The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  “But Becca knew. And Austin knew. And they used it. They wanted you on the inside. Your dad had connections; you were already a customer. The perfect one to figure out what Lawayne was up to and how deep he was in with Urho and the Lady.”

  “Who else could have done it?”

  “It doesn’t matter who else could have done it.”

  “Tell me one other person. Kaden? That kid is a moron. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s a flake. And he’s got some real shit of his own he’s still dealing with. Sure, he buys from one of Lawayne’s boys—nothing too hard, and not too much at any one time. You think he would have been a better choice?”

  “Nobody should have done it. It was a fucking stupid idea.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend you don’t know that it mattered. If you want to be mad at me, be mad at me. If you want to knock me around, fuck, sweetheart, make me your punching bag. But don’t shit on me by pretending it wasn’t important.”

  “Taking a risk like that—”

  “They were going to kill you. Do you understand that? They weren’t going to play grab-around and tease you, ok? Kyle and Leo were supposed to kill you that night in the parking lot of Garry’s. They didn’t because of me.” Emmett’s voice cracked, and he hammered his chest. “I convinced Lawayne that you could still be useful. I convinced Lawayne to push back on the Lady, to tell her not to throw away a valuable tool. I convinced Lawayne that you could be made to see reason. If we could get you out of town, you could be useful to him. He’s smart enough not to trust Urho and the Lady.”

  “You told him to blackmail me?” I took a step, stopped myself, and tried to shake out my fists. “You told him to threaten me? To scare the people I love?”

  “They were going to kill you. The end, Vie. Over and out. If Leo and Kyle failed, they had Krystal, they had that creepy kid, they had guys who could just line up a shot and blow your head off before you ever saw them. You couldn’t fight against that. You wouldn’t have had a chance once they made up their minds, so I saved your life. Try saying thank you. Just try it for once.” He chewed on his ruined lip. “Urho and the Lady had already decided to move ahead with the kids, and Lawayne figured he could get what he needed from your corpse. They weren’t screwing around, Vie. It was a kill order. You might be psychic. And you might be tough. But when someone wants you dead, really wants you dead, they’ll get what they want. Eventually, everybody slips up. And I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

  The fierceness in his voice sent a frisson down my back, and I threw a chill. “Hold on.” It took me a minute to work up the words and ask, “What do you mean about the kids? And about Lawayne and my . . . corpse?”

  Emmett’s hand, which had been massaging that spot on his cheek, stilled.

  “What did you mean with all that?”

  “I meant what I said: they wanted you dead.”

  “And I’m asking you what you meant about Tyler and Hannah. And about me. About my dead body. You know, the one you said Lawayne wanted.” Another shiver shook me, so I stepped away from the window and wrapped my arms around myself. “That’s got something to do with what happened at your house, doesn’t it? That’s got something to do with Lawayne feeling me up while you watched.”

  “I was making sure you didn’t do anything stupid.”

  I kept my eyes on him, and after a moment, his gaze fell.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he muttered in the direction of the quilt. “I wouldn’t have—well, you put me in a pretty bad position, showing up at the house like that. I had to convince Lawayne I was helping him. I guess I was helping him, at least on some level, until Krystal attacked you and I blew my cover by helping you. He saw all of that, by the way. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything else out of Lawayne, so I decided to take a different approach. That’s when I left town.”

  “You’re trying to change the subject, Emmett. What did they want with my body? What did you know about Tyler and Hannah?”

  The rag rug slipped under me when I took a step, but I caught myself and kept moving. My shins bumped up against the bed frame. The whole bed rattled, and not in the fun way it had done a little while earlier. Emmett kept right where he was, staring at me from behind those fallaway eyes. And I was falling. It was that same funhouse fall that I felt every time I was around him now: just the shock of the drop, the sense of directionless space, as though I were falling up and down and sideways all at the same time.

  “What aren’t you telling me? What are you so scared to tell me?”

