by Cari Z
“I’m not Mary Henley’s eldest son. You are, and Mary is dying in your living room, right now. And you know the worst part? All this work you did to make her love you, years and years of it, and you were so bad at it that your mom favored Jimmy all this time. Little Jimmy, who you hate.” Oh, how he hated that favored son, favored by both parents even when he was the one who’d gone into law enforcement like their father. “You’ll split the property on the lake, but she left him all her stocks, the ones you aren’t even supposed to know about but you do, and they’re all going to Jimmy. A year from now, he’ll be sitting pretty on vacation in Aruba, and you’ll still be plain old Officer John Henley, one step up from traffic but never the detective you thought you’d be by this time in your life. No wife, no kids, and now no parents.” I stepped close enough to whisper into his ear, “Your mother just died, Officer Henley. My condolences.”
I could hear his personal phone start to buzz somewhere on his body. I moved back as he reached for it, completely lost now, brought to the edge of his sanity by my cruelty.
“Hello?”
I didn’t want to hear the rest of the conversation. I got back into the car. “Happy now?”
Sören wasn’t beaming anymore. Instead he leaned over and kissed my cheek, cold and tender. “You’re a worthy competitor, Cillian. Thank you.” He kissed me again. “I’ll move to the back. You can drive now.”
In front of me, Officer Henley had just sat down on the hood of his cruiser, one hand on his cell phone, the other covering his eyes as he sobbed. Worthy. I didn’t feel very worthy of anything. I wished I could make it better for him, but the longer we delayed, the likelier it was that reinforcements would show up.
I got into the driver’s seat, turned us around, and drove off into the night.
Chapter Sixteen
The smart thing to do would have been to keep going, in line with my original plan. After what happened with the cop, though, my eyes burned like my body was trying to cry and my magic just wouldn’t let it. The guilt didn’t abate after two hours, and I wasn’t about to hand the keys over to Sören again, so I pulled off the highway at the next hole-in-the-wall motel I saw.
“Why are we stopping?”
I didn’t say anything, just got out of the car and slammed the door shut. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to that fucking dick right now. I headed into the tiny front office, where a boy who couldn’t be more than eighteen looked up from his video game a little incredulously.
“Seriously?”
“I need a room for a few hours.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Dude, we’re not that kind of hotel.”
I sighed. I was so done with dealing with smartasses for one night. “I need a room. Period. Full fucking stop. How much?”
“We have to charge you for the full night.”
I put both my hands on the counter and leaned in. “How. Much?”
The kid didn’t intimidate easily. “Twenty-nine ninety-nine. Hey, why is your car bouncing up and down?”
I didn’t even turn around. I didn’t want to know. “Because there’s a freak with a short attention span in it.” I passed him thirty bucks. “Key.”
He rummaged behind the counter for a key. “Look, whatever your buddy is on, don’t let him shoot up in the room, okay? We had a heroin addict miss a vein last week, and she got blood all over the walls. Mom doesn’t like it when she has to wear a face mask to clean the rooms.” He handed me the key, attached to a battered plastic tag. “Number eighteen, last one on the left.”
“Thanks.” I turned around, and sure enough, Sören was sitting on the back of the car and bouncing it up and down. I throttled back the urge to murder him. It wouldn’t take, and I’d probably just die myself as a result, but―yeah.
“Knock it off,” I said as I rejoined him outside. The lingering warmth of the day had finally petered out, and I was chilly now.
“I’ve seen video where cars do this, except those ones leapt much higher into the air,” Sören said, still bouncing.
“Those cars are specialized. All you’re doing right now is ruining my friend’s shocks. So stop.” He stopped, to my surprise, and I reached in and got my duffel bag out of the back. “Our room is this way.”
“We’re getting a room?” Sören smiled brightly. “Are we going to have sex now?”
“Oh my god.” I wasn’t equipped to deal with this right now, I just wasn’t. It was too much. “No. Not going to happen.” I stalked off toward the room.
