mine, and we both froze.

  Oh god. He looked… This was not Oliver. He was broader than I’d ever seen him, like he spent a lot of time lifting weights, or he had to do a lot of manual labor. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, and his arms were covered in tattoos. Even his fingers were tattooed.

  His eyes were bloodshot and his face darkened by a slight beard. Not one of those designer scruff looks, but like he had no reason to put himself together every day. His hair was long and shaggy and fell into his eyes.

  “I haven’t taken anything.”

  His words confused me. “What?”

  Frozen, only his gaze went to Aaron. “I haven’t taken anything. So why am I seeing a dead person?”

  “I’m not dead.”

  “She’s not dead,” Aaron said helpfully.

  “You’re a ghost.” He took one step to me. “And you wait ten fucking years to appear? What the fuck, Lacey? Why are you here now? Are you a portent? A harbinger? What’s going on? Who’s about to die?”

  I held out a hand to him. “I’m alive. Touch me.”

  His pupils were blown wide open as his eyes tracked from my hand back to my face. “Pass.”

  “Oliver.” I stomped to him and smacked his chest. “Jesus Christ. I’m alive. Get your shit together.” I peered closer into his eyes. “And don’t tell me you haven’t taken anything. You’re clearly wasted.” He’d been smoking dope. Or he was coming off a bender.

  “For your information, I work a night shift at the meat packing plant. So fuck off.”

  Had he seriously just told me that? I lifted my eyebrows, and he had the good sense to drop his gaze. “I need your help.”

  Placing his hands on his hips, he let his head fall back and let out a breath. “I can’t even fucking help myself, Lacey.”

  Who was this defeated Oliver? It broke my heart to see him like this. “Oliver. I came here after trying to save your dad. He had some kind of—I don’t know—mid-life crisis and awoke Erdirg from the sleep I put him in. When he did that, he fucked with time. Everything I know to be true—it’s messed up.”

  “What.” He stared at me, his gaze hard.

  “Was that a question?” I asked. This Oliver was really hard to read. All he did was sort of stand there, stare, and brood.

  “What’s messed up?” he asked.

  I swallowed. “Well, I haven’t read a newspaper or gone to a library, so I don’t know if big things have changed or just everything around my life. But in my life, you are not this person, for example. You are not working nights and you haven’t been to jail. You’re not stoned.” I hadn’t bought his explanation about not being high, not for a second. “Or inked up.” Although that was kind of sexy, and if my version of Oliver wanted a few tats I’d encourage that. “The town isn’t a shit hole. Aaron isn’t living
in this apartment. He doesn’t smoke.” I shot him a look. “And he’s a little OCD when it comes to cleaning.”

  Oliver visibly swallowed. “What am I doing?”

  “You own a veterinary practice. Co-own. With two other people. But these days you’ve been helping me. It’s a very long story.”

  Blinking rapidly, Oliver paced to the window. “No. No. No. No.” It occurred to me for half a second that he might try to throw himself out of it. Aaron must have had the same thought because he grabbed his brother’s arm.

  “Come sit down.” He motioned toward the couch for his brother. “It’s a lot to take in. She says she needs our help.”

  Oliver put his head in his hands so that when he spoke, it was muffled. “For what?”

  “Well, I want to go back and undo what he fucked up. I want to put things back the way they were.”

  Aaron winced. “Essentially eliminating us. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “No, not eliminating you. You’ll still be around. You’ll just be writing and published. Look, I get it. This is all very sci-fi, and that’s not my favorite genre. But I’ll admit it. I’m selfish. I want my life back. Who knows what happens? Maybe there’ll be two separate timelines. You can keep going. Just put me back in mine. Help me do that, guys.”

  Oliver snorted. “And suddenly she goes Marvel.”

  I didn’t know what that meant. “I have these stones. We can use them. I just don’t know how.” I reached into my pocket where I had put them, only they weren’t there. What the hell? I patted all over my body. “Oh shit.”

  Oliver dropped his hands from his face. “Missing something?”

  “Yes, the rocks. Sorry, stones, that your dad used. I had them. He was with me and then he vanished into dust. But I had the stones. And I didn’t think to check to see if they disappeared, too. I don’t understand. Why would they do that?”

  Aaron sat down next to Oliver. “I don’t understand any of this, but then again I’m not very bright and I didn’t do well in school.”

  It was like taking a bullet. He wasn’t very bright? He hadn’t done well in school? No, Aaron! I wanted to shout, but didn’t because some things just weren’t useful. Ranting at him was one of those things. In this world, maybe he really thought that about himself.

  Oliver’s hands shook. He hardly seemed to notice. “Our dad vanished? Like poof?”

  “Right. He didn’t even seem surprised.”

  “Motherfucker.” With a hard kick, he turned over Aaron’s coffee table, then stomped on it, breaking it into pieces. Over and over he went at the table like it had personally offended him.

  “I guess you and your dad have issues in this life, too.”

  Oliver stopped what he was doing, boot above the slivers of wood. And then laughed. There was the Oliver I knew. Head thrown back, smiling. He shook his head, wiping beneath his eyes as he got ahold of himself. “Yeah. You could say that. My father is more than happy to stand in the spotlight while ignoring the rest of us, at the very least.”

  “Yikes.” I found it fascinating that Mr. Chee, who had changed the future to be closer to his sons, still fucked it up. If ever the universe was telling someone something, it was telling Mr. Chee to let his sons live their lives. “I really, really need to talk to him.” I had a few choice words.

  “There you are.” Oliver stepped over the broken table to stare down at me. “That look there. The one that says you’re about to throw down and for the rest of us to post up. I recognize that.”

