by Lucy Auburn
Maybe I am a drug.
If so, I need to figure out how to stop him from overdosing.
Just as soon as I'm done melting into his mouth—
The door opens. We jump apart, our hands still decidedly interlocked. Somehow Grayson has a palm on my lower back, beneath my shirt. The outline of his dick in his pants makes a clear impression.
Wyatt stares at both of us, silent and still.
Then he shuts the door—so gently I wince, more than I would if he slammed it—and walks away.
Chapter 16
We don't talk. What is there to say? Grayson just adjusts his pants, winces a little—embarrassed or uncomfortably hard, I can't tell—and points out, "You came here to do detective work about your mother's death."
That throws a bucket of cold water over everything. Whatever passion he felt before, it's left his body all at once, replaced with a distinctly uncomfortable, distant attitude.
Oh, and an erection you could see from space.
I wish I were in outer space right about now.
Clearing my throat, I wince as I ask, "Will Wyatt be okay? Should I talk to him?"
Grayson raises his brows. "He may stutter, Ellen, but he's a big boy. I'm sure he'll get over seeing us play tonsil hockey."
"But he has a crush on me," I point out, feeling like some kind of middle schooler. "Or, I'm pretty sure he does. I mean, it's hard to tell, when he barely talks."
"Wyatt is a player," Grayson says, which doesn't sound right, but he seems convinced it's true. "He slept with seven girls last semester, all of them no more than three times. I would know—I'm the one who had to limp out of the room when he brought them over. If he's upset, it's just because he didn't get into your pants first. He's usually pretty good at that, stutter or not." Narrowing his eyes at me, he adds, "He didn't get into your pants, did he? I know Kincaide has had you six ways to Sunday—"
"It's not like that!" I try to tug my fingers from his, but Grayson resolutely holds on, so I give up after a moment. "Mason and I just hooked up a couple of times. And no, I haven't slept with Wyatt. I'm not—I don't—" I blow out a frustrated breath. "I haven't exactly had an uncomplicated love life. Sleeping around isn't really my thing. If I know what my thing is, which I don't, so."
"So anal is off the table, noted."
Despite myself, I lose it at his joke, laughing and punching him in the arm at the same time. "That's not—you shouldn't—that's terrible!" Tears actually leak out of my eyes, which makes it hard to scowl at him convincingly. "We both know that kiss wasn't about me."
"Right. It was about Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, who makes my dick hard." He throws a blasphemous look up at the ceiling. "Look, Wyatt will be fine. As for you and I—we can fuck after you talk to your mom's ghost, and afterwards you'll know if sleeping around is for you."
I scowl at him, convincingly this time. "I'm not sleeping with you."
"Did I mention sleep?"
"You're reminding me why I want to slap your face," I fume at him, frustrated yet somehow still aroused, and irritated at myself as much as him. "No sex. It would just complicate things. Especially since Mason..."
"Is developing feelings for you? Yeah, could've guessed that one. When you're done stomping on his heart, try not to throw a sword in his direction again. You could really kill him this time."
He says it wryly, but there's more than a little heat beneath his words. Grayson doesn't want me to hurt his friend's feelings—which makes his little desperation-fueled kiss of me more than a little hypocritical.
"I'm not the one kissing my best friend's girl," I point out to him, only to hastily add, "Not that I'm his girl. Not that it's—I mean, I told him we're casual, so it's not cheating. Really. Exactly. Especially since you kissed me."
"I seem to remember your tongue in my mouth more than once," the bastard points out, but a glare from me silences him, and he throws his free hand up. "Fine, no sex. I mean, it would have been fun. It would still be fun—hate fucking is a kink for a reason, you know. And with my leg feeling better I bet I could really get deep in there—fine, fine, stop punching me." I punch him again, just for emphasis. "Just don't take Mason out on a date. That includes dinner, or movies. Including streaming. Or a stroll around the courtyard while holding hands. In fact, don't hold hands with him outside of training. Maybe not inside training, either."
