by Jasmine Walt
Between the fire and the heavy covers, he was already sweating. “A glass of water?” he suggested.
She nodded, rising fluidly from her chair. “I’ll be right back.”
Jeremy’s father waited for her to disappear before he left his post near the fire and walked slowly to the bed, all leonine grace and poise. He wasn’t terribly tall or broad in the shoulders, but he carried a certain sense of purpose that gave him an air of subtle, implacable power. Nathaniel replaced his mother on the stool by his bed and looked into Jeremy’s eyes. He sat there patiently, eyes never wavering. “You were playing in the ruins,” he said finally. It wasn’t a question.
“How did you know?”
His father’s patient stare gave him all the answer he needed.
Jeremy’s heart fell. “Ellie told you,” he concluded.
Nathaniel nodded. “You shouldn’t have left her here alone,” he said. His voice was harsh, his words reproachful.
Jeremy cowered beneath the gaze of his father’s gray eyes as his mother returned with a glass of water. “Thanks,” he mumbled, taking a sip.
Annabelle looked between Jeremy and his father, and they stared back at her in silence. With a sigh, his mother left the room again, closing the door behind her.
“I didn’t mean to leave Ellie alone,” Jeremy blurted out. “I meant to be home before Mom showed up, I swear.”
His father shook his head. “You aren’t in trouble because you were caught,” he said. “You’re in trouble because you did the wrong thing. It’s never safe to go off on your own, especially when your mother and I aren’t around.” His face softened for a moment. “And you know how lonely your sister gets without your company.”
Jeremy tried to shrug, but the movement hurt his shoulder. “I tried to hang out with her yesterday, but she wanted to be alone.”
“Really?” His father sounded skeptical. “That’s not like Eloise.”
“I don’t know what it is about this place,” Jeremy said, referring to the valley. “She seems to love it, but at the same time I feel like she’s a different person here.”
“Regardless of how your sister is acting,” his father said, “family still comes first.”
Jeremy let out a harsh laugh. “When did that become your motto?”
He wished he could bite back the words as soon as he said them. Anger flashed across his father’s eyes like a bolt of lightning, sparking from nothing before disappearing. If he hadn’t been watching, Jeremy might have missed it altogether.
His father sighed, his face suddenly much more haggard than Jeremy was used to seeing. “I’m sorry, Jeremy,” he said, his eyes taking on a quality that was as rare as Bigfoot. They looked almost warm. Friendly, even. “Living with me, dealing with the effects of my work schedule—I know that it must have been difficult for you. I’ve always been one step too far away from you kids for my comfort, but that’s just the nature of the industry. Business is a beast, and I’m in its clutches.” He placed a long, slender hand on top of Jeremy’s, and he smiled. “But I am trying the best I can to be your father.”
Jeremy tried to respond, but he was suddenly gripped with an overwhelming sense of vertigo. His eyes danced with light as the world around him was swapped out, piece by piece. Gone were his desk and schoolbooks, the mirror and the fireplace, and even his father.
In place of his bedroom was a large office of some sort. A long, oval table of sturdy wood ran the length of the center of the room, and men and women in smart business suits sat along both sides. An entire wall of the room was made of plate-glass windows, and the office had an incredible view of Odols. The sun was setting, silhouetting the city’s skyline in inky black contrast to its vibrant red and orange and purple.
Jeremy stood by one of the other walls, and every member of the meeting had their eyes trained on him as he spoke. His voice was confident and powerful, and his arms accompanied the speech he was giving with animated gestures. He ignored his phone as it vibrated once in his pocket.
“As I’m sure you are all well aware,” Jeremy said, speaking with his father’s confident voice, “the acquisition of Brüding Pharmaceuticals represents a significant opportunity to increase SymbioTech’s share of the biomedical consumer market. In the first year, we will recoup the total investment cost of the acquisition.”