Sören trailed along behind me. “Why not?”
“Because,” I said as I inserted the key in the lock. The edges were worn down so far they were barely enough to get the pins to move, but it worked eventually. I stepped inside and said a silent thanks for the strong smell of bleach in the room. Bleach was better than a lot of what I’d smelled in other places like this.
“Because why?”
I turned on Sören, who was shutting the door with a look of distaste on his face. Apparently bleach wasn’t so comforting to him. “What are you, five years old?”
He looked at me, and his expression went still as misty purple rose up in his eyes. I froze. “Older than you,” he said, an edge of hollowness back in his voice. “Older than all of your short-lived kind. I was old when humans first stepped foot on our land of fire and ice. Consider that, as you seek to chastise me.”
I wasn’t going to apologize, but I couldn’t afford to be an asshole either. I tamped down on both my fear and my aggravation. “We’re not going to have sex because I don’t want to do that with you.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
“You’ve had sex with this body numerous times.”
I shook my head. “That was with Sören, not you.”
“We’re the same person now.”
I dropped my duffel at the foot of the bed―the double bed, goddammit―no twins here. “Not to me.”
“You aren’t attracted to this body anymore?”
“Not when Sören isn’t in it.” I felt filthy, covered with the remnants of too many cold sweats and a gritty layer of dirt. Every muscle ached, despite Sören’s little burst of healing magic after the whole tying me to a tree thing. If I didn’t clean up soon, I wouldn’t be able to, I’d just collapse onto the bed and sleep for way too long. “I’m going to shower. I’ll be back out in a few minutes.” I grabbed sweatpants and a T-shirt and headed into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I didn’t bother to lock it. That wouldn’t help anything.
The water was lukewarm at best, and the little bar of soap had obviously been used before and stuck back inside the wrapper, but I didn’t care. I scrubbed every inch of myself, rubbing hard at where the bullet wound used to be, just to see if I could still feel something of it, anything. In less than a day, my entire life had been turned upside down. I was a contestant in a game I was in no way sure I could win. I had, at best, half a plan that relied on people doing stuff I didn’t know how to compel them to do yet. And I was traveling with the body of a man I loved and the soul of a spirit sociopath. Life didn’t just suck, it was ready to grind me down into the cracks on the sidewalk and leave me there to rot.
I cupped my flaccid penis, thinking about Sören for a moment. There was nothing, not even a stir of interest. Too tired. Too sad. Too wrong. I stayed in the shower until the water went cold, putting off my exit as long as I could. When it was no longer possible to delay, I dressed and went back out into the room, expecting another discussion, maybe a fight, about why I wasn’t going to give in to Sören’s very poor seductions.
Instead I found him lying on his back on the bed, so still at first I thought the landvættir might have left the body. But no, his lips were moving, although no sound emerged. I sat down on the edge of the bed and watched, warily, until Sören’s eyes opened and he looked at me.
“I’m singing him a lullaby,” he explained in a soft voice. “He sleeps, for the most part. It’s easier on him, even though the water is soft. He dis
likes the cold of it, so I don’t wake him to experience it unless I must. But some things can seep through, and singing is one of them.”
I turned out the lamp and then stretched out on the bed next to him, keeping a little distance between us. “What’s the lullaby?”
“It’s called Móðir mín í kví, kví. It’s about a mother who couldn’t take care of her child, so she left him outside to die. Later, the child comes back to haunt her and offers her the rags he died in to clothe herself.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“It’s traditional. Are the lullabies you’re familiar with any better?” Sören gently prodded. “When the bough breaks, the baby will fall… That’s a song about a child perishing, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure.” Maybe it was, I’d never really thought about it. “What else can seep through?”
“Only the things I choose to let in. Comforts. Sounds that he enjoys. The warmth of another body. He misses it greatly.”
“I don’t want to have sex with you.”