  “I haven’t changed all that much. I mean—besides not being dead.”

  “That’s a pretty big one,” Aaron replied. He knelt down and began to collect the broken parts of his furniture. He stared at the pile, sighed, and dropped them back to the floor. “Fuck it. I’ll get it later. She wants us to get in touch with Colton and Thorn, too.”

  Oliver froze. “Fuck that noise.”

  I needed them. We needed to do this together. The only way anything worked in any of our worlds was when we figured things out together. Look at what happened when I tried to do things on my own—I spent ten years in Alaska feeling guilty. I fucked up the future—and yeah, their father had something to do with it, too—but I was the one who grabbed the stones and went off half-cocked, just wanting to get this done. I owned my shit.

  “Please,” I asked. “I need all of you.”

  “So you can what? Get rid of us? Replace us with the nicer, cleaner versions of ourselves?” He stared hard at me. “Why would I do that? I’m happy with my life.”

  God. I sounded like the biggest asshole when he put it that way. “Are you?” I asked. He had a point. Just because these weren’t my guys, didn’t mean they weren’t living the lives they wanted to. Aaron smoked. Oliver had been to jail. They had self-determination. If this was the life they chose, the life they wanted, who was I to mess it up just so I could be happy?

  I loved the versions of my guys so much. I wanted them back. But this was them, too. And if—

  “I’m not.” Aaron broke off the stream my thoughts had followed. “I’m not happy. I’m passing each day, and that’s the most I can say. Oliver—can you honestly say there isn’t something missing from your life? That you don’t want more? The life she’s describing—I’m a writer! And you’re a vet who owns his own business. You wanted to do that since the time we were kids. Shit got all messed up, but what she’s talking about is a do-over. What, really, are we losing by doing that? My shitty apartment? Your parole officer?”

  “Chuck’s not a bad guy,” he muttered.

  “Ol—you’re wasted, and I saw the empty vodka bottle in your sink. We’re a fucking mess, brother.”

  Oliver dragged his hands down his face, sighing. “You’re right.” He laughed, but there was no humor to it. “You’re right, man. If I could go back, I would.” He dropped his hands and met my gaze. “Let’s do this. Let’s find the other two assholes and have our do-over.”

  I stood up a little straighter. I wasn’t fooling myself that this would be easy, but if I were sure of anything in this world, it was that I could count on the four of them. Even if none of them really knew me very well right now.

  They had known me, right at that pivotal time, when everything had been about to explode. And in this one, that was exactly what happened.

  I’d blown up. Well… okay. Things were going to change.

  Chapter 8

  The wind hit my hair, and I pulled it back behind my ears. People ran in various directions, all of them with harried expressions on their faces. One of them whispered to another, “He’s such an asshole.”

  I winced, following Aaron through the door of Colton’s business while Oliver waited in the car. When his father had been in charge, it had just been a big ranch, but now there were multiple buildings that looked quasi-industrial, quasi-commercial. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were doing, but I knew it wasn’t at all what Colton had wanted to do in life.

  “God fucking damn it,” his voice bellowed out. “Someone had better find me those fucking papers now or I swear I’m firing everyone.”

  Aaron turned to me. “Sure you need him on this? That is pretty much his constant mood. From moment one to moment ten. All day. Every day. I tried to have a beer with him three years ago. It did not go well. He yells all the time.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not afraid of Colton’s temper.” That was true. In fact, in our world, he practically never yelled at all, at least not around me. In any case, I knew that he was all bark and no bite.

  Aaron stepped aside. “You should go in. Go talk to his secretary. I’m going to wait here. Seeing me might just piss him off.”

  I walked forward, nerves hitting my stomach. Why, I wasn’t sure. What was the worst thing that would happen here? He’d say no. Okay. I’d be heartbroken a little bit. But that was fine. I’d lived through that before. The thing was, Colton was always so sure of me. What would it feel like to have him disinterested?

  I walked into the office an
d the secretary rushed through the door. “Whatever you’re here for, I’d wait until later. He’s on a rant. And I need a break. Just one little break.” She was practically in tears.

  I got out of her way so she could rush by. The poor lady. I hoped he was paying her a lot of money. Not that it would compensate for this at all. It wouldn’t. No one deserved to be treated… Hell, I wasn’t going to get myself in a snit over this. Oliver had been to jail. Aaron was a completely different person. Colton made those who worked for him miserable.

  What was Thorn doing? Kicking babies?

  Still, for now I had to focus on Colton. I steeled my back. I could do this.

  I wasn’t going to knock. I had surprise on my side, so I might as well use it. I turned the knob and opened it, walking inside.

  “I swear to god, Susan, if you don’t have the right papers this time…”

  Oh. My. God. Business Colton was… hot. Oliver and Aaron were both so tired. But Colton? The dark hair I loved was peppered with silver. A lot of silver. I guessed this was a very stressful life, because my twenty-eight-year-old Colton still had a full head of dark hair. He wore a button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal muscled forearms. His face was clean-shaven, but that jawline could cut glass.

  “Do you ever smile?” Shit. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

  Colton blinked at the papers he was reading and lifted my gaze to mine. Slowly, he stood. “What the fuck is this?” His voice shook.

  “You’re making your secretary cry. And everyone is afraid of you. That’s not the Colton I know.”

  His face went pale, and he sat down hard in his chair. After a moment, he chuckled and shook his head. “You know, Aaron told me this would happen. He said that I’d end up paying for what I did, for being a Scrooge. And here it is. The Ghost of motherfucking Christmas Past.” He dropped his head in his hands. “I don’t want to see the past. Just bring on the other two ghosts. I already know where I messed up with you.”