Heads nodded approvingly around the table. The only exception was a beak-nosed man named Lester Crowe. His face darkened when he met Jeremy’s eyes, and his mouth twisted in a sneer. “Those are rather bold claims, don’t you think?” he challenged. His tenor voice carried a distinctly Scottish accent, and his general temperament was one of conflict and complaint. Jeremy had been expecting his contestation since the start of the meeting.
“A bold claim, yes, but not without merit,” Jeremy said. “Within the last five years, Brüding Pharma has grown in leaps and bounds. Their research and development department outpaces their closest competitors, and they will pose a significant threat to our economic security unless we act now.” He straightened his crimson tie and cleared his throat, commanding even Crowe’s attention. “We have the capital to buy out their executive board, and I know at least two of the seven sitting members are already in our pocket. Turn two more, and we will have the controlling interest of pharmaceuticals in Odols for the next twenty years.”
Jeremy held his mutual glare with Lester Crowe, who remained stone-faced even as the rest of the room filled with applause. He felt his phone begin to vibrate persistently with an incoming phone call. He raised one finger in apology to the assembled group of executives and excused himself from the room. Once in the hallway, he raised the phone to his ear and winced as his wife’s plaintive request arrived, unprompted, to his inner ear.
“Anna, I can’t come home right now. I’m in the middle of a very important meeting.”
“I can’t find Jeremy,” she said. “It’s getting dark and Ellie says he hasn’t been home all day.” Annabelle sounded as nervous as he had ever heard her.
As Nathaniel, Jeremy sighed and looked at his watch. “I can leave in fifteen minutes. The entire executive board is here, and we are about to break ground on a new—”
“You can come home right now,” Annabelle argued, “and the board be damned. I don’t care how important these men think they are, your family comes first.”
Jeremy nodded wearily and checked his watch again. “Family first,” he agreed. “Of course. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
He replaced the phone in his pocket and made sure his tie was perfectly straight. He stepped back into the conference room to apologize, and a moment later he called for a close to the meeting. The gathered men and women stared at him with blank, confused looks, but he was already out the door before they could protest, phone in his hand.
“Put me through to Kai,” he said, and after a second continued, “Dr. Kai. My driver will be downstairs in three minutes; I expect you to be waiting for me there.” A pause. “Excellent,” he said. “And bring your kit.”
Jarringly, the vivid, mad hallucination ended.
Jeremy was abruptly back in bed, staring up into his father’s gray gaze. He recoiled from the touch of his father’s hand. Less than a second had passed; the slight smile which had graced his father’s face slid away to be replaced by a thin frown.
He felt violently ill, as if he had been reading while riding a rollercoaster that had just pulled out of a quadruple corkscrew. It was motion sickness on steroids. The conference room, his father’s conversation with his mother, the—well, everything—had been so real. His father asking a question was all that kept him anchored in reality.
“Jeremy, what were you doing so far from home?” Nathaniel asked, his voice at once regaining its former edge.
“I was exploring the Tower,” Jeremy choked out. He bit back the bile that threatened to rise in his throat. His head was pounding worse than ever in the aftermath of his…experience, hallucination, whatever it was he had just gone through.
> “You were exploring the tower,” his father repeated. He stood and moved to stand by the fireplace once more. Jeremy glimpsed his father in the mirror, and he looked like he was wreathed in flames.
“Your mother was nearly hysterical when she came home to an empty house,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t mean to worry her—”
“And more than anything you disappointed me, Jeremy.” His father turned, his gray eyes briefly ablaze before cooling, and he contemplated the wounded boy whose head was half-wrapped in fresh bandages. It covered both ears, wound beneath his chin, and was stained crimson by one of his temples.
“I was worried for you, Jeremy,” he said, approaching the bed. Jeremy flinched back, afraid of making contact again, and his father stopped just outside of arm’s reach. He crossed his arms as he addressed his son. “I don’t know what I would have done if you had—” His father paused. He wasn’t welling up with tears, on the verge of an emotional break; that would have been truly unnerving. He was simply taking a moment to choose his words.
