by Amie Gibbons
“No! No, I won’t be. I can get out after you do. I can take the chaos magic for a few seconds. And that’s all I need.”
He didn’t answer.
“Grant!” I punched his arm and he didn’t even flinch. “Oh my god!”
I stepped in front of him and he stared straight forward over my head.
“Grant,” I said, “I was trained by the best. I was trained by you. Do you really think I’d say I could take this if I couldn’t? Grant, let go. Let me take this. We can get you out, ya just gotta trust me. Grant, please, let go. I will kill myself before I let you stay trapped in here.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
I growled under my breath, grinding my teeth together.
“But I won’t be killing myself, because this isn’t a trap made for me. It’s made for you! I can take it better than you can, cuz I’m not a solid oak that will break before it bends. The chaos doesn’t affect me like it does you. Which means I. Can. Take. It. Please, trust me.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Grant, you can’t hold this much longer. If you don’t trust me, you’re going to die. No, worse, you’ll be stuck in this madness. It’ll get you, and I don’t think we can get you back once it does. Carvi made it sound like we wouldn’t be able to.”
His eyes jerked back and forth, the indecision obvious, and I found myself staring up at him, holding my breath, waiting for him to make the call.
How long did he have?
How long could he hold this?
His hands shook, and a tear ran out of the corner of his eye.
It made my blood run cold.
When had I ever seen Grant cry?
The only time that came to mind was when his daughter was born.
“Cora,” he said hoarsely.
Speaking of.
“Yeah,” I said. “Think of your daughter. Think of the love and follow that out.”
He shook his head in a quick jerk.
“Tell her I love her,” he said. “And I’m proud of her.”
“Tell her yourself!” I screamed.
He was not doing this.
I wouldn’t let him.
I focused on him.
If he wouldn’t give up control…
Then I had no choice but to take it.
Before I could blink, something hit me in the chest like a horse kicking me right in the sternum.
Breaking on through to the heart.
Cuz I flew backwards, out of Grant’s little bubble of order as the chaos took him.
It swirled him down, sinking further and further away.
“No!” I screamed, running for it.
Big arms grabbed me, pulled me back against a strong chest.
“Ariana, no!” Carvi screamed in my ear over the roar I didn’t even recognize till now. “You can’t follow him down. He’s gone. It got him. The madness got him.”
“No!” I yelled.
Even as I knew it was too late.
Cuz Grant had vanished.
Chapter sixteen
“No!” I fell forward outta Carvi’s lap onto my hands and knees in front of Grant, crying so hard I was afraid I’d break my eyes.
Cuz my heart already was.
Grant had pushed me back.
That’s what made him lose that last bit of control and let the chaos take him.
That’s what made it so I couldn’t take over, cuz I was too surprised.
And he’d fallen.
He was lost to us now cuz he hadn’t trusted me enough to believe me when I said I could take it.
He’d sacrificed himself, thinking he was savin’ me.
When all he’d been doing was dooming himself.
I scream-cried as I lurched up to my knees and beat my fists against Grant’s chest.
“Lea,” Carvi said, pulling me back.
“No!” I screamed, breaking his hold and lurching forward again, resting hands on Grant’s chest, staring into his eyes.
His heart still beat.
His chest still moved with breath.
But his eyes were as blank and vacant as a manikin’s.
Nobody home.
Cuz he didn’t trust me.
It’d never occurred to me that Grant wouldn’t trust me.
I’d been sure if we could reach him and I told him how to get out, he was going to.
And I’d been wrong.
Carvi pulled me back again and I curled up in his lap, crying too hard to breathe.
I didn’t even realize I was saying something until Carvi stroked my hair and started shushing me.
I don’t know what I was saying.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe a spell for all I knew.
I was psychic. I could’ve been catching a spell outta the air and trying it.
Maybe I could do that.
“No, lea,” Carvi whispered. “No.”
“He’s still in there somewhere,” I sobbed, grabbing a fistful of his shirt.
“Yes, and I’m not saying he’s lost, because you were right, we’ve done bigger, but it’s going to take so much more to find him in there now. And we don’t have the time or the resources. I’m not saying we’re giving up on him forever. But for now, we have to.”
I don’t know how long he held me there before I peeled myself off him and stood.
Carvi pushed up to his feet and looked down at me.
A hand grabbed my shoulder and I looked over to see AB.
This must’ve been how she felt.
Hollow.
Hopeless.
Helpless.
She couldn’t have saved Thomas, but she’d tried with threats the best she could.
But I could’ve saved Grant.
I would’ve been able to hold the chaos off him, and Carvi had obviously had it pinned down outside, since he’d gotten us out after Grant kicked me outta his little eye of calm.
How could Grant do this?
How could he leave everyone who loved him?
How could he not trust me?
What could I have screwed up that would have been worse than him slipping away like that?
Literally, it could not have been worse if he’d trusted me. The worst it could’ve gotten was the same thing happening.
So how…?
