He drew a breath, held it, and let it out.
It was a five-and-a-half-hour flight. He could handle that long on a plane.
At his feet, Rhia lifted her head and rested her chin against his leg. When he glanced down at her, she was staring up at him, her upper half on his feet, her lower half lying on Zander's. Callum pried his fingers loose from the armrest long enough to pat Rhia on the head. Then he went back to staring out the window. The bags were no longer being loaded, the truck having driven away in the moments he had turned away.
That was a good sign, right? That meant they'd be taking off soon.
Not that he enjoyed take-offs...
Zander's hand on his knee was what made him realize it was bouncing.
He looked to her.
"Are you afraid of flying?" she asked, her voice low and private.
"I just hate take-offs," he said with a dismissive chuckle. "And landings. And kind of flying in the air."
Her smirking smile was enough to slow his heart, if only by a fraction. "I thought you said you're from 'all over,'" she said. "I figured you'd traveled a lot."
"By car," he replied. "We always drove."
It was impressive enough his mom had been able to drive all of those hours without getting them into a wreck (there was a reason Callum didn't drive much, being distracted by spirits trying to talk at you did not make for attentive driving) but sitting in a plane as they crisscrossed the country? No way.
"Ah." Zander nodded and reached for his hand. She entwined their fingers like he'd done when they were sitting on his front steps, and again it felt so intimate and personal, lacing her fingers with his.
"I'll hold your hand this time, then," she said.
Something about that made him stop. It made his heartbeat slow so he could hear himself think again.
There weren't any spirits on this plane. He wasn't stuck, locked into a metal tube with nowhere to go while spirits talked at him, or wailed. He wasn't about to encounter something dark with no way to escape.
He was with Zander. He would be okay.
He smiled through a deep, relieved breath. "Yeah, this is not one of my sexier traits."
"It's fine." Then, with her other hand, she pulled her cell phone from the inner pocket of her motorcycle jacket and used her thumb to navigate. He watched as she sighed, shook her head, then turned off her phone and dropped it back into her pocket.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
"Huh?" She turned to him. "Oh, yeah. Just wishing a friend would text me back, that's all. I'm sure it's fine." Then she leaned into him and laid her head onto his shoulder.
Which made him feel like he was ten feet tall and could conquer anything.
"You think Cecily's okay?" she asked without lifting her head.
He felt his brow furrow as he gave a nod. "As long as they got the rune onto her, she should be fine. Are you worried about her?"
She shrugged—and still didn't lift her head. "Yeah, of course. But I'm sure you're right."
Callum brought his free hand to her arm and ran his palm gently up and down until she sighed. A quick glance confirmed what he'd suspected—she'd closed her eyes.
The plane gave a lurch and began rolling backward—which sent Callum's heart into his throat for a second. He exhaled a breath that had caught in his chest.
At least they were moving now, he told himself. Actually traveling was always so much better than the anticipation. He stared out the window and watched the outside world slide by as the plane backed up and turned.
Zander put her hand on his arm. "You okay?"
Callum drew a breath. "Yeah, I'm good." Then he said the first thing that came to mind. "Tell me about your family."
Zander lifted her head and gave him a questioning look, her brows quirked and her lips pulled into a pucker that would have been very enticing had Callum not been so nervous. "Why?"
"To distract me," he replied. "It will help."
"No, I mean why that? Why do you want to know about my sisters and mom?"
"I don’t have a family, remember?" he said with a shrug. "They’re fascinating to me."
She sighed and shook her head, her smirk turning begrudging. "Playing the no-family card, nice."
Callum gave a low laugh. "It has to be good for something."
"Fair enough," Zander replied with a quiet laugh of her own. "What do you want to know?"
Thirty minutes later, they were at cruising altitude, and he knew all about Zander's sisters. Cecily was into art and writing and had just graduated with her bachelors in the spring. Alyssa liked fashion and was very social, she’d gone the community college route and was a paralegal. The two were very close in age, which Zander said left her feeling a little odd-man-out sometimes. She'd told him how they hated sharing a room, and she thought she should probably do the big thing and clear her belongings out of her room sooner or later so one of them could take it over.
"I mean, that's what a big sister is supposed to do, right?" she said with a sideways glance.
"No idea, having never had siblings," Callum replied with a laugh. His heart wasn't pounding anymore. And Zander's hand was still in his, their fingers interlocked, which certainly wasn't hurting his mellow mood.
"So it's your Mom and sisters, and you?" he asked. "What about your dad?"
Zander sighed in a way that almost had him telling her she didn't have to talk about it if she didn't want to. But she responded before he could get the words out.
"They got divorced right before I graduated from college," she said.
"Ah. That sucks. I'm sorry." Her comment when she first stormed out on him about relationships and inevitable balls of flame made more sense now.
She laughed under her breath. "Yeah, it was really messy. He went off the deep end of a substance-abuse fueled mid-life crisis. But not before screwing my mom out of her life savings and the house. He threatened to kill her when she told him she wanted a divorce." She stopped and shot Callum a look. "Though why I just told you that, I have no idea." Then she put her eyes squarely on the back of the seat in front of her.
