I don’t think I had ever loved my least-favorite cousin as much as I did in that moment.
“I heard voices,” a masculine baritone rumbled. “Is she here?”
Dad rounded the corner and joined us in the hall outside the kitchen. “Cammie,” he whispered, throwing his arms wide and not waiting for me to decide to step into them. He scooped me up and crushed me to his chest, his arms just as strong as I remembered from all the great big bear hugs of my childhood. “I’m so glad to see you.” He set me down and wiped his cheeks dry. “You’re so beautiful—and tall. The pictures Dot sent didn’t do you justice.” He laughed. “You’re as lovely as your mother and as tall as me. Gods be praised, what a blessed sight.”
“And you brought Theo?” He stuck out his arm, fingers splayed. “I would have expected Isaac. It’s good to see you kids put the past behind you.”
“The past never stays in the past, does it?” Theo made no move to accept the forearm clasp Dad offered. “I’m sure Isaac would be here if he hadn’t been taken by the same fae who attacked you.” He placed a hand over his heart in mock sympathy when Mom gasped. “I’m sorry. You didn’t know? Maybe if you had reached out to tell us what had happened to you, we could have avoided meeting here like this.”
“Theo.” I touched his forearm, grateful his lashing out meant I got to play good cop to his bad cop. “We’ve come this far. We might as well hear them out.”
Dad shoved his hands in his pockets and ducked into the kitchen. Mom was right behind him, so we let them guide us to the table and took our seats while she poured sweet tea into familiar glasses neither of us wanted to lift.
Mom sat across from me and fidgeted with the tassels on the edge of her placemat. “You have questions, I’m sure.”
Ice water flowed through my veins. “You told me Lori died.”
My parents exchanged a glance saturated with dread and an emotion perilously close to…relief.
“The Lori you knew did die that night,” Dad answered, anguish thick in his expression. “Your sister…”
“We revived her.” Mom’s voice warbled. “It was too late. Lori suffered massive brain damage.”
I leaned back in my chair, fingers worrying the drops of condensation on my glass. “Is she…?”
“A dryad acquaintance of ours enchanted a few items, most of which we had to leave at the house after the attack. They keep her free of any pain she might be feeling and resting easy.” She picked at the strings until one came off in her hand. “She never woke up, not really. She doesn’t speak or blink. Her body is alive, but her mind—her soul—they left us that night.”
“When the rogue agent came after us, we packed the necessities and made arrangements for what we couldn’t carry to be brought here to this bolt-hole.” He indicated boxes of medical supplies left open on the counter. “Lori depends on a tube in her throat to help her breathe. She’s fed through a separate tube in her stomach. There’s also the catheter to consider.” His laugh was tired, bitter. “Mundane medical supplies are easy enough to come by, but we rely on magic to keep her as comfortable and as safe as possible. This breach, or whatever it was, with the conclave has forced us to make do, and that’s not a thing I can abide much longer.”
“How did the conclave get involved?” I had heard Vause’s side of the story, but I wanted theirs.
“The conclave performed an intensive background search on you before you were allowed to enter the marshal academy. She found us within weeks; she even came out to visit with us and your sister.” Mom set her jaw. “She refused to allow you to join unless we accepted their offer of ‘help’. She knew we had no one else to turn to, so she pressed us hard. Eventually we agreed with Magistrate Vause and allowed her to place an agent with basic medical training on the premises in case Lori went into distress.”
“Vause was protecting her investment.” That sounded about right. Her knowing about my sister made a lot more sense than her posting guards with my parents when we had no interaction, and any genetic information could have been gathered with a swab to the inside of their cheek. “She didn’t tell me she knew, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
Not much Vause did shocked me. She was a magistrate, a law unto herself, and she had proven too many times she was willing to bend me until I broke. This time, she just might get the satisfaction of hearing me snap.
“We had already cost you so much.” Dad shared a look with Mom. “We refused to be the cause of you not getting the career you wanted. Even if it meant climbing in bed with the conclave.”