“Which is very peculiar, but I suppose I can’t force such a thing,” Sören said. I felt suddenly, drastically relieved. “A reluctant gift is worse than no gift at all. But if you lie with me here, he’ll feel your presence. If you wrap me in your arms, he’ll feel your embrace. This is no trick,” he added. “When we’re quiescent, the bond is stronger. You will comfort him as much as me.”
The idea of anything I did really being a comfort to the landvættir sat a little odd with me, but I could at least do this for Sören. “Roll over on your side,” I said, and he obeyed. I scooted closer, clenched my jaw for a moment as I wrapped my head around what I was going to do, and then moved in to spoon Sören from shoulder to calf. His body was cold to touch, but I rested my head against the back of his neck and put my arm over his waist because if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. I held him close, and a moment later, Sören’s hand found mine. He laced our fingers together, and I let him, because the move was familiar, something he’d done with me before everything had become so terrible.
We lay silent for a few minutes, and my fatigue started to get the better of me. I was almost asleep when he said, “I didn’t think that using your magic like that would displease you so. You’ve done far worse.”
It was an apology and a rebuke all in one, because the thing I’d done that was worse lay in my arms right now. I’d consigned Sören to this fate. It didn’t matter how hard I’d regretted it later, I’d still done it. I’d messed with fate for selfish reasons, and this was the result. It was my fault, my responsibility, and I had to make it right.
“I’m trying to change,” I said at last. “I’m trying to be better.”
“Humans like Sören are rare. The vast majority are motivated by their own betterment, not the betterment of their fellows. You’ve already proven to be the first type. Why fight against your nature?”
I didn’t want to think about it. I was tired of talking. “Go to sleep,” I mumbled against the nape of his neck. “Just go to sleep.”
Sören didn’t speak for the rest of the night.
Chapter Seventeen
When I woke up, Sören was gone. My first instinct was to run out and check the parking lot, because if he’d abandoned me after the fiasco that was last night, I didn’t know what I’d do. Die, probably, after a lot of melodramatic running and screaming. Nothing about that thought appealed, so I closed my eyes again, took a deep breath, and ran my hand over the other half of the bed. Still noticeably cool. Okay, that was good. He hadn’t been gone long.
I opened my eyes and sat up, carefully not letting myself freak out yet. I checked for the car keys―there they were, right where I’d left them on my duffel bag. I couldn’t hear the shower going and the bathroom door was open, but if he’d gone out, he probably hadn’t gone far. Maybe he was hungry. Shit, now that I thought about it, I was hungry. The last time I’d eaten anything was…yesterday, late morning. Lunch with Andre. It felt like a hundred years ago already.
I eased myself to my feet, expecting to feel more fragile than I did. Last night had been―I didn’t really know what to think about it. It had been intense. Painful. Sad. Mostly sad, and if I thought about it too much, I’d just end up feeling guilty, and not only over Sören. I knew exactly what Officer Henley was doing right now, and it wasn’t pleasant. I did feel a bit better after ostensibly giving Sören some comfort, but any pleasantness was fleeting. And that had to change.
Fuck this. Fuck being down and out; fuck the nerves; fuck the worry. I was a goddamn seer. I was the son of a woman who had manipulated an entire government into freeing her. I was primed to succeed. I needed to leave behind my doubts and jump into this feet-first, or I would lose.
Number one thing on the agenda: get decent and get some food. Number two: get moving, but mindfully. I’d always hated that word―it was the sort of thing Marisol would throw out every now and then when she was in a particularly new-agey mindset, but right now, it seemed pretty cogent. I needed to be mindful of Sören most of all. I mean, yes, mindful of his vengeful relatives too, but if I couldn’t hang on to the landvættir on my own, all of my problems became purely academic because I’d probably be dead. So. Bathroom, clothes, find Sören, get us some food, and get out of here. We’d make it to Santa Rosa when we made it.
I put on jeans and a T-shirt, covered my more distinctive tattoos with my suit jacket, the only part of the getup that had mostly survived the carnage of yesterday, and headed for the office. I hadn’t looked too closely at the kid who’d checked us in last night, but I’d seen enough to get a glimpse of what he spent most of his time on.
