by Lucy Auburn
Taking a good long look at his friend, Grayson nods sharply. I get the feeling he's worried more about me bonding alone with someone else than anything, but he doesn't need to be. I share something special and different with each of my Conduits—even, I'm beginning to realize, without the Affinities that originally forced us together against our will.
"We'll be back by this evening," I tell the others; Levi and Wyatt are waving us off, and they don't look too happy about it. "I'll call you guys if anything happens, but I'm sure it'll be fine. They won't be looking for me at Herb's house. Even Headmaster Shu said it would be okay. She gave us the transport stone and everything. Every tracker in the Shadow Fold has checked out the house multiple times—there's so sign he's been there since that night."
Wyatt grunts. "Not safe."
"It's not like this place is safe. I was here when my powers were stolen," I point out. He reluctantly sighs and nods to acknowledge my point. "This is something I have to do. We'll be okay."
"If you say so," Levi murmurs. "Just keep in touch, okay? I don't care what you text me—it can be strings of meaningless emojis for all I care. Let us know you're okay."
"I will. I've got that phone Eve got me and everything." I grab it out of my pocket and wave it at them. "I even almost understand why it's so fucking huge and how it works—Jack never let me have one of these things, he thought I'd do crazy stuff with dating apps. I'll update you the whole time we're there."
Mason pulls the transport stone out of his jacket pocket. "We should be off. There are other people waiting to go out on missions, after all. See you guys soon—promise."
It feels strange to separate from them, even three out of four. During the attack, when I went blind and thought I'd lost them forever, all I wanted was for the five of us to be together. And I've been clinging to them every day since. But I don't think I can do this with all four of them watching me—it's too emotional, and I won't get through it with all the distractions.
Pressing his thumb down on the shallow indentation in the transport stone, Mason murmurs, "Activate."
It disintegrates in his hand, and in front of us, Cain's doors appear like the magic that they are. Unlike wishing them into existence, the transport stones are very reliable—and special dispensation. I've got the sister to the first stone, which will bring us back here without a hitch.
Mason grabs the doors and opens them up for me, and I walk through first, the breath leaving me all at once as I step out into Herb's backyard and stare up at the house.
It's a good thing this wasn't the house I was raised in my whole life, but rather one they moved to when I was a teenager. Otherwise, I don't know how I'd be able to walk through the doors knowing it's empty of everyone I've ever loved and everything that ever mattered.
I'm the last of the Arizonas.
Other than, that is, a few drunk, messy cousins who might as well be Nevadas as far as I'm concerned. Most of them don't even have my dad's last name—marriages and the desire not to sound like a spray tanned stripper have made various Arizonas forsake the family brand over the decades. It's just me who can trace that line all the way back to the first drunken fool who took it willingly.
As Mason shuts the doors behind us, I steel myself. It takes all my strength to walk through that back door and put my hand on the knob. Taking a deep breath, I pull the spare key out of my pocket and shove it in the lock, hand trembling.
"You sure you want to do this today?" Mason is watching me closely, like always. "We can always come back."
"No, I have to do it. I don't know why it's so hard–I came back here after they died. That was before Bernard was killed, though. Something about knowing it'll be empty..."
"Here." He gently slides the key from me and turns the lock. "I'll go in first. That way when you walk in, it won't be empty."
Relief and gratitude fill me. I knew there was a reason why I wanted Mason and no one else here with me. He knows how to handle the intense moments like this. I just wish he knew how to share this emotional depth with others without letting that lessen its meaningfulness.
"Do you think places hold memories?" I abruptly ask him as he walks inside. "I mean... I wonder sometimes, if the house knows how many people were murdered in it. If all the memories and emotions that happen in a place somehow imprint on it."
"Who knows. Maybe there's a Physical Affinity for that."
"The real estate market certainly will know what happened here," I observe ruefully as I take a tentative step inside. "I'll probably have to sell the place to deal with the remaining mortgage and all the taxes, but it'll be tough. Selling a murder house is hard enough—selling a double murder house is impossible."
"You could lean into it. Turn the house into an attraction." Mason suggests jokingly. "It'd be a great haunted house on Halloween."
I laugh a little, and we walk through the house, which smells like whatever antiseptic they use to get blood out of carpet. My heart aches a little to know that Bernard—messy, ridiculous, but still my only living family—will never come back here again. He deserved it more than me; this was his father's house more than my mom's.
It looks like his house still. There are overstuffed leather sofas and taxidermy stag heads on the wall that prove it. The rugs are all various shades of red and gold, like blood and money, probably ordered with the sofas to match the photo in a Pottery Barn catalog.
"This is all mine," I realize as I stroll into the kitchen, running my finger across the granite countertop, wrinkling my nose at the smell of trash that needs to be taken out and dishes washed. "The fridge is probably full of rotten food, but I don't even know what day is trash day. And the sink... there are still dishes in it. Mom was probably planning on washing up in the morning after my court date. Bernard never got around to cleaning up in here, even though he said he would. Fuck, I'd be annoyed with him if he weren't just... gone."
"I can take care of all of it," Mason offers, sliding his hand across my back comfortingly. "You don't need to worry. Just do whatever you need to do."