“It wasn’t all bad.” Mom noticed my frown. “The agents assigned were very polite and knowledgeable, eager to help and willing to get their hands dirty.” Her lips tipped upward at the corners. “They gave us a glimpse of the person you might have become.”
“That’s why you left Cammie with us?” Theo spoke up for the first time since entering the kitchen. “To hide all this from her?”
“We had no choice.” Color leached from Mom’s cheeks. “The danger was too great if she stayed.”
A frown puckered my brow. “What do you mean?”
“Gemini die in pairs for a reason, baby.” Mom reached for my hand, thought better of it and tucked hers under the table. “Twins have a special bond. Even human twins share a psychic bond, a sense of awareness of the other. In Geminis, it’s more than sixth sense, it’s a survival mechanism. No Gemini can survive without the psychic feedback from their other half.”
Meaning I had never been a survivor. I was just defective in a different way than I had been led to believe.
“We look to our twins for our reset,” Dad elaborated. “We share blood and magic with them on a regular basis. The truth is that each pair is an equal in their relationship. Siblings are linked mentally, magically and physically. Cut that off, and a Gemini is crippled. The magic goes out, seeking a receptor, and is expended instead of bouncing back to you. Slowly your body will drain itself trying to latch on to a circuit that doesn’t exist. Eventually you will die. It’s only a matter of how long it takes.”
No one had told me this in as many words. Had they been worried it would frighten me? Or that I might figure this out? Even now I had goose bumps thinking of how close I had come to death. Before I thought there was a sliver of hope, that stubbornness counted, but all the battles I had imagined fighting for survival had been petty skirmishes instead.
“That doesn’t explain why you dumped her on Mom.” Theo’s jaw flexed. “Nothing you’ve said so far excuses that.”
“The connection keeps us all alive, but it can also do us harm.” Mom tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “A connection with a twin fighting a long-term illness is dangerous. Their magic will seek out the healthy energies of their twin in an effort to heal themselves, draining their sibling until they both weaken and die.”
I risked a glance up at Mom’s face. “So you thought if you put enough distance between us that I would last longer?” Had I not been looking at her, I would have missed her nod. “That’s why you left me with Aunt Dot.”
“Yes.” A brittle smile broke across her mouth. “We tested our theory, first a week or so at a time and then for longer periods. Staying with Dot, and away from us, kept you healthy. You got sick within hours of coming home.”
“We had to make a decision.” Dad squared his shoulders. “The hardest one of our lives.” He took Mom’s hand and held it to his chest, over his heart. “We let you go so that you could survive.”
“You could have visited, written, called. Something.”
“The risk was too great. No one else knew about Lori. We couldn’t ask another Gemini for help, or word would travel back to you eventually. We didn’t have friends we could trust with her care, and we couldn’t bring her with us without getting you sick.” Dad shook his head. “We made the right choice, the hard choice, and cut ourselves off from you. We would rather have your hatred than have to watch both our girls wither in front of us.”
Throat tight,
I took a drink of tea before I could speak again. “I don’t hate you.”
Hope sparked in both their faces, and it drove a sharp spike of regret through me. This visit was a balm to old wounds, but it wasn’t a solution. It wasn’t a happy ending. It was a short visit, and then it was right back to us living separate lives.
“We wouldn’t blame you if you do,” Mom murmured. “You don’t have to spare our feelings.”
“I’ve had a good life.” I cut a glance at Theo. “Aunt Dot raised me right, and I had cousins that might as well have been my brothers for company.” Gods knew Theo had tormented me in ways only a true sibling could. He had picked up right where Lori left off. “I wish you had trusted me with the truth. I understand why you did what you did, and I’ll make peace with it eventually. Even if you had waited until I turned eighteen, I deserved to know about Lori—about why you cut yourselves out of my life—but you didn’t step forward then either, and that’s what hurts most.”
