Callum just stared at his all-but-brother for a breath, then he gave a gentle scoff like it was no BFD. "Nah. I'm good."
Scott's raised eyebrow and cynical expression spoke of how little he bought Callum's cool, careless act.
Callum sighed. When Scott got that expression he was unlikely to leave the topic alone until Callum came clean so he might as well just say it. Not like it was some huge secret either. "She left that night, dude," he said. "You were probably asleep, but she bailed. It was while she was leaving that the Shadow showed up."
"While you were standing buck naked in our front yard," Scott replied. "Trust me, I remember."
Callum laughed under his breath. He'd given Scott a rundown on the Shadow on their way to visit Miriam that morning, the basics at least. But he hadn't told the whole story, mostly for simplicity. It just hadn't seemed necessary at the time. Unnecessary and really fucking raw.
"Yeah, well, the Shadow saw her," Callum said.
"How?"
Callum shrugged and took another gulp of his beer. "Damned if I know. Maybe it saw her through me? However it works, it figured out that she's the reason I kept going dark, and it threatened to hurt her—"
"Unless you stop seeing her," Scott finished, voice low and expression full of pained recognition. "Shit, dude. That sucks."
Callum's laugh was humorless this time, a quiet scoff. "Yeah. So..."
"But, seriously, what the hell could it really do to her?"
Huh? Callum felt his expression turn questioning. "What?"
"Well, it could only see her because you were nearby, but far enough away for her cloakyness not to work, right?"
Callum shrugged. "Maybe. Like I said, I don't know how it works."
"Well it can't see her normally—or you when you're with her—so then how could it hurt her?" Scott explained. "Sounds like an empty threat."
Was he crazy? "I can't bet on that," Callum countered. "It would be pretty shitty to be wrong."
Scott shrugged. "Sure. But that's my point, I don't think we're wrong. You go dark whenever you come home, but it's not threatening to tear down our house." He raised his eyebrows. "Besides, seems worth the risk to get more nights like Friday."
He had to be kidding. Callum shook his head. Scott thought this was a fling—some chick Callum didn't mind spending time with but had no real feelings for. Hell, so had Callum at first. Plus, Scott hadn't seen what the Shadow could do to innocent bystanders if it wanted to and had Callum's energy to pull from. No, Zander's brand of spiritual vacation wasn't worth risking her safety over. "No, it's not worth the risk," Callum replied. "Besides, it's doesn't matter. I cut her loose already."
Scott's joking smile fell at the same time his comically quirked brows furrowed. "Just because of what the Shadow said?"
"Yeah, because of what the Shadow said," Callum replied. "And because of what Miriam said. She was right. And so was I when I said I'm gonna end up like her." Time for another sip of beer.
Nah, make that a gulp.
"That's bullshit, and you know it," Scott retorted. He bit out a frustrated sigh and turned away, walking back into the kitchen, leaving Callum to knock back yet another gulp.
Scott could be annoyed all he wanted, it wouldn't change anything. It was done. Zander hadn't responded to Callum's text but his gut told him she'd gotten it. Otherwise, she'd have texted again, right? And, yeah, it had killed him to do it. He'd hated typing those words. But if the last four days had shown him anything, it was that he'd been right cutting ties with her, as much as his chest hurt every time he thought of it, and as much as he wished he could text her to meet for coffee again right now. It had still been the right call.
Even while he kept trying to find reasons he was wrong.
"No, ya know what?" Scott was suddenly waltzing back into the front room, his bowl of Chinese food no longer in his hands. "When we were kids—shit, how old were we? Eleven?"
Callum felt his brows furrow with question. "Huh?"
"When you told me about being a medium."
"Oh." That. "I was ten."
"Right. When you told me dead people talk to you, do you know what I thought?"
No. Callum had never asked because he didn't want to know Scott thought he was nuts. As it was, he took Scott sticking around all these years as a sign that the guy must at least know Callum was telling the truth. Still, the thought that Scott might hate the whole thing, or think he was cracked was too painful an idea for Callum to confront.
