“I’ll see you later,” Zac said as they got out of the car. “You staying at the Best Western again?”
Simon stood on the other side of the car and studied him.
“What?”
“Well, now that we’re face-to-face, I’ve made a decision.”
“Great.”
“I’m going to crash on your couch.”
Um … what? “No, you’re not.”
“Going to cut to the chase here, okay? Okay. You look like a wreck, brother. Not so a bystander would notice. But you’ve lost weight, and you have circles under your eyes like freaking makeup, and I don’t know or care to know all the inner workings of Zac Wilson’s sentimental brain, but I can tell when a man is in trouble. And right now you are.”
Zac tried glaring, which bounced off Simon like rubber off steel. “I don’t need a nighttime babysitter.”
“Yeah? You’re sleeping sound. Eight hours, no problem.”
Zac fought the need to dash off down the street. Away. “I’m dealing. I know how to deal.”
“Good. You can deal with me sleeping on the couch.”
Zac crossed his arms, clenched his jaw. “I mean it, man; go get a hotel and leave me—”
“Fine. I’m calling a Life Buoy.”
Zac’s arms lowered. Oh.
He wasn’t always the mess, though he had been the first to hold that position and through the years seemed to hold it more often than the others. It had been Simon a few times, Moira a few other times. It was never Colm; if he got involved at all, it was to join a vigil alongside someone else. Made sense now. Colm hadn’t had the emotional capacity to become a mess.
Eleven years ago, the last time the family had called a Life Buoy, it had been for Simon. His wife’s passing had wrecked him in a way Zac had never seen his friend wrecked before, left him stranded in grief that made him erratic and mean. Zac had arm-locked him more than once to keep him from tearing his own house apart, destroying her things. Simon had yelled curses at him, fought like a baited bear, and finally collapsed in blank weariness. In the first days, Zac hadn’t allowed Moira to spell him. Simon was shamed by that later, when she joined the rotating watch over him and he realized why she’d been absent. But they had absorbed his shame as they absorbed the rest: his violence, his rage, his loss. They had made him safe, carried him through it, and after a long time had brought him out of it into life again.
And the code was simple. You couldn’t refuse a Life Buoy called on your behalf.
“It’s not that serious,” Zac said through gritted teeth.
“Not your call.”
“Simon, go and—”
“No.”
The word was quiet. Inflexible. Zac had lost.
He had to keep it together now that he was stuck with Simon, but regardless, Simon couldn’t walk away as long as the Life Buoy was in effect. Zac pressed his fingers to the corners of his eyes and shook his head.
“Come on,” Simon said and went to the foyer door.
Zac trudged up to the door and let them inside, trudged to his front door and opened that one too. When he locked it for the night and turned around, Simon was already hunting in the linen closet across the hall.
“Your pillows suck.”
“Pansy.”
Simon came to the couch with an armful of sheets. “It’s, what, ten? I’m wiped. Good night.”
Zac stood there a moment while Simon draped the sheets over the couch. When he started pillow-fluffing and grumbling to himself about cheap millionaires, Zac headed for the bedroom.
Maybe having someone else in the house would convince his subconscious the walls weren’t closing in. Maybe he’d sleep through the night and wake up to news from Nate or an answer from Doc.
TWENTY
Zac.”
The behemoth was back. Planting one foot on his chest and pressing, leaning, crushing. But a hand was there too. On his shoulder. Shaking him. His eyes opened to a view of the ceiling. Simon sat to one side, out of Zac’s space, hand clamped on his shoulder.
“Zac.”
His voice garbled a meaningless syllable.
“Right, okay.”
Relief swelled in Zac’s throat, cutting off more of his air, not helping the panic. He tried to talk. It sounded more like a sob, but he couldn’t care about the weakness revealed in the noise. Simon was here. Zac wasn’t alone.
“Okay, man, we’ve got this. It doesn’t last forever, remember. It’s going to pass. Try a longer breath, long and slow.”
Zac tried. The gasp was harsh, loud.
“Okay, that’s something. Now again.”
Zac curled his fingers into the bedsheets, and another breath filled his lungs.
“Good job, buddy. Can you say something?”
“Yeah.”
“Aha, there he is.”
“Here.”
“Yep, me too. I was watching A New Hope on TV, so that’s kind of ironic.”
Zac blinked. “Ironic?”
“Last time, it was right after Return of the Jedi released and you were put out that I hadn’t seen it yet.”
“Last time?”
“Last time you called me with this stuff.”
Zac shook his head. A squabble over Return of the Jedi didn’t sound familiar. Granted, he’d been in distress at the time. He uncurled into an upright position and stretched out his legs.
“And now here we are.” He spoke around breaths. “In a world of endless sequels and remakes.”
“Erosion of creativity, audience astuteness, and general culture. Not that I’m in a mood or anything.”
“Nah. Just your normal disposition.”
Simon gave a snort.
Eyes shut, Zac took a few more breaths. He let the hand on his shoulder remind him he was okay. Would be anyway, in another minute or so. But when he opened his eyes, the walls seemed to cave in, the ceiling to lower. At his renewed gasping, Simon’s grip tightened on his shoulder.