“This,” Nathaniel finally said, gesturing to Jeremy’s bandaged head, “could have been so much worse.”
Jeremy wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t been expecting a tearful confession or anything, but his father’s words still spoke measures. It was as close to a bonding experience as they’d had in years. He looked his father directly in the eyes.
“Family comes first,” Jeremy said, his tone even.
Nathaniel eyed him appraisingly and nodded. He patted Jeremy’s knee through the blankets and left the room without another word.
Unable to move, uncomfortably warm now beneath the blankets and basking in the fire’s glow, Jeremy watched his father’s shadow disappear down the hall. He didn’t know what to make of the memories that lingered in his head, as fresh as if he had experienced them himself. His father had received the call about Jeremy’s absence, he realized, just as he himself must have been lying unconscious on the floor of the Tower, head bleeding profusely against the cold stone.
And it had indeed been his father who rescued him from the old fort. The vision had flooded into him with the others, as vivid as his own memories. Unbidden, the captured images flooded his mind as he laid back down to rest.
His father had entered the first level of the Tower sometime after sundown, though light still filtered in through the windows of the second floor. His face had turned ashen when he saw Jeremy’s motionless body lying against the stone table, and he’d carried him in both arms like a child. Nathaniel had stepped through the doorway of the ranch house while the moon hung low in the sky, and the next few hours had been frantic with Annabelle’s fussing, Ellie’s plaintive cries, and the attentive care of the doctor.
Another memory pushed to the fore, picking up earlier in the evening when his father had been leaving from work.
Jeremy emerged from the elevator and turned to see Dr. Kai waiting as he strode into the parking deck.
“Why am I here, sir?” she asked, her tone just barely on the side of tolerant politeness.
“I need some bloodwork drawn up discreetly, and I know you are loyal to this company and to me. I understand you requested updated equipment in the diagnostics lab.”
Dr. Kai nodded.
“Consider it done,” Jeremy said in his father’s voice.
“Th-thank you, sir.”
“Of course. And remember, absolute discretion.”
The memory dissolved as a powerful wave of agony pulsed from Jeremy’s temple and he lost his fight with consciousness.
9
Brennan arrived just two minutes late of his estimate.
The apartment smelled stale, stagnant, and the specter of death loomed close by. He let himself in and marched straight back to his sister’s room. A pair of lit candles feebly fought against the cloying odors emanating from Madison Warner’s body, but they were no match for the final stages of her Fractured decay.
He was dismayed at the state in which he found her. It was obvious that she had not been able to leave her bed for several days. Her skin, once full and beautiful, now clung tightly against her bones, giving her face a hauntingly gaunt impression. The full bags under her eyes were colored like watery tea, and her eyes themselves were equally moist and ruddy. They stared lazily at one corner of the room, and she was either uncaring of Brennan’s presence or unaware of it altogether. Her body writhed in bed, unattended, with her arms and legs shooting out violently at random intervals as she babbled at invisible phantoms.
Brennan grasped one of her clammy hands and held it between his own. He rubbed the top of it reassuringly as he spoke to her soothingly. “Maddy,” he said. “Mads, I’m here. It’s Arty.”
His nephew, Greg Warner, appeared in the doorway. Greg was on the cusp of manhood, average height now but with a few inches still to grow. He brushed some of the dark hair from his eyes as he looked down on his ailing mother. “Thank you, Uncle Arty,” he said, biting at his thumb. “She was like this when I got back. I did exactly what you told me to do, but I don’t know, I guess it didn’t work.”
“When you got back?” Brennan echoed. “Why weren’t you here? You’re supposed to look after her!”
Greg’s uncertain frown turned into a scowl. “I have a life, too, you know. It was only for an hour!”
“I send money to support you two,” Brennan said, failing to keep the frustration out of his voice. “What was so important that—?”
His voice had risen to a near shout, and Maddy stirred beneath him in another bout of fitful struggling. Brennan gave his nephew a withering look and focused again on his ill sister. He held her down until the shaking ceased again. Her long-term patch use had left her body devastated. Brennan lifted the sleeves of her shirt to reveal her thin, pale arms. Faded scars lined both arms, their square shapes barely visible after years without using.
