by Angel Lawson
“So you would choose a god over me.”
“Cherry...”
“Stop it,” Memory whispers.
“No. Go back, live your lives. I’ll do this.” I wipe the sweat off my forehead and look at Odin. “Let me do this.”
“Ethan, don’t!”
“Enough.” The god’s voice is a heavy whip, cracking over the clearing. We stagger. Memory drops to her knees, and the crow on her wrist flies into the air. “I wander the earth for eternities searching for enlightenment, and yet I’m still surrounded by stupidity,” Odin says. He turns to me. “My son made you a similar offer, and you declined. Why?”
“The sacrifice was too high.”
“You chose a girl’s wishes over a god?” His ancient eyes narrow.
I shrug, which is dumb because the pain from the cut spikes up my arm, and I can’t hold back a shudder.
So did you, the crow says, landing on the head of a stone wolf. Just now. You chose my mother over Yvengvr.
Odin’s brows rise in surprise, and then his face cracks with a smile, and he laughs, another huge boom of thunder. The ground shakes, and I kneel, no longer able to fight the pain and my exhaustion.
“And he says we’re loud?” Faye complains, fingers in her ears.
The god of all gods rises from his throne, and lays his hand on my head. I feel it, the connection, hurtling at me like lightning from his vast mind, and the others are there too, a chorus behind his huge presence.
Then all I see is black, and the voices fade.
28.
Minutes
I’m pacing the tiny hallway outside the bedroom when Mimir comes out and shuts the door behind her. “He’s going to be fine,’ she says. “Exhausted more than anything else. This is mild compared to what I’ve seen him get. I made a salve that should help with the scarring.”
We stand across from one another in the tiny hallway. Curiosity gets the best of me. “So you’re his social worker?”
“Since he was six.” She nods once.
“And you are also Mimir. A witch.”
“The witch. Yes.”
“I’m not sure I understand all this.”
“Yvengvr had to wait many years for the bloodline to come together. Ethan was the wild card. I had to make sure he was protected after his parents were gone.”
“What happened to them?”
She shakes her head. “That is his story to tell. But you can thank me later for helping him make it this far.”
“But you planned this all along? For Ethan to fight Anders? To fight for us?”
“He was a fool if he thought I would sacrifice my own child, not to mention another one I loved just as much. Yes, all of this was orchestrated. He didn’t know what to do but trust me.”
“Thank you for saving us,” I say. She smiles. I look at the door. “Can I go in?”
“Only for a minute. Dean Burnett called me. He thinks we’re already on our way to the station.”
“But he didn’t do anything! Jeremy started that fight.”
“Jeremy doesn’t have a record.” She places her hand on my arm in sympathy. “I hate it for him, but I have no choice and Ethan knew the consequences.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Nothing much is,” she says and walks down the hall and away from me.
“Wait, Miriam, I have something for you.” I dig in my pocket and fish out the stoneless silver setting.
She takes it from my palm, and murmurs without looking away from it, “We leave in ten minutes.”
Ten minutes isn’t enough time, not for all I want to say, or do, or feel, but it’s all I have, so I suck back my emotions and open the bedroom door. Ethan is lying on the bed. I fight a gasp at the sight of his battered face and body, his arm wrapped in gauze. He’s not wearing a shirt and now is not the time to be checking him out, but I can see how he was made in the image of a god.
His eyes open and a small grin appears and he says, “Hi.”
“Hey.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?” I play dumb.
“For scaring you. And making you feel like I didn’t care.” He looks down at the sheet. “Because I do. And couldn’t get you out of there if I was in chains. I had to fake it, pretend like I was with him. I wasn’t, not for a second.”
“Even when he offered you a lifetime of glory?”
“Even then.”
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“I won’t.” His eyes promise, too. I kiss his cheek, and then the other, like I’ve taken an oath, or a vow. He smiles. “Where are the others? Is everyone alright?”