“Need to get out,” Zac said or tried to say.
“Outside?”
“Yeah.”
Simon braced his arm around Zac’s back and guided him to his feet. He stood on his own, legs shaking but in no danger of collapse. He staggered, hand on the wall, and made it barefoot out into the floodlit parking lot. Simon walked beside him as he paced and breathed. Paced and breathed. They didn’t talk.
After a while, Zac’s lungs stayed open. He wandered over to the tree that had seen him through most nights of the last few weeks and leaned against it. Pink had begun to fill the sky, stretching upward from the eastern horizon.
“What time is it?”
“Not quite six,” Simon said.
Almost eight hours. Wow. “And Star Wars was on TV?”
“Yep.”
If the guy was as wiped as he claimed, he shouldn’t be awake watching a movie. But Simon was doing what any of them would do after calling a Life Buoy. Zac’s role was to accept the help. It galled him and left him more grateful than words. Funny how that worked.
“Return of the Jedi. That’s been a while.”
“Yep,” Simon said. No rancor there, just fact.
A snippet came back, cobwebs draping the memory.
“If I were going to spend two hours on a film, I’d go see that other new one. The gangster one. Not some fantastical epic space thing with puppets.”
“One puppet.”
“One’s enough.”
“I’m not telling you how Solo gets out of the carbonite.”
They returned up the walk to the front door, and Zac let them inside.
Simon cocked his head. “Good?”
“Yeah.”
Simon sighed.
A rusty knifepoint pricked Zac’s chest. “Sorry. I thought with you here, maybe I’d be—I mean, maybe you wouldn’t have to deal with—” He spread his hands, head ducked to hide his heating face. “Sorry.”
“Oh, shut up.” Simon’s tone was equal parts annoyance and … warmth?
Zac looked up. “What?”
“So that’s what happened. You got it into your head you’re a bother.”
Of course he was, when he was like this.
“For a while I hoped you didn’t call because you didn’t need to. But that wasn’t it. All these years, you’ve kept this crap to yourself.”
“Not often. About like before. You know, a trigger every year or two.”
“What about now, recently?”
Zac leaned on the wall. This conversation was making him tired again. “Every night.”
Simon went still. “Every. Night.”
“Since Colm died.”
Simon gave a quiet curse.
“Yeah,” Zac said on a laugh that broke. He crossed the foyer and let them inside his unit. Flopped onto the couch, his limbs rubbery.
Simon stood over him. “You’re an idiot.”
“Probably.”
“You think it’s just going to stop?”
“I was hoping soon.”
“And it never occurred to you there might be a cause you had to deal with first.”
“Um …”
The cop’s gaze sharpened to a glare. “Life Buoy.”
Right. Second tenet of the code: no lying. He was too tired to hedge, and it was time for Simon to know. “They thought I was dead. So they buried me.”
Simon stared as if seeing him for the first time.
“You knew it had to do with the war. I mean, that’s when it all started. No genius deduction required.”
Simon nodded. Speechless? That was disconcerting.
“Well, we buried Colm, and it started over. Like it had just happened. I got left in a grave and took a while to get out, and now every night I’m back in that grave again.”
“You have to deal with this.”
“I would’ve by now if I knew how, man.”
Simon rubbed his thumbs under his eyes. “Fair enough. I want one thing though, going forward.”
“Okay.”
“Life Buoy or not, you have to stop faking us out. If I hadn’t gotten up here, and you’d kept on like this—I’ve seen guys deteriorate over this kind of stuff.”
Zac snorted.
“I mean every word. Guys on the force, way back, years ago. How many hours’ sleep were you averaging before tonight?”
“Three.”
“Okay, for the record, for the rest of our distinguished life spans, if it gets this bad again, don’t you dare try to cope almost a month without calling me. Or Moira if you want.”
“Moira doesn’t want any part of this.” Zac flinched. Those words had come from nowhere.
Simon shook his head. “You know her better than that.”
“She told me. And before you go all you inferred wrong, I’m telling you. She said it straight out.”
“Colm could’ve been messing with her.”
He’d considered that, but it didn’t fit. Colm wouldn’t have cared if Moira had stayed with him through two bad nights in 1985—truly bad, worse than this, flashback dreams that trapped him until his screaming got loud enough to wake him. He could count on his fingers the number of times in the last fifty years that these nightmares had come after him. Could count with fingers to spare. Moira had witnessed the unusually brutal trigger episode of 1985 and known as well as Zac what would happen to him the next few nights. Always before, when they knew it was coming, she would be there to wake him up, to free him from the trauma playback in his head. This time she had looked him in the eye and said, “This is inconvenient.” She’d caught a flight to Europe the same day, and he didn’t hear from her for two months.
He would never argue the inconvenience of his mental scars. Still, her words, her leaving, had torn him up worse than the nightmares had. To this day he couldn’t tell if his hurt was unfair to her or not.
“It is what it is,” he said.
“Or it’s not that at all.”
“Really, Simon, let it go.”
Simon shrugged. “You going back to bed?”