“She didn’t get her hands on anything?” he asked, repeating the visual exam with her legs. Maddy moaned incoherently and pushed at his arms. Her eyes focused on the empty space behind him and followed something that could not be seen. Brennan frowned down at his older sister.
Greg shook his head. “She’s getting worse, isn’t she?”
The question twisted a knife in Brennan’s heart. He knew that his sister might never recover from the damage her addiction had inflicted. It had robbed her of her family, her sanity, and now perhaps even her life. It was made worse by the fact that the moment the question was asked, in Brennan’s heart of hearts he knew it to be true. Knowing the true nature of things was something he’d always been gifted with, though it felt like a curse at the moment.
“Right now, I think it’s too soon to tell.” He heard the falseness of his own words, but the hope he was giving his nephew was of the same kind that he himself held on to now. “We’ll do everything we can for her.” That much was true.
“Of course,” Greg said, nodding.
Maddy was back under control, and Brennan succeeded in getting her to drink some water. When he was sure she wouldn’t relapse into spasms, at least not for the moment, he gestured to Greg to leave the room so they could let her rest. They retreated to the living room, where Brennan sat down directly across from his nephew.
He was tired. The case of Zachariah Nettle’s murder wasn’t any closer to being solved, and he realized that Bishop should have called him by now, or even earlier in the evening. He was about to enter a fourth day without sleep. And he was fairly certain that his nephew was lying to him, or at least not telling the whole truth.
His power had never led him wrong before, and of all the problems he could think of, this one was the most immediately reconcilable.
“Greg,” he started, and he heard the detached detective tone of his own voice. “Do you love your mother?”
“Yes.”
True.
“Would you do anything for her?”
“Of course.”
True.
Brennan sighed deeply. “Why
did you leave her this afternoon?”
There was a fraction of a second when Greg hesitated before answering, but Brennan saw it. “I went to a friend’s house,” Greg said. “Just for an hour.”
True.
“What did you do at your friend’s place?”
“You know, just played games.”
False.
“You’re lying to me,” Brennan growled.
“I swear I’m not!”
Brennan leaned forward and gripped the armrests of Greg’s chair, his face only inches from his nephew’s. Greg stared with wide eyes as Brennan searched his face. “Are you using, Greg?”
“What do you mean, using?”
“Don’t play games with me!” His hold on the chair was painful, white-knuckled, but he was in control of his anger. Greg sunk back slightly into the cushion. “Patches. Are you using patches?”
“N-no, Uncle Arty,” he stammered.
He didn’t need his power’s input to know that the kid was lying. Brennan sighed, grabbed his nephew by the arm, and tore his shirt’s sleeve off at the shoulder. Greg shouted in protest, but Brennan’s attention was entirely devoted to the blistering square of seared flesh, the signature mark of a patch. The drug was soaked up through the skin, and the strong toxins in the patch ate away at the flesh.
“You’re lying,” he growled, his hand tightly gripping Greg by the elbow.
Greg tried unsuccessfully to squirm out of his grasp. “Okay, I did it once. Today was the first time.”
False.
Brennan gave his nephew a look which barred any contention, and Greg’s face crumpled. Words started spilling out of his mouth, tripping over one another to get out in the open.
“Almost two years now,” he admitted. He sounded guilty—ashamed, even—though no color rose in his cheeks. “But it’s fine. I never use too many at once, and it isn’t often. I have it under control.”
“Your mother never thought she was abusing the patches either.”
Greg scowled. “You have no idea what it has been like living here. With her. She can go days without recognizing me. When she does talk to me, it isn’t really me she is seeing, but as if she’s talking to somebody she wants me to be. Her ideal son. Or maybe an old friend of hers, I don’t know. The way she is now is the way she has been for years.” He made a crazy sign with one hand. “Completely detached.”