He shook his head with a shrug.
"I remember thinking you must have seen things I never will, and how cool that is," Scott said. "But then, I thought that must be really hard, too. Like, just regular life must be a lot harder when people's dead relatives are trying to talk to you all the time. I wanted to help you, the way you'd helped me."
Callum began to ask Scott what in the hell he was talking about. One thing was for certain, Callum hadn't been able to help himself when he'd been ten. There was no way in hell he'd helped Scott with anything. But Scott went on before he could manage to get any words out.
"And I still want that. We're brothers, Cal. We both know it, even if our DNA doesn't. So when I say what I'm about to say, it's with all the goddamned love in the fucking world, okay?"
Oh Jesus.
"You're being an idiot," Scott said. "You're wallowing. And that's cool—you do you for a spell—but don't fuck yourself over in the process. 'Cause that'll just piss me off."
Aggravation flared in Callum's chest and before he could smother the spark, words were out of his mouth.
"Oh, well not pissing you off is the goal, after all," he spat, sarcasm thick as the words rolled from his tingling lips. "You have no fucking idea what you're talking about. You think I like this? You think I want to end up like Miriam?"
Scott barked a groan of obvious exasperation. "You're not gonna end up like Miriam! Not unless you keep this shit up!"
"How are you so fucking sure I won't?" Callum shot back.
"How are you so fucking sure you will?" Scott challenged. "Do you channel spirits? Let them take over your body? No. You fucking don't—"
"I don't know if that's what—"
"Yes, you do," Scott said, cutting him off. "She used to channel spirits for—"
"For money, yeah," Callum spat. "I know. I was there."
"And you know that's what sent her off the deep end," Scott said. "You've said as much!"
"I don't know that!" Callum barked back. "There's no way to know that for sure."
Scott's sigh was as good as a fuck you. He shook his head. "Ya know what, I was thinking I might hang with you the rest of the day," he headed for the front door, "but you're too fucking into your own pity party. I got work to do at the shop, even if I don't have clients. I'll be home tonight."
The door slammed behind him.
"Fuck." Callum brought his bottle of beer to his lips and downed the thing gulp after gulp. Generally speaking, Scott was more zen than agro; he wasn't one for anger. And especially wasn't one to snap-and-bail.
So Callum knew he must have fucked up even more than he realized right then.
He sighed, shaking his head as he let it rest against the back of the sofa. "Good job, dipshit."
It was dark outside when Callum came awake to the sound of Scott coming home again. His neck ached from the way he’d fallen asleep with his head against the arm of the sofa when he sat up, blinking hard to try to clear his foggy brain.
He'd finished the twelve pack of beer some hours before. He'd watched a movie—or, rather, started to watch it. He'd fallen asleep somewhere near the beginning.
He wanted to say something constructive, something like an apology, or an explanation to Scott, but he couldn't make his mind focus or his lips move to make real words.
All he got out was, "I'm a shithead, dude."
To which Scott gave a chuckle and shook his head. "Yeah, you are. But you've stood by me through my own shithead moves, so..."
Ca
llum shook his head. The world swam when he did it. "Nah, that was different."
Scott's sigh was laced with a quiet laugh. "Yeah, it was worse. Now go to bed, Cal."
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
A sharp blow to the bottom of Callum's foot woke him up the next morning. His pounding head made him acknowledge being alert.
He groaned, rolling over in his bed.
The covers were suddenly snatched from on top of him.
"Sorry sunshine. You're leaving the house today—and that starts with getting your ass out of bed."
Scott’s tone was all No-BS , which meant there was little use arguing with him. But he also didn't sound pissed, which was good.
Callum groaned again as he pushed himself up and swung his feet to the floor. The room spun.
Going vertical had been a bad idea.
He went to slump sideways onto his pillow but a firm grip on his upper arm wouldn't let him land. Then something spicy was shoved under his nose.