"Your list of instructions with me don't seem to include 'don't fuck Mason's best friend.' Wonder why that is."
Grayson smirks, the corner of his mouth curling up in an irritatingly infectious way. He has far more of a sense of humor without the pain dragging him down—still tinged with a snarky attitude and ego, of course. "Fine, I'll add: don't fuck Wyatt. You wouldn't want to, anyway. I've heard his dick is so big it might as well be a horse dick—ow, okay, stop. Let's just do the rest of this and get it over with."
Rolling my eyes, I cease punching his arm and face the doorway, trying not to feel hot under the collar about what he said. I haven't thought about Wyatt's dick at all. I certainly haven't thought about what it must look like when he's naked, all those hard, impossibly strong muscles clenched, his fist around said surely gigantic dick, his mouth curved in a wry, silent grin.
Definitely haven't thought about how he must be strong enough to pick a girl up and hold her entire body as she rides said surely-gigantic dick all the way to orgasm town.
Shaking off the thoughts and thinking about less sexy things, I try to focus, narrowing in on what I want. I breathe deep. Remember how irritating my last class was—full of confessions about feelings and emotions—and think about how badly I want to get my mother's killer.
Eventually, I'm not turned on at all. My hand is relaxed in Grayson's. He looks bored, tapping his foot impatiently—though glancing over and down, I can't help but notice that he's still at least half-hard.
I bet he's wishing he had both his hands and a little privacy right now so he could take care of that.
Swallowing, I wrench my eyes away and scowl at the door. Now is not the time. I center myself, think cold shower thoughts again, and focus on the task at hand.
Throwing up my palm, I imagine my mother. Her long, soft hair. That little smile I used to catch on her mouth when she'd watch me from the other side of the room. How she was always there for me, including when I wasn't there for her, because Jack kept me away.
She forgave me. Embraced me. Fought for me, and fought to get me out of prison. I owe my freedom to her. And we didn't even get to spend time together once I was free, not really. We had a few scant hours—hours I didn't know would be my last—before I lost her.
The grief that fills me turns to rage, and I focus it into a pinpoint, waiting for her to appear.
And waiting.
After what must be several minutes, Grayson clears his throat. "It doesn't look like she's going to show up."
"I'm doing the same thing I did last time." I grit my teeth. "So no sassy putdowns from you."
"I wasn't thinking about a putdown," he says defensively. "After what you did for me—letting me see my mother again and say goodbye to my family—all I feel is gratitude."
The genuine thankfulness in his words deflates my irritation like a popped balloon, which is frustrating in and of itself. I like being irritated at Grayson. It's much easier than feeling pity or sympathy for him, or worse, uncontrollable lust. Anger is easy. It doesn't put me in danger.
After another long minute, I have to admit that my mother isn't showing up. Sighing, I drop my free hand and shake my wrist out. "We might as well stop now. She's nowhere to be found. Maybe... maybe she already moved on. Even though she just died, maybe she's over and done with this world."
"You don't know that," Grayson says calmly. "But before you give up completely, there's one more ghost you could summon: your father."
Vincent Arizona. "I don't know enough about him to summon his spirit."
"You didn't even know my family existed before you summoned them," he p
oints out. "I think it happened because of need. You needed a way to beat me in your initiation, and you found my greatest weakness because of it. Maybe that's part of the key to your powers."
Maybe. But admitting that I needed Grayson's family to beat him means admitting that I also needed them to show up just now, because some part of me needs to know and understand the infuriating enigma of a man standing next to me. My Conduits aren't just magical power-boosting hands I hold; their fates are tied to mine, and it's impossible to trust them, or my powers, unless I know what makes them tick.
Like bitter grief born of guilt carried all the way from a traumatic childhood. Grief that I hope will ease a little now that he's gotten to say goodbye to his family completely.
Maybe he'll be less of an ass from now on.
