by Jo Holloway
His open eye squeezed into a slit as she spoke. “A friend?” he growled.
She waited in silence for his anger to cool. Trying to talk about the Pyx he’d taken in the past wasn’t working. When the eye began to relax, she tried another tack.
“I’m sorry about Olivia,” she started. He immediately tensed, but she reached out a hand to his shoulder and was surprised when he kept his seat. “Will you tell me what happened?”
“You know what happened. You see them. Hell, you walk around with one of them.” The voice was gruff, and his open eye flashed dangerously. He shifted under her hand. “One of them—one of those evil monsters—attacked her and left her like that.” He practically spat the word “monsters.”
“Left her like that?” Her voice rose.
He lowered the blood-stained dishtowel. “She was fine one minute. A deer came into the meadow outside the manor. I’d seen it before, and its eyes did something funny a few times, but I didn’t know what it meant back then. She loves animals, always has. So when the deer let her walk right up to it, she was overjoyed. She looked back at me with this huge smile. Then its eyes flashed green, and suddenly, she shrieked and grabbed her head in both hands. The deer took off, and she fell to the ground, writhing around and screaming.” He paused.
Cara’s breath stuck in her throat as she imagined the awful scene in the meadow full of wildflowers she’d wandered through. She hadn’t even noticed her hand tightening on his shoulder as he spoke. She released her grip and put her hand carefully back in her lap.
“All I know is, by the time I got across the meadow to her, she was quiet. And I haven’t heard her voice since.”
Cara sucked in a slow breath while her insides sank to her toes. She began to hate the Pyx who had done this, more than she could bring herself to hate the person beside her. Poor Olivia was a completely innocent victim. And Rhys had only wanted to save her.
“When? How long ago?” she whispered.
He glanced up to look her in the eyes. “Almost a year and a half now.”
“Rhys, I’m so sorry. I am.”
He blinked at her and nodded once.
“So after that, you started . . . um, hunting them . . . I guess?”
The muscle under his eye twitched, and he looked away again. “Not right away. I put it together over the next few weeks while the doctors tried to figure out how to fix whatever happened to her. Nothing worked, and I realized it wasn’t just a normal shock response. That thing—it did something to her.”
He held the cloth to his face again. Several drops of pink water fell to his leg as the ice inside melted.
She reached out a hand to stop a drop from running off his leg onto the white couch. He flinched at her touch.
“Sorry,” she said. She regrouped and prompted him to continue. “Pyx were disappearing by May last year.”
“I found the first one by accident—a mouse caught in one of the live traps we use at the manor. It was the first time I’d been back since she . . .” He took a deep breath. “I had just turned sixteen and gotten my license, so I drove myself out there to see if anything made sense. I guess I was looking for an answer to what happened. When I saw the green flash in the mouse’s eyes, I knew it was one of them. I could barely see straight. I took it outside, and, well, it wasn’t pretty.” He paused, and Cara grimaced at the fate of the mouse.
“It didn’t work, though.” His face fell even more. “As soon as I brought the shovel down, there was this horrible screech above me, and I looked up to see a magpie squawking and flying unsteadily. Then it leveled off, and its eyes flashed green before it flew away. That’s how I figured out they jump around. I was more careful after that.”
“You waited until you could control where they jumped,” Cara prodded.
“Partly. It was more than that.”
She stayed quiet, waiting for him to fill the silence when he was ready. Finally, he took a shuddering breath behind the cloth and lowered it again. He set it down in a decorative bowl on the coffee table. It was a soggy mess now, and a few drips had already hit the rug. His nose had stopped bleeding, but there was blood streaked across under one eye, giving him a simultaneously ferocious and defeated look. She clenched her hands together in her lap.
“I didn’t want to hurt them.”
“The Pyx? Oh, you mean the animals,” she said. “You did have Tolstoy for over three months. The Pekinese, in case you didn’t know his name.”