Heads bowed, my parents held on to each other as if I were a storm they had to weather. Hurting them hurt me too. All of us were scarred up and broken by Lori’s… I wasn’t sure what to even call it anymore.
Somewhere in the house a timer dinged, and Dad got to his feet. “Sorry, I was working on something for Lori when you arrived. I’ll be right back.”
“Wait.” I stood when he did, and Theo rose beside me. “I’d like to see her.”
“Okay.” He reached for Mom’s hand and drew her to her feet. “This way.”
This house was smaller than their last and much less tidy without the conclave cleanup crew wiping up after them. This place was lived in. Open medical supply boxes littered all the counters. Bags of chips and snacks awaited Dad in his favorite spots. Books covered every surface, the topics varied. Mom read three or four at a time, always in different genres. I spotted a cookbook, a science fiction novel, a contemporary romance and a guide to motorcycle repair.
My parents stopped in front of the last door in the hallway, and Dad wrapped his large hand around the small brass knob. His chest rose and fell, gathering courage was my guess. His other hand flattened against the raised panels. With a twist and a push, he opened the door in the total silence all parents were capable of when checking on sleeping children.
This room wasn’t the comforting bastion of childhood memories the other had been. The plain white walls and khaki-colored carpet lent a sterile quality to a room that already lacked personality. A new hospital bed occupied the center space, and machines were arranged around the head of the bed. Subtle beeping, the hiss of oxygen and whir of electronics combined to create ambient noise.
I jumped when Theo clasped my shoulder. I glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was fixated where mine had yet to roam. Coward that I was, I allowed myself to waste a few extra moments searching the room with a bland eye before focusing on the reason I was here.
The scene from Snow White came to mind, the one where she rested in her glass coffin, dead but not. Bespelled. Frozen in time. Perfect. Except no true love’s kiss could dissolve the tubes keeping Lori suspended in this moment.
Crossing to her took an eternity. And when I reached her side, I had to try several times before I covered one of her hands, both folded over her middle, with mine. Her skin was soft and warm, her hair parted in the middle and French braided so that each twist trailed down the pillow under her head and almost down to her hips. Our faces and builds were so identical that I could have been staring down at myself.
“Hi, Lore,” I whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Give them a minute alone.” Theo entered my periphery. “We’ll be outside when you’re done.”
“What about you?” I caught him by the wrist. “Don’t you want to visit with her?”
“Yes.” His throat worked. “But I can wait my turn.”
Once alone with my sister, I started talking. I didn’t stop until I had given her highlights of all the years she had missed. I told her about the academy, about the pack…about Graeson. When I ran out of topics, I pulled a chair near the bed and told her how much I had missed her, how much better all those events would have been with her around to enjoy them with me, how sorry I was that I hadn’t been faster or stronger or stood up to her in the first place to protect her from her adventurous nature.
A knock at the door tugged me from my thoughts. Theo slipped inside without waiting for me to answer and rested his hands on the silver railing of Lori’s bed. “Your parents think you should take a break. You’ve been in here for two hours, and they say touching her for long periods of time will weaken you faster.”
Two hours? Nodding, I pushed to my feet. Or I tried to. I didn’t make it all the way before wobbling knees sank me back down onto the cushion. I raised my arms and watched tremors ripple through my hands. I stared at Lori, peaceful and unaware, and forced my legs under me.
Theo’s lips thinned. “Can you make it on your own?”
“Yeah.” Voice gravelly, I tried again. “I can get back to the kitchen.”
“Call if you need me.”
He turned his back on me, and I left before I overheard what he said to Lori. They had been best friends, closer in some ways than she and I had been. Both of them had larger-than-life personalities and an unquenchable thirst for mischief. Isaac and I were the sticks in the mud. Theo and Lori… They had been an unstoppable duo. Isaac and I had envied them. I was old enough to admit that now, though I doubted Isaac ever would because his brother would never let him live down the admission. What I wouldn’t give for Lori to give me the same hard time just once more.