Or maybe pigs will fly using the power of their farts.
Snorting aloud at the thought, I ignore Grayson's curious glance. "Alright, let me try to summon my dead biological father's ghost. Not words I imagined myself saying, ever. If that doesn't work, though... I guess I'll have to try something else."
Like looking into the future with Mason, hoping we won't be bit by what we see. The thought alone makes me hope that something else works, because I can't imagine that looking into the future for answers will end well.
It's hard to think about Vincent Arizona, though. Throwing my palm up, I try to think of him as Dad, but even in my head the word twists around awkwardly. I remember him dying; I remember not really understanding what happened. But everything about it is strange and fuzzy in my head, filtered through so many years.
Six-year-olds don't really get death, so I kept waiting for him to come back. Eventually, when I realized he wasn't, I blamed him—and decided I was going to forget him entirely. Mom tried to counteract that by telling me lavish stories about him and hanging his picture all over the wall, but that just turned him into a fable in my head and a framed photograph in front of me. It didn't make him more real. Eventually, by the time I understood death, my concept of my father was more heavily weighted by stories told to me than experiences I had with him.
I think he used to hold me up in the air above his head and have me make plane propeller noises while he flew me through the air, his mouth a sputtering engine.
But maybe I made that memory up. I might've seen it in a cereal commercial for all I know. There's nothing about him that's weighted by reality in my mind.
"Are you trying?" Grayson squints into the distance, one brow raised. "Seems like nothing is happening.”
"Shut it, or I'll permanently injure your other leg."
He keeps his mouth shout, though an incredulous laugh escapes his lips. Apparently my threats of maiming and torture are hilarious to him—killers, we're all mad.
My distraction somehow makes me remember an actual moment with my dad: Mom farted in the kitchen, then pretended like she hadn't, walking away and ignoring me when I made a face and declared, "Eeeewww!" So Vincent—Dad—turned to me and winked, and we shared a conspiratorial laugh, the kind you close your lips around but that escapes somehow anyway, muffled and alive with joy.
One moment I'm thinking it, and the next he's there, in the ghostly not-flesh.
Vincent Arizona.
I wonder if this means he has unfinished business. If so, he's been waiting a long time to finish it up. Nineteen years, to be exact. That's a long time to be all see-through and everything.
Maybe he's one of the ghosts who haunt the manor.
If so, then that would explain the claw marks in the wall. I'd be pretty angry too if my one and only offspring left the family house to rot uninhabited.
I swallow, staring into his face. He looks so young. I know he and mom met in their twenties, and I was born not long after their whirlwind marriage, but this is the first time it's really occurring to me that he wasn't that old when he died.
I still don't know what happened to him—all Mom said was that he had important work to do, and he died doing it, but that his legacy lived on in me. At the time, I assumed she meant work in the Air Force, but now I don't know if he was even deployed when it happened.
"Hello." My voice sounds wobbly, so I clear my throat. "Vincent. Err, Dad." What a strange and weighty word to call someone. "I never called my stepfather that, you know. Just in case you were worried. He didn't replace you. Not that he could—Mom would've burned him alive before she'd get rid of her shrine to you."
There's something more ghostly about Vincent than there was to Grayson's family. He seems paler, a little further away, wisps of clouds floating around him. Below his knees, his not-body is all pale ghost-stuff, nothing quite solid there. It's like he's forgotten what he looked like, or just decided it's not worth the trouble to fully manifest himself in front of us.
Leaning down, Grayson murmurs, "Got any good questions for him?"
"Well, there's one." I swallow, then raise my voice. "How did you die?" Those ghostly eyes of his snap to my face, and I feel unsettled. "I mean, no one told me. Though maybe they knew—aaahhh!"
I scream because he rushes at me all at once, floating swiftly through the air, not a single step taken. Stopping in front of me, so close I can feel the chill of his passing, he stares directly into my eyes from a few inches away.