“That stupid dog—” He shook his head. “He was so freaking happy all the time, like he totally trusted me. I wasn’t going to kill him, but he just wouldn’t react when I threatened to. I just wanted the annoying voice of that thing to get out of him and into something I could deal with.”
“The snails.”
“Yeah. You took them?” he asked.
She nodded.
“When I left them behind, I never thought anyone would know what they were. I took off because there was someone in my house, and—”
“Guilty conscience?” One side of her mouth curved up into a smile as he looked over.
He almost laughed. At least, a little huff came out, which was pretty close to being a laugh. She’d take it.
“Did you let them all go?” His voice strained. She almost felt bad for all the effort he’d gone to in tricking so many Pyx out of their pyxides and into the snails, only to have them all taken away and freed again.
Her face screwed up in a grimace as she nodded while his expression fell. He groaned, but in the end she wasn’t sorry for what she’d done, because those Pyx weren’t bad. Not like the one that had attacked Olivia.
“The one who did this to your sister, she’s obviously horrible. But they aren’t all like that.” She held up a hand at his look of protest. “No, really. They aren’t. Didn’t the ones you took try to talk to you?”
“Of course they did. They wouldn’t shut up for the longest time. Not until they finally figured out I wasn’t listening.” He leaned back. When he saw her questioning look, he hunched forward again. “I wasn’t about to listen to them. They could have been saying anything. I was sure it was all lies to save themselves. I kept them away from anyone else they could hurt until I could figure out what to do about them. I’m still working on it.”
Cara flinched and gripped her hands more tightly together. “I’m sorry your first real encounter with a Pyx was with her. I can’t imagine what I would have thought if that was my first experience with being a Pyxsee. It was hard enough being introduced to it by a gentle, almost familiar voice—”
“A what? Did you say pixie?” He was close to smiling. Really close.
She fought back a grin. “Wow, you really don’t know anything. Um, no, P-y-x-s-e-e. It means you can see Pyx, and hear them. The ability comes with the gold color in your eyes, the bit that matches the color of mine. It’s called Pyxsee-gold.” She couldn’t believe she was explaining her gold eyes and the basics of being a Pyxsee to someone the same way Jenyx had explained it to her last year. Twice.
He was staring at her eyes, giving her an odd look, and she was about to say she knew it sounded crazy. Instead, he said, “Uh, you got an extra dose, then.” The corners of his mouth finally twitched up.
“Very observant,” she quipped, and for the first time she could remember, someone making a comment about her eyes didn’t irritate her. “You’re catching on quick.”
“Why did you say “she’s horrible”? I mean, why are you calling the Pyx a she? Do they actually have genders? What even are they?” His flood of questions wasn’t a surprise given how little he seemed to know.
She straightened in her seat. “We can catch you up. Wes and I can fill you in on everything. He’s a Pyxsee too, in case you didn’t notice. And Jory knows basically everything we know. I should probably go see where they are.” She started to stand and caught a flash of blond hair at the window.
“Wait.” Rhys stopped her with one quiet word. “Do you guys know . . . do you know how to help
her? Do you know what that thing—what she did to my sister to leave her like this?”
Cara sank back down and chewed the inside of her bottom lip. She swallowed and met his pleading eyes. Her chest tightened, and the little flip in the middle of it was barely noticeable this time through her sympathy.
“She didn’t leave her like that.” Her voice shook. It was barely above a whisper. He recoiled from her words.
“What do you mean?”
“The Pyx who attacked Olivia—she’s still in there.”
He shot up off the couch. “WHAT?” The hoarse shout reminded her of their meeting at the hospital.
The coffee table lurched as his knee slammed into it. The bowl flew across the room, landing with an echoing crash as it broke apart on the floor beyond the rug. The pink-tinged ice water slopped across the shining wood surface. Cara was on her feet, stepping back from the couch, though she didn’t remember standing. The front door banged open, and Wes and Jory were on either side of her before she got five feet from the coffee table.
“You okay?”
She nodded to Jory’s concerned look. He stood extremely close to her. His body heat warmed her left arm. His steadfast presence helped steady her pulse.