“Lea, stop,” Carvi said. “You are going down the rabbit hole. This is on Grant. We were in there. We had him. He’s the one who couldn’t trust enough to let you in. It wasn’t you!”
The strength of his tone made me look away from AB’s hand and up at him.
“That was all him. He’s the one who couldn’t trust enough to let go. He’s the one who was so fucking rigid that he couldn’t bear the thought of letting someone else take charge. He wouldn’t have let go for anyone if he put up that kind of fight with you. It wasn’t you.”
“He said I wasn’t strong enough to take it. No matter how much I argued with him,” I said, voice hollow.
“I don’t care what he said,” Carvi said. “That was all him not being able to trust. He knew you had me there too, and he knows how powerful I am. This is not your fault.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Yes,” my voice broke on the word, “it is. Cuz we were in Fae in the first place cuz I didn’t know when I was bein’ tricked. This is my fault.”
“You made him go with you?” Carvi snapped, grabbing my chin and making me look up at him.
I didn’t feel anything, even as his will crashed down on me.
“He went cuz I did. He went cuz I was stupid and tricked.”
“He went because he chose to,” Carvi said, taking my arms.
I couldn’t feel the grip.
Didn’t know if AB still had her hand on my shoulder with me staring up at Carvi like this.
Couldn’t feel anything.
Yep, this was probably exactly how AB had felt.
“Ariana, we still have a job to do,” Carvi said. “We can get Grant after this, but for now, we have
a war to fight, and we both lost energy in there.”
“And got nothing for our efforts.”
“Yep,” he said, eyes growing dark. “Lea, suck it the fuck up. We need you right now.”
I shrugged.
Did I really care?
Yes, these were the people responsible for Grant’s… condition.
That meant they all died.
I nodded.
“What do we do?” Shawn asked from somewhere outside my immediate tunnel vision.
“We’re going to get my people on it and call every nest leader in the path of the eclipse while you two keep researching,” Carvi said. “Tell them to be ready, get their people and anyone who knows about magic, or could be read in quickly.”
“Ready for what?” AB asked.
“War.”
###
“Find anything?”
I yelped and jumped in my seat as Thomas’s partially translucent hand tapped the book in front of me.
Well, kinda tapped in the air over it.
We’d hauled butt up to Nashville, researching in AB’s database and making calls the whole way, and grabbed a hotel just east of Nashville to avoid the massive crowds pouring into the city.
We’d separated into different rooms, me and AB researching, Carvi, Shawn and Carvi’s people in the other hotel room calling the other nests and any other supernaturals they knew of in the path of the eclipse.
The giant farmers’ breakfast Carvi had ordered for me sat next to my laptop on the desk, practically untouched.
I was integral to this plan, so I had to keep my strength up, Carvi had said.
He didn’t seem to get that no matter how much I wanted to eat, when I was this sad, I couldn’t.
“Not really,” I said, looking around.
AB was nowhere in sight.
“She went to talk to the others,” Thomas said, sitting on the bed as I swung the chair around. “I waited until she was gone. I don’t want to upset her by letting her know I’m here.”
“Good idea,” I said, the words hollow.
“Ariana, can I do anything?” he asked, the hint of helplessness creeping through his blank faced façade.
“I’m sorry, Thomas.”
He shook his head, letting it drop forward as he clasped his hands in front of him.
“Me too,” he whispered after a moment, and lifted his eyes to mine. “I can’t be this useless. I’d say I need to rethink my taste in women, but, well…”
“Now you can’t,” I said.
He nodded. “I’ve always attracted crazy chicks.”
“Say anything like that about my friend again, and I’ll go into the limbo plane and kick your ass,” I said, not really feeling the protectiveness that should’ve gone with the sentence.
He blinked at me. “I meant Emily and my ex-wife, and a few exes before them. AB is her own special kind of crazy, but her crazy was trying to save me. Her being crazy is her caring about me. I’ll take ‘that bitch is crazy about me’ over ‘bitch left me’ or ‘bitch killed me’ any day.”
That almost made me smile.
“Why then?” I asked.
I was supposed to be researching, but I hadn’t turned anything up in the past two hours or so.
“Why what?” Thomas asked.
“Why did you ditch AB? Why didn’t you work things out with her?”
He sighed, biting his lip. “I think,” he said slowly, “it was because I didn’t see a way to work things out. She was mad at me for the past, something I couldn’t change, and no matter what I did, she kept punishing me for it.
“And…” he paused. “And I never felt that way about her. She had feelings for me I couldn’t reciprocate and she couldn’t get rid of. It hurt her so much, and put a lot of strain on me. It was just easier not to deal with her if I didn’t have to.”
“She wanted to work things out with you,” I said. “She was heartbroken after what you said in November. And then again when you moved away.”
“I still don’t get that. I don’t understand how she could feel so much for me. It’s… it’s crazy.” He shrugged.
“Yep,” I said. “But you did just say you’ll take that crazy over kill you crazy any day.”