It was only then Callum realized his eyes were still closed. He peeled them open to find Scott holding a bloody mary.
"Hair of the dog, my man," Scott said. "You can take this to the shower. Then get your sorry ass to work."
"I don't have any meetings today. I'm staying home." It was Friday, right?
"You sure about that? The alert on your phone says you have a meeting at 10."
"What?" Callum reached and pulled his phone from the table beside his bed. Shit. It wasn't Friday. It was Thursday.
And it was 9:14.
"Well, fuck." Callum reached, took the bloody mary from Scott and tipped it back. Then he forced the sip down his throat as he scrubbed his face with his hand, his palm rasping against the stubble on his chin that was starting to feel more like a beard. "Maybe I should close up shop, dude. You're the one who's always telling me I could have been a tattoo artist and saved myself all the time and money I spent going to school."
"To which you always remind me you can't draw stick figures."
"Mm." That was true. "Drawing is sort of a prerequisite, huh?"
"Turns out, yeah. Nobody wants second-grader art inked into their skin," Scott replied. "Well, except the people who do—but that's different. And you played hooky one day to get plastered—you’re not closing your business. You can't. You're the smart one—if you aren't an entrepreneur, then what will you be?"
Callum was having a hard time following Scott's logic, but he couldn't be sure if that was due to the hangover or Scott being an idiot. "If I'm the smart one, what does that make you?"
"The brooding, inked, dangerous one. Duh."
“I have tattoos, too, dipshit,” Callum said.
“Please,” Scott replied with a scoff.
Callum went to laugh, but a hiccup got in the way—followed by the burn of bile rising in his throat. He swallowed and stood, angling toward the bathroom.
"I'm out! I don't do puke," Scott announced as he hauled ass down the hall. "I'll be at the studio all day, but I'm coming home for lunch and I better not find you here!"
Callum took one last sip of his now-mostly-water bloody mary, then dumped the rest of it down the kitchen sink. He took a bottle of water from the fridge, grabbed his bag from the sofa and hitched it up onto his shoulder—then he stood, staring at the door.
Detach, he told himself.
He took a deep breath, untethering from his emotions. Then he pinned a snapshot of the day's tasks front and center in his mind to focus on. If he focused on what he needed to get done, he could ignore the Shadow more easily.
Beside him, Rhia chuffed a puff of warm, wet breath into his hand before nuzzling his fingers with her nose. He absently scratched the top of her head, glancing down at her.
Scott had taken it upon himself to dress Rhia in her service animal vest so she could go with him to his meeting today. It was an ace Callum kept in his back pocket but rarely used. He'd gotten her certified through less than completely honest means (because, let's face it, spirit-sensitive was not a category listed on the certification paperwork) but that didn't mean Callum needed her any less than if he really did suffer from the seizures he'd claimed to.
Rhia was who kept him safe. And even though he tried not to need her sometimes, he did. And probably always would.
Callum sighed.
Scott had been right, he had to go to work. Not just because paying bills was sort of a requirement, but because he couldn't hide. If he hid now, he would hide forever.
So he squared his shoulders, opened the door, and stepped out into a warm morning.
As he jogged down the few front steps and hit the front gate, he consciously had to force the tension to release in his neck. As he passed the spot where the Shadow had tried to take control while he watched Zander walk down the block, he had to force his spine not to go rod-straight with anxiety.
But as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, his anxiety was quickly being replaced by question.
No hissing chuckle. No lurking mass of darkness. No cold, tingling dread slithering up his back.
He picked up the pace, hitching his bag up higher on his shoulder like he thought if he walked faster, maybe the Shadow wouldn't realize he'd left the safety of his house. Rhia fell into step beside him, eyes bright and alert.
But as he rounded the corner at the other end of the block a few minutes later, still no Shadow.
This shadow-spirit had been plaguing him for days, a near-constant annoyance; there was no way it had just up and vanished, Callum told himself, suspicious of the sudden reprieve.