“Should we go?” he asked softly.
Wes took a step forward. “We can’t.”
Rhys stood rooted to the spot in the middle of the room where he’d ended up after exploding. His chest heaved, and his arms were rigid by his sides, hands clenched in fists.
“Oh, yes, you can,” Rhys said. “You can leave and never come back. You can take your evil-possessed animal friends and stay the hell away from me. I’ll figure out how to get that thing out of her, and I’ll get rid of as many more as I can so they can’t hurt anyone else.”
“No, you won’t.” Cara stepped toward him. His face was thunderous, but for her, something had changed. He might yell, but it didn’t matter.
“You don’t even know me,” he growled. “You don’t know what I’ll do.”
“I know you didn’t like it. I know you’ll hate yourself more than you do already if you keep doing it your way.” Her voice was steadier than she’d imagined it could be, given the tightness in her chest. “And I don’t think you can bring yourself to actually kill them—the animals, not the Pyx,” she said quickly when his eyes flashed a warning.
“It doesn’t matter what I want. I have to,” he muttered. “I will.”
“No, you won’t,” she said again. “What I mean is—We’re going to help you.”
CHAPTER 16
Focus
BEHIND CARA, JORY EXHALED with a long hiss. Wes cocked his head to one side, staring at her for a moment. Then he looked back to Jory with a raised eyebrow. Rhys stared blankly ahead, his chest rising and falling a bit too quickly.
“We’re helping this jackwagon now?” Jory stepped close beside her again, breathing the words beside her ear as he touched her arm to steer her away.
“We’re helping Olivia,” she replied. She stood her ground.
“Liv.” Rhys raised his face to meet her eyes again, and his expression softened. “She hates Olivia. It’s Liv.”
There went the flip in her chest again, with a rush of warmth at his obvious affection for his sister. She finally understood the value of the Libby alias in protecting Olivia’s identity from visitors and patients. No one would hear the difference between Lib and Liv if her family slipped. Liv was a lucky girl to have a brother who cared so deeply, no matter how misguided he might be. What would it feel like to have someone care that way about her? What would it feel like to have Rhys care . . .?
Focus, Cara.
She brought her thoughts back to his sister. She looked at everything he’d done, even the terrible things, for the sake of Liv. It had all been to save his sister. They had to find a way. If she only knew how they were going to help. After all, the ghostly echoes still rang in her mind.
There’s nothing we can do to help Olivia. Well, screw that. She was doing it anyway.
“So does that mean you’ll let us help Liv?” she asked.
Rhys turned his attention to the friends standing on either side of her. His eyes scanned back and forth.
“I’d be crazy to trust you,” he said.
Jory tensed beside her, and Cara reached a hand out to calm him. She kept her eyes on Rhys. Jory exhaled under her hand and stayed quiet. Wes understood what she wanted and stood still. She waited for Rhys to break the silence again.
“What? I would. You’re still the people who broke into my house. You practically broke in here today, coming in uninvited.” He looked at Wes, who just raised one shoulder as if to ask what else he could have done. He turned to Jory, who still wore a scowl that didn’t suit him at all. “You assaulted me. I don’t even know why I haven’t called the police.” Finally, his gaze landed on her. “And you . . . Why would I trust any of you?”
“Because you’re out of options.” Wes used his calmest voice, low and quiet. It had the desired effect, the way Wes’s logic often did.
Rhys’s shoulders dropped. “Yeah. I guess I am. Can you actually help?”
“We’ll figure something out,” Cara said. Wes shot her a side-eyed glance, which she ignored.
She turned into Jory, using her hand to start him moving. He still looked like he might want to punch Rhys again. “Let’s go,” she whispered.
“We still can’t,” Wes said, his voice a little firmer now. “Where are they?” He was watching Rhys. “Where are the Pyx you have now?”
She’d forgotten part two of the plan. Well, it was really the whole plan since they’d come here not knowing how they could help Liv, and still didn’t. But the main plan was to get in here to find the missing Pyx. She could have smacked herself.