  “It’s nothing that matters. We need to keep our focus, tweaker. We need to find Urho and the Lady, and we need to come down on them so hard that there’s nothing left to hit back. We need to burn them out. This is medieval shit, tweaker. Fire and iron to get rid of the monsters. If we wait, Urho will get what he wants, and the Lady will keep building their army, and we’ll be the ones who get crushed.”

  “You are scared.” I almost didn’t believe it.

  “Of course I’m scared. I’d be out of my damn mind if I weren’t. Jesus, tweaker, we’re talking about war here. A real, super-psychic throwdown. And to be honest, I don’t think we can win.”

  “You’re so scared you’re shaking again.” I ran my hand down the inside of his thigh, the light peppering of hair teasing my palm. Tiny shakes, barely even visible, but still there. I could feel them.

  He slapped my hand away. “Stop it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ll tell you when I goddamn feel like it. Maybe that’ll be never.”

  “It has to do with the scars on your face. It has to do with where you went. What happened to you? How could it have happened—you were gone a day, Em, how could it have happened?” I brushed the back of my hand along the inside of his thigh. I wanted him like this always: naked in my bed, my own personal drug that could take me away from everything. But Emmett was right about one thing: I needed to focus. “What did you learn that’s so terrible that you can’t tell me?”

  He slapped my hand away again. He jerked away when I tried to touch him, the scarred half of his face turned toward me like a shield.

  “Where did you go?” I asked.

  He slashed the ridge of his hand under each eye.

  “Where? What did you do?”

  “Jesus, tweaker.” Red-rimmed eyes. Dry eyes, even though he kept slashing his hands beneath them. Fever, fallaway eyes. “Use your fucking brain for once in your life. I went to see your mother.”

  EMMETT DREW HIS KNEES AGAINST his chest, and he continued to glare at me. The scars went all the way down. A dazed part of my mind tracked them. I had noticed during—well, I had noticed a lot about him over the last few hours. Parts I’d never gotten to see before. I had realized that the scars came down his leg, wrapped around his ankle, and ended. It was such a neat, precise thing. As though the wounds had been meant as ornamentation instead of disfigurement. And that same unnerving, corner-of-the-eye symmetry persisted. That was when everything started to slip and slide, and I had to catch onto the dresser to keep from falling.

  “Vie?”

  I flipped him off, and moved to sit at the edge of the bed, hugging his chest and staring at me.

  “I’m going to throw up,” I said.

  Neither of us moved.

  “I’m going to throw up.”

  “Well—go. Or do you need me to—”

  I was still holding up my middle finger like a traffic sign.

  Neither of us moved.

  “Are you gonna . . .”

  I rolled my shoulders.

  “Are you really gonna puke?”

  “Christ, Emmett, just shut up.” The floor wasn’t sliding out from under me anymore, but my heart had moved up about three inches and was trying to punch a hole through my throat. Sweat broke out in a thousand pinpricks, and my legs had dissolved. “I am. I’m going to throw up all over the place.”

  “Do you want me to hold your hair?”r />
  Neither of us moved.

  And then I started crying. Not big tears. Not the kind of sobs that could shake me apart. This wasn’t even a snotty cry. It was just slow, steady leakage from the eyes. Like I was melting from the inside out. And that kind of made sense because my brain was gone. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. I just had to stand there, holding myself up on the chest of drawers, while my brains dripped out.

  “Vie, I’m—”

  “Don’t say it. No. Stay right there. If you—” My chest was so heavy. I had good lungs. I ran every day. I didn’t smoke—well, not really. But my chest was lead, and I could barely pull in any air. Just little puffs that exploded behind my eyes in white. “If you get off the bed.” Puff. “If you.” Puff. “If you come over here.” Puff, puff. “If you.” Puff. “If you.” Puff. “If you.” Puff, puff, puff like the Fourth of July right at the base of my optic nerves. “I’ll kill you.”

  Neither of us moved.

  I knew it wasn’t a threat. I guess he did too.