“Yeah, Faye and Julian are in the living room. I caught them going at it earlier. So weird.” I shudder. “Sonja is still down there, with him. She’s really mad at her mom.”
“I’m a little pissed, too,” he says. “Is Sonja still. Um.” His face twists, and he links his thumbs, and flutters his fingers, a hand shadow puppet of a bird.
“Yeah.” I shake my head, still unable to wrap my head around my brother flying, like he had been born for it.
“What about you? How are you doing?” Ethan sits up with a groan.
“Best I can.” I help him tug a T-shirt over his hurt arm. It’s a little tight in all the right places. “Knowing I have only ten minutes with you and the weight of a God’s orders on my shoulders.”
“Close the door.” His voice is rough. I pull it shut, and crowd next to him on the squishy mattress. “Closer,” he says.
“No, you’re hurt.”
“Cherry, I have eleven months ahead of me with no one but a hundred other guys to sleep, eat, and shower with. I can take a little pain to feel you next to me.” His hand is warm on my back, and I relent and curl up into his side.
“Eleven months?”
“Nine, if I can stay out of trouble. Then I’m out. On my own.”
“Not alone, though.”
I feel his mouth against my hair. “No, not alone.”
“I’m worried for you. The rest of us are going back to normal life and we’ll have each other. You’re getting locked away with a bunch of hoodlum thugs for something that isn’t your fault.”
“Hoodlum thugs? What have you been reading?” he asks. “I started that fight, don’t forget that. I’ll be fine. I’m used to it.”
“It shouldn’t be. Jeremy was working under Dr. Anders’ control!” I twist the material of his t-shirt in my fist. “I hate this. Julian and Faye and Miriam keep calling it—what we have, what we can do—a talent or a power, but it’s nothing more than a curse. You know he expects us to be back in a year? A year and a day. I tried to talk him into taking you now, keeping you out of prison, but it was an all or nothing deal. Sonja’s still there, I don’t see why you can’t be.”
“She’s probably a special case. Custody settlement or something.” I can feel him smile, the way his face moves against my cheek. “Is that why I can’t sense her? She isn’t here?”
I nod. “I think so.”
“Is this what it’s like for you and Julian? The twin thing? I can sense him. And Faye, too. They’re nearby. Not like before. When they were—” He grimaces, doesn’t say it aloud. “They aren’t in my head.”
I nod again. I let go of his shirt, and stroke my fingertips down the inside of his good arm, and watch him shiver at my touch, and the flash of connection that lingers between us. His nipple hardens under the t-shirt. “Do you sense me, too?”
“Yes. Hell, Cherry.” His voice rasps, and his fingers mirror mine, on the tender skin inside my elbow. I gasp when they keep going, light but bold, under the curve of my breast. “How am I going to get through this without you?”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. Mary will get me through this year and it all will be fine.” His words are promising but he shifts, moves away a little.
“So Mimir is still going to be your case worker?”
“She’ll be around.
Someone needs to keep an eye on me.” He kisses the corner of my mouth. “And you.”
“Can I visit?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“I can’t? Or you don’t want me to?”
“I don’t want you in that part of my world, Memory. It’s just...”
“I don’t care what it’s like!”
“No, it’s horrible. Those guys. No. I don’t want them to see you or talk about you or try to talk to me about you. I don’t want you to see how I live. It’s jail. Bars on the windows, stainless steel toilets, bunk beds and cafeteria meals three times a day. Let me finish my time. Let me finish it up and then be done with it.”
“No fights.”
“None. I promise,” he says, but the corner of his mouth is twitching, and his eyes promise nothing.
“And I’ll behave.”
He laughs. “Right.”
“I will! I can behave. No boys or fighting with Julian, or breaking into houses. I swear.”
He catches my chin between his hands. “Everything will be okay. In a year we’ll start our life over and deal with everything then. In the meantime, just have fun.” His eyes are clouded with gray, like he doesn’t believe what he’s saying, so I kiss him, soft, and then not.