"Thanks."
In this moment, all I want to do is kiss him, then snuggle up on the sofa with a blanket and a good movie. But I don't want to lead him on, so I move on, further into the house, taking it all in. Here, on the wall, is a photo Mom took of me when I was in the Girl Scouts, wearing my vest with all its badges. There's the artwork I entered into the state fair, complete with the first place ribbon pinned to it, blue and faded from sunlight.
More photos of me, and of Bernard. With Mom. With Herb, though more often than not he was the one taking the photos, not posing for them. Here we are posing in front of a waterfall after a hike. Eating a picnic in the park. Posing together at Bernard's graduation.
This is the love I had before Jack made me think I was worthless and selfish. It was the family I was too scared to reach out to, isolated and alone, afraid of what he might do to them if I sought refuge in their arms, or what they might think of me if they knew how bad it had gotten. Birthdays. Christmases. We had it all.
Only one thing was missing: Vincent Arizona.
Whatever my mom knew about him and his less public skills and activities, she kept her mouth sealed right up until the very moment she died.
But maybe there were things she wrote down. I don't think she was a journaling person, but it doesn't hurt to find out. She could've kept notes somewhere. Or maybe photos, live the ones she kept of my dad, that will give me clues about why she was killed.
The only thing is, if she kept a journal, it's in her bedroom somewhere. The place where she died.
I take a deep breath and steel myself. Going into her room now shouldn't be any harder than losing her in the first place, but somehow it is. There's this big, gaping hole where my mom used to be a part of my life, and the further I get from her death, the worse it becomes—because there's so much I still don't know, and haven't resolved.
Her bedroom is right around the corner, down the hall, past the living room, whe
re I was sleeping the night Brutus came in and slaughtered her. The night he spared me for some reason, not noticing me or not caring I was there, but killed Herb. And not long after that, it seems, he either killed Bernard or somehow manipulated the Black Serpent into doing it for him.
Walking into the bedroom, it occurs to me that my mom must've been confused that the body of her dead husband murdered her. He was wearing a face mask that night—hopefully she never saw him, or recognized him. If she had, I think she might've mentioned it to me... then again, she could've mentioned at some point that my father was a trained and notable assassin.
The bed she died on has thankfully been thrown away, and without it taking up the bulk of the space in the room, it feels like a completely different place. Her nightstand is still there; it's the one my great aunt Marsha restored before she died of lung cancer several years ago. Walking over to it, I stare down at the single drawer like it might have dragons lurking inside.
I stand there for what feels like several minutes.
What if there's nothing? What if I never find out why my mother was murdered? What if—even worse—Brutus is never caught and destroyed?
The sound of the garbage disposal running from the other room snaps me out of it. Mason is in the kitchen, no doubt dealing with some disgusting things in the fridge and sink, all so I don't have to. The least I can do to repay him is take care of the one task we came here for: getting to the bottom of this mystery.
It's stupid that I'm so afraid of this. The truth simply is. Just like the past. It can't hurt me. So I grab the drawer pull and open it wide, only to find myself staring down at... nothing.
The drawer contains: a bible, a contact lens case, three half-opened packs of gum, two romance novels with Fabio on the cover, and a remote control that looks like it belongs to a TV from the '80s.
Just in case, I open the King James Bible and flip through the pages, but there are no secrets written in the margins.
I'm on the hunt, though. I have to find something. I start with the chest of drawers, going from top to bottom, pushing all the clothes aside and pressing my fingertips into the back of each drawer, the bottom, looking for something. In TV shows and movies there's always a secret compartment. A place where all the answers are kept, waiting to be revealed.
Nothing, not in any of the drawers. Not in the storage containers under the bed, which are mostly full of old photo albums and toys I played with as a kid. There's an essay in one of the folders written in clumsy handwriting, with my name at the top. It's a story I wrote about the little brother I desperately wanted my mom to make for me so we could play outside in the summer and catch fireflies on our tongue—I was convinced they would taste like dessert.
They don't.
Nothing in any of the folders or photo albums gives me a clue. There aren't any pictures of Vincent in here; Mom saved those for her shelf to him on the bookcase in the corner of her room, so I go there next, just in case.
It's strange to see his face smiling out of a framed photograph again. Now that I've watched Brutus puppet his body around campus, fighting and killing, I can see how much a face changes when it's inhabited by a different soul. I've never seen the real Vincent in motion—other than my one, bizarre moment with his spirit—but the man who ravaged his way through the campus looked nothing like this one.
Reluctantly, I go through the mementos my mother kept of him. There's nothing inside the picture frame, hidden behind the photograph. The music box he gave her only has the trinkets and jewelry she kept in it.
Carefully, I place the little shrine to him back on its shelf, wondering how my stepfather felt about sleeping under my father's ever-watchful eye. He loved my mom a lot to deal with always being second place in her life, long after the death of her first love.
I check the closet too, and even root through Herb's stuff, but there's nothing out of the ordinary. Even the safe in their closet, which I open with my birthday, only has a gun and their passports in it. There's no sign of something magical or valuable enough to kill over, and nearly an hour of searching has passed.