  I slid down to sit at the base of the dresser; the knobs on the drawers dug into my back and scraped lines of heat up my skin. When they bumped over the raised battleground of scars, my heart thumped double. My butt felt every speck of dust and grit on the floor; my feet rubbed across the rag rug’s concentric rings. I should put on clothes, I thought. Not naked; I can’t do this naked. I needed clothes. My boxers. My jeans. Socks, hell, I’d settle for socks. I was vaguely aware the words were leaking out of me just like the tears. Even socks would be better than this. Even one sock just to drag up over my dick so I wasn’t facing this—this piece of shit, this traitorous piece of shit, this fuckboy—naked.

  “You want me to find your boxers?”

  Neither of us moved.

  “I should go.”

  Neither of us moved.

  “Vie, please. Can you look at me? Can you talk to me? Yell at me. Hit me. Rip my hair out. Throw me around. Tell me I’m a piece of shit. I know I’m a piece of shit. I’m the biggest piece of shit in your life right now. I’m the biggest piece of shit in the whole world. But I—” He drew in a breath. His eyes weren’t fallaway eyes anymore. They were bright and alive. A bright darkness. Electricity arcing in a blacked-out room. He was building up the courage to say what he wanted to say.

  Every inch of my skin tingled with what he was about to say. It rushed through me like adrenaline, and my brain cleared, and the weight fell away from my chest.

  “Don’t.” The normalcy of my voice, the evenness, the softness, went off like a gunshot between us. “If you say that, I really will kill you.”

  Bit by bit those electric lamps in his eyes went out. He tried to pull the corner of his mouth into a smirk; a tic thrummed in his cheek, and then he gave it up and just stared at me.

  “Get your fucking clothes on.”

  “Vie, I want to—”

  “Get dressed. And get out of here.”

  My boxers peeked out from under the bed, where they must have fallen when I kicked them off. I snagged them and hooked my feet through them.

  “No,” Emmett said. He rolled off the bed, landing on hands and knees next to me, and grabbed the elastic band of the boxers as they reached my hips. “Vie, just hold on.”

  “Get dressed and get out, Emmett.” I yanked up on the boxers.

  “No.” He yanked down.

  “Get your fucking hands off me.” I yanked up.

  “No. Not until you give me a chance to explain.”

  “I don’t want an explanation. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to hear about any of it. And even if I did, I don’t need to be naked to hear your explanation.” I yanked on the elastic again.

  “Yes, you do.” And then Emmett ripped at my hands, and then, somehow, we were wrestling. “Get out of those damn shorts. Get them the fuck off.”

  I tried to throw him, but he was crazy, clutching at me, clinging to me, tearing at my hands. Elastic stuttered, ripped, and the boxers came free. We rolled across the rag rug, and then we crashed up against the bed, with me on top, and I slammed him down once, hard enough that his head clicked off the floor, and then I slammed him down again.

  “What the fuck does underwear have to do with it, Emmett? There’s nothing you can say, nothing, that’s going to make this better. It won’t matter if my cock’s hanging out when you try.”

  He stared up at me; that dark electricity was back, and he shouted, with spittle on his lips, “It does matter. You’re running away, you fucking coward.”

  “I’m running away—”

  “Yeah, you’re running away. Even if you don’t get off your ass, even if you don’t leave the room, you’re putting on those fucking boxers because you’re running away, and I—” The electricity in his eyes was so bright that I could almost see how deep those bottomless eyes went. “I need you.”

  Ok, then. That was a different story. I let out a ragged breath. That was safer than what Emmett might have said. If he had said love—I stopped the thought, and said, “You need me.”

  “I need you so fucking much I can’t breathe when you’re not with me.”

  “Really? You need me?”

  “I need you. Every minute, every day, I need you. Heroin? You think that’s the fucking dope that I’m hooked on? Fuck that. That’s kiddie shit. You, on the other hand. Eating, sleeping, fucking. You’re there, inside my head, no matter what I’m doing. You’re the only thing I can think about. And I need you without those damn boxers on.” He bucked up at the last, as his words rose into a shout, and caught me by surprise.