He got to the coffee shop where he normally met his local clients a quick ten-minute walk later. Still no Shadow. He ordered a black coffee because milk still sounded like it could backfire on his hungover stomach. He found a table where Rhia would be comfortable and out of the way and was setting up his laptop just as his client walked through the door. Then he sat through the meeting, asking all his questions, sketching out some preliminary wire-frames to make sure he and this new client were on the same page about direction and general user experience of the site. They talked branding, color palette, user stories. They reviewed the client's existing site and discussed what wasn't working and what outcomes they were hoping to drive with the new one.
And through all that, Callum waited for the bastard to show up again. But, by the end of it all, no Shadow.
Three hours after leaving his house, Callum walked back home. He walked a little slower. His shoulders had lost most of their tension. The project he'd just taken on was sizable, but exciting. Not to mention lucrative. But the best part of all was that as he walked, there was no lurking darkness close on his heels.
Shadows had to be summoned through the veil—they couldn't come and go like the normal spirits he saw every day. So, did whoever had summoned it call it back? Over the years, Callum had found it true that, if ignored, most negative energies would eventually dissipate or move along and stop bothering him, but he'd never encountered anything like this Shadow. This morning, in the shower, the thought had occurred to him that he’d assumed the Shadow had been summoned and gone rogue, but there was no way for him to know that for certain. What if this wasn’t random? What if the thing had been summoned to torment him specifically? But he couldn’t think of anybody he’d pissed off enough over the years to warrant that—and even fewer he’d pissed off who actually knew he was a medium. It wasn’t exactly something he shared. Like, ever.
No, somebody must have summoned it, lost control of it, and then managed to summon it back somehow. That, or it was distracted by something even better than stalking him. The fucker was way too persistent to have left otherwise.
Plus, Callum just wasn't that lucky.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
Callum wasn't sure what, exactly, he'd done to deserve it, but by the end of the day on Friday, he still hadn't seen even the edge of that Shadow.
No looming, oppressive presence. No threatening cold.
Sure, the spirit of a woman had traveled alongside
him as he'd walked to bring Scott a coffee earlier in the day, and an old man had tried to talk to him through his entire walk back home, but that he could handle. Rhia hadn't even batted an eye.
He'd begun to realize that the Shadow's presence was part of why he'd been a brooding, emo mess lately. Well, that, and the knowledge that he'd likely burned Zander with his response to her text.
Home alone, and with Scott planning to work late, Callum rested his head back against the sofa cushions and stared at his living room ceiling.
He had work to do, but he wasn't behind on anything. There was housework to do, but nothing urgent. No, there wasn't anything he needed to do—except make things right with Zander. If he hadn't had his head up his ass the past however-many-days, he would have tried to fix things sooner even if the Shadow had still been lurking and he couldn't have made-up with her completely.
But now the Shadow wasn't lurking. So that meant maybe a more thorough kind of make-up was possible... assuming she was interested.
He sat up and pulled his phone from the back pocket of his blue board shorts. He went to write her a text but stopped before he'd typed the first word.
Texting was not the way to go. Not now, after a week of not speaking.
Wow. Had it been a week ago that they'd made-out at the library? Had slept together in his bed? It felt at once like yesterday, and a lifetime ago.
No, texting wasn't the right thing to do here, he thought, sliding the phone back into his pocket.
He sat forward and looked to Rhia, resting peacefully at his feet. She must have been comfortable because she raised her eyes to him when he looked at her, but didn't lift her head.
"You wanna go on a wild goose chase with me?" he asked her.
Her tail thumped the ground, her blue eyes bright—but she still didn't sit up.
He tried again. "You wanna help me find Zander?"
Rhia's head was off the floor in a heartbeat, quickly followed by the rest of her.
She trotted to the front door and turned back expectantly, stepping her big paws in place and smacking her mouth so she looked like she was laughing.
The Cloak's Shadow Page 15