"Find my body, Ellen." His voice is clear and strong where his form is wispy and cloudy. "Find him."
The way he says it, it's like he's repeating himself, as if he thinks his body and him, whoever that is, are in the same place. But that doesn't make sense—his body is interred in the mausoleum, where Mom will be, once her body is released by the coroner.
At least, I think his body is there.
Maybe I knew even less about my family than I thought.
"Where is your body?" I ask him, trying not to feel disturbed by a ghost being so close to me and so aggressive with his demands. "I mean, if you could give me a hint, that would help."
"The black snake rises," he says, and my stomach turns. "Another will be taken soon. Find my body."
"Okay," I tell him.
The instant the word leaves my mouth, he disappears, like he was never there at all. There's no reassuring glow to his disappearance, no slow fading. It's like he came here for one reason and one reason only: to tell me cryptic shit and leave without explaining.
Grayson mutters, "That was some very unclear shit. You might as well have read tarot cards for answers."
"He said something about a black snake, which means the Black Serpent, so... it's not completely cryptic."
Raising a brow at me, Grayson says, "Sure." Then a moment passes. He adds, "I guess we're done here."
Bending down, his leg taking his weight effortlessly—something I'm realizing must be precious to him—he picks his cane up off the ground and holds it tightly.
Then he turns to me, face expressionless, eyes going cold, as if in anticipation of what's to come.
"It was nice while it lasted." His voice is tight, his mouth already drawing down at the corners, as if the pain has come too soon. "Better end it now, though. Otherwise I might forget what this next part feels like."
"You can do it slowly if you—"
Grayson jerks his hand out of my grip all at once and shove it into his jacket pocket.
The expression that passes across his face is indescribable. It's like he folds in on himself, aging in an instant, the pain turning his mouth down, making his nostrils flare, his eyes growing cold and narrowed, a slight furrow appearing between his brows. He bites his lips, briefly, and clutches his cane like it's his only friend.
"You should probably go chase after Wyatt now," he says, voice deceptively casual, his jaw clenching after he spits the sentence out. "I can hear him pacing out in the hallway."
I didn't even notice, but now that he says it, I can hear heavy footsteps that could only belong to one person. But regret and shame fill me at the sudden pain Grayson must feel, so I tell him, "I can stay, if you need—"
"No." The word is short an
d clipped. "Go. I'll stay here, and try not to relapse." A bitter smile passes over his mouth. "Maybe if I think about your stupid little drama with Mason and now Wyatt, I won't think about how good heroin feels when it flows through your veins."
The look on his face is frightening, because he's not desperate or lonely. Just bitter and cruel. I get the sense that if I push him, now, and try to help him, he'll respond by lashing out, just to make me go away.
Anything to get me out of here before he does something he'll regret in an effort to make me take the pain away.
Because he could. With a simple push from his powers, he could turn me into a slave—even if it was just temporary—and make me sit beside him all day, holding his hand, so he never has to feel this agony again. As his eyes flutter closed and he swallows heavily, I wonder if he's considering it. If he hates himself for the dark thoughts that close around him, like I sometimes hate myself for how good it felt to stab Jack to death—and, more recently, kill that woman's abuser.
I can't help him. So I leave. After I shut the door behind me, I hear a crash as something falls to the floor. And I make myself walk away without checking to make sure that he's okay.
Chapter 17
I can't find Wyatt at first. For such a big guy, he hides pretty well. He must've heard me open the door and somehow vanished around a corner.
My heart is still unsettled from my conversation—and kiss—with Grayson. I worry for him, even though I don't want to. Having all that pain as his constant, tortuous companion can't be easy. Especially for an addict barely in recovery.
He needs someone to watch out for him. So, since I can't find Wyatt in the hallways, I make a beeline for Mason and Levi's room. Maybe one of them can help their friend since I can't. Mason is sweet, kind, and gentle, while Levi... can tell a joke.