“I don’t want fun,” I whisper against his mouth. “I want you.”
He stops my words with his lips, a hard kiss that leaves me gasping for more, clinging to his heat and my sanity. His hands are everywhere, shaping to my body until I moan. I grind into him, tugging at his shirt, pulling it up, frantic to touch his skin.
He pushes me away. He’s panting, eyes electric again. Then he smirks. “So, isn’t this like incest?” he asks. “Aren’t we like brother and sister, or cousins or something?”
I smack the arm that isn’t bandaged. “You’re so gross.”
A rap on the door has me pulling away. “Come in,” I sigh.
Faye and Julian stand in the doorway. Both look exhausted, dark purple rings under their eyes.
“Hey,” I say, smoothing my hair. “You guys okay?”
“Just wanted to say goodbye,” Faye says, pouting at Ethan. “I’m going to miss you.” Ethan nods and ducks his head. Only Faye could cause this boy to blush.
Mimir walks in without knocking. “Time to go. It’s a two hour drive and I need to be back before dark.”
Ethan’s arms tighten around me but I wiggle loose. I gawk at the ring that wraps her middle finger, now with a round smoky brown topaz in the eye-shaped setting, where the amber gem used to sit.
“Is that Sonja’s...?” I can’t finish. The others look as horrified as I feel.
“The bargain was struck, and I am bound to it, both then and now,” Miriam says. Her eyes, the same color, fill with tears, but they don’t spill over.
“She’ll be back,” Ethan says, but he doesn’t look at her.
“Time to go,” she says again.
Julian offers Ethan a hand. With a surprised glance, he takes it, letting my brother help him off the bed. Jules says, “Look, I wanted to thank you for all that...I mean, everything. For me and the girls...”
“Group effort. Don’t thank me.”
My brother shakes his head. “You were willing to risk everything for all of us.”
“You were the one who first figured out that something was weird with Anders. We should have listened.”
Miriam calls Ethan’s name from the front of the house.
“I’ll see you around,” my brother says, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Ethan grabs my brother’s arm and nods in my direction. “Take care of her.”
“Like she’ll let me,” Julian says and follows Faye out the door.
Ethan hugs me but stops short of actually leaving. He rubs his hands over his face. “This sucks.”
“Totally.”
“Quick,” he says and I run over for one more kiss, and boy, does he ever give it to me, urgent and hot, lips and teeth and tongue and searing light. I let him go and shut the door, pressing my back against the wooden surface, unable to watch him leave, breathless.
A dark image of wings is burned into my mind.
29.
Emancipation
The heavy metal door bangs behind me, trapping the rowdy voices on the other side. The guard nods and a buzzer sounds, shifting the locks, separating me from them for the last time. Goodbye block eight, hello world. It’s quieter than I remember.
“Got everything?” The corrections officer asks. He passes me a bag. “That’s all you had in your intake locker.”
I take the belt and the shoes, but push back the pants and the shirt. “These won’t fit anymore. Can you pass them on to one of the guys?”
According to the nurse’s release form, I’ve grown two more inches and gained 30 pounds since I got here. I’ll have to make do with my one allotted pair of dark blue work pants and single white T-shirt.
“Sure,” the guard says. He performs the obligatory search on the zip-lock bag of the few things I’ll take with me: a stack of forty-two letters, one for each week—though not these past three, because I told her to stop writing near my release date, not knowing if I would get them before I was out; the stone Faye slipped me under the table nearly a year ago; a couple books Julian sent with Mary, and the weird little Scandinavian comics that were mailed with no return address.
“Hope you got that picture of your girl in there. The guys were eyeing it pretty hard when it came in.”
“Shut up.” I have three pictures, though in her letters she says she sent more. I realize I haven’t officially been released and toss out a, “Sir,” to cover for my disrespect.
He ignores it and says, “She waiting for you?”