My hunch was correct. Sören was there, sitting cross-legged on the grimy floor in yesterday’s clothes, dual-playing with the kid as they shot up purple aliens on a screen that was way too small to be good for this.
“The one on the left, the left. Switch guns!” the kid insisted.
Sören switched to something that shot grenades and fired.
“Better. You’ve gotta be ready to change things up, otherwise you’ll be overwhelmed. I can’t believe you’ve never played this before.”
“Me neither.” Sören seemed to be enjoying himself. He looked over at me as I approached and grinned. Apparently we were moving on from the trauma of last night without another word. I was absolutely fine with that. “You and I haven’t played this game. Why not?”
“I think it’s too new for us to have played it.”
“It came out last year,” the kid scoffed. “That’s not new. And by the way, if you’re not out by ten, we’re charging you for another day.”
It was already nine forty-five. Wow. We―at least, me―had slept a lot. “I’ll go load up the car and get the key.” I left with only a tiny sigh of relief at having found Sören safe and sound and headed back to the room. I stuffed my clothes into the duffel bag, silently promised myself I would get some new gear soon, made sure the weapons were secure, and then…
God, I wanted to use my phone. Apart from the fact that it had GPS and I could look up directions on it and a zillion other useful little things, I felt kind of naked without it. I was cut off from my network, my community. I couldn’t turn the thing on without worrying about it being traced by Papa Egilsson, though. So that meant I was stuck with finding a payphone, if those even existed anymore, or borrowing someone else’s phone, which came with a certain amount of risk attached for the person I was borrowing from. For all I knew, Egilsson could track Sören remotely with magic, no need for technology, but I didn’t have to make his job any easier on him.
Payphones it was. Which meant I needed a way to occupy Sören while I made some calls, which meant that I really hoped he ate food. I threw my stuff in the car and went back to the front desk, where the two of them were still playing.
“We’ve got to go,” I told Sören, who frowned at me. “I’ll buy you a handheld game system, okay?”
“When?”
“After we get something
to eat.” I turned to look at the kid. “Is there a decent diner in this town?”
“There’s a Denny’s two blocks that way.” He pointed west. I felt my lips purse involuntarily.
“Is there anything better?”
The kid raised an eyebrow at me. “Have you seen this place?”
Good point. “Denny’s it is.” I expected an argument from Sören, but he stood up without any prompting and left the office without bothering to say good-bye.
“Weird guy,” the kid said.
“You have no idea.” I handed the key over. “If anyone asks, we were never here.”
“Who would ask?”
“Hopefully no one.”
“I was wrong,” the kid muttered. “You’re both equally weird.”
He had a point. I left and joined Sören in the Electra. It started smoothly enough, despite the hell we’d put it through in the past eighteen hours. “Are you a breakfast person?” I asked him as I backed out of the parking lot and onto the road.
“I don’t need to eat much.”
“Does that mean you don’t like Belgian waffles?” There was the Denny’s, yellow and red and gross all over. I tended not to like places like this because I’d eaten at way too many of them as a kid, and living with Marisol had spoiled me. On the other hand, they were cheap and plentiful and, more importantly, there was a payphone on the sidewalk just in front of it.
“I’ve never had a Belgian waffle.”
“You’re in for a treat, then.” I parked, and we got out. “Unless eating makes you sick, in which case, we should avoid this place.”
“It’s not a problem for me; it just isn’t a vital necessity like it is for you,” Sören said as we walked into the restaurant. There were probably twenty booths and tables, and only two of them were occupied. The hostess/waitress, a bored-looking woman with dark skin and bright red lipstick, showed us to a table and handed over menus.
“Coffee?” she intoned.
“Yeah, with lots of cream.” She left, and I found the waffles in the menu and pointed them out to Sören. “If you like sweets, these are indulgent. If you don’t, they’re grotesque.”