“There’s that trust thing again. I’m not telling you. Not until you prove you can help Liv.” Rhys wore that half-fierce, half-broken look with traces of blood still smeared on his face. One cheek was red and raised already. The eye on that side squinted closed more than the other. He was going to look pretty bad for the next few days.
“He’s right, Wes. I wouldn’t trust us either. Not after what he’s been through.” She cleared her throat to rid her voice of the sad note and put on what she hoped was a reassuring expression. “How about a compromise? Keep them safe, don’t take any more, and don’t try to do anything to them.” Rhys squinted at her with his good eye but didn’t object. “We’ll work on what to do for Liv, and we meet in a week. We give you our plan. You give us the Pyx. Then we get to work helping Liv.”
“At Jory’s house—It’s not far. We can write down the address for you,” Wes added.
Cara glanced at him but nodded her agreement.
Rhys sighed. “I’ll consider it.”
They opened the front door to the windy day and left after giving him Jory’s address and planning a time to meet in a week. Tension peeled off her in the summer breeze. No one spoke until they left his block and turned the corner out of sight.
“Holy crap.” Cara bent at the waist, exhaling hard. After a deep breath, she straightened up and smacked Jory’s arm. “Okay, what was that, Jor? Where did that come from?”
“Dunno,” he mumbled.
“You’re lucky. He seemed to think you owed him one for the knock on the head. He almost wasn’t mad.”
“You didn’t sense any Pyx while you were in there?” Wes asked her.
“No, I didn’t get any weird feelings that weren’t my own.” She blushed as she realized how that sounded, and shuffled a loose pebble on the sidewalk with her toe. “I mean, I didn’t sense anything from somewhere else. But I think I only feel it when they’re feeling something strong. Not just their normal state, so I can’t be sure.”
“What happened after we left?”
She thought back. “He told me about Liv. He saw her get attacked by the Pyx, but he didn’t know she was still in there. I told him we freed all the ones he collected in the snails. He wasn’t super happy ab
out that. He hardly knows anything, Wes. We’re going to have to help him learn about being a Pyxsee. He didn’t even know the word.”
“You’re talking like we’re all going to be best buds. I thought we hated this guy,” Jory said. “It’s bad enough he’s coming to my house next week.”
“Maybe,” Wes said.
“Why did you say to meet at Jory’s? I figured we’d just go back there again.” Cara stopped walking and turned to Wes.
“Human psychology,” he replied. When they didn’t immediately understand, he settled his weight to one leg and tried to explain. “If he has to come to us, then he already has to make the decision to take our help. If we go to him, he can still be on the fence, waiting for us to make a wrong move to prove he should never have trusted us. If he makes the first move, he’s invested.”
“Huh.” Jory was nodding slowly. “Makes sense.”
It did make sense. She was impressed.
“Plus, he actually could call the cops on us for trespassing if we go back there,” Wes continued. “I doubt it would amount to much, but I can’t imagine the school would be happy to learn we left campus and broke into Whalton Manor, with or without proof. And my mom would kill me if I did anything to screw up my scholarship.”
“Ouf. I didn’t think of all that. No, actually, I didn’t think of any of that,” Cara said.
The possibility of getting in trouble with the school, or her friends getting in trouble, hadn’t crossed her mind. She’d been too focused on what they could do for Liv and making sure they had a way to help Rhys. Meanwhile, Wes was thinking on three extra levels from where she was. She didn’t even realize the fine line they’d been walking.
At least at the moment, she didn’t have any reason to think Rhys was about to cause more trouble. He’d be nursing his injured face for the next few days, anyway. But more than that, she gotten the sense he wasn’t actually a terrible guy. Just a guy who’d been doing some terrible things in the face of terrible misunderstandings. Liv’s blank face in the hospital haunted her mind, and the feeling of desperation ghosted through her. He had a really good reason. The memory of his haunted face replaced Liv’s empty one, and the flutters under her sternum chased the hollow, desperate feeling out.