I found my parents in the kitchen, Mom with a book and Dad with a screwdriver in one hand and a circuit board in the other. They both dropped what they were doing and raked their gazes over me, assessing the damage that small contact with Lori had done.
“Let’s go outside.” Mom slid a coupon between the pages of the chapter where she left off reading, grabbed a bottle of greenish water from the fridge, and led me through sliding glass doors onto a patio on the opposite end of the house from Lori. “You’ll feel better out here.” She unscrewed the cap and passed the bottle to me. “Drink that. It will help. It’s how I cope being away from Dot for long periods of time.”
I did as she instructed and gagged on the first sip. “That’s horrible.”
“The alternative is worse.” She gestured toward one of the chairs tucked under a patio table. “Sit. Rest.”
I didn’t have much choice since my legs had given up on supporting me. “What will you do now?”
“We’re going to stand and fight.” Dad joined us and shut the door behind him. “We can’t leave Dot and Isaac in the hands of this crazed fae.”
I choked for a different reason. “I won’t endanger you like that.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Mom crossed to Dad and leaned against him. “I can find Dot.” She tugged a familiar necklace from under the neckline of her shirt. “Our parents had these made for us when we were kids. Back then connecting with family wasn’t as easy as pulling out a cell phone and making a call. Letters were slow to be forwarded. They followed a few towns behind, so meeting on the fly was impossible. This helped.” She twirled the simple tiger’s-eye pendant between her fingers, and I noticed it wasn’t so plain after all. A thick metal needle inset its core, and it wobbled as she moved. “Dot is its true north. I can use this to lead us to her.”
“I’ll take it.” I held out my hand. “You should stay here with Dad and Lori.”
“The magic only works between twins.” She shook her head. “You can’t use it. It would only lead you back here.”
“You’re okay with this?” I asked Dad.
“We haven’t been there for you or the rest of the family in a long time.” He kissed the top of Mom’s head. “We can’t walk away from this, and we can’t leave Lori alone.” His gaze found mine, strong and steady. “We’ve talked about this, and we trust you to keep your mom safe.�
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I braced my elbows on the table and dropped my face into my hands. “Charybdis threatened you both. His avatar, Marshal Ayer, was here. So he knows about Lori.” I rubbed my forehead. “I would be delivering Mom right into his hands.”
“We can find Dot and—” Mom argued.
“It’s not that simple.” I explained how Charybdis operated, how his hosts worked, and my parents fell silent. “Even if we get to them, they run the risk of being tainted, and we run the risk of being infected.” I dropped my hands and sat back in my chair. “How do you capture a fae who’s incorporeal like that? Without harming his avatar?”
“Fae who require an avatar integrate fully with their host.” Mom was slow to add, “To kill the fae, you would have to kill the body he occupied.”
“Except he’s proven he can hop from person to person as it suits him. There’s some proximity involved. He must use his current avatar to get in range of his new host.” That was how he took Bianca. He used an avatar, most likely Harlow, to get close enough to possess her. “There’s no way to know who he has under his control. We can’t kill everyone and hope we take him down in the process. There are too many innocents involved.”
Dad mulled over the problem. “It sounds like we need to isolate him.”
“Isolation works.” The fewer bodies in a given area, the less chance he had of leaping into a host in time to escape. “I don’t see us luring Charybdis into an obvious trap. He’s smart. There’s no way he’ll go into an area at our request without a backup host or an escape plan.”
The sliding doors parted, and Theo emerged wearing a thoughtful expression that made me curious about how much he had overheard since he had obviously been listening.
“So eliminate the variables,” he said, taking the chair beside mine.
“Wow.” I snorted. “The answer was right in front of me this whole time. How did I not see that?”
“We have something he wants.” He tapped my hand where it rested on the tabletop. “Bait, coz. We have bait.”
“He could have taken me at any time, yet he hasn’t.” I shook my head. “He’s not going to end his game early just because I’m tired of playing.”
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