“I won’t sleep.” He tugged his shirt away from him where it stiffened with drying sweat. “Anyway, I have to be at work in less than two hours.”
“Work?”
“The bakery in town. I sell desserts.” He grinned.
Simon didn’t roll his eyes. Instead he chuckled. “Nice.”
“It’s fun.”
“Whatever you say.”
He arrived at Cousin Connie’s at 7:42, was into the mental zone of customer service and sales by 8:00, but he kept his phone nearer than usual and checked his post once an hour in lulls between customers. He didn’t hide the minute it took to do so, and Connie seemed not to mind. The replies to the post were trickling down, fewer with every hour. And none of them were Doc.
At 10:15, his phone vibrated on the back counter. He finished ringing up a customer and snatched up the phone. Email. Lucas.
Zac,
I figured out you’re probably calling Dad’s phone. Here’s Mom’s instead. I hope I can talk to you.
A phone number followed. Nothing else.
He looked up at Connie, and her mouth puckered. “What is it?”
“I need to make a phone call. It’s important.”
“Something going on today?”
“I’m waiting for news about someone. Health news.”
“Go on break.” She waved him to the back kitchen for privacy.
“Thanks,” he said, already thumbing the number into his phone.
“Hello?”
Not Lucas but his mom. “Dana, hi, it’s Zac Wilson. Lucas asked me to call him at this number.”
“Oh.”
He couldn’t swallow, could hardly form words. “Is he— He emailed me, asked to talk. Is he—? I’ve been trying Nate’s phone for two days, and—”
“Nate’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Left.”
For a second or two, Zac’s brain refused to process. Gone left—he pictured Nate driving the family’s SUV and making a left turn under a green arrow. He pictured Nate sleepwalking down the sidewalk with a suitcase, because no way would he leave his family if he were awake and aware.
“He’s divorcing us. That’s how Lucas keeps saying it. But of course I’m the only one he’s divorcing.” Her sigh was quiet, depleted.
“I—Dana, I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
The formality was clearer than words. She was finished with this call. Of course she was. “I—Lucas—”
“He just fell asleep for the first time in two days. I’m not waking him up to talk to you.”
The emphasis on the last word was subtle. “No. Of course not. I’m sorry. If there’s anything—”
“There isn’t. He needs his father.”
Not a guy who emailed him every other week. Understood.
She sighed again. “I’ll let him know you called, and he’ll talk to you when I think he’s ready.”
“Of course.”
She hung up.
Zac’s legs gave out. He slid down the cabinet to the floor. His phone fell from his hand and hit the tile with a quiet clack. The fear of the last two days drained out of him. Fear for a mortal’s life that had never been in imminent danger in the first place.
He couldn’t help worrying about their physical safety. Any of them could stop breathing any minute. Meanwhile his heart beat in his chest as young and strong as it had been in 1887, incapable of wearing out. But he’d worried wrongly this time. Maybe the deaths of longevites he’d never met were messing with him.
Feet came to the door in his peripheral vision. He drew a long breath, held it, and let it out.
“Sorry.” His voice was mostly steady. “I’ll be out. Just need a minute.”
No response. The feet approached, and those weren’t Connie’s clogs. They were black-heeled boots. He looked up.
Rachel. Gray hair in a messy bun, eyes hazel today and filled with compassion.
Zac scrambled to his feet and sho
ved his phone into his pocket. “You’re not supposed to be back here.”
“Connie said you were on break. She’s dealing with a bunch of kids, so she didn’t notice me sneak back.”
“Rachel, you’re not allowed—”
“Did they die? The person you were scared for. And you just found out?”
“The person I was … What are you talking about?”
Her brow crinkled. “Your post, of course.”
He’d go into his app right now and delete it and with it all the replies that had pierced him. He swept out his arm and pointed at the EMPLOYEES ONLY door Rachel had walked through.
“You need to go.”
“I know what you were trying to tell me in the diner. All the stunts you’ve done, even that fall—you’re testing your body, but it keeps surviving. You must be so frustrated.”
A chill traced down his spine. “What?”
“I should start over.” She took a step nearer. “Doc’s gone, Zac, but I’m still here. Doc was my father.”
TWENTY-ONE
Doc’s gone?”
Not possible. He’d been moving and thinking and talking in the world just days ago. Zac shook his head. That wasn’t the most outrageous thing she’d said.
“You …”
Rachel folded her hands as if in petition. “I was born Rachel Leon in 1901.”
He glanced at the door shut against the public, against Connie. Against mortals.
“I didn’t know Finn and Cady were here. I saw your story online. To survive what you did, you had to be ageless. And the bookseller—he’s one of us too, isn’t he?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’ve seen you talking to him. His eyes are old.”
Zac shook his head. He was missing something in front of his face. Something … From the inside out, he went still.
“What did you do?” he whispered.
Her face turned as pale as her hair, and if yesterday she’d been a shaken soda bottle, now she was a geyser.
“Rachel …”
No. He couldn’t talk to her here. Connie would poke her head back to check on him any moment. No mortal could overhear a word of this.
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