“Yeah.” At least I hope so. My stomach twists up with the anticipation I’ve spent the last year trying to suppress. Only a couple hours to go. I’m hoping Mary has her cell phone number. I don’t know it, told her not to write it in her letters, because I wouldn’t be the only one reading them.
The officer leads me outside, between the work out yard and the administration building. The sky is clear. The chill of spring is gone and humidity is already sticking to my skin. I scan the parking lot through the fence, looking for Mary’s Nissan.
We walk through the side door and to the intake room. “Let me get your paperwork,” he says.
I sit in the hard plastic chair at the metal table, feeling no different than I did a day ago. I’m still confined, two-way mirrors and automatic locking doors. I’ve waited a year, mostly patient, but these last few hours have been excruciating. Did she not write because I told her not to, or because she didn’t want to?
Mary opens the door, waving my paperwork. “Ready?”
I’m out of my chair before she even finishes the word. “Let’s go!” My words are garbled by a smile so big it hurts my face.
“Good luck, Tyrell,” the guy says, holding out a hand for me to shake. “The world is a big place. Make the most of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
He has no idea how huge my world is, or that I have a destiny bigger than his reality has room for, so I nod and smile, and hold the door for Mary. We walk through the metal detectors to the outside. Same air, same sky, but it’s always bluer on this side of the fence.
“Slow down,” Mary says.
I stop, walk back to her, and stride off again. “I can’t tell you how good it feels just to walk out that door. I swear the air is fresher out here.”
“The officer got the right of it, Ethan. The world is a big place, and you got it all in your hands. You do right by me, you hear?”
“I’m good, Mary. I’ve had enough fighting for a lifetime. I promise.”
I don’t confess that I’m scared. That I’m on my own and that the only people in the world I have is a set of psychic twins, a weird witchy chick and an anonymous comic book sender, who last I saw was a black bird. I have no parents, no job, and no home, and a Norse god with expectations I can’
t even begin to understand.
The car feels smaller than it used to be. I roll down the window, enjoy the wind on my face, but we go only about five miles down the rural road when Mary stops at an abandoned gas station.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“You’ll see.”
All I want in the world is to get to a phone, so I can call Memory. My head is so full of her, I could almost reach out and touch her skin. Another car pulls up beside us, a black SUV, huge, with dark windows, something out of a gangster movie.
“Who is that? Are you leaving me here?” I ask. The door swings open and the longest, hottest pair of legs comes in view. God, I’ve missed her. I scramble out of the Nissan and attack her. Pick her up and kiss her face and lips and neck. And damn, does she smell good.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“Put me down?” She laughs.
“No.” I do, but I don’t let go. Not for a second.
“I figured Memory would cause a short circuit at the Detention Center if I brought her in looking like that, so we decided to meet here,” Mary explains.
“Yeah.” I can’t tear my eyes off her shorts and her shoulders and her neck. My cellmate would have had a heart attack.
“Come here,” Mary says, waving me to the back of her car. She opens the trunk and points inside. I reach in for my camera bag and portfolio. “I also packed you a bag. Some clothes and necessities to get you started. My going away gift.”
I lift the bag of clothing out and Memory takes my portfolio. She opens the back door of her SUV and puts them in. I turn to Mary. “Thanks for everything. I mean it. All of it.”
“You’re welcome. Be good. Stay safe.”
“We won’t see you again?” Memory asks. She’s beside me, fingers wrapped in mine.
“You are always welcome in my house.” She steps forward and gives me a hug, the first one from her I’ve had for a very long time. She seems tiny now. “Good luck.”
She gets in her car and drives away, leaving Memory and I on the side of the road. I pull Cherry to me and give her another kiss. The kind you give when no one is watching, that has her against the vehicle, and my hands full of her hair and her legs around my waist. I kiss her until we are both moaning, my lips drifting over her cheek, to her neck, and lower, searching through the fabric of her top for the nipple that rises to my touch.