Holy shit.
"Do you talk to him much?" Callum asked, then kicked himself. It was obvious she didn't like talking about it.
Zander's chuckle was dark and humorless. "Definitely not. None of us do. In fact, he's not allowed within a hundred yards of my mom."
Made sense. "What about you and your sisters?"
"It never applied to me because I was over eighteen when my mom took the restraining order out. And it stopped covering my sisters as soon as they each turned eighteen."
"Ah." Callum knew a thing or two about how being eighteen suddenly changed you in the eyes of the state. Never mind that on your eighteenth birthday you were no more capable of taking care of yourself than you’d been the day before.
He brought the back of Zander's hands to his lips. "I'm sorry you had to go through that. It sounds really tough."
She just shrugged. "Life is hard sometimes, I guess."
He supposed it was a sort of dark way to feel, but right then, he liked that they both had messed up family stories. It made them equals, in some small way. He reached across himself with his free hand and pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt to reveal part of his tattoo. Then he pointed to the small segment he'd had ten years longer than the rest of it—the part Scott had built the rest of his tattoo around. It was a simple set of interconnected lines, the ink more gray than the black lines around it. Scott had offered to go over it, to make it match the rest, but Callum had told him not to. He wanted it to be an aberration—because it was.
"My mom forced a tattoo artist to ink this on my arm," Callum said. "I was eight. Somebody called CPS, they found out I had never been to school..." He shrugged, letting his sleeve fall back into place. "The rest is history."
Zander just stared at him, and for one moment, Callum worried he'd gotten too real. That he'd freaked her out with that glimpse of his own family drama.
"Je
sus Christ," she breathed. "That makes my story sound like an after school special."
He laughed under his breath. "It's not a competition. And no, it doesn’t."
"Do you know what happened to her?" Zander asked. "To your mom, I mean."
Callum paused. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, she lives in a hospital in New Orleans."
Zander's furrowed brows asked what he meant without the need for words.
"She's mentally..." ill? He hated that term. "Unstable. It's a psychiatric hospital."
"Is that why you live in New Orleans?" she asked. "Because that's where she is?"
"Yeah, actually," Callum replied. "Or, sort of. I was in foster care in Shreveport. But as soon as I aged out of the system, I started looking for her. I found her at the same time Scott was looking at becoming a tattoo artist and New Orleans is a good place for that, so it just made sense to move down here."
"So you could be near her."
Callum shrugged. "Yeah, basically."
At the time, he'd hoped she would get better—he could see that now. He'd hoped to have a real relationship with her. He'd hoped, however childishly, that by finding her, he'd save her and she'd suddenly be the mom he remembered from when he was young.
He'd abandoned those subconscious dreams after his first couple of visits. But still, he hated to admit there was some small, eight-year-old kid in him that secretly hoped he would go for a visit and find her right as rain. Or at least functional.
Callum shook himself and looked to Zander—just in time to see her stifle a yawn.
Unbidden, a yawn pushed its way up his own throat next. He lifted the armrest between them, propped himself comfortably into the corner by the window, then lifted his arm, motioning for her to lean against him. "We should sleep, don't you think?"
"Nice we have the row to ourselves," Zander remarked as she leaned her weight against him and brought a foot up into the aisle seat beside her.
Rhia lifted her head and Zander laughed under her breath. “The three of us have the row to ourselves,” she revised.
Callum chuckled.
"You know how to get comfortable on a plane like you're a world traveler," Zander remarked, closing her eyes.
The warmth of her body felt so good against him, so vital and strong.
He hugged her to his side and leaned his head back. "It's no different than getting comfortable in a car, really."
Her response was a quiet hum of a sigh as she snuggled in against his side.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"There's the hospital where my mom works," Zander said as they passed the monstrosity of a building. It had grown over the last few decades from a local neighborhood clinic to the full-fledged medical center it was today. As such, it was a mash of buildings with facades and finishes that made them belong together, even while the architecture and styles of each building were disparate.
Callum leaned and looked across her out the window as they rode to the apartment her mom and sisters shared. He shuddered.
"Not a fan of hospitals?" she teased.
"Not normally, no," he replied, giving her a smirking, sideways glance. "If you think about it, you'll know why."
Oh. Yeah, a building full of the sick and dying wasn't his kind of place, Zander realized. "That makes sense, I guess," she said. "I hadn't ever thought about it like that."
He reached to take her hand in his, sliding their fingers together. They weren't alone in the car, but they were alone in the middle seat of the SUV, with Rhia in the seat behind theirs—which was more alone than they'd been for hours. And, as though her body knew it, the sensation of his fingers sliding between hers sent a tremor like anticipation under her skin.
He did it again, siding his fingers back, then through hers once more, like he knew what it was doing to her.
The thing was, she didn't stop him, but instead opened her hand.
Her breath hung in her chest as he dragged his fingertips onto her palm, then onto the inside of her wrist; she exhaled, lightheaded, when he pushed them down again, letting his fingers lace between hers.