There are other rooms I could look in. But most of them are lived in and loved. It's hard to imagine that they kept any secrets there. I can try prying up the floorboards and looking through the unfinished, inhospitable attic, but I don't think I'm going to find anything that tells me what I need to know.
Real life is so much more complicated than mystery novels or case of the week TV shows.
Sighing, I run my fingers through my hair and decide to take a break. The sofa in the living room is calling to me. Flopping down onto it, I stretch out and let my eyes slip closed, trying to think about something other than my own disappointment.
A while later I hear Mason step into the living room, his footsteps soft. My eyes slip closed. He murmurs, "Find anything?"
"Nothing. I can keep looking, but... I'm starting to wonder if my mom kept all the things she knew in her head."
"I'm sorry."
"Me too." He sits down on the couch next to me, his long hair pulled over one shoulder. "I just don't get it. Why kill my mom and stepdad? I get Bernard—he had memories put in his head. He could've identified the killer. But my mom..."
"Maybe she was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"I guess. She would've known her dead husband anywhere. I just don't get it, though." Sighing, I lean my head against his shoulder, enjoying the warmth of his arm against mine. "I'm sorry I dragged you out here."
"Don't be. I'm glad I could help."
Clearing my throat, I consider my next words. Maybe if we're sitting like this—maybe if I don't have to look into his face—I can tell him how I feel without second-guessing myself every second.
It figures I could kill a man and chop him up into itty bitty bite-sized pieces, but I can't manage to talk about my fucking feelings without it being a whole thing.
"Mason." I lick my lips, pausing for a moment. "I wanna tell you something. Try not to interrupt, okay?"
"Okay," he says, sounding hesitant. "If it's that you killed your ex-boyfriend, the whole country kinda knows about that."
I roll my eyes. "Yeah, yeah. It's about... you and me." He shifts a little, but manages not to say anything, just like I asked. Good ol' Mason. "So. I know you said you'd wait until I'm ready. And that's really gracious of you, and so kind. I know it hasn't been easy... waiting."
Again, he wants to say something. But he waits for me. Patiently—for the most part.
"The thing is, I don't know if I'll ever be ready. Because of everything that's happened to me, my life is a bit complicated, to say the least. Opening myself up to new things, to being vulnerable, is hard for me. I'm still not ready. But I want to be. And I know that if I make you wait until I'm ready, you'll be waiting forever, and that's not fair for you. So I think we should just dive right into being together, ready or not."
He still doesn't say anything, so I clear my throat and tell him, "That's it. All of it. You can uh, talk now. Tell me what you think."
"I think that's a solution only you would propose, Ellen Arizona," he says, voice warm and affectionate. "But I get it. Sometimes the only way to adjust to the water's temperature is to dive right in. I just don't want you to feel pressured."
"You've done the opposite of pressuring me," I point out, sitting up and leaning against him, hooking my leg around his waist. "That's what makes me so attracted to you. You're my soft place to land. And I'm so grateful that you let me make up my mind without getting upset with me."
"It was hard," he admits, reaching out to stroke the side of my face with the flat of his thumb. "But I know you, Ellen. You needed time and space. I hope I've given you what you need."
His eyes have warm brown sparks in the middle of the dark brown, like a golden ring of fire. Leaning towards him, I murmur, "Just kiss me already."
And he does, taking me into his hands, drawing me further onto his lap. There's nothing hurried about this kiss. It's like a reunion af
ter a long time away, something familiar yet fresh. He lightly sucks on my lower lip; I move my mouth to his jaw and suck on the spot just beneath his ear, which makes him tremble.
As he leans me down onto the cushions, I wrap my legs around him. My pulse surges just looking up into his eyes. His hands skim my waist, just beneath the edge of my shirt. Anticipation quickens my pulse.
Mason pushes me down into the cushions as he holds me and kisses me tight.
Something from beneath the cushions pushes up against my lower back.
Hand falling away from Mason, I reach down between the sofa cushions and frown. I pull back from him just enough to grasp what I find and yank it out.
An incredibly ornate knife shoved in an etched leather sheath.
Chapter 10
"What's that?"
"I have no idea." I stare at the knife. On the coffee table, my phone buzzes. "Hold on just a sec. Not that this hasn't been great, but... I think that's Eve calling. It might be important."
Sliding out from underneath Mason, I set the knife—dagger, really—on the coffee table and pick up the phone. I barely get out a greeting before Eve is telling me, "Get here right now. We've received word from a tracker that they found Brutus's trail near your stepfather's house—a recent trail. And no, you can't hunt him down alone. You have to come back on campus, where it's safe."
"But if Vervaine is with him... she has my powers. I have to take any chance I can get."
"We don't even know how to get them back," Eve says, sounding frustrated. "For fuck's sake Ellen, are you a complete dumbass? You're weak and powerless. You can't take on one of them, but less both of them. If you try you'll just wind up dead."
She's right. An aggressive asshole, but right. Sighing, I tell her, "We're on our way."
"Good. Hurry the fuck up. Ta-ta, Ellen."
I reluctantly meet Mason's eyes as I hang up. "This'll have to wait for later."
"The search for a clue, or what we were about to do on the sofa?"