  I tumbled off, rolled into a sitting position and stared at him. He was breathing like he’d run twenty miles. The flush in his cheeks stained his skin like wine. His tongue ran inside his lower lip; his eyes, bottomless and electric, were enough for me to fall into.

  And then I heard what he’d said at the end and started to laugh. I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt, the muscles contracting in spasms, my face wet with the laughter. I laughed so hard I doubled over, the rag rug bristling against my face, the smell of dust and old cloth in my nose. I laughed until I choked on my own spit, and somehow that was just so goddamn funny that it made me laugh even harder after I’d cleared my airway, and I fell onto my side and laughed. And laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

  His bare toes dug into my side, pushing hard enough to flip me onto my back. “You’re an asshole.”

  “You need me without my underwear on?”

  “You’re a real asshole.”

  But when I scrubbed my eyes clear, he was smiling.

  “What about socks?” I got onto my side again, head propped on my arm. My hair fell across my shoulders; it tickled my back like cool grass. It sent a shiver through me. “Do you need me without my socks?”

  “God, you’re the worst.”

  “I wasn’t running away, Em.” I couldn’t quite meet those fallaway eyes; the tips of my hair felt like frost-fuzz on my bare skin as I turned my head away. “Ok. Maybe I was.”

  “You know I like you with your cock hanging out,” Emmett said, his tone amused and still heavy. “But you know that’s not what this is about. You’re brave about a million things. You’ve lived through shit that would break most people, and I’m not talking about the supernatural stuff. But sometimes, you run. You’re right here, right where I can touch you—and I want to touch you, I want you here—but you’re gone. You talk to me, you look at me. I bet you could even fuck me, throw me a real hell of a fuck, and you’d be gone the whole time.” He chewed his ruined lip again. “Sometimes you go where I can’t follow.”

  I twisted upright, my hair fanning like ice water along my shoulders. I thought I’d gotten away from the cold; I wasn’t near the window, and Sara had the furnace blowing. But my skin pebbled from my collarbone to my ankles. How had Austin said it? Not the same words as Emmett, not the same tone, not the same let’s-fuck-around-anyway smile. But the same. The very exact same. So
metimes you go where I can’t reach you. Was that how Austin had said it?

  “The boxers—”

  “The boxers are a fucking metaphor.”

  “They’re not a metaphor. A metaphor is when you compare things.”

  “Fine, tweaker. They’re a symbol. Shut your mouth; I don’t care if they aren’t really a symbol or if that’s not the right definition or whatever. I’m trying to tell you it’s not about the boxers. It’s about you. I need you to listen to me. I need you to be here with me. I need you, not just the part of you that sticks around when you disappear.”

  “With my wiener hanging out. Come on, don’t make that face. I’m just kidding this time. Can we put on some clothes? It’s freezing.”

  Emmett’s brows lifted. “Sure. Just as long as you put on a nice show for me.”

  I ignored him as best I could. I found a fresh, unripped pair of boxers, and I dragged on joggers and a sweatshirt. I still needed that shower; I smelled a little bit like vomit, a lot like sex, and with the tang of blood—Emmett’s blood—ringing in my mouth. But the clothes, the clothes might as well have just come out of the laundry. Gain. Sara’s favorite laundry detergent. It flooded my nose as I shimmied into the clothes. I winced as my battered nose popped past the collar.

  Emmett, naked, sprawled on the bed.

  “Move over,” I said, but he didn’t budge, and so I stretched out on about four inches of mattress that he left me. “You could get under the sheet, you know.”

  “But then you wouldn’t get to look at me.” He shivered then and rolled into me, almost knocking me off the bed. “You’ll do a good job of keeping me warm.”

  Four inches. Four goddamn inches of mattress. That was all he left me. But I curled an arm and tucked him against me, and I ruffled his hair with my free hand. I trailed my fingers through the short, stiff bristles above his ears. I traced his ear, his jaw, his neck, his collarbone. Months. I had waited months and months for this.