The car stopped. "Here we are. Building D, right?
The moment dropped between them. Zander could feel her own weight in the seat again as she looked out the window.
"Yeah, this is it," she said, leaning forward. She fished her wallet from her bag, but when she looked up, Callum was already paying the driver.
"You didn't have to do that," she said, minutes later as the cab was pulling away and they were standing in the parking lot with their duffle bags hanging from their shoulders and Rhia between them.
"It was no big deal," he said, then turned his gaze to her. "I'd pay double that to see that look on your face again—the one while I was stroking your hand."
She lost the fight with the smirking grin that was pulling at her mouth. "No need to pay for it. In fact, it would turn whatever we’re doing into a very different kind of thing if you did.”
He laughed and drew a breath. "Touché. So your place is this close to the hospital, huh?"
Zander gave him a questioning look as she turned them toward the stairs that would take them to the unit. "Yeah. That way mom can walk to work. Why?"
He chuckled under his breath and shook his head as they took the stairs. "I have no doubt all the things they've said happen when you're gone are true," he remarked. "It might actually be a good thing that the Shadow showed up—otherwise your sister would have been inundated with spirits."
Uncertain what to say to that, Zander threw a look out into the parking lot as she fished her key from her bag. The Jetta was parked in their spot, so both Alyssa and Cecily were likely home. No telling if her mom would be or not.
She'd texted Alyssa their flight info after booking the tickets, telling her she was bringing Callum and Rhia with her. She'd expected more third-degree in response to that last part, but Alyssa's responses had been uncharacteristically short and nonplussed—which Zander wasn't sure whether to be relieved or worried about.
She drew a breath, sharply aware of Callum's body behind her as she shoved her key into the lock. Then she turned it, cranked the knob, and pushed the door open.
Here goes nothing.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
An hour later, after introductions and the requisite how-was-the-flight conversation, Zander was sitting on the love seat in her family's living room with Callum beside her.
Everything looked exactly how she'd left it. Which wasn't surprising, when she thought about it, but stuck out to her for some reason. She'd been gone weeks, not months—what had she expected to happen, her mom and sisters to gut the place and re-decorate it?
Beside her, Callum was quiet, his gaze roaming the room, though his expression was pleasant and interested. He'd pulled his long hair up into a knot on the top of his head so the undercut above his ears and around to the nape of his neck were on display—as well as his angled jaw, dusted in a fine stubble she found herself wanting to touch.
That conversation on the plane before they'd both fallen asleep—it had gored her. Something about the matter-of-fact way he spoke about his mom was heartbreaking—all the more for the way he obviously wasn't looking for sympathy, obviously didn't consider himself a victim.
It was fucking admirable, really.
But now she wondered what he thought of all of this. Of the small apartment where she'd lived with her two sisters and her mom—all of whom she loved and couldn't imagine her life without. Sure, they'd seen their share of bullshit drama and come out the other side of it, but it was nothing compared to being taken from your mother at eight years old, only to find her at eighteen and learn she's been institutionalized.
She wanted to wrap her arms around him. And she wanted to do so all the more for the fact that he'd followed her here, to Seattle, so they could help her sister.
"Okay, so I'm not crazy then?" Cecily asked from where she was sitting on the adjacent sofa with a blanket sliding off her shoulders, revealing her favorite T-shirt beneath it. Za
nder recognized it because Cecily wore it whenever it was clean. And sometimes when it wasn't.
But Callum didn't respond.
Zander looked at him in time to see him realize Cecily had been speaking to him. "Sorry. What?"
She fought the instinct to put her hand on his knee, or take his hand in hers. She didn't need to add to the awkwardness by all but announcing she was dating this guy.
If that was the right word for it.
She pushed the thought away—now wasn't the time.
"I was asking if I'm crazy," Cecily repeated with a smile. The first real smile she'd given since they'd gotten there.
Good. That made Zander feel better. A little.
"No, you're not crazy," Callum replied, shaking his head. "But I bet you thought you were losing your mind."
Cecily laughed under her breath. "Sort of, yeah."
Rhia, who'd basically glued herself to Cecily's side the minute they walked into the apartment, put her head into Cecily's lap and huffed a sigh. To which Cecily smiled and scratched the top of Rhia's head.
"Okay, so as long as Zander is here, that Shadow thing—or whatever—can't come into the apartment. Right?" Alyssa asked from where she was sitting on the far end of the sofa from Cecily.
"Right," Callum confirmed. He looked to Cecily. "And as long as you stay with Zander, you'll be invisible to the other side."
Alyssa breathed a sigh that was obviously one of relief.
She really did hate all this spooky stuff. Zander had always known it, so no surprises there.
"Got it." Cecily shrugged the blanket the rest of the way off her shoulders and looked at Zander. "Turns out it really was you who kept the spooky shit away."
Zander laughed and hoped it came off as genuine. She was happy to be there, and glad they could help, but she was spinning a little too.
It was just a lot. A lot to take in, a lot to think about. All of it.
The Cloak's Shadow Page 19