He bobbed his head. “Affirmative. I didn’t know that bitch was that crazy until y’all popped in. I still feel horrible for AB seeing that. I mean, I don’t think she has any claim to me, and she’s crazy if she thinks she does, but I know seeing that hurt her.”
“You’re lucky you’re a dressed ghost,” I said, barely realizing he was wearing his suit from earlier. “I figured you’d be stuck the way you died.”
He shrugged. “I don’t really care if a few magical people see me naked.” He looked down. “Well, I’d prefer people seeing me without the weight I’d gained after my wife left me. It’s still there.”
“Really?” I asked. “I’m the opposite. I lose weight with a loss. Like now, I can’t even eat. Last time a guy broke up with me, I lost the freshman five I’d gained over a semester in about two weeks.”
“Lucky.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
I sighed, looking back at the computer before turning to him again.
“I’m sorry, I can’t think of anything for you to do, Thomas,” I said.
“All I can do is watch?”
“Kinda like a psychic,” I said. “Been there.”
My head snapped back as a thought formed in my head very slowly.
“What?” Thomas asked.
I held up a finger then nodded. “Just like a psychic. Thomas, you’re a ghost! Every vamp nest is guaranteed to have at least a few people who can see ghosts. The people Carvi hasn’t been able to reach yet by phone or psychically calling, you can pop over there and yell to wake them up and give them Carvi’s number.”
His mouth fell open.
I pointed toward the wall. “Go ask Carvi who he still needs to reach. I think he said something about a few of the nests in the path being pretty small and middle of nowhere, and him not knowing exactly who to call around there.”
He smiled, a giant bright smile that lit up the room and made me see how AB could be so fixated on him.
When he was happy, he was a giant ball of energy.
It kinda made me want to punch him.
Just cuz no one should be happy right now.
But I kept that to myself.
He rushed through the wall and I hoped he remembered to keep it on the downlow until AB left the room.
I sighed again and turned back to my computer, eyes aching from the screen.
I slammed the top down and clenched my fists.
Then thrust up to my feet and marched away to keep me from throwing the useless machine into the wall.
My blood boiled and my brain seized into an instant headache.
I couldn’t take this.
I screamed at the top of my lungs and turned, throwing all my weight behind me as I smashed my fist into the wall.
It gave with a crunch, and I pulled my hand outta the drywall, staring at the hole I’d made.
Huh.
Carvi wasn’t gonna be happy with me putting holes in his hotel.
Somehow, it was hard for me to care.
I screamed and punched again and again and again.
Until there was a jagged line of little holes cutting across the wall between the entertainment center and the door out to the living room.
After a crazy second wondering if I should keep going across the wall to the bathroom door, I threw myself on the bed.
Thomas appeared on the bed next to me at some point.
I really don’t know how long.
“You should’ve seen her in there,” I said weakly.
“What now?” Thomas asked.
“In Fairy. AB was amazing. She said she went shooting with you a lot, and then after you, to try to deal with it. She shot guys right in the head, one after the other. I’m trained by the FBI, and I couldn’t h
ave made those shots that fast. You’d be proud of her.”
“I am, and watching her now, researching and working, I’m still proud of her. I don’t want her to be shut down. I want her to work through her grief, but right now, it’s what she needs to do and she’s doing it. What about you? What are you supposed to be doing right now?”
“Everything, but I can’t move.”
“But you have to.”
“How do I deal with this?” I asked him as he propped himself up on his side by an elbow, resting his chin on his hand. “You’re the psychiatrist. How do I do this?”
“Grief?” he asked.
“Guilt.”
He sighed, closing his eyes.
“You accept what you’ve done, that it was a bad decision, was a mistake, whatever caused it, and you deal with whatever emotion or misinformation made you make the bad decision.”
“Is that what you did with AB?”
“It’s what I should have done there,” he said after a moment. “It’s what I would have done if I wasn’t so close to the situation. I didn’t even realize I felt guilty until I saw the look on her face when she saw me with Emily. I didn’t want to deal with the guilt, so I didn’t recognize it. Not until Emily snapped my neck. Death makes things much clearer.”
I nodded. “You said that last time.”
He laughed suddenly. “Yeah, I did. And then I was brought back to life and suddenly things weren’t as clear again.”
“Do you wish you’d done things differently?”
“Of course I do. If I’d known the reaction she’d have? If I’d known how much it’d hurt her? If I’d had any idea what sleeping with her would have done to her? I never would have touched her. We would’ve been friends and that’s it. But I didn’t know. I never had anyone I’d slept with as two friends hooking up act like that.”
“That’s because she didn’t see it as two friends hooking up,” I said.
He looked at me, raising his eyebrows. “Except that’s what she’d said it was… before.”
“Did she say that beforehand, or did you assume she knew that’s what it was?”
He made a face. “It was implied. We weren’t dating. We were friends.”
I shrugged. “Okay, then she didn’t know what she was getting into.”
He touched a finger to his nose and pointed at me. “And that’s what I didn’t know.”
“So you didn’t know what you were getting into either.”